Traveling through Eastern Hokkaido ~ Sep, 2024 ~

I think there are quite a lot of people who collect stamps from the 100 Great Castles of Japan, but for people living in Honshu, it is not easy to go to Hokkaido and Okinawa. I visited five castles in Okinawa last year and was pleased to get the stamps, but the biggest challenge has been the eastern tip of Hokkaido, where there are several Ainu fort ruins called "Nemuro Peninsula Chashi Ruins", which are scattered all over the Nemuro Peninsula. Cape Nosappu is the front line of the conflict with Russia, which has a view of the Northern Territories, but the island silhouette, which can be easily seen with the naked eye, makes people from island country who are not usually conscious of borders feel nervous. 

Since the end of the Edo period, the border between Russia and the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin has changed many times. At the Nemuro Museum of History and Natural History, there is a border monument between Russia and the Empire of Japan, placed at the 50th parallel north of Sakhalin, which indicates the border agreed upon in the Treaty of Portsmouth. It seems that there were four monuments placed there at the time, but only one remains today. Catherine the Great, taking advantage of the return of Daikokuya Kodayu to Japan, dispatched Laxman to request trade with Japan, and the first place he visited was Nemuro. While maintaining its policy of national isolation, the Edo Shogunate strengthened its vigilance against Russia, surveying the country (Ino Tadataka) and sending Mamiya Rinzo across Sakhalin.

I believe that geographically it was inevitable that the two countries, Russia, a backward European country, and Japan, which had just opened its borders, would clash, but I cannot help but respect the sacrifices and efforts our ancestors made over the past two hundred years to maintain our land. Our country is now noisy with the representative battle between the ruling and opposition parties, but the essence of a nation's mission is to protect the lives and property of its citizens, and I foolishly believe that those who are prepared to do so should remain in the country.

I went to see the strange rock formations called Nemuro Kurumaishi. They are columnar lava formed when lava from an undersea volcano cooled rapidly and solidified. They are said to be 60 million years old, which means that in geological terms, they date back to the end of the Cretaceous Period and the beginning of the Cenozoic Era.

Hokkaido and the Kuril Islands sit on the North American Plate, but the Pacific Plate is pushing down on them from the east, and like the Tohoku region, volcanoes and earthquakes occur frequently in this region. If this reef is an uplift of an accretionary complex carried by the Pacific Plate, and if it has been moving north for 20 million years and west for 40 million years at a rate of 10 cm per year, then we can estimate that this lava was created in the ocean 4,000 km east and 2,000 km south. It may have been quite close to Hawaii.

Nakashibetsu Airport is the closest to Nemuro, but this time I landed in Hokkaido at Kushiro Airport. Kushiro is known as a marshland, but 6,000 years ago it was an inland bay during the so-called Jomon Sea Level Transgression, and then it turned into land and became a marshland, a paradise rich in flora and fauna. The Earth recently entered an interglacial period 10,000 years ago, when the ice age ended and the temperature was at its highest 6,000 years ago, when the sea water temperature was 2 degrees higher than now and the sea level was 4 meters higher, so Tokyo Bay and the Tsugaru Plain, which I visited in July, were both large inland bays. It's strange how we know the temperature from so long ago, but if you dig deep into the ice in Antarctica, the air from that time is trapped inside, and the number of oxygen isotopes seems to tell us the change in temperature.

I escaped from Tokyo, where the scorching heat continues even in September, and enjoyed the comfortable weather, but I feel that the hysterical arguments that call everything abnormal weather and blame it on the carbon dioxide emitted by humans have calmed down a little, but is that just my imagination? It is common knowledge that there is a high correlation between carbon dioxide concentration and global warming, even without waiting for data from the Industrial Revolution. In fact, during the Cretaceous period, when there was a lot of volcanic activity, the concentration was 1000 ppm, about 2.5 times that of today, and sea levels rose, dividing the North American continent into land masses east and west from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico. On the other hand, it is said that during periods of low carbon dioxide concentration, the Earth has frozen over at least three times in the past.

Carbon is the source of all life, and carbon dioxide is a medium that circulates it and is not evil in itself. It is important to control the appropriate amount, and while there are arguments that only see the trees and environmental businesses that jump on the bandwagon, I think it is important for Japanese people, who have high energy costs, to understand science and respond calmly. Carbon dioxide from human beings accounts for about 5% of the world's total, and 95% is absorbed and circulated by land with forests and (water-soluble carbon dioxide) by the ocean. The chemical reaction of burning hydrocarbons to generate carbon dioxide will continue to be the most efficient and cheap way to secure energy, and expensive and ineffective decarbonization measures will not be widely accepted in Japan or other countries. A realistic energy policy that combines availability and affordability is eagerly awaited.

From Nemuro, I drove to Abashiri, passing by Lake Mashu. Except for the mountain roads, the area is filled with endless dairy farming areas, and Hokkaido has a wide sky. I had a good look at Abashiri Prison, and learned how important Hokkaido was to the Meiji Japanese government as a strategic base and how quickly it was developed. There were many museum buildings lined up, and the most striking feature was the vivid dolls placed in various places, which were visually appealing. Inbound visitors may think, "Japanese people have quite a lot of tattoos, don't they?"