Japanese fisher Tsuruyuki Hansaku was barely out of high school when he served 10 months in a Soviet Union prison, arrested at sea on his father’s boat for catching cod in what the Russians considered their territory.
The silver-maned resident of the northern Japanese fishing town of Nemuro, now 79, is still on edge because of the sway Moscow has over the fortunes of his family fisheries business, and of his hometown.
With Russo-Japanese relations unraveling over the invasion of Ukraine, no Japanese community has felt the fallout quite like far-flung Nemuro.
The concern this time is the fate of annually held talks