The Senkaku Crisis in Perspective: An Interview with Former Chief Cabinet Secretary Sengoku Yoshito

Struggling to Find Common Ground

SENGOKU  Ultimately, there has to be some give and take. On this issue, public opinion is all for maintaining a hardline stance, but then how do you break an impasse? Prime Minister Kan urged me to defuse the situation from the United States, which he was visiting at the time.

So, we sent [lower house member] Hosono Gōshi to China [after Zhan’s release].(*1) Our instructions to him were not to negotiate with the Chinese but just to open the lines of communication and get some information, because we were hardly getting any at that point. Ultimately, Hosono was able to meet with [State Councilor] Dai Bingguo. We knew that nothing was going to be decided below that level. Hosono didn’t offer any concessions. He just explained our situation carefully and was able to obtain direct information that might provide a clue as to how to end the impasse. The Chinese said they wanted to talk directly to the chief cabinet secretary. So Dai Bingguo and I held a telephone conference and were able to settle the issue then and there.

If we had indicted the ship’s captain, it would have raised all kinds of issues regarding bail, how soon the trial would be held, and so forth, and all during that time China’s leaders would have been under intense pressure to take some sort of retaliatory action, because emotions were running so high within China.

During the first few months after the incident, Zhan received a hero’s welcome back in China, but after that, he was completely ignored, and there have even been reports that he’s disappeared.(*2) I think China’s leaders kind of knew [he was at fault], but there was no way they could let the issue rest unless they could claim that Japan had caved in.

From the standpoint of voter support, the incident certainly didn’t help those of us most closely involved or the DPJ as a whole. It also exacerbated anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan, which grew all the stronger a couple years later, when the Noda cabinet’s decision to purchase three of the islets sparked massive anti-Japanese demonstrations in China.

The average income of the Chinese people today is probably twice what it was seven years ago, and what with the weak yen, millions of Chinese tourists have visited Japan during that time. From an economic standpoint, this has been a big boon for Japan’s tourism industry, not to mention all the stores where the tourists shop. But underneath it all, I think a lot of antagonism lingers between the Japanese and Chinese people.

(For the second part of this two-part interview, see “Working with a Powerful China.”)

(Originally published in Japanese on November 15, 2017, based on an October 26 interview conducted at the Tokyo studio of Nippon.com. Photographs by Kawamoto Seiya.)