Hokkaido, Japan’s ‘Garden of the Gods’, is warming

Sapporo, the main city of Japan’s second-largest island of Hokkaido, recorded 26 degrees Celsius on April 15, 2024, an official of the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) told AFP.

Record-keeping of temperatures began in 1877. April 15, 2024 is the earliest time in the year that Sapporo, a city famous for its snow and ice sights, has recorded this temperature which the JMA classifies as a ‘summer day’, AFP added.

It is a far cry from 2008, when Hokkaido played host to the G8 summit. An analysis brought about by the World-Wide Fund for Nature-Japan had then noted that the mean temperature in August, Hokkaido’s hottest month, was 21°C:

Hokkaido’s climate is sub-arctic, with an annual average temperature of 8°C and an average annual precipitation of 1,150 mm. At Asahikawa, in central Hokkaido, the mean temperature in January, the coldest month, is -9°C. The mean temperature in August, its hottest month, is 21°C, but because of climate change, these statistics will likely change soon.

The April 15 temperature has now vindicated WWF-Japan’s warning. It also means that Hokkaido, long considered Japan’s last wild frontier, will no longer be the ‘Garden of the Gods’ as it was known to be, by the Ainu, Japan’s indigenous people.

Warming archipelago

The Japanese archipelago, which stretches from the Ryukyuan islands (including Okinawa) near Taiwan to Hokkaido near Russian-administered Sakhalin, is warming up.

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A study last year noted that “In Japan, the temperature increased by 1.28°C/100 years from 1898 to 2021 (JMA 2021), and the three recent years, 2019-2021, are the warmest since 1898. In urban areas, a much larger temperature rise has been observed because of the urban heat island.”

Perhaps the biggest impact is being seen in Hokkaido, which borders the Sea of Okhotsk near the Russian Far East.

The Japan Times, in an article last year, noted that “In a high global emissions scenario, a 5 degrees Celsius average temperature rise by the end of this century would mean more intense squalls and less snowfall, while warmer seas around the island (Hokkaido) would disrupt the migratory patterns of fish.”

The Asahi Shimbun reported a study by Hokkaido University researchers this March that sea ice “in the Sea of Okhotsk is not only dwindling in terms of coverage area, but has also lost 30 percent of its thickness across a span of 30 years”.

“If things continue on the same course, the researchers predict there will be times in the future when no ice floes will reach Hokkaido’s coast,” the newspaper added.

The Ainu

As Hokkaido — blessed with natural and a hotspot for tourism including winter resorts and winter sport areas — warms, it will also have an impact on the Ainu, who already have been a marginalised people in Japan since coming into contact with ethnic Japanese (Yamato people) 400 years ago.

“The Ainu are the indigenous people of Hokkaido and are believed to have outnumbered the Japanese until about 1800,” WWF-Japan noted in 2008.

The Ainu were largely a hunter-gatherer people. After the Japanese subdued them militarily and incorporated Hokkaido into Japan, the Ainu were and still are subject to racism from mainstream Japanese society.

The Ainu were recognised as an indigenous people of Japan in 2019.

The Japan Times highlighted a 2020 landmark lawsuit brought about “by the Raporo Ainu Nation to claim their traditional Indigenous rights to catch the prized fish comes as estimated salmon stocks hover at around half of what they were just two decades ago, with rapidly warming waters in the Sea of Okhotsk and northern Pacific potentially upending migration patterns”.

And while Japan faces its own problems with a rapidly shrinking population, the Sapporo temperature shows that climate change’s grip on the archipelago, including its last wilderness, is tightening fast.