Nayoro

Nayoro was an Ainu settlement on the western coast of Sakhalin, near routes across the island to the fishing and hunting grounds of the east. Its position made it a meeting place in the trade between the Amur region, Sakhalin and Japan. Furs travelled through Indigenous networks, while silk and other goods moved in the opposite direction.

In the eighteenth century, two sons of a Nayoro elder were taken to the mainland after a conflict. One returned bearing a Manchu document appointing him a clan headman, a title later inherited by his son. Visitors from the lower Amur called at Nayoro on their way south, and its leaders dealt with both these traders and Japanese officials as control over the island's commerce became increasingly contested.