Episode 367 - Everything and Nothing

History of Japan

Isaac Meyer

Japan, History, Japanese

4.8 • 744 Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2020

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, we're talking about one of Japan's territorial disputes: the bitter debate over ownership of the Senaku Islands/Diaoyu Islands/Pinnacle Rocks. Where do these competing claims over a bunch of uninhabited islands in the middle of nowhere come from? And what has their impact been on Sino-Japanese relations?

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week's episode is brought to you by Audible.
0:03.9	Audible has over 425,000 audiobook titles to choose from, all compatible with iPhone, Android,
0:11.0	Kindle, or your MP3 player of choice.
0:13.9	For listeners of the show, Audible is offering a free 30-day trial membership complete with
0:18.4	credit for a free audiobook of your choice.
0:21.5	You can cancel any time and keep the free book, or keep going with one of Audible's subscription offers.
0:27.1	Go to audibletrial.com slash Japan to claim your offer. This week, I'm going to recommend
0:32.7	Imperial Twilight, the Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age, by Stephen R. Platt.
0:39.6	Honestly, I think Platt is one of the best scholars writing about China today.
0:44.1	Everything he's written has been fantastic, and this is no exception.
0:47.8	If you have any interest in Chinese history at all, I highly recommend checking it out.
0:52.4	Go to audibletrial.com slash Japan to claim your copy.
1:10.2	Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 367, Everything and Nothing.
1:18.2	This week, I want to talk about the history of an argument, a dispute over land that keeps cropping up in the news, and which has cropped up in our own narratives a few times over the course of this podcast.
1:29.3	It is, in a certain sense, a dry argument over legal technicalities, how we decide who owns something and what belongs to who.
1:37.6	But in another sense, it's an argument over history, over national narratives, over whose story about where we are and how we got here is the right one.
1:46.8	Today, it is time for the story of the dispute over the pinnacle islands, which, unless you are a
1:52.5	Chinese nationalist, you probably know better as the Senkaku Islands.
1:57.0	I've been meaning to do an episode on Japanese territorial disputes for some time now, and I probably will follow this episode up with a newsletter for Patrian members about another one, probably Japan's dispute with Russia, just because for me it's more memorable since I lived in Hakodate for a bit.
2:13.8	Broadly, though, I think the story of these disputes tends to be pretty similar, and the
2:18.2	Senkakus are far and away the most famous of Japan's territorial controversies, so to my
2:23.1	mind they make the most sense to focus an entire episode on.
	...

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