The Hakodate foreign settlement (函館外国人居留地, ''Hako-kan gaikokujin kyoryūchi'') were a collection of foreign settlement sites scattered across

Hakodate is a city and port located in Oshima Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan. It is the capital city of Oshima Subprefecture. As of July 31, 2011, the city has an estimated population of 279,851 with 143,221 households, and a population density of 412.8 ...

. A warehouse,

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

church, and

Orthodox Orthodox, Orthodoxy, or Orthodoxism may refer to: Religion * Orthodoxy, adherence to accepted norms, more specifically adherence to creeds, especially within Christianity and Judaism, but also less commonly in non-Abrahamic religions like Neo-pa ...

church remain from the settlement era.

History

A_view_of_the_Hakodate_Foreign_Settlement,_c

The

Ansei Treaties The Ansei Treaties (Japanese:安政条約) or the Ansei Five-Power Treaties (Japanese:安政五カ国条約) are a series of treaties signed in 1858, during the Japanese Ansei era, between Japan on the one side, and the United States, Great Bri ...

of 1858 decided that Hakodate would be opened (allowed foreigners to do business) along with

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of To ...

, Niigata,

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whic ...

, and

Nagasaki is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in the ...

. Foreigners had especially looked favorably upon Hakodate; as Commodore Perry forced the Tokugawas' hand in revoking the ''

sakoku was the Isolationism, isolationist Foreign policy of Japan, foreign policy of the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate under which, for a period of 265 years during the Edo period (from 1603 to 1868), relations and trade between Japan and other countri ...

'' policy, Russians had similarly visited Hakodate years before. The

Treaty of Shimoda The Treaty of Shimoda (下田条約, ''Shimoda Jouyaku'') (formally Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Japan and Russia 日露和親条約, ''Nichi-Ro Washin Jouyaku'') of February 7, 1855, was the first treaty between the Russian Empire, a ...

, signed a year before the Ansei Treaties, had provided Americans and Russians with trade settlements in Hakodate; thus, Hakodate had more extensive contact with foreigners and their interests than most cities that were designated to have a foreign settlement within them. Unlike the more defined borders of the other foreign settlements, due to the large amount of readily available land, the Hakodate magistrate opened up land whenever available to meet the demands of foreign settlers. The main site of foreign settlement in Hakodate was Omachi 大町 (present day Nakahama-cho 仲浜町) constructed in 1860, consisting of about 1730 ''

tsubo A ''pyeong'' (abbreviationpy) is a Korean unit of area and floorspace, equal to a square '' kan'' or 36square Korean feet. The ''ping'' and ''tsubo'' are its equivalent Taiwanese and Japanese units, similarly based on a square '' bu'' ( ja:步) ...

'' (approximately 0.6

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...

s) in 1878. The Jizo 地蔵 foreign settlement was also opened sometime later, though few foreigners were interested in the area and the land remained largely barren. Often, foreigners lived with local people in mixed areas called ''zakkyochi'' 雑居地, a feature unseen in other foreign settlements. The population of the foreign settlement, at its height, was 72: 35 Chinese, 20 British, 6 French, 4 Russians, 3 Americans, 2 Danes and 2 Germans. Due to the little foreign population, there was no official governance of the settlement. From 1878 to 1879, a large fire devastated the Hakodate urban area, including portions of the foreign settlement as well.

Legacy

Many of the stores and buildings built by the foreigners, while nonexistent today, have influenced some of Hakodate's architecture: there are many quasi-Western buildings built by local Japanese, especially clustered around the former settlements, to this day. Some buildings built in this style are the Old Public Hall of Hakodate Ward 旧函館区公会堂, Former Hakodate Branch Office of Hokkaido 旧北海道庁函館支庁庁舎, and the Soma Co. Headquarters 相馬株式会社社屋. These buildings generally have a traditional style first floor and a Western second floor, have vertical decorated windows, a ledge between floors, and

eaves The eaves are the edges of the roof which overhang the face of a wall and, normally, project beyond the side of a building. The eaves form an overhang to throw water clear of the walls and may be highly decorated as part of an architectural styl ...

on the roof. Karl Weidl-Raymon (1894-1987), a Bohemian immigrant that lived in the settlement, founded a sausage company in Hakodate. His Thuringer sausages are a Hakodate specialty.

References

{{Reflist Hakodate History of Hokkaido Hokkaido History of the foreign relations of Japan 19th century in Japan