BETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.
BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES.

The Territorial Disputes

1. The Kuriles (Northern Territories) Dispute
2. Shikotan and the Habomais

[Map of the disputed islands (CartoGIS, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University)]

3. The Northern Territories
4.  Break the Deadlock? My Suggestion. 
5. Exposing Secret US-Soviet Deals
6. The 1947 deal, and Project Hula
7. Create a Compromise Deal?
8. Tokyo Logic.
9. The Traditional Territory (koyu no ryodo) Argument
10.  Attempted Compromises
11. The Group of Four – 2000-2001
12. The ‘Two Islands plus Alpha’ Solution?
13. The Tanaka Makiko Committee
14. Permanent Deadlock?
15. Tokyo Hardline
16. Trade Frictions

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Meanwhile the lecture circuit continued, with me continuing to criticise Japanese foreign policies.

As an educationalist in Japan it was a risky thing to be doing; the rightwing was always on the lookout for alleged progressives to attack. Now with the international situation turning tense it was even more risky. 

Russia

Japanese audiences showed most interest when I turned to foreign policy questions, the Soviet Union/Russia especially.

It made me realise how much of Japan’s prewar and wartime history had involved the Soviet Union.

In the West we were more focussed on Europe and the Pacific war.

…

Japan bitterly resented the way Moscow had for years held as labourers most of the Japanese solders they had captured in Manchuria in 1945.

(That those Japanese prisoners suffered a 10 percent death rate over ten years compared with the 50 percent rate for Chinese forced labourers in Japan over two years found little mention.)

With time the prisoners were gradually returned. That left the problem of some former Japanese territories still being held by Moscow – the Kuriles islands and some small islands (the Habomais and Shlkotan) close to the Hokkaido coast.

At times I became peripherally involved.

1. The Kuriles  (Northern Territories) Dispute

When Japan went into its 1951 peace treaty talks with the Allies, its prime minister, Yoshida Shigeru, made a strong demand for the return of all the Kurile Islands that Japan had lost to Moscow in 1945 in the final days of the war.

The demand was rejected. In its 1951 Peace Treaty with the Allies (Moscow excluded) Japan was forced by the US to renounce all right and claim to ‘the Kurile Islands’ 

The wording was clear and unambiguous.  But Tokyo still seemed to believe it had a claim, though some of its reasons remained undisclosed.

2. Shikotan and the Habomais

In its claim to all the Kuriles, Tokyo made a special claim to the Southern Kuriles – the islands of Etorofu and Kunashiri, near Hokkaido. 

Separate to the claim for the Southern Kuriles was the claim also to the adjacent islands of Shikotan and the Habomais. Both were also close to Hokkaido and formerly had been under Hokkaido administration. They had never been included in the Kuriles but they had also been taken by Moscow in 1945.

Japan had began negotiations for the return of Shikotan and the Habomais in 1954 and after a year of hard bargaining Moscow had finally agreed in 1955 to hand over those islands to Japan when a peace treaty with Japan was signed.

 It was an achievement of some note since Moscow was usually very reluctant to create any precedent for returning territory it had gained during the Second World War.

3. The Northern Territories  

But Tokyo had then decided to bundle these islands together with its claim to the Southern Kuriles. Insisting that Etorofu and Kunashiri also had never been part of the Kuriles (in fact maps had consistently shown the two islands included in the Kuriles and sometimes labelled as Southern Kuriles), it would create a new geographic entity called the Northern Territories – Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Hamomais (the Four Islands claim) 

Tokyo did this presumably to strengthen its claim to Etorofu and Kunashiri: It could argue that since Moscow had promised to return Shikotan and the Habomais when there was a peace treaty, maybe it would return what formerly had been called the Southern Kuriles as part of the same package at the same time. 

The two island claim – Etorofu and Kunashiri – had become a four island claim.

This in turn morphed into the “two-plus-two” formula: Talks about a peace treaty and the promised transfer of Shikotan and Habomai would go first. Negotiations about the future of Etorofu and Kunashiri could come later, i.e. after the peace treaty had come into existence.. 

But Moscow was not impressed; In any case, it claimed, nothing could be decided until the long-promised Soviet peace treaty with Japan was concluded.

And we learned later that the British embassy in Tokyo had regarded the bundling operation as ‘curious and naive.’

4.  Break the Deadlock? My Suggestion

To get round the deadlock, I had come up with a new approach in lectures and writings.

I would say that Japan should forget about two islands or four islands claims; it should revert to its original demand for a return of all the Kurile Islands, and at a later stage accept the four islands as a concession for dropping the all Kurile demand.

But in demanding all the Kuriles, Tokyo would have to expose some of the US skullduggery before the 1951 San Francisco Peace treaty conference.

5. Exposing Secret US-Soviet Deals

Why had Tokyo been forced by the US to renounce rights to all the Kuriles, in effect allowing Soviet troops to remain in control? In Europe and elsewhere the US was not known for wanting to do territorial favours to Moscow. 

There could at least have been an exception for the Southern Kuriles which Japan had not gained through ‘violence or greed,’ which were very close to Hokkaido, and which had been populated by Japanese citizens.

Prime Minister Yoshida’s San Francisco appeal for all the Kuriles included a special plea for the Southern Kuriles in particular. It reflected a genuine Japanese belief in their right to the islands.

Ignoring the original Ainu inhabitants, it could be said the Southern Kuriles (Etorofu and Kunashiri) had always been under Japanese control. They had been developed and inhabited by the Japanese.

It would also have served the US interest to remain ambiguous on this issue, claiming Moscow had already broken Yalta promises in Eastern Europe and that this allowed the US to soften the 1951 San Fransisco agreement by allowing Tokyo make a claim at least to some of the Kuriles.

6. The 1947 deal, and Project Hula.

But as in most foreign affairs the unusual can often be explained by the secret.

A secret 1947 Moscow-US deal uncovered by Canadian researcher, Hara Kimie, could have provided a basis for Tokyo to state that the 1951 San Fransisco Peace Conference demand Japan should give up all the Kuriles was compromised.

At the time (1947) the US was, as ever, keen to get a military base in the Far East.  Okinawa had still to be conquered.  The Mariana islands which the US had already used as bases for attacks on Japan seemed attractive. 

Under this 1947 deal, Moscow would not oppose any move in the UN Security Council to create a Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI), including Tinian and other Northern Marianas islands. Within this Trust Territory the US would not only have administering authority. It would also have military rights, something normally forbidden in UN-mandated Trust Territories. 

All this would be in exchange for a firm US promise to Moscow that at the forthcoming Peace Conference with Japan the US would follow through on its February 1945 Yalta promise to have a defeated Japan renounce all the Kuriles to the USSR.

(The February 1945 promise is carved in stone in the Yalta Lividia gardens, as I found on a visit to the gardens in 2016.)

(Tinian was base for launching the 1945 atomic bomb attacks on Japan.)

This secret deal in turn could explain the extraordinarily hard line Dulles took at the 1951 San Francisco conference in forcing Japan’s Prime Minister, Yoshida Shigeru, to abandon his efforts for a wording that would allow Japan in future to make a claim for control over all or part of the Kuriles – the Southern Kuriles especially.

The most Dulles would concede was to leave vacant to whom the territories would go when Japan gave up all right and claim. (Maybe they would even go to the US. Who knows?)

Project Hula

A further factor was US deep involvement in Project Hula, a mid-1945 plan to assist Moscow with material aid and a base in the Aleutians to prepare to invade Japan from the north. Troops would be brought across Siberia to occupy northern Hokkaido.

Boats carrying two divisions of those Soviet troops were only days away from landings in Hokkaido (Rumoi), but coming after the US atomic bombings the US decided their presence was no longer needed.

Instead the US had instructed them to turn around and go to occupy the Kuriles .  This too could explain why postwar the US may still have felt some obligation to Moscow over the Kuriles. 

7. Create a Compromise Deal?

If Tokyo had disclosed all this background earlier on, maybe its legal or moral position over revision of the Kuriles clause in the 1951 Peace Agreement would have been that much stronger (the concept of treaties negotiated under force having weak legality or no legality does exist). 

And having staked out a position for a claim to all the Kuriles it could, by making the paper concession of giving up its claim to the Northern Kuriles, have been been able to negotiate a legal position for its claim for the Southern Kuriles.

But it did not do these things. Why? 

Because they would have involved direct criticisms of the US, the conquering power, and had to be avoided.  And since Tokyo persisted with its Southern Kuriles claim by pretending it was included in something called the Northern Territories, no agreement was possible anyway.

No agreement over the Southern Kuriles (or what Japan called the Northern Territories) meant no agreement for a Japan-USSR Peace Treaty.

No agreement for a peace treaty meant no return of Shikotan and the Habomais

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Surprisingly, many in my audiences seemed to accept what I had to say provided I emphasised US responsibility for Japan losing the Kuriles.  Many even in the hard rightwing such as Bungei Shinju’s sister magazine, Shokun (and including the anti-US, former Tokyo governor, Ishihara Shintaro) were also glad to hear me blame the US for the problem.

In fact Ishihara once pulled me in to do a 30 minute one-on-one anti-US discussion on territory and trade problems on a radio channel he controlled.

8. Tokyo Logic.

It was hard to understand the Gaimusho thinking in all this. Did they really believe that by persisting with no compromise territorial claims – by refusing to sign a peace treaty with Moscow and continuing to refuse to have a serious economic and political relationship with Moscow – Japan would somehow force the Soviets to say yes and hand over the two Southern Kuriles islands?

Hokkaido stood to gain much from a closer economic relationship – apart from anything else an outlet to the market in Soviet Far East for agricultural produce, tourism and so on.   

All this would largely disappear if Moscow said no to a peace treaty on Japan’s terms.

In effect was that too to be sacrificed on the altar of Gaimusho territorial rigidity?  

Moscow had suffered greatly from the war against the Axis powers. It was in no mood to sacrifice territory in the East without reason.

In addition to the legal problem, Tokyo also failed to understand another reason preventing Moscow from returning the island territory gained in 1945, namely that it could serve as a precedent for giving up other war-gained territories, Kaliningrad for example.

But by blaming the loss of all the Kuriles, and not just the two southern Kuriles, on the US for having done its 1947 deal with Moscow to gain the right to military use of other islands, including one that had been used for Japan’s atomic bombing – Tokyo could at least have had an arguable basis for its claim.

Whether Moscow would have agreed remained to be seen.

9. The Traditional Territory (koyu no ryodo) Argument

In any case, that an issue with such a complex background could be presented as a clearcut case of Japanese virtue versus Moscow evil, with no attempt to stake out a middle position, was alarming.

Yet the issue was being raised constantly by Tokyo, and in the media, both domestic and foreign, on the bland assumption that Japan’s case was 100 percent correct simply because in the past Japan had owned the two southern Kurile islands of Etorofu and Kunashiri (koyu no ryodo – traditional territory – was the claim).

If the principle that territory should be returned just because it was traditional territory, then the entire map of Europe would have to be redrawn. 

Germany had ceded to Poland large tracts of its traditional territory at war end and has accepted that it must be reconciled to this loss as part of the price it must pay for waging, and losing, aggressive war. 

To date it has not even hinted it could use the ‘traditional territory’ argument to demand the land be returned.

Japan was defeated in its Pacific War, yet it was assuming an automatic right to claim territory it had controlled before the war, and not just Japan.  Taiwan and South Korea were supposed to hand over territories.

True, it had received promises it would not have to lose territory it had not gained through ‘greed or violence.’  But it could be argued this was on the assumption of an early surrender. 

But that too did not happen.

In the face of such illogicality maybe it was not surprising if Moscow felt it had no choice but to continue to say nyet, I suggested.

10.  Attempted Compromises

That said, both sides have at different times tried to untie the ropes surrounding this issue.  During the Yeltsin era of the 1990s, with the very pro-Japan Andrei Kozyrev appointed as foreign minister through to 1996, the Kremlin seemed ready to recognise Japan’s claims to the four islands and to conclude a peace treaty in 2000.

But under Putin, Moscow has reverted to its previous hardline in asserting Russian sovereignty over the islands. 

11. The Group of Four – 2000-2001

For a while I was marginally involved with a group of four appointed by former Prime Minister, Mori Yoshiro (2000-2001), to find a compromise agreement.

I had seen Mori in action as head of the Education reform commission after the sudden death of the Commission’s founder, Obuchi Keizo.  I liked his blunt, hands-on approach.

The Group was headed by Russian ambassador to Japan, Alexander Panov, long respected for his frequent postings to Japan and his knowledge of Japan. 

It included an influential, pro-Russia politician, Suzuki Muneo; a non-career diplomat specialising in Russian politics, Sato Masaru; and Togo Kazuhiko, a senior Gaimusho official.

The Group came up with a proposal called Two Islands plus Alpha.

12. The ‘Two Islands plus Alpha’ Solution

Under this proposal Japan would accept Moscow’s promised return of the Habomais and Shikotan (without having to wait, it seems, for a Japan-Russia peace treaty) and in exchange for dropping its claim to the two Southern Kurile islands of Etorofu and Kunashiri, it would seek some kind of plus Alpha (concessions giving Japan the right to create projects or joint developments on those two islands).

(One account says there would be continued negotiations over the status of Etorofu and Kunashiri. I rely on what I was told directly by participants about the contents of ‘plus Alpha’.)

But with the change to Koizumi as prime minister in 2001, the foreign ministry hawks took control, again. All four territories or nothing, became Tokyo’s rigid position, again.

The three Japanese members of the Mori Yoshiro committee were witch-hunted as traitors for seeming to make proposals that would impinge on Japan’s sacred  sovereignty over the Southern Kuriles. (See chapter   for details.)

Panov returned to Moscow to head Russia’s Diplomatic Academy. Years later, when I was invited to give a lecture to his Academy students, Panov gave me his frank assessment of how Japan handled its territorial problems – crazy. 

13. The Tanaka Makiko Committee

With Koizumi as prime minister in 2001, Tanaka Makiko (daughter of Tanaka Kakuei), was made foreign minister.

She set up a personal advisory committee of foreign policy moderates (women mainly), with myself included.

I did not know Makiko personally, but I had once shared a plane with her when her farther went to Indonesia. 

Also included in the committee as observer was Yachi Shotaro, a Gaimusho policy brain, (sometimes regarded as Japan’s Foreign Ministry Kissinger) to act as liaison with the Ministry and perhaps restrain us if we got too far off the rails.

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For me, as a public critic of Japan’s rightwing foreign policies, it was a strange feeling walking the ministry corridors I once loathed to get to committee meetings.

But Makiko seemed to remember my role supporting her father’s often controversial infrastructure and China policies.

At the height of the Gaimusho witch hunt against the three Japanese ‘traitors’ in the Group of Four (a witch hunt which she supported strongly) I got to suggest she should study the Kuriles question more closely. She might discover Japan’s position was not as strong as claimed.

She came back to me quickly. In 1973 her father, Tanaka Kakuei, had during a Moscow visit set out clearly Japan’s four island position to the Soviet leadership.

In response Brezhnev had said Ya znayu (I know it).

This meant he accepted the Japanese position, she said. (In fact all it probably meant was ‘I know your position. There is not implication of accepting that position.)

End of problem, at least for someone with no idea about how a Soviet leader might respond to a Tanaka-style question, or about the Russian language.

…

I checked the official record. It confirms Makiko-san’s account of the Brezhnev response in the context of the claimed Soviet agreement to the Four Islands proposal.

The official record says:

…a passage of the Soviet draft of a joint communique read, “solving the problems that have remained pending since World War II and concluding a peace treaty.”

Tanaka told Brezhnev, “I want you to remember that the four islands are part of those (‘problems’).”

Brezhnev replied, “Ya znayu (I know).”

14. Permanent Deadlock?

And on the basis of this amateur venture into understanding Russian verbal intenetions Tokyo decided to put an end to all further efforts to engage Moscow over territory or peace treaties.  It was up to Moscow to realise, they considered, that even its Supreme leader had already agreed with the Japanese position.

… A later Japanese prime minister, Abe Shinzo, tried to use a soft approach to get some from of compromise from Moscow. It is reported that under the influence of Suzuki Muneo he also proposed the Two Islands plus Alpha solution. 
According to a Gaimusho report, he became a strong advocate of joint economic projects on the Four Islands islands, agreeing with Putin in September 2017 to concentrate on five priority areas: aquaculture, greenhouse agriculture, tourism, wind power, and waste management 

But his assassination in July, 2022, and Japan’s joining in US-proposed sanctions against Russia, has stopped further discussion.

Possession of Four islands or nothing has become carved in emotional stone.

One impetuous move by Japan’s hawks more than half a century earlier has pushed Japan’s relations with Russia into permanent deadlock.

Maybe permanent deadlock was what the hawks wanted – more than the islands. But now they have lost even Shikotan and the Habomais, since the return of those islands depended on a Moscow-Tokyo peace treaty being concluded, and the peace treaty planned for 1956 never happened.

The surviving few thousands of former inhabitants waiting to return are still waiting, though they are sometimes allowed to make visits to graves. Their former locations and even houses are now being occupied by Russian immigrants

Thanks to Tokyo stubborness and clumsiness, territories successfully negotiated for return back in 1954-54 – getting on to be almost a century ago – are still not returned.  Is that something to be proud of? 

15. Tokyo Hardline

In the years since one or two brave souls – an NHK foreign policy commentator notably – had suggested some backdown from the four island demand.

In each case – the NHK commentator especially – they have been slapped down with the kind of brutality you expect in a tight communist dictatorship, with not just retractions but apologies also demanded and career endings threatened.  

It is a surprisingly ugly aspect of the way foreign policy commentary is controlled in Japan.

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Years later with the opening of British diplomatic records that ‘curious and naive’ remark was revealed.

But that did not stop the UK and everyone else in the West from fully supporting Tokyo’s four island demand position in 1956 and later.

Such is the way foreign policies, and wars, are made.

16. Trade Frictions

On trade questions – the other hot topic – I would say Japan should be more assertive in blaming mistaken US policies for the imbalances.

But it should also do something about the weak domestic demand that was harming its economy and forcing expanded exports.

That too got a reasonable response, as did articles along the same line.