Two men in a tub
Japan’s prime minister plans a steamy tete-a-tete with Russia’s president
But the chances of a breakthrough in the two countries’ territorial dispute are slim
Dec 10th 2016 | NEMURO

tete-a-tete：２人きりの・密談
breakthrough：輝かしい成果
slim：少ない

バスタブの中の二人の男
日本の首相はロシアの大統領と湯気の立ち込めた中で密談を計画している。
しかし、二国間での領土問題に対しての輝かしい成果の期待は少ない。



HIROSHI TOKUNO still remembers the stomp of army boots on the wooden floor of his classroom. When 600 Soviet troops arrived on the Japanese island of Shikotan on September 1st, 1945, he recalls, “We thought we’d be killed.” As the fear receded, he befriended the invaders and learned to speak Russian. Three years later, they herded him and his family onto a boat across choppy seas to mainland Japan. 

stomp：大きな足音を立てて歩く
receded：薄れる
herded：集める
choppy：波立っている

Mr Tokuno, now 82, is one of about 17,000 Japanese expelled from what Japan calls its Northern Territories, four islands at the bottom of the Kurile chain (Chishima in Japanese), between Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido and the snowy wastes of Kamchatka (see map). In the 19th century Russia recognised Japanese sovereignty over the four islands, and in 1875 it ceded all the Kuriles to Japan. But a few days before Japan’s surrender to the Allies in 1945, the Soviet Union, which had not been fighting Japan, abruptly declared war. Soviet troops swiftly occupied the entire chain, setting off a 70-year dispute. Japan demands the four southernmost islands back. The Soviet Union offered to hand over the two smallest of them, Habomai and Shikotan, if Japan gave up its claim to the others. But Japan refused to do so. The impasse endures to this day. 

wastes：荒地
ceded：割譲する
impasse：行き詰まり
endures：存続する

On December 15th Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, will make his first official visit to Japan in a decade. Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister and grandson of a wartime minister and post-war prime minister, has made no secret of his personal interest in resolving the issue. He has invited Mr Putin to bathe with him in hot springs in his home town of Nagato, in southern Japan—an occasion for man-to-man negotiations. The time is right for a solution, says Muneo Suzuki, an unofficial adviser to the prime minister on Russian affairs. 

In Nemuro, the rusting Hokkaido port where many of the evacuees have been stranded since the 1940s, there is guarded hope for a breakthrough. It is unthinkable that Mr Putin would come empty-handed, says Shunsuke Hasegawa, the town’s mayor. The Russian president is a “strongman” who will face down opposition to a deal at home, he insists. 

rusting：錆びる
evacuees：疎開者・避難者
stranded：取り残される
guarded：監視された
face down：勇敢に立ち向かう 

Mr Hasegawa laments that just 6,641 former residents of the islands are still alive, all elderly. Moreover, the waters around the islands used to provide fishing grounds for boats from Nemuro. It has lost half its population since the war. “It’s our last chance to solve this problem,” he says. 

laments：歎き悲しむ

More is at stake than fishing rights. The row has prevented a formal end to hostilities between Russia and Japan. The continued standoff, Japanese diplomats fret, pushes Russia closer to China. 

at stake：争点になっている
row：言い争い
fret：気をもむ

Among the possible enticements for Russia is the revival of a mothballed proposal to build a $5.3bn gas pipeline between Russia’s Sakhalin Island and Tokyo. Japan is also dangling billions in soft loans for the development of Russia’s impoverished Far East, as well as a boost to private investment. Russia, meanwhile, is wary of becoming a junior partner to China in Asia. “We can’t put all our eggs in one basket,” says Alexander Panov, a former Russian ambassador to Japan. 

enticements：誘惑
mothballed：棚上げにする
dangling：ちらつかせる
soft loans：長期低利融資
junior partner：従属的パートナー


But the obstacles to a deal are forbidding. A recent poll found that 78% of Russians are opposed to ceding all four islands; 71% object to handing over Shikotan and Habomai. “In Russia, if any president, even Putin, gives away two of our islands to Japan, he’ll bring down his ratings catastrophically,” Dmitry Kiselev, Russia’s propagandist-in-chief, said last month. “The Japanese like to talk about saving face, but they forget that Russians have faces too,” says Anatoli Koshkin of the Oriental University in Moscow. The islands guard the passage from the Sea of Okhotsk to the Pacific, “a life or death issue” for the Russian navy, says Shigeru Ishiba, a former Japanese defence minister. 

forbidding：厳しい
gives away：譲る

Small wonder, then, that Mr Putin said flatly in September: “We do not trade territories.” Valentina Matvienko, speaker of the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, said on a visit to Tokyo in November: “Russia’s sovereignty over the Kuriles is indisputable and is not up for revision.” Further reinforcing the message, the Russian armed forces announced the placement of missile-defence systems on Etorofu and Kunashiri last month. 

flatly：断固として
indisputable：議論の余地のない

“The Abe government has allowed expectations to get out of hand, even hinting at a snap election based on the success of the summit,” says James Brown of Temple University Japan. The fading prospects of a territorial deal may help explain Mr Abe’s surprise announcement on December 5th that he will visit Pearl Harbour, the site of the Japanese attack that dragged America into the second world war in 1941. The prime minister is looking for an event to boost his popularity and distract from the summit with Mr Putin, to preserve his hopes of a snap election in January, claims Nikkei, a Japanese newspaper. 

hinting：暗示する
snap election： 〔突然の議会解散によって実施される〕総選挙
get out of hand：手がつけられなくなる 期待を抑えきれなくなってきた
distract：注意をそらす

But Russia is unlikely to dash Japanese hopes altogether. “The Russian side does not want this to end,” Mr Brown says; instead, it will find ways to foster Japanese investment without ceding sovereignty, he predicts. One possible step forward at the summit might be a relaxation of visa rules and the creation of a special economic zone, allowing Japanese businesses easier access to the Kuriles. After all, Mr Putin himself has said it should be possible to find a solution whereby neither party “would feel like a loser”. 

dash：打ち砕く
altogether：完全に
whereby：それによって

Mr Tokuno’s hopes of returning home have been raised and dashed many times over the years. From the tip of the Shiretoko peninsula, a few miles from Nemuro, he can see Habomai, just offshore. A decade ago he was allowed to visit Shikotan for a pilgrimage to the graves of his ancestors. He could still remember the Russian he learned as a boy. His home was gone but he bears no bitterness. It was war, Mr Tokuno says; the best way to honour the suffering is to make sure it never happens again. A peace treaty would be a start. 

tip：先端
bears：耐える
bitterness：悔しさ
honour：栄誉に思う

北方四島の返還の件でプーチンと安倍首相がどう対処するか。領土返還はロシアの国民が納得しないだろう。プーチンは日本からガスパイプラインの開発を依頼して来るかもしれない。領土返還の代わりに日本からの投資とか、自由に訪問できるように提案して来るかもしれない。何れにしても、今回の訪問で彼が手ぶらで来ることはないだろう。安倍さんも来年の選挙があるので、気をもむところだ。

プーチンはガスパイプライン以上のことを言って来るだろう。シベリア開発だ。そうなると投資額が２桁増えることになる。４島については自由に行き来できることを提案して来るだろう。土地の投資も許可するだろう。日本側は最終的な決着ではないがそれに同意するだろう。以前の住民にはそこに居住できるよう政府が交渉するだろう。FTZのようなものだ。

木曜日。昨日はHong Kongから来た昔の友人Rossさんと会食。あとは海野塾があった。楽しい１日だった。今日は田町のBagus Barでいつもの仲間との会食がある。本も書けそうだ。夜１０時からの読書だが、近代史の本はもうほとんど読んでしまったので、次の本を探している。ではまた明日。