The Territorial Issue in Russian-Japanese Relations: an Overview

Dmitry V. Streltsov

The territorial dispute between Russia and Japan is closely linked to the ab- sence of a mutually coordinated legal settlement regarding border demarcation. This is the result of the two countries not having signed a contract or any other legal document following World War II that would have established a well-defined borderline. Japan and Russia clearly view the issue differently, not only in the fundamentals of the territorial dispute but also in the methods and prospects needed for its resolution. Japan believes that the unresolved territorial problem emerged due to the Soviet Union’s unilateral actions during World War II. It maintains that from August 28 to September 5, 1945—that is, after Japan’s adoption of the Potsdam Declaration—Soviet troops seized the territories controlled by the Japanese before the outbreak of hostilities. This included the approximately 3,000 sq km of islands comprising the Southern Kurile Ridge (Habomai, Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan), which were ceded to the USSR without any legal basis. Between 1945 and 1947, the USSR repatriated all 17,291 inhabitants of the Kurile Islands to Japan (Satō 2014). From the postwar era onward, these islands have therefore become the object of Japan’s territorial claims: they are generally referred to as the “Northern Territories” (J: hoppō ryōdo), a term that has since appeared frequently in official Japanese government documents. Russia, for its part, acknowledges that the border demarcation issue between the two countries has remained unresolved since World War II. As the USSR was not a signatory to the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, it believes the dispute should be resolved by concluding a bilateral peace treaty aimed at regulating relations between the two nations. The territorial problem assumed special significance after 1977, however, with the introduction of the concept of 200-mile “Exclusive Economic Zones.” Part of this area included about 200,000 sq km of abundant fish and other marine resources around the Southern Kurile Islands. For both countries, the economic value of this area raises the stakes and increases the level of their intransigence in the dispute. The territorial problem has already marred the relations between Russia and Japan for more than six decades. Almost all aspects of relations between these two countries are in some way, either directly or indirectly, affected by the territorial problem that has and continues to poison the climate of these

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004400856_029 578 Streltsov relations and hamper their improvement. The issues raised in this section are to a certain extent significant for all stages of postwar Russo-Japanese relations and are in this connection discussed in many of the “historical” chapters of this book.

1 Historical Aspects of the Territorial Dispute: 17th to Mid-19th Centuries

Russia and Japan fundamentally disagree on both the historical and legal aspects of the territorial dispute, with each side insisting on its privileged position vis-à-vis the islands. Even though the Southern Kuriles were first dis- covered and charted during a 1643 expedition of the Dutch seafarer and Dutch East India Company captain, Maarten (Gerritszoon) de Vries, the Netherlands has never claimed them. Japan asserts, however, that it, not Russia, initially traveled deep into the north, establishing trade relations with the Ainu people living on the Kurile Islands in the first half of the 17th century. According to the chronicle of the Matsumae clan domain, the Shinra no kiroku (Records of Shinra),1 in 1615 Prince Matsumae presented the Tokugawa shogun with a sea otter skin received from the Ainu who lived in the area of Menashi (the word “Menashi” means “Eastern,” but the Ainu presumably lived in the Kurile Islands) (Hokkaido Government 2014). The Kurile Islands—thirty-eight islands to the northeast of the Shiretoko Peninsula and Cape Nosappu—were first recorded on the 1644 Shōhō Era Map under their Ainu names (Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, Uruppu, and so forth).2 Many experts point out that this in fact refers to the establishment of trade contacts with the Ainu population of the Kuriles and does not mean that the Japanese were actually present in these territories during this period. The Shōhō Era Map renders the islands in broad outlines, and the lack of detail in their depiction is evidence that they were only drawn from descriptions by the Ainu and as such mapped as territories located outside Japan (gaichi). The first Russian scientific description of the islands of the Southern Kurile Ridge and their cartographical representation was made during the expeditions of the Russian seafarer Martin Spanberg (Martyn P. Shpanberg) in 1737, 1739, and 1742. In the mid-18th century, Russia sent various expeditions to the

1 This Edo-period chronicle compiled in 1643 is named after Shinra Saburō (Minamoto no Yoshimitsu, 1045–1127), from whom the Matsumae clan claimed descent. 2 An original version is in the Shimonoseki City Chofu Museum, Yamaguchi Prefecture; a later version is illustrated in http://www.myoldmaps.com/the-first-japanese-map-of.pdf, p. 13.