Just when Prime Minister Fukuda was thinking he might have been doing a good job avoiding the sorts of frequent rows with neighbouring South Korea that marked the terms of his predecessors, another furore kicked off this weekend, culminating in Seoul announcing that they were recalling their Japanese envoy.

Yes it’s the continued dispute of the tiny Liancourt rocks, which lie… between the two countries. (Phew, almost said “in the Sea of Japan”. That was close.)

This time the row centres on a manual for junior high school geography teachers which urges the same consideration of the Liancourt rocks (known as Takeshima to the Japanese, and Dokdo to Koreans) as of the northern Kuril islands, which themselves are the subject of an unresolved territorial dispute with Russia. The problem is that later in the manual, it is explicitly stated that “the Northern Territories are an integral part of Japanese territory.”

Cue the flag-eaters in 3, 2, 1…

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak was said to be “deeply disappointed”, while the foreign Ministry announced that Ambassador to Japan, Kwon Chul-hyun, would be recalled in protest, and they’d be summoning Japan’s ambassador to Seoul, Toshinori Shigeie, for a good telling off.

(Next paragraph contains Perspective and Proportion - avoid if allergic)
The passage at the centre of the row appears in only one (of 14) approved Junior high text, and as the Asahi article notes, “only four of 14 junior high textbooks in geography and civics” make any mention of the rocks at all.