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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
The emergence of a modern Japan in the late 1800s involved struggles to define what it meant to “be modern” and what it meant to “be Japanese.” Vivian Blaxell's essay explores this issue of identity formation through a focus on the transformation of the island that we now know as Hokkaidō. The term “Hokkaidō” dates to 1869 when it was so named by the Meiji government. These northern reaches used to be known as Ezochi and were inhabited by the Ainu, indigenous people who considered themselves distinct from “the Japanese” (wajin) who populated the lands to their south. Blaxell examines the incorporation of Ezo-turned-Hokkaidō into modern Japan, a process that she frames as Japan's first colonial acquisition, with particular attention to the built and natural environments. While considering Blaxell's argument about how ideas of modernity and national identity were revealed and extended by the manipulation of space, note the various kinds of space discussed in the essay and how Blaxell approaches and views what “being Japanese” meant for Hokkaidō.
[1] See for example, Richard Siddle. 1996. Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan. London: Routledge and Brett L. Walker. 2001. The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
[2] See Dick Stegewerns. 2003. “The Japanese ‘Civilization Critics’ and the National Identity of Their Asian Neighbours, 1918-1932: The Case of Yoshino Sakuzo” Li Narangoa and R. B. Cribb, eds. Imperial Japan and National Identities in Asia, 1895-1945. London: Routledge, pp. 107-128. Also, Vivian Blaxell. 2008. “New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore.” The Asia-Pacific Journal, January 23.
[3] Quoted in Siddle, op.cit. p. 53.
[4] Kōnō Tsunekichi. 1902. Kōnō Tsunekichi-shi kengensho. [Memoriam of Kōnō Tsunekichi], Nihon hokuhen kankei kyūki mokuroku, document held in the Hoppo Shiryoshitsu, University of Hokkaidō.
[5] Kōzen Noburu. 1978. Shisetsu kaitaku hangan Shima Yoshitake den. [The Life of Hokkaidō Colonization Commissioner Shima Yoshitake: An Historical View] Tokyo: Shima hangan kenshokai, pp. 38-39.
[6] Both poems translated into English by the author from a 1978 translation of the original poem into standard Japanese and found in Kōzen Noburu, op.cit. pp. 123-124.
[7] Aoi Akihito. 2005. Shokuminchijinja to teikoku Nihon. [Colonial Shrines and Imperial Japan]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, p. 93.
[8] Kawamura Hisashi, Katayama Kaori, Tamaki Shingo. 1999. “Sapporo-shi ni okeru toshi kōsō to hōi: Meiji zenki Hokkaidō ni okeru shokumintoshi sekkei shuhō ni kansurū kenkyū (sono 2)” [Town planning and direction in Sapporo: Research on the design techniques of colonial cities in early Meiji period Hokkaidō - No. 2] Summaries of the technical papers of the Annual Meeting of the Architectural Institute of Japan: Urban planning, building economics and housing problems. Vol 1999, pp. 261-262.
[9] Berque, Augustin. 1997. Japan Cities and Social Bonds. Yelvertoft Manor, Northamptonshire: Pilkington Press. Translated by Chris Turner, pp. 51-52. Berque insists, however, that though the go-board pattern of urban design originating in Kyoto was used in Sapporo, the urban plan itself was very much influenced by American urban planning principles and by American experts. There is no evidence for this. Shima's plan was developed and put into construction at least two years before the arrival of American expertise.
[10] Harvey, David. 1991. The Condition of Post-Modernity, London: Wiley Blackwell, p. 204.
[11] See: Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 2002. “Shokuminchi to shisō to imin: Toyohara no chōbō kara [Colonialism and migration: From the landscape of Toyohara] in Komoro Yōichi, et al. eds. Iwanami Koza Kindai Nihon no bunkashi 6: Kakudai suru modaniti 1920-30 nendai 2 [Iwanami lectures on modern Japanese cultural history, 6: Expanding modernity in the 1920s and 1930s, 2) Tokyo 2002, pp. 185-204; K. Ono and J. Lea. 2001 “Colonial towns of the northern Marianas: Rediscovering the urban morphology of Saipan and Tinian” Seminar presented at the Resource Management in the Asia-Pacific Series, Research School of Asian and Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, 31 May 2001; Louise Young, Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, 248-250.
[12] Mentioned in Kōnō Tsunekichi. 1902. Kōnō Tsunekichi-shi kengensho.
[13] Quote attributed to Benjamin Smith Lyman, a geologist from Northampton, Massachusetts who surveyed Hokkaidō's mineral resources in the 1870s. Accessed July 8, 2008.
[14] See this link and numerous other websites such as this when is used as a search term in Google.
[15] Kunishitei_jyūyōnukazai_Hōheikan [A National Important Cultural Property: The Hōheikan], Accessed August 27, 2008.
[16] Endō Akihisa. 1986. “Hōheikan saisetsu” [The Hōheikan Revisited] Summaries of the technical papers of the Annual Meeting of the Architectural Institute of Japan: Urban planning, building economics and housing problems. Vol. 1986, p. 1.
[17] Adachi was also the architect for the Nemuro Prefectural Government Office, which bears a remarkable resemblance in overall design to the Hōheikan. See Endō Akihisa. 1965. “Adachi Kikō bunsho ni yoru Nemuro kenchōsha” [The building of the Nemuro Prefectural Government Office as found in the archives of Adachi Kikō] Transactions of the Architectural Institute of Japan, extra summaries of technical papers of the annual meeting of AIJST, No. 40, p. 668. Accessed August 19, 2008.
[18] Endo Akihisa. 1961. “Kaitakushi_goyōkai_Adachi Kikō ni_tsuite: Dai_1 hō Rireki to sono gyōseki no gaiyō.” [Concerning Hokkaidō Colonization Commission official Adachi Kiko: Report 1, An outline of his career and achievements] Nihon kenchiku gakkai kenkyū hōkoku. No. 56, pp. 75-83. Accessed August 20, 2008. Also Hōheikan - Seikatei, Sapporo bunko 15, Sapporo-shi kyoiku iinkai hen www.sapporobunko.jp Accessed August 17 2008. This website offers digitized publications about Sapporo authorized by the city government. The Japanese language software T-Time 5 is required to read the downloaded texts. And Zenkoku_namae_jiten at Accessed August 20, 2008.
[19] 2002. Colonialism and Landscape: Postcolonial Theory and Applications, Rowman and Littlefield, p. 9.
[20] See Brett L Walker. 2005. The Lost Wolves of Japan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, for an illuminating study of the fate of the Hokkaidō and Honshu wolves of Japan.
[21] 1993. Rice as Self: Japanese Identities Through Time. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[22] All information about Nakayama Kyūzō is taken from Kōnō Tsunekichi. 1900. Nōgyō tokushisha Nakayama Kyūzo-o jiseki torishirabe yōryō [Outline of the investigation into the agricultural contributions of Mr. Nakayama Kyuzo] a document held in the Hoppo Shiryoshitsu, University of Hokkaidō, and this site, Accessed December 3, 2007.
[23] [Link] Accessed July 1, 2009. Sum Kong Sut. nd. “Rice Cultivation in Japan and its Related Problems” Accessed July 1, 2009.
[24] Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. op. cit. p. 18.
[25] See The Production of Space, Wiley-Blackwell, 1992.
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