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, whose culture 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 Yamato 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 Yamato Japanese culture. The process of colonisation and the resultant discrimination has been systematically denied or ignored by Japanese society.