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Japan­ese set­tle­ment on Sakhalin dates to at least the Edo pe­riod. Ōtomari was es­tab­lished in 1679, and car­tog­ra­phers of the Mat­sumae do­main mapped the is­land, and named it "Kita-Ezo". Japan­ese car­tog­ra­pher and ex­plorer Mamiya Rinzō es­tab­lished that Sakhalin was an is­land through his dis­cov­ery of what is now named Mamiya Strait (Strait of Tar­tary) in 1809. Japan uni­lat­er­ally pro­claimed sov­er­eignty over the whole is­land in 1845, but its claims were not rec­og­nized by the Russ­ian Em­pire, fear­ing that Qing dy­nasty China might re­claim Vladi­vos­tok (Chi­nese: 海參崴) and Outer Manchuria (known in China as the Sixty-Four Vil­lages East of the River). The 1855 Treaty of Shi­moda ac­knowl­edged that both Rus­sia and Japan had joint rights of oc­cu­pa­tion to Sakhalin, with­out set­ting a def­i­nite ter­ri­to­r­ial de­mar­ca­tion. As the is­land be­came set­tled in the 1860s and 1870s, this am­bi­gu­ity led to in­creas­ing fric­tion be­tween set­tlers. At­tem...

The pre-war econ­omy of Kara­futo was based on fish­ing, forestry and agri­cul­ture, to­gether with ex­trac­tion of coal and pe­tro­leum. In terms of in­dus­try, the paper in­dus­try and the char­coal pro­duc­tion in­dus­try were well de­vel­oped. Kara­futo suf­fered from a labor short­age through most of its his­tory, and tax in­cen­tives were pro­vided to en­cour­age immigration.Dur­ing World War II, a large num­ber of Ko­re­ans were also forcibly re­lo­cated to Kara­futo. An ex­ten­sive rail­way net­work was con­structed in Kara­futo to sup­port the ex­trac­tion of nat­ural re­sources. The Kara­futo Rail­way Bureau(樺太鉄道局, Karafuto Tetsudōkyoku)main­tained 682.6 kilo­me­ters of track in four main lines, and an ad­di­tional 58.2 kilo­me­ters of track.

Kara­futo was ad­min­is­tered from the cen­tral gov­ern­ment in Tokyo as the Kara­futo Agency(樺太庁, Karafuto-chō) under the Col­o­niza­tion Bureau(拓務局, Takumukyoku) of the Home Min­istry. The Col­o­niza­tion Bu­reau be­came the Min­istry of Colo­nial Af­fairs(拓務省, Takumushō) in 1923 at which time Kara­futo was of­fi­cially des­ig­nated an over­seas ter­ri­tory of the Em­pire of Japan. When the Min­istry of Colo­nial Af­fairs was ab­sorbed into the new Min­istry of Greater East Asia in 1942, the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Kara­futo was sep­a­rated, and Kara­futo be­came an in­te­gral part of the Japan­ese home is­lands.

As of 1945, Kara­futo was di­vided into four sub­pre­fec­tures, which in turn were sub­di­vided into 11 dis­tricts, in turn di­vided into 41 mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties (one city, 13 towns, and 27 vil­lages) Kara­futo's largest city was Toy­ohara. Other major cities in­cluded Es­u­toru in the north cen­tral and Maokain the south cen­tral re­gion. The list below are the towns and the city of the pre­fec­ture. These in ital­ics are the cor­re­spond­ing cur­rent Russ­iannames. Es­u­toru Subprefecture (恵須取支庁) 1. Towns 1. 1.1. Chinnai (珍内町, Krasnogorsk) 1.2. Esutoru (恵須取町, Uglegorsk) 1.3. Nayoshi (名好町, Lesogorsk) 1.4. Tōro (塔路町, Shakhtyorsk) Maoka Subprefecture (真岡支庁) 1. Towns 1. 1.1. Honto (本斗町, Nevelsk) 1.2. Maoka (真岡町, Kholmsk) 1.3. Naihoro (内幌町, Gornozavodsk) 1.4. Noda (野田町, Chekhovo) 1.5. Tomarioru (泊居町, Tomari) Shikuka Subprefecture (敷香支庁) 1. Towns 1. 1.1. Shirutoru (知取町, Makarov) 1.2. Shikuka, Shisuka (敷香町, Poronaysk) Toy­ohara Subprefecture (豊原支庁) 1. City 1. 1.1. Toyohara (豊原市, Yuzhno-Sa...