Canis lupus hattai †

This wolf is an extinct wolf from the Hokkaido and Sakhalin islands. It is infamously known as the Hokkaido wolf, though it can also be called the Ezou wolf and, for the Russian wolves, the Sakhalin wolf. It went extinct during the Meiji era as a result of farmers poisoning it. It was not the only wolf in Japan, with the other being the Honshu wolf.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTp9CPwj8oo This wolf is more related to North American wolves than Eurasian wolveshttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hokkaido_wolf&oldid=1069113401.
In Ainu culture they were celebrated as important animals. They held the distinction between wolves and dogs, but let them interbreed enough that the lines were somewhat blurred. They hunted, ate, raised, and sacrificed wolves. Various mountains and other locations are named after wolves. Their mythology differs from town to town, but there's a white wolf god who marries either a goddess or a human girl, and then their offspring become the Ainu. A poem tells the story of a white wolf god who began his life as a pet, who refused to kill his owner. But after being killed twice for the same reasons, the other wolf gods destroyed the village. Another story tells of a white fox who saved the wolf gods by scaring away monsters that scared away their prey.https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Lost_Wolves_of_Japan/NBUTCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Horkew%20Kamuy&pg=PA83&printsec=frontcover
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