TOKYO, February 7. /TASS/. Japan seeks to hold persistent consultations with Russia aiming to conclude a peace treaty based on all previously reached agreements and regrets that this issue has not been settled yet, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said at the National Rally to Demand the Return of the Northern Territories, as Tokyo refers to the southern part of the Kurils.

"I sincerely regret that 76 years after the end of World War II, the issue of the Northern Territories has not been resolved and a peace treaty between Japan and Russia has not been concluded," Kishida noted. "I am going to hold persistent talks on this issue with Russia, complying with all previously reached agreements, including those signed at the Singapore Summit in 2018." The prime minister also expressed regret that visa free travel was halted for the second year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since 1981, the National Rallies to Demand the Return of the Northern Territories have been taking place every year on February 7 to mark the Treaty of Shimoda, which was the first Russian-Japanese agreement, signed in 1855. Such events are traditionally attended by ministers, deputies from the ruling and opposition parties as well as some former residents of the Kurils’ southern part. Furthermore, some far-right groups hold anti-Russian protests in front of the country’s embassies, which the police heavily guard.

In November 2018, during a meeting in Singapore, Russian President Vladimir Putin and then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to boost negotiations on a peace treaty based on the Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, which ended war and restored diplomatic ties between the two countries. According to the document, the USSR expressed its readiness to hand over the island of Shikotan and some uninhabited islands of the Lesser Kuril Chain to Japan after signing a peace treaty.

For decades, Moscow and Tokyo have been holding consultations in order to clinch a peace treaty as a follow-up to World War II. The southern Kuril Islands issue remains the key sticking point. In 1945, the whole archipelago was handed over to the Soviet Union. Tokyo laid claims to Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and a group of uninhabited islands. The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly stated that Moscow’s sovereignty over the islands is enshrined in international law and cannot be called into question.