THE ENDLESS RIVALRY BETWEEN THE RUSSIANS AND THE JAPANESE OVER THE KURILS

 

 

 

Hello guys ! Today I’d like to talk to you about the Kuril islands. Have you ever heard about them? If not, scroll down and I’ve got a lot of interesting information for you.

 

The Kuril islands are a volcanic archipelago of 56 islands which stretches from Hokkaido to the Kamčatka peninsula , the islands  are the topic of a centuries-old debate between Japan and Russia which has not yet found an end.

To be accurate the islands are part of the Ring of Fire of the Pacific Ocean, they arise in the vicinity of the homonymous trench:  a subduction zone  where the pacific plate slides under the Asian one . Not by chance,  the name of this extremely-active zone comes from the Russian verb kurit (курить): to smoke .

The true inhabitants of this contended zone would be the Ainus, who originally occupied even the Hokkaido and Sakhalin islands, before they were sent away by the Japanese  during the Tokugawa period (1603–1867). At the time Japanese people were not  so interested in Kurils, indeed they had never organized a “proper expedition”.                                                           .

                                                 

 

The first ones “to touch “ the Kurils (after the Ainus ) were the Dutch in 1643  who even realized  a detailed map that they would have sold to the Japanese dearly.  The Russians reached the islands 6 years after the Dutch and in 1711  a Cossack expedition stepped foot on the islands disembarking in Shumuhu ( the first island under the Kamčatka peninsula ) till reaching Urup in 1739 .

When in 1853 the Crimean war broke out Russia  concentrated its forces in Crimea to fight against an alliance  formed by France, England and the Ottoman Empire .  The Japanese took advantage of this temporary vulnerability to conquer all the Kurils and the Sakhalin island . The first diplomatic contact between the Russian and the Japanese empires took place in 1855 with the Treaty of Shimoda  by which the Japanese  only had control of the four Southerner islands and the two empires had to rule jointly  over Sakhalin .                                            

 

            

A new treaty would be made in 1875 in St Petersburg. In this murky script the Russians stated that they would renounce to the Kurils in change of the total control on Sakhalin but it isn’t clear what the Russian did mean with Kurils: all the Kurils or only the four islands obtained by Japan after the treaty of Shimoda . When in 1904 the imperialistic ambitions of the two empires  for the control of the Korean peninsula and Manchuria clashed,   a new war broke out .  

                                                 

This time Japanese obtained an undisputed victory and in the Portsmouth Treaty the Empire of the Rising Sun obtained control on all the Kurils and on half of the Sakhalin peninsula. Moreover,  during the October revolution Japan snatched from Russia some eastern territories . When WW2 started, the Japanese Empire and CCCP signed a nonaggression treaty that would be broken by CCCP after the Yalta agreement in 1945.  The Russians conquered all the territories subtracted during the October Revolution,  Sakhalin island and all the Kurils,  defeating a ravaged Japan that had already been defeated by the US .

17, 000  Japanese people were expatriated from the Kurils .

 

In the same year in Potsdam another unclear treaty was signed so that another treaty could take place in 1951 in San Francisco,  with which Japan renounced Sakhalin.  But   the problem of the four southern Kurils was still there . To date,  after all these treaties, there isn’t any official negotiation ongoing and every time the representatives of the two nations meet,  the Kurils are the so-called elephant in the room. .

 

 Why all this interest?   

Japan states that this is a matter of national pride,  even though lately the possibility of the presence of some oil and gas fields  has been advanced; moreover,  on Iturup island ( for the Japanese, Etorofu-tō ) there is plenty of rhenium which is very important for the construction of weapons.

The Russians probably will never renounce the islands , where the beautiful landscapes have been ‘’ contaminated ‘’ by military installations.

Indeed the Kurils represent a natural barrier for the Okhotsk sea,  which is a refuge to the Russian fleet .

Now,  to conclude my post,  I thought I will leave you some beautiful pictures that will make you appreciate these astonishing islands that I have been telling you about . Till next time! 

 

                                                           

 

                                                          

An abandoned tank on Shikotan island

                                      Giordano C., 5sc