Kuril Islands

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For the political history of the sovereignty conflict, see Kuril Islands dispute.

The Kuril Islands [[IPA|Template:IPA]] (Russian: Кури́льские острова́ Template:IPA) or Kurile Islands in Russia's Sakhalin Oblast region, stretch approximately 1,300 km (700 miles) northeast from Hokkaidō, Japan, to Kamchatka, Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the North Pacific Ocean. There are 56 islands in total.

The Kuril Islands are known in Japanese as the Chishima Islands (Kanji: 千島列島 / Hepburn Romaji: Chishima rettō Template:IPA, literally, Thousand Islands Archipelago), also known as the Kuriru Islands (Kanji: クリル列島 / Hepburn Romaji: Kuriru rettō Template:IPA, literally, Kuril Archipelago). The name Kuril originates from the autonym of the aboriginal Ainu: "kur", meaning man.

The islands were inhabited primarily by the Ainu and were being explored and settled by the Russians and Japanese in the 18th and 19th centuries. The border between the two empires was established in 1875, when Japan inherited the islands (Treaty of Saint Petersburg) in exchange for ceding Sakhalin to Russia. Russia reclaimed them after World War II (Treaty of San Francisco), but Japan maintains a claim to the four southernmost islands of Kunashiri, Etorofu, Shikotan, and the Habomai rocks, together called the Northern Territories (see Kuril Islands Dispute).

The Kuril Islands form a volcanic island arc as a result of plate tectonics and are home to over 100 volcanoes, about 35 of which are active. The Kuril Trench is an oceanic trench that runs about 200 km east of the Kuril Islands. The islands themselves are summits of stratovolcanoes that rise from the seabed. There are frequent earthquakes.Image:Kuril islands.png

The islands are renowned for their fogginess, but are rich in seaweed and marine life, such as fish and sea otters. The northernmost, Atlasov Island (Oyakoba to the Japanese), is an almost perfect volcanic cone rising sheer out of the sea, and has led to many Japanese eulogies in haiku, wood-block prints, etc., extolling its beauty, much as they do the more well-known Mt. Fuji.

Today, roughly 30,000 people (ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Tatars, Koreans, Nivkhs, Oroch, and Ainu) inhabit the Kuril Islands. About half of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the regional administration. Fishing is the primary occupation. The islands have strategic and economic value, in terms of fisheries and also mineral deposits of pyrite, sulfur, and various polymetallic ores.

While in Russian sources the islands are mentioned for the first time in 1646, the earliest detailed information about them was provided by the explorer Vladimir Atlasov in 1697. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Kuril Islands were explored by Danila Antsiferov, I.Kozyrevsky, Ivan Yevreinov, Fyodor Luzhin, Martin Shpanberg, Adam Johann von Krusenstern, and Vasily Golovnin.

From north to south, the main islands are: