The owner of the Senkaku
Islands will agree to sell the four of the five Senkaku Islands under his
ownership to the Japanese Government for 2.05 billion yen in the next couple of
days. Unless, of course, he doesn’t. It looks suspiciously like the owner is
playing the two Tokyos against each other until the last moment to see if he
can’t further enhance what is already a generous if not quite Juwan
Howard-territory offer* from the national government. (Tokyo Governor Shintaro
Ishihara appears to have wised up and is having none of it.)
If I were the Noda
administration, I would tell the owner to stick the islands where they belong
and then walk away. After all, the Japanese Government’s sovereign rights and
obligations around those islands would be virtually unchanged if it lost its
lease as a tenant under the Civil Code. In the meantime, though, the owner is
keeping reports from at least two news outlets in the can while he makes up his
mind.
* To be sure though, the 2.05 billion yen offer is within reason
only by virtue of the absurdly expensive 29 million yen/year (estimate) lease.
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