Karafuto Prefecture

Karafuto Prefecture
樺太庁
Karafuto Prefecture 樺太庁
Former subdivision of the Empire of Japan
1905–1945
	Top: Flag of the Empire of Japan; Bottom: Flag of Karafuto Emblem
	; 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
• Treaty of Portsmouth	5 September 1905
• External territory status	1907
• Upgraded to "inner land"	1943
• Soviet invasion	11–25 August 1945
• Dissolution	1 June 1945
Preceded by	Succeeded by
	Sakhalin Department
Soviet Union
Sakhalin Oblast
Today part of	Russia

Karafuto Agency, from 1943 Karafuto Prefecture,^[a] commonly known as South Sakhalin, was a colony of the Empire of Japan on Sakhalin from 1907 to 1943 and later a prefecture 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 replaced with 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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[a]