Concept On-Line

A Constant Chill throughout the Cold War: An Analysis of Recent Historiography of Japanese/Soviet Relations from 1945 to 1991

Sean Brennan

Department of History

ааааа The relationships between the powers of the Far East during the Cold War; the Soviet Union, the United States, the People's Republic of China and Japan, have been a popular subject in post-1991 Cold War historiography. The decision of the Russian and Chinese governments to allow historians greater access to documents from the Cold War era caused an increase in the study of foreign relations in the Pacific Rim among Asian, European and American historians. Undoubtedly, the relationship that has undergone the least academic scrutiny is the one between the Soviet Union and Japan, among the tensest and most frustrating of the Cold War. In fairness, this is understandable considering the difficulty of archival research in both nations about this topic either during or after the Cold War.

ааааа However, a number of works on Japanese-Soviet relationships were published during the Cold War; among the most notable in English include Herbet Feis' Contest over Japan (1968), Savitri Vishwanathan's Normalization of Soviet-Japanese Relations, 1945-1970: An Indian View (1973), Young C. Kim's Japanese-Soviet Relations: Instruction of Politics, Economics and National Security (1974), Donald C. Hellman's Japanese Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy: The Peace Agreement with the Soviet Union (1969), Rodger Swearingen's The Soviet Union and Postwar Japan: Escalating Challenge and Response (1978) and Rajanera Kumar Jain's The USSR and Japan: 1945-1980 (1981). While all of these books are commendable in many respects, they were often hampered by the limited sources available to them and were often only superficially comprehensive. Furthermore, they often possessed a narrow focus on either issues (principally the Northern Territories dispute) or in the number of years the works cover. It was not until the post-1991 period that a number of works emerged that attempted to use the new archival situation to compose works on Japanese-Soviet relations that were truly comprehensive. At the same time, a number of articles and essays were published which attempted to analyze specific issues in Japanese-Soviet relations in greater depth than they had been before.

ааааа Although they differ in how and why it occurred, the one theme that nearly every work on about the subject of the Japanese/Soviet relations has focused on, is the extraordinary longevity of the tenseness tense relations between the two. Few other relationships during the Cold War have possessed so much hostility and frustration. It is a dismal record of failed summits, broken promises, military tension and ineffectual diplomacy. What makes this the hostility of this relationship unique, however, is that it has survived the Cold War intact and continues to characterize relations between Russian -and Japanese relations.

ааааа Therefore, it is important to analyze the significant works in Japanese-Soviet relations that have been published since the end of the Cold War to see how and if they point to further developments in this area of historiography, especially in five crucial issues between the Soviet Union and Japan during the Cold War. These issues are: (1) The Northern Territories Dispute; (2) the view in Moscow and Tokyo over National Security policy with regards to the other nation;а (3) Economic policy; (4) The legacy of the Second World War; (5) the effect of the PRC and the United States on relations between the Soviet Union and Japan. Of course, not every work covered by this essay discusses every one of these issues in depth. Nevertheless, a number of them do an excellent job of shedding new light on one of the coldest relationships of the Cold War.

ааааа Before moving on to these works, it is necessary to examine the relationship between Japan and both pre- and post-revolutionary Russia. Contacts between the two nations in the years before and during the Tokugawa Shogunate were minimal, although the Russian Navy had explored Northern Japan as early as 1739.1а However, following the "opening" of Japan by Commodore Perry in 1854, Japan established diplomatic relations with Tsarist Russia. The following year, the two nations signed the Treaty of Shimoda, partitioning the Kurile Islands, north of Hokkaido, into Russian and Japanese spheres. Etorofu, and all islands south of it, were designated as Japanese, . Uruppu, and all islands north of it, were designated as Russian. Sakhalin, a large island located to the northwest of the Kuriles, was not partitioned. Twenty years later, the Treaty of St. Petersburg made all of Sakhalin Russian territory, while the entire Kurile island chain was ceded to Japan.2

ааааа Nevertheless, the great power rivalry in East Asia that developed in the 1880s and 1890s soon spilled out into conflict between Japan and Russia, as. Japan was blocked from occupying the Laoping Peninsula by Russia with the aid of France and Germany following the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895.3а Japanese fears and mistrust of its huge and unpredictable neighbor to the north over the future of the Northeast Asian region led to Japan's surprise attack on Port Arthur in 1904 that began the Russo-Japanese War and culminated in its eventual victory over the Russians in 1905.а . The Portsmouth treaty, concluding the war, resulted in the cession of Russia's rights to southern Manchuria and southern Sakhalin to Japan, although they paid no war indeminities.4

ааааа Following the war's conclusion, Russia and Japan resumed normal relations, although they remained fraught with suspicion and bitterness, especially on the Russian side. The short-lived Japanese-Russian alliance during the First World War was followed by another Japanese invasion of Russian territory in Siberia during the Bolshevik Revolution from 1918 to 1922. Even after the Japanese withdrew, Japan's clear intention to utilize the chaotic political situation following the Bolshevik revolution was not forgotten by future generations of Soviet leaders.5

ааааа Following three years of governmental silence, diplomatic relations were established between the Soviet Union and Japan in 1925. Some of the old mistrust apparently disappeared in the following years, evidenced by Soviet neutrality over Japan's invasion of Manchuria, the sale of the Chinese Eastern Railway by the USSR to Manchuko and oil, timber and fisheries concessions.6

ааааа By the late 1930s, relations between the USSR and Japan had darkened again with Japan's signing of the Anti-Comintern pact with Germany in 1936, reaching the boiling point with clashes at the Manchuria/Soviet border. However, the prospect of fighting the Soviet Union in addition to the United States and Britain over the East-Asian Co-prosperity sphere in 1941 convinced many in the Japanese government and officer corps to seek a neutrality pact with Moscow.аа Stalin, uneasy about fighting both Germany and Japan, was receptive to Japanese overtures and on April 1941 the neutrality pact between the Soviet Union and Japan was signed in Moscow.7

ааааа Within two months, Japan's ally, Germany, would be at war with the Soviet Union. Resisting calls from the "north" group of army officers to invade Soviet Siberia, the Japanese government strove to maintain neutrality with the USSR before and after the surprise attack on the Pearl Harbor. Their success in doing so meant that the Soviet Union and Japan maintained uneasy neutrality for nearly all of the war.

ааааа What ultimately changed the situation was Stalin's willingness to consider a sphere of influence in Japanese territories if he entered the war against Japan following the surrender of Germany. In return for a Soviet promise to enter the war against Japan, Roosevelt conceded at the Yalta conference to future Soviet control of all of Sakhalin and the entire Kurile island chain.8

ааааа On August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered to the Allies, including the Soviet Union, which had declared war on them a week before. At this time neither South Sakhalin nor the Kuriles had been occupied. The administration of Harry Truman, which was decidedly less friendly to the Soviet Union than Roosevelt's, stated that although the Soviets could occupy the Kuriles, they remained Japanese territory and their ultimate status would be determined by a future peace treaty. Truman also strongly rejected Soviet requests for an occupation zone in Hokkaido.9а

ааааа Red Army commanders wasted little time in attacking Sakhalin and the Kuriles, the former on August 18 and the latter on August 23. On September 2, the Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru signed the surrender documents on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. By that time, the occupation of the Kuriles extended to Shikotan island, and was completed three days later with the occupation of Habomai.10а The occupation of the Kuriles, especially the islands of Habomai, Shikotan, Kunashiri and Etorofu (the Northern Territories), which had been Japanese territory since 1855, proved to be a bitter pill for the Japanese to swallow, especially since they viewed August 14 as their surrender date.11а

ааааа According to successive Japanese governments (with little variation), the Northern Territories are and always have been Japanese territories, illegally seized by the Soviet Union after World War II had ended, as part of an arrangement (Yalta) that their rightful owner was not a part of. The Soviet counterpoint is that Japan's actions in World War II violated the 1855, 1875 and 1905 treaties, and their seizure of the Kuriles was a penalty for Japanese aggression against Russian and Soviet territory.12

ааааа This is the summary of the positions of the Soviet Union and Japan given by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa in his excellent two-volume study of the Northern Territories dispute. Both volumes are based on sources in English, Russian and Japanese, with special emphasis placed on archives from the US State Department. In addition, Hasegawa uses secondary sources from American, Japanese and Russian writers as well as the memoirs of such figures as Harry Kissinger and Nikita Khurshchev. The first volume, The Northern Territories Dispute and Russo-Japanese Relations, Volume 1: Between War and Peace, 1697-1985, discusses the dispute from the surrender of Japan in 1945 to the beginning of the Gorbachev years.

ааааа Hasegawa writes that the dispute between the Northern Territories was the primary reason for the lack of progress in Soviet-Japanese relations, especially in finalizing a peace treaty that formally ended the state of war between the two countries.

ааааа Rather than placing the blame of the impasse over the Northern Territories squarely on the back of either nation, Hasegawa claims that there were missed opportunities by both sides to resolve the conflict, and, as a result, objectives of both nations went unsatisfied. The arrogance, clumsiness and stubbornness the Soviets displayed to the Japanese over the Northern Territories created intense anger among most Japanese during the Cold War over the issue, and made it easy for the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP) to push for a close security arrangement with the United States, and eventually, rapprochement with the PRC.13аа

ааааа A primary example of this misguided policy that Hasegawa points to, is the Soviet Union's refusal to sign the San Francisco Treaty of 1951, wherein Japan formally renounced claim to the Northern Territories to the Soviet Union. Had the Soviets signed it, this would have eliminated any later Japanese claims for the islands. But, blinded by the non-existent prospect (at that time) of a Japanese-American military alliance that would be used to attack the Soviet Union, they refused.а In doing so, they laid the groundwork for one of the longest-standing disputes of the Cold War.14а а Although Hasegawa acknowledges that this outcome was designed by the State Department of the United States, and particularly Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, in order to drive a wedge between the USSR and Japan, this outcome could have been invalidated by a Soviet decision to ratify the treaty.15

ааааа Hasegawa also states that the unwise policy of the Soviets with regards to the Northern Territories question is further evidenced by Khrushchev's renunciation of the 1956 declaration where the Soviet Union promised to return of Shikotan and Habomai. Khrushchev decided on this course of action after the Japan renewed its security treaty with the United States in January 1960. While this could have been justified by a Soviet security standpoint, it was a further reminder to the Japanese government and to its people that the Soviet Union could not and should not be trusted.16

ааааа Nevertheless, Hasegawa does not entirely absolve Japan for the continuation of the Northern Territories dispute. While he acknowledges that a rational look at the circumstances surrounding the Soviet seizure of the Kuriles shows that the USSR acquired the Northern Territories illegally, he states that the Japanese government used the memory of "victimization" by the Soviet Union to justify a close relationship with the United States.17а Unbending in what they saw as an issue of vital national pride, the Japanese failed to recognize that if the Soviet Union recognized Japanese claims to the Kuriles, to do so would open up a flood of irredentist demands for lost territory from other countries. That, and the islands' strategic position at the gateway to the Pacific Ocean, made them too valuable to the Soviet Union to be given up for nothing. Japan's policy of demanding a return of the islands, then a discussion of compensation for them, made it virtually impossible for the Soviet Union to agree to Japanese terms.18

ааааа According to Hasegawa, the Northern Territories issue affected more than just diplomatic relations and security policy. The limited amount of trade between the two countries meant that there was no pressure from the Japanese business community on the LDP to improve relations with the USSR, especially if that meant difficulty with the United States, an enormous market for Japanese industrial goods. Likewise, the limited contacts among Japanese and Soviet citizens made a pro-Soviet lobby for governmental policy practically non-existent, unlike the large lobby for improvement of relations with the PRC.19а

ааааа Thus, this combination of a diplomatic impasse, security necessities, and lethargy in economic relations over the Northern Territories, led to a cold relationship between the USSR and Japan from 1945 to 1985. It would not be until the arrival of the reformist Premier Mikhail Gorbachev that hopes in Moscow and Tokyo emerged that the Northern Territories dispute could again be resolved.

ааааа It is at this point that Hasegawa begins the second part of his work, The Northern Territories Dispute and Russo-Japanese Relations, Volume 2: Neither War nor Peace, 1985-1991. He recognizes that while the beginning of the Gorbachev era seemed to point to a new direction in Japanese-Soviet relations with regards to the Northern Territories dispute, promising greater trade and an end to the security standoff. Yet, the hopes of both nations were generally disappointed. Again, Hasegawa attributes blame to both Gorbachev and his Japanese counterparts for failing to make progress on any of these issues. Gorbachev failed to offer anything in return for Japanese assistance in trade and arms control with regards to the Northern Territories, while the Japanese remained stuck in an outdated Cold War mindset, refusing to work with the USSR to create greater stability in the Far East.20

ааааа During the six years of Gorbachev's tenure in office, the chill over the Northern Territories never quite warmed, as the Soviet leader refused to remove Soviet military installations from the islands. While trade between the two countries improved, it never had decisive effect on the resolution of the dispute. Gorbachev's summit in Japan to meet with Prime Minister Kaifu in 1991 also failed to make an impact, although he did recognize the existence of a territorial dispute between the two countries over the South Kuriles. The Japanese, in turn, refused to bend from their demand that the islands be returned before Japanese economic aid to the USSR would be forthcoming.21а Thus, although slight progress was made, the Soviet-Japanese summit of 1991 failed to make a significant breakthrough.

ааааа Hasegawa views the diplomatic failure as symptomatic of the intransigence of both nations. By 1991, Gorbachev's power was under attack by both the reformist and hard-line wings of the CPSU, and neither would tolerate a Soviet withdrawal from the Kuriles, leaving him with little alternative than to maintain the unbending position on the Northern Territories that he had inherited in 1985. However, Hasegawa also notes Gorbachev's ability to compromise with the United States, China, and Western Europe, and. He states that a primary reason for the failure of progress in the Gorbachev era was Japan's own intransigence over Northern Territories. By refusing to discuss a peace treaty or economic aid until the Soviet Union had handed over the islands, and by asking for something while offering nothing, the Japanese government had backed Gorbachev into a position where he was unable to compromise.22

ааааа Hasegawa's two-volume history is easily the definitive work in the Northern Territories dispute, and their effect it has had on a wide range of issues in Japanese-Soviet relations. It is excellently researched using a wide range of archival sources from both Russian and Japanese perspectives. Perhaps the one important issue that he does not raise is how the policy makers in Moscow and Tokyo viewed the strengths and weaknesses of the other's position, and how they could exploit it.а .

ааааа In looking at the argument Hasegawa makes, it is possible to conclude that Japan's inability to accept the reality of Soviet control over the Kuriles made them incapable to fully extract themselves from the mindset of the imperial era.а It should not come as a surprise that they lagged behind other Western nations in improving relations with the USSR (following the emergence of glasnost in the mid-1980s.)

ааааа Another notable two-volume work on the relationship between Japan and the Soviet Union during the Cold War is Hiroshi Kimura's Distant Neighbors, Volume 1: Japanese-Russian Relations under Brezhnev and Andropov and Distant Neighbors, Volume 2: Japanese-Russian Relations under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. While Hasegawa's works deal primarily with the Northern Territories dispute, Kimura primary focus is on the issue of national security for both the Soviet Union and Japan in the broad framework of the East-West confrontation.

ааааа For Kimura, the dispute over the Northern Territories was a reflection of more deep-seated differences between Japan and the USSR with regards to their nations' security.23а For Japan, the legacy of WWII was that of absolute devastation, both material and psychological. With much of the country in ruins and over one-third of the national wealth lost, as well as nearly two and a half million killed, the use of military force to achieve the national goals of Japan was no longer a viable option. Rather, as advocated by Shigeru Yoshida, the Prime Minister from 1947-1955, Japan would achieve security through economic advancement and a security alliance with the United States. For the next thirty years, successive Japanese governments never strayed far from Yoshida's policy.24

ааааа In the case of the Soviet Union, Kimura writes, the lesson was far different. Although the Soviet Union also suffered tremendous losses in the Second World War, it emerged as one of the two superpowers on the globe, with Red Army columns stretching from Berlin to the coastline of Hokkaido. An economically weak, isolated dictatorship had become, through its victory over Germany and Japan, one of the two most powerful countries in the world. Due to that victory, Kimura believes that the Kremlin saw military force as the best tool possible to advance both the Soviet Union's interests and to maintain national security.25

ааааа Therefore, the position of a nation with a militaristic view of security, the Soviet Union, bordering a nation with a pacifistic standpoint, Japan, on territory that the Japanese viewed as their own, would naturally lead to a long-standing conflict between the two nations. Since the Northern Territories were the closest location of Soviet military power to Japan, they naturally became the focal point of the security dispute.

ааааа These fundamental differences in what maintained national security is why Soviet policies towards Japan during from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s were so counterproductive. Military threats made by the Soviet Union towards Japan and similar attempts at intimidation failed to deter them from maintaining their alliance with the United States and establishing diplomatic relations with and eventually concluding a peace treaty with the PRC in the late 1970s. Japan, a pacifistic nation with a small self-defense force, was not frightened by the Soviet Union's heavy-handed tactics, merely angered by them.26

ааааа Even after Gorbachev introduced reforms discarding the Brezhnev doctrine in the mid-1980s, Japan was still not interested in altering their strategic partnership with the United States. Ironically, just as the Soviet Union was renouncing the use of military power in international affairs, Japan was emerging as one of the world's great economic powers, and had realized that its alliance with the United States was a primary reasons for this. This, coupled with the improvement improved of diplomatic relations and trade between the PRC and Japan, meant that only in the economic realm could Japan be swayed to alter its policy on the Northern Territories for conclusion of a peace treaty between itself and the Soviet Union.

ааааа Unfortunately for Gorbachev, the Soviet Union, sinking deeper and deeper into an economic morass, had nothing substantial to offer economically to Japan. Now that Japan had the world's second largest economy, it felt no need to offer the Soviet Union economic aid, if Gorbachev was not forthcoming on the Northern Territories issue. Gorbachev, by refusing to even re-examine the 1956 Joint Declaration or offer any real concessions on the Northern Territories, failed to obtain the aid from Japan that his country so desperately needed. Ultimately, his approach was "too weak, too little, too late".27

ааааа Kimura's thesis that the Northern Territories dispute was a mere reflection of the fundamental differences between Japan and the USSR with regards to protecting national security comes across much more strongly in the first volume than the second. Kimura never answers the question as to why Japan persisted on the return of the Northern Territories after the security threat of the Soviet Union dissipated during the Gorbachev era. Furthermore, while he makes effective use of Soviet and Japanese newspapers and magazines, as well as secondary sources in English, Russian and Japanese, he does not use archival sources from the Japanese Self-defense Forces (SDF), the Japanese government, the Red Army nor those from the Soviet government. This is a highly conspicuous absence in a work that proclaims its main focus to be how national security affected relations between both nations. Nevertheless, it remains a generally sound work and a good introduction to the topic.

ааааа Another notable work on the security factor in Japanese-Soviet relations is Mike Mochizuki's essay, "The Soviet/Russian Factor in Japanese Security Policy".а Mochizuki concedes that although the post-WWII Japanese governments recognized the need for a military alliance with the United States against the Soviet threat, throughout the early years of the Cold War they held a relaxed view of the Soviet Union as a military threat. As a consequence, they were extremely reluctant to increase the SDF in size to aid the United States in repelling a possible Soviet invasion.28

ааааа According to Mochizuki, it would not be until the deterioration of relations between the USSR and Japan in the late 1970s that the government began to construct the SDF as a serious fighting force to work with the United States to repel a Soviet invasion. Once again, the Northern Territories proved to be the catalyst for a change in the perception of the threat posed by the Soviet Union after Moscow made the decision to station troops and MiG 23's on the islands and allow Soviet nuclear submarines (SSBNs) patrol the Sea of Okhotsk. This ultimately strengthened the US-Japanese security alliance during a period of economic tension between the two industrial giants.29

ааааа Mochizuki's essay is primarily based on secondary sources in Japanese, with a small number of English sources, including books, articles and papers presented at national security conferences. Since his conclusions are relatively modest, his essay is generally sound, even if it does not contribute anything particularly new to the historiography of Soviet-Japanese relations.

ааааа In addition to the area of security, another issue of relevance to Soviet-Japanese relations is in the field of economics. One of the better contemporary articles that discuss this aspect is Tsuneo Akaha's and Takashi Murakimi's "Soviet/Russian-Japanese Economic Relations". Akaha and Murakimi state that the growth in Soviet-Japanese economic relations can be traced to Japan's extensive loans and credits to fund large resource development projects in Siberia and the Soviet Far East in the 1960s and 1970s.

However, due to the downturn in diplomatic relations between the two nations in the late 1970s and most of the 1980s, trade between the two nations again stagnated, with Japan dropping from three to one percent of the Soviet Union's total trade. Trade would lift slightly in the late 1980s with the advent of glasnost and perestroika, but not to the level in which it could resuscitate the declining fortune of the USSR.30

ааааа Akaha and Murakami use essays, newspapers and economic journals in English and Japanese to support their thesis: that periods of improvement in diplomatic relations between the USSR and Japan led to economic growth and vice versa. While this is generally well-supported by the evidence, the authors forget to look at an important period of relatively positive relations between the Soviet Union and Japan, the years of 1956 to 1960. It would have been interesting to learn if any economic progress had been made between the two countries during those years, and the lack of information about them weakens the essay overall.

ааааа "The Pattern of Soviet-Japanese Relations since World War II" by Jonathan Haslam offers a more general overview of the relationship between the Soviet Union and Japan. According to Haslam, the hatred of the Japanese by most members of the Soviet government, as well asand a determination to never be attacked by them again, prevented them from ever bending on the Northern Territories question or conceding to the Japanese on any major issue.31 This policy of intimidation and refusal to consider Japanese grievances, initiated by Stalin, continued with a few minor interruptions into the Gorbachev era, even when it worked against broader Soviet interests.32а As an example, Haslam points to is the USSR's refusal to change their stance on the territorial question with the Japanese while trying to persuade them not to improve relations with the PRC, the USSR's enemy, at the time. This position led to the creation of the Sino-Japanese peace treaty in 1975, especially a Tokyo-Beijing-Washington alliance that Moscow had dreaded for over a decade.33

а ааа Haslam concludes by stating that even after glasnost, Gorbachev's new approach to Japan did little to address Japanese conditions for a peace treaty., It resulted in the same type of frustration which characterized Soviet-Japanese relations throughout the Cold War.34

ааааа A wide range of sources in English, Russian and Japanese supplements Haslam's essay. He uses newspapers, declassified documents, speeches, memoirs and numerous secondary sources to support his arguments, which are well articulated and generally sound. Haslam's use of disparaging comments about the Japanese made by Khurshchev and Stalin do an effective job of demonstrating the intense dislike most Soviet leaders had of Japan.а Still, it is risky to attribute that attitude to the entire Soviet apparatus throughout the Cold War based on a few statements. That minor weakness aside, Haslam's essay is an impressive analysis of the impasse between the Soviet Union and Japan throughout the Cold War.аааа

ааааа William F. Nimmo's Japan and Russia: A Reevaluation in the Post-Soviet Era, makes an interesting argument as to the motivations behind Japan's reluctance to abandon the alliance with the United States and to compromise on the Northern Territories issue. According to Nimmo, the brutal actions of the Soviet Union in against hundreds of thousands of detained Japanese soldiers and civilians in areas that had fallen under Soviet control, as well as the brutal treatment they received at the hands of the Red Army permanently turned public opinion in Japan against the Soviet Union.35а This, along with the threat demonstrated by the Soviet Union in the Korean War convinced most Japanese that their best hope for peace and security in their homeland was an alliance with the United States.

ааааа The actions of the Soviet Union in the early years of the Cold War left most Japanese with a terrible reputation of the USSR, one that was not improved by future actions of the Soviet government in the years to come. Nimmo concurs with Haslam in that he views the shaky groundwork laid by the Soviets in their early dealings with the Japanese, as well as their inability to bend on the issue of the Northern Territories was the primary factor in the utter failure of Soviet policy in Japan, up to and including the Gorbachev era.

ааааа Unlike Haslam, however, Nimmo uses mainly secondary sources in English. As a result, his arguments, while well organized, are not as reliable as Haslam's or Hasegawa's since its basic foundations are so limited. While Nimmo's work as some positive aspects, it should only be used in conjunction with other works on the same topic.

ааааа Like Hasegawa, Kimie Hama recognizes the Northern Territories dispute as a major cause of the fractured diplomacy between the USSR and Japan during the Cold War. However, her book, Japanese-Soviet/Russian Relations since 1945: A difficult peace, sees a different cause behind the dispute.

ааааа According to Hama, a third party created the dispute over the Northern Territories, namely i.e. the United States. It was the United States that used the Kuriles as a way to get Stalin into the war against Japan at Yalta, and later to drive drove a wedge between the USSR and Japan through via the ambiguous definition of them in the San Francisco Peace Treaty.36 This "by-product" of the Cold War, as Hama terms it, remained the an issue that blocked possibilities for the full normalization of relations between the Soviets and the Japaneseаа Hama goes one step farther in claiming that the United States, while supporting Japan's claim right to the Kuriles, deliberately intended to perpetuate the dispute as long as possible in order to maintain the security alliance with Japan.37а

ааааа Of course, the continued reliance of Japan on the security alliance with the United States went against the expressed wishes of the Soviet Union. This kept the issue from being resolved, on which all other issues (trade, a peace treaty, etc.) were dependant upon. The end results of this process were a series of failures at diplomatic summits and increased military tension during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

ааааа Hama's perspective on the how the United States maintained the dispute between the USSR and Japan during the cold war resembles the argument posed by Melvyn Leffler in his article "The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945-1948". Like Leffler, Hama believes that the United States, looking to contain the Soviet Union, exacerbated anа already tense situation and only made the problem worse. In doing so, it led to a decrease, rather than an increase, in the stability of the Far East.

ааааа Hama uses a wide range of materials for her work, including books and articles in Japanese and English, articles from historical and political science journals, periodicals concerning Asian studies, and an impressive amount of government documents from the United States, the United Kingdom, the USSR, Japan and Australia. Of particular interest, from the last country, is a group of pamphlets dating back to 1946 from the Gaimusho, the Japanese Foreign Service office. Hama Hara uses the information in the pamphlets to demonstrate that Japan was already planning to lay claim to both Habomai and Shikotan, by thenа (already under Soviet occupation).38

ааааа Ironically, this undermines her central argument. Hama ignores the fact that the Soviet Union's did not do itself any favors in its obstinacy over the Northern Territories, or, more pointedly, in its treatment of Japanese POWs and civilians in Manchuria, Sakhalin and the Kuriles. The bitter experience of the Japanese under the domination of the Red Army severely damaged the USSR's reputation in Japan from the very beginning of the Cold War. The Japanese government was never inclined to improve relations with the Soviet Union if there was nothing they could show for it. The hope of regaining the Kuriles was an issue of vital national pride for the Japanese even before the machinations of the United States in the San Francisco Peace Treaty, as Hama herself demonstrates; and continued to be so after the Cold War had ended.

ааааа While Hama's work is impeccably researched, it should only be used with caution as the conclusions she reaches contradict the evidence she presents.

Many specialists in the area of the Japanese/Soviet era, such as Kimie Hara and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, see the San Francisco Peace Treaty between the United States and Japan of 1951 as a critical turning point in Soviet/Japanese relations.а "The San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Definition of the Kurile Islands",а by Haruki Wada, is a further attempt to examine the circumstances surrounding a key event in the diplomatic standoff between the Soviet Union and Japan.

ааааа Like Hama, Haruki Wada sees the primary agent in the Soviet-Japanese dispute over the Kuriles as neither Tokyo nor Moscow, but Washington. It was the United States, Wada claims, that attempted to formulate a peace agreement with Japan that determined defined the status of the southern Kuriles as Japanese, not Soviet territory. Although the United States turned its back on this definition in 1949 for reasons Wada states are not clear; the Japanese government hesitatingly adopted this policy in 1956. In the next year, the United States agreed to this position in order to support Japan against the Soviet Union. According to Hama, this was "the logic of confrontation" that poisoned Japanese/Soviet relations throughout the Cold War.39

ааааа Interestingly, Wada also points to the pamphlets discussed by Kimie Hara, which show the Gaimusho wished to define only Habomai and Shikotan as not part of the Kuriles, not Etorofu and Kunashiri.40а Therefore, it was the United States who pushed the Japanese into claiming that the other two islands were not part of Kuriles. In this way, the United States could confirm a peace treaty with Japan in keeping with the promises of the Yalta accords, while at same time creating a stumbling block to Soviet/Japanese Relations.

ааааа The problem with this is that this reads too much into the Gaimusho's position in 1946. With the nation crushed militarily and economically, and before relations between the United States and Soviet Union began to rapidly deteriorate, the Japanese may have seen Habomai and Shikotan as the best they could hope for at the time. The Japanese were also careful during this time period not to raise the potentially explosive questions about the use of Japanese POWs and civilians for forced labor. It would not be until later, when they had stronger American support behind their claims, did they attempt to challenge the actions taken by the Soviet Union in the concluding phase of the war regarding both the treatment of POWs and Japanese civilians as well as the Soviet occupation of the Kuriles.

ааааа Thus, Wada's claim that the Japanese only desired Shikotan and Habomai in 1946 and would not have attempted to further redefine the Kuriles without pressure from the United States is not a strong one, and it weakens the overall effect of Wada's essay.

ааааа The redefinition of the Kuriles is also a pivotal issue in Alexei Zagorsky's "Reconciliation in the Fifties: The Logic of Soviet Decision Making". Zagorsky writes that following Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet Union attempted to normalize relations with Japan by offering a number of concessions to Japan on the Northern Territories and in terms of security alliances and on the Northern Territories question. This, ultimately, led, in 1956, to the normalization of relations between the two nations and the proclamation of a Joint Declaration. The Declaration which stated that the islands of Shikotan and Habomai would be given to Japan after the conclusion of a peace treaty. However, in 1960, the Soviet Union abruptly reversed course on concessions to Japan, and returned to their position pre-1956 of the Northern Territories, which they maintained for the rest of the Cold War.41

ааааа Zagorsky argues that the intended result of the Soviet diplomacy with regards to Japan was to follow the "Adenauer formula" that is, to re-establish diplomatic relations while either ignoring or denying the existence of a territorial dispute.42 The decision to follow the Adenauer formula with regards to Japan was Khrushchev's attempt to distinguish himself from the hard-line policy of his one remaining rival to succeed Stalin, Vyaschlev Molotov.43а After Molotov had been ousted (due to Khrushchev's ability to outmaneuver him in the field of foreign relations), the Soviet leader continued his policy of easing relations with Japan.а Unfortunately, the emergence of increased tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union over West Berlin, Cuba, and the U-2 incident forced Khrushchev to return to his hard-line stance in 1960.44

ааааа Citing the lack of useful sources from Soviet archives over the time period, Zagorsky is extremely critical of those that are available, especially the memoirs of the Nikita Khrushchev, which he views as too full of inaccuracies and inconsistencies to be of much use. Instead, he uses secondary sources in Russian, Japanese and English as well as few documents from the Japanese government. By his own admission, certain claims that he makes, such as the motivation behind Khrushchev's new policy towards Japan and the sudden reversal of that policy, requires a mental leap of faith on the part of the reader, particularly because there are no primary sources to support it.а Fortunately, none of the arguments put forth by Zagorsky are radical or unrealistic and thus do not require too great a leap, making Zagorsky's essay a useful, if limited, improvement to this particular topic.

ааааа In recent years, one of the most visible fields of historical research has been how the images constructed of one nation by another effects their policy towards that nation. One recent example of this is Mark Philip Bradley's Imagining Vietnam & America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919-1950. Peter Berton's "Two Decades of Soviet Diplomacy and Andrei Gromyko"а a recent essay in the field of Japanese-Soviet relations, is similar to Bradley's work in its conclusions and methodology.

ааааа Berton views Soviet perceptions of the Japanese as the principle cause of the massive failure of the Soviet policy towards Japan during the Cold War,а (which served only to draw Japan closer to a military alliance with the United States and legitimized the need for the SDF).аа Andrei Gromyko, the long serving (1957-1984) Soviet foreign minister, is Berton's representative of Soviet perceptions of and attitudes towards Japan during that era.

ааааа Berton writes that Gromyko's views towards post-World War II Japan contained three crucial flaws. The first, revealed in his writings about the nation, was that Gromyko saw Japan as a land of mysterious feudal traditions, the home of the Rising Sun and Mt. Fuji, rather than the industrial and economic powerhouse emerging out of from the rubble of WWII. The second was that, since the Japanese no longer possessed a large army and navy, then they could not be a world power in any sense of the word,а (their technological and economic progress notwithstanding). In other words, in the negotiations between the two nations, due to the strength of the Red Army, the Soviets held all the cards, the Japanese none. Third, Japan had no type of independent initiatives at all in the realm of diplomacy, as it was merely an extension of the United States.45

ааааа These three misconceptions of Japan, relayed by Gromyko to his superiors in the Politburoа drove Soviet Union to utilize the hard-line tactics against Japan that only worked against their own interests. Notable examples Berton points out are the USSR's attempt to use fishing permits in the North Atlantic to intimidate Japan, the violation of Japanese airspace by Soviet fighter planes, and the attempt to destabilize the Japanese government through by supporting acts of terrorism by the Japanese Communist Party (JCP).46

ааааа Berton uses primarily issues of The Japan Times and The New York Times, interviews with a few experts in the area such as Rodger Swearingen, a few secondary sources in Japanese, and the memoirs of Andrei Gromyko. Like Bradley, Berton uses his sources to demonstrate that inaccurate perceptions of another nation or people can and will have negative effect on the direction of policy towards that nation.а However, unlike Bradley, he spends his attention on one individual to make a claim regarding the attitudes of his nation, whereas Bradley focuses on a wide variety of individuals and organizations. Berton's type of methodology is always a risky one in attempting to discern the attitudes of an entire nation, but due to the closed and isolated state of Soviet society and the total dominance of Soviet government in foreign affairs, the idea that Gromyko could speak for the Soviet Union with regards to their perception of Japan maintains a good deal of credibility.

ааааа Following the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985 and the replacement of Andrei Gromyko by Eduard Shevardnadze, relations between the two nations again began to improve.а . Unfortunately, while the years of 1985-1991 appeared to offer a breakthrough in the territorial dispute and in the conclusion of a peace treaty between the Soviet Union and Japan, they ended in disappointment much as they had in 1960. Nobuo Shimotomai's essay, "Japan-Soviet Relations under Perestroika: Perceptions and Interactions between the Two Capitals", and Lisa Tarlow's "Russian Decision-Making on Japan in the Gorbachev era" are two notable works about the final period of Japanese/Soviet relations during the Cold War. .

ааааа In his essay, Shimotomai writes that the perceptions of both countries towards the other had a decisive effect on the direction of Japanese/Soviet relations. He states that one of the main reasons for stagnation before the Gorbachev era was due to ignorance of both the Japanese and Soviet governments to on how the decisions decisions or policies were made or policies were decided by the other nation.47а During the years of perestroika, the Japanese foreign ministry decided to exclude a number of diplomats from the 'Russia School'(who had been trained in the US or the UK on the Soviet threat to Japanese security) from assignments in the Soviet Union and began replacing them with diplomats whose primary experience was in Europe.48а In turn, the Soviet Union allowed a number of specialists in Japanese studies to have a greater role in the formation of Soviet policy towards Japan.49

ааааа Nevertheless, despite these improvements, the Soviet Union and Japan did not achieve the desired breakthrough in the full normalization of relations. Shimotomai attributes this to the disagreements in the direction this "new thinking" towards Japan should take inby the Soviet Politburo, as well as a similar controversy in the Japanese government. While both nations were able to make some innovations in terms of how diplomacy was conducted, their decision to stall on settling vital issues from 1985 to 1988 meant that both countries had lost the opportunity to set relations on a new course.50а After 1988, the Soviet Union was too troubled by domestic problems to adequately resolve their disputes with Japan, and. Thus, the best chance, since 1956, to conclude a peace treaty and resolve the territorial dispute had failed.

ааааа Unlike many of the other works in the historiography of this period, Shimotomai's essay is based on the memoirs of figures in the Japanese and Soviet governments during the time period. This proves to be effective as it offers a penetrating look into the workings of the Japanese and Soviet governments during the period of Gorbachev's reforms. Furthermore, his Shimotomai's argument that improvements in diplomatic relations between the USSR and Japan did not go nearly far enough from 1985 to 1988 is well articulated and convincing.а . Shimotomai's claims are aided the overwhelming consensus among most experts in Japanese/Soviet relations that the Tokyo summit of 1991 came far too late to make any real change. Thus, his essay remains one of the better analyses of how perestroika failed to provide lasting change between the two nations.

ааааа Lisbeth Tarlow's interpretation of Moscow's "new thinking" towards Japan also observes the ultimate failure of the policy to conclude a peace treaty with Japan, increase trade, or resolve the Northern Territories dispute. Like Shimotomai, Tarlow believes that Gorbachev and his advisors in the Kremlin learned to place a higher priority on Japan and to leave behind their outdated view of it as a merely an extension of the United States. Furthermore, the Soviet need of Japanese funds for Soviet economic recovery pushed Gorbachev to reverse their long-standing Soviet policy towards the Kuriles.51

ааааа However, this did not result in a breakthrough in the Northern Territories except for the fact that the Soviet Union recognized a territorial dispute between it and Japan, something it had denied the past thirty years. Tarlow attributes this to the deteriorating political environment surrounding Gorbachev in the 1990 and 1991 that prevented him from implementing a policy reversal on Japan. Once again, a chance for a substantial improvement in Japanese/Soviet relations slipped away to inopportune circumstances.52

ааааа Tarlow's essay is founded on a number of secondary sources in English, statements by Mikhail Gorbachev, and interviews with Roald Sagdeev and Alexei Zagorsky, Soviet experts in Japan. While her sources are generally solid, they seem somewhat sparse and fail to back up her central arguments. The use of archival evidence from the Soviet government would could have greatly aided her thesis. As such, it remains a limited study of an important period in Japanese/Soviet relations.

ааааа Ten years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, a peace treaty still has not been concluded between Russia and Japan, while the Northern Territories dispute remains a divisive issue between the two countries, with no clear sign of resolution in sight. This demonstrates that the conflict between the Soviet Union and Japan is rooted in more than simple Cold War machinations. Disappointingly, with the exception of Haslam, Nimmo and, to a lesser extent, Kimura, few historians in the last ten years have paid significant attention to the cause of the conflict between Moscow and Tokyo outside of a Cold War paradigm.

ааааа Also, the historiography of Japanese/Soviet relations during the 1990s contains a number of works that pay too much attention to the role of the United States in creating and maintaining the rift between the two countries, such as those by Kimie Hara and Haruki Wada. While it is clear that diplomatic impasse between the USSR and Japan suited the United States' security interests in the Far East, this approach does not explain why the conflict has continued after the Cold War has ended and the Soviet military threat to United States and Japan in the Far East was removed.

ааааа Finally, the historiography of the topic since the end of the Cold War suffers from a lack of archival evidence from the Soviet and Japanese governments from the mid-1940s to the early 1980s. While this is understandable, considering the notorious reluctance of both the Russian and Japanese governments to allow for detailed archival research by historians, it also gives the impression that a number of vital elements to the story have been left out or remain undiscovered.

ааааа Nevertheless, there are a number of excellent works from the 1990s that offer a great amount of insight into the history of the Cold War's longest lasting and most frustrating standoff. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's two volume history of the Northern Territories dispute will likely be the authoritative work on the subject for years to come, while Hiroshi Kimura's two volume account of Japanese-Russian relations from Brezhnev to Yeltsin is also one of the best works on the subject. William Nimmo's work and the essays by Jonathan Haslam, Alexei Zagorsky and Peter Berton remain informative and offer a good introduction to the topic.

ааааа Thus, the historiography of Japanese/Soviet relations from the last ten years has by no means exhausted all possible topics or explanations for the course of action taken by either Moscow or Tokyo. а. However, the work done by historians since the fall of the Soviet Union has laid a promising groundwork for future study.а

ааааа Also, there remains at least one point of consensus among nearly every work in the field of Japanese/Soviet relations is, that the diplomatic impasse during the Cold War was not the sole fault of either nation. Intransigence and missed opportunities by both parties contributed to both the Soviet Union's and Japan's failure to obtain what they wanted from the other nation. The common ground found by historians during the 1990s should prevent the emergence of one-dimensional historical studies that intend to lay all the blame on either Japan or the Soviet Union, as was the case with a number of Japanese and Russian works on the subject in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

а ааа Hopefully both the Japanese and Russian governments will allow greater access to formerly classified documents in the years to come. If so, historians will have the opportunity to use the works that preceded them in the 1990s, to provide a clearer explanation was to why hostility rather than cooperation was the norm between the Soviet Union and Japan and how this affected the outcome of the Cold War in the Far East.

End Notes

1. Rodger Swearingen.а The Soviet Union and Postwar Japan: Escalating Challenge and

Response.а (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1978), 4.

2. Swearingen, 5.

3. Ibid, 5.

4. Akira Iriye.а Japan and the Wider World: From the Mid-nineteenth Century to the Present.а (New York: Longman, 1997), 24.

5. Swearingen, 6.

6. Ibid, 6.

7. Ibid, 7.

8. Akira Iriye.а The Cold War in Asia: A Historical Introduction.а (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974), 94.

9. Kimie Hara.а Japanese-Soviet/Russian Relations since 1945: a difficult peace. (New York: Routledge, 1998), 17.

10. Hara 18.

11. Ibid, 19.

12. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa.а The Northern Territories Dispute and Russo-Japanese Relations, Volume 1: Between War and Peace, 1697-1985.а (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 71.

13. Hasegawa, 172.

14. Ibid, 101.

15. Ibid, 105.

16. Ibid, 137.

17. Ibid, 172.

18. Ibid, 171.

19. Ibid, 175.

20. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa.а The Northern Territories Dispute and Russo-Japanese Relations, Volume 2: Neither War nor Peace, 1985-1991.а (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 221.

21. Hasegawa, 402.

22. Ibid, 403.

23. Hiroshi Kimura.а Distant Neighbors, Volume 1: Japanese-Russian Relations under Brezhnev and Andropov. (London: M.E. Sharpe, 2000), 21.

24. Kimura, 22.

25. Ibid, 23.

26. Ibid, 107.

27. Hiroshi Kimura.а Distant Neighbors, Volume 2: Japanese-Russian Relations under Gorbachev and Yeltsin.а (London: M.E. Sharpe, 2000), 100.

28. Mike Mochizuki.а УThe Soviet/Russian Factor in Japanese Security PolicyФ Russia and Japan: An Unresolved Dilemma Between Distant Neighbors.а Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Jonathan Haslam, and Andrew Kuchins, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 127.

29. Mochizuki, 131.

30. Tsuneo Akaha and Takashi Murakami. УSoviet/Russian-Japanese Economic RelationsФа Russia and Japan: An Unresolved Dilemma Between Distant Neighbors.а (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Jonathan Haslam, and Andrew Kuchins, eds. 161.

31. Jonathan Haslam.а УThe Pattern of Soviet-Japanese Relations Since World War IIФа Russian and Japan: An Unresolved Dilemma Between Distant Neighbors. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Jonathan Haslam, and Andrew Kuchins, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 3.

32. Haslam, 8.

33. Ibid, 33.

34. Ibid, 39.

35. William F. Nimmo.а Japan and Russia: A Reevaluation in the Post-Soviet Era.(London: Greenwood Press, 1994), 39.

36. Hara, 33.

37. Ibid, 214.

38. Ibid, 24.

39. Habuki Wada.а УThe San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Definition of the Kurile IslandsФа Japan and Russia: The Tortuous Path to Normalization. Gilbert Rozman, ed.а (New York: St. MartinТs Press, 1999), 29.

40. Wada, 17.

41. Alexei Zagorsky.а УReconciliation in the Fifties: The Logic of Soviet Decision MakingФа Japan and Russia: The Tortuous Path to Normalization. Gilbert Rozman, ed.а (New York: St.MartinТs Press, 1999), 49.

42. Zagorsky, 59.

43. Ibid, 65.

44. Ibid, 66.

45. Peter Berton, УTwo Decades of Soviet Diplomacy and Andrei GromykoФ Japan and Russia: The Tortuous Path to Normalization. Gilbert Rozman, ed.а (New York: St. MartinТs Press, 1999), 84.

46. Berton, 85.

47. Nobuo Shimotomai. УJapan-Soviet Relations Under Perestroika: Perceptions and Interaction between Two CapitalsФа Japan and Russia: The Tortuous Path to Normalization. Gilbert Rozman, ed.а (New York: St. MartinТs Press, 1999), 110.

48. Shimotomai, 111.

49. Ibid, 114.

50. Ibid, 112.

51. Lisbeth Tarlow.а УRussian Decision Making on Japan in the Gorbachev EraФа Japan and Russia: The Tortuous Path to Nomalization.а Gilbert Rozman, ed.а (New York: St. MartinТs Press, 1999), 136.

52. Tarlow, 137.