Isoya

Isoya belongs to the Japan Sea coast of western Ezo, around the lower Shiribetsu River and the shores south of Iwanai. Its early modern landscape contained Ainu settlements as well as the trading and fishery establishments through which Japanese merchants extended their activities. Coastal boats linked places that were separated inland by steep, wooded country.

In April 1806 the shogunal inspectors Toyama Kageshin and Muragaki Sadayuki stayed at Isoya while examining western Ezo, then sailed for Iwanai. The following year Kondo Juzo and his companions entered the Shiribetsu River. An accompanying journal recorded a single trading-house at Shiribetsu itself, while Shimakotan and Notto together contained twenty-seven Ainu houses. This local distribution shows why a commercial station cannot simply be equated with a Japanese town or with the whole Indigenous settlement landscape. In 1832 Nishikawa Junbei, the contractor of the Isoya trading place, founded an Inari shrine at Kita-Shiribetsu. Trade, fisheries and the passage of officials were thus changing the coast while Ainu communities remained an essential part of its inhabited geography.