New Cambridge History of Japan. Volume III, the Modern Japanese Nation and Empire, c. 1868 to the Twenty-First Century. Laura Hein ed. 2023
Patrick Wolfe’s “concept of settler colonialism” explains conflicts between “indigenous peoples” and “agricultural settlers.” The New Cambridge History of Japan includes “borderlands.” Regardless, settler colonialism is violent because it is genocidal. (New Cambridge History of Japan. 24)
Katsuya Hirano writes that the Ainu in Hokkaido were exploited during the Tokugawa era. However, the Tokugawa did not take Ainu lands.
Violence erupted between the Ainu and Japanese sent to Hokkaido during the Meiji period. This was a result of settler colonialism. (New Cambridge History of Japan. 24)
Brett L. Walker. A Concise History of Japan. 2015
People in northern Japan resisted Japanese rule from at least 300 A.D. (Walker 27)
During the Nara and Heian periods, Japanese officials referred to the people as “toad barbarians.” (Walker 28)
Trade brought changes and hurtful diseases to the Ainu. (Walker 135)
Hokkaido makes up 20% of Japan. After the Japanese conquered the area, they found coal, which helped Japan industrialize. Hokkaido was “transformed into an agricultural breadbasket with the help of American advisors, well schooled in colonizing lands formerly inhabited by Indigenous peoples.” (Walker 136)
“After the Battle of Sekigahara (1600), Iyeasu had recognized the Matsumae family’s exclusive rights to trade with the Ainu throughout Hokkaido.” (Walker 136)
Actually, there were “five major groups” of Ainu. They had different languages “and other cultural practices.” (Walker 136)
The Matsumae set up coastal trading posts with the Ainu. (Walker 136)
Nevertheless, the increased trade led to conflict between the various Ainu committees and the largest war in the history of Hokkaido, the Shakushain’s War (1669). (Walker 137)
Ainu trade with the Japanese caused overfishing “salmon and overheated deer . . . while [the] Japanese inadvertently introduced smallpox, measles, and syphilis to Ainu communities. Ainu undermined their own subsistence systems as such Japanese trade items as silks, swords, iron goods, rice, and sake became prestige items in Ainu communities. . . . Trade required that animals fell from the world of spirits and ancestors to the world of proto-capitalism, and become hunted commodities in the context of interaction with the Japanese.”
Finally, disease destroyed half of the Ainu population, and “Hokkaido was ripe for swift incorporation into the modern Japanese state within a matter of decades.” (Walker 138-139)
Documentaries about the Ainu emphasize their abuse.
American Edwin Dun advised the Japanese government Hokkaido Development Agency “to oversee development of a livestock industry on Hokkaido.” (Walker 189)
“Known as the father of Hokkaido agriculture Dun fastened Hokkaido’s future to sheep, horses, and cattle, representing a radical departure from Japan’s grain-farming past.” (Walker 189-190)
“The disappearance of deer, an important prey species for wolves, proved one reason wolf predation on horses became so severe on Hokkaido.” (Walker 190)
Thus, under Meiji, the Ainu hunted the wolves to “near extinction.” (Walker 190)
“The cultural and ecological implications of wolf extinction on Hokkaido, as well as mainland Japan, cannot be underestimated.” (Walker 190)
From 1689 to 1770, “Russian trappers collected pelts,” which they “viewed as tribute from the obedient conquered people of the North Pacific. Ainu were not always submissive participants, however. In 1770 . . . Russians killed several Ainu who refused to pay tribute to their new masters. The next year, Ainu retaliates by ambushing traders . . . killing at least ten Russians in the process.” (Walker 202)
“Similar to Anglo-American settler justifications for the conquest of Native American lands, or the so-called white man’s burden of European Empires, Japanese projected the conquest of Ainu lands through the lens of Confucian benevolent rule, or the need to rescue Ainu from their disease ridden lives. Indeed, providing medical assistance to Ainu proved one manifestation of Japanese control over Hokkaido. . . . Ainu understood smallpox to be a deity, and the fact that the Japanese could vanquish the divine airborne killer with the prick of an arm surely destabilized the Ainu pantheon. Japanese officials also encouraged the Ainu to assimilate to Japanese life, including learning the Japanese language.” (Walker 203)
“Japanese policy shifted from Confucian ‘benevolent care’ to the colonial protection of evolutionary lagging Ainu.” (Walker 203)
“This transition to protecting the Ainu signaled the beginning of policies designed to transform them - up to this point hunters, gatherers, and traders - into small-scale farmers. The Meiji policies of paternalism culminated in the Hokkaido former Aborigine Protection Act of 1899, which distributed . . . agricultural plots to Ainu.” The goal was to destroy Ainu society. (Walker 204)
“Meanwhile, the Ainu, their population in shambles from smallpox, measles, influenza, and after the Meiji Restoration, tuberculosis, became a miserable people in desperate need of colonial care and civilizing. As Horace Capron (1804-1885), a Civil War veteran and foreign overseer of the development effort on Hokkaido remarked . . . the same difficulties . . . to civilize these people [the Ainu] which are met . . . with the North American Indians.” (Walker 205)
Chitoshi Yanaga. Japan Since Perry. 1949.
During the Meiji Restoration, northern Japan was underdeveloped and undefended. The Japanese were concerned about the Russians encroaching on Yezo, which they renamed Hokkaido in 1869. (Yanaga 59)
The development of Hokkaido was a top priority, and Americans were recruited to lead the way. The main concern, though, was security and not economics. (Yanaga 59)
“American influences have left an indelible imprint on Hokkaido.” Agriculture in Japan resembles rural American agriculture. ((Yanaga 59)
Settlers to Hokkaido did not move there voluntarily. Whole communities were transplanted. Different fiefs were set up. Displaced samurai were among the settlers. However, those from southern Japan could not adjust to the harsh northern climate. (Yanaga 60)
“In addition to the positions in the government . . . the land development program to help the samurai establish themselves in agriculture.” Samurai were given preferential in settling Hokkaido. (Yanaga 60)
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