The article discusses the attitude of Japanese government towards the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which was introduced in the United Nations’ agenda in 2017. The case of Japan is special and even unique, due to the fact that, in spite of its historical experience of atomic bombings and the position of its civil society, which supports the idea of a nuclear ban, Tokyo refuses to sign the Treaty. Moreover, the rejection of the TPNW does not correlate with Japan’s active participation in the international nuclear non-proliferation initiatives. As far as Japan is undoubtedly an influential member of world community and a threshold state, possessing advanced nuclear technologies and ready to transform its peaceful nuclear program into a military one, its position regarding the TPNW can have a significant impact on the prospects of the nuclear non-proliferation regime in Asia. The author concludes that Japan has demonstrated an obvious refusal to sign the TPNW, in spite of all factors which could have produced the alternative position. However, its views remain ambiguous, as Tokyo adheres to international nuclear non-proliferation regimes and comprehensive nuclear disarmament. On the one hand, Japan is one of the U.S.’ main allies, remaining under the U.S. security guaranties, being protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella from external threats, and incorporated in the global system of nuclear deterrence. On the other hand, there is certain support for ideas of nuclear non-proliferation and prohibition of nuclear weapons in Japanese society, which is demonstrated by the activity of Japanese anti-nuclear non-governmental organizations. Consequently, in relation to the TPNW, Japan demonstrates an inconsistent course, involving the reliance on the U.S. nuclear umbrella in order to provide its security and active participation in the international nuclear non-proliferation initiatives simultaneously.

The article is devoted to the so-called Keicho Embassy Japanese mission to Europe, led by Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga, who earned broad popularity as the first Japanese diplomat in Europe. Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga was a Japanese samurai and retainer of Date Masamune. In the years 1613 through 1620, Hasekura headed a diplomatic mission to Spain and the Vatican, traveling through New Spain (arriving in Acapulco and departing from Veracruz) and visiting various ports-of-call in Europe. On the return trip, Hasekura and his companions re-traced their route across New Spain in 1619, sailing from Acapulco for Manila, and then sailing north to Japan in 1620. He is conventionally considered the first Japanese ambassador to the Americas and Spain. Although Hasekura's embassy was cordially received in Spain and Rome, it happened at a time when Japan was moving toward the suppression of Christianity. European monarchs, such as the King of Spain, thus refused the trade agreements Hasekura had been seeking. Hasekura returned to Japan in 1620 and died of illness two years later, his embassy seemingly ending with few results in an increasingly isolationist Japan. The objective of the Japanese embassy was both to discuss trade agreements with the Spanish crown in Madrid, and to meet with the Pope in Rome. Sotelo, in his own account of the travel, emphasizes the religious dimension of the mission, claiming that the main objective was to spread the Christian faith in northern Japan. When in April 1616 Hasekura met with the King of Spain for the second time, the king declined to sign a trade agreement on the ground that the Japanese Embassy did not appear to be an official embassy from the Tokugawa ruler of Japan. Japan's next embassy to Europe would only occur in 1862, more than 220 years later and following two centuries of isolation.

The purpose of this article is to consider the subject composition of the collection by V.L. Seroshevsky in Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (“MAE No. 831”) as the first in the Russian ethnographic Japanese studies thematic set of materials enabling visual representation of the cultural and ethnic functioning of traditional phallic and fertility cults, as well as some aspects of the gender culture of the mid. 19th c. Japan. The acquisition was the result of the collecting activity of V.L. Seroshevsky during his expedition to Japan in 1903, sponsored by Emperor’s Geographical Society and the Emperor’s Academy of Sciences. The acquisition reflects the research interests of L.Y. Sternberg, one of the founders of the Soviet ethnographic school. The collection was acquired in the period when phallic cults, once an integral part of the “primordial” paradigm of Japanese ethnicity, suffered suppression from the part of the Meiji authorities and stayed at the very verge of extinction. However, this reason allowed V.L. Seroshevsky to collect a number of very rare items, which in subsequent periods would be much more difficult to acquire. V.L. Seroshevsky’s comments proper on the pieces he collected are valuable ethnographic evidences, too. The article also touches upon the problem of transformation of the approaches (both in Russia and Japan) to the relevant limits for the visualization of phallic cult objects in public space and museum exposition; the fate of this collection presents a vivid example of such transformation.

This article is devoted to one of the most well-known discussions in the literary circles of Japan at the beginning of the twentieth century, the dispute between Akutagawa Ryunoske and Tanizaki Jun’ichiro about the essence of prose, which was called the “plotless novel” debate. In 1927, when the discussion was published in the magazine “Kaizo”, literary life was concentrated in the circles of the creative elite, or bundan , within which various associations and magazines were created. During the discussion, Akutagawa proposed the concept of “poetic spirit” in a prose work as the central category of his aesthetic theory, implying the dominant role of the hero’s lyrical mood over the storyline. Akutagawa considered the work containing the “poetic spirit” to be the pinnacle of prose creativity and called such prose “a story without a story”, believing that the “interesting story” and interest in the story as such diminish the quality of the work, bringing it closer to the mass entertaining literature. Tanizaki, whose works Akutagawa criticized for “an interesting plot,” defended the story with many plot lines, arguing that this creates the “architectural beauty” of the work, which implies, firstly, its structural complexity, and, secondly, provides internal energy. In contrast to Akutagawa, Tanizaki did not consider the general accessibility of literature as a quality that crossed out its artistic value. In essence, this discussion, in which the recognized classics of modern literature present the basis of their aesthetic views, is a dispute about the role of pure literature ( junbungaku ) and mass ( taishū bungaku ) - a problem that will be most developed after Akutagawa’s death. This is the main significance of this dispute, which should rather be called a discussion, since there was no fundamental difference between the writers. The discussion took place due to differences in attitude, character, aesthetic perception, psychological organization of the writers, as well as the polarity of their life moments at that time. For Akutagawa, prone to melancholy, rational analysis, and intellectual perception of the world, the end of his life and the end of the era of "pure" literature was nearing, while Tanizaki, demonstrating a sensual-mystical worldview and confidently gathering the fruits of glory, still had much to do in his literary career.

The article analyzes how the “comfort women” issue influences current relations between the Republic of Korea and Japan. In the early twentieth century Japan annexed Korea, and the memories of colonial-era humiliation are vivid in Korean collective consciousness. As a result, issues of the past often sour bilateral relations even today. Recently, Seoul has been actively pressing the issue of sexual slavery in Japanese military brothels, and differences over this seemingly irrelevant issue have impeded political and military cooperation. Articles on former sexual slaves (also called wianbu in Korean) have resurfaced time and again in Korean press throughout the 1940-80s, but the problem internationalized only in the 1990s, when broad public discussion started. Although Japan maintains that the 1965 bilateral normalization resolved all issues of the past, Tokyo has several times offered official condolences and compensations to the victims, however Seoul found these steps or the tone unsatisfactory. Most recently, in 2015, Abe Shinzo and Park Geunhye signed an agreement to close the wianbu issue, but the document irritated South Korean public and opposition, so Seoul abandoned it. President Moon Jaein, who came to power in 2017, continued this course and added pressure on related historical problems, such as Korean forced laborers in imperial Japan. As the crisis deepened, Tokyo introduced economic sanctions against South Korea (technically on unrelated grounds). Conflicts stemming from collective memory are a characteristic feature of North East Asian political culture. They are a popular tool in foreign and domestic policy of many countries. This, coupled with irrational nature of nationalism and imperfection of regional security, makes issues of the past a very real threat to the present.

The article discusses the characteristic features of the party system in Japan in 1955-1993, which give the grounds to describe its distinctive nature as a dominant party model that was unique to the global historical experience of democratic countries. Special attention is paid to the unique toolkit used by the Liberal Democratic Party to preserve its dominant positions in the Diet. An emphasis is put on the electoral technologies, and, first of all, on the personalistic orientation of Japanese voters, as well as on the lobbying capabilities of influential LDP MPs, which provided them with significant advantages in electoral mobilization. The personality-oriented relationship with electors allowed the LDP to recruit representatives of various social strata. The feedback mechanisms of the ruling party with the society made it possible for the LDP to effectively address increasingly complicated interests and values of individual social groups and strata by means of a consolidated state policy. The ruling party created a powerful political planning apparatus and maintained close ties with the bureaucracy. An important role in the system of power of the LDP was played by the mechanisms of inner-party democracy and the pluralism of opinions, ensuring a consensus within the party ranks based on the interfactional balance of power. The article gives several reasons for the end of the era of the “1955 system”. First of all, due to the collapse of the USSR and the end of the bipolarity era, the dividing line of ideological confrontation between parties disappeared. Another reason was the fact that, by the end of the 1980s, due to the change of the model of economic development, it became impossible to finance numerous infrastructure projects in depressed regions of Japan, resulting in substantially decreased role of political authorities as the subject of redistribution of surplus social product. Electoral psychology had also changed, and the traditional methods of mobilizing votes used by the LDP had lost their effectiveness. Finally, a certain role was played by mass discontent with the ruling party, associated with the rapid expansion of political corruption, in which the entirety of the LDP leadership was involved.

Despite the strong economic gravity between Japan and China, there are still many social factors that pull the countries away from each other. One of such factors is the negative image of the partner, which is largely related to the memory of World War II. Perception of China in Japanese society has been changing over the post-war decades. After Japan’s surrender and occupation of the country by the Allied Powers, political, economic, and cultural distance between the two countries grew. This led to a “lapse of memory” related to China among the post-war generation of the Japanese. Interest towards China in Japan started growing after some time had passed since the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations (1972) - from late 1980s-early 1990s, as the contacts between the countries on different levels became more and more active. The image of China in Japan deteriorated dramatically for the first time after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which demonstrated that China was an unsafe country with a repressive state machine. The attitude of Japanese society to China has been worsening since then for various reasons. Starting from the 1990s, new problems emerged, including the struggle for geopolitical influence, global competition, pollution of environment and bad quality of Chinese products, problems of communication with Chinese business partners, growing number of Chinese tourists in Japan, etc. As Sino-Japanese relations became more complicated, the problem of historical memory emerged more and more vividly. This problem fits into the whole picture of controversies accumulated in the Sino-Japanese relations and intensifies some of them. Despite the unfavorable perception of China by the Japanese society, signs of improvement can be seen in the last few years, especially among the younger generation. Many young Japanese view China and the prospects of developing bilateral relations positively. Contacts with China give more opportunities to understand this country better, and close economic ties make the influence of political factors less obvious.

This article is devoted to the study of the position of the Russian Foreign Ministry led by V.N. Lamsdorf on Korea’s independence after signing the Treaty of Protectorate. The work is based on a wide range of sources, mainly archival diplomatic documents, most of which are introduced into the scientific circulation for the first time. The author shows that, up to the change in the policy of the Russian government, which occurred after the appointment of A.P. Izvolsky in May 1906, Russia, compelled to recognize Japan’s predominant political, military, and economic interests in Korea, invariably adhered to the principle of independence and territorial integrity of Korea, remained committed to the non-recognition of the agreements imposed by Japan on Korea by force, which violated the supreme rights of the Korean emperor, and tried to maintain at least limited sovereignty of Korea by diplomatic means. For the first time, the article reveals in detail the efforts of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to nullify the terms of the protectorate agreement and restore the status of the independent Korean state, to strengthen Russia’s presence in Korea as the number of Japanese troops in the north of the Peninsula, bordering the Russian Maritime province, was increasing. It describes in detail the attempts of Russian diplomacy to resist the claims of the Japanese government to establish complete control over the domestic and foreign policies of Korea, the implementation of the Katsura-Taft agreement regarding the termination of Korean diplomatic relations with all other states. In particular, the author of the article draws attention to the Foreign Ministry's message to foreign powers about the protest of the Korean emperor against the Treaty of Protectorate imposed on Korea, in order to encourage them to intervene and protest against the actions of Japan. The article analyzes the attempts of Russian diplomats to raise the fundamental question of the compatibility of the Japanese claims to establish complete control over Korea’s domestic and foreign policy with the treaty rights of the Powers, to preserve the form of foreign representation in Korea and to resume the activities of the Russian mission in Seoul, citing Russian-Korean treaties. The article clarifies and supplements the official position of Russia on the abolition of the Russo-Korean treaties at the insistence of the Japanese government; on the demotion of the diplomatic mission in Seoul; on what kind of authority should issue the exequatur to foreign consuls in Seoul; and on the abolition of consular jurisdiction - the issue that was considered the cornerstone of relations with Japan. The details of the negotiations between the Russian and Japanese sides, the arguments of Russia in favor of the right of the Russian Consul General in Seoul to receive an exequatur not from the Japanese, but from the Korean emperor (the Japanese government insisted on the former) have been restored. For the first time, the fact that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its representatives abroad tried to draw the attention of Western powers to the fact that Japan’s demand for an exequatur to the Consul General in Korea was illegal and contrary to the established practice of international relations, and that Korea as a sovereign state had the right to maintain direct relations with other states, and foreign consuls had to receive exequatur from the territorial sovereign. The Foreign Ministry also proposed the initiative to raise the Korean issue for international discussion in order to achieve non-recognition by the powers of the Japanese protectorate and to condemn the actions of Japan in an international court. However, the initiative of Russia was not supported. With the appointment of A.P. Izvolsky, a supporter of a pragmatic course regarding the postwar settlement with Japan, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the line towards rapprochement with Japan prevailed in the Far Eastern policy of Russia. This had direct impact on the policy of the Russian government regarding Korea.