GSI of Japan has found the new 7000 Islands
When Japan counted its islands, it found 7,000 more than it had previously believed.
There are around 14,125 islands in Japanese territory, more than double the 6,852 islands listed in official documents since a report by the Japan Coast Guard in 1987, according to digital mapping by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI).
According to the GSI this week, the revised figure did not alter the total amount of land that Japan now owns; instead, it showed improvements in surveying technology and also the level of detail in the maps used for the count.
Yet, it was said that the survey used the same size criterion as the one carried out 35 years earlier, although there is no international agreement on how to count islands.
To do it, all naturally occurring land areas with a radius of at least 100 metres must be counted (330 feet).
Artificially recovered land is not included in the updated total.
Several territorial disputes have their roots in the islands that surround Japan.
Soviet forces captured Japanese troops at the close of World War II, and Japan now asserts ownership of the southern Kuril islands, which are now under Russian control. Tokyo refers to these islands as the Northern Territories.
China has consistently disputed Japan’s historical claim to the East China Sea’s uninhabited Senkaku Islands, which it currently controls.
In the meantime, the sovereignty of a set of islets referred to by Seoul as Dokdo and Tokyo as Takeshima in the Sea of Japan, which Korea refers to as the East Sea, has been the subject of a more than 70-year-old standoff between the two countries.
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