By J. Berkshire Miller
Last month, Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba restarted a round of “half-in” strategic dialogue with his Russian counterpart during the latter’s visit to Tokyo. With Vladimir Putin seemingly set to retake control of the Russian presidency this year, Japan sees an opening to make constructive progress on their decades-old territorial dispute with Russia over the Kuril Islands.
Attempts to decipher which country is the rightful owner of the islands is muddied by a series of treaties dating back to 1855. Russia and Japan have fought two wars since then, but Tokyo claims control of the Southern Kurils as the Northern Territories, and argues that the 1951 San Francisco treaty it signed renouncing ownership of the Kuril Islands doesn’t apply to the four southern islands. Moscow remains unyielding to Japan’s protests that the islands be “returned.”
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