History
Hokkaido is, administratively, not even called a prefecture — it’s a “do” (道), a distinct designation shared with no other part of Japan — and for good reason: it joined the country later and differently than everywhere else. For centuries it was Ezo, home to the indigenous Ainu people, only brought under direct Japanese administration in 1869, the year after the Meiji Restoration, as the new government pushed to settle and develop its northern frontier before Russia could claim it first.
Hokkaido and the wider world
That development effort leaned heavily on Western expertise. The Meiji government hired foreign advisors — most famously the American agricultural scientist William S. Clark, who spent less than a year in 1876 founding Sapporo Agricultural College (now Hokkaido University) but left behind the parting words “Boys, be ambitious,” still one of the most quoted phrases in Japanese education. Hokkaido’s grid-planned streets, dairy industry, and beer brewing (Sapporo Breweries was founded here in 1876) all trace back to this deliberately Western-influenced settlement push.
The island’s more difficult modern history is the position of the Ainu themselves, whose land and language rights were suppressed for over a century after annexation; Japan did not formally recognize the Ainu as an indigenous people in law until 2019. Hokkaido’s northernmost edge also borders Russia’s Kuril Islands, a territorial dispute — the “Northern Territories” — that remains unresolved since the end of World War II.
Hokkaido and the mainland
Hokkaido is connected to Honshu only by the Seikan Tunnel, one of the world’s longest undersea rail tunnels, linking Hakodate to Aomori Prefecture in the Tohoku region — there’s no land border with any other prefecture, which shapes a lot of the island’s distinct, semi-separate identity within Japan.
Getting there and getting around
New Chitose Airport, south of Sapporo, is Hokkaido’s main air gateway, with direct flights from several international hubs. The island is large enough that a rental car is genuinely useful outside Sapporo itself, though JR Hokkaido’s rail network covers the main cities.
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