Hokkaido

The northern island, and the only part of Japan that is a settler colony in the ordinary sense. Until the nineteenth century it was Ainu land, known as Ezo, inhabited by a people with their own language, religion and economy who were unrelated to the Japanese state and traded with it through the Matsumae domain at the southern tip. The Meiji government annexed the island outright in 1869, renamed it Hokkaido, and created a Colonisation Commission that recruited American advisers, laid out Sapporo on a grid, and imported wheat, dairy cattle and beer brewing - which is why the region still looks and eats unlike the rest of the country. Settlement was carried out partly by tondenhei, farmer-soldiers settled as a militia against Russia. Ainu land was declared ownerless and redistributed, the language was suppressed in schools, and the Former Aborigines Protection Act of 1899 pushed survivors into agriculture on poor plots. The Ainu were recognised as an indigenous people by the Diet only in 2008. Coal, fishing, forestry and later heavy industry drove the economy, and all four have declined since the 1960s. Hokkaido holds roughly a fifth of Japan's land and four per cent of its people, with the population falling faster than anywhere else. Its winters are severe by Japanese standards, which built the Sapporo Snow Festival and the 1972 Winter Olympics. The southern Kuril islands, held by Russia since 1945, remain disputed. Sapporo is the fifth largest city in Japan. The island grows most of the country's potatoes, onions and dairy. Ainu place names survive across the map, usually written in characters chosen for sound alone. The Upopoy national Ainu museum opened in 2020.

• Existed: 1869 CE – present
• Type: Entity