(also spelled Yezo or Yeso) is the Japanese term historically used to refer to the people and the lands to the northeast of the Japanese island of Honshu. This included the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, which changed its name from "Ezo" to "Hokkaidō" in 1869, Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)
"Ezo"
in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. 184. and sometimes included Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. In reference to the people of that region, the same two kanji used to write the word ''Ezo'' can also be read ''

Emishi The (also called Ebisu and Ezo), written with Chinese characters that literally mean "shrimp barbarians," constituted an ancient ethnic group of people who lived in parts of Honshū, especially in the Tōhoku region, referred to as in contemp ...

''. The descendants of these people are most likely related to the

Ainu people The Ainu are the indigenous people of the lands surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, including Hokkaido Island, Northeast Honshu Island, Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula and Khabarovsk Krai, before the arrival of the Y ...

of today.

Etymology

Japanese sources that include an etymology describe ''Ezo'' as probably originally a borrowing from the

Ainu Ainu or Aynu may refer to: *Ainu people, an East Asian ethnic group of Japan and the Russian Far East *Ainu languages, a family of languages **Ainu language of Hokkaido **Kuril Ainu language, extinct language of the Kuril Islands **Sakhalin Ainu la ...

word meaning . The term is first attested in Japanese in a text from 1153 in reference to any of the non-Japanese people living in the northeast of

Honshū , historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island separa ...

, and then later in 1485 in reference to the northern islands where these people lived, primarily Hokkaido, Karafuto (that is, Sakhalin), and the Kuril Islands. The kanji spelling is based on the meanings of the characters rather than the phonetics ( jukujikun), and is composed of the characters meaning and meaning . The use of the character for might be in reference to the long "whiskers" ( antennae) of these animals, alluding to the prominent beards worn by Ainu men. The spelling 'Yezo' reflects its pronunciation , when Europeans first came in contact with Japan. It is this historical spelling that is reflected in the scientific Latin term , as in ''

Fragaria yezoensis ''Fragaria yezoensis'' is a species of wild strawberry native to the eastern side of the Japanese island of Hokkaidō, and the adjacent Kuril Islands and Sakhalin in Russia. It is of no economic value. Some botanists include the very similar '' ...

'' and ''

Porphyra yezoensis ''Porphyra'' is a genus of coldwater seaweeds that grow in cold, shallow seawater. More specifically, it belongs to red algae phylum of laver species (from which comes laverbread), comprising approximately 70 species.Brodie, J.A. and Irvine, ...

''. However, there are species that use a different spelling, such as the Japanese scallop known as .

History

The first published description of Ezo in the West was brought to Europe by Isaac Titsingh in 1796. His small library of Japanese books included by Hayashi Shihei. This book, which was published in Japan in 1785, described the Ezo region and its people. In 1832, the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland supported the posthumous abridged publication of Titsingh's French translation of . Julius Klaproth was the editor, completing the task which was left incomplete by the death of the book's initial editor, Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat.

Subdivisions

or () was divided into several districts. The first was the Wajinchi, or 'Japanese Lands', which covered the Japanese settlements on and around the Oshima Peninsula. The rest of Ezo was known as the (), or 'Ainu Lands'. Ezochi was in turn divided into three sections: North Ezochi, which covered southern Sakhalin; West Ezochi, which included the northern half of Hokkaidō; and East Ezochi, which included the populous southern Hokkaidō and the Kuril Islands.Frey, Christopher J. (2007)

Notes

References

* Cullen, Louis M. (2003)
''A History of Japan, 1582-1941: Internal and External Worlds.''
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ;
OCLC 50694793
* Hayashi, Shihei. (1786). . Edo: Manuscript
OCLC 44014900
* Klaproth, Julius. (1832). ''San kokf tsou ran to sets, ou Aperçu général des trois royaumes.'' Paris: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland
OCLC 2563166
''also'
OCLC 561284561

External links