Sato Masaru’s views on the Russian-Japanese relations in the 1990s – 2000s within the context of his professional biography

Introduction. Paper examines the views on politics and politicians of a former diplomat, member of the Japanese MOFA “Russian school”, popular political analyst, author of more than 200 books and articles on politics, politicians and political thought, Sato Masaru. Methods and materials. The objective of this study is to extract the most relevant and illustrative ideas about politics and political behavior, expressed by a former diplomat, which relate to the essential characteristics and contents of the Russian-Japanese negotiations in the 1990s. The data sources for our analysis are the memoirs by Sato Masaru and his non-fiction texts (“The Self-Destructing Empire”, “The Art of Negotiating”, “State, God and Marxism”, “Russian-Japanese Diplomatic Relations: Northern Territories and Intelligence”). Analysis. Sato Masaru expresses uncommon views on Japanese and Russian political culture during the period of the rise of the Russian-Japanese relations in Post-Cold War era, which coincided with the “Lost Decade” depression in Japan in the 1990s and lasted for three decades. Moreover, Sato’s views illustrate the pragmatic approaches of the Japanese diplomatic machine towards the dialogue with Russia, while he obtained his information by observing members of elite groups of politicians in Moscow and Tokyo. In order to extract and study Sato’s most representative ideas, we have divided our text into four parts: (1) Sato Masaru’s professional biography, (2) his views on the structure of Russian and Japanese elite groups in relation to Sato’s diplomatic activities; (3) his assessment of the Putin-Abe dialogue in the context of the international situation. Results. The specific Sato’s views concerning Russian-Japanese relations in the Post-Cold War decades consist in (1) similarities between Russian and Japanese political cultures within the structure and behavior of elites, which are beneficial for a fruitful interstate dialogue; (2) assessment of the Putin-Abe ties in the 2010s taking into account Sato’s diplomatic experience in the 1990s and a panoramic view of international affairs under the Ukrainian crisis and sanctions during the 2010s.