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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Blaxell treats the naturalization and Japanization of the land formerly known as Ezochi (literally “land of the barbarians”) into Hokkaido. Blaxell discusses the transformation of the urban space of Sapporo in the 1870s and 1880s by Japanese working with American advisors. The result was neither Japanese nor American, but distinctly modern and evocative of the imperial age. Blaxell touches upon the simultaneous erasing of the indigenous people, the Ainu, from the land during this re-conceptualization of Hokkaido as Japanese space and land. (The policies directed toward the Ainu after Hokkaido's colonization are discussed in Hirano Katsuya's article in Part II.) Blaxell uses the importation of a quintessentially Japanese characteristic—rice—to the unforgiving climate of Hokkaido and its eventual acculturation as an example of how the processes of colonization helped to naturalize a landscape as Japanese. Her article encourages us not to take for granted the geographic space—whether urban or “natural” —and understand how it is the result of both constructive (for some people but not others) and destructive human actions.
[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] Kōno Tsunekichi. 1902. Kōno Tsunekichi-shi kengensho. [Memoriam of Kōno 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 kansuru kenkyū (sono 2)” [Town planning and direction in Sapporo: Research on the design techniques of colonial cities in early Meiji period Hokkaido - 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 Yoichi, 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 Kōno Tsunekichi. 1902. Kōno Tsunekichi-shi kengensho.
[13] Quote attributed to Benjamin Smith Lyman, a geologist from Northampton, Massachusetts who surveyed Hokkaido'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. “Hoheikan 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 Endo Akihisa. 1965. “Adachi Kikō bunsho ni yoru Nemuro kenchōsha” [The building of the Nemuro Prefectural Government Office as found in the archives of Adachi Kiko] 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 Kikō: 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 Hokkaido and Honshū 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 Kōno Tsunekichi. 1900. Nōgyō tokushisha Nakayama Kyūzō-ō 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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