Hokkaido

Hokkaido is the second-largest of Japan's four main islands and, together with its offshore islands, forms the country's largest prefecture by far. It is the only prefecture styled dō (circuit) rather than ken, a legacy of the colonial administration set up after the Meiji Restoration. The prefectural government sits in Sapporo, the fifth-largest city in Japan, and the territory is divided into fourteen sub-prefectural bureaus.

For most of history the island lay outside the Japanese state. It was Ainu Mosir, the land of the Ainu, whose hunting, fishing and trading culture developed from around the thirteenth century. Japanese presence was confined to the Matsumae domain on the southern tip until 1869, when the new government renamed the island, founded the Development Commission (Kaitakushi) and began a programme of settlement, agriculture and mining modelled partly on the American frontier.

Today Hokkaido supplies a large share of Japan's milk, wheat, potatoes, sugar beet, scallops and kelp, and draws visitors for powder snow, wide-open summer landscapes and wildlife found nowhere else in the country. Seven national parks lie wholly within it, and the Shiretoko Peninsula is a UNESCO natural World Heritage site.

Before 1869 the island was known in Japanese as Ezo or Ezochi, a term for the lands of the Ainu. The name Hokkaidō was chosen in 1869 on the proposal of the explorer Matsuura Takeshirō, who had suggested Hokkaidō (北加伊道), in which kai is said to echo an Ainu self-designation; the government adopted the characters 北海道, ‘northern sea circuit’, modelled on the ancient circuits (dō) such as Tōkaidō.

At the same time the island was divided into eleven provinces (Oshima, Shiribeshi, Iburi, Ishikari, Teshio, Kitami, Hidaka, Tokachi, Kushiro, Nemuro and Chishima), which added to the classical provinces of Japan but never served as domains. After the Development Commission was abolished in 1882, the territory was briefly split into Hakodate, Sapporo and Nemuro prefectures, then unified in 1886 as the Hokkaido Agency (Hokkaidō-chō). It became a full prefecture under the Local Autonomy Law of 1947. The Northern Territories (Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai islands) are claimed by Japan as part of Nemuro Sub-prefecture but have been administered by Russia since 1945.

Hokkaido is separated from Honshu by the Tsugaru Strait and from Sakhalin by the Sōya Strait, with the Sea of Japan to the west, the Sea of Okhotsk to the north-east and the Pacific to the south. A north–south chain of mountains forms the island's backbone: the volcanic Daisetsuzan massif at its centre, crowned by Asahi-dake (2,291 m), the highest peak in Hokkaido, and the Hidaka Mountains running south to Cape Erimo.

Between the mountains lie Japan's broadest plains. The Ishikari Plain, drained by the Ishikari River, holds Sapporo and most of the population; the Tokachi Plain in the south-east is the country's great field-crop and dairy district; and the Kushiro Marsh in the east is Japan's largest wetland. Volcanism has left a series of caldera lakes – Kussharo, Mashū, Akan, Shikotsu and Tōya – and active volcanoes such as Usu, Tarumae and Tokachi-dake. The offshore islands include Rishiri, Rebun and Okushiri.

Hokkaido has a cool, humid continental climate with long, snowy winters and mild summers, and it largely escapes the early-summer rainy season (tsuyu) that affects the rest of Japan. The Sea of Japan side, including Sapporo and Otaru, receives heavy snowfall from north-westerly winter monsoon winds, while the Pacific and Okhotsk sides are drier, sunnier and colder. From late January to March drift ice (ryūhyō) from the Amur estuary reaches the Okhotsk coast around Abashiri and Shiretoko, the southernmost sea ice in the northern hemisphere. The inland basins are the coldest places in Japan: Asahikawa recorded −41.0 °C in 1902.

People have lived in Hokkaido since the Palaeolithic. The Jōmon culture flourished here as in northern Honshu, and several of its settlement and ritual sites form part of a World Heritage listing. In place of the rice-growing Yayoi period, the island saw the Zoku-Jōmon, Satsumon and Okhotsk cultures, from which the Ainu culture emerged around the thirteenth century, with trade links to Honshu, Sakhalin and the Amur region.

From the fifteenth century Japanese traders settled on the southern Oshima Peninsula. The Matsumae clan obtained a monopoly on trade with the Ainu from Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1604, and increasingly unequal exchange led to armed resistance, most notably Shakushain's War of 1669. Russian expansion in the late eighteenth century prompted the shogunate to take direct control of Ezochi at times, and Hakodate was opened to foreign trade in 1859.

After the last shogunal forces surrendered at Goryōkaku in Hakodate in 1869, the Meiji government renamed the island and launched its colonisation. Farmer-soldiers (tondenhei), immigrants from across Japan and advisers such as William S. Clark built roads, railways, coal mines and farms; Ainu land and fishing rights were curtailed and assimilation policies imposed. After 1945 Hokkaido became a prefecture, hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics and was joined to Honshu by the Seikan Tunnel in 1988. Legislation in 2019 recognised the Ainu as an indigenous people of Japan.

Hokkaido's culture combines two strands. Ainu traditions – oral epics (yukar), embroidery, woodcarving, dance and a worldview in which animals, plants and tools are inhabited by kamuy (spirits) – survive and are being revived through museums such as Upopoy in Shiraoi and communities such as Nibutani in Biratori and Akan. Ainu place names underlie most of the map: Sapporo, Otaru, Shiretoko and Noboribetsu all derive from Ainu words.

The settler culture is younger and more uniform than that of old Japan: many towns were laid out on grids, and families trace their roots to Tohoku, Hokuriku and other regions. Winter shapes public life, from snow festivals and skiing to the local variant of the Hyakunin Isshu card game played with wooden cards. Hokkaido dialect (Hokkaidō-ben) is close to standard Japanese, with Tohoku influences along the coasts.

Hokkaido cooking rests on cold-water seafood and on the dairy, wheat and vegetable farms of the colonisation era. Crab, sea urchin, salmon roe, scallops and kelp (konbu, much of it from Rishiri, Rausu and Hidaka) are staples; butter, cheese and milk from Tokachi supply the whole country. Several dishes owe their existence to the settler period, among them grilled mutton, and each major city has its own style of ramen.

Hokkaido is Japan's largest agricultural prefecture by output, with farms many times the national average size, and leads the country in milk, wheat, potatoes, sugar beet, soybeans and adzuki beans. Fisheries – scallops, salmon, kelp, pollock and crab – and food processing are closely tied to this primary sector. Manufacturing is concentrated around the port of Tomakomai (paper, automotive parts, refining), while coal mining, once the backbone of towns such as Yūbari, has ended. Tourism, from skiing at Niseko to summer touring in Furano and the national parks, is a major employer. Population is declining and concentrating in Sapporo.