Kuril Islands

The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands (; ; Japanese: or is a volcanic archipelago in Russia's Sakhalin Oblast that stretches approximately northeast from Hokkaido, Japan to Kamchatka, Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the north Pacific Ocean. There are 56 islands and many minor rocks. It consists of the Greater Kuril Chain and the Lesser Kuril Chain. The total land area is , and the total population is 19,434.
All the islands are under Russian administration. Japan claims the four southernmost islands, including two of the three largest ones (Iturup and Kunashir), as part of its territory as well as Shikotan and the Habomai islets, which has led to the ongoing Kuril Islands dispute. The disputed islands are known in Japan as the country's "Northern Territories". In 2018, Russo-Japanese talks on resolving the dispute resumed.
Etymology.
The name "Kuril" originates from the autonym of the aboriginal Ainu, the islands' original inhabitants: "kur", meaning "man". It may also be related to names for other islands that have traditionally been inhabited by the Ainu people, such as "Kuyi" or "Kuye" for Sakhalin and "Kai" for Hokkaidō. In Japanese, the Kuril Islands are known as the Chishima Islands (Kanji: , literally, "Thousand Islands Archipelago"), also known as the Kuriru Islands (Katakana: , literally, "Kuril Archipelago"). Once the Russians reached the islands in the 18th century they found a pseudo-etymology from Russian "kurit' " (курить – "to smoke") due to the continual fumes and steam above the islands from volcanoes.
Geography and climate.
The Kuril Islands form part of the ring of tectonic instability encircling the Pacific Ocean referred to as the Ring of Fire. The islands themselves are summits of stratovolcanoes that are a direct result of the subduction of the Pacific Plate under the Okhotsk Plate, which forms the Kuril Trench some east of the islands. The chain has around 100 volcanoes, some 40 of which are active, and many hot springs and fumaroles. There is frequent seismic activity, including a magnitude 8.5 earthquake in 1963 and one of magnitude 8.3 recorded on November 15, 2006, which resulted in tsunami waves up to reaching the California coast. Raikoke Island, near the centre of the archipelago, has an active volcano which erupted again in June 2019, with emissions reaching .
The climate on the islands is generally severe, with long, cold, stormy winters and short and notoriously foggy summers. The average annual precipitation is , a large portion of which falls as snow. The Köppen climate classification of most of the Kurils is subarctic ("Dfc"), although Kunashir is humid continental ("Dfb"). However, the Kuril Islands’ climate resembles the subpolar oceanic climate of southwest Alaska much more than the hypercontinental climate of Manchuria and interior Siberia, as precipitation is heavy and permafrost completely absent. It is characterized by mild summers with only 1 to 3 months above and cold, snowy, extremely windy winters below , although usually above .
The chain ranges from temperate to sub-Arctic climate types, and the vegetative cover consequently ranges from tundra in the north to dense spruce and larch forests on the larger southern islands. The highest elevations on the islands are Alaid volcano (highest point: ) on Atlasov Island at the northern end of the chain and Tyatya volcano () on Kunashir Island at the southern end.
Landscape types and habitats on the islands include many kinds of beach and rocky shores, cliffs, wide rivers and fast gravelly streams, forests, grasslands, alpine tundra, crater lakes and peat bogs. The soils are generally productive, owing to the periodic influxes of volcanic ash and, in certain places, owing to significant enrichment by seabird guano. However, many of the steep, unconsolidated slopes are susceptible to landslides and newer volcanic activity can entirely denude a landscape. Only the southernmost island has large areas covered by trees, while more northerly islands have no trees, or spotty tree cover.
The northernmost, Atlasov Island (Oyakoba in Japanese), is an almost-perfect volcanic cone rising sheer out of the sea; it has been praised by the Japanese in haiku, wood-block prints, and other forms, in much the same way as the better-known Mount Fuji. Its summit is the highest point in Sakhalin Oblast.
Ecology.
Marine.
Owing to their location along the Pacific shelf edge and the confluence of Okhotsk Sea gyre and the southward Oyashio Current, the Kuril islands are surrounded by waters that are among the most productive in the North Pacific, supporting a wide range and high abundance of marine life.
Invertebrates: Extensive kelp beds surrounding almost every island provide crucial habitat for sea urchins, various mollusks and countless other invertebrates and their associated predators. Many species of squid provide a principal component of the diet of many of the smaller marine mammals and birds along the chain.
Fish: Further offshore, walleye pollock, Pacific cod, several species of flatfish are of the greatest commercial importance. During the 1980s, migratory Japanese sardine was one of the most abundant fish in the summer.
Pinniped: The main pinnipeds were a significant object of harvest for the indigenous populations of the Kuril islands, both for food and materials such as skin and bone. The long term fluctuations in the range and distribution of human settlements along the Kuril island presumably tracked the pinniped ranges. In historical times, fur seals were heavily exploited for their fur in the 19th and early 20th centuries and several of the largest reproductive rookeries, as on Raykoke island, were extirpated. In contrast, commercial harvest of the true seals and Steller sea lions has been relatively insignificant on the Kuril islands proper. Since the 1960s there has been essentially no additional harvest and the pinniped populations in the Kuril islands appear to be fairly healthy and in some cases expanding. The notable exception is the now extinct Japanese sea lion, which was known to occasionally haul out on the Kuril islands.
Sea otters: Sea otters were exploited very heavily for their pelts in the 19th century, as shown by 19th and 20th century whaling catch and sighting records.
Seabirds: The Kuril islands are home to many millions of seabirds, including northern fulmars, tufted puffins, murres, kittiwakes, guillemots, auklets, petrels, gulls and cormorants. On many of the smaller islands in summer, where terrestrial predators are absent, virtually every possibly hummock, cliff niche or underneath of boulder is occupied by a nesting bird. Several of the islands, including Kunashir and the Lesser Kuril Chain in the South Kurils, and the northern Kurils from Urup to Paramushir, have been recognised as Important Bird Areas (IBAs) by BirdLife International because they support populations of various threatened bird species, including many waterbirds, seabirds and waders.
Terrestrial.
The composition of terrestrial species on the Kuril islands is dominated by Asian mainland taxa via migration from Hokkaido and Sakhalin Islands and by Kamchatkan taxa from the North. While highly diverse, there is a relatively low level of endemism.
The WWF divides the Kuril Islands into two ecoregions. The southern Kurils, along with southwestern Sakhalin, comprise the South Sakhalin-Kurile mixed forests ecoregion. The northern islands are part of the Kamchatka-Kurile meadows and sparse forests, a larger ecoregion that extends onto the Kamchatka Peninsula and Commander Islands.
Because of the generally smaller size and isolation of the central islands, few major terrestrial mammals have colonized these, though red and Arctic foxes were introduced for the sake of the fur trade in the 1880s. The bulk of the terrestrial mammal biomass is taken up by rodents, many introduced in historical times. The largest southernmost and northernmost islands are inhabited by brown bear, foxes, and martens. Some species of deer are found on the more southerly islands. It is claimed that a wild cat, the Kurilian Bobtail, originates from the Kuril Islands. The bobtail is due to the mutation of a dominant gene. The cat has been domesticated and exported to nearby Russia and bred there, becoming a popular domestic cat.
Among terrestrial birds, ravens, peregrine falcons, some wrens and wagtails are common.
History.
Early history.
The Ainu people inhabited the Kuril Islands from early times, although few records predate the 17th century. The Japanese administration first took nominal control of the islands during the Edo period (1603-1868) in the form of claims by the Matsumae clan. It is claimed that the Japanese knew of the northern islands 370 years ago. The "Shōhō Era Map of Japan" (), a map of Japan made by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1644, shows 39 large and small islands northeast of Hokkaido's Shiretoko Peninsula and Cape Nosappu. A Dutch expedition under Maarten Gerritsz Vries explored the islands in 1643. Russian popular legend has Fedot Alekseyevich Popov sailing into the area .
Russian Cossacks landed on Shumshu in 1711.
The Ainu people seem to have used the name Choka for Paramushir and its neighbouring islands. Then Rakkoshima ("sea-otter isles") extended from Onnekotan to Simushir. Urup, Iturup and Kunashir are the three southern islands.
In 1811 the Golovnin Incident occurred: retainers of the Nambu clan captured the Russian captain Vasily Golovnin and his crew - who had stopped at Kunashir during their hydrographic survey - and sent them to the Matsumae authorities. Because Petr Rikord, the captain of a Russian vessel, also captured a Japanese trader, Takadaya Kahei, near Kunashir in 1812, Japan and Russia entered into negotiations to establish the border between the two countries.
American whaleships caught right whales off the islands between 1847 and 1892. Three of the ships were wrecked on the islands: two on Urup in 1855 and one on Makanrushi in 1856. In September 1892, north of Kunashir Island, a Russian schooner seized the bark "Cape Horn Pigeon", of New Bedford and escorted it to Vladivostok, where it was detained for nearly two weeks.
Japanese administration.
The Russian Empire and Japan concluded the "Treaty of Commerce, Navigation and Delimitation" in 1855, establishing their border between Iturup and Urup. This treaty confirmed that Japanese territory stretched south from Iturup and Russian territory stretched north of Urup. Sakhalin remained a place where people from both countries could live. The Treaty of Saint Petersburg in 1875 resulted in Japan relinquishing all rights over Sakhalin in exchange for Russia ceding all of the Kuril Islands south of Kamchatka.
In 1869, in the context of the Boshin War of 1868-1869, Japan's Meiji government established the Colonization Commission in Sapporo to aid in the development of the northern area. Ezo was renamed "Hokkaidō" and Kita Ezo (South Sakhalin) later received the name of "Karafuto". Eleven provinces and 86 districts founded by the Meiji government were put under the control of feudal clans. Because the Meiji government could not sufficiently cope with Russians moving to south Sakhalin, Japan negotiated with Russia over control of the Kuril Islands, resulting in the Treaty of Saint Petersburg, which ceded the eighteen islands north of Uruppu to Japan and all of Sakhalin to Russia.
Road networks and post offices were established on Kunashiri and Etorofu. Life on the islands became more stable when a regular sea-route connecting the islands with Hokkaidō opened and a telegraphic system began. At the end of the Taishō period of 1912 to 1926, towns and villages were organized in the northern territories and village offices were established on each island. The Habomai island towns were all part of Habomai Village for example. In other cases the town and village system was not adopted on islands north of Uruppu, which came under direct control of the Nemuro Subprefectural office of the Hokkaidō government.
Each village had a district forestry system, a marine-product examination center, salmon hatchery, post office, police station, elementary school, Shinto temple, and other public facilities. As of 1930, 8,300 people lived on Kunashiri island and 6,000 on Etorofu island - most of them engaged in coastal and high-sea fishing.
From the very end of 19th century the Japanese administration started the forced assimilation of the native Ainu people. Also at this time the Ainu were granted automatic Japanese citizenship, effectively denying them the status of an indigenous group. Many Japanese moved onto former Ainu lands, including the Kuril islands. The Ainu were forced to learn Japanese, required to adopt Japanese names, and ordered to cease religious practices such as animal sacrifice and the custom of tattooing. Prior to Japanese colonization (in 1868) about 100 Ainu reportedly lived on the Kuril islands.
During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, Gunji, a retired Japanese military man and local settler in Shumshu, led an invading party to the Kamchatka coast. Russia sent reinforcements to the area to capture and intern this group. After the end of the war, Japan received fishing rights in Russian waters as part of the Russo-Japanese Fisheries Agreement until 1945.
During their armed intervention in Siberia 1918–1925, Japanese forces from the northern Kurils, along with United States and European forces, occupied southern Kamchatka. Japanese vessels carried out naval strikes against Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.
World War II.
In February 1945 the Yalta Agreement promised to the Soviet Union South Sakhalin and the Kuril islands in return for entering into World War II against the Japanese. In August 1945 the Soviet Union mounted an armed invasion of South Sakhalin at the cost of over 5,000 Soviet and Japanese lives.
Russian administration.
Japan maintains a claim to the four southernmost islands of Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan, and the Habomai rocks, together called the "Northern Territories".
On 8 February 2017 the Russian government gave names to five previously unnamed Kuril islands in Sakhalin Oblast: Derevyanko Island (after Kuzma Derevyanko, ), Gnechko Island (after Alexey Gnechko, ), Gromyko Island (after Andrei Gromyko, ), Farkhutdinov Island (after Igor Farkhutdinov, ) and Shchetinina Island (after Anna Shchetinina, ).
Demographics.
, 19,434 people inhabited the Kuril Islands. These include ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Tatars, Nivkhs, Oroch, and Ainus. Russian Orthodox Christianity is the main religion. Some of the villages are permanently manned by Russian soldiers (especially in Kunashir following recent tensions). Others are inhabited by civilians, which are mostly fishermen, workers of the fish factories, dockers, and social sphere workers (policemen, medics, teachers, etc.). Recent construction works on the islands attracts a lot of migrant workers from the rest of Russia and other Post-Soviet states. , there were only 8 inhabited islands out of a total of 56. Iturup Island is over 60% ethnically Ukrainian.
Economy.
Fishing is the primary occupation. The islands have strategic and economic value, in terms of fisheries and also mineral deposits of pyrite, sulfur, and various polymetallic ores. There are hopes that oil exploration will provide an economic boost to the islands.
The economic rise of the Russian Federation has been seen on the Kurils too. The most visible sign of improvement is the new construction in infrastructure. In 2014, construction workers built a pier and a breakwater in Kitovy Bay, central Iturup, where barges are a major means of transport, sailing between the cove and ships anchored offshore. A new road has been carved through the woods near Kurilsk, the island's biggest village, going to the site of Yuzhno-Kurilsk Mendeleyevo Airport.
Gidrostroy, the Kurils' biggest business group with interests in fishing, construction and real estate, built its second fish processing factory on Iturup island in 2006, introducing a state-of-the-art conveyor system.
To deal with a rise in the demand of electricity, the local government is also upgrading a state-run geothermal power plant at Mount Baransky, an active volcano, where steam and hot water can be found.
Military.
The main Russian force stationed on the islands is the 18th Machine Gun Artillery Division, which has its headquarters in Goryachiye Klyuchi on Iturup Island. There are also Border Guard Service troops stationed on the islands. In February 2011, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for substantial reinforcements of the Kuril Islands defences. Subsequently in 2015, additional anti-aircraft missile systems 'Tor', 'BUK' missile systems, coastal defence missile systems 'Bastion', combat helicopters Ka-52 'Alligator' and 1 'Varshavyanka' project submarine came on defence of Kuril Islands.
List of main islands.
While in Russian sources the islands are mentioned for the first time in 1646, the earliest detailed information about them was provided by the explorer Vladimir Atlasov in 1697. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Kuril Islands were explored by Danila Antsiferov, I. Kozyrevsky, Ivan Yevreinov, Fyodor Luzhin, Martin Shpanberg, Adam Johann von Krusenstern, Vasily Golovnin, and Henry James Snow.
The following table lists information on the main islands from north to south: