Each nation refers to the islands by different names: The Diaoyu-tai Islands (People's Republic of China), Tiaoytai (Taiwan), and The Senkaku Gunto Islands (Japan), to which they are most commonly referred ("How Uninhabited Islands," 2014). The Senkakus are 205 miles from China, 105 miles from Taiwan, and 105 miles from the closest island of Japan (McDevitt, 2014). .
In the late eighteen hundreds, Japan surveyed the islands as "terra nullius," which translates in Latin as "belonging to no one" ("Narrative," 2012). By 1895, after the first Japanese and Chinese (Sino) war, the islands were under the controlling victor, Japan, as stipulated by the Treaty of Shimonoseki ("Overview," 2009). The treaty stated that all of the islands around Taiwan belonged to Japan and though the document did not address specific geographical distances, the Senkaku islands were thought to be included ("Narrative," 2012). In addition, a Japanese cabinet-level decision was made to annex the islands and make them part of the Okinawa prefecture. It was at that time when the Japanese government leased the Senkakus to a Japanese businessman, Tatsuhiro Koga, who established a fish-processing plant that employed 200 workers (Scoville, 2015). The islands were eventually abandoned due to the onset of the second Sino-Japanese war in 1937, and have remained uninhabited since (McDevitt, 2014). .
In opposition, China insists the Japanese annexation was unlawful, because the islands should not have been classified as terra nullius. They claim that the islands had been a part of China's territory since the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), and the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912). Furthermore, China declares that Japan's 1985 terra nullius claim to the Senkaku islands was conveniently during China's "century of humiliation," a time when China did not possess the power to object (McDevitt, 2014).
