Japan–Pacific Islands Relations

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Foreign relations of Japan Summary

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Japan–Pacific Islands Relations

The archipelago of Japan is made of more than three thousand Pacific islands. Most of them are tiny uninhabited spots of land, but they provide a sort of buffer zone between the four main Japanese islands and the non-Japanese Pacific islands. Historically, Hokkaido in the north and the Ryukyu Islands (included in Okinawa Prefecture, named for the largest of the Ryukyus) in the south did not come under the control of the central government until the beginning of the twentieth century. This was the last step before the expansionist thrust of the early twentieth century toward the Asian mainland and the outer Pacific islands.

The great design of expanding Japanese territory and space step by step, rock by rock was inspired by the work of Japanese geographers at the beginning of the century. "South Seas fever" enflamed the national imagination and contributed to the myth that Japan could find in the South Seas islands the natural resources it lacked.

In 1917 a secret agreement between Japan and the United Kingdom, confirmed by the Treaty of Versailles (1919), provided the basis for the sharing of the German Far East possessions after World War I. In this way, Japan acquired sovereignty over the Marianna (except Guam), Marshall, and Carolina islands.

The Pacific War

During the 1920s, Japan built naval bases on the Micronesian islands for its expanding fleet, which was progressively being freed from the constraints imposed by the Washington Naval Conference of 1922. (That conference had limited the number of military vessels Japan could have.)

On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked the U.S. forces in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Hong Kong, Guam, Wake Island, and the Gilbert Islands were seized within a month. The Japanese built a major base in Rabaul (New Britain, Papua New Guinea), from which they launched attacks on New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. The year 1942 was decisive, with the main sea battles in the Coral Sea (4–11 May), Midway (3–7 June), and Guadalcanal (August 1942–February 1943) being won by the U.S. forces. The Pacific islands were conquered by the U.S. forces, which leapfrogged toward Japan's main islands from Bougainville (November 1943) to Iwo Jima (February 1945). After the war, Japan surrendered sovereignty over Micronesia to the United States.

Developments After World War II

After the war, Japan's energies were devoted to reconstruction and economic recovery. Japan was not part of any formal agreement between its former territories and the victorious Allied powers. The South Pacific became a U.S. lake under the ANZUS Treaty of 1952, which linked Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States set up the South Pacific Commission in 1947 for economic cooperation among their dependent territories. The Pacific islands gradually attained independence between 1962 and 1980. Australia and New Zealand became the leading regional powers and promoted the creation of the South Pacific Forum (SPF) in 1971 as a gathering of the independent island states of the region. The SPF promoted the creation of the South Pacific nuclear-free zone in 1986 (Treaty of Rarotonga). In 2001 the forum's membership included the following: Australia, the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

During the Cold War, the main manifestations of Japan's relations with Pacific islands were commercial exchanges, Japanese fishing in these islands' economic exclusive zones (EEZ), and Japanese tourists.

The Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

The end of the East-West confrontation in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the French nuclear tests in Polynesia in 1995 dramatically changed the international role of the Pacific islands. They ceased to be pawns in a global competition and were left facing their own shortcomings and difficulties as poor, remote, and resourceless islands.

The former colonial powers have been all too happy to let Japan distribute a substantial amount of development aid to the island states. Since the 1990s, Japan has been contributing between $150 and $200 million annually in official development assistance (ODA) to the Pacific islands. It pursues an active bilateral diplomacy through grants (54.8 percent of ODA) and technical cooperation (33 percent) with most of them. It is also the third-largest contributor to Pacific Islands Forum activities (after Australia and New Zealand). At the end of the 1990s, Japan was the biggest bilateral aid donor to Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu and the second biggest to Fiji, the Federal States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu. Japan is also the largest export market for the SPF countries, taking more than 30 percent of their exports (in minerals, forestry, fish).

In 1997 Japan initiated regular meetings between the leaders of Japan and the South Pacific states. The second meeting was held in April 2000. Three issues were discussed at this conference: sustainable development for the Pacific islands, promoting cooperation on regional and global problems, and strengthening Japan's partnership with the South Pacific states. At the top of the cooperation agenda on global problems are climate change and global warming, which are matters of life and death for the island states, because rising sea levels are leading to land erosion and to the disappearance of some of the islands. The Pacific island states also expect Japan to pay attention to their own preoccupations when multilateral trade rules are being discussed in other forums.

Japan's aid policy is part of its global U.N. diplomacy: in 2000 Japan gave $3 million to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to be spent on projects for the South Pacific, including projects aimed at advancing technologies and fighting infectious diseases. Paradoxically, Japan is also using aid to the South Pacific states as a means of gaining supporting votes in the United Nations on such controversial issues as whaling, Tonga and Fiji being considered as potential pro-whaling countries, or for its bid to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

The geographic location of the Pacific islands also explains why Japan is paying such attention to them. First, access to the region's rich resource of tuna has been an enduring reason for Japan's aid program. Japan is constantly trying to strike a balance between its own interests and those of the Pacific island states in this regard. Second, the island states are scattered on the sea links being used by Japanese ships coming from Europe carrying nuclear waste. These trips usually cause great discontent among the nuclear-sensitive populations of the Pacific, and Japan is keen to assuage these fears. Third, Japan is also interested in taking advantage of the location of the Pacific islands near the equator. Japan's NASDA (National Space Development Agency) built a monitoring facility on Kiritimati Island in Kiribati in 1977. In 2000 NASDA was granted authorization to renovate the runway and to build ports, road, and other facilities by March 2002 and to use the runway until 2020 as part of its space program to develop a reusable spacecraft. Last, Japanese tourists account for a huge majority of the visitors to the Micronesian islands and to the French overseas territories of New Caledonia and French Polynesia.