Japan poised to impose sanctions on Russia over Ukraine

When Vladimir Putin was preparing for another shot at the Russian presidency a little over two years ago, he said he would give a command to Russian and Japanese officials: “hajime.”

After half a century of frosty relations with Moscow, the order to “start” — using a word employed in the Japanese martial art of judo, in which Putin is a black belt — was well received in Tokyo. Even more so when Shinzo Abe returned later in 2012 for his second tenure as Japan’s prime minister and ordered his...