National News

MATSUE (Kyodo) -- Ruling Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker Shu Watanabe will be the first DPJ parliamentarian to attend an annual ceremony to commemorate "Takeshima Day" in Shimane Prefecture on Feb. 22, prefectural officials and local DPJ members said Wednesday.

The plan is part of the DPJ's bid to fend off domestic criticism that it has been too soft on the issue of sovereignty of the South Korean-controlled islets off the western Japan prefecture, but could also provoke a backlash from South Korea.

The move comes at a time when territorial disputes have come under the spotlight again in Japan in the wake of the Sept. 7 ship collisions near the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands claimed by China in the East China Sea.

Watanabe, 49, plans to join the Feb. 22 event to promote Japan's claim to the islets, called Dokdo in South Korea, in the Sea of Japan.

Watanabe is considering taking part in a panel discussion on the territorial issue at the event, the officials said, adding the local government will also call on some Cabinet members such as foreign and education ministers to do so.

Watanabe, who heads the DPJ's National Rallying and Canvassing Committee, belongs to a bipartisan group of lawmakers working on protecting Japanese territory.

Hisaaki Komuro, the lawmaker who heads the party's prefectural chapter, is also scheduled to attend the ceremony, party members said. Komuro was opposed to the move of designating the day.

The main opposition Liberal Democratic Party, some of whose lawmakers have participated in the event several times in the past, is considering having executives of its headquarters attend it, as last year.

Shimane designated the day in 2005, the 100th anniversary of the formal declaration on Feb. 22, 1905 that the islands was part of the prefecture.