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From the 1860s onwards, the Japanese colonization of Hokkaido and the opening of the Hakodate harbor to foreign vessels allowed numerous European explorers, missionaries and scientists to discover this northern territory and to report on its japanization. Their travel writings share, for the first time, the view point of Westerners on a colonization scheme which was led by an Asian actor but inspired by the American pioneering spirit. The indigenous Ainu people, portrayed as antimoderns, became the main topic of several literary works in the 1880s.