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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Many Japanese and others today understand Hokkaido as an ancient part of Japan, and do not know that the island was only formally absorbed in the mid-19th century. This article explains the process by which the island of Ezo was annexed by the Japanese in 1868 and renamed Hokkaido (“the path to the northern seas”). The Japanese also began transforming Ezo, now Hokkaido, in order to thoroughly incorporate the island into the new central polity. This transformation had dire consequences for the indigenous Ainu population. This article also introduces two Japanese laws that were ratified in the late 19th century: the Emigrant Protection Law of 1896 and the Hokkaido Former Natives Protection Law of 1899. “Enacted like bookends on the (First) Sino-Japanese War,” the latter was to have an especially serious effect on the livelihoods of the Ainu. Komori argues that Japan sought through those two laws to protect its territorial interest vis-à-vis the major Western colonial powers in two different places and ways. The Emigrant Protection law was legislated to encourage and also protect Japanese migrants who were rapidly moving into Hawai'i and other areas internationally while the Hokkaido law encouraged migration to Hokkaido by suppressing the Ainu.
1 [Translator's Note] Komori's essay first appeared in the book Media, hyosho, ideorogii: Meiji sanjyunendai no bunka kenkyu (Media, Representation, Ideology: A Study of the Culture of the Third Decade of Meiji), eds. Komori Yoichi, Kono Kensuke, and Takahashi Osamu (Tokyo: Ozawa shoten, 1997), 319-34. I would like to thank Kim Tongfi, Inoue Makiko, Masayuki Shinohara, and Leslie Winston for their invaluable help with this translation. A special thank you to Komori Yoichi for allowing us to include this essay in our volume.
2 [Translator's Note] In previous centuries Japanese were under the mistaken notion that Hokkaido was geographically close to Manchuria and Santan, an area in China. It is true that historically Ainu conducted what Japanese called “Santan trade” with various groups on Sakhalin for Chinese goods, such as silk and colored beads.
3 Kaitakushi nisshi 4 (Journal of the Development Agency 4) (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1987).
4 Hanasaki Kohei, “Ainumoshiri no kaifuku: Nihon no senjyuminzoku Ainu to Nihon kokka no taiainu seisaku” (The Restoration of Ainu Moshir: Japan's Indigenous Ainu and the Japanese State's Policies toward the Ainu), in Iwanami koza gendai shakaigaku 15: sabetsu to kyosei no shakaigaku (Contemporary Sociology Vol. 15: Sociology of Discrimination and Coexistence), ed. Inoue Shun et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1996), 93-108.
5 Takakura Shinichiro, Ainu seisaku shi (The History of Ainu Policy) (Tokyo: Nippon hyoronsha, 1942), 401.
6 Kaitakushi nisshi 2 (Journal of the Development Agency 2) (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1987).
7 [Translator's Note] Smith was a professor of chemistry and president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College from 1867 to 1879. He is most famous in Japan for his parting words, which were, according to legend, “Boys, be ambitious!”
8 Utari mondai konwakai (Ainu Issues Discussion Group), 1988.
9 Murai Osamu, “Kindai Nihon ni okeru nation no soshutsu” (The Construction of the Nation in Modern Japan), in Iwanami koza, gendaishakaigaku 24: minzoku, kokka, esunishitei (Contemporary Sociology Vol. 24: Race, the Nation-State, and Ethnicity), ed. Inoue Shun et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1996), 117-38.
10 Takakura, Ainu seisaku shi, 571.
11 [Translator's Note] This debate emerged out of a larger discussion of the “racial” origins of the Japanese. Tsuboi argued for the existence of a non-Ainu Neolithic people, based on his discovery of an Ainu legend that spoke of a “dwarf-like people” (kor-pok-un-kur in Ainu, koropokkuru in Japanese) who had preceded Ainu settlement, while Koganei suggested that the Jomon people, known through archaeological evidence, were in fact Ainu. See Richard Siddle's discussion in Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan (London: Routledge, 1996), 8184.
12 “Ainu no hanashi” (Stories of the Ainu), Kokumin shinbun (Kokumin Newspaper), Mar. 27, 1894 (emphasis added). [Translator's note: The interpolations “bear” and “salmon” appear in the newspaper article.
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