The Republic of Ezo (蝦夷共和国, Ezo Kyōwakoku) was Japan's most improbable political creation: a samurai democracy on a frozen northern island, self-governing and self-doomed from the moment of its founding. Its president, Enomoto Takeaki (榎本武揚, Enomoto Takeaki), 32 years old, was no feudal reactionary. He was a trained naval engineer who had spent years studying in the Netherlands. He had not fled south with the Tokugawa fleet in late 1868 because he believed the shogunate was right — he had fled because he had given his word, and a samurai's word was not conditional on whether he was winning.

Enomoto established the republic on December 25, 1868, after arriving in Hokkaido with most of the former shogunate's navy. He modeled its structure on the United States, complete with a cabinet and a popular vote to choose officers — among the samurai class, it was the first election ever held on Japanese soil. The men who voted were warriors with swords and the men they voted for were administrators of a doomed state. History has not produced many stranger elections.

By April 1869, the Meiji government's patience with this northern anomaly had run out. A fleet and a 7,000-man infantry force were dispatched to Hokkaido. Imperial forces won the naval Battle of Hakodate Bay, cutting off any possibility of resupply or escape by sea, and began advancing on Goryōkaku (五稜郭, Goryōkaku), a star-shaped Western-style fortress near Hakodate — one of the first such fortifications built in Japan, completed in 1864. Inside the fortress: roughly 800 defenders against 7,000 attackers.

The arithmetic was not lost on Enomoto. On or around May 18, 1869, he raised a white flag. The formal surrender ceremony is dated June 27, 1869 by some sources, but May 18 is given by others as the moment organized resistance ended — the distinction between the decision and the paperwork. According to some accounts, Enomoto's surrender letter to the imperial commander was accompanied by a rare Dutch naval treatise on maritime law that he had been guarding throughout the campaign. It was too valuable to be burned in a losing battle, he reportedly wrote. The Meiji commander was said to have been moved by the gesture.

Not every defender chose Enomoto's path. Hijikata Toshizō (土方歳三, Hijikata Toshizō), vice-commander of the legendary 新選組 (Shinsengumi) and known as 鬼の副長 (Oni no Fukuchō, Demon Vice-Commander) for the ferocity with which he had enforced the group's code, fought until there was nothing left to fight with. He was shot through the lower back while leading his men on horseback. He died on June 20, 1869 — one week before the formal surrender at Goryōkaku. He was 34 years old.

Hijikata's death and Enomoto's survival represent two answers to the same impossible question: what do you do when the world you served no longer exists? Hijikata kept fighting until a bullet ended the question for him. Enomoto laid down his weapons, went to prison, and waited. The Meiji government eventually pardoned him. He went on to serve as a diplomat, negotiating the Sakhalin-Kuril Exchange Treaty with Russia in 1875, and later held multiple cabinet posts. The last president of the samurai republic became one of the new Japan's most useful statesmen.

The star-shaped fortress at the center of this story, Goryōkaku, is now a park. In spring, the cherry trees planted inside its earthworks bloom pink against the old stone ramparts. The last stand of the samurai age has become one of Hokkaido's most beloved tourist sites — which is, in its way, the most Japanese of endings.