A new front has opened up in man’s territorial scramble. Japan is deploying a secret weapon to buttress its claim to tiny islands 1,060 miles south of Tokyo. It will not be sending in submarines or gunships. Instead, it will dispatch white-coated scientists bearing nothing more offensive than hunks of coral.

At stake is the status of Okinotorishima, which the Japanese claim to be an island, but the Chinese insist is merely an uninhabited rock, mostly submerged by water. Actually two outcroppings, the smaller of the two is said by detractors to be about the size of a twin bed. No one has ever slept there.