For almost 60 years, Moscow’s large embassy near central Tokyo has been under siege.
Tokyo demands the return of a few islands it lost to Moscow in late the war. In support of that demand, big trucks carrying Planet War Two uniformed ultra-rightists blast out old war music.
Abusive slogans demanding the return of the islands are megaphoned into the Embassy grounds. A large number of riot police within gas-belching buses encompass the premises.
It is a territorial dispute which has blocked the financial and personal contacts that could have done much in order to vitalize the economies of both Hokkaido and the Russian Far East.
Tokyo’s first move to recover territories that it got lost as a result of its Pacific War was a modest 1952 claim to Shikotan island as well as the Habomai islands, lying just off the coastline of Hokkaido. Total area: 365 square kilometers.
After a yr of difficult negotiations Moscow agreed to come back those islands to Japan – yet only following the summary of a peace treaty between the two nations.
With Shikotan and the Habomais seemingly out of the way, Tokyo started to demand the come back of the Southern Kurile islands, Kunashiri and Etorofu, furthermore near Hokkaido.
But on this occasion Moscow had no trouble saying nyet.
At the February-March 1945 Yalta Conference to decide the continuing future of postwar Japan, the US, the USSR as well as the UK had decided Moscow could have the Kurile (Chishima) Island destinations if it promised in order to attack Japan as soon as it had conquered Nazi Germany. Moscow had done as promised.
So Clause 2c from the 1951 San Francisco peace treaty with the Allies states unambiguously that “Japan renounces very well, title and claims to the Kurile Island destinations. ”
But Tokyo had a nice way around that will problem. It developed new geographic unit called “the Northern Territories, ” composed of Shikotan, the Habomais, Etorofu and Kunashiri.
So on paper in demanding the return of Etorofu and Kunashiri Tokyo had not been demanding the islands this had renounced. It was demanding islands that will had never been part of the Kuriles.
They had always been part of the ‘Northern Territories’ – a piece of geographic sleight of hands yet to be caught up with by the mapmakers, who continue to contact them the The southern part of Kuriles.
Even the UK plus France, both involved in the original San Francisco 51 peace treaty speaks with Japan, were unimpressed simply by that Northern Territories move.
“Curious and naive” had been the words of the UNITED KINGDOM ambassador to The japanese in a now-revealed message to London during the time.
Undeterred, Tokyo repeated the particular Etorufu-Kunashiri claim at the 1956 talks that were supposed to settle once and for all the terms of the peace treaty between Japan and the USSR. (Moscow was absent from your 1951 peace treaty. )
Yet once again Moscow said no . And once again Japan insisted: No peace treaty with Moscow unless Etorofu and Kunashiri had been returned.
And so the siege of the Soviet (now Russian) Tokyo charge was started and it has continued.
Over the years, Moscow has sent some impressive diplomatic skill into its embattled Tokyo embassy within a bid to resolve the matter.
During the administration of prime minister Yoshiro Mori (2000-2001), senior Russian diplomat and The japanese expert Alexander Panov joined three important Japanese officials within Tokyo in a bid to find a compromise.
The “two island destinations [Shikotan and the Habomais] plus Alpha” has been their provisional give up, with Alpha becoming some form of undefined joint development on the disputed islands.
But that will did not promise Western sovereignty over Etorofu and Kunashiri as demanded by Japanese rightists.
So with the fall of Mori, Foreign Ministry hawks quickly moved in to kill the talks.
The three Western compromising cooperators had been accused of being traitors to the nation. A single ended up in jail, another under risk of jail. The 3rd was banished to a distant diplomatic posting.
Panov came back to a senior submit in Moscow. When I met him presently there soon after, he just said bluntly that will no solution to the dispute was possible.
But for a while generally there did seem several chance of a cutting-edge – when excellent minister Shinzo Abe decided good relationships with Moscow had been crucial for separating Beijing.
He sought repetitive meetings with Ruskies President Vladimir Putin. But the talks by no means got beyond information like visa-free visits to the four islands by former inhabitants (now very old) and joint advancement projects.
As a G7 associate in 2014, the year of the first Russo-Ukrainian war, Japan acquired felt obliged to go along with the first call for sanctions on Russia. However it did so slowly and reluctantly, signaling that Abe nevertheless had hopes.
But all that ended with the 2022 Ruskies attack on Ukraine and Abe’s killing soon after. Bilateral relationships are now in deep freeze.
Increasing territorial nationalism in Russia is a related problem. In This summer 2020, the Ruskies constitution was modified to deny activities “directed toward the alienation of any part of the territory of the Russian Federation. ”
And occasionally the ominous 1960 statement by then-Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko is revived.
Gromyko warned that a condition for your 1956 promise to come back territory to The japanese after a peace treaty was that Japan avoid joining any military alliance directed against the USSR. In 1960, Japan renewed its military alliance using the US.
The present Russian ambassador within Tokyo, Mikhail Galuzin, a fluent Japanese speaker now in the fourth posting to Tokyo, has inherited the deep freeze. Nevertheless , in his talks to foreign affairs groups, he has tried to remain positive.
The signing of a peace treaty on the basis of the 1956 declaration should pave the way to a higher level of relations he demands.
As for the Gromyko threat, the current US-NATO policy of encirclement of Russia can be carried out no matter where US soldiers are located.
For the moment, even though, everything is on freeze. The conditions for Putin-Abe-style talks do not exist.