How a Few Tiny Islands Put Japan and China in Dispute

The South China Sea isn’t the only arena in Asia’s waters where China’s territorial claims are stoking tensions. One thousand miles to the northeast, China is in a dispute with Japan over century-old claims to a set of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea -- called the Senkakus in Japan and the Diaoyus in China. That poses the potential for wider conflict, since the U.S. has said the islands are covered by its security treaty with Japan. Tokyo and Beijing have for decades been at loggerheads over the islands whose combined surface area is about 3 square miles (7 square kilometers), causing almost daily friction, raising concerns that a bigger confrontation might erupt at any time.

With eight major outcrops, the islands are located about 105 miles (170 kilometers) northeast of the northern tip of Taiwan, which also has a claim on them, but has largely stayed out of the fray. Japan lists the isles -- the biggest of which measures 1.5 square miles -- in its Okinawa prefecture and says they were incorporated into the nation’s territory in 1895. Beijing holds that they are part of its historical territory that should have been returned with the rest of Japan’s colonial possessions after World War II. As many as 200 Japanese lived there in the early years, according to Japan’s Foreign Ministry, producing dried fish or collecting bird feathers to sell. Now human-free, only goats are sighted there.