The polar regions are, of course, extremely difficult to define. This reviewer was once informed by a doyen, now sadly deceased, of polar studies that a simple rule of thumb was that they included anywhere where the sea froze. That is sufficient justification for inserting brief notice of this book in Polar Record, because the sea on the northern coasts of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, most definitely does freeze each winter as indeed it does frequently on the other coasts as well. Add to this the prodigious snowfall that the island experiences and we have a double justification for inclusion.

A third reason is that there are very few works in English, and certainly none as accessible as is the present volume, on the island in question. Part of the reason for this might be that Hokkaido is a borderland in the strict sense of the word adjacent as it is to Russia to the north. Moreover while ethnic Japanese people, or Wajin, have lived on the country's other three main islands, Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku, for many centuries, they only started serious immigration into Hokkaido in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

This book tells the story of Japan's aboriginal people, the Ainu, followed by that of foreign explorers and ethnic Japanese pioneers. The book pays close attention to the Japanese-Russian disputes over the island, including cold war confrontations and more recent clashes over fishing rights and over the once Hokkaido-administered islands (the southern parts of the Kuril chain and Karafuto, southern Sakhalin) seized by the U.S.S.R. in 1945.

The author is absolutely open about the fact that her ability in the Japanese language is limited and that the book depends largely on English language sources. This is, of course, a disadvantage as is the lack of engagement with Russian sources but her diligence in unearthing almost anything written in English about Hokkaido and the surrounding areas has been remarkable. The bibliography is a testament to the amount of sheer hard work that she has invested in this book. Moreover the writer's style is pleasant and easy to read. The result is a wholly satisfactory compilation, slanted obviously by the restricted nature of the sources, but one that presents a convincing portrayal of Hokkaido from the nineteenth century onwards. It is warmly recommended.