Is there a volatile situation between China and Japan over contested islands in the East China Sea?
There is the Senkaku Islands dispute, where the United States turned the islands over to Japan in 1972 after seizing them in 1945. It turned them over to the Japanese administration but not as a sovereign territory of Japan. And since then, the United States has maintained an alliance relationship which says it will protect Japan and those areas Japan administers, but the United States also says that it does not recognize Japan as the sovereign of those particular islands. It’s a bit of a complicated position to take, but it helps straddle the relative realities of China’s claims, Japan’s claims, and Taiwan’s claims on the islands, while at the same time providing the promise of the stability through the alliance protection of Japanese interest there.
