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The islands are known in Japanese as the 千島列島 - Chishima retto (Thousand Islands Archipelago) or クリル列島 - Kuriru retto (Kuril Archipelago). The name originates from the autonym of the aboriginal Ainu: "kur", meaning man.

The Kuril Islands were inhabited by the Ainu from time immemorial until they were expelled from the northernmost by the Russians in the 18th century. Japan inherited them in 1875 ( Treaty of Saint Petersburg) in exchange for ceding Sakhalin to Russia. Russia reclaimed them after the WWII ( Treaty of San FranciscoThe Treaty of Peace between the Allied Powers and Japan was officially signed by 48 nations on September 8, 1951 in San Francisco, resulting in the popularly used moniker, the Treaty of San Francisco . It was enacted on April 28, 1952. The treaty served t), but Japan maintains a claim to the four southernmost islands, called Northern Territories in Japan (see Kuril Island conflictThe title of this article may have been inspired by Kuril Islands Conflict (video game). You may be looking for Kuril Islands Conflict. The Kuril Island conflict is a dispute between Japan and Russia over sovereignty over the four southernmost Kuril Islan).

The islands are renowned for their fogginess, but are rich in seaweed and marine life, such as fish and otters. The northernmost, Atlasov IslandAt latitude 50. 80N, longitude 155. 50E, Atlasov Island known to the Japanese as Oyakoba is the northernmost island of the Kuril islands, part of the Sakhalin Oblast in Russia. The Russian name is sometimes rendered in English as Atlasova Island or Ostrov (Oyakoba to the Japanese), is an almost perfect volcanic cone rising sheer out of the sea, and has led to many Japanese eulogies in haikuThis is the article on the ancient Japanese form of poetry. For the BeOS open-source recreation project, see Haiku (operating system). For the town in Hawaii, see Haiku-Pauwela, Hawaii. Haiku is one of the most important forms of traditional Japanese poet, wood-block prints , etc., extolling its beauty, much as they do the more well-known Mt. FujiMount Fuji ( Fuji-san is the highest mountain on the island of Honshu and indeed in all of Japan. It straddles Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures in central Japan just west of Tokyo, whence it can be seen on a clear day. It is surrounded by the five lakes.

The first information about the Kuril Islands was provided by Russian explorer Vladimir Atlasov in 1697. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Kurils were explored by Danila Antsiferov , I.Kozyrevsky, Ivan Yevreinov , Fyodor Luzhin , Martin Shpanberg, Ivan Krusenstern, and Vasily Golovnin.