Kurofune Zenya is a substantial historical work that examines intercultural contact in the North through the relations among Russia, the Ainu, and Japan. Looking before Perry’s Black Ships, it reconsiders encounters and conflicts around Hokkaido, the Kurils, and Sakhalin from a world-historical perspective.

It portrays the human history of Russia, the Ainu, and Japan crossing paths in the northern borderlands before Japan’s opening.