Earlier than Hokkaido was Hokkaido, it was recognized to mainland Japan as Ezo. Additional again nonetheless, indigenous Ainu communities referred to the northern expanse as Ainu Mosir, a reputation they’d used for untold generations.
But the story of humanity in these lands started lengthy earlier than the Ainu, and at the moment, Hokkaido’s furthest reaches are hoping the treasures of long-forgotten peoples might be the important thing to drawing curious vacationers searching for a glimpse at Japan’s bygone previous to the deep north.
The Okhotsk subprefecture in northeastern Hokkaido derives its identify from the Okhotsk tradition, a group of communities that migrated all through the modern-day Sea of Okhotsk from the 4th to the twelfth centuries. At its peak from the fifth to ninth centuries, the maritime-based Okhotsk peoples stretched from northern Hokkaido, all through the Kuril Islands and throughout the breadth of Sakhalin in modern-day Russia.
