- Japanese people in Russia
Infobox ethnic group
image_caption=Akimono -clad woman walks down Vladivostok's Svetlanskaya Street, c. 1910
group=Japanese people in Russia
population=835 (exact number unknown)(2002)
regions=Moscow ,Vladivostok , and other large cities
languages=Japanese, Russian
rels=Buddhism ,Shintoism ,Orthodox Christianity
related=Japanese people Japanese people in Russia form a small part of the worldwide community of "
Nikkeijin "; they count various notable political figures among their number.Early settlement
The first Japanese person to settle in
Russia is believed to have beenDembei , a fisherman stranded on theKamchatka Peninsula in 1701 or 1702. Unable to return to his nativeŌsaka due to theTokugawa Shogunate 's "sakoku " policy, he was instead taken toMoscow and ordered by Peter the Great to begin teaching the language as soon as possible; he thus became the father ofJapanese language education in Russia .cite journal|last=Lensen|first=George Alexander|title=The Russian Push Toward Japan: Russo-Japanese Relations, 1697-1895|journal=American Slavic and East European Review|volume=Vol. 20|number=No. 2|date=April 1961|pages=pp. 320–321|doi=10.2307/3000924] Japanese settlement in Russia remained sporadic, confined to theRussian Far East , and also of a largely unofficial character, consisting of fishermen who, like Dembei, landed there by accident and were unable to return to Japan.cite paper|author=Kobayashi, Tadashi|title=Japanese Language Education in Russia|url=http://www.erina.or.jp/En/Opinion/E/Russia/2001/eKobayashi2.htm|date=2001|accessdate=2006|publisher=Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia] However, a Japanese trading post is known to have existed on the island ofSakhalin (then claimed by theQing Dynasty , but controlled by neither Japan, China, nor Russia) as early as 1790.cite journal|url=http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/publictn/acta/17/itani/itani-1.html|volume=17|date=2000|title=Building Construction in Southern Sakhalin During the Japanese Colonial Period (1905-1945)|last=Itani|first=Hiroshi|coauthors=Koshino, Takeshi; Kado, Yukihiro|pages=130–160|journal=Acta Slavica Iaponica|accessdate=2007-02-22|format=dead link|date=June 2008 – [http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=author%3A+intitle%3ABuilding+Construction+in+Southern+Sakhalin+During+the+Japanese+Colonial+Period+%281905-1945%29&as_publication=Acta+Slavica+Iaponica&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&btnG=Search Scholar search] ]The opening of Japan
Following the opening of Japan,
Vladivostok would become the focus of settlement for Japanese emigrating to Russia. A branch of the nihongo|Japanese Imperial Commercial Agency|日本貿易事務官|Nihon bōeki Jimukan was opened there in 1876.cite journal|last=Saveliev|first=Igor R.|coauthors=Pestushko, Yuri S.|title=Dangerous Rapprochement: Russia and Japan in the First World War, 1914-1916|journal=Acta Slavica Iaponica|volume=18|date=2001|accessdate=2007-02-22|pages=19–41|url=http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/publictn/acta/18/igor-yuri.pdf See section "Japanese Communities within the Russian Far East and Their Economic Activities"] Their numbers grew to 80 people in 1877 and 392 in 1890; women outnumbered men by a factor of 3:2, and many worked as prostitutes.cite book|last=Minichiello|first=Sharon A.|title=Japan's Competing Modernities: Issues in Culture and Democracy 1900-1930|date=1998|publisher=University of Hawaii Press|location=Hawaii, United States|id=ISBN 0824820800 (Pages 47-49)] However, their community remained small compared to the more numerous Chinese and Korean communities; a 1897 Russian government survey showed 42,823 Chinese, 26,100 Koreans, but only 2,291 Japanese in the whole of the Primorye area. A large portion of the migration came from villages in northernKyūshū .The politics of
Japanese-Russian relations had a large influence on the Japanese community and the sources and patterns of Japanese settlement in Russia. The nihongo|"Association of Corporations"|同盟会 was founded in 1892 in order to unite the various Japanese professional unions; at that point, the Japanese population of the city was estimated at 1,000. It would later be renamed in 1895 as the nihongo|"Association of Fellow Countrymen"|同胞会|"Dōhōkai" and again in 1902 as the nihongo|"Vladivostok Resident Association"|ウラジオ居留民会|Urajio Kyoryūminkai. They were often suspected by the Russian government of being used as intelligence-gathering tools for Japan, and having contributed to Russia's defeat in theRusso-Japanese War . Though the Japanese residents' association in Vladivostok was officially disbanded in 1912 under pressure from Russia, Japanese government documents show it continued to operate clandestinely until 1920, when most Japanese in Vladivostok returned to Japan. The initial landing of Japanese forces in Vladivostok after theOctober Revolution was prompted by theApril 4 1918 murder of three Japanese living there, [cite journal|title="A Great Disobedience Against the People": Popular Press Criticism of Japan's Siberian Intervention|journal=The Journal of Japanese Studies|volume=32|issue=1|pages=53–81|date=Winter 2006|accessdate=2007-02-22|last=Dunscomb|first=Paul E.|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_japanese_studies/v032/32.1dunscomb.html|doi=10.1353/jjs.2006.0007] and theNikolayevsk Incident which occurred in 1920. After the establishment of theSoviet Union , some Japanese communists settled in Russia; for example,Mutsuo Hakamada , the brother ofJapanese Communist Party chairmanSatomi Hakamada , escaped from Japan in 1938 and went to Russia, where he married a local woman. His daughter Irina later went into politics after the collapse of the Soviet Union.cite book|last=Mitrokhin|first=Vasili|coauthors=Christopher, Andrew|date=2005|title=The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World|publisher=Basic Books|location=Tennessee, United States|id=ISBN 0-476-00311-7]The aftermath of World War II
akhalin
After the end of the
Russo-Japanese War in 1905 with theTreaty of Portsmouth , the southern half ofSakhalin officially became Japanese territory, and was renamed asKarafuto , prompting an influx of Japanese settlers there. Japanese settled in the northern half of Karafuto; after Japan agreed to hand this half back to the Soviet Union, some may have chosen to remain north of the Soviet line of control. However, the majority would remain in Japanese territory until the closing days ofWorld War II , when the whole of Sakhalin came under Soviet control as part of the USSR'sOperation August Storm ; most Japanese fled the advancing Red Army, or returned to Japan after the Soviet takeover, but others, mainly military personnel, were taken to the mainland of Russia and detained in work camps there.cite news|url=http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/07/03/japanpow.shtml|date=2006-07-03|accessdate=2007-02-23|publisher=Mosnews.com|title=War-displaced Japanese Returns Home After 67 Years in Russia] Furthermore, roughly 40,000 Korean settlers, despite still holding Japanese nationality, were denied permission to transit through Japan in order to repatriate to their homes in the southern half of theKorean peninsula ; known asSakhalin Koreans , they became trapped on the island for almost four decades.cite news|last=Ban|first=Byung-yool|title=Koreans in Russia: Historical Perspective|date=2004-09-22|accessdate=2006-11-20|url=http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200409/kt2004092218583111950.htm|publisher=Korea Times]Prisoners of war
Following Japan's surrender, 575,000 Japanese prisoners of war captured by the
Red Army inManchuria ,Karafuto , andKorea were sent to camps inSiberia and the rest of the Soviet Union. According to figures of the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, 473,000 were repatriated to Japan after the normalisation ofJapanese-Soviet relations ; 55,000 died in Russia, and another 47,000 remained missing; a Russian report released in 2005 listed the names of 27,000 who had been sent to North Korea to perform forced labour there. [cite news|url=http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/04/01/japanesedied.shtml|date=2005-04-01|accessdate=2007-02-23|title=Russia Acknowledges Sending Japanese Prisoners of War to North Korea|publisher=Mosnews.com] Rank was no guarantee of repatriation; one Armenian interviewed by the US Air Force in 1954 claims to have met a Japanese general while living in a camp at Chunoyar,Krasnoyarsk Krai between May 1951 and June 1953. [cite paper|url=http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/tfrussia/wringer000/52A-5378A.pdf|publisher=United States Air Force|author=Burstein, Gerhard|date=1954-03-15|accessdate=2007-02-23|filetype=PDF|title=Air Intelligence Information Report: Info on US Civilians held in the Forced Labor Camp in CHUNOYAR] Some continued to be repatriated as late as 2006.Post-normalisation
Following the normalisation of Japanese-Soviet relations, a few Japanese went to Russia for commercial, educational, or diplomatic purposes; however, as Vladivostok was closed to foreign settlement until the 1970s, they instead concentrated in Moscow.Fact|date=February 2007 There is one Japanese-medium school, the Japanese School in Moscow, founded in 1965.ja icon cite web|url=http://www.mosnichi.com/ayumi.htm|publisher=Japanese School in Moscow|title=モスクワ日本人 学校の歩み|accessdate=2006-12-01] The 2002 Russian census showed 835 people claiming Japanese ethnicity (nationality).ru icon cite web|url=http://www.perepis2002.ru/ct/doc/TOM_04_03.xls|accessdate=2006-12-01|title=Население по национальности и владению русским языком по субъектам Российской Федерации|format=
Microsoft Excel |publisher=Федеральная служба государственной статистики]References
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