Ever since I first visited Hakodate, gathering materials on its ill-fated Republic of Ezo, I have loved the city. It has a certain resemblance to my native Southend on Sea, but also a bunch of craziness. There’s the locals’ odd obsession with pretty-boy vigilante Toshizo Hijikata, shown on contemporary T-shirts fighting a giant squid for some reason, and celebrated in a blue-and-white slushy that imitates the colours of his lynch mob, the Shinsengumi.

There’s the town’s weird Foreigners’ Cemetery, with all the stories implicit in the headstones of sailors and entrepreneurs far from home at one of the first Treaty Ports, just up the hill from a Monument to Local Prostitutes. There’s the Old Town Hall, which inevitably comes scattered with Japanese women of a certain age, cosplaying as Victorian aristocrats. And as I discovered to my cost (about ten thousand yen), it now has a town tartan, registered with the Scottish Register of Tartans in 2024.

“This design is intended to reflect the city and its location including the ridgeline of Mt. Hakodate and the curves of the Port. Colours: red is intended to symbolise the red brick warehouses and the tram trains; dark blue for the Tsugaru Strait; light grey for the winter snow in the city and sepia for squid ink.”