Gov. Blinky Ishihara wants to buy the Senkaku Rocks

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Just don't mention the war...

Actually, with the Chinese, it's hard to know what war not to mention.
When they entered the fray in Korea, one official reason given for attacking the U.N. was in retaliation for Western (British) imperialism having started the Opium Wars (only a century earlier, albeit addicting large swathes of the population for some time after).
If the Chinese retain similarly long memories in this ADHD era (which I suspect they may given the events of the past few weeks and Japanese amnesia regarding anything in the first half of the 20th century in which it was not a victim), I think Japan's gonna have to get ready to have someone "go medieval on its arse," to sum up in the immortal words of Marcellus Wallace.

[Coligny]

Just don't mention the war...

Actually, i'm a bit lucky since me Julie don't seems to look Japanese to other asian nationz dwellers...

In Korea people talk to her in Korean, Vietnam in vietnamese, on China airlines, in chinese... it hurtz her uyoku pride... but whatever...

[matsuki]

Just don't mention the war...

Actually, with the Chinese, it's hard to know what war not to mention.
When they entered the fray in Korea, one official reason given for attacking the U.N. was in retaliation for Western (British) imperialism having started the Opium Wars (only a century earlier, albeit addicting large swathes of the population for some time after).
If the Chinese retain similarly long memories in this ADHD era (which I suspect they may given the events of the past few weeks

LOL

and Japanese amnesia regarding anything in the first half of the 20th century in which it was not a victim), I think Japan's gonna have to get ready to have someone "go medieval on its arse," to sum up in the immortal words of Marcellus Wallace.

Why is it that 99.999999% of J-peoples only seem to recite 2 points about WWII? Japan was fighting to liberate Asia from western control and it was horrible how the US dropped nukes on them. Mention "pearl harbor" and you get reactions like "It was a conspiracy! The US knew we were coming!"

[gaijinpunch]

The US knew we were coming!"

Yeah... that makes it okay.

[matsuki]

The US knew we were coming!"

Yeah... that makes it okay.

Exactly...but you know this kind of Japanese logic. Piece doesn't fit the puzzle but thrown in there for the sake of irrelevant argument.

[cstaylor]

From the NY Times

Mr. Chen described what he called the intervention of the United States in territorial disputes in the South China Sea — where China has been at odds with another American ally, the Philippines — as a way for the United States to expand its influence and restrain the influence of China.

“Will these countries misjudge and draw China and the United States into a confrontation?” Mr. Chen asked. “The danger is apparent, and China needs to be aware of that.”

I wonder what the Mandarin is for either Encirclement or Containment.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

I wonder what the Mandarin is for either Encirclement or Containment.

包圍 (Encirclement) and 牵制 (Containment)

Do I have Asperger's? 亞斯伯格症候群?

[BigInJapan]

Beijing Marathon bars Japan runners

BEIJING — Japanese runners have apparently been barred from registering for the Beijing Marathon to be held Nov. 25, as the organizer has removed Japan from the nationalities listed on the application form on its official website, it was learned Saturday.

While the reasons behind the move are unknown, it could be another retaliatory step by Beijing against Japan's nationalization of the Senkaku Islands, which are claimed by China.

And while Japanese firms helped sponsor last year's race, none are listed on the organizer's website this year. The Beijing Marathon has been held every fall since 1981.

[From JT]

[Russell]

From Japan Today:

Beijing marathon bars Japanese runners due to safety concerns

Organizers of the Beijing marathon have barred Japanese runners from taking part due to safety concerns after a fresh flare-up in a territorial dispute between Japan and China, a report said Saturday.

“If they choose other nationalities including China, Japanese can take part,” the influential newspaper Asahi Shimbun’s online edition quoted a source at the organising committee of the Nov 25 marathon as saying.

The committee made the decision by taking into consideration the safety of athletes, the daily said in a report from the Chinese capital.

More...

I find the "safety concern" not completely convincing in this case.

Anyway, China is shooting itself in the foot with these kind of actions. I am involved in discussions about the organization of international scientific conferences, and China has recently become less popular as a location, because we cannot risk the banning of Japanese participants. The organization of a conference takes lots of efforts and money, and you do not want that to be thrown away because of some political hotheads. Organizing committees do not like uncertainties.

[Coligny]

After a little transit throught shangai airport, if the rest of the country is as badly fucked, i'd say nuke them from orbit... we can surely find another shithole to make plastic crap to sell in 100 yens shops...

[Russell]

After a little transit throught shangai airport, if the rest of the country is as badly fucked, i'd say nuke them from orbit... we can surely find another shithole to make plastic crap to sell in 100 yens shops...

I have also transited through Shanghai Airport, but found it a modern airport. What's the problem?

[yanpa]

Maybe it was the smaller and more venerable Hongqiao?

[Coligny]

Modern, except for the locals and for the administrative overstamping...

Byzantine for a single fooking transit...

[Mike Oxlong]

After a little transit throught shangai airport, if the rest of the country is as badly fucked, i'd say nuke them from orbit... we can surely find another shithole to make plastic crap to sell in 100 yens shops...

I have also transited through Shanghai Airport, but found it a modern airport. What's the problem?

Moi aussi...

[Samurai_Jerk]

After a little transit throught shangai airport, if the rest of the country is as badly fucked, i'd say nuke them from orbit... we can surely find another shithole to make plastic crap to sell in 100 yens shops...

Have you ever done business with the French? Asian bureaucracy and formality combined with Latin inefficiency and (lack of) punctuality.

[Coligny]

D00d that's like saying that your ex was not such a bad lay compared to f00king a corpse...

BUT shengen treaty area is sacred...

As well as internationnal transit zone...

[yanpa]

A 'fishing' trip to East China Sea disputed islands

As Japan and China continue to exchange angry words over their competing claims to an uninhabited group of islands in the East China Sea, it's not that easy to get a close look - and sometimes a little deception is required.

When you arrive in a new country as a foreign correspondent, the first thing you try to do is figure out how that country works.

Japan, where I arrived three months ago, has a reputation for being particularly complex for foreigners to understand. And so it is proving.

Take for example the little trip I recently took out in to the East China Sea.

The objective was the Senkaku Islands, as they are known here in Japan. If you live in China they are the Diaoyu. I'm just going to call them The Islands.

As you may have heard The Islands are currently the subject of a very acrimonious dispute between Japan and China over who owns them.

The Japanese government has banned everyone - including Japanese citizens - from landing on them. You are, however, allowed to go fishing in the waters nearby.

But before we could set off we had to undergo an inspection by the Japanese coastguard, and this is where things started to get interesting.

The coastguard officers were extremely polite and friendly. They were also surprisingly thorough. They wanted to see our fishing equipment, rods, reels and bait. They even wanted to see whether there really was ice in the boat's fish lockers.

Then came a question I was not expecting.

"What is the purpose of your trip?" the senior officer asked me.

I hesitated, wondering whether I was really expected to lie.

"We're… um… going… fishing!" I said.

...more...

[Russell]

How double-dealing sparked Japan-China island dispute



The road to China’s breakdown in relations with Japan began here - a sleepy Tokyo suburb that is home to the reclusive real-estate investor at the center of the explosive property deal that enraged Beijing.

Surrounded by concrete walls, security cameras and warnings of guard dogs, Kunioki Kurihara has shunned the spotlight in his compound since closing a deal to sell three uninhabited islands in the East China Sea to Japan’s government in September.

The islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan, are also claimed by China, where they are known as the Diaoyu and deemed part of its national territory for centuries.

Their $25.5 million sale sent tension soaring between Tokyo and Beijing. Seen in Beijing as a nationalization of private property, it sparked violent protests and a boycott of Japanese goods. Chinese ships were dispatched to patrol disputed waters.

Participants close to the deal describe how a property magnate with heavy debts clinched a deal he had sought with the government for at least six years by playing it off against a fiery nationalist - Tokyo’s then-governor, Shintaro Ishihara.

Ishihara has since resigned to return to national politics at age 80. It was his initial offer to buy the islands that led to a quick government purchase - at a markup of at least half a million dollars.

Kurihara, 70, declined a request for an interview.

His younger brother Hiroyuki, who describes himself as family spokesman, has used his sudden fame to promote a book, “Senkaku Islands for Sale”—and a longshot plan to turn the islands into a center for medical tourism.

“It’s odd that they owned the islands for so long,” said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asia Studies at Temple University in Japan. “It’s only now that the ante is up.”

Mostly rocky outcroppings which serve as a home to migratory birds and a herd of wild goats, the islands are closest to Taiwan, about 210 km (125 miles) northeast of Taipei and 1,800 km from Tokyo.

The largest, Uotsurijima in Japanese, rises up like a forest-canopied mountain from the sea, with no port for landing. A little larger than New York’s Central Park, the island’s highest point tops the Eiffel Tower.

The Kuriharas obtained the islands for an undisclosed amount in the 1970s from Zenji Koga, a journalist from Okinawa, an island to the northeast. Before World War Two, his father had run a fish processing plant on Uotsurijima.

Japan annexed the islands in 1895 and Koga rented them, then bought them in 1932, when they fell under the jurisdiction of colonial Taiwan, also annexed by Japan.

Taiwan also claims the islands.

The Kuriharas obtained the islands after the United States returned Okinawa to Japan in 1972 and interest grew in potential oil and gas deposits.

But the family’s focus was on commercial and residential property in Omiya, a legacy of wealth built up in the rice trade. Records show Kunioki pledged at least 75 real estate parcels in Omiya and Tokyo against his bank borrowing.

One building next to his house served until recently as headquarters of a Buddhist-affiliated group, Kenshokai, which preaches that Japan faces an apocalyptic reckoning and invasion by China. The group, a former Kurihara tenant, has described the isles as a potential flashpoint in that conflict.

In the summer of 2011, Kurihara approached Akiko Santo, a lawmaker from the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, saying he wanted to try to sell the islands to Tokyo governor Ishihara.

Ishihara became internationally known in 1989 for his best-seller “The Japan that Can Say No,” an argument to reduce Japan’s reliance on the protection of the United States.

Kurihara described himself as an admirer of the governor and said he wanted to sell him the islands, Santo said. The two met at the Omiya compound in September 2011 and later in Tokyo’s fashionable Ginza district, where they reached a verbal deal.

“They shook hands and gave their word to each other as men, which in Japan is the strongest promise you can make,” she said.

In April, Ishihara announced a plan to buy the islands, raising $17 million from private donors. His deputy, Vice-Governor Naoki Inose, also an author, estimated Kurihara’s net debt at about 1.5 billion yen, almost $19 million.

“I’m not stupid. I checked his mortgages,” Inose told Reuters.

Records show Kurihara had a credit line of almost $50 million, or 4 billion yen by 2012. The funding was provided by Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan’s largest lender, and the Saitama Shinkin Bank, a local bank.

The final offer from Ishihara’s team was just over 2 billion yen, nearly $25 million, two people close to the talks said.

But Kurihara had also been talking to the government.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda saw a national bid as a way to head off a more damaging confrontation with China.

“He first approached us about the islands in 2006,” said Akihisa Kameda, the official responsible for negotiating the deal.

Kameda said Kurihara had earlier rejected proposed swaps for forests or fields elsewhere in Japan. With the Tokyo governor offering cash, the government was forced into the bidding.

By late June, Kurihara had grown worried that the sale could be tied up in Tokyo’s local parliament or derailed by assessors, Santo said. He broke off talks with Ishihara’s team with a curt message: “I decided to sell the islands to Japan.”

Government negotiators offered Kurihara the higher price, people involved told Reuters, and fast-tracked a deal that would have taken up to a year with a private-sector buyer.

Kameda offered few details on the price, saying that it reflected a calculation of what it would cost to “replace” the islands, without further explanation. Officials declined requests by Reuters to see documents related to the valuation and sale.

On Sept 11, Japan announced it had nationalized three of the Senkaku islands, generating outrage in China, where a Communist Party Congress opened last week to put in place new leaders who will face the challenge of re-engaging with Japan.

“Japan should have pressed more for China to accept that the Senkaku are Japanese islands,” Kurihara’s brother, Hiroyuki, told Reuters.

Kazuko Kurihara, a younger sister, still holds the second-largest island, Kubajima, and in May renewed a 20-year lease to the Defense Ministry. Kubajima has been made available to the United States as a bombing range, last used in 1978.

Ishihara has told aides he wants to fund building projects on the islands. That would strain ties with China further.

Santo said she understood Kurihara’s pursuit of the highest offer. “For him, business considerations were the most important. After all, he is a real-estate broker,” she said.

[Coligny]

Bullshit level straight out of a Tom Clancy novel...

[Russell]

Bullshit level straight out of a Tom Clancy novel...

Did you actually read it?

[cstaylor]

Bullshit level straight out of a Tom Clancy novel...

Did you actually read it?

When has that ever stopped Coligny from posting before?

[Coligny]

Bullshit level straight out of a Tom Clancy novel...

Did you actually read it?

Not saying the reporting is bullshit. Just that getting on edge of war because of a cocksucker who got unlucky with his real estate adventure is of a level of crap that you'd expect from a Tom Clancy novel... not from real life...

DEAR CSTAYLOR, I think the non harrassment rule apply also to forum mods. Forget about me KTXBYE.

[cstaylor]

DEAR CSTAYLOR, I think the non harrassment rule apply also to forum mods. Forget about me KTXBYE.

A statement of fact is not harrassment. And you are the last poster who should be crying for the mods.

[Coligny]

DEAR CSTAYLOR, I think the non harrassment rule apply also to forum mods. Forget about me KTXBYE.

A statement of fact is not harrassment. And you are the last poster who should be crying for the mods.

Say the dick who don't give me a fucking break in nearly any thread...

I don't shave my balls to avoid crabs, that also apply to forums, so find another scrotum to hang to...

[cstaylor]

Say the dick who don't give me a fucking break in nearly any thread...

[matsuki]

While I enjoy CST's humor and and take the occasional personal shots with a smile (I actually have fun laughing at myself), I have to ask, is something not going so smoothly in your life CST? You've been snapping at a few people more often lately and hell, you know we're all about problem sharing/solving.

[cstaylor]

is something not going so smoothly in your life CST?

Just an incredibly annoying cold. Finished a pretty big project last week, was looking forward to relaxing, then I got hit by it.

(But Coligny's spam has been getting on my nerves for a while. Obviously the guy is smart, so it's annoying when he posts like a moron sometimes).

[Russell]

is something not going so smoothly in your life CST?

Just an incredibly annoying cold. Finished a pretty big project last week, was looking forward to relaxing, then I got hit by it.

(But Coligny's spam has been getting on my nerves for a while. Obviously the guy is smart, so it's annoying when he posts like a moron sometimes).

To improve your communication with Coligny, you may want to learn some French:

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

To improve your communication with Coligny, you may want to learn some French:

I thought all that messing around with wee was the domain of you northern Europeons and Scandalknavians...

[IparryU]

is something not going so smoothly in your life CST?

Just an incredibly annoying cold. Finished a pretty big project last week, was looking forward to relaxing, then I got hit by it.

(But Coligny's spam has been getting on my nerves for a while. Obviously the guy is smart, so it's annoying when he posts like a moron sometimes).

To improve your communication with Coligny, you may want to learn some French:

snot

LOL