Meiji renamed Ainu Ezo into Japan’s northern prefecture
Hokkaido is Japan’s second-largest, northernmost main island and its own prefecture-region, split from Honshu by the Tsugaru Strait yet linked by the Seikan Tunnel railway. Sapporo, the capital, is the island’s only ordinance-designated city; Russian-held Sakhalin lies about 43 kilometres north.
Hunter-gatherers of the Jōmon culture lived here from more than 15,000 years ago, apparently without the warfare seen on Honshu, and their reverence for nature spirits may have shaped later Ainu belief. Yayoi farmers arrived about 2,000 years ago. Mounds at Ebetsu from the eighth and ninth centuries hold swords, beads and Sue pottery, pointing to early contact with the Yamato state. Islanders traded with Dewa Province and bought rice and iron while living largely by hunting and fishing.
Japanese outsiders called the island Ezochi. In the Muromachi era settlers fortified the southern Oshima Peninsula, and in 1457 Takeda Nobuhiro killed the Ainu leader Koshamain. His descendants became the Matsumae domain, holding exclusive trading rights with the Ainu through the Edo period. Shakushain’s revolt of 1669–1672 was the last big uprising, and after the Menashi–Kunashir rebellion was crushed in 1789 the line between Japanese and Ainu hardened. Fear of Russia, stirred by the Laxman expedition of 1793, drove the shogunate to take direct control of most of the island in 1855–1858.
After the Boshin War, Tokugawa loyalists under Enomoto Takeaki briefly held the island until their defeat in May 1869. That year the Meiji state annexed it and set up a Development Commission. Matsuura Takeshirō offered six names; officials settled on Hokkaido, written 北海道 in echo of Tōkaidō, with kai reflecting an Ainu word for the region. Tokyo prized its coal, timber and fish and saw colonisation as a buffer against Russia and a badge of modernity.
Settlers took Ainu land and pressed assimilation, and today Ainu language and customs are nearly gone. Hokkaido became a full prefecture in 1947, keeping the unique suffix dō. Activists have proposed Ainu names such as aynu mosir, land of the humans. Despite cold winters and heavy snow, the island ranks as a national breadbasket.
Source: Hokkaido
