In Shitomi's day Hokkaido 
was largely terra incognita to the 
Japanese, except for the southwest 
ern peninsula where the Matsumae 
Daimyate comprised the northernmost 
bastion of the powerful Tokugawa 
Shogunate. Wot until the very end 
of the Tokugawa -re did population 
preasure in Honshu force the Japa- 
ness to expand extensive settlements 
into Hokimido bayond what is now 
Hakodate, and it took the dissolu- 
tion of the Daimyates by the Emperor 
Meiji to take control of all Hokkaido 
exports out of the hands of the 
Mateumae clan. However, the Matsu- 
mae Daimyos had agencies or outposts 
farther northward and eastward as 
early as the middle of the 18th cen- 
tury, and even established a trading 
poet on Yetorup Island (Etorofu- 
shima) in the Kurils in 1800. These 
outposts were essentially pioneer 
trading posts, bartering goods from 
the south for native products. Thus 
the Japanese in medieval Hokkaido 

Figure 5. ~ Barly woodcut of fur seal were essentially traders, who did 
(Bibl 8). The inscription states: "Oneppu. not catch the fur seal and other 
They are a product of wostern Okoshiri." products themselves but obtained 
them by barter from the native abo- 
rigines, the Ainu. 
The Ainu were a hunting people who, according to anthropologists, once occupied 
all four main islande of Japan but were gradually driven out of the southern islands sev- 
era) thousand years ago by the ancestral Japanese stock which immigrated from the south or 
west. By Tokugawa Shogunate time the Ainu's only remaining etronghold was Hokkaido. Here 
they managed to survive until the island was invaded by the Japanese en masse early in the 
Meiji era. A few decadent Ainu families still remain in isolated localities, where they 
are exploited as a tourist attraction, but they and their interesting customs are fast 
disappearing. 
The ancient Hokimido Ainu hunted fur seals along the coast, mostly in Uchiura-wan 
during the spring migration. They used frail, paddle-propelled craft made originally of 
bound reeds but later of wood, which were not eea worthy enough to let them go far from 
shore, and they operated only on calm days when the seals were likely to be sleeping on 
the sea surface and could be killed easily by arrowa and harpoons. Because of the frail- 
nase of the craft, Ainu seal hunting was not. without its element of danger. It was appar- 
ently a highly specialized aspect of Ainu life and was intricately bound with their relig- 
ion, as were many of their other hunting activities. 
The following description of Ainu hunting is taken from Hokknidoshi (Bibl 10), 
which wae compiled in 1884 from earlier rare documents: 
"Yormer’..y the natives used to catch fur seals from early winter to the next March 
or April. As the Ainu had no calendar, they timed their hunting season as that period when 
the fur seals gathered to follow the 'shushamu’ [Spirinchus lanceolatus, an indigenous 
smelt) when they come down to salt water from the upper reaches of the fresh water streams. 
The expert Ainu hunters, known as ‘jeba ezo', were very rare and had to keep very strict 
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