Mitsujiro Morita, 35, died on August 16 as Russian border guards pursued a Japanese boat suspected of poaching in the Pacific waters that both Russia and Japan claim as part of their territory in the southern Kuril island chain.
The Japanese lawmakers said in a letter handed to a Russian envoy that the waters belonged to Japan and Russia had no right to detain Japanese fishing boats there or arrest the captain and the crew on charges of violating the border. They also demanded that the individuals who caused the fisherman's death be punished and compensation paid to the deceased's family.
Mikhail Galuzin, Russia's deputy ambassador to Tokyo, said it was difficult for him to accept such reproaches after he received the letter from Yoshiaki Harada, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Japan's lower house of parliament.
"The location where everything happened is Russia's sea area, and everything that happens there is subject to Russian law," Galuzin said. "We would like the Japanese side to do its best to no longer ignore incidents of poaching in Russian waters."
In the aftermath of the fatal incident, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the blame rested with the crew of the ship and certain representatives of Japan's authorities who turned a blind eye to poaching despite Moscow's attempts to raise the issue.
Galuzin met with Yukio Hatoyama, secretary general of Japan's opposition Democratic Party, who said the measures were obviously extreme and caused a human death.
The Russian diplomat replied that the situation required "a calm approach to avoid any damage to Russian-Japanese relations."
Hiroshi Fujiwara, mayor of Nemuro, the closest Japanese city to the disputed Kuril Islands, and Tetsuo Osaka, head of the fishermen trade union, also visited Wednesday the Russian consulate in Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido Island. They demanded a faster investigation into the incident and the return of the three fishermen detained on the Kunashir Island.
Japan considers four Kuril Islands - Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and Habomai - closest to its territory, to be illegally occupied by the Soviet Union and then Russia after World War II. The territorial dispute has prevented the two countries from signing a peace agreement for more than 50 years.
