On a student exchange programme in St Petersburg in 2014-15, the lanky young Japanese man impressed Russian friends with his knowledge of their city and its literary legends, such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
“You are suspected of espionage,” a masked Russian officer says in a video released by the FSB. “V smysle?” a befuddled Mr Imai answers in Russian. “What do you mean?”
Imai yuki spent years learning to read Russian literature in the original. Mr Imai parlayed his language skills into a job covering Russia for the Hokkaido Shimbun, a regional newspaper from Japan’s northernmost big island. On October 13th operatives from the Federal Security Service (FSB) burst into his hotel room on Sakhalin, off Russia’s far-eastern coast, and handcuffed him.
Arresting a journalist for being a spy “probably means Russia is trying to get somebody home”, reckons Mr Gershkovich, the author of “This Cursed Beautiful Land”, a book about his experience and Russia’s hostage diplomacy. Officials speak openly about its status: “It may be time to fill up our exchange fund with European and American idiots in order to get our guys out,” Dmitry Medvedev, a former president turned attack dog, wrote days before Mr Imai’s arrest. In Russian, such detainees are referred to as aktivy (assets) in the country’s obmenny fond (exchange fund).
Talk of swaps has increased as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump explore a possible meeting at next month’s APEC summit in China: at Mr Trump’s request, Mr Putin last week released an elderly American held in Russian prison for four years.
For Russian spooks, Japan has long been an important posting, says Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russian intelligence: “You can’t really approach Americans in America, but you can try to recruit Americans there.” Russia may also see Japanese citizens as fungible aktivy. Several factors may explain Russia’s recent frostiness. Japan’s ongoing efforts to strengthen its armed forces , while focused on countering China, also have implications for Russia, which uses the Sea of Okhotsk as a bastion for nuclear submarines. So too does prime minister Takaichi Sanae’s push to build up Japan’s intelligence services .
American negotiators freed two Japanese nationals from jail in Belarus as part of prisoner exchanges last year.
