ABSTRACT
When Gorbachev delivered his groundbreaking speech at Vladivostok in 1986, the Japanese did not like the emphasis on the centrality of Sino-Soviet relations and Gorbachev’s failure to acknowledge Japan as a power in its own right. Under Gorbachev the contradiction between the political-ideological downgrading of Japan and its practical economic significance became ‘glaringly apparent’.2 Despite a belated recognition by Gorbachev of Japan’s importance at least in economic terms, little headway was made in Soviet-Japanese relations. This was in no small part due to the Japanese insistence on a policy of sekei fukabun, or the non-separation of politics and economics. This held that until the four ‘Northern Territories’ (Kurils in Russian) were returned to Japan, no financial aid or large-scale investment could be contemplated. Thus on Gorbachev’s first official visit to Japan in April 1991 he commented bitterly that the Japanese ‘persisted in reminding us of the principle of the linkage between politics and economics’.3 At the time, Gorbachev also faced difficulties on the domestic front, which restricted his room for manoeuvre.
