An original book that reviews the problems of political rapprochement in terms of foreign policy decision-making between Japan and Russia since 1945, including the infamous 'Northern Territories' dispute. Uses four bilateral summits as case studies to explore patterns, changes and tendencies in the decision-making process. Concludes that much of the Cold War system of relations between the two states still remains in place at the end of the twentieth century.

Why has the stalemate in Japanese-Russian relations persisted through the end of the Cold War and Moscow's weakening control over its far eastern territories? In this volume Kimura continues his comprehensive analysis of Russia and Japan's strained and unstable relations to the present day.

This book provides an in-depth study of the Japanese-Soviet neutrality pact, which held between 1941 and 1945 and ended with the USSR's declaration of war against Japan.

This book provides a comprehensive survey of Japanese-Russian relations from the end of the Russo-Japanese War until the present. Based on extensive original research in both Japanese and Russian sources, it traces the development of relations from the tumultuous pre-war period, through the Second World War, Cold War and post-Cold War periods. Considering the wider international situation, domestic influences and ideological factors throughout, it shows how the hopeful period of the late 1990s - when Japanese-Russian relations briefly ceased to be acrimonious, and it seemed that normal relations might be established - was not unique. Joseph P. Ferguson argues there have been several previous occasions when rapprochement seemed possible, which in the end proved elusive: rapprochement frequently becoming the victim of domestic factors which frequently worked against and took precedence over good relations. The book concludes with an assessment of the present situation and of how relations are likely to develop in the immediate future.

This study by the leading Japanese specialist in the field offers a comprehensive analysis of the deterioration of Soviet-Japanese relations in the 1970s and 1980s -- a period when the two countries clashed over issues ranging from military security to fishing rights and their competing claims to the southern Kuriles, Japan's "Northern Territories", awarded to Stalin at Yalta.