There has been considerable media hoopla about the centennial of the outbreak of World War I. The subsequent slaughter of 16 million people was prompted by the assassination of an Austrian archduke and duchess, which activated the system of interlocking alliances intrinsic to the balance of power that was the ostensible guarantee against war.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attracted a storm of unfair criticism when he suggested that World War I demonstrates there is no room for complacency about rising tensions between Japan and China over rocky islets in the East China Sea. Extensive economic relations suggest that both nations have too much at stake to risk war, but similar arguments were made about Great Britain and Germany a century ago while Europeans were sleepwalking toward the abyss. But Davos was only a few weeks after Abe's visit to Yasukuni Shrine, perhaps explaining why his sensible remarks were misconstrued as warmongering.
In response to Abe, China dialed up a different event, the 120th anniversary of the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), initiated and won by Japan. During this conflict, Japan seized control of the disputed islands known here as Senkaku and as Diaoyu in China, contending they were unclaimed. This claim is disputed by China, which refers to them as war booty and therefore should be returned under the terms of the 1943 Cairo Declaration.