The Noda administration is not seeing the forest for the trees while devoting all its energy to the Diaoyu Islands. It is leaving its country's diplomatic relations with China in a stalemate.

Putting these islands under the Japanese government control, the Noda administration is trying to strengthen Japan's legal claim on them.

However, its claim of sovereignty over these islands is untenable on two historical fronts.

China discovered and controlled the islands from the 14th century. For several centuries the Diaoyu Islands have been administered as one part of Taiwan and have always been used exclusively by Chinese fishermen as a base for fishing, both before and after World War II.

In 1874 Japan took Ryukyu Islands (known as Okinawa today) by force when the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was at war with several countries. The Diaoyu Islands, however, remained under the administration of Taiwan, a part of China. Following its defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the Qing government ceded Taiwan, including the affiliated islands of Diaoyu, to Japan, under the Shimonoseki Treaty.

After WWII, the Japanese government accepted the terms stated in the 1943 Cairo Declaration and 1945 Potsdam Proclamation, including “that all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa (as Taiwan was referred to prior to 1945), the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China.”

On Sept 2, 1945, the Japanese government accepted the Potsdam Proclamation in explicit terms with the Japanese Instrument of Surrender and pledged to faithfully fulfill the obligations enshrined in the provisions of the Potsdam Proclamation.

All the documents shatter Japan's justification for its claim of sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands. The Cairo Declaration and Potsdam Proclamation enabled the victorious nations, including China, to create a post-war international order.

The San Francisco Peace Treaty, which was signed between Japan, the United States and some other countries in 1951 without China being present, placed Ryukyu Islands under the US administration. It invited the Chinese government's protest. In 1972, the administration of the islands were reverted illegally to Japanese control under the Okinawa Reversion Treaty between the US and Japan.

This control does not necessarily entitle Japan to sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands.

China has decided that its contemporary relations with Japan should not be held hostage to history. In 1972 -- 27 years after Japan's surrender, which marked the end of Japanese aggression -- China established diplomatic relations with Japan.

To make this happen, leaders of the two countries were forward-looking and paved the way. They agreed to put aside the territorial dispute over the Diaoyu Islands.

The minutes kept by the Committee on the International Relations of Japan's House of Representatives on Aug 18, 1978, reveal Japanese Foreign Minister Sunao Sonoda's proposal on joint development of the Diaoyu Islands.

Today's Japanese leaders have the nerve to say there is no dispute over the islands.

Burden of history

Japan has been confused about its place in the world since the late 19th century. In an editorial in 1885, Fukuzawa Yukichi urged his nation to "escape from Asia", where he found bad friends. In his hopes for a strong Japan, Fukuzawa saw the Asian countries around Japan as potential deterrents in need of guidance. He promoted the development of Japan's imperialism through military buildup.

Japan began its expansion in East Asia in 1931 with the invasion of China's Northeast Manchuria and continued in 1937 with a brutal attack on China. It made a long series of aggression into Southeast Asia.

Japan was defeated and surrendered in 1945. The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal brought formal prosecution to 28 Class A war criminals, including Toujou Hideki, former Japanese prime minister and the prime war criminal of Japan for crimes against peace, conventional war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Out of the 28 Class A war criminals, seven were sentenced to death by hanging, including Toujou Hideki; 16 to life in prison; two to imprisonment of 20 and seven years.

In addition to the central Tokyo trial, various tribunals sitting outside Japan judged some 5,000 Japanese guilty of war crimes, of whom more than 900 were executed.

The trials and executions spoke volumes for the brutality Japan unleashed on the Asian countries.

Japan has been trying hard to be a normal country since WWII.

After one and a half century of "escape from Asia", Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio wanted to shift Japan's focus from a more America-centric foreign policy to a more Asia-focused policy.

Japan, however, fails to lead Asia as it aspires to do. It can't win trust from its neighbors because it is unwilling to do soul-searching for its past.

Unlike Germany, Japan allows a lot of ambiguity to creep into its attitude toward its aggression in WWII.

Take the Yasukuni Shrine. War criminals are enshrined there, and it is dedicated to the soldiers and others who died fighting on behalf of the Emperor of Japan.

This is perceived by the East Asian countries as a failure of integrity in Japan– a failure to observe the universal standards of right and wrong.

These countries protest when Japanese officials pay homage to the shrine. But the controversy doesn't bother Japan. Moreover, some politicians demonstrate a political attitude by visiting the Yasukuni deliberately.

Without a clearly radical departure from its military past and sincere apology for the aggression, Japan can't find a place in Asia as Germany did in Europe.

As its moral ground is shaky, Japan is not likely to play a leading role in the region politically.

Up until now Japan has had to leech on to the US. This is a price Japan has to pay.

Japan has made the Diaoyu Islands issue a mine in bilateral relations in the past six months. The role the uninhabited isles are playing in China-Japan relations and, more broadly, in East Asia, is bigger than what people can imagine.

The Japanese government needs to know that its nationalization of the Diaoyu Islands does not have the legal power in terms of international law.

Its nationalization plan can't bury the dispute.

For Japan and China, these islets are no longer the issue that they can afford to leave for future generations. Current leaders have to set their wits to the dispute with cool-headedness and reason.

The author is the Tokyo bureau chief of China Daily. E-mail: caihong@chinadaily.com.cn