also: えぞ
Emishi; Ezo; non-Yamato peoples of northern Japan
Historical term for indigenous groups in northern Honshu and Hokkaido, often contrasted with the Yamato court. The reading えみし is older; えぞ is now more common.
Emishi is a term that referred to the people who lived in the Tohoku region in ancient times.
In history class, we learned about the relationship between the Emishi and the imperial court.
Yezo; Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands
Only with reading えぞ
Historical name for the northern territories, especially during the Edo period. Reading restricted to えぞ.
See also: 蝦夷地
During the Edo period, the Ezo region was controlled by the Matsumae domain.
The imperial court sent troops to subjugate the Emishi.
During the Edo period, many merchants crossed over to Ezo.
蝦夷地 names the land (roughly Hokkaido and surrounding areas), whereas 蝦夷 refers to the people or the region itself, so the two are easy to mix up in historical texts.
Used for people in formal or counting-context usage; for this ethnonym, there is no special conventional native counter beyond the general people counter.
Standard kanji spelling for both the historical people and the region; most commonly read えぞ in modern contexts.
Older reading for the historical people; now largely replaced by えぞ in general usage.
Katakana spelling of the older reading; may appear in historical or academic contexts.
The spelling 蝦夷 is an old Chinese-style designation applied in Japan to northern peoples and territories. The historical relationship between the readings えみし and えぞ remains uncertain, though development of the latter from the former is widely proposed.