Excerpt from The Russian Push Toward Japan: Russo-Japanese Relations, 1697-1875 World War. As late as June, - Only two months before Russia plunged into the Far Eastern holocaust - a former prime minister of Japan and one-time ambassador to Moscow told the Soviet ambassa dor that if the Soviet Army and the Japanese Navy were to join forces, Japan and the Soviet Union together would become the strongest powers in the world. The Japanese attitude toward Russia today cannot be understood solely in terms of political and economic ideology. It has been shaped by centuries of intercourse between Russians and Japanese, dating back to l 697, the year of the first recorded encounter of a Japanese cast away and a Russian explorer. What were some of the lasting first impressions made by the Japanese and the Russians on each other? What was the nature of Russian pressure on Japan? Did a flourishing trade with Russia materialize after the opening of Japan or were Russian pleas for trade merely a cloak for more sinister designs? By whom was Russian policy toward Japan determined and how con sistent was this policy over the years? Questions such as these sug gested the need for a detailed narrative of early russo-japanese relations prior to a survey of dealings in the modern period. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

As a result of the Aigun (1858) and Beijing Treaties (1860) Russia had become a participant in international relations of Northeast Asia, but historiography has underestimated the presence of Russia and the USSR in this region. This collection elucidates how Russia's expansion affected early Meiji Japan's policy towards Korea and the late Qing Empire's Manchurian reform. Russia participated in the mega-imperial system of transportation and customs control in Northern China and created a transnational community around the Chinese Eastern Railway and Harbin City. The collection vividly describes daily life of the emigre Russians' community in Harbin after 1917. The collection investigates mutual images between the Russians and Japanese through the prism of the descriptions of the Japanese Imperial House in Russian newspapers and memoirs written by Russian POWs in and after the Russo-Japanese War and war journalism during this war. The first Soviet ambassador in Japan, V. Kopp, proposed to restore the division of spheres of interest between Russia and Japan during the tsarist era and thus conflicted People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs, G. Chicherin, the Soviet ambassador in Beijing, L. Karakhan, and Stalin, since the latter group was more loyal to the cause of China's national liberation. As a whole, the collection argues that it is difficult to understand the modern history of Northeast Asia without taking the Russian factor seriously.

Over the remote Pacific island of Chichi Jima, nine American flyers-Navy and Marine pilots sent to bomb Japanese communications towers there-were shot down. Flyboys, a story of war and horror but also of friendship and honor, tells the story of those men. Over the remote Pacific island of Chichi Jima, nine American flyers-Navy and Marine pilots sent to bomb Japanese communications towers there-were shot down. One of those nine was miraculously rescued by a U.S. Navy submarine. The others were captured by Japanese soldiers on Chichi Jima and held prisoner. Then they disappeared. When the war was over, the American government, along with the Japanese, covered up everything that had happened on Chichi Jima. The records of a top-secret military tribunal were sealed, the lives of the eight Flyboys were erased, and the parents, brothers, sisters, and sweethearts they left behind were left to wonder. Flyboys reveals for the first time ever the extraordinary story of those men. Bradley's quest for the truth took him from dusty attics in American small towns, to untapped government archives containing classified documents, to the heart of Japan, and finally to Chichi Jima itself. What he discovered was a mystery that dated back far before World War II-back 150 years, to America's westward expansion and Japan's first confrontation with the western world. Bradley brings into vivid focus these brave young men who went to war for their country, and through their lives he also tells the larger story of two nations in a hellish war. With no easy moralizing, Bradley presents history in all its savage complexity, including the Japanese warrior mentality that fostered inhuman brutality and the U.S. military strategy that justified attacks on millions of civilians. And, after almost sixty years of mystery, Bradley finally reveals the fate of the eight American Flyboys, all of whom would ultimately face a moment and a decision that few of us can even imagine. Flyboys is a story of war and horror but also of friendship and honor. It is about how we die, and how we live-including the tale of the Flyboy who escaped capture, a young Navy pilot named George H. W. Bush who would one day become president of the United States. A masterpiece of historical narrative, Flyboys will change forever our understanding of the Pacific war and the very things we fight for.

The territorial dispute between Japan and Russia over four islands off the northeast coast of Hokkaidō has been an enduring obstacle to closer relations between the two powers and therefore an important determinant of geopolitics in North-East Asia. Having emerged at the end of World War II, this conflict has now existed for more than seven decades. And yet, despite the passage of so much time, within Japan there remains a resilience of belief that the islands will eventually be returned. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Japan’s prospects of ever recovering these "Northern Territories". Offering an in-depth account of why the Japanese side believe they still have a chance of securing the return of the four islands, it also provides an objective and methodical evaluation of the prospects of these expectations being realised. The key finding is that Japanese policymakers and scholars have consistently overestimated the extent of Japan’s leverage with regard to Russia, and that there is, in fact, already no possibility whatsoever of sovereignty over the four islands being restored to Japan. This has major implications for Japanese decision makers who must balance their principled commitment not to compromise on territorial issues with more pragmatic considerations of energy security and how to contain the rise of Chinese regional power. Presenting a unique analysis and a strikingly different perspective on this territorial dispute, the findings of this book are of considerable importance for international relations within the Asia-Pacific region. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Japanese Politics, Russian Politics and International Relations.

Edgar Franz deserves credit for having been the first to use Siebold’s private papers and manuscripts to provide a detailed analysis of his influence on Russia’s policy on opening up Japan. Franz proves that Siebold’s intimate knowledge of Japan and his sensitive attitude to the Japanese mentality were crucial to Russian negotiations. Subsequently Russia was the first foreign nation to succeed in concluding a treaty with Japan that included establishing trade relations between the two nations. It has been possible to verify Siebold’s significance for the modernization of Japan, the political dimension of Japan’s activities and Siebold’s great influence on the opening of Japan for trade and navigation

Dr Robertson provides a comprehensive analysis of a vital but often neglected contemporary relationship, and suggests that portrayals of basic Soviet-Japanese antipathy may be overplayed, largely as a result of excessive concentration upon a few specific past episodes.

An illuminating account of Russia’s attempts—and failures—to achieve great power status in Asia. Since Peter the Great, Russian leaders have been lured by opportunity to the East. Under the tsars, Russians colonized Alaska, California, and Hawaii. The Trans-Siberian Railway linked Moscow to Vladivostok. And Stalin looked to Asia as a sphere of influence, hospitable to the spread of Soviet Communism. In Asia and the Pacific lay territory, markets, security, and glory. But all these expansionist dreams amounted to little. In We Shall Be Masters, Chris Miller explores why, arguing that Russia’s ambitions have repeatedly outstripped its capacity. With the core of the nation concentrated thousands of miles away in the European borderlands, Russia’s would-be pioneers have always struggled to project power into Asia and to maintain public and elite interest in their far-flung pursuits. Even when the wider population professed faith in Asia’s promise, few Russians were willing to pay the steep price. Among leaders, too, dreams of empire have always been tempered by fears of cost. Most of Russia’s pivots to Asia have therefore been halfhearted and fleeting. Today the Kremlin talks up the importance of “strategic partnership” with Xi Jinping’s China, and Vladimir Putin’s government is at pains to emphasize Russian activities across Eurasia. But while distance is covered with relative ease in the age of air travel and digital communication, the East remains far off in the ways that matter most. Miller finds that Russia’s Asian dreams are still restrained by the country’s firm rooting in Europe.

Before Japan was 'opened up' in the 1850s, contact with Russia as well as other western maritime nations was extremely limited. Yet from the early eighteenth century onwards, as a result of their expanding commercial interests in East Asia and the North Pacific, Russians had begun to encounter Japanese and were increasingly eager to establish diplomatic and trading relations with Japan. This book presents rare narratives written by Russians, including official envoys, scholars and, later, tourists, who visited Japan between 1792 and 1913. The introduction and notes set these narratives in the context of the history of Russo-Japanese relations and the genre of European travel writing, showing how the Russian writers combined ethnographic interests with the assertion of Russian and European values, simultaneously inscribing power relations and negotiating cultural difference.