Japan-Russia Peace Agreement | Tokyo on Fire (with Dr. James Brown)

On the sidelines of the ASEAN-Russia Summit in Singapore last November, Prime Minister Abe and President Putin both compromised to an acceleration in the negotiations of a peace treaty between both countries. We are now in March and close to the G20 Summit in Osaka, but has much been accomplished?

Join us in this episode as Timothy Langley and Dr. James Brown discuss the Japan-Russia Peace Treaty Agreement and the Kuril Islands issue.

[ENG] captions available!

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(Transcript below)

Tim: Russia and Japan, where are we today? Don't forget to hit the subscribe button! Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Tokyo on Fire. Today is February 20th 2019, Russia and Japan are still in very tense negotiations. The Foreign Minister has been meeting with the Foreign Minister of Russia, there is a lot of talk going on: where are we right now. I'm so happy to welcome back Dr. James Brown. Welcome back!

James: Thanks for having me.

Tim: You happen to be one of our most popular guests. You are articulate about an issue that is very complicated, very important for the Japanese people, apparently for the Russians as well. Where are we right now, where are the negotiations going?

James: Well in Japan-Russia relations often there's the sense that nothing really changes, but I think just at the moment there is something really quite new. And that's after an agreement that was made in November last year: Putin and Abe met in Singapore and they reached an agreement to accelerate talks based on the 1956 joint declaration. Now, that's significant because it actually represents a bit of a concession from the Japanese side. Now, you won't find Prime Minister Abe saying it openly, at least not yet, but it seems to be clear that by stressing that agreement, he's really decided that rather than trying to go for all four of the islands, which are under dispute, instead he's focused on just two. And the reason why we know that is because in the 1956 agreement, it only mentions two islands: the larger two islands of Iturup and Kunashir and not mentioned in that document whatsoever. It's only the smaller islands of Shikotan and Habomai. So, that seems to indicate that Abe has in mind to go for a two island deal. They also agreed to a new framework for talks, which have been led by the foreign ministers with the deputy foreign ministers also involved, so it does seem to be a new stage in these talks.


Tim: I like the tone and the tenor that is being pursued by Foreign Minister Kono and it seems like this is really beginning to generate some sort of a gel at the diplomatic level, but it seems like at the higher level there's intransigence.

James: Well, the hope was that after that agreement reached in November there really would be acceleration. That's what the agreement was, to accelerate based on that agreement. But now, we've had two meetings between the foreign ministers, the most recent of which happening in Munich on the sidelines of the Security Conference; we've also had a summit in Moscow on the 22nd of January. And really, it's pretty clear that whilst the Japanese side want to move forward quickly on this, the Russian side have an interesting interpretation of acceleration, it seems to be actually moving really quite slowly and raising a number of additional concerns that they have. So, I think the actual picture is that the Japanese side at the moment are really quite disappointed by the fact that despite the agreement in November, despite the concessions from their side which have also included new wording, they will no longer talk about the islands as being inherent Japanese territory; they also won't talk about them being illegally occupied, which is the way they were previously described, despite those things, the Russian side doesn't want to budge.

Tim: It's not a good idea when you're at this stage of negotiations to have mistakes in interpretation, wouldn't you agree? Yeah, so it seems that there's maybe a willingness or an eagerness on one side that is not represented by the other.

James: I think there is just a fundamental disagreement on what the resolution of this is going to be. The Prime Minister, Abe, still has significant hopes. It seems that he has committed so many times to reaching an agreement on this issue before the end of his time in office and he also, apparently, is going for an outline agreement as soon as June. That's when President Putin is due to visit Japan for the Osaka G20 summit and that seems to be what Abe has in mind, but that just doesn't seem to be on the agenda at all for the Russian side.

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