Colonisation of Hokkaido

The colonisation of Hokkaido was the process from around the fifteenth century by which the Yamato Japanese took control of Hokkaido and subjugated and assimilated the indigenous Ainu people, which had developed from around the thirteenth century. The process of colonisation began with the trading of fish, furs, and silk between Japan and the Ainu. Despite rebellions against increasing Japanese influence in 1669 and in 1789, their control of the island steadily increased: by 1806, the Tokugawa shogunate directly controlled southern Hokkaido.

In 1869, just after the start of the Meiji era, a development commission was set up to encourage Japanese settlement on Hokkaido. Colonisation was seen as a solution to multiple problems: it would solve mass unemployment among the former samurai class, provide natural resources needed for industrialisation, ensure a defence against an expansionist Russian Empire, and increase Japan's prestige in the eyes of the West. American advisors were heavily involved in guiding and organising the process. The traditional Ainu subsistence lifestyle was replaced by large-scale farming and coal mining, with the native Ainu, along with political prisoners and indentured, Koreans, women and children, forced to provide labour.

Colonisation dispossessed the native Ainu people of their lands and property. Widespread discrimination enforced against them, including their forced relocation into mountain areas and the prohibition of the use of the Ainu language, had the eventual aim of the extinction of Ainu culture and its replacement by Japanese culture. The process of colonisation and the resultant discrimination has been systematically denied or ignored by Japanese society.

From around the 13th century an identifiable Ainu culture developed and replaced the previous Satsumon and Okhotsk cultures in Hokkaido.^[1][2] It was also during this period that economic contact between the Yamato of Honshū and Ainu of Hokkaido began.^[1] The Yamato viewed the Ainu as "barbarians",^[3][4] with the contemporaneous Japanese name for the island of Hokkaido, Ezochi, meaning either "land of the barbarians" or "the land for people who did not obey the government."^[5][6][7] The Ainu called the territory they inhabited Ainu Moshiri meaning "land of humans/land of the Ainu".^[8][9][10]

Before the colonisation of Hokkaido, the Yamato and early Japanese polities took control of the region of northern Honshū inhabited by the Emishi people.^[11][12]

By the fifteenth century Yamato trading settlements had been established around the Oshima peninsula in southern Hokkaido.^[13] Fighting between the Ainu and Yamato began in 1456, leading to the destruction of many of the trading settlements.^[14] Through the sixteenth century the Yamato engaged in a campaign of inviting Ainu leaders and elders to peace talks, at which the Ainu were ambushed and killed.^[14] During this time the Kakizaki family took a leading role in the Yamato settlers on southern Hokkaido, establishing a monopoly of trade with the Ainu.^[14][15]

In 1599 the Kakizaki family took the name Matsumae.^[14][18] The Tokugawa shogunate officially granted the Matsumae clan exclusive rights to trade with the Ainu in the northern part of the island.^[19] Later, the Matsumae began to lease out trading rights to Japanese merchants, and contact between Japanese and Ainu became more extensive. Throughout this period, Ainu groups competed with each other to import goods from the Japanese, and epidemic diseases such as smallpox reduced the population.^[20][21]

In 1635, Matsumae Kinhiro, the second daimyō of the Matsumae Domain in Hokkaido, sent Murakami Kamonzaemon, Sato Kamoemon, and Kakizaki Hiroshige on an expedition to Sakhalin.^[22] One of the Matsumae explorers, Kodō Shōzaemon, stayed on the island during the winter of 1636 and sailed along the east coast to Taraika in the spring of 1637.^[23] From 1669 to 1672, Ainu chieftain Shakushain led a rebellion against the Matsumae clan.^[24] The rebellion began as a fight for resources between Shakushain's people and a rival Ainu clan in the Shibuchari River basin, ending up as a war between the Matsumae and an Ainu led coalition seeking to regain direct trading rights with Honshū.^[25] The rebellion was eventually quashed, with the Shogun rewarding the Matsumae for this result.^[26] Brett Walker highlights the rebellion as a watershed moment in the history of the Japanese conquest of Hokkaido,^[27] as it solidified the future involvement of Japanese state powers in colonising Hokkaido instead of it being left to the local Matsumae clan.^[27]

Through the Edo period the Matsumae developed the fishing industry in Hokkaido, where Japanese merchants oversaw Ainu fishers whos catch was processed and sold to the Japanese of Honshu.^[28] The Ainu working in this industry were forced into it, and subjected to rampant exploitation.^[28] The development of this industry also had wider ecological impacts, disrupting the subsistence fishing that many Ainu relied upon.^[29]

From 1669, the Matsumae had ships conduct trade with southern Sakhalin, while also exploring the island for exploitable resources.^[30] In an early colonisation attempt, a Japanese settlement called Ōtomari, was established by the Matsumae on Sakhalin's southern end in 1679, to control trade with the Ainu and Nivkh who lived on Sakhalin,^[31] though trade on the island was still dominated by the Qing dynasty until the 1790s.^[32]

In the 1780s, the influence of the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate on the Ainu of southern Sakhalin increased significantly.^[33] By the beginning of the 19th century, the Japanese economic zone extended midway up the east coast, to Taraika.^[34] With the exception of the Nayoro Ainu located on the west coast in close proximity to China, most Ainu stopped paying tribute to the Qing. The Matsumae clan was nominally in charge of Sakhalin, but they neither protected nor governed the Ainu there.^[35] Instead they extorted the Ainu for Chinese silk, which they sold in Honshū as Matsumae's special product. To obtain Chinese silk, the Ainu fell into debt, owing much fur to the Santan (Ulch people), who lived near the Qing office. The Ainu also sold the silk uniforms (mangpao, bufu, and chaofu) given to them by the Qing, which made up the majority of what the Japanese knew as nishiki and jittoku. As dynastic uniforms, the silk was of considerably higher quality than that traded at Nagasaki, and enhanced Matsumae prestige as exotic items.^[36] Eventually the Tokugawa government, realising that they could not depend on the Matsumae, took control of Sakhalin in 1807.^[37]

Mogami's interest in the Sakhalin trade intensified when he learned that Yaenkoroaino, the above-mentioned elder from Nayoro, possessed a memorandum written in Manchurian, which stated that the Ainu elder was an official of the Qing state. Later surveys on Sakhalin by shogunal officials such as Takahashi Jidayú and Nakamura Koichiró only confirmed earlier observations: Sakhalin and Sóya Ainu traded foreign goods at trading posts, and because of the pressure to meet quotas, they fell into debt. These goods, the officials confirmed, originated at Qing posts, where continental traders acquired them during tributary ceremonies. The information contained in these types of reports turned out to be a serious blow to the future of Matsumae's trade monopoly in Ezo.^[38]

In 1789 a further Ainu rebellion occurred on the Shiretoko Peninsula in northeastern Hokkaido due to labour exploitation of the Ainu working in fisheries.^[39][40][41]

From 1799 to 1806, the shogunate took direct control of southern Hokkaido.^[42] The shogunate moved the seat of the government in Ezochi from Matsumae to Hakodate in 1802.^[43] Japan proclaimed sovereignty over Sakhalin in 1807, and in 1809 Mamiya Rinzō was claimed that it was an island.^[44][45] During this period, Ainu women were separated from their husbands and either subjected to rape or forcibly married to Japanese men.^[46] Meanwhile, Ainu men were deported to merchant subcontractors for five- and ten-year terms of service. Policies of family separation and assimilation, combined with the impact of introduced diseases such as smallpox and venereal diseases,^[47] caused the Ainu population to drop significantly in the early 19th century.^[48] In the 18th century, there were 80,000 Ainu,^[49] but by 1868, there were only about 15,000 Ainu in Hokkaido, 2,000 in Sakhalin, and around 100 in the Kuril Islands.^[50]

Despite their growing influence in the area in the early 19th century as a result of these policies, the Tokugawa shogunate was unable to gain a monopoly on Ainu trade with those on the Asian mainland, even by the year 1853. Santan traders, a group composed mostly of the Ulchi, Nanai, and Oroch peoples of the Amur River, commonly interacted with the Ainu people independent of the Japanese government, especially in the northern part of Hokkaido.^[51][52] In addition to their trading ventures, Santan traders sometimes kidnapped or purchased Ainu women from Rishiri to become their wives. This further escalated Japan's presence in the area, as the Tokugawa shogunate believed a monopoly on the Santan trade would better protect the Ainu people.^[51][53]

Shortly after the Boshin War in 1868, a group of Tokugawa loyalists led by Enomoto Takeaki temporarily occupied the island (the polity is commonly but mistakenly known as the Republic of Ezo), but the rebellion was defeated at the end of the Battle of Hakodate in June 1869.^[21] Through colonial practices, Ezochi was annexed into Japanese territory, and officially in 1872.^[54]

In 1869 the Development Commission (開拓使, Kaitakushi) was established by the Meiji government, with the goal of encouraging Japanese settlers to Hokkaido.^[55] Mainland Japanese settlers began migrating to Hokkaido, leading to Japan's colonisation of the island.^[56] Motivated by capitalist and industrial goals, the Meiji government forcefully appropriated fertile land and mineral-rich regions throughout Hokkaido, without consideration for their historical Ainu inhabitancy.^[57][58] The Meiji government implemented land seizures and enacted land ownership laws that favoured Japanese settlers, effectively stripping Ainu people of their customary land rights and traditional means of subsistence.^[57]

After 1869, the northern Japanese island was known as Hokkaido, which can be translated to "northern sea route,"^[59][60][61] and regional subdivisions were established, including the provinces of Oshima, Shiribeshi, Iburi, Ishikari, Teshio, Kitami, Hidaka, Tokachi, Kushiro, Nemuro and Chishima.^[62] This is viewed as the beginning of the Empire of Japan,^[63] with the tactics and lessons learned later deployed in the Japanese colonisation of Korea and Taiwan.^[64]

Japanese proponents of colonisation argued that the colonisation of Hokkaido would serve as a strategic move to enhance Japan's standing and influence on the global stage, particularly in negotiations with Western powers, specifically the Russian Empire.^[65] It was known as "colonisation" (拓殖, takushoku) at the time, but later by the euphemism "opening up undeveloped land" (開拓).^[66] The Meiji government invested heavily in colonising Hokkaido for several reasons.^[67] Firstly, they aimed to assert their control over the region as a buffer against potential Russian advances.^[67][68] Secondly, they were attracted to Hokkaido's rich natural resources, including coal, timber, fish, and fertile land.^[67] Lastly, since Western powers viewed colonial expansion as a symbol of prestige, Japan viewed the colonisation of Hokkaido as an opportunity to present itself as a modern and respected nation to Western powers.^[67] Researcher Katarina Sjöberg quotes Yūko Baba's 1980 account of the Japanese government's reasoning:

... The development of Japan's large northern island had several objectives: First, it was seen as a means to defend Japan from a rapidly developing and expansionist Russia. Second ... it offered a solution to the unemployment for the former samurai class ... Finally, development promised to yield the needed natural resources for a growing capitalist economy.^[69]

The Japanese failed to settle in the interior lowlands of the island because of Ainu resistance.^[70] The resistance was eventually destroyed, and the lowlands were under the control of the commission. The most important goal of the Japanese was to increase the farm population and to create a conducive environment for emigration and settlement.^[71] However, the Japanese did not have expertise in modern agricultural techniques, and only possessed primitive mining and lumbering methods.^[71][72] Thus Japan looked to American experts and technology to aid in the settler-colonisation of Hokkaido.^[73] Through the 1870s the Japanese government issued ordinances declaring all fauna and flora on Hokkaido property of the Crown, curtailing the Ainu's hunting and fishing.^[74][75]

From the 1870s to the 1880s, Japanese leaders placed their efforts on settling Hokkaido by systematically migrating former samurai lords and retainers who had been effected by the political changes of the Meiji restoration, and farmers and peasants who had been negatively impacted by the land tax reform of 1873, providing them with "free" land and financial assistance.^[73][68] This transformation was facilitated with the expertise of American advisors who introduced various colonisation technologies, transforming Hokkaido into land suitable for Japan's capitalist aspirations.^[76]

Japanese leaders and colonial officials drew inspiration from American settler-colonialism during their diplomatic visits to the United States.^[67][77] This included declaring large portions of Hokkaido as ownerless land, providing a pretext for the dispossession of the Ainu people.^[67][57]

Kuroda Kiyotaka was put in charge of the project of colonisation,^[71] travelling to the United States to recruit Horace Capron, President Ulysses S. Grant's commissioner of agriculture. From 1871 to 1873 Capron bent his efforts to expounding Western agriculture and mining, with mixed results.^[72] Frustrated with obstacles to his efforts, Capron returned home in 1875.^[78] In 1876, William S. Clark arrived to found an agricultural college in Sapporo.^[79] Although he only remained a year, Clark left a lasting impression on Hokkaido, having inspired the Japanese with his teachings on agriculture as well as Christianity.^[80] His parting words, "Boys, be ambitious!", can be found on public buildings in Hokkaido to this day.^[81][82] The population of Hokkaido increased from 58,000 to 240,000 during that decade.^[83]

Kuroda hired Capron for $10,000 per year and paid for all expenses related to the mission.^[84] Kuroda and his government were likely intrigued by Capron's previous colonial experience, particularly his involvement in the forced removal of Native Americans from Texas to new territories after the Mexican–American War.^[85] Capron introduced capital-intensive farming techniques by adopting American methods and tools, importing seeds for Western crops, and bringing in European livestock breeds, which included his favourite North Devon cattle.^[73][58] He founded experimental farms in Hokkaido, conducted surveys to assess mineral deposits and agricultural potential, and advocated for improvements in water access, mills, and roads.^[73]

After the Meiji colonisation of Hokkaido, Meiji Japan depended on prison labour to accelerate the colonisation process.^[86] The Japanese built three prisons and rendered Hokkaido a prison island, where political prisoners were incarcerated and used as prison labour.^[86] During the opening ceremony of the first prison, the Ainu name "Shibetsuputo" was replaced with the Japanese name "Tsukigata," as an attempt to "Japanise" Hokkaido's geography.^[86] The second prison opened near the Hokutan Horonai coal mine, where Ainu people were forced to work.^[86] Cheap prison labour played an important role in coal and sulphur mining, as well as road construction in Hokkaido.^[86] Eventually, several types of indentured labour, Korean labour, child labour and women labour replaced the convict labour in Hokkaido.^[86] Working conditions were difficult and dangerous.^[86] Japan's transition to capitalism depended heavily on the growth of the coal mining sector in Hokkaido,^[86] with its importance increasing throughout World War I, and the mines requiring larger and larger amounts of labourers.^[86]

As a result of the 1875 Treaty of Saint Petersburg, Japanese-administered Sakhalin was given to Russia,^[87] while the Kuril Islands—along with their Ainu inhabitants—came under Japanese administration.^[88][89][90] The Japanese authorities did not trust the Ainu of the formerly Russian controlled Kuril Islands to be loyal to Japan, and so forcefully displaced them from the islands to Hokkaido where they were expected to work as farmers for Japanese landlords.^[91]

During the transfer of Sakhalin, Japan forcefully relocated over 800 Sakhalin Ainu to Hokkaido.^[92]

The Meiji government embarked on assimilation campaigns aimed not only at assimilating the Ainu but also eradicating their language and culture entirely.^[57] They went from being a relatively isolated group of people to having their land, language, religion, and customs lost and eroded.^[93][94] They were also forced to take on Japanese names.^[9]

The 1899 Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act further marginalised and impoverished the Ainu people by forcing them to leave their traditional lands and relocating them to the rugged, mountainous regions in the center of the island.^[95] The act prohibited the Ainu from fishing and hunting,^[96][97] which were their main sources of subsistence.^[98][99] The act also impacted the education of Ainu children, where in 1899 22.5% of Ainu children attended Japanese schools, while by 1909, 89.8% of Ainu children were in Japanese schools.^[100][101] It was in 1901 that education of and in the Ainu language and the use of Ainu in schools was formally prohibited with the Education Code for Hokkaido Ainu.^[102] This forced enculturation was a colonial policy that led to a dramatic reduction in use of the Ainu language, and its replacement by Japanese.^[103] The ultimate goal of such policies was to cause the Ainu to cease to exist as an ethnically distinct group.^[104]

A view of the Ainu as being a "backward" people in need of "civilising" provided the basis for assimilation polices,^[105][100] with the Ainu receiving the designation of "former aborigines".^[106][107] The Ainu were valued primarily as a source of inexpensive manual labour, and discriminatory assimilation policies further entrenched their sense of inferiority as well as worsened poverty and disease within Ainu communities.^[108] These policies exacerbated diasporic trends among the Ainu population, as many sought employment with the government or private enterprises, often earning meagre wages that barely sustained their families.^[57][109] This trend was seen especially among younger Ainu.^[110]

Facing pervasive stigma, many Ainu concealed their heritage.^[9] Given the Meiji state's full political control over the island, the subsequent subjugation of its indigenous inhabitants, aggressive economic exploitation, and ambitious permanent settlement endeavours, Hokkaido emerged as the sole successful settler colony of Japan.

During this time, the Ainu were ordered to cease religious practices such as animal sacrifice and the custom of tattooing.^[111] The same act applied to the native Ainu on Sakhalin after its annexation as Karafuto Prefecture as part of the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth.^[112][113]

The prevalence of diseases such as tuberculosis among the Ainu, which had been exacerbated through the process of colonisation, was used as justification for policies that further dismantled Ainu communities and replaced traditional housing with Japanese-style houses.^[114]

The development of the state ideological Emperor system in the Taishō and Shōwa eras demanded a continuation of policies of assimilation to realise Japan as an ethnically homogenous nation.^[115][116] The belief of Japan as an ethnically homogenous nation continued after the defeat of Japan in World War II.^[117] Following World War II and the start of the Cold War, Hokkaido was represented as merely "northern Japan".^[118]

Through the 20th century even areas that had persisted in having distinct Ainu populations saw increasing migration of Japanese people.^[114][107]

Through the latter half of the 20th century, many academics and the government of Japan sought to deny any difference between the Ainu and Japanese, and has been deemed an attempt to obscure the history of colonisation and conquest that the Ainu have been subjected to.^[119] Despite a history of political and legal discrimination,^{[120][121][122]} subjecting the Ainu to racial hierarchies and European style race-science,^[123][124] and propositions and motions in the National Diet,^[125] the Ainu were not recognised as an indigenous people until 1997.^{[126][75][127]} This recognition began the process of claiming indigenous rights under national and international frameworks.^[75]

While the history of the colonisation of Hokkaido has been portrayed in a positive light in state media,^[128] throughout the process of colonisation and settler-colonialism the Ainu have suffered systemically.^[127] They were subject to destitution during the Meiji period, with the Japanese state attributing this outcome to the supposed "innate inferiority" of the Ainu.^[129] In a 2009 news story, Japan Today reported that through the history of colonisation "many Ainu were forced to work, essentially as slaves, for Wajin (ethnic Japanese), resulting in the breakup of families and the introduction of smallpox, measles, cholera and tuberculosis into their communities."^[21] The Japanese government also "banned the Ainu language, took Ainu lands away, and prohibited the Ainu from engaging in salmon fishing and deer hunting."^[21][75] Historian Roy Thomas wrote that the "ill treatment of native peoples is common to all colonial powers, and, at its worst, leads to genocide. Japan's native people, the Ainu, have, however, been the object of a particularly cruel hoax, because the Japanese have refused to accept them officially as a separate minority people."^[130]

Ainu writing alongside scholarship have pointed out the parallels between the treatment of the Ainu by the Japanese and Japanese state, and the treatment of Native Americans and the United States.^[131] Similarities between the treatment of the Ainu and other indigenous peoples have also been pointed out and studied.

Scholar Michele Mason writes that the assimilation policies of the past and the economic disparity caused by the colonial process continue to effect the Ainu population today.^[132] One result of the assimilation policies as been the dying off of the Ainu language, with UNESCO recognising it as critically endangered.^[133][134] In 1966, there were about 300 native Ainu speakers; in 2008, there were about 100.^[135] There have been continuing efforts through the latter 20th and 21st centuries to revitalise Ainu as a language.^[136]

In 2004, the small Ainu community in Russia wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin, urging him to recognise Japanese mistreatment of the Ainu people as a genocide, something which Putin declined to do.^[137]

Naohiro Nakamura, writing in 2015, identified Japanese governmental and administrative practices in reporting on Ainu people especially in urban settings that erased then from the statistical and demographic record as Ainu.^[138] Ann-Elise Lewallen wrote in 2016 that the Japanese colonisation of lands inhabited by the Ainu had "genocidal consequences" for the Ainu,^[139] and that the Ainu were made indigenous through the "invasion and colonial subjugation of their ancestral lands, lifeways, and attempted genocide of their ancestors".^[140] Researchers Robert Hughes and Esther Brito Ruiz have detailed how the assimilationist policies of Japan from the 19th century has resulted in a cultural genocide of the Ainu,^[141][142] where their existence was only permitted if they ceased being Ainu.^[143]