East Shikotan

East Shikotan lies within the northern island world that Japanese records called Ezo, the lands and peoples northeast of Honshu. The term commonly included Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, and its seafaring communities were especially connected with the Ainu. Cold currents, fog and rich fishing grounds shaped travel between islands.

Ezo first appears in a Japanese text of 1153 for non-Japanese people of northern Honshu. By 1485 it referred to the northern islands they inhabited, chiefly Hokkaido, Karafuto and the Kurils. The toponym probably entered Japanese from an Ainu word, and its changing meaning joined sea and islands into one northern world. Japanese geographers later divided Ezo between Wajinchi, lands settled by Japanese, and Ezochi, Ainu country.

A Japanese work printed in 1785 described the northern islands and peoples, while a Western account based on related books appeared in 1796. These records show sailors, fishermen and officials gradually mapping a world already known to Ainu communities. East Shikotan belonged to this frontier of islands, sea routes and overlapping names rather than to a single recorded town.