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| Karafuto Prefecture 樺太廳 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Former subdivision of the Empire of Japan | |||||||||
| 1905–1949 | |||||||||
 Green: Karafuto Prefecture within Japan in 1942 Light green: Other constituents of the Empire of Japan | |||||||||
| Anthem | |||||||||
| Karafuto tōka | |||||||||
| Capital | Ōtomari (1907–1908) Toyohara (1908–1945) | ||||||||
| Population | |||||||||
• December 1941 | 406,557 | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
| 5 September 1905 | |||||||||
• External territory status | 1907 | ||||||||
• Upgraded to "inner land" | 1943 | ||||||||
| 11–25 August 1945 | |||||||||
• Dissolution | 1 June 1949 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
| Today part of | Russia | ||||||||
Karafuto Agency, from 1943 Karafuto Prefecture,[a] commonly known as South Sakhalin, was a part of the Empire of Japan on Sakhalin. It was part of the gaichi from 1907 to 1943 and later a prefecture as part of the naichi until 1945.
Karafuto became a territory of the Empire of Japan in 1905 after the Russo-Japanese War, when the portion of Sakhalin south of 50°N was ceded from the Russian Empire in the Treaty of Portsmouth. Karafuto was established in 1907 as an external territory, until being upgraded to an "Inner Land" of the Japanese metropole in 1943. Ōtomari (Korsakov) was the capital of Karafuto from 1905 to 1908 and Toyohara (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk) from 1908 to 1945.
In August 1945, the Japanese administration ceased to function following the invasion of South Sakhalin by the Soviet Union. Karafuto Prefecture was de facto annexed to the pre-existing Sakhalin Oblast, although it continued to exist de jure under Japanese law until it was formally abolished as a legal entity by Japan in June 1949.
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