 The first Japanese person to settle in Russia is believed to have been Dembei, a fisherman stranded on the Kamchatka Peninsula in 1701 or 1702.Unable to return to his native Ōsaka due to the Tokugawa Shogunate's "sakoku" policy, he was instead taken to Moscow and ordered by Peter the Great to begin teaching the language as soon as possible; he thus became the father of Japanese language education in Russia.Japanese settlement in Russia remained sporadic, confined to the Russian Far East, and also of a largely unofficial character, consisting of fishermen who, like Dembei, landed there by accident and were unable to return to Japan.