Hydrographical Revisionism

Urged by South Korean lobbies, some state legislatures in the United States are renaming the sea between Japan and Korean Peninsula. Virginia’s House of Delegates passed a bill, following Senate, requiring all textbooks to refer to the Sea of Japan with notice of that it was also called the East Sea. The same movement appeared in State of New York and New Jersey. Although the Government of Japan is frustrated with the tendency, it could not have stronger influence than Koreans have in U.S. However, isn’t it a movement of changing status quo in history?

While benefit of renaming the sea was not clear, the Koreans and Japanese made a political battle in Virginia. According to Reuters, population of Korean-American in Virginia amounts 82,000, greatly outnumbering 19,000 of ethnic Japanese in the Commonwealth. South Korea’s Foreign Ministry paid a Senator of Virginia who sponsored the bill $7,600 to invite him to Seoul. Hundreds of Korean-Americans showed up in the capital to support the bill to pass.

The Japanese Embassy hired a consulting firm with price of $75,000 to lobby for Japan on this issue. Ambassador Ken-ichiro Sasae reportedly indicated to the Governor, Terry McAuliffe, that the enactment of the bill would be risking damage on economic tie between Japan and Virginia.

Japan lobby in U.S. has been weak, as seen in the issue of comfort women, because its efforts were exercised mainly as a job of Embassy staffs. Money-oriented diplomacy did not work well against broad movement of citizens of the Koreans and Chinese in America. Regrets or explanations of high class officials in Japan, such as Foreign Minister or Chief Cabinet Secretary, does not seem to have reached to the American continent.

Even if those state legislations were a kind of exercise of internal politics, renaming the sea may contradict to the attitude the Federal Government has been taking in its diplomacy. Basic stance of U.S. on territorial dispute, for example toward China on Senkaku issue, has been no unilateral change of status quo. The status quo in textbooks in U.S. has been that the name of the sea was “the Sea of Japan.”

U.S. government needs to realize that the renaming may render Japan a cause to dispute further over Takeshima island, on which Japanese right-wing conservatives are strongly protesting South Korea’s administration. What is it going to do, if the French-American starts arguing that the English Channel should be written as Le Manche? Wouldn’t China begin to call the Pacific Ocean the East China Ocean and the West American Ocean? Be careful on changing traditional name in geography.