HONG KONG/TOKYO | Wed Aug 15, 2012 11:52am EDT
(Reuters) - China demanded Japan immediately and unconditionally free 14 Chinese activists held over a protest landing on disputed islands on Wednesday, as tensions between Tokyo and its neighbors flared on the anniversary of the end of World War Two.
Video:Review: Diaoyu Islands dispute CCTV News - CNTV English
Video: Japan arrests 14 Chinese activists on Diaoyu Islands issue CCTV News - CNTV English
The landing by the activists on an island chain in the East China Sea and their detention by Japan's coastguard came on a day of regional diplomatic jousting, underscoring how history dogs Japan's ties with China and South Korea.
In a meeting with Japan's ambassador to Beijing and a phone call with a Japanese official, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying lodged "solemn representations" over the latest territorial quarrel between Asia's two biggest economies.
Fu "demanded that Japan ensure the safety of 14 Chinese nationals and immediately and unconditionally release them", the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on its website.
Japan arrested five members of a group of activists from China, Hong Kong and Macau who landed on the island, Japan's coastguard said. China's Xinhua news agency said Japan's coastguard later detained nine activists on their boat. Japanese media also said that in all, 14 activists had been detained.
Earlier, South Korea prompted an official protest from Japan after comments by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak which some saw as going too far by insulting Japanese Emperor Akihito.
And in a move likely to add to the anger of Japan's neighbors, two Japanese cabinet ministers paid homage at a controversial Tokyo shrine for the war dead.
Memories of Japan's wartime occupation of much of China and colonization of South Korea run deep despite close economic ties in one of the world's wealthiest regions.
Japan protested to China's ambassador over the landing and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Tokyo would deal with the matter strictly in accordance with the law.
Xinhua said Japan had pushed tension "to a new high".
"The tensions are fully due to irresponsible clamoring and attempts by some Japanese politicians and activists to claim the islands, which ... indisputably belong to China," it said.
Friction over the uninhabited isles, near potentially rich gas deposits, had been heating up already.
Several of the activists, who set out from Hong Kong, jumped into the sea, swam and waded ashore. The group said its boat had been rammed by the coastguard and hit with water cannon. A Japanese official denied that any serious damage had been done to the boat.
Media published photographs of the activists planting a Chinese flag on a rocky shore.
"We've waited 10 years for this... We finally managed to get ashore," the captain of the protest ship was quoted as saying on Hong Kong television.
A separate row over rival claims by South Korea and Japan to other islands has also intensified, signaling how the region has failed to resolve differences nearly seven decades after Japan's defeat at the end of World War Two.
WARTIME MEMORIES LINGER
The friction in part reflect skepticism over the sincerity of Japan's apologies for wartime and colonial excesses.
On Tuesday, South Korea's Lee told a group of teachers that Emperor Akihito should apologize sincerely if he wants to visit South Korea, saying a repeat of his 1990 expression of "deepest regrets" would not suffice.
Japan, noting that it had never broached the idea of a visit by the emperor to South Korea, lodged a protest with Seoul over the remarks. Akihito has spent much of the past two decades trying to heal the wounds of a war waged in his father's name.
Lee, whose Friday visit to the islands claimed by South Korea and Japan frayed ties between the two U.S. allies, called Japan an "important partner that we should work with to open the future".
But in remarks commemorating Korea's liberation from Japan's 1910-1945 rule, he also said the countries' tangled history was "hampering the common march toward a better tomorrow".
He urged Japan to do more to resolve a dispute over compensation for Korean women abducted to serve as sex slaves for wartime Japanese soldiers, known by the euphemism "comfort women" in Japan and long a source of friction.
"It was a breach of women's rights committed during wartime as well as a violation of universal human rights and historic justice. We urge the Japanese government to take responsible measures in this regard," Lee said.
Japan says the matter was closed under a 1965 treaty establishing diplomatic ties. In 1993, Tokyo issued a statement in the name of its then-chief cabinet secretary apologizing to the women and two years later set up a fund to make payments to the women. South Korea says those moves were not official and so not enough.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the war's end on Wednesday, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda acknowledged the "enormous damage and suffering" caused by Japan to other countries, especially in Asia.
"We deeply reflect upon (that) and express our deepest condolences to the victims and their families," he said, vowing that Japan would never go to war again.
Tapping into anti-Japanese sentiment remains a way to seek public support in South Korea and China, which face leadership changes in coming months. And some experts say a new strain of nationalism is surfacing in Japan amid gloom about the future.
In a sign of the domestic pressures in Japan, National Public Safety Commission Chairman Jin Matsubara and Transport Minister Yuichiro Hata visited the Yasukuni shrine for war dead, defying Noda's urgings to stay away.
Many see the shrine as a symbol of Japan's past militarism because 14 Japanese wartime leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal are honored there with Japan's war dead.
(Additional reporting by Kaori Kaneko and Stanley White in Tokyo, and Ben Blanchard and Chris Buckley in Beijing; Editing by Louise Ireland and Robert Birsel)
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Backgrounder: History proves Diaoyu Islands are China's territory
Xinhua | 2012-8-17 19:02:23
The Japanese government on Friday decided to release the 14 Chinese illegally detained Wednesday by Japanese authorities at the Diaoyu Islands after the Chinese government repeatedly demanded their "immediate and unconditional" release.
The 14 Chinese, despite obstruction by Japan Coast Guard patrol ships, arrived at the Diaoyu Islands by a Hong Kong fishing vessel to assert China's territorial claim to the islands.
Japanese police arrested them on suspicion of "illegal entry."
After their detention, China's Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying reiterated China's sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands and the affiliated islets, and demanded that the Japanese guarantee the safety of the citizens and free them immediately and unconditionally. On Thursday, China once again urged Japan to "immediately and unconditionally" release its nationals.
Demonstrators across China staged protests Thursday demanding the release of the 14 Chinese nationals.
The Diaoyu islands, in the East China Sea between China and Japan, have belonged to China since ancient times.
The islands are 120 nautical miles northeast of China's Taiwan province, 200 nautical miles east of China's mainland and 200 nautical miles west to Japan's southernmost island Okinawa.
Geologically the islands are attached to Taiwan. The waters around the islands are 100 to 150 meters deep and there is a 2,000-meter-deep oceanic trench between the islands and Japan's Okinawa islands.
Fishermen from China's Taiwan and Fujian and other provinces conducted activities such as fishing and collecting herbs in this area since ancient times.
The islands appeared on China's map since the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
There are records about the islands in a book published during the rule of Yong Le (1403 to 1424) in the Ming Dynasty, more than 400 years before Japan claimed discovery of the Diaoyu islands in 1884.
After the Ming Dynasty, the islands were recorded in many historical documents.
On a map published by Japan between 1783 and 1785, marking the boundary of the Ryukyu Kingdom, the Diaoyu islands were shown as belonging to China.
Japan never questioned China's sovereignty over the islands before the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895.
In April 1895, the government of the Qing Dynasty was forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, under which China ceded the whole island of Taiwan and its surrounding islands including the Penghu Islands to Japan.
Only since then has Japan had its own name for the area where the Diaoyu islands are located. Before that, Japanese maps marked the islands by their Chinese names.
Japan was occupied by the United Sates after it was defeated in the Second World War.
In 1951, Japan and the United States illegally signed a treaty in San Francisco without the presence of China, which was one of the victor countries in the Second World War.
Although article two of the treaty said that Japan surrendered its claim over Taiwan and the Penghu islands, article three wrongly assigned the Diaoyu islands, which Japan had stolen from China, and other islands, to the Ryukyu zone which was under US control.
The then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai lodged a strong protest and said the Chinese government would never recognize the San Francisco Treaty.
In a statement on territorial waters in 1958, the Chinese government said that Japan should return all the territory of the People's Republic of China including Taiwan and the islands around it to China.
Consequently, there is no room for argument that the Diaoyu islands have historically been a part of China's territory.
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Next time, China too can use surveillance and coast guards to intervene, prevent and arrest Japanese activists trying to land Diaoyu Islands.
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