十勝 とかち Tokachi
Tokachi region, Hokkaidō
Ainu spellings: Tokaci, Tokapci
One of the large Hokkaidō names whose meaning and whose original place are unsettled. Edo-period sources write Tokachi almost without exception. The tradition recorded from the chief Kushiyopatsuku in 1808 speaks of a breast-shaped hill, which the received reading and the author's reading both take up, one through the word for breast and one through a pair of peaks.
Location
42.9297, 143.2083 · Coordinates: OpenStreetMap Nominatim, 2026-09-10, on 北海道十勝総合振興局. Open in OpenStreetMap
Referents
- region The Tokachi region of eastern Hokkaidō
- river The Tokachi River, second in Hokkaidō and sixth in Japan by catchment area
Analyses
tokap-ci
トカㇷ゚チ ‘the breast dries up’ received reading- tokap ‘breast’
- ci ‘dry up, wither’
Proponent: 従来の地名解
Tokachi is read Tokapuchi and glossed 'breast', sometimes explained by the river dividing in two in its lower course. The second element is taken as chi 'burn, wither', giving 'the breast dries up', after the curse the Koropokkur are said to have left: 'let this breast dry and rot, let the water dry and rot'.
Objections
- The element chi stays unexplained, the account reads as a tale, and Tokapuchi is very rare in the Edo-period record while Tokachi is nearly universal. The author holds that the reading was proposed because Tokachi sounds like tokap. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek…
tokap 'breast' is a dictionary word; the second element carries no gloss the article can support, and the spelling the reading needs is rare in the records.
tu-katchi
トゥカッチ ‘two sharp peaks’ proposed- tu ‘two’
- *katchi ‘sharp peak, rock tower on a mountain’
Proponent: zenibako_trek（小樽銭函地名歴史研究会） (zenibako_trek (Otaru Zenibako Place-Name and History Society))
The two peaks are Nishi-Kumaneshiri-dake and Biribetsu-dake, seen side by side from Tokachi-Mitsumata near Mikuni pass, where the head of the Ishikari, the Tokachi and the Tokoro lie close together. Their paired shape is also what gives them their local nickname as breast mountains, so the landform matches the tradition of a breast-shaped hill while the reading differs. The author takes katchi to be an old Ainu word lost from the later language, which he holds may be why it was replaced by the similar-sounding tokap. He states that he cannot confirm that Tokachi is a katchi name and that the older and larger a place name is, the less its meaning is known.
Evidence
- parallel place names
In the upper Tōbetsu the element sits inside Ainu names: penke katchi-nupri and panke katchi-nupri, katchi-pa-oma-nay 'stream above the katchi', katchi-utur-oma-p 'place between the katchi' and katchi-nupri-rer-oma-p 'place beyond the katchi mountain'. Katchi-utur-oma-p shows that the katchi are the two mountains themselves. Genkotsu-yama in Nishiokoppe, called Katchi-nupri, carries a rock tower like a raised fist beside its summit; Mt. Pishikachinai in Shikaoi has a conspicuous sharp peak south of its summit; at Shikaribetsu in Niki the names Katchi and Katchinai survive by a prominent rock tower.
- topography
The paired peaks stand at the Hokkaidō watershed by Mikuni pass, on the route by which people crossing from the Ishikari side or from the Abashiri and Kitami side entered Tokachi. An elder of Otofuke reports a trade route between Kitami and Tokachi that ran by Biribetsu. In 1874 Benjamin Smith Lyman crossed from Sōunkyō against his Ainu guide's word that no one had ever crossed from Aibetsu to Tokachi, and came out in the upper Otofuke, fixing his position near Nukabira.
- archaeology
Tokachi-Mitsumata, where the two peaks are seen, was a source of the obsidian called Tokachi stone from the palaeolithic on. Tools made of it are found across Hokkaidō, and Matsuura Takeshirō picked up the stone on his way through. The author offers the paired peaks as a landmark for the quarry.
The reading turns on katchi, a word no dictionary carries; its support is the recurrence of the element in names of places that have a rock tower or a sharp peak, assembled by the author. He states that he cannot settle which pair of peaks the name would belong to, and asks whether the Tokachi range, at the head of the Tokachi River, has the better claim.
Tuk-a-chi-moshiri
‘Upward extending country, or protruding country’ proposedProponent: John Batchelor
Probably so called on account of the numerous mountains in this locality. Tuk means to grow and to extend upwards; to protrude; achi is the plural of a, to be.
Batchelor's reading and gloss as printed in 1905; the segmentation is his, and several of its elements answer to no dictionary headword.
Attestations
- トカチ map Edo period
Almost all Edo-period maps and journals write Tokachi. Spellings with Tokapuchi are very few, on Mamiya Rinzō's map and the maps that follow it.
zenibako_trek… - 乳の形に似たる丘 document 1808 東蝦夷地名考（秦憶麻呂）
其地に乳の形に似たる丘ある故に地名になれりと酋長のクシヨパツク語りき。
The earliest record of the origin of the name, taken from the chief Kushiyopatsuku. The tradition of a breast-shaped hill was thus current among the local Ainu.
zenibako_trek…
Related names
- 勝納 かつない — Katsunai in Otaru, read katchi-un-nay 'stream where the rock tower is', the name that leads the article to katchi. zenibako_trek…
- キリカツ沢 — A name at Kasuga in Mukawa, written キリカツ and キリカツチ in the old records, at a former Mukawa settlement. Nagata Hōsei reads kir-katchi 'salmon spawning ground'. Matsuura records a story of a chief who ate the marrow of a large bone thinking it a deer's and found it human. No conspicuous rock stands nearby, and the author suspects that Kirikaji in Setana, a cape with a somewhat prominent rock, may belong with this name; he says he has no firm ground for counting Kirikaji among the katchi names. zenibako_trek…