Hokkaido

• Japanese: 北海道 (Hokkaidô)

Hokkaidô is the northernmost of the four main islands of the Japanese archipelago and the northernmost prefecture in the country. Long existing on the borders of, or outside of, the Japanese state, the land of Hokkaidô (and surrounding islands) was long home to the Ainu and other indigenous peoples; while the Ainu referred to the territory as Ainu Mosir ("Ainu land") or Yaun Mosir ("the country land"), Japanese long referred to it as Ezo or Ezochi, a barbarian land.

In the Edo period, the Matsumae clan, based at Matsumae castle near the southern tip of the island, was the sole samurai clan handling relations with the Ainu. At times, they expanded their administrative efforts to organize extraction from Ainu fishing groups, and at times to assimilate the Ainu into Japanese ways. Japanese (Wajin) expansion into greater settlement of Ezochi and stronger administration of it came in large part in reaction to Russian expansion into the territory beginning in the 1790s.

Matsumae domain and the Tokugawa shogunate claimed control of the entire territory for brief periods early in the 19th century, but their de facto on-the-ground control was always rather less than total. The Empire of Japan (Meiji government) formally claimed and annexed the territory, however, in 1869, renaming it Hokkaidô ("Northern Sea Route") and establishing formal colonial settlement and land development efforts. Over the ensuing decades, the Ainu people were thoroughly dispossessed of their lands and livelihoods, and subjected to harsh assimilation policies.

History

The Jômon peoples who were the first inhabitants of the Japanese islands, going back as early as roughly 10,000 years ago, extended across nearly the entirety of what is today considered the Japanese archipelago, from Hokkaidô in the north to Okinawa and its immediately surrounding islands in the south. Some degree of interaction across the Tsugaru Strait - between Hokkaidô and Honshû - and quite possibly across longer distances within the archipelago, took place as early as this time.

Trade between Hokkaidô and the central parts of the Japanese state is documented in some of the earliest Japanese texts, including the Nihon shoki, Shoku Nihongi, and Engishiki. Japanese traded iron tools and other products for bear and sable furs, seal skins, bird feathers, kombu seaweed, and other natural products.

The Yamato state launched expeditions into Emishi ("barbarian") lands in northeastern Japan as early as the 7th century; though these largely took place in what is now considered the Tôhoku region of Honshû, Tôhoku at that time was in significant ways an extension of the same cultural area as Hokkaidô; these expeditions contributed to pushing the indigenous peoples north, out of Tôhoku and into Hokkaidô, as the Yamato state gradually expanded its influence over the region.