Russia protested Japan's protest. In 1,930 comments, exactly four took Russia's side — with three votes between them.
What the Northern Territories are, and why — eighty years on — Russia's case cannot win a single vote in this country. Explained from August 1945, for readers hearing of it for the first time.
How the votes fell
Ranked by upvotes. Left of the slash is agree, right is disagree. This is where the resentment actually sits.
- 1 6124 ∕ 137 Isolated over Ukraine and ever more dependent on China, Russia squeezes Japan to show Beijing a united front. Summoning the ambassador over Japan's natural protest at an illegal occupation is pure performance. Japan should hold its line, unmoved.
- 2 4322 ∕ 180 Ignore the illegitimate protest completely. If they expel our ambassador for ignoring it, expel Russia's ambassador from Tokyo in return. Until the islands come back, resolve is everything.
- 3 3293 ∕ 99 Protesting is proper, but nothing changes while the Putin government stands. May a president with different ideas appear. Russia, North Korea and China understand no words at all.
- 4 2694 ∕ 263 Ukraine has been reliable lately — hardly a Russian refinery left untouched. The hopeful scenario is a coup or a breakup, and an independent eastern republic returning the islands in exchange for Japanese economic cooperation. Ukraine is fighting for Japan's interests too.
- 5 1255 ∕ 62 Claiming the Northern Territories as inherent Japanese territory is simply Japan's position. Summoning the ambassador over it is an attempt to bury the substance of the problem under pressure.
I read all 1,930 parent comments. Total votes: 26,021 'I relate' against 9,173 'hmm' — 74 percent agreement. Comments taking Russia's side: 4 out of 1,930, carrying 3 supporting votes between them. Comments invoking the history of 1945 — the broken neutrality pact, the invasion after the surrender, the Siberian internment — number 189, carrying 1,303 votes; comments using the words 'thief' or 'illegal occupation' number 188, carrying 6,394. The objections, meanwhile, fell on Japan's own side: the 126 comments mentioning PM Takaichi total 1,694 in favor against 2,428 against — her critics were the ones rejected. 'The government's clumsiness will get us into a war' (127 to 1,660), 'she phrases things poorly' (122 to 886), a both-sides comment left signed by its AI (51 to 874), 'diplomacy needs cunning, not emotion' (173 to 391) — caution, criticism and neutrality, drowned in that order.
President Putin visited Etorofu, one of the islands Japan calls its Northern Territories. Prime Minister Takaichi protested. Russia's answer was to summon Japan's ambassador in Moscow and protest back: the islands, the Foreign Ministry said, belong to Russia "as a result of the Second World War"; the Japanese remarks "crossed the line of propriety"; Russia reserves the right to "appropriate countermeasures." The meeting lasted about twenty minutes.
If you are new to this dispute, here is what sits underneath it. The Northern Territories are four islands off the eastern tip of Hokkaido — Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai group. In 1945 the Soviet Union had a neutrality pact with Japan — a standing promise not to attack each other. On August 8, with that pact still in force, the USSR declared war. Japan announced its surrender on August 15; Soviet forces took the four islands afterwards, between August 28 and September 5. The roughly 17,000 Japanese residents were expelled, and in eighty years no Japanese civilian has lived there since. In the same weeks, about 575,000 disarmed Japanese soldiers were shipped to Siberian labor camps — the "Siberian internment" — and more than 50,000 never came home. Because of these islands, Japan and Russia have never signed a peace treaty — to this day.
So to Japanese readers, these are the islands taken after the war ended, by a neighbor who broke his word to come take them. I opened this comment section with a prediction: the room would be one hundred percent against Russia. Here is how the count came out.
I read all 1,930 parent comments (2,576 including replies) about fourteen hours after publication. Counting each comment's "I relate" votes as agreement and its "hmm..." votes as disagreement: 26,021 in favor, 9,173 against. 74 percent agreement.
Not one hundred, then? Look closer. Of 1,930 comments, exactly four took Russia's side — and the four of them collected three supporting votes between them. The defense of Russia is statistically zero. So who received the 9,173 objections? Japan's own cautious voices did.
What the comments say, in order of support
The top comment reads Russia's move as theatre — and names the intended audience.
Isolated over Ukraine and ever more dependent on China, Russia looks to be squeezing Japan as a show of solidarity for Beijing's benefit. Japan's protest against the illegal occupation of its own territory is only natural; answering it by summoning the ambassador is performance and nothing more. Watch the China-Russia moves in the Far East — and hold the line, unmoved.
ウクライナ問題で孤立し中国への依存を強めるロシアが、対日圧力を強めることで中国に忖度し、共闘姿勢を誇示しているように見えます。固有の領土への不法占拠に対する日本の当然の抗議に対し、大使を呼び出して反発してみせるのはパフォーマンスに過ぎません。極東での中ロの動きを警戒しつつ、日本は毅然とした姿勢を貫くべきです。6,124 in favor, 137 against — the top of the thread. "Illegal occupation": 188 comments use that word or "thief," carrying 6,394 votes between them. Second place (4,322) gets practical.
Simply ignore the illegitimate protest, completely. And if ignoring it gets our man declared persona non grata and expelled, then Japan expels Russia's ambassador from Tokyo in return — that is all. Until the Northern Territories come back, what matters is an unbending posture.
不当な抗議は、完全に無視すれば良いと思います。
もし、無視したことでペルソナ・ノン・グラータ（好ましからざる人物）として国外退去命令が出たら、日本政府も対抗して、東京のロシア大使館の大使を国外退去させればよい話です。
北方領土を取り戻すまで、毅然とした態度で接することが大事だと思います。Third place (3,293): "nothing changes while the Putin government stands — may a president with different ideas appear." Fourth (2,694) openly cheers the war news — Ukraine's strikes on Russian refineries — and sketches a scenario where Russia breaks up and a friendly eastern republic hands the islands back in exchange for Japanese investment. Note the vocabulary at the top of an angry thread: ignore, expel, wait for the collapse, cheer for Ukraine. For all the heat, almost nobody talks about military force. Japan's hard line is a procedural hard line.
The history of 1945, the room lectures for itself. A comment at 490 to 25 lays out the legal file: Russia asserts ownership but never discusses how the islands became Russian — "of course not; there is no case to state." Their transfer was promised in the secret Yalta bargain between the US, Britain and the USSR, "to which Japan was no party and owes no obedience — a secret deal struck while the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact was still in force. What Japan accepted was the Potsdam Declaration; claims resting on anything else are inadmissible." One hundred eighty-nine comments make this historical case — the broken pact, the post-surrender invasion, the internment. "They took the islands like a thief at a fire scene" (a Japanese idiom for looting during a disaster). "They broke the neutrality pact to invade — Russia never even earned a victor's rights" (144 to 10). Eighty-year-old Augusts are written about here in the tense of yesterday.
Now the real story of this page: where did the 9,173 objections land? Here is the deepest-rejected comment in the thread.
This government keeps doing things that put its own people in danger, and it alarms me. The one outcome we must avoid is a war, born of governmental clumsiness, that costs citizens their lives. [...] Negotiating with Russia one-on-one, condemning Russia as a lone country — folly, stop it. Better to win over the neighbors — China, South Korea, North Korea — than to pick fights in every direction. This government's diplomacy is simply wrong.
最近の政府は、国民を危険にさらすような事ばかりしていて、強い危機感をおぼえます。
政府のやり方がまずいために戦争となり、国民が生命を落とすような事態は絶対に避けて欲しいものです。
［…］ロシアと一対一で交渉したり、日本一国でロシアを非難など愚かなので止めて下さい。せめて日本の周辺国・中国や韓国や北朝鮮の味方につければ良いものを、自己の周りにケンカを売る日本政府は外交的に間違っています。127 in favor, 1,660 against — the bottom of the thread. Read it again: this comment does not defend Russia. It says be careful, gather allies, don't get us into a war. Around it on the seabed: "What scares me about Takaichi is the needless remarks that anger the other side — words invite calamity" (122 to 886). "They hold the islands in fact, so protesting what their head of state does there is interference in their internal affairs" (16 to 120). "Diplomacy needs cunning; emotion serves no national interest" (173 to 391). Even a fond memory of Deputy Minister Galuzin's days as a fluent, courteous ambassador in Tokyo sank (140 to 290).
And one very 2026 sinking. A both-sides comment — Russia argues international law, Japan leans on sentiment, "the Japanese side's lack of awareness stands exposed" — was posted with its instrument still attached: the final line reads, verbatim, "Structural Augmentation by Copilot." The room's answer: 51 in favor, 874 against. A comment that smells machine-written, arguing that both sides have a point, is found and drowned on sight.
What I make of it
First, the prediction held — on substance. Four comments out of 1,930 took Russia's side, with three votes between them: 0.2 percent of the comments, 0.01 percent of the votes. Russia's case is worth statistically nothing in a Japanese comment section, and the room itself explains why: they broke the pact, came after the surrender, and emptied the islands of their people. Eighty years on, this is the one August memory nobody here disputes.
Second, and yet the vote was not 100 to 0 — and that is the finding. The 9,173 objections fell not on Russia but on Japanese commenters: the woman who feared a war (1,660 objections), the one who questioned the Prime Minister's phrasing (886), the one who counseled cunning (391). Under Yasukuni, this country argued with itself, 63 to 37. Facing an external adversary, it closes to 74 to 26 — and spends the entire 26 on its own doves. Divided over its own history; united against the neighbor; and quickest of all to cut down the ally who says "careful, now." Put the two threads side by side and you have the country's outline.
Third, look at what the hard line is made of. Ignore them. Expel an ambassador. Wait out the regime. Cheer for Ukraine. Even the thread's most practical proposal — a parliamentary commission to plan the islands' administration after a return, to "raise Russia's cost of holding them" — sank at 295 to 530. The room is not asking for a plan, much less a war. It is asking for a posture; the word it pays for is kizen — unbending. Eighty-one years after the war, Japan's hawkishness wears a lawyer's face: treaties, declarations, reciprocal expulsions, and not one bullet.
Fourth, for the foreign reader. Japanese opinion splits on most things — you have watched it split all month on this site. The Northern Territories are the exception: as close to literal unanimity as 1,930 comments ever come. If you want to understand Japan's relationship with Russia, start there — with four islands you can see from Hokkaido on a clear day, and the three votes their occupier's case earned.
I will keep counting, and I will keep watching.
Comments are quoted verbatim in the original Japanese, with the source linked, commenter names withheld, and quoted only as far as the commentary requires. Translations are mine. Source articles may expire (retrieval dates noted). The substance of this piece is the author's commentary.