Readings

Creation of the New National Museum of Territory and Sovereignty - To build a place for thinking about Japan’s territories

On January 20, 2020, the National Museum of Territory and Sovereignty was relocated from Hibiya to Toranomon with expanded area. As introduced in Volume 9, No. 21 of the Journal of Islands Studies, the establishment of this newly relocated and expanded Museum owes its basic ideas to the recommendations by the Advisory Panel on Communications Concerning Territorial Integrity (July 29, 2019).2 The recommendations, titled “For Practical Initiatives to Strengthen Communication Based on Changes in the Domestic and Overseas Environment,” has gone far beyond just assembling general rules, suggesting many concrete plans presumed to be put into practice. All of the members of this Advisory Panel had either participated continuously in the Panel since its creation back in 2013, shortly after the Office of Policy Planning and Coordination on Territory and Sovereignty was established under the Cabinet Secretariat, or had actually been involved in activities in the area of territory and sovereignty. They joined not merely as leading scholars in academic fields, but gathered under the framework aligned for considering ways and means that meet specific demands, and are practically feasible. They visualized valuable ideas and thoughts in the form of the recommendation.

Japan’s Island Territories and the Three Manners of Warfare

Prussian general and military theorist Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz characterized war in his work Vom Kriege, i.e. On War, as “An act of force is to compel our enemy to do our will.l.1” Clausewitz, in his own words, masterfully distills the essence of war from a political science perspective. Meanwhile, French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined war sociologically, asserting that “...the effect of a mutual, steady and manifest disposition to destroy the enemy State, or at least weaken it, by all means possible. This disposition reduced to actions is war properly so called; so long as it remains without consequences, it remains nothing but the state any assortment of means it has at its disposal.

The Positions of the United States and the United Kingdom regarding the Senkaku Islands at the time of the Okinawa Reversion

Japan, after its defeat in World war II in August 1945, signed the Peace Treaty with the allied nations in 1952, and international law relations between these contracting partis changed from wartime to peacetime in international relations.1 Article 3 of the treaty stipulated that the Nansei wartime to peacetime in international relations.1 Article 3 of the treaty stipulated Island and Parece Vela (the Ogasawara Islands and Marcus Island (Minamitorishima Island) would be placed under the trusteeship of the United States as sole administering authority

Marine Scientific Research by Third Countries over the Extended Continental Shelf

The Benham Rise constitutes the greater part of the extended continental shelf of the Philippines. It has been pointed out since early on that there may be large deposits of oil and natural gas under the Benham Rise, and the waters over the Benham Rise also have abundant marine living resources. The Philippine government submitted information on the limits of the continental shelf to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) in order to exercise its sovereign rights to the Benham Rise as well as the 200-nautical-mile conventional continental shelf. Following the recommendation of the CLCS, the Philippine government deposited charts and relevant information describing the outer limits of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles with the Secretary-General of the United Nations in accordance with Article 76, paragraph 9. If it is assumed that the Chinese ship was carrying out marine scientific research on the Benham Rise, it follows that the research ship was on the high seas even if it was engaged in a survey of the extended continental shelf. Aren’t there fears that any problems arise from this situation under international law? The present paper examines this issue while analyzing discussions about this question.

The Functions and Work of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf

Iuchi Yumiko and Usui Asano, two OPRF research fellows, explain the role of the CLCS, a body tasked with examining and recommending approval of submissions from coastal states regarding their continental shelf limits. Offshore islands can serve as the baseline for extensions of these limits, making them a vital part of states’ submissions to the CLCS. When conflicting submissions are made, as by the coastal states surrounding the South China Sea, how does the commission function? And how has Japan’s 2008 submission extending its continental shelf in seven regions been regarded?

The Problems in the South China Sea

In February 2012 the second in a series of international conferences was held in Singapore. There participants discussed territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Japan is not a party to these disputes, but they have bearing on the nation for their impact on the East Asian security environment and on China’s relations with other states. Defense specialist Ueno Hideshi introduces the range of views presented at this conference on Chinese territorial claims, US responses, and other factors that will need close attention as the region moves forward.