The Stalemate North of Hokkaido
More than 60 years ago, in the last days of World War II, the Soviet Union seized the four islands north of Hokkaido from Japan, islands that Russia had recognized as Japanese for nearly 100 years prior to their occupation in late 1945. Over the course of the past six decades, the dispute over ownership of these four islands has overshadowed relations between Moscow and Tokyo, frustrating repeated efforts to sign once and for all a peace treaty formally ending the state of war between them that began in August 1945. Japan's desire for greater energy security in recent years has held out the possibility of improved relations with Russia, the world's second-largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia, provided that the two nations could reach some kind of modus vivendi over the territorial issue. However, the recent Putin-Koizumi summit held in Tokyo late last year offered little hope that this might occur anytime soon. Observers in both countries are now suggesting that it may take another decade, and the passing of the generation exiled from the disputed islands, before this issue can be resolved dispassionately as a nettlesome historical problem, rather than the matter of personal loss and human dislocation that it has become.
Japan and Russia : the tortuous path to normalization, 1949-1999
Introduction PART I: RELATIONS: 1949-1984 The San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Definition of the Kurile Islands H.Wada The Soviet-Japanese Postwar Peace Settlement in Retrospect B.Slavinsky Reconciliation in the Fifties: The Logic of Soviet Decision-Making A.Zagorsky Two Decades of Soviet Diplomacy and Andrei Gromyko P.Berton Japan-Soviet Political Relations from 1976 to 1983 H.Kimura PART II: RELATIONS: 1985-1999 Japan-Soviet Relations under Perestroika: Perceptions and Interactions between Two Capitals N.Shimotomai Russian Decision-Making on Japan in the Gorbachev Era L. L.Tarlow A Japanese View of Japan-Russian Relations between the August 1991 Coup and President Yeltsin's State Visit of October 1993 S. Edamura A Russian View of Russian-Japanese Relations in 1991-93 G.Kunadze Why Did Russia and Japan Fail to Achieve Rapprochement in 1991 to 1996? T.Hasegawa Cross-Border Relations and Russo-Japanese Bilateral Ties in the 1990s G.Rozman Russo-Japanese Relations after Yeltsin's Re-election in 1996 K.Sarkisov Japanese-Russian Relations in 1997-99: The Struggle against Illusions S.Hakamada PART III: MUTUAL INFLUENCES AND COMPARISONS Factors Shaping the Formation of Views on Japan in the USSR in the Postwar Period S.Verbitsky Japanese Perceptions of the Soviet Union and Russia in the Postwar Period T.Hasegawa Overcoming the Legacy of History: Japanese Public Relations in Russia, 1990-94 A.Kawato Nihonjinron and Russkaia Ideia: Transformation of Japanese and Russian Nationalism in the Postwar Era and Beyond T.Anno Japan and Russia: Great Power Ambitions and Domestic Capacities G. Rozman
Testosterone levels, handedness and sex ratio at birth.
Geschwind has hypothesized that levels of androgens in utero affect postnatal laterality preferences, high levels being associated with left-handedness of offspring. I have hypothesized that high parental androgen levels at the time of conception are associated with subsequent male births. However, left-handed parents seem to produce an excess of female, not male, offspring. This finding could be reconciled with the two hypotheses if individuals who were exposed to high levels of androgens in utero had low circulating levels in adulthood. Some evidence for this loophole is reviewed here. Lyster & Lloyd (1987, J. theor. Biol. 126, 125) have reported that (consistent with the hypotheses) index left-handed men have an excess of brothers; but, contrary to the hypotheses, index left-handed women have an excess of sisters. Accordingly these authors proposed that left-handedness in females is associated not with high levels of androgen in utero, but with a "sensitivity" to it. If such sensitivity were associated with low androgen levels, it might explain an excess of sisters among the sibs of left-handed women. It is shown here that evidence in agreement with this hypothesis (though not discriminating between it and Geschwind's) suggests that the sex ratios of offspring of LH male x RH female and of RH male x LH female matings, are both low.