TOKYO, September 14 One of the priority areas in relations with Russia will resume visiting the graves of ancestors by former residents of the “northern territories,” as Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan and Habomai are commonly called in Japan, the new head of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Yoko Kamikawa, said at the first press conference.
«»With regard to the resumption of grave visits in the northern territories and other exchanges, this is one of the priorities in Japan-Russia relations. To meet the aspirations of the islands' former residents who are in old age, I intend to continue to urge Russia to resume exchanges with special attention to the issue of visiting graves,» the minister said.
On March 21 last year, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that Moscow, as a response to Tokyo’s unfriendly steps, refuses to negotiate with Japan on a peace treaty, stops visa-free travel for Japanese citizens to the southern Kuril Islands, and withdraws from dialogue with Japan on establishing joint economic activities in the southern Kuril Islands. Kuril Islands.
Visa-free exchange between residents of the Russian Southern Kuril Islands and Japan began in 1992 on the basis of an intergovernmental agreement to improve mutual understanding between the peoples of the two countries and resolve the issue of concluding a peace treaty. Travel was carried out using a national passport with a special insert, without visas. The first charter flight from Japan to the Kuril Islands took place in September 2017; before that, visa-free delegations were delivered only by sea. As part of visa-free exchanges, visits to the graves of the ancestors of former island residents also took place. Visa-free exchanges between Russia and Japan have been frozen since 2020 due to the pandemic and then amid worsening bilateral relations.
Relations between Russia and Japan have been clouded for many years by the absence of a peace treaty. In 1956, the USSR and Japan signed a Joint Declaration, in which Moscow agreed to consider the possibility of transferring Habomai and Shikotan to Japan after the conclusion of a peace treaty, and the fate of Kunashir and Iturup was not affected. The USSR hoped that the Joint Declaration would put an end to the dispute, while Japan considered the document only part of the solution to the problem, without giving up its claims to all the islands. Subsequent negotiations came to nothing, and a peace treaty at the end of World War II was never signed. Serious opposition arose from the United States, which threatened that if Japan agreed to transfer only two of the four islands to it, this would affect the process of returning Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty (the Agreement on the return of Okinawa to Japan came into force in 1972 — ed.). Moscow's position is that the islands became part of the USSR following the Second World War and the sovereignty of the Russian Federation over them is beyond doubt.