Yezo

Industries and Products.--Marine products constitute the principal wealth of Yezo. Great quantities of salmon, sardines and codfish are taken. The salmon are salted for export to Nippon and other parts of Japan; the sardines are used as an agricultural fertilizer and the codfish serve for the manufacture of oil. An immense crop of edible seaweed is also gathered and sent to Chinese as well as to Japanese markets. This kombu, as it is called, sometimes reaches a length of 90 ft. and a width of 6 in. The herring fishery, too, is a source of wealth, and the canning of Akkeshi oysters as well as of salmon gives employment to many hands. Vast tracts are covered with a luxuriant growth of ash, oak, elm, birch, chestnut and pine, but, owing to difficulties of carriage, this supply of timber has not yet been much utilized. Communications.—The roads are few and in bad order, but there is a railway which, setting out from Hakodate in the ex treme south, runs, via Sapporo and Iwamizawa, to the extreme N. with branches from Iwamizawa, S. to Mororan and E. to

Poronai, and from Oiwake N.E. to the Yubari coal-mines. There is also a line W. along the S. coast from Nemuro.

History.

Yezo was not brought under Japan's effective con trol until mediaeval times. In 1604 the island was granted in fief to Matsumae Yoshihiro, whose ancestor had overrun it, and from the close of the 18th century the east was governed by officials sent by the shogun, whose attention had been attracted to it by Russian trespassers. In 1871 the task of developing its resources and administering its affairs was entrusted to a special bureau, which employed American agriculturists to assist the work and American engineers to construct roads and railways; but in 1881 this bureau was abolished, and the government abandoned to private hands the various enterprises it had inaugurated. The modern government departments attend to the development of Yezo in the same way as for the rest of the islands of the Empire. See the Annual Report of the Japanese Government.