Japan’s passionate celebration of “Northern territories day” sparked a new phase of tensions in relations between Moscow and Tokyo. Experts and political analysts continue to scrutinize the juridical aspects of the territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands. Viktor Pavlyatenko, senior fellow at the Center for Japanese Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of the Far East asserts that the four disputable islands are legally an inseparable part of the Russian Federation and that Moscow must avoid playing games with Tokyo.
Samir Shakhbaz: According to an old Japanese tradition, February 7th is South Kuril Islands Day, they call them the Northern Territories. One gets the impression that this year’s festivities have a more aggressive feel to them. Is that really the case?
Viktor Pavlyatenko: Indeed, there is an increased level of aggressiveness. This holiday has been celebrated since 1982, and the date coincides with the anniversary of the Treaty of Shimoda, the first Russia-Japan accord, signed on February 7, 1855, and behind it lies the notion of Japan recovering territories it used to own.
Japan’s political elite has created a highly charged atmosphere around this territorial dispute. For almost two years, Japan has been ruled by the Democratic Party, which spent a long time in opposition before. The new Cabinet is led by Yukio Hatoyama, the grandson of Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama, who was a signatory to the Soviet-Japanese Declaration of 1956.
This accord ended WWII hostilities between the USSR and Japan, enabling the two countries to restore diplomatic relations and resolve all major disputes, and a degree of progress was made on the territorial issue, a common matter for peace treaties to address. But this document is officially referred to as a declaration, not a peace treaty, because Article 9 postpones the final solution of the territorial dispute.
S.S.: From the point of view of international law, do the Japanese have any legal grounds to claim the four disputed islands? If, say, they were to hire some highly competent lawyers…
V.P.: Ahead of [President Boris] Yeltsin’s planned visit in 1992, which was eventually delayed, the Japanese side explored the possibility of lodging their claim with an international court. But that research showed unequivocally that they would be better off not doing that.
S.S.: Because they could lose another island or two?
V.P.: I don’t know whether we could agree on Hokkaido; that’s up to the lawyers to decide. These are territories that have always belonged to Japan; they’ve never been part of Russia or the Soviet Union. The four disputed islands are not part of the Kurils. But they were referred to as such in the San Francisco Peace Treaty.
In 1951, Japan’s parliament carried out an inquiry into which of the islands really are part of the Kurils. The official reply designated Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan and Habomai as the South Kuril Islands.
And when MPs protested, Prime Minister [Shigeru] Yoshida said Japan was in no position to raise the issue now that it had signed the Instrument of Surrender and ratified the Peace Treaty. By pledging to drop these claims, Japan actually deprived itself of the right to put the issue back on the agenda. The Japanese side showed it was willing to abandon its claims.
During the 1956 peace talks between the Soviet Union and Japan, the Soviet side proposed to settle the dispute by returning Shikotan and Habomai to Japan. By accepting the Soviet proposal, Japan de facto acknowledged that the Kuril Islands, that is, all the Kuril Islands as we know them today, in fact belonged to the USSR including the four disputed islands. This was how things stood. This was Japan’s stance at the time. But they soon changed their mind. Today they accuse the Soviet Union of failing to make good on its obligations in 1960, following the signing of the Japan-U.S. peace treaty. But these accusations look groundless. Japan is willfully misrepresenting the situation here, interpreting treaty provisions as it sees fit.
We could not deliver on our own commitments four years after the signing of the Soviet-Japanese Declaration, because the situation had now changed. This is not uncommon in international legal practice. The Japanese also reviewed the number of islands they sought to recover, thereby renouncing their obligations under the treaty. From the point of view of international law, if one party renounces its obligations, the other has the right to follow suit.
Japan’s negotiating tactics comes down to interpreting accords from various angles and proactively pushing their own agenda forward. So should Russia make one wrong move, Japan could try and turn the situation to its advantage. The Japanese have been employing those tactics for quite a while now. It assumes various forms, but its essence remains the same.
S.S.: This raises the question: If international law is on Russia’s side, why does it continue to react to this verbal barrage from Japan? Let them say whatever they like. Why should Russia’s Foreign Ministry bother responding?
V.P.: The situation is, in fact, ambiguous. Certain things remain beyond the law. By law we primarily mean all those international treaties and agreements that were signed by the Allies, notably the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration, the Yalta Declaration, Japan’s Instrument of Surrender and the San Francisco Peace Treaty. They all define a certain framework for the territorial issue. But clearly, alongside international law, real politics, realpolitik, also plays a role.
Here, in San Francisco and in those early post-war years, we also saw realpolitik come into play, as carried out by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, alongside international law, which, as we know only too well, is not omnipotent.
Plans of how the global balance of power would pan out were already in the making in 1945, after the victory over the common enemy in the West and in the East.
Back in 1943, when briefed on the situation over the Kuril Islands, President Roosevelt was already contemplating steps to further U.S. interests in the Far East. And at Yalta, he gently insisted these islands should of course be handed over to the Soviet Union. That was real politics in action, and the documents signed were founded in realpolitik.
The Japanese now argue that they were not party to the Yalta Declaration, and that therefore it is, from their perspective, irrelevant. We are beginning to consider this issue in earnest. I personally believe that Russia should abstain from making any comments at all. But our leadership has raised this issue to the international level, trying to convince everyone that it does involve Japan. But this is no great revelation: everyone knows it involves Japan. Russia knew nothing about Japan secretly signing the Taft-Katsura agreement during the conclusion of the Portsmouth Accord in 1905. So where then was the imperative for Japan to know about the secret agreement reached in Yalta?
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
