Chapter 217

## In Hokkaido

**In Hokkaido**, or **To Hokkaido** (北海道にて, *Hokkaidō Nite*) is the 217th chapter of the *Golden Kamuy* manga.

## Synopsis

In Karafuto, Ogata asks about Asirpa at a hotel and the proprietress confirms that an Ainu girl had stayed at her lodge and that she was being chased by the navy. Ogata asks if the navy had managed to capture her but the old lady says that she was able to escape, much to Ogata’s delight. He then attempts to board a ferry, causing trouble for the ship’s officers and causing the captain to come down. Ogata pretends to be a penniless soldier injured in war who just wishes to return home to his parents and offers some dried cod as payment. The captain is moved by Ogata’s story and allows him to board the ship.

In a forest in Hokkaido, a man is running from a brown bear and accidently cuts his forehead on a tree branch before getting caught and eaten by the bear who notices his bear bag hanging off his waist. Elsewhere, Sugimoto and Asirpa are out hunting with an Ainu men and his dogs who finds several markings left behind by a bear hibernating. As Asirpa informs Sugimoto about how they hunt bears, they prepare a trap for the bear and manages to kill it so that they can take its meat back to the kotan.

Upon returning to the kotan, Sugimoto says that when he looks at the cise, it really feels like Hokkaido, and Asirpa states that they really made it back to Hokkaido. Inside the cise, Asirpa is making some more poison for her arrows and warns Shiraishi to be careful around her poisoned arrows. Shiraishi then questions what they will do next and if they have a strategy for getting all the gold themselves. Asirpa says that they have no choice but to take all of the tattooed skins from both Hijikata’s Group and the 7th Division.

Sugimoto declares that they will somehow make both factions clash with each other and then swoop up the skins while they are fighting each other. Shiraishi falls onto his back, saying that it is easier said than done before noticing an Ainu woman breastfeeding a bear cub. He then notes that they would need traveling funds but it would be difficult to focus on that goal everyday before asking an Ainu man if he knows of any way to make easy money. The Ainu man reveals that there is a kotan south of them that had put out a request to get rid of a Wen Kamuy.

Shiraishi is unsatisfied with this answer and asks if there is anything that they can do that does not involve hunting bears but the Ainu man continues, saying that the Wen Kamuy has already killed five people since last year and that all of the victims were gold panners. This catches Sugimoto’s attention and the Ainu man tells them about a man who had been panning managed to strike it rich, earning 50 yen in a single day.

Elsewhere, in a forest, a man out hunting for wood slips on the snow and is about to fall off a cliff, but manages to grab a tree root to hang onto. He begins to scream out for help and his companions hears him, running towards the man named Heita. Just as Heita is about to fall down, Sugimoto’s Group is able to grab ahold of him, unaware of his connections to the bears.

## Character Appearances

* Hyakunosuke Ogata
* Heita
* Asirpa
* Saichi Sugimoto
* Yoshitake Shiraishi
* Vasily
* Young Boy *(Debut)*
* Bearded Man *(Debut)*
* Elderly Man *(Debut)*