MOSCOW (Kyodo) -- A picture book published in Russia last year examines the experiences of Japanese civilians who were forced to leave Karafuto, located on the present-day Russian Far East island of Sakhalin, at the end of World War II, a subject that has received limited attention in the country.

Titled "Shard of Karafuto," the book depicts the friendship between a Japanese and a Russian girl and is set in Karafuto, the southern part of Sakhalin that Japan ruled until its defeat in 1945.

The story reflects on the displacement of Japanese residents following the Soviet invasion of the island in August that year.

The author, Elena Golovanova, lives in Ravenna in northern Italy and writes for Russian lifestyle magazines. She said the idea for the book began to take shape in 2021, when she returned temporarily to Russia.

While visiting a cafe in the central city of Tyumen, Golovanova noticed a tea bowl on display labeled "early 20th-century Japanese ceramics." She asked a cafe employee why a Japanese item was there and was told that such objects were being excavated in Sakhalin.

Golovanova later learned that everyday household items from the period of Japanese rule are still being found on the island, and that artists sometimes collect shards of the ceramics and transform them into decorative pieces.

Her interest in Karafuto was further influenced by conversations with her friend Miki Homma, who lives in Ravenna and is originally from Sapporo in northern Japan.

Homma told Golovanova that her father fled Toyohara, also on Sakhalin and now called Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, with his parents at the age of 9 during the Soviet invasion, eventually returning to Hokkaido.

When Golovanova mentioned the tea bowls found in Sakhalin, Homma reflected on her own family's past. "I think ours are probably buried somewhere too," she said.

Unable to put the subject out of her mind, Golovanova decided to create a picture book. She studied the history of Karafuto using documents and lectures before developing the story.

The book follows Ayako, an 8-year-old Japanese girl living in Karafuto at the end of the war. In the autumn of 1946, Soviet authorities order her family to evacuate within 24 hours. With little time to prepare and unable to take most of their belongings, Ayako buries her favorite teacup -- decorated with a rabbit -- in a forest, hoping she will one day return to retrieve it.

The story then moves forward several decades to the autumn of 2025. Ayako's granddaughter, Fumiko, travels to Sakhalin with her parents. There, she befriends a local Russian girl named Marina.

When the two girls part, Marina gives Fumiko a necklace made from a shard of ceramic she had found on the shore and kept as a treasured object. The fragment bears the image of a rabbit.

After returning home, Fumiko shows the necklace to Ayako. At the sight of the rabbit, Ayako's fingers tremble as she recognizes the design.

The book was published by the St. Petersburg-based publisher Polyandria. In a statement, the publisher described the work as portraying personal histories within a broader historical context, adding that the writing was carefully considered.

Golovanova said her own family history influenced the project.

Her grandmother was exiled from Russia to Central Asia in the 1930s during the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin.

"Unfortunately, refugees remain a major theme in the world, both past and present," Golovanova said. "I wanted to depict that."

(By Osamu Hirabayashi)