China Admitted Senkakus as Japan's in 1958
In 1958 a map-publishing company run by the Chinese Government issued an atlas which clearly showed that the Senkaku Islands belonged to Japan.
The Map Publishing Company (地図出版社) started to sell The World Atlas (世界地図集) after having been censored by the Chinese Communist Party. Accordingly this Atlas is regraded as representing official views of the Chinese Government on its national territory. Put simply then mighty Chinese leaders such as Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Premier Zhou Enlai believed that the Senkaku Islands were part of Japan.
In fact Taiwan is presented in the Atlas as part of the national land of People's Republic of China (which is however not). But the Senkaku Islands, situated 170 km northeast of Taiwan Island, are clearly specified in this Atlas as part of Okinawa Prefecture of Japan. It apparently contradicts the controversial claim by the Chinese Government that the Islands in the East China Sea belong to China, which China started to allege around 1970 when crude oil and natural gas fields were discovered by the UN under the sea near the Senkaku Islands.
Specifically the Atlas indicates the Senkaku Islands (尖閣諸島) as the Senkaku Archipelago (尖閣群島) and names the main island of Senkakus Uotsuri-jima (魚釣島) very correctly using the same kanji letters Japanese use. (By the way, Senkaku means a pinnacle, Uotsuri means fishing, and jima or shima means an island(s) in Japanese.)
So, this Atlas is well known to parties concerned as an official proof that the Chinese Government had acknowledged that the Senkaku Islands belonged to Japan before 1970. It is also well known that Chinese authorities today are looking for copies of this map book to buy them and destroy them. This book is still circulated in secondhand bookstores and antiquarian bookshops in Japan, China, Taiwan, etc.
Actually a Chinese professor teaching in a university in Japan recently found one copy of this Atlas in a bookshop in Beijing. He tried to obtain it, but the owner of the shop said to him, "You are Chinese; I will not give it over to you. I will rather sell this atlas to Japanese, since they will buy it at a higher price."
You had better refer to the following posting for detailed information about the Senkaku Islands and Chinese territorial aggression in the East China Sea.
http://eereporter.blogspot.jp/2010/10/yesterday-two-miracles-however-you.html
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