SPEAKING FREELY Japan's false claim to the Kurils By Yu Shiyu
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Japan's
so-called Northern Territories have lately received a
lot of media coverage, reflecting Tokyo's hope, or
rather wish, that it may be high time for Russia to
relinquish, willy-nilly, the latter's control since 1945
of the four disputed southernmost islands, plus some
uninhabited islets, of the Kuril Archipelago to their
rightful owner - Japan.
But what is the legal
basis for Japan's claim? After the end of World War II,
Japan has engaged, somewhat timidly in the early 1950s,
and then in an ever-growing crescendo, in a huge
propaganda war to depict the southern Kuril Islands as
Japan's "inherent territories that have never belonged
to a foreign country".
Unfortunately, other than
Japan's own populace and political parties from the
ruling Liberal Democrats to the communists, the once
enthusiastic but now lukewarm Beijing officialdom, and
the Washington establishment that have bought into this
propaganda, the rest of the world seems rather unmoved
by this "inherent territories" pitch.
Like much
of other historical revisionism now vigorously peddled
by a growing crowd in Tokyo regarding World War II, the
"Great East Asian Coprosperity Sphere" and Japan's
earlier "entrance" into China, the "inherent
territories" claim does not stand up under scrutiny.
First of all, it is well known that the
expansion of the Japanese state into the northern part
of Hokkaido, let alone the Kuril Islands, was a fairly
late historical development. At the very least, this
expansion of the Japanese rule did not predate Russia's
rapid advances to Siberia and the Far East. The sequence
of documented events puts much of Japan's propaganda
about its "inherent" ownership of the (southern) Kuril
Islands into serious doubt.
According to John J
Stephan's book The Kuril Islands: Russo-Japanese
Frontiers in the Pacific published by Oxford
University Press in 1974, Russian exploration of the
Kuril archipelago began in the 1690s, and the first
documented Japanese landing on the southern Kurils
occurred in 1754.
The 2003 electronic edition of
the authoritative Encyclopedia Britannica is even more
explicit: "The Kurils were originally settled by the
Russians, following their exploration in the 17th and
18th centuries. In 1855, however, Japan seized a group
of the southern islands and in 1875 took possession of
the entire chain."
After demonstrating the
dubious nature of Japan's claim to the Kurils by
historical precedence, we now examine the claim's legal
foundations. The 1951 San Francisco Treaty stipulates in
Article 2, Chapter II, that: "Japan renounces all right,
title and claim to the Kuril Islands, and to that
portion of Sakhalin and the islands adjacent to it over
which Japan acquired sovereignty as a consequence of the
Treaty of Portsmouth of September 5, 1905."
The
fact that the Soviet Union did not sign the 1951 treaty
notwithstanding, Japan as a signatory has apparently
ceded all legal claims to the Kurils. Therefore, the
only legitimate basis for Japan to reclaim its "Northern
Territories", once the ink of the San Francisco Treaty
had dried, is that the four southernmost Kuril islands
were never part of the Kuril Islands. As the
preceding oxymoronic English clause reads, such a legal
argument by Japan would really stretch the almost
universally accepted geographic definition of the Kuril
Islands, typified by the Encyclopedia Britannica cited
above.
The refined version of Japan's legal
argument that the "Northern Territories" were never part
of the Kuril Islands (Chishima retto in Japanese)
goes as follows: In the 1855 Treaty of Shimoda, Japan
and Russia divided up the Kuril Islands, with Japan
owning the four southernmost islands and Russia getting
the rest of the archipelago. Then in the 1875 Treaty of
St Petersburg, Russia gave up the sovereignty on its
part of the Kuril Islands in exchange for the sole
ownership of the Sakhalin (Karafuto) Island. In
the second treaty, the 18 islands previously owned by
Russia were individually listed. This fact is now being
used by Tokyo for its argument that the remaining four
southernmost islands in the same archipelago were not
part of the Kuril Islands.
Unfortunately for
Japan, the official version of the Treaty of St
Petersburg was written in French, befitting both the
Francophile tradition of the Czarist Russia and the
rigor of French as a diplomatic language. Prior to
listing the 18 islands by their name, the treaty asserts
in Article 2:
En echange de la cession a la
Russie des droits sur l'ile de Sakhaline, enoncee dans
l'Article premier, Sa Majeste l'Empereur de Toutes les
Russies pour Elle et pour ses heritiers, cede a Sa
Mejeste l'Empereur du Japon le groupe des iles dites
Kouriles qu'Elle possede actuellement, avec tous les
droits de souverainete decoulant de cette possession, en
sorte que desormais ledit groupe des Kouriles
appartiendra a l'Empire du Japon.
As a
French-speaking modern researcher observed (Journal of
Oriental Studies, Vol 36, 1996, p10), the absence of a
comma after the phrase "le groupe des iles dites
Kouriles" logically means that what Russia was
giving up was not the whole of the Kuril Islands.
Therefore, Tokyo's legal argument that what Russia ceded
in the 1875 treaty represented all Kuril Islands does
not hold water in rigorous analysis either.
This
commentator is not entirely unsympathetic to Japan's
wish to reclaim the southern Kurils, nor is he oblivious
to the fact that Japan in all likelihood did more than
Czarist Russia, the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia
combined in developing the Kurils and the Sakhalin
Island, on which several generations of Japanese
colonists were buried. However, propaganda based on
historical revisionism will not get Japan very far in
this endeavor.
Still worse is the suggestion to
solicit Washington's help in reclaiming the "Northern
Territories". As the aforementioned text of the 1951 San
Francisco Treaty, largely drawn up by the United States,
demonstrates, Washington originally had little interest
in safeguarding any of Japan's "inherent territories".
This attitude was naturally changed by the Cold War.
However, it was also exactly the US intervention in the
mid-1950s that had cost Japan the historical opportunity
to recover the first two of the four southern Kuril
islands half a century ago.
Given Washington's
continuing encroachment on Russia's influence in the
latter's "near abroad", fully exemplified by the recent
presidential election in Ukraine, Japanese politicians
should probably think thrice before asking Uncle Sam to
intervene again in this territorial dispute.
Yu Shiyu is a regular columnist for
Lianhe Zaobao (The United Morning News), Singapore's
largest Chinese newspaper. He also writes frequently on
international affairs for several newspapers and
magazines in mainland China.
(Copyright 2004 Yu Shiyu)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
