Japan requires consular access to journalist arrested for espionage in Russia

O spokesperson for the Japanese Government, Minoru Kihara, said today that Tokyo demanded consular access to Russia for a Japanese journalist arrested on charges of espionage at a time of deterioration of bilateral relations.

The Director-General of European Affairs of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kimitake Nakamura, made a formal request in Moscow “requiring a rapid consular visit to the Japanese citizen arrested and his immediate release,” Kihara said at a press conference.

Nakamura met on Tuesday in the Russian capital with a Russian diplomat, Lyudmila Georgievna Vorobyova, a meeting in which, according to Kihara, “several bilateral issues pending in the current context” were addressed.

Although the spokesman avoided going into details about the talks, he acknowledged that relations between Russia and Japan “pass through a complex situation”.

On October 13, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported that journalist Yuki Imai of the newspaper Hokkaido Shimbun was accused of “performing espionage activities in Russian territory.”.

In response, Tokyo called on the Russian ambassador to protest detention, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called for “fair and impartial treatment”.

Two days later, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi denied any espionage activity in Russia after the arrest by Moscow of a Japanese journalist accused of espionage.

“There is no such fact,” Takaichi told journalists in response to a question about Russian accusations.

“ The protection of Japanese citizens is extremely important at the moment, and we intend to focus our efforts on this goal,” he added.

In recent years, Russia has detained several citizens of countries it considers hostile, accusing them of working for Western secret services.

Takaichi stated that the details of the charges are vague. “The national legislation of each country is different, so we do not yet know the details of what they call ‘allegation’,” said the head of the Japanese Government. “However, Japan will firmly defend its own position,” he added.

The Russian security service FSB previously indicated that a Japanese citizen was detained on the island of Sakhalin, in the Russian extreme east, near a disputed archipelago, without revealing the identity of the person.

The FSB pointed out that this person had worked for the Japanese secret services in order to gather information about Russia's defense.

Moscow and Tokyo have been involved for decades in a territorial dispute regarding the status of an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, off the northeast coast of Japan and southwest of the Russian region of Sakhalin.