Ainu | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

About 5 pages (1,405 words)

Ainu language Summary

Ainu

In the Ainu language the word ainu means "human being." For the rest of the world, the word designates the small indigenous population that lives in the northern part of Japan. Although Japan has several minority groups (Burakumin, Koreans, Chinese), only the Ainu are both ethnically distinct from the Japanese and have lived in the Japanese islands from long before written history.

In prehistoric times, the Ainu could be found on the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kurile Archipelago; in modern times, they mainly inhabit Hokkaido. Their number at present is estimated to be around twenty-five thousand, but after decades of intermarriage with the Japanese it is now rare to encounter a person purely of Ainu blood. The population estimate thus represents those people who think of themselves as being both Ainu and Japanese.

Origins

The origins of the Ainu people and their language are unknown. Many different theories have been proposed, but none has managed to gain general acceptance among scholars. For a long time, Western scholars believed that the Ainu were of Caucasian descent, which greatly stimulated research and resulted in a large body of literature on all aspects of Ainu culture. The theory was never widely accepted by Japanese scholars and has been thoroughly discredited by newer research. A consensus gradually emerged that the ethnic origins of the Ainu must be sought in Japan's prehistoric Jomon culture (10,000–300 BCE).

The Ainu language has no writing system. Traditions, beliefs, and tales about the past were orally transmitted through epics, songs, and stories memorized and told by the old to the young. There were originally three distinct dialects of Ainu—Sakhalin, Kurile, and Hokkaido. However, there is no longer anyone who speaks the Ainu language as a mother tongue.

The traditional lifestyle of the Ainu was based on hunting, fishing, and gathering edible plants. Society centered on villages (kotan) of five to twenty families under the leadership of a male chief (otona). Villages were usually placed near a river to ensure access to water and fish. Deer and fox were hunted near the villages, and brown bear were hunted in the mountains—all with bow and arrow.

Customs

The Ainu are famous for their skilled woodwork. Formerly, the products were bowls and utensils, decorated wooden prayer sticks, and whittled sticks offered to the gods. In modern times, most woodcraft is aimed at the tourist trade. Clothes were woven from the shredded bark of the elm tree and decorated with dyed patterns or cotton appliqué. Men and women wore coat-like dresses fastened with a belt. Accessories such as headgear, earrings, and necklaces were used for festive occasions. Shoes were made from fish skin.

Male and female lineages were kept separate. The men's lineage was shown by their totem animal (itokpa) on various utensils, whereas the women's lineage in the form of patterns on a belt (upsor) was worn under the clothes. Women also wore tattoos around the mouth and on their forearms and hands. These were produced by making small incisions with sharp stones and rubbing soot into the open wounds.

The Ainu gods are called kamuy and are believed to be present as spirits everywhere in nature, as well as in a spirit world of their own. Everything in the human world is seen as a visitor from the spirit world. The most important kamuy was the brown bear. Every year, all over Hokkaido, bear cubs were caught and kept in cages in villages. When a cub reached young adulthood, a ceremony was held to send its spirit back to its ancestors in the spirit world. By providing an elaborate ceremony and honoring the bear, it was hoped that it would speak well of human beings to the other bear spirits. If this happened, many bear spirits would venture into the land of the humans, ensuring a steady supply of bears for hunting. After the bear was ceremoniously killed, its meat was eaten by the villagers and its head was placed on an altar outside the chief's house.

The Ainu and the Japanese

The Japanese knew of the Ainu as far back as the tenth century, when Ainu were still present on the main island of Honshu. By the fifteenth century the Japanese had managed to establish several strongholds in southern Hokkaido from which they traded metal and rice to the Ainu for fur, fish, and other natural products. By the beginning of the Edo period (1600/1603–1868), Matsumae, a Japanese warrior clan, gained authority over the Japanese-dominated parts of the island and established a trade monopoly. Trade came to be conducted through Japanese merchants who traveled to specified trading posts on the island under the control of the Matsumae clan. Deceiving the Ainu in trade transactions was common, and a number of Ainu were forced into slave-like labor for the Japanese. This situation gave rise to several Ainu rebellions, but eventually the Ainu succumbed to the Japanese.

After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Ainu came to be considered as Japanese citizens and were forced to adopt Japanese names. They were, however, still considered second-class citizens and were greatly disadvantaged in terms of education, health, and employment. The Meiji government started a large-scale colonization of Hokkaido that led to mass immigration from other parts of Japan, and eventually the Ainu were reduced to only a small percentage of the total population on Hokkaido. Deprived of their lifestyle as hunters and fishermen, they quickly sank into poverty and apathy. To ameliorate this situation, the Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act was enacted in 1899, granting education and small plots of land to the Ainu.

In the late twentieth century, a new pride in being Ainu emerged. Cultural events, language classes, and study groups attempted to revive the Ainu culture. Bowing to pressure from Ainu organizations that saw the protection law as discriminatory, in 1997 the government repealed the Protection Act and replaced it with a new law to promote Ainu culture and facilitate public understanding of Ainu tradition.

Kirsten Refsing