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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
It is Japan, but yet there is a difference somehow. Isabella Bird, 1878.
A whole history remains to be written of spaces — which would at the same time be the history of powers — from the great strategies of geopolitics to the little tactics of the habitat. Michel Foucault, “The Eye of Power”
Though Hokkaidō may seem a natural part of Japan, manacled to Tokyo as it is by law, by language, by economics, and by the 54 kilometer undersea Seikan Tunnel, Hokkaidō was not always Japan. Hokkaidō was not always Hokkaidō. Hokkaidō was modern Japan's first foreign conquest; its first colony in a deliberate imperial trajectory begun in 1869, concluded in 1945 and eventually encompassing vast tracts of East and Southeast Asia. The colonization of Hokkaidō took place in many ways, most especially through the catastrophic deculturation, dispossession and subjugation of the island's indigenous population, the Ainu. [1] Yet, the business of making Hokkaidō, “Hokkaidō,” of turning the island known as Ezochi, a wild untrammeled sort of place, into an integral part of modern Japan was also about space, about creations of space and about remaking local space in ways that delivered Ezochi up to Hokkaidō and surrendered Hokkaidō to Japan.
[1] See for example, Richard Siddle. 1996. Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan. London: Routledge and Brett L. Walker. 2001. The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
[2] See Dick Stegewerns. 2003. “The Japanese ‘Civilization Critics’ and the National Identity of Their Asian Neighbours, 1918-1932: The Case of Yoshino Sakuzo” Li Narangoa and R. B. Cribb, eds. Imperial Japan and National Identities in Asia, 1895-1945. London: Routledge, pp. 107-128. Also, Vivian Blaxell. 2008. “New Syonan and Asianism in Japaneseera Singapore.” The Asia-Pacific Journal, January 23.
[3] Quoted in Siddle, op.cit. p. 53.
[4] Kōno Tsunekichi. 1902. Kōno Tsunekichi-shi kengensho. [Memoriam of Kōno Tsunekichi], Nihon hokuhen kankei kyūki mokuroku, document held in the Hoppo Shiryoshitsu, University of Hokkaidō.
[5] Kōzen Noburu. 1978. Shisetsu kaitaku hangan Shima Yoshitake den. [The Life of Hokkaidō Colonization Commissioner Shima Yoshitake: An Historical View] Tokyo: Shima hangan kenshokai, pp. 38-39.
[6] Both poems translated into English by the author from a 1978 translation of the original poem into standard Japanese and found in Kōzen Noburu, op.cit. pp. 123-124.
[7] Aoi Akihito. 2005. Shokuminchijinja to teikoku Nihon. [Colonial Shrines and Imperial Japan]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, p. 93.
[8] Kawamura Hisashi, Katayama Kaori, Tamaki Shingo. 1999. “Sapporo-shi ni okeru toshi kōsō to hōi: Meiji zenki Hokkaidō ni okeru shokumintoshi sekkei shuhō ni kansuru kenkyū (sono 2)” [Town planning and direction in Sapporo: Research on the design techniques of colonial cities in early Meiji period Hokkaidō -No. 2] Summaries of the technical papers of the Annual Meeting of the Architectural Institute of Japan: Urban planning, building economics and housing problems. Vol 1999, pp. 261-262.
[9] Berque, Augustin. 1997. Japan Cities and Social Bonds. Yelvertoft Manor, Northamptonshire: Pilkington Press. Translated by Chris Turner, pp. 51-52. Berque insists, however, that though the go-board pattern of urban design originating in Kyoto was used in Sapporo, the urban plan itself was very much influenced by American urban planning principles and by American experts. There is no evidence for this. Shima's plan was developed and put into construction at least two years before the arrival of American expertise.
[10] Harvey, David. 1991. The Condition of Post-Modernity, London: Wiley Blackwell, p. 204.
[11] See: Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 2002. “Shokuminchi to shisō to imin: Toyohara no chōbō kara [Colonialism and migration: From the landscape of Toyohara] in Komoro Yōichi, et al. eds. Iwanami Kōza Kindai Nihon no bunkashi 6: Kakudai suru modaniti 1920-30 nendai 2 [Iwanami lectures on modern Japanese cultural history, 6: Expanding modernity in the 1920s and 1930s, 2) Tokyo 2002, pp. 185-204; K. Ono and J. Lea. 2001 “Colonial towns of the northern Marianas: Rediscovering the urban morphology of Saipan and Tinian “Seminar presented at the Resource Management in the Asia-Pacific Series, Research School of Asian and Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, 31 May 2001; Louise Young, Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, 248-250.
[12] Mentioned in Kōno Tsunekichi. 1902. Kōno Tsunekichi-shi kengensho.
[13] Quote attributed to Benjamin Smith Lyman, a geologist from Northampton, Massachusetts who surveyed Hokkaidō's mineral resources in the 1870s. Accessed July 8, 2008.
[14] See this link and numerous other websites such as this when 日本三大がっかり is used as a search term in Google.
[15] Kunishitei jyūyōnukazai Hōheikan [A National Important Cultural Property: The Hōheikan], Accessed August 27, 2008.
[16] Endō Akihisa. 1986. “Hōheikan saisetsu” [The Hōheikan Revisited] Summaries of the technical papers of the Annual Meeting of the Architectural Institute of Japan: Urban planning, building economics and housing problems. Vol. 1986, p. 1.
[17] Adachi was also the architect for the Nemuro Prefectural Government Office, which bears a remarkable resemblance in overall design to the Hōheikan. See Endō Akihisa. 1965. “Adachi Kikō bunsho ni yoru Nemuro kenchōsha” [The building of the Nemuro Prefectural Government Office as found in the archives of Adachi Kikō] Transactions of the Architectural Institute of Japan, extra summaries of technical papers of the annual meeting of AIJST, No. 40, p. 668. Accessed August 19, 2008.
[18] Endō Akihisa. 1961. “Kaitakushi goyōkai Adachi Kikō ni tsuite: Dai 1 hō Rireki to sono gyōseki no gaiyō.” [Concerning Hokkaidō Colonization Commission official Adachi Kikō: Report 1, An outline of his career and achievements] Nihon kenchiku gakkai kenkyū hōkoku. No. 56, pp. 75-83. Accessed August 20, 2008. Also Hōheikan - Seikatei, Sapporo bunko 15, Sapporo-shi kyoiku iinkai hen www.sapporobunko.jp Accessed August 17 2008. This website offers digitized publications about Sapporo authorized by the city government. The Japanese language software T-Time 5 is required to read the downloaded texts. And Zenkoku namae jiten at Accessed August 20, 2008.
[19] 2002. Colonialism and Landscape: Postcolonial Theory and Applications, Rowman and Littlefield, p. 9.
[20] See Brett L Walker. 2005. The Lost Wolves of Japan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, for an illuminating study of the fate of the Hokkaidō and Honshū wolves of Japan.
[21] 1993. Rice as Self: Japanese Identities Through Time. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[22] All information about Nakayama Kyūzō is taken from Kōno Tsunekichi. 1900. Nōgyō tokushisha Nakayama Kyūzō-ō jiseki torishirabe yōryō [Outline of the investigation into the agricultural contributions of Mr. Nakayama Kyuzo] a document held in the Hoppo Shiryoshitsu, University of Hokkaidō, and this site, Accessed December 3, 2007.
[23] [Link] Accessed July 1, 2009. Sum Kong Sut. nd. “Rice Cultivation in Japan and its Related Problems” Accessed July 1, 2009.
[24] Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. op. cit. p. 18.
[25] See The Production of Space, Wiley-Blackwell, 1992.
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