Hokkaido’s History: Introductory Reading

Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost major island, has only been a part of the nation of Japan officially since 1869. Its history is one of steady encroachment by Wajin (ethnic Japanese) settlers for hundreds of years, and interaction between those settlers and the island’s indigenous people, the Ainu. Long the target of Russia to the north, Hokkaido’s strategic importance and natural resources have made it a crucial part of the story of Japanese state-building. After Japan was ‘opened’ to western trade in the 1850s, Hakodate on Hokkaido’s southern peninsula became the site for much intermingling between peoples from all over the world. Hokkaido’s urban landscape today is made unique by European architectural influence, and its rural landscape in turn has been developed into American-style farms and pastures. Hokkaido’s multifaceted histories, therefore, can paint a picture of pioneering development, settler colonialism, international rivalry, culinary innovation, and/or perseverance against harsh conditions. It is, in my skewed opinion, one of the most interesting places in Japan. And yet, it can be difficult to know where to start for anyone who wants to learn about the history of Hokkaido. Beginner-friendly history books about Tokyo or Kyoto abound, as do more general histories of Japan that tend to focus further south, but you’re unlikely to see a book about Hokkaido history in a highstreet bookshops (Hokkaido Highway Blues, despite the name, is in fact about hitchhiking across the entire country). So, as I prepare to write about my experiences travelling through Hokkaido historical sites over the last two weeks, I thought I’d start with a short list of books that I think are enjoyable, and useful, for anyone who wants to learn about how Hokkaido became an important part of modern Japan.

Hokkaido: A History of Ethnic Transition and Development on Japan’s Northern Island by Ann B. Irish

There are only two recent books in English, to my knowledge, that give a readable overview of Hokkaido’s history in its totality. Ibrahim Jalal’s Hokkaido is fine, and certainly easier to find, but in my opinion it can’t hold a candle to Irish’s book. Despite not specialising in Japan or knowing Japanese, Irish’s Hokkaido is built on an impressive foundation of research and reading. It’s written to be an academic work, but in the interest of accessibility, copious footnotes and reference to historiography (the discussions historians engage in behind the scenes) are largely left out of the main text. The book, moreover, is highly readable and flows well, while delivering an impressively comprehensive history.

Another selling point is that Irish is more interested in organising her book thematically than chronologically. This means that, while Hokkaido is generally chronological, its chapters often cover the same period multiple times but from differing vantage points, providing a more complete image to the reader. For instance, in this way Irish manages to do what many authors don’t and highlight the intertwined but often separate stories of Japanese settlers and the indigenous Ainu, as well as looking at the same development practices through the eyes of both the settler, who often benefitted, and the Ainu, who more often suffered as a result. Moreover, I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read about the histories of Hakodate or Sapporo - few works focus entirely on either, but Irish dedicates an entire chapter to each. The thematic framing also allows readers to skip past any portions they find uninteresting.

Unfortunately Hokkaido is pricier than most on this list - Amazon Japan sells it for about ¥9000, nearly £50. However, university libraries are likely to have a digital copy, and some larger public libraries may as well.

Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by Isabella Bird

Unbeaten Tracks is a classic of Victorian travel literature. Isabella Bird travelled all over the world, and this book, adapted from letters to her sister, tells of her journey through Japan to the titular unbeaten tracks, the Hokkaido ‘wilderness.’ Bird travelled Hokkaido at a time when the island was still scarcely inhabited by Japanese, and she made the trek on horseback with a Japanese guide, staying at an Ainu village in today’s Biratori district. Since Bird was, unlike many fellow westerners in Hokkaido, not a scientist out to study the Ainu, her experiences of their hospitality and daily life are useful even today for historians.

Nevertheless, Bird’s travelogues were inevitably coloured by Victorian attitudes. She echoes Social Darwinist views, reports Japanese stereotypes about the Ainu as fact, and generally presents them as a ‘dying race’ with no capacity for change. The reader should therefore go into Unbreaten Tracks with a few things in mind. First, not only was Bird influenced by racism, she also, according to at least one historian, may have played up the more scientific racism in her book to legitimise herself in a male-dominated environment. And second, Bird was seeing an Ainu community only after years of population decline, exploitation by Japanese, and poverty, and her description of Ainu life should be taken as reflecting a community in crisis rather than how Ainu ‘traditionally’ lived. Nevertheless, with a bit of critical scrutiny, Unbeaten Tracks remains a fantastic snapshot of life in Hokkaido, for Japanese, Ainu, and westerners, at the tail end of the 19th century.

The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800 by Brett L. Walker

Brett Walker is a professional historian and his works are largely academic, so be prepared for some occasional jargon, and for every claim to be backed up with copious evidence and footnotes. Nevertheless, Walker also does a better job than most historians at making his work accessible, and this is no exception. He traces the processes by which Ainu became dependent on Japanese trade, forcing them to abandon sustainable traditional hunting patterns in favour of overhunting for trade that would ultimately decimate Hokkaido’s animal populations and cause severe suffering amongst the Ainu, the state of affairs that prevailed when Japan colonised Hokkaido wholesale during the Meiji Period (1868-1912). Also covered by Walker are the major examples of Ainu armed resistance to Wajin encroachment, including the famous Shakushain’s War, as well as the early incursions by Russia that made the Japanese polity begin to treat Hokkaido as a buffer zone.

Ultimately, though, Walker is an environmental historian, so his focus is on how humans relate to our natural environment. In this case, that means that Walker concentrates on how Ainu and Wajin hunting and trading practices affected wildlife and vegetation in Hokkaido, revealing conclusions that will interest any reader interested in the modern Climate Crisis.

The Lost Wolves of Japan by Brett L. Walker

The Conquest of Ainu Lands is an excellent book, but it’s one of Walker’s other books, The Lost Wolves of Japan, that stands out as one of my favourite history books ever. Wolves are extinct in Japan; we even know when and where the last one died, in Nara in 1905. But how they went extinct is something of an open question, and Walker presents this book almost like a detective novel, chronicling not only the history, but also his own journey, across Japan and across wolf territory in the United States, to find answers. He takes a refreshing approach by looking at history through the eyes of the wolves themselves - how did they feel about human encroachment on their lands? Can their howls and behaviours be used as historical sources?

While the book is not about Hokkaido, Hokkaido is where some of the Japanese state’s most concerted efforts to exterminate wolves took place. Walker describes in excellent depth how wolf extinction was tied directly to Japanese expansion, as they threatened new horse and cattle pastures on Hokkaido. Another fascinating question raised by this book is how we define a wolf; wolves and dogs have long been porous concepts in Japan, such that Ainu hunting dogs were often caught in the crossfire of what Walker describes as an outright war between humans and wolves. It’s as entertaining a story as it is a disturbing one.

Our Land Was A Forest: An Ainu Memoir by Kayano Shigeru

When you start learning about the Ainu, it doesn’t take long to hear the name Kayano Shigeru. A respected cultural leader and the first Ainu to sit in the national legislature, Kayano dedicated his life to preserving Ainu ways of life for posterity, and to their revival. This was often no easy task, as the Ainu language has only very recently been written down, and many traditions had never been documented in writing. It’s in large part because of Kayano, who tirelessly worked with elders in his community to record everything from the names and uses of tools to popular poems and stories, that we know so much about Ainu history today.

Kayano’s memoir is a rare first-person account of childhood and early life in 1930s Biratori, recounting how he and other Ainu were assimilated into Japanese society and pressured to abandon traditional lifeways. Memorable episodes include a time where his mother stumbled home after having far too much blood drawn by a researcher looking into Ainu racial properties, or that Kayano’s family had to practice religious rites in private for they were looked on as primitive by Japanese authorities. It’s a moving account by a giant in the story of Ainu cultural revival, and Kayano’s personal collection of traditional items is now housed at a museum in Nibutani.

Race, Resistance, and the Ainu of Japan by Richard Siddle

Sheffield’s own Richard Siddle, now retired, was a major player in the international community of scholars working on the Ainu. He was so prolific that even Japanese read the translation of this book as their introduction Ainu history. It is, certainly, an excellent overview of Ainu history going back hundreds of years. But Siddle’s primary focus is more specifically on how Japanese practices nearly erased Ainu culture, and how Ainu have since worked to keep their culture alive and spread awareness of it all over the world. He therefore dedicated much time to efforts to connect Ainu and fight for political rights, including recognition as an indigenous people of Japan, in the postwar period.

That this is an academic work is a double edged sword for non-specialists. On the one hand, it can be dense and tricky. But on the other, its chapters offer standalone arguments, meaning that the reader can pick and choose which they want to read without losing out on too much context. Regardless, I do think it’s worth giving the whole book a read, for it covers not only ‘traditional’ Ainu culture, but also the many disagreements, political conflicts, and particularities in the Ainu community today.

Golden Kamuy by Noda Satoru

Finally, this list couldn’t be complete without Golden Kamuy. Noda’s manga-turned-anime series follows a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War and a badass Ainu huntress as they pursue convicts from the feared Abashiri Prison across Hokkaido, in search of a hidden fortune. It’s often a very strange story, with some moments that are either uncomfortable or hilarious depending on the viewer, but I can’t deny that it’s quite good. It’s certainly popular; Golden Kamuy has fuelled much interest in Ainu culture and Hokkaido generally, prompting tourism and for Hokkaido organisations to plaster the characters everywhere.

What makes Golden Kamuy particularly good is that the author makes an effort to educate the audience about Ainu traditions, often in great detail. Ainu feature prominently in the story, a rarity in Japanese pop-culture. Also, the visual medium allows the audience to grasp more fully what Hokkaido looked and felt like in late-Meiji - and as far as I know, it’s largely accurate. So, if you’d like to learn a bit about Hokkaido while reading or watching an entertaining, action-packed story, I give Golden Kamuy my seal of approval.