Comment on the Japanese annexation of Hokkaido

I've come up against scholar after scholar that have strongly pressed the opinion that the 1869 Japanese annexation of Hokkaido was merely a formal de jure announcement of what had been long since the de facto reality of Japanese control of or the long-since completed Japanese "conquest" of Ainu Moshir. This reading of the history of the colonization of Hokkaido would understand the proclamation of the Japanese Empire's annexation of Hokkaido (May 1869/Meiji 2; reproduced in full below) as a mere formality.

蝦夷地開拓御下問書

「蝦夷地ノ儀ハ皇国ノ北門直ニ山丹満州ニ接シ給界粗定ルトイエドモ北部ニ至テハ中外雑居致処是迄官民ノ土人ヲ決設スル甚ダ苛酷ヲ極メ外国人ハ頗ル愛恤ヲ施シ候ヨリ土人往々我邦人ヲ怨離シ彼ヲ尊信スルニ至ル一且民苦ヲ救ウヲ名トシ土人ヲ煽動スル者有之時ハ其禍忽チ箱館松前ニ延及スルハ必然ニシテ禍ヲ未然ニ防グハ方今ノ要務ニ候箱館平定ノ上ハ速ニ開拓指導等ノ方法ヲ施設シ人民契殖ノ域ト為サシメラル可キニ付利害得失各意見ヲ忘憚ナク可申出候事」

While who could doubt the Tokugawa/Matsumae's hegemony of the Hokkaido (and to a lesser extent, the Kurile/Sakhalin) Ainu in as far as the efficacy of armed suppression of the Ainu, or the reality of the basho ukeoi slavery or the endemic sexual exploitation that accompanied this, I think we have to take Tessa Morris-Suzuki's stance in looking at the May 1869 annexation as representing a major break in the history of Hokkaido. Tokugawa-era Japanese hegemony over the Ainu, after all, was much more akin to the Ming/Qing tusi (土司) system of frontier management, where formal Indigenous sovereignty was maintained, as were Indigenous lifeways, on the basis of recognition of the imperial sovereignty of the central state. In effect, this was a form of the larger, so-called "Sinocentric tributary system" which exchanged recognition and monetary tribute from the weaker state to that of the stronger imperial state, whether it be China or Japan. At times, this took the form of a grotesque farce, like the spectacle of local Japanese officials kowtowing to Ainu headmen to demonstrate formal recognition of Ainu sovereignty over their land, and despite the fact that, as some perplexed European observers described in the 1850s and '60s wrly observed, the same Ainu who went out to greet the kowtowing Japanese officials were themselves obviously terrified of the same kowtowing Japanese. In other words, even as the Japanese physically dominated the Hokkaido Ainu throughout the Tokugawa period, they took special care to performatively demonstrate recognition of Ainu sovereignty over Ainu land. Why? The reason is, the Japanese state gained legitimacy from the tributary relationship with neighbouring states and the symbolic capital from the formal recognition of Ainu autonomy was worth than the expected from outright annexation of the Ainu. This is similar to the Ryukyu Kingdom, which was formally was allowed to maintain its monarchy under armed Satsuma hegemony. And in both cases, the Ainu and Ryukyuans continued to formally recognize the hegemony of both the Qing and Japanese states. As Ronald Toby demonstrated with the Ryukyu Kingdom and Brett walker similarly showed with Ainu Moshir, at a time of total Japanese estrangement from the Qing Empire, an indirect relationship through these borderlands was vital.

But even out of the context of the "Sinocentric tributary system", we can find examples of this kind of relationship as a precursor to settler colonialism in Canada and the United States, with the Hudson Bay Company's Rupert's Land and Columbia District territories functioning in a similar way to the Matsumae domain in Ainu Moshir. Like Matsumae, which Brett Walker shows as unique amongst the Japanese domains in that they had an economy based primarily on trade rather than agriculture (and with the secondary role of border defense and exploration), the Hudson Bay Company territories were similarly based on trade with Indigenous peoples and surveying lands which would later be colonized by white settlers. While the Hudson Bay Company, for the most part, did not interfere in local Indigenous affairs, they indeed maintained their own laws and political order and represented a sort of "place holder" for future British (and as it happened, American) sovereignty, while maintaining a degree of sovereignty over the lands they administered.

And similar to the 1869 proclaimation as being spurred on over fears of Russian colonization of the Ainu territories, the formal transfer of control of the Hudson Bay Company's territories to the British Empire (as well as the push for white settlement of these territories, and the often violent suppression of Indigenous people's political sovereignty, lifeways, and economies that accompanied settlement) was based on fears over the westward push of the United States and southward push of the Russian Empire. For what at times borders on apologism over the Japanese colonization of Ainu Moshir as a necessary maneuver against the Russian threat, we should keep in mind that British/Canadian colonization of "the west" was spurred on by the exact same rationale. As was, for that matter, Euro-American colonial land appropriation globally under the guise of the "Great Game", "the Scramble for Africa", etc.

All this is to say that we have to be careful in how we frame the basic question of sovereign control of Indigenous territory means, either as this question applied to Indigenous people on their own land, to the settlers whose presence may have signified sovereign control of a territory, or as applied to the colonizing empire itself. The basic ability to enslave or kill people is not the same thing as "owning" their land, especially given discourses of land ownership central to territorial sovereignty as it is recognized by international law. Just as the British Empire took control of territories formally controlled by the Hudson Bay company and aggressively began to colonize these territories in a way recognizable to competing colonial states, Japanese control of lands formerly administered or managed by the Matsumae domain was part of the "use it or lose it" discourses of territorial sovereignty which have remained prevalent into the 21st century, as demonstrated by Japan's ongoing territorial disputes. And, moreover, while I haven't yet had a chance to look at 万国公法 and couldn't say for certain, I imagine if the Chinese/kango translation of Wheaton's Elements of International Law included the passage on internationally-recognized Russian sovereign control of the Kuriles, late Tokugawa period Japanese readers would have been extremely alarmed with the rug pulled out from under them.