Comment: Russia’s policy towards Japan (1993, 20 Marks)
Russia’s policy towards Japan has been shaped for eight decades by one unresolved question: the southern Kuril Islands, which Japan calls the Northern Territories (Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and the Habomai group). Soviet forces seized them in 1945, and the dispute has prevented a peace treaty ever since. Moscow has repeatedly sought Japanese capital and technology while refusing territorial concessions, and it has treated Japan less as an independent power than as the forward base of the US alliance.
Evolution
- San Francisco ambiguity: in 1951 Japan renounced the “Kuril Islands” without the treaty defining them or naming a beneficiary, and Moscow did not sign; Kimie Hara (Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific, 2007) traces the region’s territorial disputes to such ambiguities.
- The 1956 bargain: the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration ended the state of war and promised to hand over Shikotan and the Habomais after a peace treaty. When Japan revised its security treaty with the United States in 1960, Moscow added the withdrawal of foreign troops as a condition and for decades denied that a dispute existed.
- The 1990s opening: Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1991 visit acknowledged the dispute. Boris Yeltsin cancelled his 1992 visit under nationalist pressure, but the Tokyo Declaration of October 1993 committed both sides to negotiate the attribution of all four islands. Need for Japanese aid explains Moscow’s flexibility.
- Vladimir Putin’s approach: the 2001 Irkutsk statement accepted the 1956 Declaration as a starting point, and Shinzo Abe’s personal diplomacy produced joint economic activities on the islands (2016) and a 2018 agreement to accelerate talks on the basis of 1956. Russia’s 2020 constitutional amendment barring the cession of territory then narrowed the room for any deal.
Rupture since 2022
Japan joined G7 sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine, and in March 2022 Russia ended peace-treaty negotiations, suspended visa-free exchanges and joint economic projects, and listed Japan as “unfriendly”. It has steadily militarised the islands with coastal anti-ship and air-defence systems, and Russian and Chinese bombers have patrolled jointly near Japan since 2019. In August 2026 Putin visited Iturup, his first visit to the disputed islands. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called it “absolutely unacceptable”.
Explaining the policy
- Realist: the islands guard the Sea of Okhotsk, a bastion for Russia’s ballistic-missile submarines; handing them over could invite American forces under the US–Japan treaty.
- Identity: for Moscow the islands are a fruit of victory in the Second World War, and conceding them would reopen the post-1945 settlement; for Tokyo they are inherent territory.
- Liberal limits: complementarity (Japanese capital, Russian energy) never outweighed security and nationalism, though Japanese firms kept their Sakhalin energy stakes after 2022.
- Wedge strategy: Moscow dangled a deal to loosen Japan’s ties with Washington and lost interest whenever Tokyo stayed aligned.
Significance for India
India holds annual summits with both: Putin’s state visit of 4–5 December 2025 and the 15th India–Japan summit (29 August 2025). Russian hostility to Japan, and its growing dependence on China, pull Moscow into an anti-Western Asian alignment that runs against India’s Indo-Pacific partnerships, the Quad included. India’s interest is a Russia that keeps options in Asia, which is one reason for its US$1 billion credit line for the Russian Far East (2019) and the Chennai–Vladivostok sea route.
Conclusion
Russia’s Japan policy is territorial realism wrapped in historical memory: flexibility appears only when Russia is weak and needs Japanese money, as in 1956 and 1993, and disappears when strategic rivalry with the United States sharpens. With Putin’s Iturup visit and the 2022 rupture, a peace treaty is further away than at any time since the Cold War.