THE wave of anti-Japanese protests that has erupted across China, after tit-for-tat landings by ultranationalists on uninhabited islands which the Japanese call the Senkakus and the Chinese the Diaoyus, is alarming. It is a reminder of how a barren group of disputed rocks could upend pain-staking progress in the difficult relations between Asia’s two biggest powers (see article). And the spat even raises the spectre of a conflict that could conceivably draw in America. History always weighs heavily in East Asia, so it is essential to understand the roots of the squabble. China has never formally controlled the Senkakus, and for most Japanese, blithely forgetful of their country’s rapacious, imperial past, possession is nine-tenths of the law. Yet the islands’ history is ambiguous. The Senkakus first crept into the record lying in the Chinese realm, just beyond the Ryukyu kingdom, which in the 1870s was absorbed by Japan and renamed Okinawa. The Chinese emperor objected to Japanese attempts to incorporate the Senkakus into Okinawa, but in 1895 Japan did it unilaterally. After Japan’s defeat in 1945 the Americans took over Okinawa’s administration, along with the Senkakus. In the 1951 peace treaty between Japan and the United States, as well as in the agreement to return Okinawa in 1972, the Senkakus’ sovereignty was left vague (Taiwan claims them too). The Americans say the dispute is for the parties to resolve amicably. Three decades ago that looked possible. Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s modernisation, recognised the risks. When he signed a Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Japan in 1978, the two countries agreed to kick the Senkakus into the long grass. “Our generation”, Deng said, “is not wise enough to find common language on this question. The next generation will be wiser.” His hopes have been dashed. Chinese maritime power is growing, in ways that not only challenge Japan’s control of the Senkakus (but also worry other countries that have maritime disputes with China). Maritime law has evolved with exclusive economic zones around territories (see article). So all the islets have become more valuable. The current squabble began when the right-wing governor of Tokyo declared that the metropolitan government would buy the Senkakus from their indebted private owner, the better to assert Japanese sovereignty. Not to be seen as weak, Yoshihiko Noda, the prime minister, retorted that the Japanese government would buy them instead.

The natural solution

What can be done? Neither side wants to jeopardise good relations, let alone go to war, over the Senkakus. But the fact that there is a (remote) danger of conflict should prompt both governments to do two things. The long-term task is to defang the more poisonous nationalist serpents in both countries’ politics. In Japan that means producing honest textbooks so that schoolchildren can discover what their predecessors did. In China (no promulgator of honest textbooks itself) the government must abandon its habit of using Japanophobia as an outlet for populist anger, when modern Japan has been such a force for peace and prosperity in Asia. But the priority now is to look for ways to minimise the chances of unwished-for conflict, especially in seas swarming with rival vessels.

At a minimum that means not only having hotlines between the two governments, but also cast-iron commitments from the Chinese always to pick up the phone. A mechanism to deal with maritime issues between the two countries was set up last year, but crumbled when put to the test. Ideally, both sides should make it clear that military force is not an option. China should undertake not to send official vessels into Japanese waters, as it still occasionally does, and deal more forcefully with militaristic sabre-rattlers like the general who suggested using the Senkakus for bombing practice. Back in 2008 the two countries agreed on a framework for the joint development of disputed gasfields in the East China Sea, though China unpicked this good work when a Chinese trawler rammed a Japanese coastguard vessel near the Senkakus in 2010.

As for the Senkakus themselves, Mr Noda’s proposal to buy them would have value if accompanied by a commitment to leave them unvisited. And it would be easier to face down the nationalists if America acknowledged its own past role in sweeping competing claims over the Senkakus under the carpet. Our own suggestion is for governments to agree to turn the Senkakus and the seas round them—along with other rocks contested by Japan and South Korea—into pioneering marine protected areas. As well as preventing war between humans, it would help other species. Thanks to decades of overfishing, too few fish swim in those waters anyway.