Imperial ambitions

Kunashir as seen from near Shibetsu. Before a month long fog came and obscured the view.

On Monday last, on his way home from some regional shindig in Hanoi, Dimitry Medvedev, President of Russia, decided to stop off at a small, isolated windswept island some 7000 kilometres from Moscow. He only spent a few hours on Kunashir, visiting a fish processing factory, a small housing development, and taking some photos of a tank. (There's not that many things to do on the island, and even less tourists come and do them). It rained the entire time he was there. Before night fell, he boarded the presidential jet and flew across six time zones back to Moscow. And by the time he settled down to his dinner that evening all diplomatic hell had broken loose.

Dimitry goes sightseeing.

Japan regards Kunashir and three other islands in the southern Kurils as their sovereign territory. They refer to the islands as the 'Northern Territories' and are included in all official geographical and political designations of Japan. Up until 1945 they were under Japanese control but then during the final dog days of World War II, the Soviets landed and, well, to the victors go the spoils.

The islands themselves aren't all that valuable, but the surrounding waters are home to some of the richest fisheries in the world.

(Click on the above image to enlarge it and stop straining your eyesight)

Anyway, when Dimitry dropped in to Kunashir he was stepping on all sorts of Japanese toes. Prior to his visit, no Soviet nor Russian leader had ever set foot on the islands (and probably for good reason too. Wikipedia describes their climate as "generally severe, with long, cold, stormy winters and notoriously foggy summers"); hitherto there had been ad hoc discussions on 'resolving' the islands' disputed status, and on going goodwill exchanges between the islands' Russian inhabitants and the city of Nemuro on the eastern tip of Hokkaido.

So Dimitry's jaunt was the diplomatic equivalent of two fingers to the Japanese, an unmistakable message of "feck off! these are our islands". This set off howls of protest here in Japan from all quarters. On the Monday of the visit, bus loads of somewhat startled city employees, fishermen, local activist groups and anybody else they could find, were driven from Nemuro out to Cape Nosappu, the closest point to the islands. There they gamely chanted their opposition to the visit, though their words were lost in the driving rain and howling wind that unmercifully lashed them, quickly rendering the protest into a battle against hypothermia (the pictures on that evening's news, the camera rain streaked and shuddering from the power of the wind, showed a number of sodden protestors dressed only in suits. Out there fervor gets beaten every time by the weather).

Down south in considerably warmer Tokyo, there was anxious nosies from the prime minister's office, the foreign minister expressed his displeasure and people on the streets around Shinjuku were canvassed for their opinions (though I am guessing a fair few needed reminding of just where Japan's Northern territories are). On Tuesday, the Japanese government recalled their ambassador from Moscow, which probably had Dimitry choking with laughter on his salmon roe (one of the several gifts he received from the fish processing factory).

What the whole episode has highlighted is:

(a) how lightweight Japan has become, diplomatically speaking. Prior to this Russian 'incident', there had been a similar flare up with China (and it's still smouldering) over the Senkaku islands, at the opposite, southern extreme of the Japanese archipelago, towards which the Chinese also adopted a noticeably bellicose approach, akin to "Ye startin, wha? Are ye? Ye lookin at me, are ye. Ye startin, yeah, ye startin. I'll feckin do you pal".

(b) how consistently, feckin shite the weather is in east Hokkaido. I lived (endured?) for three years in Shibetsu-cho, some 26km from Kunashir where Dimitry went walkabout, and I can personally testify to the 'long, cold, stormy winters and notoriously foggy summers' in the area. Indeed, so bad was the weather there, that my body rapidly evolved to adapt to the harsh climate, which is why I now have such a thick, lush growth of matted hair insulating my chest and weaving its way over my shoulders and down my back (and yes, I can write these graphic descriptions of out-of-control body hair because I am already married and thus don't have to worry about the consequences anymore).

Shibetsu, in August. At noon.