A little past 9:30 on the morning of Sept. 7, 2010, a Japanese Coast Guard vessel in the East China Sea spots a Chinese fishing trawler off the coast of islands, known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese.
The Japanese have little tolerance for such incursions in the Senkakus, which they annexed in 1895 during the Sino-Japanese War. But recently China has asserted claims to these islands extending hundreds of years earlier. The island dispute is wrapped up in a morass of misunderstanding and one-upmanship, with an eye toward the rich seabed resources nearby.
When you ask Japanese officials about the territorial dispute, they will look at you as if it is almost insulting to answer the question. "It's our land," one government official told me, as if an American diplomat had been asked if Hawaii is part of the United States.