Japan and Russia, the Soviet Union's legal successor, are the only former warring nations that have still failed to sign a peace treaty since the end of World War II.
Japan first tried to conclude a peace treaty with the Soviet Union in 1955, four years after the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty between the Allied Powers and Japan. The U.S.S.R. refused to take part in the San Francisco Conference because of disagreements with the United States and the United Kingdom.
No bilateral peace agreement has been signed to date because the Japanese side links this issue with the solution of the territorial problem. Under the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Tokyo renounced all claims to the entire Kuril Archipelago. After 1951, Japan proclaimed the islands of Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and Habomai as its age-old territories and demanded their unconditional return by Moscow.
By the time bilateral talks got underway in the 1950s, the U.S.S.R. deemed it possible to transfer the islands of Shikotan and Habomai under Japanese jurisdiction in exchange for signing a peace treaty. The Soviet Foreign Ministry made the proposal to Tokyo during bilateral talks in 1955. Under pressure from the Japanese government's conservative wing and with U.S. support, Tokyo rejected that plan and refused to sign the peace treaty. Since then, Japan has been insisting on signing the agreement in exchange for the simultaneous transfer of all four disputed islands under Japanese jurisdiction.
The Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956 became the first breakthrough in bilateral peace talks. The Russian Foreign Ministry still treats it as a basic legal document that had launched the process of talks to conclude a peace treaty with Japan. Although this was not a formal peace treaty, it ended a state of war between Japan and the U.S.S.R. Moscow agreed to transfer the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to Japan after the conclusion of a bilateral peace treaty.
Bilateral peace talks made no headway after 1956. Year after year, national heads of state and their foreign ministers adopted decisions postponing the final peace settlement.
In 1973, Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka visited Moscow and held talks with General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev. After the talks, both sides signed a Joint Soviet-Japanese Statement, another stage in fruitless attempts to conclude a bilateral peace treaty. The document said Soviet and Japanese diplomacy would aim to sign the relevant peace treaty.
Another Joint Soviet-Japanese Statement was adopted on April 11, 1991after Soviet President and General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev made his visit to Japan. The document virtually repeated the 1973 statement's provisions as regards prospects for signing the peace treaty.
The Tokyo statement, signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, was followed by the 1993 Tokyo Declaration on Russian-Japanese Relations, which was signed in Tokyo by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa. Like all previous documents, the declaration said nothing new on the peace treaty issue.
The sides achieved relative progress in 1998 with the signing of the Moscow Declaration on Establishing a Creative Partnership between Japan and the Russian Federation. President Boris Yeltsin and Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi expressed their determination to conclude a peace treaty by 2000. An ad hoc sub-commission for border demarcation issues was established for that purpose. Moreover, the two leaders agreed to implement joint economic projects in the South Kurile Islands and to allow Japanese citizens, who had previously lived there, and their family members to freely visit the islands.
On September 5, 2000, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a joint statement dealing with the bilateral peace treaty in Tokyo. This document justified both sides' failure to sign the treaty by 2000, as stipulated by the 1998 Moscow Declaration. Putin and Mori only managed to agree to expedite the work of the concerned commissions.
In March 2001, President Putin and Prime Minister Mori signed the last bilateral document to date, the Irkutsk statement concerning further talks on a peace treaty. The sides decided not to set any specific deadlines for signing the peace treaty and agreed to define a specific direction of movement toward signing a peace treaty in the near possible future.
At the same time, plans to reinstate Article 9 of the 1956 Declaration on transferring the islands of Habomai and Shikotan to Japan began to be discussed. Although Putin told Mori in Irkutsk that the article required additional expert discussions to standardize its provisions, he said off the record that he would be ready to negotiate the transfer of both islands to Japan, if he were elected for the second term.
However, Junichiro Koizumi, who replaced Mori as Prime Minister in April 2001, stressed in his first policy speech that he would press for the return of all four South Kuril Islands to Japan.
Tokyo also rejected Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's public statement highlighting the Russian Government's readiness to reinstate the provisions of the 1956 Joint Declaration. Tough Japanese territorial claims to Russia forced President Putin to modify his position and to say on September 27, 2005 that the South Kuril Islands were under Russian jurisdiction, that the Russian side had no intention of discussing this issue with Japan, that this was formalized by international law and was the outcome of World War II.
Nevertheless, Russian leaders are not renouncing the subsequent search for mutually acceptable conditions for signing a bilateral peace treaty. The history of signing the 1956 Joint Declaration proves that mutual goodwill and respect for each other's positions can make it possible to achieve this goal.
