[Asia_news] upcoming seminar info on territorial problem in East China Sea

[Shinnosuke Takahashi]

For those who may concern,

Please circulate the following seminar information next week, 9 Oct in CHL.
Professor Gavan McCormack will present one of the most severe 
territorial problems in contemporary East Asia between China and Japan.

Best wishes,
Shin Takahashi


School of Culture, History and Language

College of Asia and the Pacific

Tuesday, 9 October, 12.00-1.30

Seminar Room C -- Coombs Bldg, ANU


  Yonaguni


  Dilemmas of a Frontier Island in the East China Sea

Professor Gavan McCormack

(Emeritus Professor, PAH, CHL, CAP, ANU)

Forty years after they were "normalized," relations between Japan and 
China are so abnormal that events planned to celebrate the anniversary 
in September had to be scrapped.

Tension rises throughout the East China Sea and especially in the 
vicinity of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands where Japanese, Chinese and 
Taiwanese fishing and coastguard vessels jostle, each insisting that the 
islands and their adjacent waters are their own sovereign territory. 
National, and to some extent global, attention focusses on an "Okinawa 
problem" that has, until recently, been almost entirely seen in the 
context of the main island of Okinawa, where the "world's most dangerous 
base," Futenma Marine Air Station continues to sit in the middle of 
Ginowan City 16 years after its promised return, where works on a 
projected new base toreplace it at Henoko in Nago City to the north 
remain blocked, and where plans to introduce the highly controversial 
tilt-rotor MV-22 Osprey aircraft have roused the entire prefecture to 
fierce united protest. Yonaguni opens a new front in the contest between 
the agenda that the governments of Japan and the United States attempt 
to impose and local aspirations for an order of peace and cooperation 
that would finally supplant Cold War confrontation.

On 24 September 2012, a special session of Yonaguni Island's Town 
Assembly voted 3:2 against a proposal to conduct a town plebiscite on 
the question of whether or not to host a Self-Defense Force facility. 
The storm that raged over that decision showed at microcosmic level the 
way in which the Obama administration's "pivot" to Asia was affecting 
local communities in the Northeast Asian region. Yonaguni was assuming 
-- if the town assembly's controversial decision to host a SDF facility 
is carried out - the role of front line in an emerging East Asian Cold 
War. To China, the Japanese decision to implant a military force within 
the first Chinese maritime line of defense, and in the closest Japanese 
island territories to the contested Senkaku or Diaoyu islands, will 
inevitably be seen as a challenge. Few islands faced choices of such 
moment.


      Gavan McCormack is emeritus professor in the School of Culture,
      History and Language in the College of the Asia-Pacific. He is
      also coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal -- Japan Focus
      (http://japanfocus.org/) which was in 2008 awarded the Inaugural
      Ikemiyagi Shui prize for promotion of international understanding
      of Okinawan issues. He first wrote about territorial problems in
      these seas in 1973, in a chapter on "Senkaku" in his /Japanese
      Imperialism Today/ (with Jon Halliday). For his most recent work
      analysing current territorial problems in the Pacific and East
      China Seas, see his "Troubled Seas: Japan's Pacific and East China
      Sea Domains (and Claims)," The Asia-Pacific Journal/, Vol. 10,
      Issue 36, No. 4, September 3, 2012
      (/http://www.japanfocus.org/-Gavan-McCormack/3821?rand=1346639114&type=print&print=1
      <http://www.japanfocus.org/-Gavan-McCormack/3821?rand=1346639114&type=print&print=1>/.
      /


      In 2012 he and MIT historian John Dower featured in Japan's NHK
      special New Year program, "Kantogen" discussing the outlook in
      post-Fukushima Japan.

His most recent book is the**just published (co-authored with Satoko Oka 
Norimatsu) /Resistant Islands -- Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United 
States/ (Rowman and Littlefield, 2012, distributed in Australia by 
InBooks and currently being translated into Japanese, Korean and Chinese 
for publication early in 2013).


*All Welcome.*
Enquiries:
Shin Takahashi (shin.takahashi at anu.edu.au)
Tana Li (tana.li at anu.edu.au <mailto:tana.li at anu.edu.au>)


-- 
Shin Takahashi
?? ???

Ph.D Student
Room 5209, H.C. Coombs Building
Division of Pacific and Asian History
School of Culture, History and Language
College of Asia and the Pacific
The Australian National University
ACTON, ACT, Australia

Phone:+61-612-56363 (office)
E-mail: shin.takahashi at anu.edu.au

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