Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 499, A Rocky Relationship.

So, while preparing for a related episode, I was taking inventory of some of the topics

we've talked about and uncovered a startling omission.

We've covered most of Japan's modern territorial disputes from the issue of the northern territories of the Coral Islands

to the Senkaku-Slaju Islands in the south.

But we've missed a spot, one that in many ways serves as a microcosm of one of the most important stories in the politics of modern Asia.

In fairness, the spot in question is pretty tiny and thus easy to miss.

I refer, of course, to the so-called Liencourt Rocks,

the comparatively neutral name I am going to stick to here

in lieu of either using their Japanese name, Takeshima, or the Korean one, Docto.

Now, I cannot stress enough that this is a pretty small area we are talking about.

Together, the Liencourt rocks have an area of around 0.07 square miles, or 0.18 square kilometers.

By comparison, Kitonomaru Park, just north of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, is around the same size in terms of its overall area, and unlike the Kitonomaru Park, the Liancore rocks are not continuous.

There are two major islands, called Sōdo and Dongdo in Korean, or Otokohima and Onnajima, man island and woman island in Japanese,

and an additional 35 smaller ones.

There's also an additional 54 islands that emerge or sink beneath the waves, depending on the tides.

What I am getting it here is that these places are small, and they're also, by the way, very

unpleasant.

As the name Liencourt rocks might clue you in on, these are, well, rocks, not really suitable

for human habitation, and mostly composed of dense volcanic rock with a thin layer of soil and moss

in some places.

Specifically, they are volcanic rocks formed during the last few million years, so relatively recently, geologically speaking,

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