| Summary: | The Hepburn system to romanize Japanese words and names is used in this paper, except that long vowels are not indicated with long marks. The names of Japanese individuals in the text are written in a Western format, whereas given names precede surnames. This is done so that consistency is maintained among all names mentioned in the work. The names of the Kurile Islands and Sakhalin Island are in accordance with Russian usage, as Russia current maintains sovereignty over the islands as recognized by the United States as well as most countries. In Russian, the spelling of the archipelago is Kuril; however, in most published material from the United States, Europe, and English material in Japan, the spelling is Kurile. The archipelago will be referred to throughout this work using the latter spelling in order to maintain consistency with the most dominant spelling method. Department of Geography
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