Ainu people


The Ainu or the Aynu, also known as the Ezo in historical Japanese texts, are an East Asian ethnic group indigenous to Japan and Russia.
Official estimates place the total Ainu population of Japan at 25,000. Unofficial estimates place the total population at 200,000 or higher, as the near-total assimilation of the Ainu into Japanese society has resulted in many individuals with Ainu heritage having no knowledge of their ancestry.

History

Pre-modern

Recent research suggests that Ainu culture originated from a merger of the Jōmon, Okhotsk and Satsumon cultures. These early inhabitants did not speak the Japanese language and were conquered by the Japanese early in the 9th century. In 1264, the Ainu invaded the land of the Nivkh people. The Ainu also started an expedition into the Amur region, which was then controlled by the Yuan Dynasty, resulting in reprisals by the Mongols who invaded Sakhalin. Active contact between the Wa-jin and the Ainu of Ezogashima began in the 13th century. The Ainu formed a society of hunter-gatherers, surviving mainly by hunting and fishing. They followed a religion which was based on natural phenomena.
During the Muromachi period, disputes between the Japanese and Ainu developed into a war. Takeda Nobuhiro killed the Ainu leader, Koshamain. Many Ainu were subject to Japanese rule, which led to violent Ainu revolt such as Koshamain's Revolt in 1456.
During the Edo period the Ainu, who controlled the northern island which is now named Hokkaidō, became increasingly involved in trade with the Japanese who controlled the southern portion of the island. The Tokugawa bakufu granted the Matsumae clan exclusive rights to trade with the Ainu in the northern part of the island. Later, the Matsumae began to lease out trading rights to Japanese merchants, and contact between Japanese and Ainu became more extensive. Throughout this period Ainu were forced to import goods from the Japanese, and epidemic diseases such as smallpox reduced the population. Although the increased contact created by the trade between the Japanese and the Ainu contributed to increased mutual understanding, it also led to conflict which occasionally intensified into violent Ainu revolts. The most important was Shakushain's Revolt, an Ainu rebellion against Japanese authority. Another large-scale revolt by Ainu against Japanese rule was the Menashi-Kunashir Battle in 1789.
From 1799 to 1806, the shogunate took direct control of southern Hokkaidō. Ainu men were deported to merchant subcontractors for five and ten-year terms of service, and were enticed with rewards of food and clothing if they agreed to drop their native language and culture and become Japanese. Ainu women were separated from their husbands and forcibly married to Japanese merchants and fishermen, who were told that a taboo forbade them from bringing their wives to Hokkaidō. Women were often tortured if they resisted rape by their new Japanese husbands, and frequently ran away into the mountains. These policies of family separation and forcible assimilation, combined with the impact of smallpox, caused the Ainu population to drop significantly in the early 19th century.

Meiji Restoration and later

In the 18th century, there were 80,000 Ainu. In 1868, there were about 15,000 Ainu in Hokkaidō, 2000 in Sakhalin and around 100 in the Kuril islands.
The beginning of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 proved a turning point for Ainu culture. The Japanese government introduced a variety of social, political, and economic reforms in hope of modernizing the country in the Western style. One innovation involved the annexation of Hokkaidō. Sjöberg quotes Baba's account of the Japanese government's reasoning:
... The development of Japan's large northern island had several objectives: First, it was seen as a means to defend Japan from a rapidly developing and expansionist Russia. Second... it offered a solution to the unemployment for the former samurai class... Finally, development promised to yield the needed natural resources for a growing capitalist economy.

In 1899, the Japanese government passed an act labelling the Ainu as "former aborigines", with the idea they would assimilate—this resulted in the Japanese government taking the land where the Ainu people lived and placing it from then on under Japanese control. Also at this time, the Ainu were granted automatic Japanese citizenship, effectively denying them the status of an indigenous group.
The Ainu were becoming increasingly marginalized on their own land—over a period of only 36 years, the Ainu went from being a relatively isolated group of people to having their land, language, religion and customs assimilated into those of the Japanese. In addition to this, the land the Ainu lived on was distributed to the Wa-Jin who had decided to move to Hokkaidō, encouraged by the Japanese government of the Meiji era to take advantage of the island's abundant natural resources, and to create and maintain farms in the model of Western industrial agriculture. While at the time, the process was openly referred to as colonization, the notion was later reframed by Japanese elites to the currently common usage kaitaku, which instead conveys a sense of opening up or reclamation of the Ainu lands. As well as this, factories such as flour mills, beer breweries and mining practices resulted in the creation of infrastructure such as roads and railway lines, during a development period that lasted until 1904. During this time, the Ainu were forced to learn Japanese, required to adopt Japanese names, and ordered to cease religious practices such as animal sacrifice and the custom of tattooing.
The 1899 act was replaced in 1997—until then the government had stated there were no ethnic minority groups. It was not until June 6, 2008, that Japan formally recognised the Ainu as an indigenous group.
The vast majority of these Wa-Jin men are believed to have compelled Ainu women to partner with them as local wives. Intermarriage between Japanese and Ainu was actively promoted by the Ainu to lessen the chances of discrimination against their offspring. As a result, many Ainu are indistinguishable from their Japanese neighbors, but some Ainu-Japanese are interested in traditional Ainu culture. For example, Oki, born as a child of an Ainu father and a Japanese mother, became a musician who plays the traditional Ainu instrument tonkori. There are also many small towns in the southeastern or Hidaka region where ethnic Ainu live such as in Nibutani. Many live in Sambutsu especially, on the eastern coast. In 1966 the number of "pure" Ainu was about 300.
Their most widely known ethnonym is derived from the word ainu, which means "human". Ainu also identify themselves as Utari. Official documents use both names.

Official recognition in Japan

On June 6, 2008, the Government of Japan passed a bipartisan, non-binding resolution calling upon the government to recognize the Ainu people as indigenous to Japan, and urging an end to discrimination against the group. The resolution recognized the Ainu people as "an indigenous people with a distinct language, religion and culture". The government immediately followed with a statement acknowledging its recognition, stating, "The government would like to solemnly accept the historical fact that many Ainu were discriminated against and forced into poverty with the advancement of modernization, despite being legally equal to people." In February 2019, the Japanese government consolidated the legal status of the Ainu people by passing a bill which officially recognizes the Ainu as an indigenous people, based on Article 14 of the Constitution, "all of the people are equal under the law" and bans discrimination by race. Furthermore, the bill aims at simplifying procedures for getting various permissions from authorities in regards to the traditional lifestyle of the Ainu and nurture the identity and cultures of the Ainu without defining the ethnic group by blood lineage. A bill passed in April 2019 officially recognizes the Ainu of Hokkaidō as the indigenous people of Japan.
According to the Asahi Shimbun, the Ainu were due to participate in the opening ceremony of the Olympic games 2020 in Japan, but due to logistical constraints this was dropped in February 2020. The space was scheduled to open on April 24, 2020, prior to the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games scheduled in the same year, in Shiraoi, Hokkaidō. The park will serve as base for the protection and promotion of Ainu people, culture and language.

Official recognition in Russia

As a result of the Treaty of Saint Petersburg, the Kuril Islands – along with their Ainu inhabitants – came under Japanese administration. A total of 83 North Kuril Ainu arrived in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on September 18, 1877, after they decided to remain under Russian rule. They refused the offer by Russian officials to move to new reservations in the Commander Islands. Finally a deal was reached in 1881 and the Ainu decided to settle in the village of Yavin. In March 1881, the group left Petropavlovsk and started the journey towards Yavin on foot. Four months later they arrived at their new homes. Another village, Golygino, was founded later. Under Soviet rule, both the villages were forced to disband and residents were moved to the Russian-dominated Zaporozhye rural settlement in Ust-Bolsheretsky Raion. As a result of intermarriage, the three ethnic groups assimilated to form the Kamchadal community. In 1953, K. Omelchenko, the minister for the protection of military and state secrets in the USSR, banned the press from publishing any more information on the Ainu living in the USSR. This order was revoked after two decades.
, the North Kuril Ainu of Zaporozhye form the largest Ainu subgroup in Russia. The Nakamura clan, the smallest group, numbers just six people residing in Petropavlovsk. On Sakhalin island, a few dozen people identify themselves as Sakhalin Ainu, but many more with partial Ainu ancestry do not acknowledge it. Most of the 888 Japanese people living in Russia are of mixed Japanese–Ainu ancestry, although they do not acknowledge it Similarly, no one identifies themselves as Amur Valley Ainu, although people with partial descent live in Khabarovsk. There is no evidence of living descendants of the Kamchatka Ainu.
In the 2010 Census of Russia, close to 100 people tried to register themselves as ethnic Ainu in the village, but the governing council of Kamchatka Krai rejected their claim and enrolled them as ethnic Kamchadal. In 2011, the leader of the Ainu community in Kamchatka, Alexei Vladimirovich Nakamura, requested that Vladimir Ilyukhin and Boris Nevzorov include the Ainu in the central list of the Indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East. This request was also turned down.
Ethnic Ainu living in Sakhalin Oblast and Khabarovsk Krai are not organized politically. According to Alexei Nakamura, as of 2012 only 205 Ainu live in Russia and they along with the Kurile Kamchadals are fighting for official recognition. Since the Ainu are not recognized in the official list of the peoples living in Russia, they are counted as people without nationality or as ethnic Russians or Kamchadal.
The Ainu have emphasized that they were the natives of the Kuril islands and that the Japanese and Russians were both invaders. In 2004, the small Ainu community living in Russia in Kamchatka Krai wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin, urging him to reconsider any move to award the Southern Kuril Islands to Japan. In the letter they blamed the Japanese, the Tsarist Russians and the Soviets for crimes against the Ainu such as killings and assimilation, and also urged him to recognize the Japanese genocide against the Ainu people—which was turned down by Putin.
both the Kuril Ainu and Kuril Kamchadal ethnic groups lack the fishing and hunting rights which the Russian government grants to the indigenous tribal communities of the far north.
In March 2017, Alexei Nakamura revealed that plans for an Ainu village to be created in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and plans for an Ainu dictionary are underway.

Origins

The Ainu have often been considered to descend from the Jōmon people, who lived in northern Japan from the Jōmon period. One of their Yukar Upopo, or legends, tells that "he Ainu lived in this place a hundred thousand years before the Children of the Sun came".
Recent research suggests that the historical Ainu culture originated in a merger of the Okhotsk culture with the Satsumon, one of the ancient archaeological cultures that are considered to have derived from the Jōmon-period cultures of the Japanese archipelago. The Ainu economy was based on farming, as well as on hunting, fishing and gathering.
"Full-blooded" Ainu, compared to people of Yamato descent, often have lighter skin and more body hair. Many early investigators proposed a Caucasian ancestry. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza places the Ainu in his "Northeast and East Asian" genetic cluster.
Omoto has suggested that the Ainu are more closely related to other phenotypically East Asian people, than to phenotypically West Eurasian or Caucasoid people – on the basis of fingerprints and dental morphology.
Anthropologist Joseph Powell of the University of New Mexico wrote "... we follow Brace and Hunt and Turner in viewing the Ainu as a southeast Asian population derived from early Jomon peoples of Japan, who have their closest biological affinity with South Asians rather than western Eurasian peoples". They also suggest morphological similarities to the Kennewick Man. Other anthropologists, such as Jantz and Owsley, considered the Ainu as Caucasoids.
Mark J. Hudson, Professor of Anthropology at Nishikyushu University, Kanzaki, Saga, Japan, has stated that Japan was settled by a "Proto-Mongoloid" population in the Pleistocene who became the Jōmon and that their features can be seen in the Ainu and Okinawan people. A dental morphology study shows the Jōmon and Ainu have their own dental structure, but are generally closer to the Sundadont groups which is more common in Southeast Asia and Taiwan.
In 1893, anthropologist Arnold Henry Savage Landor described the Ainu as having deep-set eyes and an eye shape typical of Europeans, with a large and prominent browridge, large ears, hairy and prone to baldness, slightly hook nose with large and broad nostrils, prominent cheek-bones and a medium mouth.
Ainu men have abundant wavy hair and often have long beards. The book of Ainu Life and Legends by author Kyōsuke Kindaichi contains a physical description of Ainu: "Many have wavy hair, but some straight black hair. Very few of them have wavy brownish hair. Their skins are generally reported to be light brown. But this is due to the fact that they labor on the sea and in briny winds all day. Old people who have long desisted from their outdoor work are often found to be as white as western men. The Ainu have broad faces, beetling eyebrows, and large sunken eyes, which are generally horizontal and of the so-called European type. Eyes of the Mongolian type are hardly found among them."
A craniometric study by Brace et al. shows a closer morphological relation of the Ainu and Jōmon people to prehistoric and modern Europeans rather than to other contemporary East Asians. The study concludes that the Jōmon and Ainu people are descendants of a population that moved into northern Eurasia in the Late Pleistocene, which significantly predates the expansion of the modern core population of East Asia.
Another study based on cranial and genetic characteristics suggests a northern origin for the Ainu people. The study results and genetic evidence suggest the Arctic regions of Eurasia as possible original homeland of the ancestral population of the northern Jōmon and Ainu people. The Jōmon people are considered to be a people of northern ancestry and belong mostly to Haplogroup D2 which characterizes the northern people of Asia. Thus, despite their morphological similarities to Caucasoid populations, the Ainu are essentially of North Asiatic origin. Genetic evidence support a relation with Arctic populations, such as the Chukchi people.

Genetics

Paternal lineages

Genetic testing has shown that the Ainu belong mainly to Y-haplogroup D-M55 and C-M217. Y-DNA haplogroup D-M55 is found throughout the Japanese Archipelago, but with very high frequencies among the Ainu of Hokkaidō in the far north, and to a lesser extent among the Ryukyuans in the Ryukyu Islands of the far south. Recently it was confirmed that the Japanese branch of haplogroup D-M55 is distinct and isolated from other D-branches since more than 53,000 years. The split between D1a1 happened likely in Central Asia, while some others suggest an instant split during the origin of haplogroup D itself, as the Japanese branch has five unique mutations not found in any other D-branch.
Several studies suggest that the paternal lineage of the Ainu and the Paleolithic Jōmon population originated somewhere in Central Asia. According to Hammer et al., the ancestral haplogroup D originated between Tibet and the Altai mountains. He suggests that there were multiple waves into Eastern Eurasia.
A study by Tajima et al. found two out of a sample of sixteen Ainu men to belong to Haplogroup C-M217, which is the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup among the indigenous populations of Siberia and Mongolia. Carriers among the Ainu may reflect a certain degree of unidirectional genetic influence from the Nivkhs, a traditionally nomadic people of northern Sakhalin and the adjacent mainland, with whom the Ainu have long-standing cultural interactions. Hammer et al. tested a sample of four Ainu men and found that one of them belonged to haplogroup C-M217.

Maternal lineages

Based on analysis of one sample of 51 modern Ainus, their mtDNA lineages consist mainly of haplogroup Y, haplogroup D, haplogroup M7a, and haplogroup G1. Other mtDNA haplogroups detected in this sample include A, M7b2, N9b, B4f, F1b, and M9a. Most of the remaining individuals in this sample have been classified definitively only as belonging to macro-haplogroup M.
According to Sato et al., who have studied the mtDNA of the same sample of modern Ainus, the major haplogroups of the Ainu are N9, D, M7, and G ; the minor haplogroups are A, B, F, and M.
Studies published in 2004 and 2007 show the combined frequency of M7a and N9b were observed in Jōmons and which are believed by some to be Jōmon maternal contribution at 28% in Okinawans, 17.6% in Ainus, and from 10% to 17% in mainstream Japanese.
In addition, haplogroups D4, D5, M7b, M9a, M10, G, A, B, and F have been found in Jōmon people as well.
and the Ainu, Hokkaidō, c. 1775

Autosomal DNA

A 2004 reevaluation of cranial traits suggests that the Ainu resemble the Okhotsk more than they do the Jōmon. This agrees with the references to the Ainu as a merger of Okhotsk and Satsumon referenced above. Nevertheless, a newer genome study shows that the Ainu share most of their genome with the Hokkaidō Jōmon and it is suggested that the Okhotsk received strong Jōmon influence.
Hideo Matsumoto suggested, based on immunoglobulin analyses, that the Ainu have a Siberian origin. Compared with other East Asian populations, the Ainu have the highest amount of Siberian components, higher than mainland Japanese people.
A 2012 genetic study has revealed that the closest genetic relatives of the Ainu are the Ryukyuan people, followed by the Yamato people and Nivkh.
A genetic analysis in 2016 showed that although the Ainu have some genetic relations to the Japanese people and Eastern Siberians, they are not closely related to any modern ethnic group. Further, the study detected genetic contribution from the Ainu to populations around the Sea of Okhotsk but no genetic influence on the Ainu themselves. According to the study, the Ainu-like genetic contribution in the Ulch people is about 17.8% or 13.5% and about 27.2% in the Nivkhs. The study also disproved the idea about a relation to Andamanese or Tibetans; instead, it presented evidence of gene flow between the Ainu and "lowland East Asian farmer populations".
A comparison with the genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism data of HGDP populations also showed the unique status of the Sanganji Jōmon despite being relatively closer to the East Eurasian cluster, they are far apart from all modern East Eurasians. The uniqueness of the Sanganji Jōmon within East Eurasians is consistent with the results including Europeans and Africans. When the Ainu, the mainland Japanese and the Ryukyuans from the Japanese Archipelago and CHB28 were compared with Sanganji Jōmon, PC1 separated the Ainu and Sanganji Jōmon from the other populations. The population closest to the Sanganji Jōmon was the Ainu, followed by the Ryukyuan and then the mainland Japanese. The study also implies genetic affinity between the Jōmon and Altai-Neanderthals but the degree is not much different than other non-African populations. Compared with other East-Eurasians, the Jōmon lacked similarities with Denisovans.
Genetic analyses of HLA I and HLA II genes as well as HLA-A, -B, and -DRB1 gene frequencies links the Ainu to some Indigenous peoples of the Americas, especially to populations on the Pacific Northwest Coast such as Tlingit. The scientists suggest that the main ancestor of the Ainu and of some Native American groups can be traced back to Paleolithic groups in Southern Siberia.

Military service

Russo-Japanese War

Ainu men were first recruited into the Japanese military in 1898. Sixty-four Ainu served in the Russo-Japanese War, eight of whom died in battle or from illness contracted during military service. Two received the Order of the Golden Kite, granted for bravery, leadership or command in battle.

Second World War

During World War II, Australian troops engaged in the hard-fought Kokoda Track campaign in New Guinea, were surprised by the physique and fighting prowess of the first Japanese troops they encountered.

Language

In 2008 Hohmann gave an estimate of fewer than 100 remaining speakers of the language; other research placed the number at fewer than 15 speakers. Vovin has characterised the language as "almost extinct". As a result of this, the study of the Ainu language is limited and is based largely on historical research.
Despite the small number of native speakers of Ainu, there is an active movement to revitalize the language, mainly in Hokkaidō, but also elsewhere such as Kanto. Ainu oral literature has been documented both in hopes of safeguarding it for future generations, as well as using it as a teaching tool for language learners.
As of 2011 there has been an increasing number of second-language learners, especially in Hokkaidō, in large part due to the pioneering efforts of the late Ainu folklorist, activist and former Diet member Shigeru Kayano, himself a native speaker, who first opened an Ainu language school in 1987 funded by Ainu Kyokai.
Although some researchers have attempted to show that the Ainu language and the Japanese language are related, modern scholars have rejected the idea that the relationship goes beyond contact. No attempt to show a relationship with Ainu to any other language has gained wide acceptance, and linguists currently classify Ainu as a language isolate. Most Ainu people speak either the Japanese language or the Russian language.
Concepts expressed with prepositions in English appear as postpositional forms in Ainu. A single sentence in Ainu can comprise many added or agglutinated sounds or affixes that represent nouns or ideas.
The Ainu language has had no indigenous system of writing, and has historically been transliterated using the Japanese kana or Russian Cyrillic. it is typically written either in katakana or in the Latin alphabet.
Many of the Ainu dialects, even those from different extremities of Hokkaidō, were not mutually intelligible; however, all Ainu speakers understood the classic Ainu language of the Yukar, or epic stories. Without a writing system, the Ainu were masters of narration, with the Yukar and other forms of narration such as the Uepeker tales being committed to memory and related at gatherings which often lasted many hours or even days.

Culture

Traditional Ainu culture was quite different from Japanese culture. Never shaving after a certain age, the men had full beards and moustaches. Men and women alike cut their hair level with the shoulders at the sides of the head, trimmed semicircularly behind. The women tattooed their mouths, and sometimes the forearms. The mouth tattoos were started at a young age with a small spot on the upper lip, gradually increasing with size. The soot deposited on a pot hung over a fire of birch bark was used for colour. Their traditional dress was a robe spun from the inner bark of the elm tree, called attusi or attush. Various styles were made, and consisted generally of a simple short robe with straight sleeves, which was folded around the body, and tied with a band about the waist. The sleeves ended at the wrist or forearm and the length generally was to the calves. Women also wore an undergarment of Japanese cloth.
Modern craftswomen weave and embroider traditional garments that command very high prices. In winter the skins of animals were worn, with leggings of deerskin and in Sakhalin, boots were made from the skin of dogs or salmon. Ainu culture considers earrings, traditionally made from grapevines, to be gender neutral. Women also wear a beaded necklace called a tamasay.
Their traditional cuisine consists of the flesh of bear, fox, wolf, badger, ox, or horse, as well as fish, fowl, millet, vegetables, herbs, and roots. They never ate raw fish or flesh; it was always boiled or roasted.
Their traditional habitations were reed-thatched huts, the largest square, without partitions and having a fireplace in the center. There was no chimney, only a hole at the angle of the roof; there was one window on the eastern side and there were two doors. The house of the village head was used as a public meeting place when one was needed. Another kind of traditional Ainu house was called chise.
Instead of using furniture, they sat on the floor, which was covered with two layers of mats, one of rush, the other of a water plant with long sword shaped leaves ; and for beds they spread planks, hanging mats around them on poles, and employing skins for coverlets. The men used chopsticks when eating; the women had wooden spoons. Ainu cuisine is not commonly eaten outside Ainu communities; only a few restaurants in Japan serve traditional Ainu dishes, mainly in Tokyo and Hokkaidō.
The functions of judgeship were not entrusted to chiefs; an indefinite number of a community's members sat in judgment upon its criminals. Capital punishment did not exist, nor did the community resort to imprisonment. Beating was considered a sufficient and final penalty. However, in the case of murder, the nose and ears of the culprit were cut off or the tendons of his feet severed.

Hunting

The Ainu hunted from late autumn to early summer. The reasons for this were, among others, that in late autumn, plant gathering, salmon fishing and other activities of securing food came to an end, and hunters readily found game in fields and mountains in which plants had withered.
A village possessed a hunting ground of its own or several villages used a joint hunting territory. Heavy penalties were imposed on any outsiders trespassing on such hunting grounds or joint hunting territory.
The Ainu hunted bear, Ezo deer, rabbit, fox, raccoon dog, and other animals. Ezo deer were a particularly important food resource for the Ainu, as were salmon. They also hunted sea eagles such as white-tailed sea eagles, raven and other birds. The Ainu hunted eagles to obtain their tail feathers, which they used in trade with the Japanese.
The Ainu hunted with arrows and spears with poison-coated points. They obtained the poison, called surku, from the roots and stalks of aconites. The recipe for this poison was a household secret that differed from family to family. They enhanced the poison with mixtures of roots and stalks of dog's bane, boiled juice of Mekuragumo, Matsumomushi, tobacco and other ingredients. They also used stingray stingers or skin covering stingers.
They hunted in groups with dogs. Before the Ainu went hunting, particularly for bear and similar animals, they prayed to the god of fire, the house guardian god, to convey their wishes for a large catch, and to the god of mountains for safe hunting.
The Ainu usually hunted bear during the spring thaw. At that time, bears were weak because they had not fed at all during their long hibernation. Ainu hunters caught hibernating bears or bears that had just left hibernation dens. When they hunted bear in summer, they used a spring trap loaded with an arrow, called an amappo. The Ainu usually used arrows to hunt deer. Also, they drove deer into a river or sea and shot them with arrows. For a large catch, a whole village would drive a herd of deer off a cliff and club them to death.

Fishing

Fishing was important for the Ainu. They largely caught trout, primarily in summer, and salmon in autumn, as well as "ito", dace and other fish. Spears called "marek" were often used. Other methods were "tesh" fishing, "uray" fishing and "rawomap" fishing. Many villages were built near rivers or along the coast. Each village or individual had a definite river fishing territory. Outsiders could not freely fish there and needed to ask the owner.

Ornaments

Men wore a crown called sapanpe for important ceremonies. Sapanpe was made from wood fibre with bundles of partially shaved wood. This crown had wooden figures of animal gods and other ornaments on its centre. Men carried an emush secured by an emush at strap to their shoulders.
Women wore matanpushi, embroidered headbands, and ninkari, earrings. Ninkari was a metal ring with a ball. Matanpushi and ninkari were originally worn by men. Furthermore, aprons called maidari now are a part of women's formal clothes. However, some old documents say that men wore maidari. Women sometimes wore a bracelet called tekunkani.
Women wore a necklace called rektunpe, a long, narrow strip of cloth with metal plaques. They wore a necklace that reached the breast called a tamasay or shitoki, usually made from glass balls. Some glass balls came from trade with the Asian continent. The Ainu also obtained glass balls secretly made by the Matsumae clan.

Housing

A village is called a kotan in the Ainu language. Kotan were located in river basins and seashores where food was readily available, particularly in the basins of rivers through which salmon went upstream. A village consisted basically of a paternal clan. The average number of families was four to seven, rarely reaching more than ten. In the early modern times, the Ainu people were forced to labor at the fishing grounds of the Japanese. Ainu kotan were also forced to move near fishing grounds so that the Japanese could secure a labor force. When the Japanese moved to other fishing grounds, Ainu kotan were also forced to accompany them. As a result, the traditional kotan disappeared and large villages of several dozen families were formed around the fishing grounds.
Cise or cisey in a kotan were made of cogon grass, bamboo grass, bark, etc. The length lay east to west or parallel to a river. A house was about seven meters by five with an entrance at the west end that also served as a storeroom. The house had three windows, including the "rorun-puyar," a window located on the side facing the entrance, through which gods entered and left and ceremonial tools were taken in and out. The Ainu have regarded this window as sacred and have been told never to look in through it. A house had a fireplace near the entrance. The husband and wife sat on the fireplace's left side . Children and guests sat facing them on the fireplace's right side. The house had a platform for valuables called iyoykir behind the shiso. The Ainu placed sintoko and ikayop there.
Outbuildings included separate lavatories for men called ashinru and for women called menokoru, a pu for food, a "heper set", and drying-racks for fish and wild plants. An altar faced the east side of the house. The Ainu held such ceremonies there as Iyomante, a ceremony to send the spirit of a bear to the gods.

Traditions

The Ainu people had various types of marriage. A child was promised in marriage by arrangement between his or her parents and the parents of his or her betrothed or by a go-between. When the betrothed reached a marriageable age, they were told who their spouse was to be. There were also marriages based on mutual consent of both sexes. In some areas, when a daughter reached a marriageable age, her parents let her live in a small room called tunpu annexed to the southern wall of her house. The parents chose her spouse from men who visited her.
The age of marriage was 17 to 18 years of age for men and 15 to 16 years of age for women, who were tattooed. At these ages, both sexes were regarded as adults.
When a man proposed to a woman, he visited her house, ate half a full bowl of rice handed to him by her, and returned the rest to her. If the woman ate the rest, she accepted his proposal. If she did not and put it beside her, she rejected his proposal. When a man became engaged to a woman or they learned that their engagement had been arranged, they exchanged gifts. He sent her a small engraved knife, a workbox, a spool, and other gifts. She sent him embroidered clothes, coverings for the back of the hand, leggings and other handmade clothes.
The worn-out fabric of old clothing was used for baby clothes because soft cloth was good for the skin of babies and worn-out material protected babies from gods of illness and demons due to these gods' abhorrence of dirty things. Before a baby was breast-fed, they were given a decoction of the endodermis of alder and the roots of butterburs to discharge impurities. Children were raised almost naked until about the ages of four to five. Even when they wore clothes, they did not wear belts and left the front of their clothes open. Subsequently, they wore bark clothes without patterns, such as attush, until coming of age.
Newborn babies were named ayay, shipo, poyshi, and shion. Children were called by these "temporary" names until the ages of two to three. They were not given permanent names when they were born. Their tentative names had a portion meaning "excrement" or "old things" to ward off the demon of ill-health. Some children were named based on their behaviour or habits. Other children were named after impressive events or after parents' wishes for the future of the children. When children were named, they were never given the same names as others.
Men wore loincloths and had their hair dressed properly for the first time at age 15–16. Women were also considered adults at the age of 15–16. They wore underclothes called mour and had their hair dressed properly and wound waistcloths called raunkut and ponkut around their bodies. When women reached age 12–13, the lips, hands and arms were tattooed. When they reached age 15–16, their tattoos were completed. Thus were they qualified for marriage.

Religion

The Ainu are traditionally animists, believing that everything in nature has a kamuy on the inside. The most important include Kamuy Fuchi, goddess of the hearth, Kim-un Kamuy, god of bears and mountains, and Repun Kamuy, god of the sea, fishing, and marine animals. Kotan-kar-kamuy is regarded as the creator of the world in the Ainu religion.
The Ainu have no priests by profession; instead the village chief performs whatever religious ceremonies are necessary. Ceremonies are confined to making libations of saké, saying prayers, and offering willow sticks with wooden shavings attached to them. These sticks are called inaw and nusa.
They are placed on an altar used to "send back" the spirits of killed animals. Ainu ceremonies for sending back bears are called Iyomante. The Ainu people give thanks to the gods before eating and pray to the deity of fire in time of sickness. They believe that their spirits are immortal, and that their spirits will be rewarded hereafter by ascending to kamuy mosir.
The Ainu are part of a larger collective of indigenous people who practice "arctolatry" or bear-worship. The Ainu believe that the bear is very special because they think that the bear is Kim-un Kamuy's way of delivering the gift of the bear's hide and meat to humans.
John Batchelor reported that the Ainu view the world as being a spherical ocean on which float many islands, a view based on the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. He wrote that they believe the world rests on the back of a large fish, which when it moves causes earthquakes.
Ainu assimilated into mainstream Japanese society have adopted Buddhism and Shintō, while some northern Ainu were converted as members of the Russian Orthodox Church. Regarding Ainu communities in Shikotanto（色丹と）and other areas that fall within the Russian sphere of cultural influence, there have been cases of church construction as well as reports that some Ainu have decided to profess their Christian faith. There have also been reports that the Russian Orthodox Church has performed some missionary projects in the Sakhalin Ainu community. However, not many people have converted and there are only reports of several persons who have converted. Converts have been scorned as "Nutsa Ainu" by other members of the Ainu community. Even so, the reports indiciate that many Ainu have kept their faith in the deities of ancient times.
According to a 2012 survey conducted by Hokkaidō University, a high percentage of Ainu are members of their household family religion which is Buddhism. However, it is pointed out that similar to the Japanese religious consciousness, there is not a strong feeling of identification with a particular religion.

Institutions

Most Hokkaidō Ainu and some other Ainu are members of an umbrella group called the Hokkaidō Utari Association. It was originally controlled by the government to speed Ainu assimilation and integration into the Japanese nation-state. It now is run exclusively by Ainu and operates mostly independently of the government.
Other key institutions include The Foundation for Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture , set up by the Japanese government after enactment of the Ainu Culture Law in 1997, the Hokkaidō University Center for Ainu and Indigenous Studies established in 2007, as well as museums and cultural centers. Ainu people living in Tokyo have also developed a vibrant political and cultural community.
Since late 2011, the Ainu have cultural exchange and cultural cooperation with the Sámi people of northern Europe. Both the Sámi and the Ainu participate in the organization for Arctic indigenous peoples and the Sámi research office in Lapland.
Currently, there are several Ainu museums and cultural parks. The most famous are:

Litigation

On March 27, 1997, the Sapporo District Court decided a landmark case that, for the first time in Japanese history, recognized the right of the Ainu people to enjoy their distinct culture and traditions. The case arose because of a 1978 government plan to build two dams in the Saru River watershed in southern Hokkaidō. The dams were part of a series of development projects under the Second National Development Plan that were intended to industrialize the north of Japan. The planned location for one of the dams was across the valley floor close to Nibutani village, the home of a large community of Ainu people and an important center of Ainu culture and history. In the early 1980s when the government commenced construction on the dam, two Ainu landowners refused to agree to the expropriation of their land. These landowners were Kaizawa Tadashi and Kayano Shigeru—well-known and important leaders in the Ainu community. After Kaizawa and Kayano declined to sell their land, the Hokkaidō Development Bureau applied for and was subsequently granted a Project Authorization, which required the men to vacate their land. When their appeal of the Authorization was denied, Kayano and Kaizawa's son Koichii, filed suit against the Hokkaidō Development Bureau.
The final decision denied the relief sought by the plaintiffs for pragmatic reasons—the dam was already standing—but the decision was nonetheless heralded as a landmark victory for the Ainu people. In short, nearly all of the plaintiffs' claims were recognized. Moreover, the decision marked the first time Japanese case law acknowledged the Ainu as an indigenous people and contemplated the responsibility of the Japanese nation to the indigenous people within its borders. The decision included broad fact-finding that underscored the long history of the oppression of the Ainu people by Japan's majority, referred to as Wa-Jin in the case and discussions about the case. The legal roots of the decision can be found in Article 13 of Japan's Constitution, which protects the rights of the individual, and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The decision was issued on March 27, 1997, and because of the broad implications for Ainu rights, the plaintiffs decided not to appeal the decision, which became final two weeks later. After the decision was issued, on May 8, 1997, the Diet passed the Ainu Culture Law and repealed the Ainu Protection Act—the 1899 law that had been the vehicle of Ainu oppression for almost one hundred years. While the Ainu Culture Law has been widely criticized for its shortcomings, the shift that it represents in Japan's view of the Ainu people is a testament to the importance of the Nibutani decision. In 2007 the 'Cultural Landscape along the Sarugawa River resulting from Ainu Tradition and Modern Settlement' was designated an Important Cultural Landscape. A later action seeking restoration of Ainu assets held in trust by the Japanese Government was dismissed in 2008.

Governmental advisory boards

Much national policy in Japan has been developed out of the action of governmental advisory boards, known as in Japanese. One such committee operated in the late 1990s, and its work resulted in the 1997 Ainu Culture Law. This panel's circumstances were criticized for including not even a single Ainu person among its members.
More recently, a panel was established in 2006, which notably was the first time an Ainu person was included. It completed its work in 2008 issuing a major report that included an extensive historical record and called for substantial government policy changes towards the Ainu.

Formation of Ainu political party

The was founded on January 21, 2012, after a group of Ainu activists in Hokkaidō announced the formation of a political party for the Ainu on October 30, 2011. The Ainu Association of Hokkaidō reported that Kayano Shiro, the son of the former Ainu leader Kayano Shigeru, will head the party. Their aim is to contribute to the realization of a multicultural and multiethnic society in Japan, along with rights for the Ainu.

Standard of living

The Ainu have historically suffered from economic and social discrimination throughout Japan that continues to this day. The Japanese Government as well as people in contact with the Ainu, have in large part regarded them as a dirty, backwards and a primitive people. The majority of Ainu were forced to be petty laborers during the Meiji Restoration, which saw the introduction of Hokkaidō into the Japanese Empire and the privatization of traditional Ainu lands. The Japanese government during the 19th and 20th centuries denied the rights of the Ainu to their traditional cultural practices, most notably the right to speak their language, as well as their right to hunt and gather. These policies were designed to fully integrate the Ainu into Japanese society with the cost of erasing Ainu culture and identity. The Ainu's position as manual laborers and their forced integration into larger Japanese society have led to discriminatory practices by the Japanese government that can still be felt today. This discrimination and negative stereotypes assigned to the Ainu have manifested in the Ainu's lower levels of education, income levels and participation in the economy as compared to their ethnically Japanese counterparts. The Ainu community in Hokkaidō in 1993 received welfare payments at a 2.3 times higher rate, had an 8.9% lower enrollment rate from junior high school to high school and a 15.7% lower enrollment into college from high school than that of Hokkaidō as a whole. The Japanese government has been lobbied by activists to research the Ainu's standard of living nationwide due to this noticeable and growing gap. The Japanese government will provide ¥7 million beginning in 2015, to conduct surveys nationwide on this matter.

Geography

The traditional locations of the Ainu are Hokkaido, Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, Kamchatka, and the northern Tohoku region. Many of the place names that remain in Hokkaido and the Kuril Islands have a phonetic equivalent of the Ainu place names.
In 1756 CE, Mitsugu Nyui was a kanjō-bugyō of the Hirosaki Domain in the Tsugaru Peninsula. He implemented an assimilation policy for Ainu who were engaged in fishing in the Tsugaru Peninsula. Since then, Ainu culture was rapidly lost from Honshu.
After the Treaty of Saint Petersburg, most of the Ainu from the Kuril islands were moved to the island Shikotan by persuading the pioneers for difficult life supplies and for defense purposes.
In 1945, the Soviet Union invaded Japan and occupied Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. The Ainu who lived there were repatriated to their home country, Japan, except for those who indicated their willingness to remain.

Population

The population of the Ainu during the Edo period was a maximum of 26,800, but it has declined due to the epidemic of infectious diseases since it was regarded as a Tenryō territory.
According to the 1897 Russian census, 1,446 Ainu native speakers lived in Russian territory.
Currently, there are no Ainu items in the Japanese national census, and no fact-finding has been conducted at national institutions. Therefore, the exact number of Ainu people is unknown. However, multiple surveys were conducted that provide an indication of the total population.
According to a 2006 Hokkaido Agency survey, there were 23,782 Ainu people in Hokkaido. When viewed by the branch office, there are many in the Iburi / Hidaka branch office. In addition, the definition of "Ainu" by the Hokkaido Agency in this survey is "a person who seems to have inherited the blood of Ainu" or "the same livelihood as those with marriage or adoption." Additionally, if it is denied that the other person is an Ainu then it is not subject to investigation.
According to a 1971 survey, there were 77,000 survey results. There is also a survey that the total number of Ainu living in Japan is 200,000. However, there's no other survey that supports this estimate.
Many Ainu live outside Hokkaido. A 1988 survey estimated that the population of Ainu living in Tokyo was 2,700. According to a 1989 survey report on Utari living in Tokyo, it is estimated that the area around Tokyo alone exceeds 10% of Ainu living in Hokkaido, and there are more than 10,000 Ainu living in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
In addition to Japan and Russia, it was reported in 1992 that there was a descendant of Kuril Ainu in Poland, but there are also indications that it is a descendant of the Aleut. On the other hand, the descendant of the children born in Poland by the Polish anthropologist Bronisław Piłsudski, who was the leading Ainu researcher and left a vast amount of research material such as photographs and wax tubes, was born in Japan.
According to a 2017 survey, the Ainu population in Hokkaido is about 13,000. This has dropped sharply from 24,000 in 2006, but this is because the number of members of the Ainu Association of Hokkaido, which is cooperating with the survey, has decreased, and interest in protecting personal information has increased. It is thought that the number of people who cooperated is decreasing, and that it does not match the actual number of people.

Subgroups

These are unofficial sub groups of the Ainu people with location and population estimates. According to historical records and census only a small population of pure-blooded Ainu still exist. That amount continues to decrease. Many who claim Ainu heritage are multiracial.
SubgroupLocationDescriptionPopulationYear
Hokkaido AinuHokkaidoHokkaidō Ainu : A Japanese census in 1916 returned 13,557 pure-blooded Ainu in addition to 4,550 multiracial individuals. A 2017 survey says the Ainu population in Hokkaido is about 13,000. It decreased sharply from 24,000 in 2006.13,0002017
Tokyo AinuTokyoTokyo Ainu According to a 1989 survey, more than 10,000 Ainu live in the Tokyo metropolitan area.10,0001989
Tohoku AinuTohokuTohoku Ainu : Forty-three Ainu households scattered throughout the Tohoku region were reported during the 17th century. There are people who consider themselves descendants of Shimokita Ainu on the Shimokita Peninsula, while the people on the Tsugaru Peninsula are generally considered Yamato but may be descendants of Tsugaru Ainu after cultural assimilation.Extinct17th century
Sakhalin AinuSakhalinSakhalin Ainu: Pure-blooded individuals may be surviving in Hokkaidō. From both Northern and Southern Sakhalin, a total of 841 Ainu were relocated to Hokkaidō in 1875 by Japan. Only a few in remote interior areas remained, as the island was turned over to Russia. Even when Japan was granted Southern Sakhalin in 1905, only a handful returned. The Japanese census of 1905 counted only 120 Sakhalin Ainu. The Soviet census of 1926 counted 5 Ainu, while several of their multiracial children were recorded as ethnic Nivkh, Slav or Uilta.
  • North Sakhalin: Only five pure-blooded individuals were recorded during the 1926 Soviet Census in Northern Sakhalin. Most of the Sakhalin Ainu were relocated to Hokkaidō in 1875 by Japan. The few that remained were mostly married to Russians as can be seen from the works of Bronisław Piłsudski.
  • Southern Sakhalin : Japanese rule until 1945. Japan evacuated almost all the Ainu to Hokkaidō after World War II. Isolated individuals might have remained on Sakhalin. In 1949, there were about 100 Ainu living on Soviet Sakhalin.
100 Sakhalin1949
Northern Kuril AinuNorthern Kuril islandsNorthern Kuril Ainu : Also known as Kurile in Russian records. Were under Russian rule until 1875. First came under Japanese rule after the Treaty of Saint Petersburg. Major population was on the island of Shumshu, with a few others on islands like Paramushir. Altogether they numbered 221 in 1860. They had Russian names, spoke Russian fluently and were Russian Orthodox in religion. As the islands were given to the Japanese, more than a hundred Ainu fled to Kamchatka along with their Russian employers. Only about half remained under Japanese rule. To derussify the Kurile, the entire population of 97 individuals was relocated to Shikotan in 1884, given Japanese names, and the children were enrolled in Japanese schools. Unlike the other Ainu groups, the Kurile failed to adjust to their new surroundings and by 1933 only 10 individuals were alive. The last group of 20 individuals were evacuated to Hokkaidō in 1941, where they vanished as a separate ethnic group soon after.Extinct20th century
Southern Kuril AinuSouthern Kuril islandsSouthern Kuril Ainu : Numbered almost 2,000 people during the 18th century. In 1884, their population had decreased to 500. Around 50 individuals who remained in 1941 were evacuated to Hokkaidō by the Japanese soon after World War II. The last full-blooded Southern Kuril Ainu was Suyama Nisaku, who died in 1956. The last of the tribe, Tanaka Kinu, died on Hokkaidō in 1973.Extinct1973
Kamchatka AinuKamchatkaKamchatka Ainu : Known as Kamchatka Kurile in Russian records. Ceased to exist as a separate ethnic group after their defeat in 1706 by the Russians. Individuals were assimilated into the Kurile and Kamchadal ethnic groups. Last recorded in the 18th century by Russian explorers.Extinct18th century
Amur Valley AinuAmur RiverAmur Valley Ainu : A few individuals married to ethnic Russians and ethnic Ulchi reported by Bronisław Piłsudski in the early 20th century. Only 26 pure-blooded individuals were recorded during the 1926 Russian Census in Nikolaevski Okrug. Probably assimilated into the Slavic rural population. Although no one identifies as Ainu nowadays in Khabarovsk Krai, there are a large number of ethnic Ulch with partial Ainu ancestry.Extinct20th century

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