Shimane Prefecture, home of my in-laws and in many respects a hidden jewel* in Japan, has produced a prefectural assembly that has decided to create a diplomatic incident of its very own. The Marmot reports that the prefecture has decided, apparently on its own, with no input from, say, the Japanese Foreign Ministry, to run a series of TV adverts claiming that a barren islet in the middle of the Japan Sea (sorry Koreans you lose on this for much the same reason that the English Channel is called the English Channel) belongs to Japan for obscure historical reasons.
My first thought when I read this was: is there a concrete shortage? Shimaneken is home to very few people and more concrete than about 5 major metropoleis combined (Shimane has barely enough people to fill even a single medium sized metropolis) and it seems to spend most of its time spending money from the National Government on building more hugely expensive roads with lots of bridges, tunnels, cuttings etc that need lots of concrete. The only reason I can think of why there is money in the Shimane budget for making propaganda adverts is that there is a lack of concrete this year. Either that or they killed off a bunch of senile pensioners and are using the money saved by not paying their pensions or nursing fees, but I think that would have caused an outcry.
More seriously I note that it is just possible that the Shimane position - nicely, but not IMHO terribly convincingly, explained in three languages on their website - has been inspired by the attempt by the top Korean policeman to boost the morale of the police on the island by visiting them during the lunar new year. However I note that - unlike the Japanese foreign ministry which seems to be keeping mum- the Korean one did suggest to the policeman that maybe it wasn't the most diplomatic of actions.
Either way this seems totally bizarre. There seems to be no logical reason at all why Japan should be interested in raising the Dokdo issue at present. Indeed I would have thought Japan was fully occupied tracking Chinese submarines and doing DNA analyses of the remains returned from N Korea and in the light of these tensions would not want to antagonise South Korea, who ought to be on the Japanese side in both these issues. If it isn't something in the Shochu, the only logical reason I can think of is that it is in fact caused by domestic Japanese politics of some sort.
For example it coule be meant to embarass the Japanese government in order to try and extort more concrete funds from it to make them shut up. Conceivably someone in the finance ministry noted that Shimane had enough concrete and wanted to make the concrete people do something else for a job and this is Shimane's way of firing back. Another possibility is that the governor of Shimane is deliberately trying the harm the Koizumi government as part of another round of LDP infighting. Or perhaps he has national ambitions and wishes to use this issue as a way to seize momentum from the other racist bigots in Japanese politics such as the never subtle Mayor of Tokyo.
*I'm not joking about the hidden jewel bit. Shimane is extremely picturesque and chock full of things of historical interest as well as onsens (hot springs) and many many other things that make it almost the archetype of traditional Japan in a way that Kyoto (to pick an overbuilt architural monstrosity of city not totally at random) isn't.
PS if you think that my attitude to both Korea and Japan in regards to this issue is ever so slightly patronising then you'd probably be right. The whole series of related disputes are all childish in the extreme and remind me more of a school playground than interational diplomacy. This spat reported by Japundit is a good example