Japan steps up protests of U.S. bills on ‘East Sea’

[unhappycamper]

http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2985293

Japan steps up protests of U.S. bills on ‘East Sea’
Feb 21,2014

The Japanese government has stepped up lobbying efforts in the United States, this time to block a bill in New York that would enable the use of the term “East Sea” to describe the body of water between Korea and Japan.

New York legislators from both houses earlier this month in Albany introduced a proposal calling for the joint use of “East Sea” and “Sea of Japan” in future school textbooks, which follows the passage of a similar bill in Virginia. In retaliation, Ambassador Sumio Kusaka, the consul general of Japan in New York, sent letters protesting the bill to the state’s senators and assemblymen.

His correspondence, dated Feb. 11, the day after the press conference introducing the “East Sea” bill penned by Democratic State Senator Toby Ann Stavisky and Assemblyman Edward C. Braunstein, called the proposal unjust and noted that the U.S. State Department and the United Nations use the Sea of Japan as their sole designation.

The letter further argued that the term “Sea of Japan” was established and came into use in the late 18th century and early 19th century. This is despite numerous maps, including English-language maps, that indicate otherwise. An 18th century English-language map by profile cartographer Thomas Jeffereys, for example, labels the body of water as the “Sea of Corea.”