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Karafuto was a former Japanese prefecture in the southern part of Sakhalin island, from 1905 to 1945.
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Karafuto was a former Japanese prefecture in the southern part of Sakhalin island, from 1905 to 1945.
The Karafuto Prefecture incorporated several smaller islands.
Karafuto was a very mountainous area. Its highest mountain was Mount Shisuka.
Owing to the influence of the raw, foggy Sea of Okhotsk, the climate is very cold. At Dui the average yearly temperature is only 0.5°C (January -15.9°; July 16.1°), 1.7° at Kushunkotan and 3.1° at Aniwa (January, -12.5°; July, 15.7°). At Mamiya near Dui the annual range is from 27° in July to -39° in January, while at Rūtaka in the interior the minimum is -45°C. The rainfall averages 570 mm. Thick clouds for the most part shut out the sun; while the cold current from the Sea of Okhotsk, aided by north-east winds, brings immense ice-floes to the east coast in summer.
During the winter, the Sea of Okhotsk turns to ice, rendering the northern coast impassable to marine traffic, and halting the lucrative fisheries there until the thaw.
The Sea of Okhotsk is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean. It is located between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, Japan's island of Hokkaido on the south, the island of Sakhalin along the west, and a stretch of eastern Siberian coast along the west and north. The northeast corner is the Shelikhov Gulf. The sea is named for the port of Okhotsk, itself named for the Okhota River.
Sakhalin is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies 6.5 km (4.0 mi) off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies 40 kilometres (25 mi) north of Japan's Hokkaido. A marginal island of the West Pacific, Sakhalin divides the Sea of Okhotsk to its east from the Sea of Japan to its southwest. It is administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast and is the largest island of Russia, with an area of 72,492 square kilometres (27,989 sq mi). The island has a population of roughly 500,000, the majority of whom are Russians. The indigenous peoples of the island are the Ainu, Oroks, and Nivkhs, who are now present in very small numbers.
The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands are a volcanic archipelago administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the Russian Far East. The islands stretch approximately 1,300 km (810 mi) northeast from Hokkaido in Japan to Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the north Pacific Ocean. There are 56 islands and many minor islets. The Kuril Islands consist of the Greater Kuril Chain and, at the southwest end, the parallel Lesser Kuril Chain. They cover an area of around 10,503.2 square kilometres (4,055.3 sq mi), with a population of roughly 20,000.
Karafuto Agency, from 1943 Karafuto Prefecture, commonly known as South Sakhalin, was a colony of the Empire of Japan on Sakhalin from 1907 to 1943 and later a prefecture until 1945.
Japanese place names include names for geographic features, present and former administrative divisions, transportation facilities such as railroad stations, and historic sites in Japan. The article Japanese addressing system contains related information on postal addresses.
Paramushir is a volcanic island in the northern portion of the Kuril Islands chain in the Sea of Okhotsk in the northwest Pacific Ocean. It is separated from Shumshu by the very narrow Second Kuril Strait in the northeast 2.5 km (1.6 mi), from Antsiferov by the Luzhin Strait to the southwest, from Atlasov in the northwest by 20 km (12 mi), and from Onekotan in the south by the 40 km (25 mi) wide Fourth Kuril Strait. Its northern tip is 39 km (24 mi) from Cape Lopatka at the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Its name is derived from the Ainu language, from “broad island” or “populous island”. Severo-Kurilsk, the administrative center of the Severo-Kurilsky district, is the only permanently populated settlement on Paramushir island.
Between 1905 and 1945, the Japanese Empire administered the southern half of Sakhalin, using the name Karafuto (樺太). The area was designated a chō (廳), the same term given to Hokkaidō at the time. It is commonly referred to as Karafuto Prefecture in English. The prefecture was divided into 4 subprefectures, which in turn were subdivided into 11 districts, in turn divided into 41 municipalities
Tyuleny Island is a small uninhabited island in the Sea of Okhotsk, to the east of Russia's Sakhalin Island, in Northeast Asia. It is also known by its Japanese name 海豹島 and has two widely used spelling alternatives: Tuleny and Tyuleniy.
This timeline of European exploration lists major geographic discoveries and other firsts credited to or involving Europeans during the Age of Discovery and the following centuries, between the years AD 1418 and 1957.
From 1264 to 1308, the Mongol Empire made several incursions into the island of Sakhalin off the east coast of Siberia to aid their Nivkh allies against the Ainu, who had been expanding north from Hokkaido. The Ainu put up a tenacious resistance, even launching a counter-attack on Mongol positions on the continent across the Strait of Tartary in 1297, but finally capitulated to the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China in 1308.
Matsuura Takeshirō was a Japanese explorer, cartographer, writer, painter, priest, and antiquarian. During the late Edo period and Bakumatsu he journeyed six times to Ezo, including to Sakhalin and the Kuriles. In the early Meiji period he was an official in the Hokkaidō Development Commission. Instrumental in the naming of the island and many of its places, he is sometimes referred to as the "godparent of Hokkaidō".
The Ainu languages, sometimes known as Ainuic, are a small language family, often regarded as a language isolate, historically spoken by the Ainu people of northern Japan and neighboring islands.