ABSTRACT
Japan's "inherency policy" garners most attention in the East China Sea and centers on uninhabited islands that Japanese know as the Senkaku and Chinese and Taiwanese know as the Diaoyutai. Between 1945 and 1972, the United States (US) had governed these islands in the East China Sea together with its occupation of all of Okinawa. Moving north through the Tsushima Straits and into the East Sea/Sea of Japan lies another one of Northeast Asia's key security flashpoints: the sharply pointed volcanic outcrop that Koreans know as Dokdo and Japanese call Takeshima. Both Japan and Korea claim these islands as "inherent territory"—;;with Tokyo tying this dispute together to the ones with China and Russia. The American drafters of the San Francisco Treaty exercised enormous power when they geographically redefined what "Japan" meant, and the detritus of those decisions exists today in the form of the island disputes Japan has not only with Korea, but also with China and Russia.
