Ainu

• Japanese: アイヌ (ainu)

The Ainu are an indigenous people of Japan, mainly associated with Hokkaidô, though as late as the Edo period, a few hundred Ainu still lived in the Nanbu and Tsugaru domains in Tôhoku.

Today, there are less than 20 native speakers of the Ainu language, though tens of thousands, mainly living in Hokkaidô and Tokyo, claim partial or full Ainu heritage. The Ainu were formally recognized by the Japanese government as an indigenous people in recent years, though social programs and the like for the Ainu are centered exclusively in Hokkaidô, making it difficult for Ainu in Tokyo or elsewhere to benefit.

Origins

As in many indigenous cultures around the world, in their own language, the word "Ainu" simply means "human being" or "person." The relationship of the Ainu to the Emishi or other indigenous groups pushed back from Eastern Japan to Tôhoku, and eventually to Hokkaidô, in earlier periods is unclear, as is the identification of the Ainu people and the Japanese, or "Yamato people," to the Jômon/Yayoi divide.

That said, the term "Ainu" is generally used only in discussions of the 16th century or so, and beyond; whether they are technically the same people or not, "Emishi" and other words are generally used to refer to indigenous groups in earlier periods.

Ainu Society

From the 16th century or so (or perhaps earlier) onwards, Ainu society was organized into small communities called kotan. There was no overall Ainu chief or king, or any sort of government administration or bureaucracy; the kotan was, more or less, the largest social (or political) entity in Ainu society.

Kotan were self-organized, usually locating themselves near a river or seashore. They did not "own" land in any manner resembling modern concepts of ownership, but simply occupied a given territory and were associated with it. The men of a given kotan would hunt and fish in their area, chiefly bear and salmon, while the women farmed, mainly millet and vegetables, for a year or two on a given plot before allowing that spot to return to nature. Ainu never engaged in rice cultivation, but purchased rice from the Japanese, who called themselves Wajin (和人), among other terms, to identify themselves in contrast to the Ainu Other. The Ainu, meanwhile, used the word shisam, meaning literally "the great and nearby," to refer to outsiders.

Ainu-Japanese Relations

Edo Period

Though the Japanese had had some interactions and dealings with the Ainu (or Emishi) of Hokkaidô in earlier periods, it was in the Edo period that directed policy was first aimed at the island of Hokkaidô, then called Ezo.

For most of the Edo period, the Japanese continued to directly control very little of the island, but the economic benefits, and political or discursive benefits of having Ezo (and its people, the Ainu) within Japan's sphere of influence was of importance to the shogunate. Relations with the Ainu were handled almost exclusively by the Matsumae clan beginning in 1604, the only clan to be based on Ezo. Japanese and Ainu engaged in trade, with the Ainu providing items such as furs, fish, hawks for hunting, as well as items obtained from the Asian continent, in exchange for lacquerware, swords, and other Japanese craft-goods. A system or tradition was established in which Ainu chiefs regularly visited Matsumae, bringing gifts and paying respects to the samurai lords; the Matsumae clan saw this as a paying of tribute, in the ideological mode of Chinese or Japanese political worldview, but it is not clear that the Ainu saw it in that way, as an expression of submission or subordination.

For lengthy periods of time in the Edo period, there was a degree of fluidity of movement between Ainu and Japanese society, with some Japanese moving out beyond the borders of Matsumae han, and essentially joining Ainu society, while some Ainu shaved their beards, cut their hair, and adopted Japanese customs and lifestyle. (Some Ainu also maintained, to a degree, their Ainu identity and lifestyle while living within Japanese society.) It is said that some Ainu even fought alongside the samurai armies of the Matsumae clan (then called the Kakizaki clan) in the Sengoku period, being known especially for their poisoned arrows. Tessa Morris-Suzuki points out the significance of this conception of Japanese as something people could become - something grounded more in culture and societal behavior than in racial or ethnic identity.

Indeed, as the Japanese began to sense a threat from Russian encroachment in the 1740s, and especially around the 1790s-1800s, "Japanization" of the Ainu was pursued with greater fervor. The Ainu may have been considered outsiders, and on the periphery, but it was still considered "our" periphery in the eyes of the Japanese, a place and a people with whom the Japanese had a long relationship, and from whom the Japanese got fish, furs, and much other important commerce; there was a fear of losing all of this to the Russians. Some shogunate officials and other thinkers and writers suggested that the shogunate ought to seize Ezo, the Kurile Islands, and Sakhalin, in order to fend off the Russians and claim the Ainu (and the economic benefits they represented) more securely for Japan.

Indeed, in 1799, and again in 1807, the shogunate laid claim to lands in these areas, returning them to the responsibility of the Matsumae clan only in 1821, after fears of Russian encroachment subsided. At that time, policies or attitudes about the Japanization of the Ainu were reversed. Discursively, it lent greater power and legitimacy to the Matsumae clan, and to the shogunate, to appear to have a foreign people submitting themselves to Japanese dominion; the Shimazu clan of Satsuma han engaged in similar discursive activities in their relations with the Kingdom of Ryûkyû.

Though continuing to exert direct control over only a very small portion of the island, in the 18th century the Matsumae clan began licensing Japanese merchants to establish commercial operations in Ainu lands, setting up small permanent outposts of Japanese settlement, and cottage industries such as fisheries, where Ainu served as hired labor. This, combined with severe increases in prices for Japanese goods frustrated the Ainu, who saw this as a betrayal by people who had, up until then, kept to their own territory, traded fairly and amicably, and treated the Ainu with respect. Several Ainu rebellions would occur over the course of the Edo period, one of the largest or most famous being Shakushain's Revolt in 1669-1672.

Bakumatsu and Meiji Period

The first agreements between Japan and Russia as to a defined national border between them were made in 1855; Ezo was renamed Hokkaidô and formally incorporated into the territory of the modern Japanese state in 1869.

This was followed by vigorous efforts to colonize and "develop" Hokkaidô. A colonial government agency was established, with Horace Capron, a former US Secretary of Agriculture who played a prominent role in suppressing Native American opposition to American expansion, as one of the chief advisors. Ainu lost their traditional lands and hunting & fishing rights, to Japanese colonist farmers, or to the Japanese state itself.

The Meiji government's policies towards the Ainu seem ambiguous, confusing, or hypocritical in terms of the implications for the racial ideas behind them. Ainu were dispossessed of their lands, but were then, beginning with the Former Natives Protection Law of 1899, given land to farm, along with tools, seed, and other materials, and encouraged to assimilate and become Japanese. They were encouraged to become Japanese, but were at the same time acknowledged as a special, different, group worthy of government concern and welfare, their financial assets seized by the state and re-apportioned to programs aimed at ensuring the "welfare" of the Ainu people. Even as they were encouraged to become Japanese citizens, to assimilate into the newly created and supposedly homogenous Japanese identity, and to be seen as Japanese, Ainu continued to be treated as Other in many contexts and venues. At a 1903 domestic exposition in Osaka, mirroring the St. Louis World's Fair which would take place the next year on a more international stage, Ainu were put on display alongside Taiwanese aborigines, Koreans, and others, in a "Pavilion of Mankind," essentially, a "human zoo," where Japanese visitors could see how less civilized people look and how they live.

Though deprived of their traditional hunting & fishing grounds, and of their financial assets, Ainu were at least promised a certain amount of land - five chô per household - by the government; the government ran out of land to give out ten years later, in 1909. The program had further problems as the land given to the Ainu to farm was not always the most fertile or arable land, and as the Ainu were not used to farming, at least not in the manner or with the particular crops that the Japanese now encouraged. Many crops failed, leading to famine, underdevelopment of the land overall, and widespread poverty, issues which set the foundation for continued underdevelopment and economic issues in Hokkaidô today.

References

• Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation. M.E. Sharpe, 1998. pp9-25ff.