Japanese people have lived on the country's other three main islands - Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku - for many centuries, but ethnic Japanese, or Wajin, began coming to Hokkaido in large numbers only in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This work describes the culture of the island's aboriginal people, the Ainu, and recounts the appearances of foreign explorers and ethnic Japanese. The book pays close attention to the Japanese-Russian conflicts over the island, including Cold War confrontations and more recent clashes over fishing rights and the Hokkaido-administered islands seized by the U.S.S.R. in 1945.