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A Reef or a Rock?

Question Puts Japan

In a Hard Place

To Claim Disputed Waters,

Charity Tries to Find Use

For Okinotori Shima

By MARTIN FACKLER

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

February 16, 2005; Page A1

TOKYO -- Yoshihiko Yamada is determined to find new ways to defend Japan's

territory from Chinese encroachment. Some ideas so far: building a prison, raising

tuna and breeding billions of micro-organisms.

Mr. Yamada is trying to find some economic use for Okinotori Shima, an uninhabited

coral reef that sits isolated in the deep blue Pacific Ocean 1,100 miles south of

Tokyo. No matter how far-fetched, the ideas he picks could become reality, thanks

to millions of dollars from Mr. Yamada's employer, the Nippon Foundation, a charity

that finances patriotic projects.

The charity is wading into a diplomatic row between Tokyo and Beijing over

Okinotori's status. For years, Japan has called Okinotori an island, which allows

Japan to claim not only sovereignty but also exclusive economic control of waters

extending out 230 miles, or 200 nautical miles, in every direction. This has

allowed Tokyo to claim 160,000 square miles of ocean -- an area larger than the

entire landmass of Japan.

[Yoshihiko Yamada]

Then, last April, Beijing suddenly cried foul. At a routine meeting of midlevel

diplomats from both sides, the Chinese representatives said their nation now views

Okinotori as just a rock. That definition doesn't question Japan's sovereignty. But

it would erase Japan's claim to the vast exclusive economic zone, or EEZ.

Chinese interest in Okinotori lies in its location: along the route U.S. warships

would likely take from bases in Guam in the event of a confrontation over Taiwan.

China's efforts to map the sea bottom, apparently so its submarines could intercept

U.S. aircraft carriers in a crisis, have drawn sharp protests from Japan that China

is violating its EEZ.

Still, U.S. and other experts on oceanic law and territorial issues say China's

challenge is valid. According to the United Nations Law of the Sea, established in

1982 and adhered to by 147 countries and territories, countries can have an EEZ

around only an island that has inhabitants, or self-sustaining economic activity.

But neither is the case with Okinotori Shima, which means "Island of the Sea

Birds." No one has ever lived there, and the atoll's entire exposed landmass is

just two mattress-sized boulders barely sticking of the water.

Experts say Japan's position is similar to a failed British attempt to claim an EEZ

around Rockall, an uninhabited granite outcropping in the Atlantic. London

eventually dropped its claim in the 1990s when other countries objected. "You

simply can't make a plausible claim that Okinotori should be able to generate a 200

[nautical]-mile zone," says Jon Van Dyke, a law professor at the University of

Hawaii specializing in oceanic law.

So far, Japan has gone to great lengths to prevent Okinotori from disappearing

altogether, but has done little to create economic activity. It has spent more than

$250 million to fortify each of the twin boulders with its own 83-foot-thick

concrete sea wall to protect it from typhoons. The smaller boulder was also covered

with a titanium screen to stop wave-hurled debris from chipping off a piece of it.

[ ]

So, because Japan did nothing after China's April 2004 rock proclamation, Mr.

Yamada swung into action. "Sometimes the private sector can be more efficient, and

come up with more realistic plans than the government," says the 42-year-old Mr.

Yamada. A former bond trader, he quit his job at a bank 14 years ago to do

something of social value. The Nippon Foundation, founded under a different name in

1962 by Ryoichi Sasakawa, a billionaire boat-racing tycoon who died in 1995, funds

everything from leprosy research to nationalistic projects like Okinotori.

As initial research, Mr. Yamada took 46 Japanese academics and journalists by ship

to the island in November to brainstorm ideas. There, the group used rubber

dinghies to land on the sea wall of one of the boulders, spending a few hours

photographing, measuring and taking samples from the outcropping before heading

back.

At Nippon Foundation's Tokyo headquarters, Mr. Yamada looked over more than a dozen

proposals made by his junketeers for creating self-sustaining economic activity on

the outcropping. One called for building a manned coral-research lab, but Mr.

Yamada thought it might be too expensive to shield it from Okinotori's waves, which

can tower as high as a four-story building during a typhoon. Another was to open

Okinotori to ecotourism, but the drab reef might not merit the long, grueling trip,

Mr. Yamada says. He also rejected a plan to cover the atoll with pavement or

landfill in order to build a prison. The submerged reef is about 2.7 miles long and

1.1 miles wide and the plan called for filling in part of it. "The island has to be

natural to qualify," he says.

Japanese officials and politicians say they welcome the Nippon Foundation's

efforts. After meeting with Mr. Yamada, Tokyo's outspoken nationalist governor,

Shintaro Ishihara, promised that the city would spend $5 million to implement

another proposal: creating a "tuna ranch" around Okinotori by floating buoys

carrying long ropes in the water, which cast shadows to attract the fish.

(Okinotori is technically part of Tokyo.) The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and

Transport, which administers the island, also says it will likely approve whatever

Mr. Yamada comes up with.

"We're happy the private sector is coming up with some creative ideas," says

Katsunori Kadoyu, an assistant director at the ministry.

Chinese analysts said the Nippon Foundation's moves would only worsen the situation

and blamed Japan for being more aggressive. "It's just one of the many new

developments from Tokyo of a strong military approach" to addressing diplomatic

issues, said Chu Shulong, a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

So far, Mr. Yamada has decided to fund two projects. The first is a $10 million,

unmanned lighthouse. He says it would constitute economic activity because the

beacon would improve the safety of a busy nearby shipping route for carrying

Australian iron ore and other raw materials to Japan.

But Mr. Yamada's heart is in another, more ambitious project: To gradually expand

Okinotori's landmass until it's big enough to hold a permanent population. To do

this naturally -- and thus to abide by the Law of the Sea -- Mr. Yamada is hoping

to produce tons of sand using two methods. One is accelerating the growth of coral,

which is pulverized into sand by waves, by submerging hundreds of hollow concrete

"flower boxes" to shelter coral larvae. The other is to attract large numbers of

Foraminifera, hard-shelled microscopic organisms whose bodies become sand as they

die. Since Foraminifera are drawn to plants, there will be sheets of artificial

turf laid out on the atoll's floor.

"Humans have never tried to speed along the natural island-building processes

before," says one of the plan's authors, Makoto Omori, director of Akajima Marine

Science Laboratory, a private research center in Okinawa. A marine biologist, Dr.

Omori came up with the idea after studying how typhoons and currents created

islands naturally.

If the plan works at all, it will take decades or even a century before the island

is large enough to be useful, admits Dr. Omori. That doesn't deter Mr. Yamada. "The

Law of the Sea doesn't specify that economic activity has to start right away," he

says.

--James T. Areddy in Shanghai contributed to this article