In 2013 China Central Television aired a news bulletin with a provocative headline: ‘Japan is snatching our islands using the pretext of environmental protection!’ This fiery denunciation was a reaction to the announcement by the Yamashina Institute that a new variant of Steller’s albatross had been discovered nesting on the disputed Senkaku (Ch: Diaoyu) Islands. Might this accusation by Chinese state media might have a kernel of truth to it? This chapter begins by exploring the politics of heritage preservation in Okinawa under US occupation, before showing how nature conservation on the Senkaku became tangled up in the sovereignty dispute over the islands in the 1960s. Shortly before Okinawan reversion to Japan, the naturalist Takara Tetsuo helped stoke a nationwide panic about Taiwanese fishermen ‘poaching’ seabird eggs on the Senkakus. Later, in the early 2010s, Japanese nationalists led by Tokyo Mayor Ishihara Shintarō used nature conservation as a pretext to lobby the central government to take harder line on the dispute.

This chapter centres upon what might be referred to as the foundation concepts of land ownership. It examines the doctrine of land tenure as relevant in modern Australia but locates the discussion within its historical context. We then investigate the doctrine of estates and see how this doctrine is inextricably linked to the doctrine of land tenure in providing time-based recognition of interests in land. The discussion then moves to a consideration of legal future interests and how the common law has been modified by legislation. The chapter next considers the restraint on alienation of property and the rule against perpetuities. The focus of this part of the chapter is concerned with understanding how the law governs a property owner’s ability to control the alienation of their property. The starting point is the general principle of the free alienation of property. As the modern rule against perpetuities is a combination of concepts developed by the common law and as now adjusted by legislative reform, you will need to appreciate the interconnection between common law concepts and critical provisions of the reforming legislation across Australian jurisdictions.