I didn't arrive by ferry, as I’d always hoped to, but instead via the world's longest undersea tunnel. And, I won't be able to make it all the way to Sakhalin this time, thanks to the arbitrariness that is nationhood and the invisible lines we call borders. So this is far from perfect but by god, it feels good to write this.
Hokkaido, here I am.
Having been in Hakodate for just a day, I have nowhere else to start but its magnificent sky, a giant blue colosseum filled with raging bulls, prancing hares, basking whales and all manner of living things carved in spongy white. The brilliance of that blue, the softness of that white, my morning was lost somewhere between the two. For hours I sauntered around, unable to look down or look ahead. Eventually, I ended up lying down in a bed of yellow daisies on an empty football field in the bay, and soaked it all in, the world's ceiling.
After an indeterminate amount of time, a bevy of dark grey clouds came out of nowhere, showering raindrops. It all passed in ten minutes, but the spell had been broken. I finally started to notice other things around me, starting with all the quaint old houses filling up the streets, punctuated by the yellow fire hydrants calling attention to themselves. And, of course, there were the cathedrals, traces of the early evangelists. The Russian Orthodox, the Anglican, the Catholic, all within a stone’s throw of each other, surrounded by the Buddhist and the Shinto shrines. And then there are the consul buildings - American, British and Russian - along with a swathe of old western-influenced architecture, a not so common sight in Japan. And, of course, there was Commodore Perry’s statue gazing down onto the bay, looking mighty pleased with himself.
The chequered 150-year history of Hakodate written in architecture. As interesting as it was, I came to Hokkaido for something else, for what was here all along, before the world had come calling. The Ainu. So I went seeking my primary reason, the Hokkaido Museum of Northern Peoples. I finally encountered my first reality of the Ainu, things I'd only read about, seen pictures of and even seen animated. And sigh, there were the textiles, woven of bast fiber, featuring geometric patterns so sublime I could stare at for hours.
The story of the Ainu is the story of most indigenous peoples in the world, an ancient wisdom devastated by prejudice and “development”, so this is going to be an intense journey. I came to Hokkaido, or Ezo, as I should say, in the hope of experiencing the landscape that gave rise to their traditions and folklore, to assimilate a little bit of their worldview into my own. Reading is only ever a part of knowing, it's never really complete without knowing the sensation of standing somewhere and opening yourself up to let everything in. Without feeling the breeze of the firs, the birches and the oaks, without knowing the sight of the sun rising over the Okhotsk, without feeling the shrill midnight chill of the forest, how could I claim to know anything about the Ainu, no matter how many words I read about them?
So, well, hopefully this journey will give me a little bit of that while I also discover some tiny far-flung museums along the way. Ideally this journey would have continued north into Sakhalin to encounter the similar yet different landscapes that influenced the Karafuto Ainu, the Nivkh and the Orok, but that shall be for another day. Russia, when the time comes, shall possibly devour years of my life anyway, so the Trans-Siberian railway can wait. And that day, I shall assemble that experience with this one in my head, and they will fit perfectly, like two interlocking pieces of a puzzle.
For now, I shall make my way through Hokkaido, peeling through layers of its intricate history in long train rides along the coast, struggling to make sense of museum descriptions, walking over rolling meadows in bloom and enduring chilly nights under a star-filled sky.
[10:04 pm, 9th May 2023,
Hakodate, Hokkaido.]
