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Historical term for the islands north of Japan and their people

Ezo (蝦夷) (also spelled Yezo or Yeso) is the Japanese term historically used to refer to the people and the lands to the northeast of the Japanese island of Honshu. This included the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, and sometimes included Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. In reference to the people of that region, the same two kanji used to write the word Ezo can also be read Emishi. The descendants of these people are most likely related to the Ainu people of today.

Japanese sources that include an etymology describe Ezo as probably originally a borrowing from the Ainu word enciw meaning The term is first attested in Japanese in a text from 1153 in reference to any of the non Japanese people living in the northeast of Honshū, and then later in 1485 in reference to the northern islands where these people lived, primarily Hokkaido, Karafuto (that is, Sakhalin), and the Kuril Islands. This book, which was published in Japan in 1785, described the Ezo region and its people. In 1832, the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland supported the posthumous abridged publication of Titsingh's French translation of Sankoku Tsūran Zusetsu. Julius Klaproth was the editor, completing the task which was left incomplete by the death of the book's initial editor, Jean Pierre Abel Rémusat.

Ezo (蝦夷) or Ezogashima (蝦夷ヶ島) was divided into several districts. The first was the Wajinchi, or 'Japanese Lands', which covered the Japanese settlements on and around the Oshima Peninsula. The rest of Ezo was known as the Ezochi (蝦夷地) , or 'Ainu Lands'. Ezochi was in turn divided into three sections: North Ezochi, which covered southern Sakhalin; West Ezochi, which included the northern half of Hokkaidō; and East Ezochi, which included the populous southern Hokkaidō and the Kuril Islands.