The or is a bay southeast of the island of

Hokkaido is Japan's second largest island and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel. The la ...

in northern Japan. It has also been known as Iburi Bay and Volcano Bay.

History

The shoreline of Uchiura Bay was first settled by the

Jōmon people is the generic name of several peoples who lived in the Japanese archipelago during the Jōmon period (). The Jōmon people may have consisted of multiple groups, which arrived and merged at different times in the Japanese archipelago, using multi ...

as early as 4000 BC. Trade settlements have been found along its shoreline, such as the Ōfune Site where the Jōmon people relied on the body of water for trade routes to other Jōmon settlements in northern Tōhoku. In modern history, the bay was charted during the late-eighteenth century voyage of

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

Commander

William Robert Broughton William Robert Broughton (22 March 176214 March 1821) was a British naval officer in the late 18th century. As a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, he commanded HMS ''Chatham'' as part of the Vancouver Expedition, a voyage of exploration through th ...

and the crew of during the eruption of nearby

Mount Usu is an active stratovolcano in the Shikotsu-Toya National Park, Hokkaido, Japan. It has erupted four times since 1900: in 1910 (which created Meiji-shinzan 神沼克伊,小山悦郎 ''日本の火山を科学する　日本列島津々浦々、 ...

. Due to the eruptive activity, they labeled the bay as "Volcano Bay" in September 1796. Commander Broughton and his crew mingled extensively with the Ainu and Japanese living around the bay while they surveyed the bay's coastline. At a dinner they exchanged maps with the Japanese and conversed using Russian.

Geography

Uchiura Bay is a bay east of

Oshima Peninsula The Oshima Peninsula (渡島半島 ''Oshima-hantō'') is the southernmost part of Hokkaidō, the northernmost of the Japanese islands. Where the peninsula starts is open to interpretation. A more generous interpretation is to draw a line southe ...

that protrudes from the southwestern corner of Hokkaido south towards Honshu and to the south of western

Iburi Subprefecture is a subprefecture of Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan. Geography Located in south-central Hokkaido, Iburi stretches East-West and North-South. Iburi covers an area of . Iburi borders Oshima Subprefecture to the West, Shiribeshi, Ishikari, and ...

. It is a subdivision of the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

with a total area of . Its opening to the Pacific Ocean is marked by a line between

Hokkaido Koma-ga-take , also , , or just is a andesitic stratovolcano on the border between Mori, Shikabe, and Nanae, all within the Oshima Subprefecture of Hokkaidō, Japan. Occurrence of volcanic activity started some 30,000 years ago. Following roughly 5,000 y ...

and Cape Chikiu. It has been known as "Eruption Bay" as well as "Volcano Bay" due to the eruption of Mount Usu when the bay was being documented by Western explorers in the late-eighteenth century. In addition to Mount Usu, several other volcanoes line the shore of Uchiura Bay. It has also been called Iburi Bay, likely due to its proximity to Iburi Subprefecture.

Animal and plant life

The bay marks a junction between the arctic sea life seen in the waters surrounding northern Hokkaido and eastern Russia and the more temperate marine ecosystem seen around the rest of Japan. Arctic rainbow smelt, the Japanese lamprey, flounder, several species of shellfish, and kelp live in the waters of Uchiura Bay. The practice of farming

scallop Scallop () is a common name that encompasses various species of marine bivalve mollusks in the taxonomic family Pectinidae, the scallops. However, the common name "scallop" is also sometimes applied to species in other closely related families ...

s was first developed in the bay by the residents of the town of Toyoura on the bay's northern shore. In

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

it is believed that a gigantic octopus

kamuy A ''kamuy'' ( ain, カムィ; ja, カムイ, kamui) is a spiritual or divine being in Ainu mythology, a term denoting a supernatural entity composed of or possessing spiritual energy. The Ainu people have many myths about the ''kamuy'', passed ...

lives in Uchiura Bay. The

Kraken The kraken () is a legendary sea monster of enormous size said to appear off the coasts of Norway. Kraken, the subject of sailors' superstitions and mythos, was first described in the modern age at the turn of the 18th century, in a travelogu ...

-like creature is known as Atkorkamuy and Akkorokamui among the Ainu and Japanese, respectively.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Bays of Japan Landforms of Hokkaido