The history of official relations between Russia and Japan encompasses a period of a little more than one hundred and fifty years, but stretches back unofficially for at least double that amount of time. For both Russia and Japan, these relations have never been a key element of foreign policy, indispensable or intrinsically important for their diplomatic strategy. It is also noteworthy that for most of this time Russia and Japan were enemies, rivals, competitors. The significance of bilateral relations to a large extent was determined by geographical proximity, characterized as “distant neighbors.”