The Ryukyu section of the 1876 Complete Map of Great Japan does not have a label for the Diaoyu Islands.
A map published more than 130 years ago by historian Zheng Hailin has become one of the strongest evidences of the current Sino-Japanese island dispute. In this "Complete Map of Great Japan" drawn and published by the Japanese Army Staff Bureau at that time, there is no label of the Diaoyu Islands at all, which fully shows that the Diaoyu Islands were not owned by Japan in history. When people further studied the details and historical background of this map, they unexpectedly found more valuable things in it.
Published 11 1876
In 1876, the second year of Qing Guangxu, the ninth year of Meiji in Japan. If you count from 1867, when the shoguns "returned the government" to the emperor, Japan's Meiji Restoration has entered its 10th year, and the "elite" and the Hao clan of the empire have seen the hope of a rich country and a strong army. Although Japan itself is still saddled with unequal treaties with the Western powers, its ambitions for foreign expansion have been revealed. In January of that year, the Japanese government sent Kiyotaka Kurohi as plenipotentiary to lead seven warships and more than 1,000 Marines to Korea to forcibly negotiate and conclude treaties with the North Korean government, citing the shelling of its warships and the initiation of armed conflict. Under the coercion of force, the North Korean government signed the so-called "DPRK-Japan Reconciliation Treaty", also known as the Ganghwa Treaty, on February 26 on Ganghwa Island, thus opening the door to Korea. The year before, Japan had forced the Ryukyu State to stop paying tribute to China. The year before, in 1874, Japan invaded Taiwan on the pretext of seizing the opportunity to demand 500,000 taels of silver from the Qing court. The great turmoil in the sea frontier in eastern China has begun to emerge.
In fact, China in 1876 had no shortage of remarkable points in its domestic and foreign affairs. In January of that year, Guo Songtao, a famous westerner, went to Britain, becoming the first envoy stationed abroad in China's modern diplomatic history. Zuo Zongtang, who was known as a famous minister of Zhongxing, fought against Tsarist Russia in the northwest and launched a campaign to recover Xinjiang. China's first railway, the Wusong Railway, was put into operation. Just the year before, the Qing court began to prepare for the establishment of the Beiyang and Nanyang Marine Divisions, and purchased 4 gunboats from the British.
However, in response to the great changes in the eastern sea frontier, the Qing government was unusually weak. Korea and Ryukyu were China's vassal states at that time, and Taiwan was China's territory. Before Japan forced Korea to sign the Treaty of Ganghwa, it sent envoys to Beijing to test the attitude of the Qing court. The Qing court's prime minister in charge of foreign affairs, Yamen Yamen, said that although North Korea is subordinate to China, all political and religious prohibitions are completely autonomous, and China has never heard of it. This attitude of cowering and retreating fueled Japan's expansionist ambitions and became an important factor affecting the situation in East Asia in the future.
Publisher: Japanese Army Staff Bureau
Zheng Hailin's collection of "The Complete Map of Great Japan" was drawn and published in 1876 by the then Japanese Army Staff Bureau.
In 1871, meiji 4, the Japanese Ministry of War established the Army Staff Bureau (the predecessor of the Japanese Army Staff Headquarters). In February of the following year, the Province of War was split into the Ministry of the Navy and the Ministry of the Army, and the Army Staff Board was changed to the Army Provincial Staff Office. In April 1873, the Provincial Staff Office of the Army was renamed the Sixth Bureau, and in 1874 it was renamed its original name. In June 1875, it was changed to an agency directly under the Army Province. In December 1878, it was renamed the General Staff Headquarters and became independent from the Army Province, separating military administration from military orders. In March 1886, the General Staff Headquarters was divided into the Admiralty and the War Department, which were in charge of the Navy and Army Orders respectively. In 1888, the Admiralty and the Army were renamed the Naval Staff Headquarters and the Army Staff Headquarters, and the Army and Navy Chiefs of Staff were called The Army. In 1889, the Chief of Staff of the Army was renamed chief of staff.
At the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, Japan established a national policy of "opening up the territory and expanding the territory". Japan's military establishment is the most direct and active force in the implementation of this national policy. In 1876, although Japan had forced the Ryukyu State to sever tributary relations with China, it had not yet officially occupied Ryukyu. In this year, the Japanese Army Staff Bureau published the "Complete Map of Great Japan" and drew Ryukyu into the territory. But even on such an expansive map, the Diaoyu Islands, which are close to the Ryukyu Islands, are not included, showing that the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands does not belong to Japan at all.
Historical Analysis of the Ryukyu Kingdom
There is a view in Japan that the Diaoyu Islands belong to Ryukyu and Ryukyu belongs to Japan. But in fact, the Diaoyu Islands did not belong to the Ryukyu Kingdom in history, and the Ryukyu Islands did not belong to Japan originally.
The Ryukyu Islands are located between the islands of Taiwan and Kyushu in Japan, and consist of the Amami Islands, the Okinawa Islands, and the Senjima Islands. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Ryukyu Kingdom had always been a vassal state of China, and the king accepted The Chinese canonization and used the Chinese era name, but it was also constantly invaded by Japan.
In the fifth year of Meiji, that is, in 1872, when the Ryukyu envoys visited Japan, japan suddenly forced the "canonization" of the Ryukyu king as the king of the domain. Subsequently, the Japanese side continued to exert political and military pressure to further coerce the Ryukyu Kingdom to sever its clan relations with China, but all of them were rejected by the Ryukyu Kingdom. In August 1875, King Shangtai of Ryukyu replied to a letter from the Japanese side that he could not "forget the great grace of China for generations and lose faith." The Ryukyu Kingdom also sent letters to western ministers requesting assistance.
In 1879, in disregard of public international law, Japan secretly dispatched military and police personnel to take a surprise action to occupy Ryukyu, change the Ryukyu state into Okinawa Prefecture, and force the Ryukyu king Shangtai to go to Japan. The Ryukyu Kingdom secretly sent personnel to Tianjin to meet Li Hongzhang and ask China to send troops. The Qing government also tried to argue, but in the end failed to send troops to aid Ryukyu. Ryukyu was annexed by Japan.
On this 1876 edition of the Complete Map of Great Japan published by the Japanese Army Staff, that is, before Japan completely annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom, Ryukyu had already been drawn into the map, which showed its expansion ambitions. However, on this map, it is not depicted in the Diaoyu Islands, which also proves from one side that the Diaoyu Islands do not belong to the Ryukyu Islands. In fact, Japan didn't know anything about the Diaoyu Islands at the time.
Diaoyu Islands are the first to be discovered and named Chinese. As early as the Ming Dynasty Yongle years of printing the book "Sending with the Wind", there is a detailed record of the Diaoyu Islands, the transcript of this book is now in the Bodlin Library of the University of Oxford, England, the names used in the book are "Diaoyu Island" and "Chikan Island", that is, today's Diaoyu Island, Chiwei Island. Chinese pearl mining, medicine collection and fishing in the Diaoyu Islands have never stopped. In the eleventh year of Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty, Chen Kan's "Records of Making Ryukyu" also clearly recorded the Diaoyu Islands. In order to defend against the Wokou, the Ming government formed many coastal defense books, and included various coastal maps in the book. In 1562, the Compilation of The Chart of the Sea, published under the auspices of Hu Zongxian and compiled by Zheng Ruozeng, further included the Diaoyu Islands into the territory of Fujian Province and used them as a military stronghold for defending against the Wokou. From 1621 to 1628, Shi Yongtu compiled the "Fujian Coastal Defense Map" clearly recorded that diaoyuShan, Huangwei Mountain, Chiyu Island and other islands were within the scope of Fujian coastal defense. Moreover, on the early maps drawn by the United Kingdom, France, the United States and other countries, the names of islands such as Diaoyu Island, Huangwei Island, and Chiyu Island were marked according to the pronunciation of The Chinese Hokkien language.
According to official documents released by Japan, in 1884, the Japanese Koga Tatsushiro discovered the Diaoyu Islands, and after 1885, the Japanese government sent people to survey the Diaoyu Islands many times, which was at least a few hundred years later than the Chinese record. In 1876, the Japanese Army Staff Bureau published this "Complete Map of Great Japan", there is no trace of the Diaoyu Islands, so it can be seen that Japan's occupation of the Diaoyu Islands has no historical basis.
Accidental discovery of historical physical evidence
In the early 1990s, Zheng Hailin, a doctor of history, was engaged in the study and research of history and international law at prestigious universities such as the University of Tokyo in Japan. One Sunday, as usual, he walked into a bookstore in Tokyo, where he stumbled upon a brown paper envelope in the pile of old books, and when he opened it, he opened it and saw a "Complete Map of Great Japan" drawn and published by the Army Staff Bureau in the ninth year of Meiji (1876) with moisture-proof cotton paper mounted on the back.
Zheng Hailin carefully looked at this picture and found that it was engraved in copper engraving ink, which was very precise, and the whole picture was made up of 4 printed pages spliced together. Zheng Hailin was surprised to find that the Diaoyu Dao and its affiliated islands did not appear on this map, which shocked him. According to the provisions of international law, the official map published by a country has the effect of international law in terms of territorial ownership, and this official map of Japan published in 1876 fully proves that the Diaoyu Dao and its affiliated islands are by no means the inherent territory of Japan.
History and international law are the areas of Zheng Hailin's research, and he immediately realized the value of this map. Zheng Hailin was a regular customer of the bookstore and knew the bookstore owner well, so he bought the map from the bookstore owner.
This map allowed Zheng Hailin to change the direction of his academic research, after which he began to collect a lot of information and immerse himself in research, and published the book "Historical and Legal Research on the Diaoyu Islands" in 1998. The book proves with detailed historical facts and conclusive evidence that the Diaoyu Dao and its affiliated islands have been Chinese territory since ancient times: "According to research, the Japanese officials needed to understand the geographical environment between the Ryukyu Islands and Taiwan through the British sea charts in order to promote the plan of southern invasion of Taiwan, and also learned that these islands had nothing to do with the Ryukyu Kingdom, and had long been named after China and belonged to the territory of the Qing Dynasty. During the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese government secretly passed a cabinet resolution unilaterally deciding to place the Diaoyu Islands under the jurisdiction of Okinawa Prefecture. This move is totally inconsistent with international law. ”
In recent years, Zheng Hailin's research has made new discoveries, in the 18th century, 19th century by the United Kingdom, France, the United States and other countries drawn maps, Diaoyu Island, Huangwei Island, Chiyu Island and other island names are based on the Chinese Hokkien pronunciation of Zhuyin, and the Japanese first to obtain knowledge about the Diaoyu Islands is derived from these maps, and Zhuyin is also in Hokkien. This further proves that the naming of these islands originated in China, and Chinese is the true owner of the Diaoyu Islands. (Qin Guanglin)