JAPAN TO RENAME ISLANDS DISPUTED WITH CHINA

JAPAN TO RENAME ISLANDS DISPUTED WITH CHINA

A local council in southern Japan voted to rename an area, including islands disputed with China and Taiwan

The local assembly of Ishigaki city approved a plan to change the name of the area covering the Tokyo controlled Senkaku Islands — known by Taiwan and China as the Diaoyus — from “Tonoshiro” to “Tonoshiro Senkaku”

Uninhabited islands are at the centre of a festering row between Tokyo and Beijing and the move sparked anger in both Taiwan and mainland China

Senkaku/ Diaoyu/ Diaoyutai Islands: Group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea

Located east of Mainland China, northeast of Taiwan, west of Okinawa Island, and north of the southwestern end of the Ryukyu Islands

Disputed islands between the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), and Japan

China claims the discovery and ownership of the islands from the 14th century 

Historically, the Chinese had used the uninhabited islands as navigational markers in making the voyage to the Ryukyu Kingdom

 

Japanese central government annexed the islands in early 1895 while still fighting China in the First Sino-Japanese War

 

Islands came under US government occupation in 1945

In 1971, the Okinawa Reversion Treaty passed the U.S. Senate, returning the islands to Japanese control in 1972

Also in 1972, the Republic of China (Taiwan) government and People's Republic of China government officially began to declare ownership of the islands

On December 17, 2010, Ishigaki declared January 14 as "Pioneering Day" to commemorate Japan's 1895 annexation of the Senkaku Islands 

China assert that the Potsdam Declaration required that Japan relinquish control of all islands except for "the islands of Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine", and China state that this means control of the islands should pass to Taiwan, which was part of China at the time of the first Sino-Japanese War as well as of the San Francisco Peace Treaty

Japan does not accept that there is a dispute, asserting that the islands are an integral part of Japan. Japan assert that the islands had been uninhabited and showed no trace of having been under the control of China prior to 1895, the islands were neither part of Taiwan nor part of the Pescadores Islands, which were ceded to Japan by the Qing Dynasty of China in Article II of the May 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki,  thus were not later renounced by Japan under Article II of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, though the islands were controlled by the United States as an occupying power between 1945 and 1972, Japan has since 1972 exercised administration over the islands.