In a slightly surreal case, Kyodo [10] news agency reports April 20 that a Shanghai Maritime Court [11] ordered the seizure of a vessel owned by Japanese shipping giant Mitsui OSK Lines [12] at a port in Zhejiang province for failing to pay compensation in "a wartime contractual dispute." It seems that in 1936, Mitsui's predecessor, Daido Shipping Co, rented two ships on a one-year contract from China's Zhongwei Shipping Co. The ships were commandeered by the Imperial Japanese Navy, and later sank at sea. The suit was brought against Mitsui by grandsons of the founder of Zhongwei Shipping, and has been batted around in China's courts for years. In 2012, the Supreme People's Court [13] rejected Mitsui's petition for retrial, affirming the Maritime Court's finding that the company must pay. The decision to seize the ships now seems pretty clearly retaliation for Japanese cabinet minister Keiji Furuya [14]'s visit to the Yasukuni shrine [15] days earlier. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe himself sent a "ritual offering" to the shrine ahead of Japan's spring festival, which starts this week. All of this is happening (again less than coincidentally) exactly as Japan has started construction of a military radar station on Yonaguni Island [16]—just 150 kilometers from the disputed gas-rich Senkaku archipelago, claimed by China as the Diaoyu Islands. (Reuters [17], Singapore Today [18], Xinhua [19], BBC News [20])
As we've said before [21], China and Japan have got way too much invested in trade with each other to actually intend to go to war. But brinkmanship is a dangerous game, and there is plenty of potential here for things to spiral out of control very quickly. Japan's spring festival, which will likely see more high-profile homages to war criminals at Yasukuni, will actually overlap with President Obama's visit to the country this week. Hopefully, he will have a little talk with Abe, telling him that such behavior is not helpful. Of course, there is no reason whatsoever to hope that Obama will rein in Japan's military expansion, which the US is avidly facilitating [22]...
