Japanese fisherman Tsuruyuki Hansaku was barely out of high school when he served 10 months in a Soviet prison, arrested at sea on his father’s boat for catching cod in what the Russians considered their territory.
The silver-maned resident of the northern Japanese fishing town of Nemuro, now 79, is still on edge because of the sway Moscow has over the fortunes of his family fisheries business, and of his hometown.
With Russo-Japanese relations unravelling over the crisis in Ukraine, no Japanese community has felt the fallout quite like far-flung Nemuro.
The concern this time is the fate of annually held talks between the two governments to set the quota for Japan to catch salmon and trout born in the Amur River.
The so-called salmon-trout negotiations date back to 1957 and usually wrap up by March, leaving plenty of time before the traditional start of the drift-net fishing season on April 10. The talks have long been touted as the only diplomatic channel that remained between two nations even through the testy Cold War era.
This year, they have yet to conclude. Japanese government and industry insiders say the delay is a demonstration of Moscow’s anger over economic sanctions that Tokyo joined its allies in imposing following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Japan’s fisheries industry also needs Moscow at the table for three other annual negotiations that cover products such as kelp and Pacific saury in some of the world’s richest fishing grounds.