What is Japan’s plan for investing huge amounts in the four northern islands?

Recently, Eiichi Hasegawa, Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Japan, led a second business delegation to Kunashir Island in Russia. Earlier on September 23, 68 Japanese landed on Kunashir Island and Etorofu Island.

We know that the Japanese were not able to board these islands in the past. They could only fly to "inspect" the islands disputed by Japan and Russia from the air. This led Russia to jokingly say that it welcomes visits to Russian territory.

Why can the Japanese land on the four northern islands (called the Southern Kuril Islands in Russia) so frequently now? What happened? Let us first understand the historical reasons for the disputed islands between Japan and Russia!

The four northern islands (called the Southern Kuril Islands in Russia), according to Japan, refer to the four islands of Ortor, Shikotan, Habomai and Kunashiri, with a total area of ??5,038.33km2. In the 18th century, the northern and southern parts of the Kuril Islands belonged to Japan and Russia. In the 19th century, Tsarist Russia occupied the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin Island, including the four northern islands.

Due to the failure of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, Tsarist Russia was forced to transfer control of the Kuril Islands and South Sakhalin Islands to Japan through the Treaty of Portsmouth. After Japan established a foothold there, it not only blocked Russia's exit to the Pacific Ocean, but also blocked the sea passages to the ports of Kamchatka and Chukotka Peninsula, becoming a base for attacking the coastal areas and the Far East.

In February 1945, before Japan’s defeat, the Yalta Agreement between the Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain on postwar Japan stipulated that the entire Kurile Islands, including the Orofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and Habomai Islands, were placed under Soviet Union.

After the war, Japan began to become restless under the protection of the United States. On the pretext that the scope of the Kuril Islands had not been agreed upon, Japan began to demand what they called the four northern islands. However, successive leaders of the Soviet Union did not agree. Stalin once said: "They are trophies obtained with the blood of countless Soviet soldiers, and no one has the right to take them away." The current Russian President Vladimir Putin even rebuked Japan in 2015: A defeated country always wants territory from a victorious country. This is nothing. The history of World War II will never be allowed to be overturned. Putin also said: Russia’s territory is very large, but not an inch is redundant.

Japan saw that this method did not work, so it changed to another method-investing huge amounts in the Southern Kuril Islands.

On September 7, 2017, Shinzo Abe met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok, Russia. After the meeting, the two announced at a joint press conference that Russia and Japan have begun to implement a series of joint projects on the Southern Kuril Islands, involving aquaculture, wind energy, greenhouse agriculture, waste treatment and tourism.

Japan believes that joint economic activities on the Southern Kuril Islands can ease relations with Russia and strengthen its presence in disputed areas. This will be an important step in the future signing of a peace treaty between the two countries. The signing of this agreement is one of the main issues in Russian-Japanese relations.

Russia, because it has been subject to economic sanctions by European and American countries for a long time, also wants to ease its relations with Japan by inviting Japan to put aside disputes and engage in joint development, and strive for a geopolitical buffer zone in Northeast Asia.

But Russia has always been naturally wary of disputed territories. Therefore, it is unrealistic for Japan to return to the four islands now, and it will be equally unrealistic in the future?