Short answers, pulled from the story.
Hokkaido means "northern sea route" in Japanese. The name was chosen by the Meiji government in 1869 after a man named Matsuura Takeshiro submitted six proposals. Matsuura based the name on what the Ainu people called the region, Kai, which also resembles the Sino-Japanese reading of characters used for over a thousand years to refer to Ainu and related peoples.
The Ainu are the indigenous people of Hokkaido, whose ancestors inhabited the island for over 15,000 years. They primarily relied on hunting and fishing and maintained extensive trading networks with Japanese settlements. Following Meiji colonization in 1869, the Ainu were dispossessed of their land, forbidden from speaking their language, and forced to assimilate. UNESCO has recognized the Ainu language as critically endangered, and in the 21st century most people of Ainu descent have no knowledge of their heritage.
Japan established the Hokkaido Colonization Board in 1869 and recruited American advisors, including Horace Capron, who was paid US$10,000 per year, and William S. Clark, who founded an agricultural college in Sapporo in 1876. The government declared large portions of Hokkaido ownerless land, dispossessed the Ainu, relocated mainland settlers, and used prison labor for coal mining and road construction. The 1899 Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act banned Ainu fishing and hunting and relocated indigenous communities to mountainous interior regions.
A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck in 1993 and generated a tsunami that killed 202 inhabitants of Okushiri Island. A magnitude 8.3 earthquake hit near the island on the 26th of September 2003. On the 6th of September 2018, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake centered near Tomakomai caused a blackout across the entire island.
Hokkaido has produced more yokozuna, the highest rank in professional sumo, than any other prefecture in Japan, with eight wrestlers reaching that rank. The historical explanation is tied to the Meiji era's high birth rates and economic hardship, which led families to send young boys to sumo stables to reduce the number of mouths to feed. The prefecture's golden age came during the Showa and Heisei periods when Chiyonofuji, Hokutoumi, and Onokuni all held the rank of yokozuna simultaneously.
Hokkaido holds nearly one quarter of Japan's total arable land and ranks first in the nation in the production of wheat, soybeans, potatoes, sugar beets, onions, pumpkins, corn, raw milk, and beef. The average farm covers 26 hectares, almost eleven times the national average of 2.4 hectares as of 2013. The prefecture also accounts for 22 percent of Japan's forests and leads the nation in marine products and aquaculture.