Ainu

Ainu individuals in modern and traditional clothing; image from exhibition "Ainu Treasures: A Living Tradition in Northern Japan," East-West Center Gallery, Honolulu, Spring 2013

• 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. Closely related groups also inhabit Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

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 relationship of the Ainu and the Japanese ("Yamato people") to the Jômon/Yayoi divide.

That said, the term "Ainu" is generally used only in discussions of the 14th century and beyond. Ainu/Emishi history is generally divided into the following periods:

• Jômon (before 100 BCE)
• Zoku-Jômon (lit. "continued Jômon"; 100 BCE - 800 CE)
• Satsumon culture (800 - 1300 CE)
• Ainu (1300 CE to present)

Ainu Society

Ainu robes on display at the East-West Center Gallery

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, with written contracts, legal codes, and/or systems of inheritance. Rather, so long as a plot of land was under cultivation by an individual, family, or kotan, others would respect the claim or "rights" to that land.

The men of a given kotan would hunt and fish in their area, chiefly bear and salmon, while the women farmed, mainly millet, beans, barley, wheat, sorghum, and vegetables. They would usually burn the field first, creating ash which served as fertilizer, and would then cultivate a given plot for a year or two before allowing that area to return to nature, and turning to a different plot of land to claim as theirs to cultivate for a period. The Ainu, especially in Sakhalin, bred dogs, which they used for a variety of purposes, including as hunting companions, sled dogs, and for their fur/skins and their meat.

Ainu never engaged in rice cultivation traditionally, 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, and words such as kur and utar to refer to other Ainu groups (e.g. from a different region) or other indigenous tribes, e.g. from the nearest parts of the Asian mainland, or from Sakhalin and the Kurils.

Ainu men often wore their hair and beards long. Their clothes were wrapped with the left side on top, the opposite of Japanese customs, and they wore fur boots, which were quite unlike the straw sandals (zori or waraji) Japanese were used to. They had no written language, though Japanese scholars later developed a system of representing Ainu sounds in Japanese kana through the introduction of a handful of new symbols.

Ainu-Japanese Relations

Early Interactions

Japanese expanded into Tôhoku as early as the 8th-9th centuries, and into Ezo by the 15th century, if not earlier, establishing small centers of control and either pushing the Emishi further north, or assimilating them. Some of these Japanese leaders were agents of the Yamato state; some sought independence from the Yamato state; and some were in fact Emishi chiefs or their descendants who had taken on Japanese identity. Meanwhile, those Japanese who sought to break from the Yamato state and to establish their own independent polities in the north were sometimes designated "Emishi" by the center.

The mid-15th century saw a new surge of instability in Tôhoku and Ezo, as Japanese traders, fishermen, trappers and the like made further inroads into Ainu territories. Japanese and Ainu got into conflict, and some studies indicate that the Ainu won most of these scattered skirmishes. The zone of Japanese control shrank, and receded, for a time; at the opening of the 17th century (the time of the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate), it was the Kakizaki clan who controlled the only remaining Wajin (Japanese) territory on the island of Ezo. Controlling that territory from Matsumae castle, they came to be known as the Matsumae clan, and remained the only daimyô on Ezo, in control of the northernmost han in the realm, throughout the Edo period.

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 1730s-40s, 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, who were actively building Russian Orthodox churches in the Kurils and elsewhere, and converting the native peoples. The shogunate's assimilation efforts were directed, therefore, not at the Ainu living closer to Matsumae-chi, but at those living nearest the areas of Russian encroachment, in order to solidify the Japaneseness of the Ainu there. Intermarriage was encouraged, and ceremonies celebrating "kaizoku no shûgi" (改俗の祝儀, "the improvement of customs") were held, in which Ainu were given Japanese-style dress and haircuts. Since Japanese society was highly stratified, however, assimilating Ainu into it meant assigning them a place within the system, and signs of their new status; most Ainu were given castoff peasants' clothing, but their village headmen, elders, and the like were often given haori or other elements of a higher-status costume, signs of a status position above peasants but below samurai officials. By around 1800, Ainu constituted only about half of Ezo's population.

Some shogunate officials and other thinkers and writers suggested that the shogunate ought to seize Ezo, the Kuril 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. Ainu were in fact pressured to work for the fisheries, and discouraged - through intimidation and other forceful methods - from engaging in farming; Ainu agriculture noticeably declines in the 17th-18th centuries. 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, but all were eventually suppressed.

The Ainu continued to trade not only with the Japanese, but with various mainland Asian peoples, throughout the Edo period. Though the volume of this trade is unclear, some amount of goods from Russia, and from indigenous tribal groups such as the Nivkh and Uilta, were then in turn traded to the Japanese.

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.

Ainu were sparsely settled across the vast land area of Hokkaidô, which was thus seen by Japanese as, essentially, a "clean slate" or terra nullius. Discussions or debates of prior decades were revived, with some suggesting the government take a relatively hands-off approach, allowing private interests (merchants/firms) and individual settlers to develop the land, and allowing Ainu to assimilate in an organic, gradual manner. Others argued that a more direct, focused effort of colonization be undertaken.

In the end, 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. After a series of surveys and investigations, the Western experts who had been brought in by the Japanese government disagreed widely. Capron took the lead, suggesting a directed effort to bring in Japanese settlers to colonize Hokkaidô; deciding that the land was no good for growing rice, he advocated a more American way of life, raising wheat, eating bread, and living in Western-style brick homes with Western-style furniture and a largely Western-style diet. This latter set of suggestions was ultimately not followed, however, as lifestyle in Hokkaidô was instead adapted to conform to more Japanese norms - even if the land were indeed better for raising wheat and other grains rather than rice, a hardier strain of rice plant was instead developed, and other elements of Japanese culture and lifestyle were introduced (or imposed).

In 1875, Japan and Russia revised their formal agreements regarding borders and territorial claims; the Kuril Islands came under Japanese control in exchange for Japan relinquishing its claims to Sakhalin. The Japanese authorities discovered, however, that the Ainu of the Kuril Islands had been Russified. The inhabitants of Shumshu and Paramushir were forcibly relocated to Shikotan, one of the southernmost Kuril Islands, nearest to Hokkaidô, and efforts were made to assimilate them into Japanese culture and customs. However, the relocation resulted in disease, depression, and famine, and the community shrank dramatically; still, they retained their Russian names, dress, and customs, and even managed to convert a number of Japanese to Russian Orthodox Christianity.

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, and their traditional systems of land rights & hunting/fishing rights eradicated. Under the Former Natives Protection Law of 1899, the seized lands were then reapportioned by the state, divvied up to the Ainu, who were given up to five hectares of land to farm, along with tools, seed, and other materials. The Ainu were encouraged to assimilate and adopt Japanese customs, and were officially designated as kyûdojin (旧土人), or "former aborigines," a term meant to highlight that Ainu identity was a thing of the past, and that they were now "Japanese." However, the "former Ainu" 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 their "welfare." Even as the Ainu were encouraged to become Japanese citizens, to assimilate into the newly created and supposedly homogenous Japanese identity, and to be seen as Japanese, they 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.

By this time, numerous Orientalist writings had emerged describing the Ainu as Japanese people, or Jômon people, of the past. Scholars in the emerging field of Japanese archaeology, among other fields, argued that the Ainu were either fully ethnically Japanese, or of the same ethnic ancestry, and had maintained the culture and lifestyle of an earlier era; it was believed that the Ainu could serve as a treasure house of (pre-)historical culture, from which the Japanese could (re-)learn how to live more in harmony with nature, and otherwise learn how to moderate those effects of modernization seen as spiritually or culturally detrimental. Very similar discourses circulated concerning Okinawa, Taiwan, and Korea, as storehouses of an earlier form of Japanese culture.

Despite knowledge of Ainu agriculture, Japanese scholars cultivated a discourse in which the Ainu were represented as existing in the hunter-gatherer / fishing-trapping, pre-agricultural stage of societal development, thus emphasizing their primitiveness and distance from the "modern" Japanese. The fiction of Ainu primitiveness, including the myths that Ainu never developed agriculture or metalworking, was considerably aided by the significant decline in Ainu agricultural activity and metalworking in the face of Japanese pressure and economic competition in the Edo period.

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. "Creating the Frontier: Border, Identity, and History in Japan's Far North." East Asian History 7 (June 1994). pp1-24.
• Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation. M.E. Sharpe, 1998. pp9-25ff.