GOOD Point by my wife: How come countries don’t buy and sell land to each other more frequently? It seems like it could help with budgets or simply putting land under more productive use. For example I bet Japan could do a lot with that big island just north of it (or even kamchucha)
Because selling off your land is probably the worst thing you could do. It’s about as short term as short term thinking gets. I’m not well versed in this area but I’m sure Russia regrets its sale of Alaska.
Alaska was sold cause Russian Empire couldn't hold the land and eventually would've lost it.
The islands north to Japan are important cause the access from sea ports to the ocean in winter. Plus, if they were Japanese, they'd have American bases there and there wouldn't be a way for the submarines to leave ports without being tracked.
A lot of that land is inhabited, or at least owned by citizens or companies. Pretty sure they would be against changing citizenship or losing their land.
And for government owned, uninhabited land: land is worth a lot more than its surface area. You can have natural resource of all kinds underneath – maybe some that are technically or financially not feasible to mine, yet, but may be in a few decades. (Just think of the massive oil fields in the arctic that'll soon be accessible to Canada and Russia)
If it's a coastal area it massively extends your country's EEZ – that's why there are a lot of border conflicts around tiny rocks in the ocean. That's also the prime reason why Russia will forever hang onto Sakhalin island. (Plus Japan already is not doing much with Hokkaido, I doubt they'd do anything worthwhile on Sakhalin except forestery and military areas).
