The dominating and often contradicting tendencies of the early post-war Hokkaido were the continuing otherness, foreignness and distinctiveness from the rest of Japan, and the growing integration into the nation state. In other words, Hokkaido became more tightly connected to and more a part of Japan than ever before, but it clearly retained its peculiarity and was not simply a region or prefecture among the others. This study of Hokkaido is built on the premise that rather than being ahistorical and unchangeable entities, regions can be considered as spatial manifestations of social processes and they have to be conceptualised and analysed empirically as a part of the historical development of the society. It utilises the institutionalisation of region model when analysing how a region is constructed and how it is connected to the observable political, legal, social, economic, cultural, educational and administrative practices. The model consists of four interlocked stages (territorial shaping, symbolic shaping, institutional shaping, and establishment of region) that can be abstracted for analytical purposes and is tested here as a device to perceive the importance and understand relations between the various processes contributing to the making of the region.

中文翻译：

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战后北海道的重建与重新定义

战后早期北海道的主要趋势（通常是相互矛盾的）是与日本其他地区的持续异性，异国情调和独特性，以及与该国的日益融合。换句话说，北海道比以往任何时候都更紧密地与日本联系并成为日本的一部分，但它显然保留了其独特性，而不仅仅是其他地区或县。对北海道的研究建立在这样一个前提下，即区域不是社会历史和不变的实体，而是可以被视为社会过程的空间体现，必须作为社会历史发展的一部分对其进行概念化和分析。在分析区域的构建方式以及其与可观察到的政治，法律，社会，经济，文化，教育和行政实践的联系时，它利用了区域模型的制度化。该模型包含四个互锁的阶段（领土塑造，符号塑造，机构塑造和地区建立），可以将其抽象化以用于分析目的，并在此处进行测试，以此作为感知重要性的工具，并了解促成风险的各个过程之间的关系。区域的制作。