The invasion of Ukraine has turned Japan definitively against Russia

THE ARRIVAL of Russian soldiers shocked the villagers. An escape plan was hatched. The children were told to keep silent, recalls Tsunoka Yasuji, who was eight years old in 1945 when his family fled Habomai, one of four Japanese islands just north of Hokkaido that defeated imperial Japan lost to Russia in the final days of the second world war. The islands, which Japan calls the Northern Territories and Russia the Southern Kuriles, have remained contentious ever since, preventing the two neighbours from concluding a formal peace treaty.