Japan plans to hold talks with Russia on possible visa-free visits by air to four disputed islands to help former Japanese islanders make trips more frequently and faster, according to a government source.
Japan hopes to introduce the plane trips to the islands — which Japan has claimed since the former Soviet Union's seizure of the territory at the end of World War II — by March 2018, the source said.
Former residents are only allowed to visit the islands in the summer by chartered ship, and voyages are sometimes canceled due to high waves.