(also called Ezo in historical texts) are an ethnic group indigenous to Hokkaid?, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin. There are most likely over 150,000 Ainu today; however the exact figure is not known as many Ainu hide their origin due to racial issues in Japan. In many cases, surviving Ainu may not be even aware of their ancestry, as their parents and grandparents kept their descent private in order to protect their children from social problems.

Their most widely known ethnonym is derived from the word ainu, which means "human" (particularly as opposed to kamui, divine beings) in the Hokkaid? dialects of the Ainu language; Emishi, Ezo or Yezo () are Japanese terms, which are believed to derive from the ancestral form of the modern Sakhalin Ainu word enciw or enju, also meaning "human". The term (meaning "comrade" in Ainu) is now preferred by some members of this minority. Note that Yezo was also an earlier name of the island of Hokkaid?, if not of the homonymous prefecture.

Origins

The origins of the Ainu have not been fully determined. They have often been considered J?mon-jin, natives to Japan from the J?mon period. "The Ainu lived in this place a hundred thousand years before the Children of the Sun came" is told in one of their Yukar Upopo (Ainu legends).^[1]

Ainu culture dates from around 1200 AD^[2] and recent research suggests that it originated in a merger of the Okhotsk and Satsumon cultures.^[3] Their economy was based on farming as well as hunting, fishing and gathering.^[4]

Full-blooded Ainu are mostly fair-skinned, with the men generally having dense hair development.^[5] Many early investigators proposed a Caucasian ancestry although recent DNA tests have found no traces of Caucasian ancestry. ^[6]

Ainu man, circa 1880.

Some have speculated that the Ainu may be descendants of a prehistoric race that also produced indigenous Australian peoples. In Steve Olson's book Mapping Human History, page 133, he describes the discovery of fossils dating back 10,000 years, representing the remains of the J?mon, a group whose facial features more closely resemble those of the indigenous peoples of New Guinea and Australia. After a new wave of immigration, probably from the Korean Peninsula, some 2,300 years ago, of the Yayoi people, the J?mon were pushed into northern Japan. Genetic data suggest that modern Japanese are descended from both the Yayoi and the J?mon.

American continent connection

In the late 20th century, much speculation arose that people of the group related to the Jomon may have been one of the first to settle North America. This theory is based largely on skeletal and cultural evidence among tribes living in the western part of North America and certain parts of South America. It is possible that North America had several peoples among its early settlers – these relatives of the Jomon being one of them. The best-known evidence that may support this theory is probably Kennewick Man.^[14][15]

Groundbreaking genetic mapping studies by Cavalli-Sforza have shown a sharp gradient in gene frequencies centered in the area around the Sea of Japan, and particularly in the Japanese Archipelago, that distinguishes these populations from others in the rest of eastern Asia and most of the American continent. This gradient appears as the third most important genetic movement (in other words, the third principal component of genetic variation) in Eurasia (after the "Great expansion" from the African continent, which has a cline centered in Arabia and adjacent parts of the Middle East, and a second cline that distinguishes the northern regions of Eurasia and particularly Siberia from regions to the south), which would make it consistent with the early J?mon period, or possibly even the pre-J?mon period.^[16]

History

Ainu ceremonial dress. British Museum.

In 1899 the Japanese government passed an act labeling the Ainu as former Aborigines, with the idea they would assimilate. The act was replaced in 1997?until then the government had stated there were no ethnic minority groups.^[5] It was not until June 6, 2008 that Japan would formally recognise the Ainu as an indigenous group.^[5] As Japanese citizens, the Ainu are now governed by Japanese laws and judged by Japanese tribunals, but in the past, their affairs were administered by hereditary chiefs, three in each village, and for administrative purposes the country was divided into three districts, Saru, Usu and Ishikari, which were under the ultimate control of Saru, though the relations between their respective inhabitants were not close and intermarriages were avoided. The functions of judge were not entrusted to these 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. Intermarriages between Japanese and Ainu were 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. There are many small towns in the southeastern or Hidaka region where full-blooded Ainu may still be seen such as in Nibutani. In Sambutsu especially, on the eastern coast, many children of such marriages may be seen.

Ainu bear sacrifice. Japanese scroll painting, circa 1870.

Today, many Ainu dislike the term Ainu because once it had been used with derogatory nuance and prefer to identify themselves as Utari (comrade in the Ainu language). In official documents both names are used.

Official recognition

On 6 June 2008, a bi-partisan, non-binding resolution was approved by the Japanese Diet calling upon the government to recognize the Ainu people as indigenous to Japan and urge an end to discrimination against the group. The resolution recognised the Ainu people as "an indigenous people with a distinct language, religion and culture" and rescinds the law passed in 1899.^[5] Though the resolution is historically significant, Hideaki Uemura, professor at Keisen University in Tokyo and a specialist in indigenous peoples' rights, commented that the motion is "weak in the sense of recognizing historical facts" as the Ainu were "forced" to become Japanese in the first place.^[18]

Geography

The Ainu were distributed in the northern and central islands of Japan, from Sakhalin island in the north to the Kurile islands and the island of Hokkaid? and Northern Honsh?, although some investigators place their former range as throughout Honsh? and as far north as the southern tip of Kamchatka. The island of Hokkaido was known to the Ainu as Ainu Moshir, and was formally annexed by the Japanese at the late date of 1868, partly as a means of preventing the intrusion of the Russians, and partly for imperialist reasons.

According to the Russian Empire Census of 1897, 1446 persons in the Russian Empire reported Ainu language as their mother tongue, 1434 of them in Sakhalin Island.^[19] For historical reasons nearly all Ainu live in Japan now. The southern half of Sakhalin was acquired by Japan as a result of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, but at the end of World War II in 1945, the Soviets declared war on Japan and took possession of the Kurile islands and southern Sakhalin. The Ainu population, as previously Japanese subjects, were "repatriated" to Japan.

There are, however, a small number of Ainu living on Sakhalin, most of them descendants of Sakhalin Ainu who were evicted and later returned. There is also an Ainu minority living at the southernmost area of the Kamchatka Peninsula and on the Kurile Islands. However, the only Ainu speakers remaining (besides perhaps a few partial speakers) live solely in Japan. There, they are concentrated primarily on the southern and eastern coasts of the island of Hokkaid?.

Due to intermarriage with the Japanese and ongoing absorption into the predominant culture, there are no truly Ainu settlements existing today. The town of Nibutani in Hidaka area (Hokkaido prefecture) has a number of Ainu households and a visit to some of the Ainu owned craft shops close to the Ainu museums (there are two of them in Nibutani) is an opportunity to interact with the Ainu people. Many "authentic Ainu villages" advertised in Hokkaido such as Akan and Shiraoi are tourist attractions and provide an opportunity to see and meet Ainu people.

Language

The Ainu language is significantly different from the Japanese language in its syntax, phonology, morphology, and vocabulary. Although there have been attempts to show that they are related, the vast majority of modern scholars reject that the relationship goes beyond contact, such as the mutual borrowing of words between Japanese and Ainu. In fact, no attempt to show a relationship with Ainu to any other language has gained wide acceptance, and Ainu is currently considered to be a language isolate. The Ainu language is polysynthetic, and attempts have been made to relate Japanese, Korean and Ainu via an early proto-Ainu language. Words used as prepositions in English such as: to, from, by, in, and at are postpositional in Ainu and come after the word that they modify. A single sentence in Ainu can be made up of many added or agglutinated sounds or morphemes which represent nouns or ideas. The Ainu language has had no system of writing, and has historically been transliterated by the Japanese kana or the Russian Cyrillic and now Latin alphabets by investigators. The unwieldy nature of the Japanese kana with its inability to accurately represent terminal consonants has contributed to the degradation of the original Ainu, with such words as "Kor" (meaning to hold), being pronounced now with a terminal vowel sound, "Koro", in many Japanese Ainu dialects, as distinct from the Kurile or Sakhalin Ainu. Many of the Ainu dialects even from one end of Hokkaido to the other were not mutually intelligible; however, the classic Ainu language of the Yukar, or Ainu epic stories, was understood by all. Without a writing system, the Ainu were masters of narration, with the Yukar and other forms of narration such as the Uepeker (Uwepeker) tales, being committed to memory and related at gatherings often lasting many hours or even days.

Culture

Flag of the Ainu people, designed by Bikki Sunazawa in 1973. Cerulean blue stands for sky and sea, white for snow and red for arrow which is running in the snow beneath Hokkaido's sky. ^[20].

Religion

For more information see Ainu creation myth.

The Ainu are traditionally animists, believing that everything in nature has a kamuy (spirit or god) on the inside. There is a hierarchy of the kamuy. The most important is grandmother earth (fire), then kamuy of the mountain (animals), then kamuy of the sea (sea animals), lastly everything else. They have no priests by profession. The village chief performs whatever religious ceremonies are necessary; ceremonies are confined to making libations of rice beer, uttering prayers, and offering willow sticks with wooden shavings attached to them. These sticks are called inau (singular) and nusa (plural). They are placed on an altar used to "send back" the spirits of killed animals. The Ainu people give thanks to the gods before eating and pray to the deity of fire in time of sickness. They believe their spirits are immortal, and that their spirits will be rewarded hereafter by ascending to kamuy mosir (Land of the Gods).

Some Ainu in the north are members of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Institutions

Ainu cultural promotion center and museum, in Sapporo (Sapporo Pirka Kotan)

In March 1997, the Ainu were recognized by a Japanese court as an indigenous and minority people. Ainu issues did not matter in the sphere of public policy until then. There was a limited outcry when the Saru River was dammed and the upriver town of Nibutani, one of the largest traditional Ainu villages, was flooded and the land expropriated from its Ainu owners. The reservoir was designed to service an industrial development project on the coast of Hokkaido, and despite the industrial project's cancellation, the government persisted in building the dam. Two Ainu residents, Kaizawa Tadashi and Kayano Shigeru, refused to sell their land, and in 1993 filed lawsuit against the expropriation. The expropriation was upheld, and for the first time, a Japanese Court recognised that the Ainu's indigenous rights had been violated.^[21]

As signatories of the United Nations Treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which was signed by Japan in 1979, the Japanese had been forced to face the issue that the Ainu were indeed indigenous and minority peoples, which supported the Ainu in their pursuit of their rights to their distinct culture and language. There are many different organizations of Ainu trying to further their cause in many different ways. There is an umbrella group of which most Hokkaido Ainu and some other Ainu are members, called the Hokkaido Utari Association, originally controlled by the government with the intention of speeding Ainu assimilation and integration into the Japanese nation-state, which now operates mostly independently of the government and is run exclusively by Ainu.

Subgroups

• Tohoku Ainu (from Honsh?, no known living population)
• Hokkaido Ainu
• Sakhalin Ainu
• Kuril Ainu (no known living population)
• Kamchatka Ainu (extinct since pre-historic times)
• Amur Valley Ainu (probably none remain)

See also

• Ethnic issues in Japan
  • Ryukyuan people
  • Yamato people
• Burakumin
• Ethnocide
• Human rights in Japan
• Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
• Indigenous peoples
• List of ethnic groups
• Yukar
• Ainu music
• Shogun
• Kennewick Man
• Iomante
• Ainu-ken
• Ry?ky? independence movement
• Aterui

Notes

References and further reading

• Kayano, Shigeru (1994). Our Land Was A Forest: An Ainu Memoir. Westview Press. ISBN 0813318807. ISBN 9780813318806.
• Article on the Ainu in Japan's Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity.

External links

• The Ainu Museum at Shiraoi
• Smithsonian Institution
• Hokkaido Utari Kyokai
• Sapporo Pirka Kotan Ainu Cultural Center
• Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Ainu in Samani, Hokkaido
• Ainu-North American cultural similarities
• Foundation for Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture (centers located in Sapporo and Tokyo)
• Ainu Lineage
• The Boone Collection
• Article in ''The Christian Science Monitor'', June 9, 2008

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