History in the Making – Laid to Waste: Exploration as Dispossession in Japanese Hokkaido

This talk analyzes the meaning of “wasteland” (荒蕪地 or 未開地) in Hokkaido following its annexation by the Japanese Empire in 1869. I show that “wasteland” did not refer to barren or inhospitable territory but quite the opposite: verdant but unproductive land which, Japanese colonialists claimed, was merely being “wasted” by the Indigenous Ainu people. This land would be “improved” through its exploitation by settlers. Through close readings of the travelogues, field reports, and correspondence of rebel-turned-colonizer Enomoto Takeaki and entrepreneurial private settlers Hayashi Kenzō and Yoda Benzō, I argue that the characterization of Ainu living spaces as “wasteland” was integral to Japan’s claims that their unceded territories constituted terra nullius (empty or ownerless land).

Michael Roellinghoff is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures. He is a historian of modern Japan with broader interests in Northeast Asia and the transpacific. His book project examines the relationship between the doctrine of terra nullius and national sovereignty, the impact of colonial policy on the Indigenous Ainu people, and links between settler colonialism in Hokkaido and in the United States and British and Russian empires.

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