Moscow arrests a Japanese journalist. A warning to Tokyo — and a favour to China

First, there is the man on the floor, in what is presumed to be his hotel room, with three masked men holding him down. Then he is kneeling, handcuffed, in front of a Panasonic computer. Subsequent images show him being transferred and, finally, the young man behind bars. The video released yesterday by the Russian security services (FSB) via the TASS news agency documents in real time the arrest of a Japanese journalist accused of espionage. It is a show of force by the Kremlin, at a time when relations between Russia and Japan are at an all-time low. A few hours after the footage was released, the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, identified the journalist as Yuki Imai, a reporter for the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper who was working in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, in the south of Sakhalin Island. 

The last time Russia arrested a foreign journalist on espionage charges was in 2023, when it detained the American Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, who was released on 1 August the following year as part of a prisoner exchange. Imai was working on relations between Russia and North Korea, and was documenting the lives of North Koreans on the island of Sakhalin, the Russian territory north of Japan – the same oblast that also includes the Kuril Islands, which Tokyo refers to as the Northern Territories, and which, since the end of the Second World War, have remained at the centre of an unresolved territorial dispute between Moscow and Tokyo. His work also focused on the history of Japanese prisoners of war deported to the Soviet Union after 1945, a chapter that remains a sensitive issue in Japan’s historical memory. The FSB claims that the journalist was gathering information “relating to the country’s defence capabilities” on behalf of Japanese intelligence, and according to reports in the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper, Yuki Imai was arrested just before returning to Japan.

Yesterday, Moscow issued a public and disturbing warning to Tokyo, which, following the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, has fully aligned itself with Western sanctions against Russia, but is now going much further. Recently, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has sought to circumvent the restrictions imposed by Japan’s post-war Constitution, partly to increase direct aid to Kyiv – there has long been talk in Tokyo of beginning to supply Ukraine with weapons such as Patriot missiles, rather than just non-lethal equipment. In particular, over the past few weeks, while imposing new sanctions against Russia, the Japanese government has discreetly stepped up high-level visits and cooperation with Ukraine, especially in the areas of defence and intelligence sharing. In practice, whilst South Korea was sending one of its secret service officials to Moscow and then launching a fierce diplomatic attack against Kyiv, Japan was strengthening its position within the alliance of countries defending Ukraine, obtaining in return information on North Korea and on the tactics of modern high-tech warfare.

Putin’s Russia has punished this momentum, having previously issued warnings: this is how the Japanese press interpreted the Russian president’s visit on 12 August to Sakhalin, where he had observed exercises by the Pacific Fleet. The following day, Putin visited the Kuril Islands for the first time, stopping at Iturup, one of the four southern islands claimed by Japan. Yesterday, on the very same day as the Japanese journalist’s arrest, a delegation from the People’s Republic of China also visited Iturup. According to the Russian regional government of Sakhalin, the delegation included officials from the Chinese province of Heilongjiang and business representatives, interested in developing cooperation in sea urchin and sea cucumber aquaculture, as well as in tourism. This timing is notable: for roughly the past year, Beijing has been conducting an anti-Japanese propaganda campaign of unprecedented intensity, following Prime Minister Takaichi’s remarks that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could pose an existential threat to Japan. Meanwhile, journalist Yuki Imai faces up to twenty years in prison.