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The Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles and the Treaties That STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY Department of Oriental Languages The Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles and the Treaties That Shaped the Territorial Dispute Bachelor’s Thesis in Japanese Studies Spring 2014 Erik Isaksson Supervisor: Akihiro Ogawa Table of Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 1.1. Purpose ............................................................................................................................ 1 1.2. Research question ............................................................................................................ 3 1.3. Hypothesis ....................................................................................................................... 3 1.4. Theory .............................................................................................................................. 3 1.5. Structure ........................................................................................................................... 4 1.6. Introduction of standards and reference system .............................................................. 5 1.6.1. Introduction of standards .......................................................................................... 5 1.6.2. Introduction of reference system .............................................................................. 6 2. Background ............................................................................................................................ 7 2.1. History ............................................................................................................................. 7 2.2. Current political situation ................................................................................................ 8 3. Method and material ............................................................................................................. 10 3.1. Method ........................................................................................................................... 10 3.2. Material .......................................................................................................................... 11 3.2.1. Previous research .................................................................................................... 11 3.2.2. Primary sources ....................................................................................................... 12 4. Comparison of treaties ......................................................................................................... 14 4.1. Wartime inter-allied agreements ................................................................................... 14 4.2. The San Francisco Peace Treaty .................................................................................... 15 4.3. Pre-World War II treaties .............................................................................................. 18 4.4. Different interpretations ................................................................................................ 20 5. Treaty discrepancies and their significance.......................................................................... 21 5.1. The treaty of Shimoda ................................................................................................... 21 5.2. The treaty of Saint Petersburg ....................................................................................... 26 6. Discussion ............................................................................................................................ 30 6.1. Kimie Hara’s San Francisco Theory ............................................................................. 30 6.2. Where do the islands belong? ........................................................................................ 32 6.3. The situation today and the future ................................................................................. 33 7. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 35 8. Summary .............................................................................................................................. 36 References ................................................................................................................................ 38 Published works .................................................................................................................... 38 Internet resources .................................................................................................................. 38 1. Introduction 1.1. Purpose A number of territorial disputes exist in East Asia and three of them involve Japan. The Senkaku/Diaoyu islands disputed by Japan, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China, Takeshima/Dokdo disputed by Japan and the Republic of Korea and the southernmost part of the Kurile Islands that stretch from Hokkaido’s eastern coast to the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kuriles in Russia, being disputed by the those two states and under effective control by the latter. The Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles dispute will be the subject of this paper. The map below displays the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles as “Disputed Islands” in relation to the larger Kurile Islands chain and mainland Japan and Russia. A more detailed map of the island chain itself follows. ©2014 About.com. 1 © University of Texas at Austin. I studied for a year at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan and became interested in the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles dispute after a trip to Hokkaido’s easternmost city of Nemuro that lies on the edge of the peninsula aptly called the Nemuro Peninsula beneath the red arrow on the map. A noticeably large amount of signposts along the roads, reading, translated into English “Give us back our Northern Territories1” sparked a personal interest in how the dispute came to be and the fundamentals of it. Since the Russian takeover of the Crimean peninsula in the aftermath of the toppling of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine, territorial issues in general and Russian attitudes to them in particular have risen to the top of the agenda of countries that border Russia and countries that are involved in territorial disputes, which makes the issue of the Northern territories/Southern Kuriles a very timely one and worthy of scrutiny. Through studying the scholarship on the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles dispute, I have identified the Treaty of Peace with Japan of 1951 (hereafter referred to as the San Francisco Peace Treaty, elaborated upon in sections 1.4 and 4.2) and possible mistranslations into the Japanese versions of pre-World War II treaties signed between Japan and Russia as factors that have had an important impact on the dispute. The latter is something that Shichirō Murayama and Haruki Wada have pushed, saying, as will be presented in more detail further on in this paper, that those mistranslations have allowed the Japanese government to argue something that they could not argue using the 1 Or, as the Japanese signs actually said: “北方領土を返せ” (Hoppō ryōdo o kaese). 2 original treaty texts. In this paper I will strive to determine how it is possible to interpret two of those treaties signed between Japan and Russia in the second half of the 19th century in relation to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which is regarded by the articulator of the theory this paper is based on as the more important factor. This is of interest because of the need to understand what the actual treaty texts mean and to what extent they can be construed as supporting one or the other side. I intend for this paper to contribute to the scholarly discourse on the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles on a linguistic level, determining how it is possible to interpret the above-mentioned treaties. 1.2. Research question This paper’s research question is the following: How is it possible to interpret passages in the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Japan and Russia (hereafter referred to as the Treaty of Shimoda) of 1855 and the Karafuto- Chishima Exchange Treaty (hereafter the Treaty of Saint Petersburg) of 1875 that have been identified as mistranslated by Shichirō Murayama and Haruki Wada? 1.3. Hypothesis In this paper I put forward the following hypothesis that I will attempt to prove: Mistranslations in passages in the Japanese language versions of the bilateral treaties the Treaty of Shimoda and the Treaty of Saint Petersburg have given the Japanese government room to argue a position the original treaty texts do not support. 1.4. Theory Through this research I aim to expand on Kimie Hara’s theory about how the San Francisco Peace Treaty to a large extent created the territorial disputes involving Japan today. This expansion will consist of adding a linguistic element involving the 19th century treaties to the argument. While Hara’s theory focuses on the creation of the territorial dispute my argument will have more to do how texts have to do with its maintaining. In short, Hara argues that the ambiguity of the San Francisco Peace Treaty’s wording regarding border demarcations created the territorial disputes with Russia, the two Chinas and the two Koreas. The particulars of this theory, referred to in this paper as Kimie Hara’s
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