This publication presents the first translation into Russian of the essay “On the [Favorable] Moment [to Display] Reasonableness” (“Shinkiron”) written by a famous Japanese artist and intellectual, an adherent of Dutch studies Watanabe Kazan (1793-1841). This essay was written in 1838 as a response to the shooting attack on the United States trade ship “Morrison”, which delivered shipwrecked Japanese sailors, by Japanese government in the previous year (even though the author didn’t know all details concerning the incident). The main appeal of the author is to display reasonableness, that is to stop shying away from the changing world and to realize Japan’s situation in it, and for this end to turn to Western learning whose adherent the author was, and to reconsider the policy toward foreign vessels. In his essay, Watanabe Kazan pays great attention to Great Britain and Russia by presenting these two countries as greatest world powers but comparing them on several characteristics. In general, the author shows deep knowledge of the global situation and world history, making comparisons between Japan and other countries of the world, while his essay is indicative of the development of Western studies in 1830s’ Japan. The preface represents the details of the attack on the “Morrison” and the creation of the essay. The spread of “The Tale of a Dream in Bojutsu Year” written by Kazan’s friend and like-minded person Takano Choei led to punitive measures by the government against advocates of Western learning. The manuscript of “Shinkiron” was discovered during the search at Kazan’s house and the author was sentenced to home arrest and committed suicide two years later.

The article is devoted to the divine palanquins (portable Shinto shrines) from Shirohige Jinja, Komadome Hachiman Jinja, Kasuga Jinja, Kasai Jinja, Kuramae Jinja, Tomioka Hachimangu, Atago Jinja, Shibuya Hikawa Jinja, Otama Inari Jinja, Tomigaoka Hachimangu of the Tokyo Metropolitan area, currently used during Shinto religious festivals, so-called matsuri. Nowadays, like in ancient times, the divine palanquins are one of the main attributes of Shinto festivals in Japan. They began to be widely used in urban religious festivals since the middle of the Heian period. The author describes the shrines to which the ten palanquins belong, and reveals the characteristic features of religious, architectural, and decorative components of the palanquins, dividing their construction into three main parts: the bars, using which they are carried, the base, and the shrine. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of their rich decorations. The décor of the base of the divine palanquins includes a black lacquer coating, metallic decorative components, foliage, and geometric patterns. Also, the décor can include relief compositions. The storyline contents of the décor of the divine palanquins bases can be devoted to the animals of the Chinese zodiac, the four beasts of Chinese astronomy, and games of fantastic animals karashishi and komainu. The décor of the walls of the divine palanquins may include carved compositions on the western and eastern facade, depicting stories from the “Kojiki” and the “Nihongi”, with zoomorphic motives of birds against the background of waves. The main décor can include the image of emperor Jimmu with a kite on his hand, or an image of goddess Amaterasu. The shape of the roofs of all divine palanquins is based on the Buddhist style of architecture used in the construction of pagodas. Based on the comparison of the palanquins made in the 18th - early 20th centuries with the modern ones, the author comes to conclusions about their design features. The article is supplemented by photographs which illustrate the variety of the palanquins’ décor.

Kouta, the songs of the licensed quarters, still remain one of the most poorly explored genres of the Edo period literature. These songs, created by anonymous female authors from luxurious brothels with the assistance of the bohemian literati of the time, were known for many centuries as the treasury of Japanese folklore. The highest level of education and considerable poetic skills typical for many authors became a token of close connection with classical poetry and predestined the role of the genre in the formation of literary canon in Kabuki and Joruri drama. In the meantime, kouta present a brilliant example of the most successful adaptation and transformation of the whole palette of folklore lyrical songs - from the dancing tunes with rhythmic refrains free of any semantic functions to the long dramatic ballads and descriptions of specific locations in the genre of a poetic guidebook. Professional compilers and editors of the kouta collections deserve great appreciation both for the amount of the preserved songs and for the skillful composition of the books. Impressive achievements of the editors reveal the existence of a folklore studies trend in premodern Japan - a phenomenon that can be compared only to the infatuation with folklore so typical for the age of Romanticism in Europe. Kouta anthologies compiled in the 17-18th centuries essentially constitute one great poetic monument, a unity in diversity revealing the slightest details of the city life and featuring primarily customs and mores of the licensed quarters. Unlike the most provocative, sometimes even grotesque imagery of the shunga erotic woodblock prints, kouta tell the stories of true love and suffering of the joro sexual slaves from “tea houses”. Musical and poetic merits of the kouta songs gained them great reputation not only in the professional geisha community, but also among the public at large. Kouta influenced the formation of the Japanese Romanticist shintaishi poetry in the late 19th century and made a strong impact on enka, the most successful folk song genre of the 20th century.

The article aims to study the process of formation and evolution of the territorial problem in the relations between the Soviet Union and Japan after the end of WWII up to the conclusion of the Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956. Under consideration are the agreements of the Allied Powers concerning the postwar territorial limits of Japan. The author insists that the position of the USA towards the territorial provisions of the 1945 Yalta Agreements was repeatedly altered before and after signing the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Changes took place, on the one hand, because of the deterioration in the U.S. relations with the USSR, and, on the other hand, in connection with Washington’s aim to “protect” itself from Tokyo’s demands to return Okinawa. It is noteworthy that Japan’s attitude to the problem of South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands was from the very beginning not immutable either and has undergone multiple corrections. The paper gives a detailed examination of the process of the Soviet-Japanese negotiations on the normalization of bilateral relations in 1955-1956, providing an analysis of the reasons for the Soviet leadership’s readiness to hand over the Habomai islands and Shikotan to Japan. The author assesses the significance of the conclusion and the ratification of the Joint Declaration of 1956 for both the Soviet Union and Japan, as well as the attitude of both the Soviet/Russian leadership and the Japanese government to the possibility of the implementation of its territorial article. After Prime Minister Abe had stated in November 2018 that the Japanese side is ready to hold negotiations on the basis of the territorial article of the 1956 Joint Declaration, Russo-Japanese negotiations on the conclusion of the Peace Treaty were launched. However, compared to the Japanese side, for which the pivotal aim is to fix an agreement on the ownership of the islands and the borderline, much more important motives of the Russian side are to acquire Japan's recognition of the legality of the Russian possession of the Kuril Islands, to obtain guarantees that the Japan-US security alliance would not be aimed against Russia’s interests, as well as to lay a base for a broader development of bilateral relations with Japan. Against the background of the unwillingness of the public opinion of the two countries to accept the 1956 Declaration as a method of resolving the territorial problem, the possibility to achieve a Peace Treaty in 2019 is seen as unrealistic.

The article addresses recent changes in the views of the Japanese government, headed by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, regarding the content and desired effect of its economic policy, which is presented to the public under the brand of “Abenomics”. The article highlights major points of the economic credo proclaimed by the Japanese cabinet set up by the current leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic party after the Diet lower house elections of late 2012. It presents the mid-term goals set by the new cabinet, as well as the principal macroeconomic tools that would be mobilized by the cabinet to secure their achievement through modifying the tendencies which had solidified during the previous two decades, and to bring fresh stimulus and dynamism to the Japanese economy. The author briefly reviews the results of economic performance following several years of practicing “Abenomics” by the government and monetary authorities and possible explanations for the lack of significant progress in achieving the goals that had been set initially. The author traces the evolution of the priorities in the economic tasks formulated by Abe cabinets, which have been shifting from stimulating demand and reflation to promoting growth of productivity through dissemination of new technologies and ensuring an adequate supply of labor resources. The article notes the reassessment that took place in 2015-2016 regarding the potential effectiveness of monetary policy instruments as a means of supporting and accelerating economic growth, as well as the awareness of limited potential of additional inputs of public funds through government efforts as a tool for invigorating investment activity in the economy. A change in the points being emphasized, both in the public presentation of the government's economic and social policies and, to a lesser extent, in its realization, was the logical consequence of the reevaluation of effectiveness of the above-mentioned tools. Recent government documents setting larger goals, in particular the annual “Future Investment Strategy”, are analyzed as a reflection of a new vision of the economic role of the state. The latter includes less concern for current short-term macroeconomic indicators and more responsibility of the government for the fundamental characteristics and quality of the resources laying the foundation for national economic activities. The article concludes that Japanese government policy regarding social and business activities has been seriously adjusted in an effort to raise Japan’s global competitiveness and ensure conditions for long-term sustainable growth of its economy. The said adjustment includes abandonment of the traditional ‘industrial policy’ concept.

The work is devoted to the history of Soviet-Japanese relations before and at the beginning of the Second World War. The article explores the problems of the Japanese presence in the far East of Russia. Having reached its peak during the Civil War and foreign intervention in Russia, the Japanese presence has been steadily declining since 1922. The documents revealed in the Far Eastern archives confirm the theses about the departure of the Japanese from the USSR in the 1920s-1930s voiced by Russian historians, the curtailment of their economic activities and the closure of Japanese consular offices (Novosibirsk, Odessa, etc.). The interwar period is characterized by the gradual growth of the Soviet-Japanese contradictions, which largely determined the entry of the two states into the opposing military-political blocs. And the repressions of the late 1930s and the Soviet-Japanese military conflicts resulted in the almost complete disappearance of Japanese migrants in the USSR. In Russian historiography, researchers point to the gradual disappearance of Japanese migrants in the USSR from the mid-1920s to 1937. However, the Japanese were still present in the territory of the USSR on the eve and at the beginning of the Second World War. In the early 1940s, in the Far East of the USSR, there were consular offices of Japan and Manchukuo, the Japanese worked in coal, oil, and fishing concessions, some Japanese lived in Vladivostok and other Soviet cities or, being convicted, were in prison. Some Japanese engineers and teachers were officially invited to work in the USSR in the 1920s. Still, the issues of Japanese presence in the Far East of Russia at the beginning of the Second World War have not been covered in Russian historiography. Discovered documents allowed to restore the historical picture of the release of the Japanese sailors arrested at the beginning of the Second World War in Soviet waters. The study will restore the forgotten pages of the history of the Japanese in Russia.

A brief report on the scientific-practical conference “Japanese Language in Educational Space” held at the Institute of Foreign Languages of the Moscow State Pedagogical University on March 21-22, 2019. Since 1994, Institute of Asian and African Countries of the Moscow State University, MSU, began to hold conferences on the teaching of Japanese language, where the participants discussed the state of affairs in teaching Japanese language in a separate country, city, university. Then, with an increase in the number of universities where the Japanese language was being tought, they proceeded to speak on linguistic, linguocultural, and methodological issues. The organizers of these conferences are the Association of Teachers of Japanese Language of the Russian Federation, Institute of Asian and African Countries of the Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, The Japan Foundation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. This year the conference was held at the Institute of Foreign Languages of the Moscow State Pedagogical University. These conferences are of great importance for improving the methodological and professional level of teachers of the Japanese language. Conference proceedings are regularly published based on the materials of presentations made at the conferences.

A three-days 21th Annual International Conference “History and Culture of Japan” took place in Moscow at the Higher School of Economics on February 18-20, 2019. The conference was organized by the Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies of the Higher School of Economics. Over 70 papers were presented. The topics discussed during the conference included history, philology, arts, religion, philosophy, etc. The 1^st conference, organized by professor Alexandr N. Meshcheryakov, was held in May 1998. It was a one-day forum, and just 14 papers were presented. Since then, the conference has broadened both its geographical scope and the number of participants. It transformed into, first, a two-day and then a three-day forum. 13 volumes of selected papers were published, 12 of them in “Orientalia et Classica. Papers of the Institute of Oriental and Classical Studies” series. As of now, the conference papers are published annually. The conference is a key event in Russian Japanology and the most representative forum in this field throughout the post-Soviet space.