Japan to Keep Demanding Restart of Visits to Northern Territories

Tokyo, Feb. 7 (Jiji Press)–Japan will keep requesting Russia to allow the restart of a program for former residents of Russian-held northwestern Pacific islands to visit their ancestors’ graves on the islands, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Saturday. “Resuming the visits is a humanitarian issue and one of the top priorities in the Japan-Russia relationship,” Takaichi said in an annual national rally held by the government and related organizations to demand the return of the Japanese-claimed islands, called the Northern Territories. “We will patiently urge the Russian side to resume them,” she also said, referring to the aging of former residents of the islands, seized from Japan by Soviet troops around the end of World War II. The visit program was halted for reasons including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is totally unclear when the program will restart. “It is really vexing and regrettable that a peace treaty between Japan and Russia has not been concluded and that the Northern Territories issue has not been resolved although 80 years have passed since the war ended,” Takaichi stressed. “There is no change in the government’s policy of resolving the issue of the ownership of the four islands and signing a peace treaty,” she said. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]