evidence: Starting in the early 1600s, the Japanese also started colonizing the region where they would eventually encounter Russians. This was today’s Hokkaidō, the southern Kuril/Chishima Islands, and southern Sakhalin/Karafuto. The indigenous inhabitants of these lands called themselves "Ainu," and the region "Ainu Moshir," which roughly translate into "the people" and "the land of the people." The Japanese, on the other hand, called both the "barbarians" and the "barbarian land" they lived in "Ezo."2 By the late eighteenth century, they dominated the Ainu economically, militarily, and politically. Trade with Japanese merchants had changed the Ainu economy, traditionally based on hunting, fishing and regional trade with different peoples, into one that was dependent on trade with one people: the Japanese. At Japanese trading outposts, Ainu increasingly exchanged prestige goods such as eagle feathers and fur pelts for foodstuffs, especially rice, as well as manufactured items and luxury goods, such as sake.3 Inevitable Ainu resistance was ruthlessly suppressed. Yet the Japanese never annexed the region, and the Tokugawa government in Edo remained largely uninvolved in Ainu affairs. Instead, Ainu trade was overseen by the Matsumae Clan, whose feudal domain was restricted to the southernmost portion of today’s Hokkaidō.