Japan’s Foreign Ministry dispatched officials to Moscow this week in an urgent bid to make contact with journalist Yuki Imai, arrested by Russia’s FSB security service on espionage allegations.
Imai, a correspondent for the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper, was arrested on October 14 in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin Island, with televised footage showing FSB officers forcing their way into his hotel room while he slept.
Russian authorities accused Imai of attempting to gather information on soldiers stationed near the Kuril Islands, a long-contested territorial flashpoint in Japan-Russia relations.
He was swiftly transferred to Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, where a court ordered pretrial detention until at least December 12, and the 34-year-old journalist faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, according to the International Federation of Journalists.
Japanese embassy officials in Moscow have been denied all consular access to Imai, and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has publicly condemned the arrest and rejected claims that he was operating as a spy.
Russian Ambassador Nikolay Nozdrev insisted Imai had been caught “red-handed,” according to the official TASS news agency, and claimed Japanese intelligence agencies routinely use journalists to collect classified information aimed at “undermining Russia’s security and defense capability.”
Veteran journalist and author Yoji Gomi, who has reported extensively across Asia, told DW that while Japanese journalists may occasionally meet with diplomats and “share thoughts and impressions,” the notion that reporters are paid spies is baseless.
“One-party nations often see foreign correspondents as spies because that is exactly what they use their journalists for,” Gomi said, adding that Imai’s location near sensitive areas housing North Korean laborers likely heightened Russian suspicion.
Stephen Nagy, a professor of international relations at Tokyo’s International Christian University, suggested Russia may be treating Imai as a bargaining chip for future prisoner exchanges, but warned that Tokyo is unlikely to yield to such pressure.
“They are going to resist because it means that Russia, or any other country, can then just seize a Japanese national, put them on trial for espionage and demand the release of one of their people,” Nagy told DW, calling such an outcome “a dangerous precedent.”
The arrest follows the detention in Japan and extradition to Germany of a member of the Russia-linked hacking group Qilin, in connection with a 2024 cyberattack on a logistics center.
Imai’s case draws comparisons to that of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested in Russia in 2023, sentenced to 16 years in a penal colony, and released in a prisoner exchange with Western nations in 2024.
Nagy further argued that Imai’s seizure was a deliberate move to pressure Tokyo, forming part of a coordinated effort with China to isolate Japan at a moment when Washington is distracted by domestic concerns and Middle East conflicts.
“Moscow and Beijing are coordinating to create the image that Japan is not a reformed member of the international community but still the military state of the 1930s and that it poses a threat to stability in the Indo-Pacific region,” Nagy said.
Tadashi Anno, a professor of politics at Tokyo’s Sophia University, said he believes Japan had worked hard to preserve stable ties with Russia even after joining international condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“Japan condemned the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 because it was a fundamental violation of international law, but Russia is only now pushing back hard,” Anno told DW, describing the timing as puzzling.
At the core of the deteriorating relationship is a decades-old territorial dispute over a chain of islands seized by Soviet forces following Japan’s surrender in World War II, known as the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils by Russia.
Diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute have faltered in recent years, compounded by Japan’s announcement that it would join the NATO initiative to provide nonlethal assistance to Ukraine.
In August, President Vladimir Putin visited the disputed islands, becoming only the second Russian leader ever to do so, and a Chinese business delegation was subsequently welcomed there as talks on economic cooperation advanced.
