A Japanese Foreign Ministry official said the planned visit was unacceptable.
The visit by Ivanov, who is responsible for arms procurement and transportation in Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s government, will be a new step by Moscow to assert sovereignty over the four islands disputed between the two countries.
Ivanov said he was among the architects of a federal development program for the Kurile archipelago. The 56-island chain stretches from Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula to Japan’s northern main island Hokkaido.
“I want to check, along with a series of ministers, how it is being carried out on the ground,” Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
Soviet troops occupied the four islands off Japan’s Hokkaido at the end of World War Two, and they have remained in Moscow’s hands, preventing the two countries signing a peace treaty.
The visit would be the first from Moscow since an earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in March, devastating parts of Japan’s northeast coast and crippling a nuclear power plant. Russia sent emergency workers and aid following the disaster.
Japan’s Kyodo News Agency said earlier this week that Ivanov was planning on visiting two of the four disputed islands, known in Japan as the Northern Territories.
“We cannot accept the visit by Russian government officials to the Northern Territories,” a Japanese Foreign Ministry official said on Friday, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
President Dmitry Medvedev angered Japan last November when he became the first Kremlin leader to visit the remote islands, promising increased federal investment.
Medvedev later said Russia must deploy modern weaponry to ensure the islands’ security, and a visit in February by Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov rekindled Tokyo’s anger.
A visit by Japan’s foreign minister to Moscow weeks later brought no progress toward a resolution and the nations clashed over a Russian invitation to other Asian countries to invest in the islands.
Other senior officials have since visited the island chain, where Russia maintains an artillery base, though analysts say its equipment is in need of an overhaul.
Russia’s military has said the process of rearming the islands would start this year.
