A Japanese ship owned by Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd was ordered seized by a Shanghai court to stand as compensation for the loss of two ships the company had leased from a Chinese companies prior to the Sino-Japanese war in 1937. The order was to imposed upon the Baosteel Emotion, a 226,434 ton boat that was impounded at the Majishan port in the Zheijang province since April 19.
The said order and seizure was confirmed by both the Shanghai Maritime Court and Mitsui OSK through notices on their respective websites. The dispute started when the predecessor of Mitsui OSK, Daido Kaiun had chartered two boats from Chung Wei Steamship. These two boats were confiscated by the Japanese government and both were later lost at sea. The heir of Chun Wei Steamship Co sued the Japanese government in 1964 and again in 1970. It then filed a case in China in 1980, to which Mitsui was seeking a settlement prior to the issue of the impound order by the maritime court.
This is but another incident indicating the strained ties between the two countries. There is also a pending territorial dispute over a chain of islands as well as protests over the visits of Japanese politicians to a shrine in Tokyo that honor the Japanese war dead. This recent decision is a milestone, as this is the first time a Chinese court ordered the seizure of Japanese assets related to damages sustained during the Second World War.
According to Shogo Suzuki, as reported on Bloomberg, "Many of the major Japanese companies like Mitsubishi or Mitsui have existed through back to the pre-war era could all be implicated in one way or another. Japanese companies can't extract themselves easily at this stage, so I think they'll be quite worried." Suzuki is a senior lecturer for China Japanese relations at the University of Manchester in the UK.
Many of the disputes have now gone the legal path and ended up in courts. This case is one of the many, with another case being accepted by a Chinese court against two Japanese companies, one being Mitsubishi Materials Corp. for its use of forced labor during the last World War.
