Aleksej V. Kalinin: Rossija i Japonija. Vstreča dvuch civilizacij. Monografija. Tver': Kondrat'ev A. N., 2013. 358 S. ISBN: 978-5-905621-38-3

Aleksej V. Kalinin: Rossija i Japonija. Vstreča dvuch civilizacij. Monografija. [Russland und Japan. Begegnung zweier Kulturen. Monographie] Tver’: Kondrat’ev A. N., 2013. 358 S. ISBN: 978-5-905621-38-3.

Russia is Japan’s closest neighbor, but the history of their relations has not been an easy one. Conventionally, historians date the relationship between Russia and Japan to the first half of the nineteenth century, when Russia attempted to solidify its power in East Asia while Japan tried to ward off Western imperialist advances. The border between Russia and Japan was settled in the treaty of 1875, according to which the Russian Empire obtained the undisputed sovereignty of Sakhalin Island while Japan retained the Kurile Islands. Unhappy with the treaty, the Japanese government and public became increasingly anti-Russian. Fears of military threat and even of colonization were coupled with the perception of Russia as an opportunistic and cunning nation.

Aleksei Kalinin’s book deals, however, with the relationship between the two countries during the eighteenth century, in other words, with the pre-history of the direct confrontation. The author argues that the very early contacts between the two nations and peoples laid the foundation for future political and cultural relations, “forming the ethnopsychological framework of each nation”. (S. 5)

The book consists of eleven chapters following a chronological order. The first chapter covers the earliest Russian references to Japan in the seventeenth century. Kalinin bases his research on the reading of the treatise Kosmographia 1670, which was a translation from Latin into Russian of European writings on the non-European world. Many of these observations were based on the writings of Marco Polo. The next nine chapters follow the steady advance of the Russians from west to east. Chapter 2 focuses on the colonization of Kamchatka and the growth of interest in Japan. It covers roughly the period of Peter the Great’s rule and nicely describes the state’s obsession with geographical discoveries in the East, stimulating the science of cartography in Russia. Chapter 3 covers the Russian discovery of the Kuril Islands as well as Japanese explorations of their northern territories. Chapter 4 describes the First Kamchatka Expedition of 1724 led by Vitus Bering with the aim to map the way from Kamchatka to the Icy Sea. It was hoped that, along the way, Japan as well as the meeting point between Asia and America would be discovered. The First Expedition was a prelude to the highly ambitious Second Kamchatka Expedition, or the Great Northern Expedition (Chapter 5), whose aim was to extend the Russian empire to North America. The Second Expedition established the first contact with the Japanese in 1739. Because the Russian presence in Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin was more prevalent from this point onward, more and more shipwrecked Japanese fishermen and tradesmen were encountered and sent to the Russian mainland. Most of these captured Japanese became teachers in Japanese language schools in St. Petersburg and Irkutsk.

Chapter 6 is devoted to the colonization of the Kuril Islands, the tribute system Siberian military leaders and governors imposed on the local Ainu people, and to the many abuses and burdens the locals had to endure. Although the author does not dwell on this point, it seems to be crucial that the Japanese learned about the brutality of the Russian authorities from the Ainu, many of whom escaped from the Kurils and moved to the south. Chapter 7 explores the origin of the Japanese theory of “threat from the North”. In 1771, the Russian prisoner and Hungarian rebel Beniowski escaped to Japan from Siberia and wrote a report to the Japanese authorities about Russia’s activities in the Far East and their plans for Asia. The Russians, warned Beniowski, were planning to attack Japan from the north and subjugate the Japanese nation in the very near future. Interestingly, Kalinin does not dismiss Beniowski’s report as exaggerated but instead fully agrees with it, offering an overview of Russia’s enormous expansion during the eighteenth century. Chapter 8 deals with the first attempt by a private merchant to establish trade relations with Japan. Previous expeditions and contacts were all state-organized and state-sponsored with the primary aim of geographical discovery and territorial expansion. The Iakutian merchant Pavel Lebedev-Lastochkin attempted a trade partnership in 1778 but, since Japan followed a policy of seclusion at that time, the attempt failed. In general, the interests of the Russian state moved to North America and it abandoned the advance to the south. The policy was altered once Russia faced sudden competition in the Icy Sea from the Great Britain (Chapter 9). To solidify its control, the Russian government reinvigorated its policies in East Asia, sending the Adam Laxman Expedition to Japan in 1792 (Chapter 10). This Expedition obtained a permit to land on Japanese territory but this was not used and, under the seclusion policy, further negotiations were stalled. Finally, the last chapter cursorily describes the largely positive perceptions of the Japanese nation and people in European and Russian writings of the eighteenth century.

The strength of the book lies with its sources. Kalinin manages to work through numerous primary documents from the Russian State Archive of Early Acts (RGADA), ranging from the memoirs and writings of Peter the Great and Ekaterina the Great to official reports and memoirs of leaders of the various Expeditions, contemporary geographical encyclopedias, and revealing reports from Siberian governors and military leaders. The author may receive some criticism for telling a story rather than writing an analytical monograph, but readers should find much of value here. Researchers of the early history of Russia will discover a rich vein of bibliographical references.

The book, however, is less about the meeting of two civilizations, which is in itself a problematic choice of words, and more about the Russian advance into Asia. Japan is touched upon only in a general way, as a subject largely relying on secondary sources published by Russian historians. Throughout its eleven chapters, Kalinin vividly describes the thorny, often accidental, and brutal colonization of Siberia, Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin. The author harbors no illusions about the true nature of Russian imperial intentions and the “conquistadors’” justification of horrific acts (genocide, hunger, enslavement, forced religious conversion) against local people. Kalinin sees the Russian advance into the east, including Japan, as a colonial imperial project driven for the sake of expansion. Kalinin does not address other factors targeted by historians of Imperial Russia to date, such as the demands of the Enlightenment Age for new discoveries, a new political economy, dynamism in the Russian public domain, or the emergence of a Russian national consciousness that intertwined with and became inseparable from Russian territorial consciousness. For that, I would refer readers to: Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930. Ed. by Jane Burbank / Mark von Hagen / Anatolyi Remnev. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Kalinin’s book therefore is of primary interest to people who are interested in the colonization of Siberia and the Far East. As a documentary source, it could also compliment G. Patrick March: Eastern Destiny: Russia in Asia and the North Pacific. Praeger Publishers, 1996.

Kalinin’s book takes a high-flying approach probably dictated by the sources it uses. It covers the period between the two main reigns of the century, Peter the Great (1682–1725) and Ekaterina the Great (1762–1796). Therefore, the dramatic confrontations between Russian captains and Japanese authorities between 1796 and 1810, which greatly antagonized Japan against Russia, are unfortunately omitted. More importantly, however, Kalinin’s book is among the few to suggest that the Ainu became intermediaries between the Russians and the Japanese. Traditionally, historians adhered to the position that the Japanese were afraid that they would lose influence over the Ainu people and their lands (the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin) to Russia, whose policies towards minorities, they believed, were more amicable than that of Tokugawa Japan. Albeit perhaps unaware of this scholarship, Kalinin challenges this view in stating that the Japanese and the Ainu never thought of the Russians as benevolent rulers. Instead, the negative view of Russians in Japan was largely informed by Ainu stories and what the Japanese on the borderlands witnessed themselves.

Many individuals are described in the book, but the most fascinating among them are the shipwrecked Japanese, whose subsequent stories are gripping. Some died of diseases, some were murdered by greedy Cossacks, some married Russian women and had children, and many moved to St. Petersburg, where they met the emperor Peter or Great Ekaterina. Most of the captured Japanese became Japanese language teachers – some of them baptized, some not – and almost none were allowed to return home. The author, however, leaves their stories half-told and one is left anxious to know more about these people and their fate. While this may be out of Kalinin’s scope, the book would have gained so much value if a more personal approach had been taken.

Be that as it may, for its sheer breadth of documentary sources and its attention to the understudied eighteenth century, rather than to the well-researched nineteenth century, Rossiia i Iaponiia is a valuable contribution to the study of Imperial Russian history.

Tatiana Linkhoeva, München