Hokkaido

The Ainu language of the island's indigenous people (“Ainu”) means “inu mosir” (meaning “land where humans live”) or “ya un mosir” (“land land”) [7 Is called]. Japanese people (Watans) call Watarishima in ancient times, Ainu (ezo) until modern times, and the land is called Ezochi, or Hokushu, Toshujima, etc. But [* 3] [* 4], the Meiji government examined the name change with the establishment of the pioneer, and Takeshiro Matsuura, who had continued exploration of remote areas and exchanges with the Ainu, submitted a white paper to the government. Six proposals were presented: “Kitakai Road”, “Kohoku Road”, “Kaito Road”, “Hidakami Road”, “Tohoku Road”, and “Kishima Road”. In the end, “Hokkaido” was adopted as the basis, and it was named “Hokkaido” as a compromise with Kaihoku, and as a form that imitates the names of Tokaido, Nankaido, and Nishikaido in Goki 7 . Matsuura explains in the Ken Hakusho that the “Kitakaido” plan was devised because Ainu called himself “Kai”, but linguist Kazuyo Kaneda said that fact He claims that no evidence has been found.

Hokkaido is considered to be one of the ordinary local public bodies (prefectures) in the Local Autonomy Law that is equivalent to other “city / prefecture / prefecture”, but for “city”, “prefecture” and “prefecture”, remove this. , “Tokyo”, “Osaka”, “Kyoto”, “Kanagawa”, “Aichi”, etc., while Hokkaido is sometimes referred to as “North Sea” by simply removing the “road”. Very rare (although there are some examples of proper nouns such as company names and school names, such as Hokkai Times and Hokkai Gakuen University). The official notation in English is “Hokkaido Government” or “Hokkaido” [8], and is not written as “Hokkai Government” or “Hokkai Prefecture”. On the other hand, since there are only local governments that are “roads” in Hokkaido (similar to “inside Tokyo” and “downtown” in Tokyo), “roads” are “Domestic rice”, “outside Hokkaido”, etc. In fact, it is widely used as a vocabulary (morpheme) that uniquely points to Hokkaido.

As will be described later, the local government office that oversaw Hokkaido from 1886 (Meiji 19) to 1947 (Showa 22) was the Hokkaido Agency. In this case, “Hokkaido” is just a regional designation, and “Hokkaido Agency” is the name of the government office placed alongside “Tokyo Prefecture”, “Aomori Prefecture”, etc. (same as the relationship between Eita and Eita) . This “Hokkaido Government” is not the central government office of the local government as it is currently used. In 1901 (Meiji 34), the Hokkaido Association Law and the Hokkaido Local Expenses Act were promulgated and enforced to become a local government with a “Hokkaido Association” parliament, but the local government was called “Hokkaido Local Expenses”. After the war, when the prefectural system was revised together with the municipal system, town village system, and Tokyo system in the first local system reform in 1946 (Showa 21), the Hokkaido Association Law and the Hokkaido Local Cost Law were abolished and became the prefectural system. Integrated. In addition, according to the provisions of the supplementary law of the revised law, the local government that was previously called “Hokkaido Local Expenses” was called “Road”. The Hokkaido Government as a local administrative agency was abolished together with the “Hokkaido Government Official System” by the enforcement of the Local Autonomy Law in 1947 (Showa 22), and became Hokkaido as a normal local public organization based on this law.