Slavic Research Center News no12 (10)

Annual Newsletter of the Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University		SRC Home
	No.12 , December 2004	back to INDEX>>

From the Director	Japan Consorthium fro Area Studies and the 21st Century Program	SRC Winter Symposium 2004 (Jan.)	SRC Summer Symposium 2004	International Symposium: Where Are Slavic Eurasian Studies Headed in the 21st Century?		International Conference, "The Status Law Syndrome"
Agreement with the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre of the University of Oxford Program		Foreign Visitors Fellowship Program	The 21st Century COE Foreign Visitors Fellowship Program	Obituary	Commemorative Lecture and Farewell Party for Professor INOUE Koichi's Retirement		Welcoming Mr. MAEDA Hirotake
Our Current Staff	Ongoing Cooperative Research Projects	Guest Lectures from Abroad	Visitors from Abroad	Publications (2003-04)	The Library	Web Site Access Statistics	At a Memorial Party

Essays

INOUE Koichi

Victor Shnirelman

Paul Werth

Obituary

Professor MURAKAMI Takashi Passed away on July 13, 2004 from Pancreatic Cancer at the Age of Sixty-Two.

Professor Murakami was born in a small village in Nagano prefecture in 1942. After he graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo in 1969, he began to work at the Japan Association for Trade with the Soviet Union & Socialist Countries of Europe (SOTOBO), where he worked with Mr. OGAWA Kazuo (1935–2002) and gradually became one of the top specialists in Japan in the field of the Soviet industry and mining, and Japanese–Soviet economic relations. In 1988 Mr. Murakami was nominated as a chief of the economic studies department of SOTOBO, and when the Institute for Soviet & East European Economic Studies was established in 1989, he became a chief of the economic studies department of that institute (In 1992 SOTOBO was renamed as the Japan Association for Trade with Russia & Central-Eastern Europe (ROTOBO) and its institute as the Institute for Russian & East European Economic Studies).

In 1994 he was nominated as a professor of the Slavic Research Center of Hokkaido University. Since then he had made a great contribution to the various research projects carried out by the SRC and he worked as the Director of the SRC in 2000–2002.

During these years he accomplished the following two big studies. First, in the period 1998–2000 he organized a joint project, entitled "Interdisciplinary Studies on the 'Economic Development and the Environment' of the Sakhalin Offshore Oil and Gas Field." "Interdisciplinary" means that not only the scholars in social and human sciences, but also those in the natural sciences participated in this project. He was one of the first who pointed out the possibility of water pollution being caused by the Sakhalin offshore field development. He organized a number of seminars and lectures on this problem for citizens living in coastal cities along the Okhotsk and Japan seas.

Second, he conducted historical research on the Kita-Karafuto (Northern Sakhalin) oil concession, which was granted to Japan in 1925 in the tense atmosphere of the Russian Far East after the Russian Revolution and continued to be worked until 1944. He utilized an enormous quantity of materials from both Japanese and Russian archives, including the Russian State Archive of the Economy (RGAE), the State Archive of Sakhalin Oblast (GASO) and the Sakhalin Center for Documentation on Contemporary History (STsDNI). Especially, he took advantage of unused materials of the RGAE that were made available thanks to the joint project of the Institute of Economic Research of Hitotsubashi University and the RGAE.

Last December, he was informed by a doctor that he had pancreatic cancer and would not live longer than a year. Nevertheless, he persisted in completing the study on the Sakhalin concession. He continued his work on his sickbed and published a thick book, Kita-Karafuto (Northern Sakhalin) Oil Concession 1925–1944, in June. In the same month he was granted a doctoral degree from Hokkaido University on this pioneering research.

We are sincerely grateful for his distinguished contribution to the development of our Center and pray that his soul may rest in peace.

TABATA Shinichiro

Major publications of Professor Murakami:

Kita-Karafuto (Northern Sakhalin) Oil Concession 1925–1944, Sapporo: Hokkaido University Press, 2004. (in Japanese)
(Ed.) Sakhalin Offshore Oil and Gas Development and Environmental Protection, Sapporo: Hokkaido University Press, 2003. (in Japanese)
(Ed. with S. Tabata) Russian Regions: Economic Growth and Environment, Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, 2000.
"The Present Situation and Future Problems of Energy Production in the Russian Far East," in T. Akaha ed., Politics and Economics in the Russian Far East, 110–119, 1997.
(With T. Akaha) "Soviet/Russian-Japanese Economic Relations," in T. Hasegawa, J. Haslam and A.C. Kuchins eds., Russia and Japan: An Unresolved Dilemma between Distant Neighbors, 161–186, 1993.
(With K. Saisyu) The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the World Energy Crisis, Tokyo: PHP, 1992. (in Japanese)
(With K. Ogawa) Awakening Soviet Far East: the Role of Japan, Tokyo: Nihonkeizaihyoronsha, 1991. (in Japanese)
(With K. Ogawa) Agriculture and Agricultural Trade of the USSR, Tokyo: Kyoikusha, 1979. (in Japanese)