The restorer of the history of Karafuto talks about the secret cities and difficult life of the Japanese on Sakhalin. Sakhalin "Japanese" money and where you can find it Why bunker

Since 1875, Sakhalin was a place of hard labor, where prisoners were taken from all over Russia. Convicts were used as cheap labor in coal mining and logging. The famous thief and adventurer Sonya the Golden Hand also visited this penal servitude. She even tried to escape from hard labor three times, but after circling the entire island about 3 times in a row, she returned to the place of escape out of despair.

Settlements on Sakhalin were then small villages or even dugouts, between which there were very bad roads. The main route of communication was the sea. All this disorganization continued until 1905. During this period, the Russian Empire was defeated in the Russo-Japanese War. Soon, according to a peace treaty shameful for Russia, the south of Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands became the property of the Land of the Rising Sun.

Karafuto period (1905-1945)

The border between Russia and Japan ran along the 50th parallel. Border markers and posts were installed in 1906.

Russian residents mostly moved to Russia, but some remained. The Japanese government did not infringe on their rights. Meanwhile, Japanese settlers poured into the south of Sakhalin.

After the Japanese built ports in Sakhalin cities near the sea coast, a full-fledged ferry connection with the Japanese metropolis was established. Japanese business with its capital also reached out to Sakhalin. During the year 1906 alone, about 1,200 industrial, craft, trade, cultural and entertainment enterprises were registered in the southern part of the island.

On March 14, 1907, Emperor Mutsuhito of Japan signed a decree establishing the new Japanese prefecture of Karafuto with the administrative center in Odomari (Korsakov).

Then the capital of the prefecture was nevertheless moved to the fertile valley of the Susuya River, to where the Russian village of Vladimirovka was located. The Japanese rebuilt new areas of the city of Toyohara (now Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk), in their own style, a little south of the village of Vladimirovka.

In 1906, there were only about 2,000 Japanese citizens on the southern part of the island. In 1920 there were already 106,000 people, and in 1945 - 391,000 people (358,500 were Japanese). This is a very significant figure for half of Sakhalin Island, since during the Soviet era, about 820,000 Soviet citizens lived in the Sakhalin region. According to data for 2012, there were already 493,000...

In 1945, southern Sakhalin returned to the Soviet Union (as a result of victory over Japan).

Here is a summary of what was left as a legacy from Japanese rule:

• 735 enterprises
• 700 km. railways.
• 100 brick factories (currently there are none).
• 36 coal mines (5 mothballed (flooded in the 90s), 20 mines abandoned)
• 31 rice factories (currently none)
• 26 fish hatcheries (some restored, others abandoned and destroyed).
• 23 canning factories, of which 15 factories are on the Kuril Islands (now none of those factories exist)
• 20 sake distilleries (currently none)
• 18 tunnels, dozens of bridges
• 13 airfields (during Soviet times, some were used, most of these airfields were classified and mushroom pickers in the forests still come across the remains of these grassy airfields with other metal rubbish)
• 10 soybean plants (no more)
• pulp and paper mill (not preserved)
• 8 starch factories (closed)
• 4 soap factories (currently none)
• 2 plants for the production of technical oils (no longer exist)
• 1 oxygen production.
• production of sugar from sugar beets (in Soviet times, CHPP-1 was made from it, since there was a turbogenerator generating electricity there).
• 1 pharmaceutical plant (during Soviet times it no longer existed)

And there are still buildings of museums, gymnasiums, newspapers.

After 1945, the Soviet government inherited a good economy. However, all this could not be saved.

Money Karafuto

It is quite logical to assume that the money during the period of Japanese development of Sakhalin was Japanese. In Japanese, 5 Ri is half of 1 Sen.

1 sen is like 1 kopeck; 100 sen is made up of a yen.

To give you an idea of ​​their value, let’s give the cost of some products in 1937. 1.8 kg of rice - 34 sen, 600 gr. (100 kin) potatoes - 0.25 sen, 600 gr. cabbage - 0.6 sen, 600 gr. apples - 8 Sep, 600 gr. beef - 70 sen, 600 gr. chicken - 2.3 yen. A ton of coal, for example, cost 13 yen (this was a teacher’s salary for a month).

It is noteworthy that the Japanese trace their chronology from the accession to the throne of the reign of each of their emperors. That is, the new emperor of Japan ascended the throne - which means a new era of reckoning begins. Until 1912 there was the Meiji era (Emperor Mutsuhito), until 1925 - Taisho (Emperor Yoshihito), and Hirohito ruled there until 1989, and the era was called Showa. Today, if anyone is interested, is the 28th year of the Heisei era with Emperor Akihito.

And if you get Japanese coins from the Karafuto period, then you will be able to see the numbers on them - the 39th year, the 40th, and so on until 45. This is the Meiji era, and the years from 1905 to 1912. If the numbers from 1 to 15 are 1912 - 1926, Taisho era. And if from 1 to 35, this is the Showa era (1926-1945). However, not all coins will have European numerals. For a better understanding, it is worth learning the styles of Japanese characters denoting numerals.

Where to look for Karafuto's money?

Of course, in the south of Sakhalin, in the vicinity of the cities of Korsakov (Odori), Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (Toyohara), Dolinsk (Ochiai), Sinegorsk (Kawakami), Kholmsk (Maoka), Nevelsk (Honto), Makarov (Siritoru).

According to local search engines and treasure hunters, in almost every field there were mini-farms of 3-5 houses, outbuildings, etc. In such places, you mainly come across small household items - plates, cups, bottles.

And they are washed.

And real treasures of “gold and silver” are sought in the forests. Of course, not gold and silver as such, but jugs with coins of that time, jewelry, and other items of value.

Particular attention should be paid to maps of the Japanese period. Some of them can be found.

P.S.. For those who are interested, there is a documentary film “Karafuto - the Japanese period on Sakhalin”. Created by STS-Sakhalin, its duration is 135 minutes. Available at YouTube.

Finds from the Japanese period have become commonplace for builders of residential buildings in the 25th microdistrict of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Household items of the Japanese, who lived in these places more than seven decades ago, are found here almost every day, an employee of the Sfera company who works at this site told RIA Sakhalin-Kuril Islands.

Builders are installing utilities at the site for future residential development. Soon dozens of three-story buildings will rise on this site.

Mostly the dishes left in the ground from the Japanese are glass and ceramic. For example, excavators recently discovered a small kettle, small but deep plates, possibly for soup, cups, bottles, and vials. What is noteworthy is that workers often find intact dishes that, seven decades later, have not suffered any damage. There are also figurines that, according to the builders, are of interest. They preserve such samples and even give them to the museum.

The local history museum confirmed that they had already received finds from the builders of the Sphere, but the Japanese dishes were not of particular interest to history.

Since we dig a trench for external networks, we come across such finds quite often. In addition, we also found a Japanese water supply here, operational, the pipe is made of lead,” said the builder.

In general, Sfera employees are already accustomed to the fact that history lies right under their feet. Similar finds occurred during construction work on Sakhalinskaya Street and when the Ice Palace was being built.

We often find interesting things, but here everything depends on the driver of the equipment and on who the excavator operator is working with, on their attentiveness. Most, of course, don’t need this; they dig quietly and don’t notice the valuables near their nose, but someone pays attention and stops the work,” said a Sfera employee.

From 1905 to 1945, the southern part of Sakhalin, following the Portsmouth Peace Treaty, was part of the Japanese Empire and was called Karafuto Prefecture with its center in the city of Toyohara (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk). More than 80 objects dating back to the period of the Karafuto governorship have been identified in the region. Among them are Shinto shrines, school pavilions, memorial signs, light beacons, and several Japanese cemeteries.

Photos of the Sphere builders

On Sakhalin, the nature and color of which was dedicated, there is a breath of Japan. His landscapes resemble scenes from Japanese prints, anime, or films about Godzilla. Sometimes the fragments of the Land of the Rising Sun themselves flash by - an arch with a floating roof, a stele with hieroglyphs, a factory or a pier that was clearly not built by us... The legacy of the Karafuto governorship on Southern Sakhalin is not as abundant as the legacy of Prussia in the Kaliningrad region or Old Finland on the Karelian Isthmus , but, like Japan itself, it is much more exotic. And moreover, there are people left here from Karafuto - Sakhalin Koreans.

So, in 1905, the Russian Empire lost Southern Sakhalin, which became the governorate of Karafuto in the Japanese Empire. But we must understand that this land was neither ours nor theirs, and even the Ainu, in the wars with which Japan was born 1500 years ago, came to Falcon Island only in the 17th century. The Japanese were one step ahead of us in this race: if Vasily Poyarkov in 1644 only saw the foggy hills of northern Sakhalin from the mainland, then samurai Murakami Hironori from the Matsumae clan landed on its southern shores for the first time that year. The first Japanese settlement on Sakhalin was the trading post Shiranusi, organized in 1790 on the site of an ancient Manchu fortress at the base of Cape Crillon. Almost immediately, three Russian people showed up at that trading post and expressed a desire to trade. This is how “sentan” appeared on Sakhalin - barter trade between the Japanese, Russians, Ainu and natives of the Amur region. In 1805, on the site of present-day Korsakov, the Japanese fortification of Kusunkotan (in the frame below) briefly arose with a garrison of 700 people under the leadership of the samurai of the Matsumae clan, but it did not last long: in those years, a number of border incidents swept across Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, which with great stretch can be would be called the first Russian-Japanese war, and Russia was represented in it by the well-known “Juno” and “Avos”. In the Southern Kuril Islands, the Japanese had already gained the upper hand, but they chose to leave Sakhalin, suffering losses in the storm.

2.

Then decades passed, distant Russia and medieval Japan did not dare to confidently take the cold island, and periodic attempts to declare sovereignty over it were not supported by any actions. Little by little, fishermen, traders and fugitive criminals from both sides settled on Sakhalin, and in 1853 two Russian garrisons were added to them - the Kusunai post on the Tatar Strait and the Muravyov post on Aniva Bay. In 1855-75, this uncertainty was even consolidated by the co-ownership regime, but in the end in St. Petersburg they realized that time was on the Japanese side, and having handed over the Kuril Islands to them before it was too late, in exchange Russia received Sakhalin for sole use. However, few people wanted to settle on this resource-poor island with a disgusting climate, and hard labor became the face of Russian Sakhalin for many years. By 1905, the population of the Sakhalin department was about 45 thousand people from all the peoples of the European part, from Tatar to Latvian, but there were also about 750 Japanese among them. Were they waiting for their fellow tribesmen, were they happy about the landing of troops armed with the latest technology on the Sakhalin shores? Now it is unlikely that it will be possible to find out. The Japanese invaded Sakhalin in July 1905, at the very end of the war, and the resolution of the century-old dispute became for them a kind of bonus to their tremendous successes in China and Korea. Having quickly broken the resistance of sparsely populated posts and a few partisans, the Japanese quickly occupied the entire huge island and began to literally scoop up its Russian population, ship by ship sending it to the nearest mainland port of De-Kastri. According to the Portsmouth Peace Treaty, Sakhalin was divided between Russia and Japan along the 50th parallel (in the frame below there is a border post). At that time, only 2.5 thousand inhabitants remained to the south of it, including the stationed military: the Japanese occupied the “Northern Frontier” in order to live on it.

2a.

Of course, Sakhalin was a distant and remote periphery for Japan. But not at all to the same extent as for Russia. Moreover, the local reserves of timber and coal were, by Russian standards, of very minor importance, but for Japan they were priceless. I have already drawn parallels with the Komi Republic or the Murmansk region - a harsh, sparsely populated region awaiting priority development. The Japanese took their new governorship of Karafuto seriously, and their main legacy in South Sakhalin is South Sakhalin itself, as we see it. I don’t know the reasons why the USSR could develop this distant and unprofitable (at that time) region more actively than Kamchatka or the north of the Khabarovsk Territory, while the Japanese created a dense network of railways, highways and populated areas in Karafuto. The rapid development of the “Northern Frontier”, coupled with its mono-nationality, allowed Karafuto to move from gaiti (“external lands”, that is, colonies) to find (“internal lands”, that is, regions of the metropolis). True, not for long - in 1943.

3.

Japan of those years was a very paradoxical sight. On the one hand, it made a leap unprecedented in world history, jumping from the Middle Ages (or rather even Antiquity) into modern times in a few decades. The pilots of the Zero and the sailors of the battleship Yamato had great-grandfathers who fought with a sword and a bow. In fact, the Japanese hardly even saw the steam era, immediately moving into the era of electricity - and by 1941, 89% of households in Japan were electrified: twice as many as in England! The Japanese learned very quickly, and for example, from the construction of the country's first railway (1872) to the complete refusal of the participation of foreign specialists in railway construction, it took them only 10 years. The landscapes of the cities of Karafuto are very reminiscent of the scenery of Westerns, and they were built on the model of the young American West:

4.

But at the same time, as someone correctly noted, “industrialization is a very painful process for those being industrialized”: all this was achieved at the cost of wear and tear. The average Japanese worked a lot, received little and was punished severely - in fact, like a Korean in the 1970-80s, a Chinese in the 1980-90s, some Vietnamese or Bengali - now. Only adjusted for the fact that it was a completely different time all over the world, and even in the most developed countries, starvation was commonplace, and war was constantly waiting at the door. Since the 1930s, the screws have been rapidly tightened in Japan and freedom of enterprise has been curtailed: for example, peasants handed over their harvest to the state at fixed prices and bought food in state stores. For wrong thoughts and words, a Japanese, like a Russian or a German, could get a knock on the door. In short, the Japanese Empire at the peak of its military power was a rather gloomy country...

4a.

Well, what about the Northern Frontier? The governorate of Karafuto, with its capital in the city of Toyohara, was second in area (36 thousand square kilometers) in Japan after neighboring Hokkaido, and in terms of population (about 400 thousand people) it was slightly inferior to its territory today. This population was distributed, however, in a completely different way. Karafuto was divided into 4 districts with centers in Toyohara (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk), Sisuke (Poronaisk), Maoka (Kholmsk) and Esutoru (Uglegorsk), each of which in turn was divided into several districts. 28 thousand people lived in the provincial Toyohara, 23 thousand in Otomari (Korsakov), which was part of its district, and 18 thousand in the other three district cities. 180 thousand people live in present-day Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Kholmsk and Korsakov are slightly larger than they were (27 and 33 thousand inhabitants), Poronaysk (15 thousand) is slightly smaller, and all other cities and villages are now significantly smaller than they were in those times. A very striking example is what I recently showed, where almost 2000 people lived under the Japanese, and now there are not even fifty. In other words, Japanese Sakhalin was not more populous than Russian, but was much more densely and evenly populated. However, Karafuto was also a raw materials region, the prosperity of which was determined by timber, coal, fish and military garrisons.

5.

More than 90% of the population of Karafuto were Japanese, so it’s even strange that the status of gaiti was not removed from it earlier. Moreover, this region managed to leave its mark in Japanese culture. If he had remained part of Japan, then Chekhov’s place in the pantheon of fellow countrymen would have been occupied by Kenji Miyazawa, a somewhat blessed Buddhist writer from the north of the island of Honshu. In Japanese literature, he occupies approximately the same place as in English - Lewis Carroll: the cult author of children's poems and stories in which adults could see all the depths of the universe and find the answer to any question. Only Carroll wrote cheerfully, and Miyazawa wrote with typically Japanese melancholy. In 1921, after the death of his beloved sister, Kenji left to look for her spirit to the cold waves of the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk. On Sakhalin in 1922, he created a draft of his main work, “Night on a Train on the Milky Way,” where two boys Giovanni and Campanella travel in a carriage from constellation to constellation, apparently to the afterlife. Karafuto, of course, is not mentioned in it, but Sakhalin remained “Giovanni’s Island” for the Japanese.

5a.

In addition to the Japanese, other peoples lived here. 5% of the population of Karafuto according to censuses and 10% de facto were Koreans - partly guest workers (whom the Japanese called "takobeya" - "people caught in a crab trap"), partly Ost-Arbeiters: like the Germans of the Slavs, the Japanese exported them here en masse to war, when men went to distant fronts, and the island required urgent strengthening. The Nivkhs and Ainu still lived here, and a kind of conflict was associated with the latter: in 1899, the Ainu were recognized as Japanese, and the Japanese metropolis was declared a mononational state. Together with Sakhalin, Japan inherited several thousand unassimilated Ainu, whose identity they began to urgently break at the knees. Often in very sneaky ways: for example, the Ainu could not have fishing equipment... but they could rent them from the Japanese! By 1933, the Sakhalin Ainu were also officially liquidated as a people, and then this fate would probably await the Oroks and Evenks... Another minority of Southern Sakhalin were the Russians - by the end of 1905 there were about 300 of them left here. Later, the community shrank, only slightly replenished by runaway “whites” to the Civil. Basically, the Russians lived by selling bread, and due to the lack of education in Karafuto in their native language (as well as any other language except Japanese), they remained illiterate. It also happened differently - for example, the strongest sumo wrestler in the 20th century, Taiho Koki from Sisuki (Poronaysk), had a little secret: his middle name was Ivan Boryshko, inherited from his Little Russian father.
Beautiful shot - Russians and Japanese at the church in Nayossi (Lesogorsk) in the 1910s:

6.

In the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk museum there are two heavy captured Russian cannons from Port Arthur:

7.

And the Japanese weapons themselves... defeats. In the frame above is a light howitzer "type No. 91", developed in 1929-31 and produced at the Osaka Arsenal, and in the frame below is a light tank "Ha-Go", produced since 1935. Both of them became trophies of the Red Army in 1945:

8.

The Karafuto story ended in 1945. It was a kind of “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact”, but not with Germany, but with the USA: the Soviet Union, 3 months after the victory in Europe, sent its troops into Manchuria, and for the defeat of Japan on land it could keep Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. After the war, these islands became part of the RSFSR as the new Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk region, but the most interesting things were just beginning here:

9a.

The Japanese greeted the advance of the Red Army with panic, especially since military propaganda said that the Russians would come to kill, rob and rape, and jokes with them were bad, because a Red Army soldier would rip a bear’s mouth with his bare hands. In the confusion of a losing war, people fought: some rushed across the La Perouse Strait, others hid in the forests, and a couple of times the Japanese carried out reprisals against the Koreans, realizing that they had something to take revenge for. By the end of 1945, about 300 thousand people remained on Sakhalin, including 23 thousand Koreans, several hundred Ainu and Oroks, hundreds of Eveks and Russian “old settlers,” and several dozen Nivkhs. The new region was headed by Dmitry Kryukov, a native of Northern Sakhalin. But if the Germans from Königsberg or the Finns from Vyborg were quickly expelled, Stalin initially had slightly different plans for Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Japan, humiliated by the Americans, was seen as a potential ally, and the option of creating Japanese national autonomy in the Far East of the USSR was being seriously prepared.

9b.

The Japanese themselves even liked it: now they worked not 12-16 hours a day, but only 8, had 2 days off a week, not a month, salaries did not vary by nationality and gender, the boss no longer had to bow, and the boss no longer had the right to beat his subordinates. Stalin's socialism turned out to be more market-oriented than the war capitalism of previous years - now peasants could sell their harvest at the most ordinary bazaars. And perhaps not everyone liked the closure of brothels, even to the point of a strike by disgruntled miners... The Russians and Japanese demonstrated, if not sympathy, then genuine interest in each other. And we can only imagine what strange scenes we could see now if the Japanese had remained on Sakhalin... And what names there would be! Let's say Nikolai Soitirovich or Aizawa Stepanovich...

9th century

But everything turned out differently... There were fewer and fewer prospects for an alliance with Japan as the Cold War grew. Since 1947, the Japanese began to be deported back home, which many of them resisted as best they could. By 1949, there were about 2,500 people with Japanese names remaining on Sakhalin, most of whom were valuable technical specialists. Their departure continued until the 1960s, and about 600 Japanese never left the USSR. It is unlikely that there is at least one descendant of Prussian Germans in Kaliningrad, but I (albeit in Moscow) knew one girl whose grandfather was Japanese from the Kuril Islands. Every single one of the Ainu left Sakhalin, and the last people in Russia from this amazing people should be looked for only in Kamchatka...
, and also a good anime "Giovanni's Island" without politicization and cranberries.

When looking at modern Japan with its skyscrapers and high-speed trains, a myth was born that the USSR purposefully destroyed all Japanese buildings on Sakhalin. In the end, toponymy was eradicated here as quickly and completely as on the Karelian Isthmus or in the Kaliningrad region. But to destroy strong permanent houses where hundreds of thousands of displaced people were going?! There really is little Japanese heritage left on Sakhalin, and the answer to the question “where did it go?” stands in Yuzhny on Sakhalinskaya street:

10.

This is a miraculously surviving typical Toyohara house, and the peeled plaster shows how it was built - according to our classification, it is nothing more than a "fill-in". The Japanese loved wooden architecture even more than us, but spoiled by the warm climate and intimidated by earthquakes, they preferred frames to log houses. Having seen Japanese life, the Russians really took them for savages: they live in “plywood houses” (at best, plywood, or even covered with thick paper), sleep and sit on the floor, and have never even held a spoon and fork in their hands! Most Japanese buildings were indeed destroyed without regret - but only because it was not possible for Russian people to live in them. And at the same time, the “housing issue” on Sakhalin was acute - fire hazards and cold “paper fanzes” determined the appearance of its cities for another 20-30 years after joining the Soviet Union. The same processes took place in Japan, which only massively mastered modern building materials in the post-war decades. Excluding temples, the state of preservation of Japanese architecture of the 1910-30s on Sakhalin is approximately the same as in its historical homeland.
There are fewer permanent buildings here than pre-Petrine chambers in Central Russia. You should look for them first of all in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. In posts about this city I will show everything that I found, but for now here is the oldest and most beautiful Japanese house in Sakhalin. Security Troops Headquarters (1908):

11.

And a regional museum (1937), which would not be lost in Japan:

12.

It was built in the teikan style - Japanese imperial historicism. Interiors:

13.

However, the Japanese were more willing to build in the European style. Here, for example, are two buildings of the Hokkaido Development Bank (which dominated Karafuto), almost typical for the country - in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (1930):

14.

And Korsakov (1928):

15.

Banks, museums, factories and warehouses are buildings that were more practical to build from non-combustible materials. Here are a couple more warehouses in Korsakov:

16.

The best “reserve” of ordinary Japanese development is the village of Sokol (Otani) near Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Cottages:

17.

And the barracks of the airfield from which in 1983 a Soviet plane flew to shoot down a Korean Boeing:

18.

In the outback, the most common Japanese essence is hoanden. Translated as “a repository of spiritual treasures”, and in everyday life as “a school pavilion”. The schools themselves were made of wood and sometimes burned, as for example in 1943 in Sirutoru (Makarov), when 23 people died in a fire. And the khoanden that stood near the schools contained state symbols, portraits of the emperor, various secular relics and regalia, which were brought out to the people on holidays. What is more surprising is that only on Sakhalin did the Hoanden survive: in Japan itself, Korea and China they were successively destroyed in the 1940s, like the Ilyichs in the post-Soviet Baltic states. For Russians, these booths, which became utility rooms, did not evoke political associations.

19.

Here and there you come across monuments or their remains, like the pedestal from the title frame:

20.

But perhaps the most unusual heritage of Japan in Russia is the Shinto shrines, or jinja. Shinto is an ancient paganism of the Japanese islands, which grew out of the cults of the ancient Ainu and proto-Japanese in alliance with Buddhism and under its influence. If Hinduism is similar to Greek or Scandinavian paganism, then Shintoism is similar to the cults of the northern peoples with their deification of the forces of nature and places, as well as the constant cult of ancestors. The main category of Shintoism is “kami”, not even spirit, but the spiritual essence of things. Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, was honored more than others only because the imperial house traced its ancestry to her. Shinto shrines, where travelers and fishermen prayed, were placed near mountains, rivers and seaside cliffs like steppe obo:

20a.

The idol from the frame above, for example, marked Moguntan - the current Pugachev mud volcano.

20b.

The Shinto temples themselves, or more correctly, shrines, looked like this. Pay attention to the katsuogi - transverse bars above the ridge of the roof, marking the rank of jinja: the main temples of Japan had up to 10 of them. About the architecture, details and history of the formation of Shinto shrines of Karafuto, and in short - Karafuto was characterized by a special northern style, formed in Hokkaido . However, architectural styles (“zukuri”) no longer matter - all jinja buildings, without exception, on Sakhalin were wooden, and the last of them sunk into oblivion in the 1970s. However, each of them was accompanied by a whole set of auxiliary structures, and there are still quite a few of them in cities and villages.

20.

First of all, this is a torii - an arched gate, in the original sense, the roost of the rooster that woke up the sun-Amaterasu. Therefore, the main thing in torii is not even the floating roof, but the crossbar. Their materials were different - wood, concrete, whale bones... but only concrete ones survived, as for example in Seaside (Shiraura) from the Higashi Shirauri Inari Temple (1914). The inscriptions tell the story of the 2600th anniversary of Great Japan and the founder of the jinji named Yamagiya Takeo:

21.

The sando, “the road to the temple,” led through the torii, which was marked:
- ishi-toroo - lanterns that I have never come across.
- Koma Inu - paired guard dogs with open and closed mouths (Tomari)
- chozubachi - a bathtub for washing hands, hewn from solid stone (Kholmsk):

22.

Since Shintoism was tightly tied to the cult of ancestors, and the whole life of the Japanese was with the cult of war and valor, tyukonhas were erected at temples - “monuments to those who showed loyalty.” These were altars in memory of heroes, through which, after the farewell ceremony, their souls ascended to heaven. Tyukonhas are known locally as “Japanese stoves” due to their characteristic niche for candles.

23.

Sometimes military monuments were made in the form of a projectile. Both frames, top and bottom, are from Tomari, where the jinja is best preserved. This obelisk, however, is no longer “tyukonhi”, but “senshi-kinehi”: the former can be correlated with the Soviet Alleys of Heroes, and the latter with simple Victory monuments. Of which, by the way, there are almost none on South Sakhalin - after all, those heroes who came from here now rest on the warm bottom near Guadalcanal.

24.

The largest jinja also included hobutsuguraden - treasuries where numerous temple relics were protected from fire. One of these, a concrete imitation of the azekura style (Japanese timber-frame architecture), has been preserved in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk from Karafuto-jinja, the main temple on the island:

25.

Most Japanese believers are dual believers: Shintoism viewed Buddhas as a type of kami, Buddhism viewed kami as living beings, like people, in need of salvation. From time immemorial, most Japanese shrines nourished adherents of both religions. However, during the Meiji era, that is, the period of Europeanization and colonial expansion, the two religions were officially separated, and the more national Shintoism became the official religion of the Japanese. This may be why Buddhist temples in Karafuto were rare, and mainly Koreans prayed in them. Here, for example, is the foundation of the pagoda in Kholmsk:

26.

However, perhaps most clearly the Japanese heritage is manifested not in spiritual, but in the most utilitarian architecture - infrastructure. Moreover, as you have already noticed, the alternative to wood for the Japanese was not brick or rubble stone, but concrete, the appearance of which fell precisely in the Meiji era. In Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Tomari (pictured), and maybe somewhere else, I saw Japanese bridges with unchanged pylons at the entrances:

27.

The railways built by Japan deserve a separate post, especially since the trains on them are not ours:

28.

Sea shores and mountain cliffs are reinforced in some places with retaining walls:

29.

And the buckets (harbours) are protected by powerful breakwaters, also built in Japan. The largest of them is in Nevelsk, and from February to June a sea lion rookery is established there:

30.

There are a dozen capital lighthouses along the shores of Sakhalin, approximately equally divided between Soviet, Tsarist and Japanese. The most striking monument to Karafuto is perhaps the Tonino lighthouse (1939, 31m) on Cape Aniva. But it is also the most inaccessible - a trip here takes a week, a boat excursion costs 6,500 rubles per place, and even from afar it is visible from the Farkhutdinov on the way to the Kuril Islands:

31.

And, of course, factories! First of all - 9 pulp and paper mills built in 1913-35 in Otomari (Korsakov), Toyohara (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk), Maoke (Kholmsk), Noda (Chekhov), Tomari, Ochiai (Dolinsk), Siritoru (Makarov) , Sisuke (Poronaysk) and the most powerful in Esutoru (Uglegorsk). Initially, there were several players in this Karafuto industry, but in the end everyone was crushed by the Oji company. The latter is still the world's third largest paper producer, and for Karafuto it meant about the same as Gazprom for Yamal. The factories worked properly under the Soviets (and it was they that were “managed” by Japanese specialists until the 1960s), but in the 1990s they closed one after another, and by the mid-2000s the pulp and paper industry on Sakhalin disappeared. The most impressive ruins of the pulp and paper mill are in Kholmsk and again in Tomari:

32.

There was, of course, other industry in Karafuto, but don’t look for old car factories, shipyards or machine tool manufacturing here: those industries that Japan is proud of did not reach here. In addition to pulp and paper mills, there are power plants, coal mines on Sakhalin...

33.

And agro-industrial factories, for example beet and sugar factories. There are especially many of them (except for mines) along the northern outskirts of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. The low old pipes here are made not so much of concrete as of yellowish-gray brick:

34.

As in Prussia, the Japanese heritage of Karafuto is not limited to buildings - many smaller antiquities are collected in local museums. Here the most interesting artifact is on the left - this is a replica of a border post, specially made for the museum as an illustration of the escape of actress Yoshiko Okada to the USSR. There was something to illustrate: the Japanese star was from Hiroshima, in 1936 she married a communist, and, fascinated by red ideas, the two fled in 1938 to Northern Sakhalin. There they were immediately arrested, and not only their husband was shot, but also Meyerhold, Yoshika’s idol, to whom they were heading. The Japanese woman’s journey took 10 years through the camps, but in the end she ended up in Moscow and became a radio announcer broadcasting to Japan. She visited her homeland several times and was surprised to discover that she was loved and remembered there. But her homeland was the USSR, and 90-year-old Okada died shortly after its collapse.

35.

To the right in the frame above is a net for a seine, a kukhtyl (sea float), a lighthouse horn, memorial plaques, remains of millstones and tools, a metal home stove and much more. Pay attention to the furniture - the Japanese did without beds, chairs and tables, but they found plenty of room for a clock or a piano.

36.

Cult objects in the Korsakov Museum are a porcelain temple bowl, a metal “bansho” bell and a ritual hearth, and next to them are peasant millstones and a cart wheel:

37.

A mask and sword for fencing, next to which the iron looks funny:

38.

Utensils of Japanese houses:

39.

Surely, Japanese artifacts can be found in the homes of ordinary Sakhalin residents, just as German artifacts are found in the homes of residents of the Kaliningrad region. Once on the train we met a man who was traveling with a metal detector into the mountains, to the site of a long-abandoned Korean village, where it would now take two days to go. Open and talkative, like most Sakhalin residents, he happily showed us his “catch”:

40.

41.

But what distinguishes Karafuto from Prussia or Old Finland - in addition to the dead heritage, living people also remained from it. After all, as already mentioned, the second largest people of Karafuto were Koreans. , deported in the 1930s from the Far East (including Northern Sakhalin) to Central Asia, they did not come from the regions bordering Russia, but mainly from South Korea, and therefore they are actually a different people. It is believed that, unlike the Japanese, there was no one to take them from here (this version is voiced even by the unfortunate Korean woman from that very anime “Giovanni’s Island”), but in reality everything was more complicated. The Koreans were considered more loyal than the Japanese, and the USSR decided to delay their departure until the island was saturated with Russian settlers - on depopulated Sakhalin there were not enough hands not only to operate the economy, but even to maintain its conservation. However, later a civil war began in Korea, and the Soviet government could not release its citizens to the imperialist-occupied South. But in the 1940s, the Sakhalin community was replenished with a number of North Koreans who were recruited there for temporary work, but others managed to stay in the Soviet Union. Instead of Japanese autonomy in the 1950s, Korean autonomy existed here de facto - with a press, schools and theater. All this was eliminated in 1963 by the same Pavel Leonov, whose rule of the region remained a “golden age” in the memory of Sakhalin residents. He did this for a reason: the Sakhalin Koreans remained faithful to traditions and hated the Soviet government, which did not allow them to return home, while the Koryo-Saram became Russified, and the Soviet government was respected, including for the deportation of the rice fields that were given to them in the Syr Darya. The two communities hated each other like the army officers of South and North Korea, and formally semi-autonomy on Sakhalin was curtailed at the request of the Koreans themselves - of course, the “mainland” ones. The Sakhalin Koreans themselves, however, have not gone away, and to this day it is impossible to imagine this island without them:

42.

South Korea, surprisingly, is still not very willing to engage in repatriation: according to the official program, only 3.5 thousand people went there, mostly old people taken by the Japanese before 1945. They now live in the city of Ansan, and Japan pays for their tickets to Sakhalin once a year. There are about 25 thousand Koreans left on Sakhalin, 5.5% of the island's population and 10% of the population of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and more than a quarter of them remember the Korean language. But in Tomari, people do not celebrate a wedding or September 1st, but the Day of the Liberation of Korea from Japanese Occupation:

43.

The main contribution of the Koreans to Sakhalin culture was the kitchen - thrown into alien conditions, here they began to prepare herbs that the Russians and Japanese never considered food, or to process alien plants like cabbage and carrots in their own way. This is how Korean carrots, unknown in Korea itself, appeared, salads made from burdock or fern, and kimchi here, they say, is different. Traditional steamed pies are called pegodi among Central Asian Koreans, and pyan-se among the locals. At the burger shop near the station in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk they served Korean burgers with sesame sauce, and Primorsky Confectioner also adds sesame seeds to the Sakhalin chocolate bar... here, however, see.

44.

Another Korean manifestation is the numerous Protestant churches that grew up in the 1990s and 2000s on the outskirts of Sakhalin cities. Among Koreans (mostly non-believers at all), there are now more Catholics and Protestants than Buddhists. This church even has Korean letters on the facade above the window:

45.

Korean cemeteries are also original. Pay attention to the names - unlike Koryo-Saram, Sakhalin Koreans have retained not only their surnames. True, whether everything is official and how official I still don’t understand.

46.

And next to them, under the steles with hieroglyphs, the Japanese are buried, and a large monument probably reminds of a pre-war cemetery demolished under the Soviets:

47.

Japan reminds us of our common past through plaques on monuments:

48.

And various cultural and business organizations from non-profit foundations to hotels. The attitude of Sakhalin residents towards Japan comes down to the same two types as the attitude of Kaliningrad residents towards Germany: either the Japanese were villains and occupiers, about whom it is ugly even just to remember, or they are entirely highly cultured people from whom these islands were taken away in vain. However, the official phrase “liberation of Sakhalin from Japanese militarists” hurts my ears a little...

48a.

Karafuto lived the longest here, in the South Sakhalin Church of St. James (2001) - the Catholic “Apostolic Prefecture of Karafuto” was called that until 2003.

49.

But first of all, the former metropolis reminds Sakhalin of itself like this. On the one hand, Sakhalin is the most “left-hand drive” region visited on this trip (20 percent of cars, I would say), but at the same time it is also the most “off-road” - this is proportional to the condition of the roads... Regular parking in Yuzhny:
.
Sakhalin
. Two villages on Falcon Island.
. Nature, history and realities.
Sakhalin in general. Fragments of Karafuto.
Sakhalin in general. Railways and other transport.
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Color and views.
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Communist Avenue and surroundings.
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Shards of Toyohara.
The Sakhalin Frog, or How We Didn't Get to Cape Giant.
Korsakov.
Nevelsk.
Kholmsk. Center.
Kholmsk. Outskirts and surroundings.
Hoshinsen. Mud volcano.
Hoshinsen. Damn bridge.
Vzmorye, Penza, Chekhov.
Tomari.
Northern Sakhalin
Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky. Three brothers.
Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky. City and hard labor.
Nogliki and Nivkh.
Daginsky springs and Chaivo.
Kurile Islands
Motor ship "Igor Farkhutdinov".
Iturup. Kurilsk and surroundings.
Iturup. Baransky Volcano.
Iturup. White rocks.
Iturup. Killer whale.
Kunashir. Yuzhno-Kurilsk.
Kunashir. Neighborhoods of Yuzhno-Kurilsk.
Kunashir. Cape Stolbchaty.
Kunashir. Mendeleev Volcano.
Kunashir. Golovnino and its volcano.
Shikotan. Malokurilskoye and Krabozavodskoye.
Shikotan. The end of the world.

Sakhalin is Russia's largest island, located in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, east of Russia and north of Japan.

Since in its structure, Sakhalin Island resembles a fish, with a fin and tail, the island has disproportionate dimensions.

Its dimensions are:
- in length, more than 950 kilometers
- in width, in its narrowest part, more than 25 kilometers
- in width, in its widest part, more than 155 kilometers
- the total area of ​​the island reaches more than 76,500 square kilometers

Now let's plunge into the history of Sakhalin Island.

The island was discovered by the Japanese around the middle of the 16th century. And by 1679, a Japanese settlement called Otomari (the current city of Korsakov) was officially formed in the south of the island.
During the same period, the island was given the name Kita-Ezo, which translated means Northern Ezo. Ezo is the former name of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Translated into Russian, the word Ezo means shrimp. This suggests that near these islands there lived a large concentration of one of the main Japanese delicacies, shrimp.

The island was discovered by Russians only at the beginning of the 18th century. And the first official settlements on the current island of Sakhalin were developed by 1805.

I would like to note that when Russian colonists began to create topographic maps of Sakhalin, there was one mistake on them, because of which the island got its name, Sakhalin. This is because maps were drawn up with rivers in mind, and because of the location from which the colonists began mapping the topography, the main river was the Amur River. Since some of the guides of the Russian colonists through the untouched thickets of Sakhalin were immigrants from China, the Arum River, according to the old written Chinese languages, namely from the Manchu dialect, the Amur River sounded like Sakhalyan-Ulla. Due to the fact that Russian cartographers did not correctly enter this name, namely, the place Sakhalyan-Ulla, they entered it as Sakhalin, and they wrote this name on most maps where there were branches from the Amur River, on the mainland they considered that the name was was assigned to this island.

But let's get back to history.

Due to the abundant resettlement of Russian colonists to the island, the Japanese, in 1845, declared the current island of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands independent, the inviolable property of Japan.

But due to the fact that most of the north of the island was already inhabited by Russian colonists, and the entire territory of present-day Sakhalin was not officially appropriated by Japan and was considered not disbanded, Russia began disputes with Japan about the division of the territory. And by 1855, the Treaty of Shimoda was signed between Russia and Japan, in which it was accepted that Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands were a joint undivided possession.

Then in 1875, in St. Petersburg, a new treaty was signed between Russia and Japan, according to which Russia renounced its part of the Kuril Islands in exchange for full ownership of the island.

Photos taken on Sakhalin Island, between the mid-18th and early 19th centuries

In 1905, due to Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, which took place from 1904 to 1905, Sakhalin was divided into 2 parts - the Northern part, which remained under Russian control, and the Southern part, which went to Japan.

In 1907, the southern part of Sakhalin was designated Karafuto Prefecture, with its main centers represented by the first Japanese settlement on Sakhalin Island, the city of Otomari (present-day Korsakov).
Then the main center was moved to another large Japanese city, Toehara (the current city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk).

In 1920, Karafuto Prefecture was officially given the status of an external Japanese territory and, from an independent Japanese territory, came under the control of the Ministry of Colonial Affairs, and by 1943, Karafuto received the status of an internal land of Japan.

On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and 2 years later, namely 1947, the Soviet Union won this, the second Russo-Japanese War, taking the southern part of Sakhalin and all the Kuril Islands.

And so, from 1947 to the present day, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands remain part of the Russian Federation.

I would like to note that after the deportation of more than 400,000 Japanese back to their homeland began by the end of 1947, at the same time, mass migration of the Russian population to Sakhalin Island began. This is due to the fact that the infrastructure built by the Japanese on the southern part of the island required labor.
And since there were many minerals on the island, the extraction of which required a lot of labor, mass exile of prisoners began to Sakhalin Island, which was an excellent free labor force.

But due to the fact that the deportation of the Japanese population occurred more slowly than the migration of the Russian population and the Sylochniks, the deportation was finally completed by the end of the 19th century. Russian and Japanese Citizens had to live side by side for a long time.

Photos taken on Sakhalin Island between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.