ASIA : Japan Endures a New Russian Threat: Scavenging Sailors

“The Russians are coming.” It’s a warning that has been sounded with increasing frequency in this northern port city.

But it is not the nuclear submarines that roam the waters nearby nor the missiles in the Russian Far East that residents are worried about. It’s the Russian sailors who are coming to the city in growing numbers to deliver cargoes of canned crab, frozen salmon and cod roe. With little money to spend, some sailors have apparently turned to scavenging, stealing and bartering with smuggled goods to acquire products they can’t get at home.

“Whenever a big Russian ship comes in, we notice that things begin to disappear,” said Takeharu Kamata, a stationery store owner who heads the block watch group in a neighborhood near the port. “We tell people to be careful, not to leave their bicycles outside.”

So far, the incidents are seen as minor irritants, almost comic relief. “In the evenings you can see them on bicycles heading for their ship carrying worn-out tires and old car parts,” laughs a local reporter who has written about the problem in the national press.

Such stories, generally accompanied by comments on poverty in Russia, could be damaging to Russia’s stature and its relations with Japan.

Relations are already troubled as a result of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s last-minute decision earlier this month to cancel a state visit to Japan. Yeltsin complained that Japan was trying to take advantage of Russia’s economic problems to pressure it into returning four disputed islands north of here in exchange for increased aid.

Problems with Russian sailors have become noticeable in the last year as Russian freighter traffic has increased. In Aomori, 30 Russian ships came into port in the first eight months of this year, the same number as in all of 1991. As the number of sailors has increased, so have reports of missing car batteries, car mirrors and--in one recent case--winter clothes stored in a shed. There is even one tale of jeans having been picked off a clothesline in a port town nearby.

Aomori police say they have not arrested any Russian sailors in the act and are reluctant to accuse them directly. But police now carry Russian-language leaflets to explain that bicycles left unlocked on roadsides in the middle of the night may have owners and should not be taken.

In one Tokyo port neighborhood, 11 Russians have been apprehended and given warnings this year for taking bicycles and other items off the street, the Yomiuri Shimbun, a national circulation daily paper, reported last month.

Andrei Zhigulov, a ship engineer on a freighter just in from Kamchatka, is troubled by such talk. “Russians aren’t bad people,” he said. Nevertheless, he admits, the temptation may be too great for some young sailors. “Some young people want to live a more interesting life. They have nothing, and they see young people in Japan who own things they will never own.”

Japanese who have met Russian sailors usually come away impressed.

“They are very clean-cut,” said Tadashi Sasayama, a used-car dealer working in the nearby port of Hachinohe.

For some, the Russians have become big customers. Yuichi Kagaya, owner of an Aomori scrap yard, recently opened a used-car business to cater to Russian sailors. Whenever a Russian ship comes in, Kagaya sends a minivan to pick up sailors and take them to his yard, where several dozen cars are parked beside mountains of scrap metal.

So far this year, he has sold 182 cars this way. One recent weekday, a bus full of sailors went home with half a dozen cars--including a shiny red Honda Civic with just 35,000 miles on it, bought for under $400. The cars were loaded onto their rusted freighter. One sailor carried home a spare used bumper he bought for $24.

Customs officials complain that to pay for these products, Russian sailors smuggle in canned caviar and crab, leather coats and frozen cod roe. Kenichi Yamada, head of the Aomori customs office, says his people caught eight Russians this year trying to smuggle goods into Japan. “We never had this problem before,” he said.