When I first arrived in Hokkaido, it was for my wedding preparation and greeting to my wife’s family. But when I came back to Japan later in 1995, it was to pray for the mega-city, Sapporo. During this 1 full month of prayer journey, I began to understand what was causing what was obvious in the spiritual realm from my study of the history of Hokkaido.
Ainu Couple
One of the first thing that was very obvious was the relationship with the native Ainu people. They were mistreated by Japanese and forced to abandon Ainu language and culture replaced by Japanese and Japanese culture. This deeply wounded Ainu people. Now most of Ainu are not 100% Ainu anymore since they are mostly inter-mixed with Japanese and carry Japanese names. When you meet them on the street, you may not recognize them as Ainu unless they have Ainu’s facial structure on their faces. Just like Hawaiians in Hawaii, they are not pure any more.
This dark history of early settlement in Hokkaido from main island of Honshu caused deep root of spiritual darkness. Many of them were cheated by Japanese in their trade since the Ainu did not keep accounting often. Many promises were broken and finally the war between them was final blow against them for the total surrender.
Hokkaido people (Dosanko道産子） are immigrants like Americans. They are from all over the Honshu (the main island of Japan) and other islands like Shikoku or Kyushu. Not many are from Okinawa. It was only a little over 100 years when Japanese government decided to expand their territories to other places. This expansion policy affected to form a pioneering companies to move farmers to Hokkaido. Many were promised to receive large land after they cultivate the land for farming. Usually it was those of 2nd child or later since they could not inherit their parents’ land. It was the 1st son who will inherit the land and 2nd, 3rd, 4th and forth are not the heirs from their parents. They will either be renting portion of the land and become very poor in the future ending up helping their elder brother. If they are lucky, they can survive in their lives. It was that harsh for the farmers in Japan back then. So this expansion policy attracted many, but the sad thing about moving to sepearte and unknown island of Hokkaido was emotionally heart breaking. Seperating from their parents and their home land was not an easy decision. It was many times one way ticket.