Under Diplomatic Strain, Japan Recalls Envoy in Dispute With China Over Islands
TOKYO — Japan temporarily recalled its ambassador to China on Sunday in response to renewed friction over a disputed island group, while it faces discord with its allies South Korea and the United States over women forced to work in Japanese brothels during World War II.
Though minor, the diplomatic flare-ups underscore how disagreements over history and territory continue to isolate Japan from the rest of Asia. They come after several years of relative calm in which Tokyo seemed to mend fences with neighbors still traumatized by Imperial Japan's brutal, early-20th-century march across Asia.
On Sunday, Japan's ambassador to China, Uichiro Niwa, returned to Tokyo for what Japanese officials said were discussions over how to prevent the island dispute from further damaging ties between the two Asian powers.
"We'll send him back to Beijing soon after he finishes" the discussions, the foreign minister, Mr. Gemba, said late Saturday in Hanoi, Vietnam. Mr. Gemba had already lodged a protest with Beijing over the entry by the Chinese ships.
Mr. Noda announced plans for the central government to buy three of the uninhabited islands, which are owned by a Japanese citizen, after Tokyo's rightist governor announced that he wanted to buy them. China says Japan seized the islands after winning a late-19th-century war between the two nations. Virtually worthless in their own right, the islands are near rich fishing grounds and possible undersea oil and natural gas deposits.
Mr. Gemba was in Southeast Asia to attend a regional meeting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that failed on Saturday to find agreement on how to respond to China's separate territorial claims in the South China Sea, which are disputed by Vietnam and several other nations in the region.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/world/asia/japan-recalls-ambassador-to-china.html?_r=1&ref=china
