In Closing

The city of Niigata’s lone skyscraper houses an organisation called the Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia (ERINA).^[611] This is Niigata’s flashiest venue, and fitting, therefore, that the consulates of the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation and the Republic of Korea have their offices on floors just above and below ERINA’s.

The former governor of Niigata prefecture, Hirayama Ikuo, a respected economist at the Bank of Japan and now university president, explained some of these hurdles: ‘When ERINA wants to make a policy pro­posal, it has to go through five different desks at the Foreign Ministry (in Tokyo): Russia, China, South Korea, North Korea, and the United States. You can imagine what happens.’^[612] Looked at differently, ERINA’s backers want to exploit resources and rely on the open possibility of the sea as a transport network. They view this body of water's connec­tive tissue as primary for its surrounding lands ideally in which regional inhabitants would have greater control over policy direction and profit allocation. Regardless of the ultimate decision over this sea's name - or maybe as part of it - all who share its coastlines will want to determine a name for it that has connective meaning to it and to all of its life forms in order to hold the region together rather than further dividing it.