[2012.12.22] The Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands 尖阁钓鱼岛列岛.docx

The Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands尖阁/钓鱼岛列岛Narrative of an empty space无人之地的故事 Behind the row over a bunch of Pacific rocks lies the sad, magical history of Okinawa围绕着太平洋上一组岩石所爆发的争端其背后是冲绳悲哀却又迷人的历史Dec 22nd 2012 | IRIOMOTE, YAEYAMA ISLANDS | from the print edition A CLUTCH of five uninhabited islets and three rocks, cast adrift out in the currents of the Western Pacific, recently demonstrated their power to convulse East Asia. China, which (along with Taiwan) claims them, calls them the Diaoyu islands; to Japan, which controls them, they are the Senkaku islands. In September the Japanese government bought the three islets it did not already own from their private landlord. That set off a storm of protests in China, a slump in Japanese exports to China and in Chinese tourists to Japan, and incursions by Chinese vessels into the waters around the Senkakus.在西太平洋奔腾的波涛中孤立着五座无人居住的小岛和三块岩礁。正是最近，这些孤石显示了它们蕴涵着震动整个东亚地区的潜力。中国（以及台湾）声称其对这些岛屿拥有主权，并称其为钓鱼岛列岛。而对这些岛屿有着实际控制权的日本则称其为尖阁列岛。今年9月日本政府将该群岛内尚不属国有的三块小岛从私人所有者手中买下。这一行为在中国触发了大规模抗议，并造成日货在中国销售受到抵制，旅日中国游客数目急降，之后中国船舰还驶入该列岛周围的水域之中。 In theory, ownership is straightforward. But out in the ocean, things are not so clear. The question of who the islands belong to is obscured by the fog of history, and many furlongs of water.理论上来讲，列岛归属应该是非常清楚明了的。但是在茫茫大海上，实际情况则远没有那么清楚。岛屿归属这一问题被历史的迷雾和广阔的水域遮掩起来而变得模糊不清。 The Senkakus have long been known to sailors from the Okinawa chain of islands, and Okinawa is part of Japan. But Okinawa was once an independent kingdom, a peaceful place which avoided conflict with the two great powers on either side of it by paying tribute to both. And the islands’ geography is as ambiguous as their history. The Senkakus are closer to Japan than to China, but they lie on the edge of China’s continental shelf, just as it plummets into the Okinawa Trough, 2,300 metres (7,500 feet) at its deepest. China insists the trough proves that the continental shelves of China and Japan are not connected, and that the trough “serves as a boundary bet