How are the Ainu and Nivkh similar? Genocide of the Ainu - the original inhabitants of Hokkaido and the northern islands. Ainu in Japan

The Far Eastern lands keep many unsolved mysteries, one of them is the mystery of the origin of the people Ainu. The most ancient people inhabited, according to archaeological excavations and mentions in ancient manuscripts of different peoples, the land of Japan, Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, Kamchatka, the mouth of the Amur already 13 thousand years BC.

Russian and European sailors, visiting these lands back in the 17th century, were very surprised to find settlements of people who looked very similar to them, and the Japanese, on the contrary, when they saw the first Europeans, called them "red Ainu", the external similarity was so obvious to them.

Ainu, light-skinned owners of more open eyes like Europeans, unlike their neighbors the Itelmen, Chukchi, Evens, Japanese and other peoples, thick dark brown hair, a thick beard, mustache and increased body hair, Stepan Krasheninnikov called them "furry smokers" By the way, the name Kuril Islands and Kurilians comes from the Ainu "kuru" or "guru" - people, person, in general, many Ainu names have been preserved in these lands: Sakhalin - Sakharen Mosiri "wavy land", endings in words "kotan" And "shir" means "land", "piece of land", Shikotan - "land of Shi",Kunashir - "land of Kun".

Language Ainu does not resemble any other language in the world, it is considered a separate language, although some names are very interesting, for example woman in Ainu is "mat"(ь), A death is "paradise". "Ainu" stands for "real people", "real man" unlike the world and who had spirit - "kamui", but were not like people, very reminiscent of the words for which all animals were "People".

Ainu they tried to live in harmony with and spiritualized the entire world around them. Kamui served as an intermediary between them and the world of spirits. inau- a stick, one end of which was split into twisted fibers, it was decorated and an offering was made, and then they were asked to convey their request to some spirit.

The most important and greatest spirit is considered to be the “Great Heavenly Serpent”, who, flying to heaven, forgot his inau sticks, and so as not to return, he turned them into willow.

One of national characteristics there was a woman's tattoo around the lips, similar to a mustache or a smile, and clothing was decorated with spiral designs.

Judging by legends and archaeological excavations, Ainu fragments of some powerful ancient civilization, founders of the Jomon culture and, possibly, the legendary state of Yamatai, by the way in the language Ainu “Ya ma ta i” - the place where the sea cuts the land, but then something happened and the Japanese, who were settling the islands, found them already living in small scattered settlements - "utari", who were mainly engaged in hunting and fishing, but still preserved ancient traditions, obeying no one, relying on their martial art and the spirits of nature - “kamuy”, were trusting like children, not knowing or understanding deception, possessing exceptional honesty, like many Far Eastern peoples.

About your origin Ainu they said that long ago in a distant country Pan, the ruler wanted to marry his daughter, but the princess ran away with her faithful dog for the "Great Sea" and founded new people. Another legend says that the princess’s husband was the owner of the mountains - a bear, who came to her in the form of a man. The cult of the bear was one of the main ones Ainu, most main holiday- bear holiday.

Confrontation between the Japanese and Ainu lasted for 2 thousand years, according to the Japanese, when they came to the islands, “barbarians” lived there and the most ferocious of them were Ainu.

Ainu were skilled warriors - "janginami", fought without shields with two short, slightly curved swords, although bows with armor-piercing arrow tips soaked in poison were preferable "sukuru" from econite root and spider venom, or war hammers, which were used as a sling or flail. They carried quivers for arrows and swords on their backs, for which they were called “people with arrows sticking out of their hair.”

The Japanese did not like to meet them in open battle, they said that “one emishi or ebisu (“barbarian” as they disparagingly called the Ainu) was worth a hundred people.” The Ainu legend says that there lived an Ain grandfather and a Japanese grandfather, God settled them on these lands and ordered Ainu make a sword, and the Japanese have money, so Ainu there was a cult of the sword, and the Japanese had a cult of money.

Another feature of Ainu military actions is to end them at the “negotiating table.” The leaders of the warring parties gathered for a feast, where they discussed the terms of the truce and often they became relatives. This later destroyed them, when the Japanese simply killed the leaders of the Ainu at a feast, and this also led to the fact that the ruling elite of Japan outwardly differed from the rest of the people, because there were many Ainu among them.

Ainu having intermarried with the privileged class of the Japanese, they brought with them their religion, culture, martial arts, many Japanese names and now sound in the Ainu language - "Tsushima" is distant, "Fuji" - grandmother, spirit or kamuy of the hearth.

The national Japanese religion, Shinto, has Ainu roots, as does Bushido, the complex of military valor, the Harakiri ritual, and the culture and martial arts of the samurai. Initially, some samurai clans were Ainu.

The fate of the rest of the people Ainu tragic, they had to endure brutal oppression by the Japanese, almost genocide, someone managed to move from the Japanese islands to the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin and Kamchatka, under the protection of Russia, but in the harsh times of Stalinist repressions, in one Ainu surname could have been sent to the Gulag, so many changed their last names, and the children had no idea about their nationality.

Today, 104 people live in Kamchatka who call themselves descendants of the Ainu and are trying to achieve recognition of them as the indigenous population, there are practically no “pure” Ainu left, few descendants of the Ainu live at the mouth of the Amur, the Sakhalin Ainu chose to call themselves Japanese, this gives them the right to visa-free entry to Japan; about 20 thousand descendants of the Ainu live in Japan itself.

The 20th century rolled like a heavy roller through the destinies of many peoples, one of them was the Ainu. The language is forgotten, only the records of our and Japanese researchers who studied the culture of the Ainu remain, and the scientific world still cannot solve the mystery of the origin of this amazing people.

Who knows, maybe their ancestors lived in, or maybe they inhabited a single continent at one time, or perhaps they are the descendants of those who once came to these lands from the mysterious country of Hyperborea...

"All human culture, all the achievements of art,
science and technology that we are witnessing today,
- the fruits of the creativity of the Aryans...
He [the Aryan] is the Prometheus of humanity,
from whose bright brow at all times
sparks of genius flew, igniting the fire of knowledge,
illuminating the darkness of gloomy ignorance,
what allowed a person to rise above others
creatures of the Earth."
A. Hitler

I’m moving on to the most difficult topic, in which everything is mixed up, discredited and deliberately confused - the spread of the descendants of settlers from Mars across Eurasia (and beyond).
While preparing this article in the institute, I found about 10 definitions of who the Aryans are, the Aryans, their relationship with the Slavs, etc. Each author has his own view on the question. But no one takes it broadly and deeply into millennia. The most profound thing is the self-name of the historical peoples of Ancient Iran and Ancient India, but this is only the 2nd millennium BC. Moreover, in the legends of the Iranian-Indian Aryans there are indications that they came from the north, i.e. The geography and time period are expanding.
Whenever possible, I will refer to external data and the y-chromosome R1a1, but as observations show, this is only “approximate” data. Over the millennia, the Martians (Aryans) mixed their blood with many peoples on the territory of Eurasia, and the y-chromosome R1a1 (which for some reason is considered a marker of true Aryans) appeared only 4,000 years ago (though I already saw that 10,000 years ago, but that’s still has not yet beaten 40,000 years ago, when the first Cro-Magnon man, also known as a Martian migrant, appeared).
The most faithful remain the legends of peoples and their symbols.
I’ll start with the most “lost” people - the Ainu.

Ainy ( アイヌ Ainu, lit.: “man”, “real person”) - the people, the oldest population of the Japanese islands. The Ainu once also lived on the territory of Russia in the lower reaches of the Amur River, in the south of the Kamchatka Peninsula, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Currently, the Ainu remain mainly only in Japan. According to official figures, their number in Japan is 25,000, but according to unofficial statistics, it can reach up to 200,000 people. In Russia, according to the results of the 2010 census, 109 Ainu were recorded, of which 94 people were in the Kamchatka Territory.

A group of Ainu, photo from 1904.

The origin of the Ainu remains unclear at present. Europeans who encountered the Ainu in the 17th century were amazed by their appearance. Unlike the usual appearance of people of the Mongoloid race with yellow skin, a Mongolian fold of the eyelid, sparse facial hair, the Ainu had unusually thick hair covering their heads, wore huge beards and mustaches (holding them with special chopsticks while eating), their facial features were similar to European ones. Despite living in a temperate climate, in the summer the Ainu wore only loincloths, like the inhabitants of equatorial countries. There are many hypotheses about the origin of the Ainu, which can generally be divided into three groups:

• The Ainu are related to the Indo-Europeans of the Caucasian race - this theory was adhered to by J. Batchelor and S. Murayama.

• The Ainu are related to the Austronesians and came to the Japanese Islands from the south - this theory was put forward by L. Ya. Sternberg and it dominated in Soviet ethnography. (This theory has not currently been confirmed, if only because the Ainu culture in Japan is much older than the Austronesian culture in Indonesia).

• The Ainu are related to Paleo-Asian peoples and came to the Japanese Islands from the north/from Siberia—this point of view is held mainly by Japanese anthropologists.

So far, it is known for certain that in terms of basic anthropological indicators the Ainu are very different from the Japanese, Koreans, Nivkhs, Itelmens, Polynesians, Indonesians, Australian aborigines, Far East and the Pacific Ocean, and become close only with the people of the Jomon era, who are the direct ancestors of the historical Ainu. In principle, there is no big mistake in equating the people of the Jomon era with the Ainu.

The Ainu appeared on the Japanese Islands about 13 thousand years ago. n. e. and created the Neolithic Jomon culture. It is not known for certain where the Ainu came to the Japanese islands, but it is known that in the Jomon era the Ainu inhabited all the Japanese islands - from Ryukyu to Hokkaido, as well as the southern half of Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and the southern third of Kamchatka - as evidenced by the results of archaeological excavations and toponymic data , for example: Tsushima— Tuima— “distant”, Fuji — Huqi- "grandmother" - kamui of the hearth, Tsukuba— tu ku pa- “head of two bows” / “two-bow mountain”, Yamatai mdash; I'm mom and- “a place where the sea cuts the land” (It is very possible that the legendary state of Yamatai, which is mentioned in Chinese chronicles, was an ancient Ainu state.) Also, a lot of information about place names of Ainu origin in Honshu can be found in the institute.

Historians have discovered that The Ainu created extraordinary ceramics without a potter's wheel, decorating it with intricate rope patterns.

Here is another link to those who decorated pots with a pattern by wrapping a rope around it, although in this article they are called “laces.”

The Ainu sculpted dogu figurines, similar to modern man in a spacesuit.

Ethnographers are also grappling with the question of where people wearing swinging (southern) type of clothing came from in these harsh lands. Their national casual wear- dressing gowns, decorated with traditional patterns, festive - white, the material is made of nettle fibers.

Here are some beauties in traditional clothes.


And here the beauty is not only in traditional clothes, but also against the background of a traditional ornament (doesn’t it remind us of our “sown field”)?

And perhaps the Ainu were also the very first farmers in the Far East, and perhaps in the world. For a reason that is completely unclear today, they left their agriculture and crafts, taking a step back in their development, and turned into simple fishermen and hunters. The legends of the Ainu people testify to countless treasures, castles and fortresses. However, travelers from Europe found representatives of this tribe living in dugouts and huts, where the floor was 30-50 cm below ground level.


No satisfactory explanation has yet been found for why the Jomon people dug their homes into the ground. The assumption that this was done with the aim of increasing the height of housing seems to us too shaky. It was possible to raise the ceiling using other techniques available at that time. (My version, please note they live in semi-dugouts).
What were the Jomon dwellings like? All of them, or almost all, have the shape of a circle or rectangle. The arrangement of the pillars supporting the roof indicates that it was conical if the base of the building was a circle, or pyramidal when the base was a quadrangle. During the excavations, no materials were found that could cover the roof, so we can only assume that branches or reeds were used for this purpose. The hearth, as a rule, was located in the house itself (only in the early period it was outside) - near the wall or in the middle. The smoke came out through smoke holes, which were made on two opposite sides of the roof.



Ainu language- also a mystery (it has Latin, Slavic, Anglo-Germanic and even Sanskrit roots). The research of Valery Kosarev is interesting in this regard. He says: "

“I don’t think that 12 thousand years ago Indo-European languages ​​already existed. Taking into account such a venerable historical period, one can only assume that the Proto-Ainu or Proto-Ainu language once stood out from the previous language array. And at the designated time it was a Nostratic community (Nostratic proto-language, Nostratic linguistic unity). If the ancestors of the Ainu separated from some Paleolithic intertribal community, migrated and then found themselves in long-term isolation on the island periphery of Asia, then this well explains the relict nature of the Ainu language, which preserved very archaic linguistic features." Then he compares Ainu words with Indo-European ones.
The structure of the Ainu language is agglutinative, with a predominance of suffixation. In the grammar, it should be noted that the designation of units is optional. or more numbers, which brings the Ainu language closer to some languages ​​of the isolating system. The Ainu language has an original counting system (in “twenties”: 90 is designated as “five twenty to ten”). Genealogical connections of the Ainu language have not been established.
For reference: Agglutinative languages(from lat. agglutinatio- gluing) - languages ​​that have a structure in which the dominant type of inflection is agglutination (“gluing”) of various formants (suffixes or prefixes), and each of them carries only one meaning. Agglutinative languages ​​- Turkic, Finno-Ugric, Mongolian, Tungus-Manchu, Korean, Japanese, Kartvelian, part of the Indian and some African languages. The Sumerian language (the language of the ancient Sumerians) also belonged to agglutinative languages.

According to the official version, the Ainu language was an unwritten language (literate Ainu used Japanese). At the same time, Pilsutsky wrote down the following Ainu symbols:


Here they compare Ainu runes with runes found on the territory of Rus'. Of course, I understand that crosses and curls are also crosses and curls in Africa, but nevertheless, they are very similar!

Conquest. About two thousand years BC. Other ethnic groups begin to arrive on the Japanese islands. First, migrants arrive from Southeast Asia (SEA) and Southern China. Migrants from Southeast Asia mainly speak Austronesian languages. They settle mainly on the southern islands of the Japanese archipelago and begin to practice agriculture, namely rice growing. Since rice is a very productive crop, it allows a fairly large number of people to live in a very small area. Gradually, the number of farmers increases and they begin to put pressure on the natural environment and thus threaten the natural balance, which is so important for the normal existence of the Neolithic Ainu culture. The migration of the Ainu to Sakhalin, the lower Amur, Primorye and the Kuril Islands begins. Then, at the end of the Jomon era and the beginning of the Yayoi era, several ethnic groups from Central Asia arrived on the Japanese islands. They were engaged in cattle breeding and hunting and spoke Altai languages. (These ethnic groups gave rise to the Korean and Japanese ethnic groups.) According to the Japanese anthropologist Oka Masao, the most powerful clan of those Altai migrants who settled on the Japanese islands developed into what later became known as the “Tenno clan.”

When the state of Yamato takes shape, an era of constant war begins between the state of Yamato and the Ainu. (At present, there is every reason to believe that the state of Yamato is a development of the ancient Ainu state of Yamatai.

The confrontation between the state of Yamato and the Ainu lasted almost one and a half thousand years. For a long time (from the eighth to almost the fifteenth century), the border of the Yamato state ran in the area of ​​the modern city of Sendai, and Northern part The island of Honshu was very poorly developed by the Japanese. Militarily, the Japanese were inferior to the Ainu for a very long time. As a result of these wars, the Japanese even developed a special culture - samuraiism, which has many Ainu elements. And some of the samurai clans, by their origin, are considered Ainu. For example, the Ainu warrior had two long knives. The first was ritual - to perform a suicide ritual, which was later adopted by the Japanese, calling it “harakiri” or “seppuku”. It is also known that the Ainam helmets were replaced by thick long hair, which was tangled. The Japanese were afraid of an open battle with the Ainu and recognized that one Ainu warrior was worth a hundred Japanese. There was a belief that particularly skilled Ainu warriors could create fog in order to hide unnoticed by their enemies. However, the Japanese still managed to conquer and oust the Ainu through cunning and betrayal. But this took 2 thousand years.
Interesting fact: A village is called “kotan” in the Ainu language. Since the villages were inhabited mainly by one family (clan), the family was also called kotan.

The Ainu swords were short, slightly curved with a one-sided sharpening and sword belts made of plant fibers. Dzhangin (Ainu warrior) fought with two swords, not recognizing shields.
Swords were presented to the public only during the Bear Festival.


Those. For the Ainu, the sword had a sacred meaning, it was like a clan belonging. It is not surprising that the famous Japanese swords began to be called katana.

Ainu beliefs. In general, the Ainu can be called animists. They spiritualized almost all natural phenomena, nature as a whole, personified them, endowing each of the fictional supernatural creatures with traits the same as they possessed themselves. The world created by the religious imagination of the Ainu was complex, huge and poetic. This is the world of celestials, mountain dwellers, cultural heroes, numerous masters of the landscape. The Ainu are still very religious. The traditions of animism still dominate among them, and the Ainu pantheon consists mainly of: “kamui” - the spirits of various animals, among which the bear and killer whale occupy a special place. Ioina, culture hero, creator and teacher of the Ainu.

Unlike Japanese mythology, Ainu mythology has one supreme deity. The Supreme God is called Pase Kamuy (that is, “ creator and owner of the sky") or Kotan kara kamuy, Mosiri kara kamui, Kando kara kamui(that is " divine creator of worlds and lands and ruler of the sky"). He is considered the creator of the world and the gods; through the medium of good gods, his assistants, he takes care of people and helps them.

Ordinary deities (yayan kamuy, that is, “near and distant deities”) embody individual elements and elements of the universe; they are equal and independent of each other, although they form a certain functional hierarchy of good and evil deities (see Ainu Pantheon). Good deities are predominantly of heavenly origin.

Evil deities are usually earthly origin. The functions of the latter are clearly defined: they personify the dangers that await a person in the mountains (this is the main habitat of evil deities), and control atmospheric phenomena. Evil deities, unlike good ones, take on a certain visible appearance. Sometimes they attack good gods. For example, there is a myth about how some evil deity wanted to swallow the Sun, but Pase Kamuy saved the sun by sending a crow, which flew into the mouth of the evil god. It was believed that evil deities arose from the hoes with which Pase Kamuy created the world and then abandoned it. The evil deities are headed by the goddess of swamps and bogs Nitatunarabe. Most of the other evil deities are her descendants, they wear common name— Toyekunra. Evil deities are more numerous than good ones, and myths about them are more widespread.

Initially they lived on the islands of Japan (then called Ainumoshiri - land of the Ainu), until they were pushed north by the proto-Japanese. They came to Sakhalin in the 13th-14th centuries, having “finished” their settlement in the beginning. XIX century. Traces of their appearance were also found in Kamchatka, Primorye and Khabarovsk Territory. Many toponymic names of the Sakhalin region have Ainu names: Sakhalin (from “SAKHAREN MOSIRI” - “wave-shaped land”); the islands of Kunashir, Simushir, Shikotan, Shiashkotan (the endings “shir” and “kotan” mean “plot of land” and “settlement”, respectively).

It took the Japanese more than 2 thousand years to occupy the entire archipelago up to and including (then called “Ezo”) (the earliest evidence of skirmishes with the Ainu dates back to 660 BC). Subsequently The Ainu almost all degenerated or assimilated with the Japanese and Nivkhs. Currently, there are only a few reservations on Hokkaido where Ainu families live. The Ainu are perhaps the most mysterious people in the Far East.

The first Russian navigators who studied Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands were surprised to note the Caucasoid facial features, thick hair and beards unusual for the Mongoloids. A little later, ethnographers wondered for a long time where in these harsh lands the people wearing the open (southern) type of clothing came from, and linguists discovered Latin, Slavic, Anglo-Germanic and even Indo-Aryan roots in the Ainu language. The Ainu were classified as Indo-Aryans, Australoids, and even Caucasians. In a word, the riddles became more and more, and the answers brought more and more new problems.

Here is a summary of what we know about the Ainu:

AIN SOCIETY

The Ainu population consisted of socially stratified groups (“utar”), headed by families of leaders by the right of inheritance of power (it should be noted that the Ainu clan went through the female line, although the man was naturally considered the head of the family). "Uthar" was built on the basis of fictitious kinship and had military organization. The ruling families, who called themselves “utarpa” (head of the Utar) or “nishpa” (leader), represented a layer of the military elite. Men of “high birth” were already destined from birth to military service, high-born women spent their time doing embroidery and shamanic rituals (“tusu”).

The chief's family had a dwelling within a fortification ("chasi"), surrounded by an earthen mound (also called a "chasi"), usually under the cover of a mountain or rock jutting out over a terrace. The number of embankments often reached five or six, which alternated with ditches. Together with the leader's family, there were usually servants and slaves (“ushu”) inside the fortification. The Ainu did not have any centralized power.

WEAPONS

The Ainu preferred weapons. No wonder they were called “people with arrows sticking out of their hair” because they carried quivers (and swords, by the way, too) on their backs. The bow was made from elm, beech or euonymus (a tall shrub, up to 2.5 m high with very strong wood) with whalebone guards. The bowstring was made from nettle fibers. The plumage of the arrows consisted of three eagle feathers.

A few words about combat tips. Both "regular" armor-piercing and spiked arrowheads were used in combat (possibly to better cut through armor or to get an arrow stuck in a wound). There were also tips of an unusual, Z-shaped section, which were most likely borrowed from the Manchus or Jurjens (there is information that in the Middle Ages they fought back big army, which came from the mainland).

Arrowheads were made of metal (early ones were made of obsidian and bone) and then coated with aconite poison “suruku”. The root of aconite was crushed, soaked and placed in a warm place to ferment. A stick with poison was applied to the spider's leg; if the leg fell off, the poison was ready. Due to the fact that this poison decomposed quickly, it was widely used in hunting large animals. The arrow shaft was made of larch.

The Ainu swords were short, 45-50 cm long, slightly curved, with one-sided sharpening and a one-and-a-half-handed handle. Ainu warrior - Dzhangin— he fought with two swords, not recognizing shields. The guards of all swords were removable and were often used as decoration. There is evidence that some guards were specially polished to a mirror shine to repel evil spirits. Besides the swords Ainu They wore two long knives (“cheyki-makiri” and “sa-makiri”), which were worn on the right hip. Cheiki-makiri was a ritual knife for making sacred shavings "inau" and performing the ritual "pere" or "erytokpa" - ritual suicide, which the Japanese later adopted, calling it "" or "" (as, by the way, is the cult of the sword, special shelves for sword, spear, bow). Ainu swords were put on public display only during the Bear Festival. An old legend says: A long time ago, after this country was created by God, there lived a Japanese old man and an Ain old man. The Ainu grandfather was ordered to make a sword, and the Japanese grandfather: money (it is further explained why the Ainu had a cult of swords, and the Japanese had a thirst for money. The Ainu condemned their neighbors for money-grubbing). They treated spears rather coolly, although they exchanged them with the Japanese.

Another detail of the Ainu warrior’s weapons were battle mallets - small rollers with a handle and a hole at the end, made of hard wood. The sides of the beaters were equipped with metal, obsidian or stone spikes. The beaters were used both as a flail and as a sling - a leather belt was threaded through the hole. A well-aimed blow from such a mallet killed immediately, or at best (for the victim, of course) disfigured him forever.

The Ainu did not wear helmets. They had natural long thick hair that was matted together, forming something like a natural helmet.

Now let's move on to the armor. Sundress-type armor was made from bearded seal leather (“sea hare” - a type of large seal). In appearance, such armor (see photo) may seem bulky, but in reality it practically does not restrict movement, allowing you to bend and squat freely. Thanks to numerous segments, four layers of skin were obtained, which with equal success repelled the blows of swords and arrows. The red circles on the chest of the armor symbolize the three worlds (upper, middle and lower worlds), as well as shamanic “toli” disks that scare away evil spirits and generally having magical meaning. Similar circles are also depicted on the back. Such armor is fastened at the front using numerous ties. There was also short armor, like sweatshirts with planks or metal plates sewn on them.

Very little is currently known about the martial art of the Ainu. It is known that the proto-Japanese adopted almost everything from them. Why not assume that some elements of martial arts were also not adopted?

Only such a duel has survived to this day. The opponents, holding each other by the left hand, struck with clubs (the Ainu specially trained their backs to pass this test of endurance). Sometimes these clubs were replaced with knives, and sometimes they fought simply with their hands until the opponents lost their breath. Despite the brutality of the fight, no injuries were observed.

Actually, they fought not only with the Japanese. Sakhalin, for example, they conquered from the “Tonzi” - a short people, truly the indigenous population of Sakhalin. From “tonzi”, Ainu women adopted the habit of tattooing their lips and the skin around their lips (the result was a kind of half-smile - half-mustache), as well as the names of some (very good quality) swords - “toncini”. It's interesting that Ainu warriors - Dzhangins- were noted as very warlike, they were incapable of lying.

Information about the signs of ownership of the Ainu is also interesting - they put special signs on arrows, weapons, and dishes, passed down from generation to generation, so as not to confuse, for example, whose arrow hit the beast, or who owns this or that thing. There are more than one hundred and fifty such signs, and their meanings have not yet been deciphered. Rock inscriptions were discovered near Otaru (Hokkaido) and on the island of Urup.

There were also pictograms on “ikunishi” (sticks for supporting the mustache while drinking). To decipher the signs (which were called “epasi itokpa”) it was necessary to know the language of the symbols and their components.

It remains to add that the Japanese were afraid of open battle with the Ainu and conquered them by cunning. An ancient Japanese song said that one “emishi” (barbarian, ain) is worth a hundred people. There was a belief that they could create fog.

Over the years, they repeatedly rebelled against the Japanese (in Ainu “chizhem”), but lost each time. The Japanese invited the leaders to their place to conclude a truce. Sacredly honoring the customs of hospitality, Ainu, trusting like children, they did not think anything bad. They were killed during the feast. As a rule, the Japanese were unsuccessful in other ways to suppress the uprising.

That was a long time ago. There was a village among the hills. An ordinary village in which ordinary people lived. Among them is a very kind family. The family had a daughter, Aina, who was the kindest of all. The village lived its usual life, but one day at dawn a black cart appeared on the village road. The black horses were driven by a man dressed all in black. He was very happy about something, smiled widely, and sometimes laughed. There was a black cage on the cart, and a small fluffy Teddy Bear was sitting in it on a chain. He sucked his paw, and tears flowed from his eyes. All the people of the village looked out the windows, went out into the street and were indignant: what a shame for a black man to keep a white bear cub on a chain and torment him. People were only indignant and said words, but did nothing. Only a kind family stopped the black man’s cart, and Aina began to ask him to release the unfortunate Little Bear. The stranger smiled and said that he would release the beast if someone gave up his eyes. Everyone was silent. Then Aina stepped forward and said that she was ready for this. The black man laughed loudly and opened the black cage. The white fluffy Teddy Bear came out of the cage. And good Aina lost her sight. While the villagers looked at the Little Bear and spoke sympathetic words to Aina, the black man on the black cart disappeared to no one knows where. The little bear didn't cry anymore, but Aina cried. Then the white Bear cub took the string in his paws and began to lead Aina everywhere: around the village, along the hills and meadows. This didn't last very long. And then one day the people of the village looked up and saw that the white fluffy Teddy Bear was leading Aina straight into the sky. Since then, little Bear has been leading Aina around the sky. They are always visible in the sky so that people remember good and evil...

The Ainu are a unique people, occupying a special place among the many small nations of the Earth. Until now, he enjoys such attention in world science that many much larger nations have not received. They were a beautiful and strong people, whose whole life was connected with the forest, rivers, sea and islands. Their language, Caucasian facial features, and luxurious beards sharply distinguished the Ainu from neighboring Mongoloid tribes.

In ancient times, the Ainu inhabited a number of regions of Primorye, Sakhalin, Honshu, Hokkaido, the Kuril Islands, and southern Kamchatka. They lived in dugouts, built frame houses, wore loincloths of the southern type and used closed fur clothing like residents of the north. The Ainu combined the knowledge, skills, customs and techniques of taiga hunters and coastal fishermen, southern seafood gatherers and northern sea hunters.

“There was a time when the first Ainu descended from the Land of Clouds to the earth, fell in love with it, took up hunting and fishing in order to eat, dance and bear children.”

The Ainu have families who believe that their gens originated as follows:

“Once upon a time, a boy thought about the meaning of his existence and, in order to find it out, he set off on a long journey. On the first night, he stopped for the night in a beautiful house, where a girl lived, who left him to spend the night, saying that “about such little boy the news has already arrived.” The next morning it turned out that the girl could not explain to the guest the purpose of his existence and he should go further - to his middle sister. Having reached a beautiful house, he turned to another beautiful girl and received food and lodging from her. In the morning, she, without explaining to him the meaning of existence, sent him to his younger sister. The situation repeated itself, except that younger sister showed him the road that lies through the Black, White and Red Mountains, which can be raised by moving the oars stuck at the foot of these mountains.

Having passed the Black, White and Red mountains, he gets to the “God’s mountain”, on the top of which stands a golden house.

When the boy entered the house, something appears from its depths, resembling either a person or a clot of fog, which demands to listen to him and explains:

“You are the boy who must initiate the birth of people as such with a soul. When you came here, you thought that you spent one night in three places, but in fact you lived in one year each.” It turns out that the girls were the Goddess of the Morning Star, who gave birth to a daughter, the Midnight Star, who gave birth to a boy, and the Evening Star, who gave birth to a girl. The boy receives orders on the way back to pick up his children, and on returning home to take one of the daughters as his wife, and to marry the son to another daughter, in which case you will give birth to children; and, in turn, if you give them to each other, they will multiply. These will be the people.” Returning, the boy did as he was told on “God’s mountain.”

“This is how people multiplied.” This is how the legend ends.

In the 17th century, the first explorers who arrived on the islands discovered to the world previously unknown ethnic groups and discovering traces of mysterious peoples who lived on the islands earlier. One of them, along with the Nivkhs and Uilta, were the Ainu or Ainu, who inhabited Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands and the Japanese island of Hokkaido 2-3 centuries ago.

Ainu language- a mystery for researchers. Its relationship with other languages ​​of the world has not yet been proven, although linguists have made many attempts to compare the Ainu language with other languages. It was compared not only with the languages ​​of neighboring peoples - Koreans and Nivkhs, but also with such “distant” languages ​​as Hebrew and Basque.

The Ainu have a very original counting system.. They count as "twenties". They do not have such concepts as “hundred”, “thousand”. The Ainu express the number 100 as “five twenty,” and 110 as “six twenty minutes to ten.” The counting system is complicated by the fact that you cannot add to twenties, you can only subtract from them. So, for example, if an Ain wants to say that he is 23 years old, he will say this: “I am seven years old plus ten years subtracted from twice twenty years.”

The basis of the economy The Ainu have been fishing and hunting sea and forest animals since ancient times. They obtained everything they needed for life close to home: fish, game, edible wild plants, elm bast and nettle fiber for clothing. There was almost no farming at all.

Hunting weapons The Ainu consisted of a bow, a long knife and a spear. Various traps and snares were widely used. In fishing, the Ainu have long used a “marek” - a spear with a movable rotating hook that catches fish. Fish were often caught at night, attracted by the light of torches.

As the island of Hokkaido became increasingly populated by the Japanese, hunting lost its dominant role in the life of the Ainu. At the same time, the share of agriculture and livestock raising increased. The Ainu began to cultivate millet, barley, and potatoes.

National Ainu cuisine consists mainly of plant and fish foods. Housewives know many different recipes for jellies, soups made from fresh and dried fish. In earlier times, a special type of whitish clay served as a common seasoning for food.

National clothes of the Ainu- a robe decorated with bright ornaments, a fur band or wreath. Previously, clothing material was woven from strips of bast and nettle fibers. Nowadays, national clothes are sewn from purchased fabrics, but they are decorated with rich embroidery. Almost every Ainu village has its own special embroidery pattern. When you meet an Ainu in national clothes, you can unmistakably determine which village he is from.

Embroidery on men's and women's clothing differ. A man would never wear clothes with “feminine” embroidery, and vice versa.

To this day, on the faces of Ainu women you can still see a wide tattoo border around the mouth, something like a painted mustache. The tattoo is used to decorate the forehead and arms up to the elbow. Getting a tattoo is a very painful process, so it usually takes several years. A woman most often tattoos her hands and forehead only after marriage. In choosing a life partner, an Ainu woman enjoys much more freedom than women of many other peoples of the East. The Ainu quite rightly believe that marriage issues concern primarily those who enter into it, and to a lesser extent everyone around, including the parents of the bride and groom. Children are required to listen respectfully to their parents' word, after which they are free to do as they wish. An Ainu girl is granted the right to marry the young man she likes. If the matchmaking is accepted, the groom leaves his parents and moves into the bride's house. After getting married, a woman retains her previous name.

The Ainu pay a lot of attention to raising and teaching children. First of all, they believe, a child must learn to obey elders: his parents, older brothers and sisters, adults in general. Obedience, from the Ainu point of view, is expressed, in particular, in the fact that the child speaks to adults only when they themselves turn to him. He must be in full view of adults at all times, but not make noise or bother them with his presence.

The boys are raised by the father of the family. He teaches them to hunt, navigate the terrain, choose the shortest road in the forest and much more. The upbringing of girls is entrusted to the mother. In cases where children violate established rules of behavior, commit mistakes or misdeeds, parents tell them various instructive legends and stories, preferring this means of influencing the child’s psyche to physical punishment.

The Ainu do not name their children immediately after birth, as Europeans do, but at the age of one to ten years, or even later. Most often the name Aina reflects distinctive property his character, inherent in him individual trait, for example: Selfish, Dirty, Fair, Good speaker, Stutterer, etc. The Ainu do not have nicknames, there is no need for them with such a naming system.

The uniqueness of the Ainu is so great that some anthropologists distinguish this ethnic group into a special “small race” - the Kuril. By the way, in Russian sources they are sometimes called: “shaggy Kurilians” or simply “Kurilians” (from “kuru” - person). Some scientists consider them to be descendants of the Jomon people, who emerged from the ancient Pacific continent of Sunda, and the remnants of which are the Greater Sunda and Japanese Islands.

The fact that it was the Ainu who inhabited the Japanese islands is supported by their name in the Ainu language: “Ainu Mosiri”, i.e. "world/land of the Ainu." For centuries, the Japanese either actively fought with them or tried to assimilate them by entering into interethnic marriages. The relations of the Ainu with the Russians as a whole were initially friendly, with isolated cases of military skirmishes, which occurred mainly due to the rude behavior of some Russian fishermen or military personnel. The most common form of their communication was barter. The Ainu either fought with the Nivkhs and other peoples or entered into intertribal marriages. They created amazingly beautiful ceramics, mysterious dogu figurines resembling a man in a modern space suit, and, in addition, it turned out that they were perhaps the earliest farmers in the Far East, if not in the world.

Some customs and etiquette observed by the Ainu.

If, for example, you want to enter someone else's house, then before crossing the threshold, you need to cough several times. After this you can enter, provided, however, that you know the owner. If you come to him for the first time, you should wait until the owner himself comes out to meet you.

Upon entering the house, you need to go around the fireplace to the right and, without fail crossing your bare legs, sit on the mat opposite the owner of the house sitting in a similar position. There is no need to say any words yet. After coughing politely several times, fold your hands in front of you and rub with your fingertips right hand left palm, then vice versa. The owner will express his attention to you by repeating your movements. During this ceremony, you need to inquire about the health of your interlocutor, wish that heaven will grant prosperity to the owner of the house, then to his wife, his children, the rest of his relatives and, finally, to his native village. After this, without ceasing to rub your palms, you can briefly outline the purpose of your visit. When the owner begins to stroke his beard, repeat the movement after him and at the same time console yourself with the thought that the official ceremony will soon end and the conversation will take place in a more relaxed atmosphere. Rubbing your palms will take at least 20-30 minutes. This corresponds to Ainu ideas of politeness.

Representatives of the Ainu adhere to a tradition called funeral ritual. During it, Aina is killed by a she-bear hibernating in a cave along with her newly born offspring, and the babies are taken from the dead mother.

Then, for several years, the Ainu representatives raise small cubs, but ultimately kill them too, since monitoring and caring for an adult bear becomes life-threatening. The funeral ceremony directly related to the soul of the bear is a central part of Ainu religious customs. It is believed that during this ritual, a person helps the soul of a divine animal go to the other world.

Over time, the killing of bears was prohibited by the council of elders of this unusual nation, and now even if such a ritual is carried out, it is only as a theatrical performance. However, there are rumors that to this day, real funeral ceremonies continue to be held, but all this is kept in the strictest confidence.

Another Ainu tradition involves the use of so-called special prayer sticks. They are used as a method of communicating with the gods. Various engravings are made on prayer sticks to identify the owner of the artifact. In the past, prayer sticks were believed to contain all the prayers the owner made to the gods. The creators of such instruments for religious rites put a lot of effort and labor into their craft. The end result was a work of art, one way or another reflecting the spiritual aspirations of the customer.

The most popular game is "ukara". One of the players faces the wooden pole and holds onto it tightly with his hands, while the other hits him on his bare back with a long stick wrapped in soft material, or even without any material at all. The game ends when the person being beaten screams or jumps to the side. Another takes its place... There is one trick here. To win at ukara, one must have not so much tolerance for pain as the ability to strike in such a way as to create the illusion of a strong blow for the audience, but in fact barely touch the partner’s back with the stick.

In Ainu villages, near the eastern wall of houses, you can see planed willow sticks of various sizes, decorated with a bunch of shavings, in front of which the Ainu perform prayers - inau. With their help, the Ainu express their respect to the gods, convey their wishes, requests to bless people and forest animals, and thank the gods for what they have done. The Ainu come here to pray when going hunting or on a long journey, or when returning.

Inau can also be found on the seashore, in places where they go fishing. Here the gifts are intended for the two brother sea gods. The eldest of them is evil, he brings various troubles to the fishermen; the younger one is kind and protective of people. The Ainu show respect to both gods, but naturally have sympathy only for the second.

The Ainu understood: if they want not only them, but also their children and grandchildren to live on the islands, they need to be able to not only take from nature, but also preserve it, otherwise in a few generations there will be no forest, fish, animals and birds left. All Ainu were deeply religious people. They spiritualized all natural phenomena and nature in general. This religion is called animism.

The main thing in their religion was kamui. Kamui- a god who should be revered, but he is also a beast who is killed.

The most powerful Kamui gods are the gods of the sea and mountains. Sea god - killer whale. This predator was especially revered. The Ainu were convinced that the killer whale sent whales to people, and each discarded whale was considered a gift; in addition, the killer whale every year sends shoals of salmon to its elder brother, the mountain taiga god, in processions of its subjects. These shoals were turned into Ainu villages along the way, and salmon has always been the main food of these people.

Not only among the Ainu, but also among other peoples, those animals and plants on whose presence the well-being of people depended were sacred and were surrounded by worship.

The mountain taiga god was the bear- the main revered animal of the Ainu. The bear was the totem of this people. A totem is a mythical ancestor of a group of people (animal or plant). People express their respect to the totem through certain rituals. The animal representing the totem is protected and revered; it is forbidden to kill or eat it. However, once a year it was prescribed to kill and eat the totem.

One of these legends talks about the origin of the Ainu. In one Western country, the king wanted to marry his own daughter, but she ran away overseas with her dog. There, across the sea, she gave birth to children, from whom the Ainu descended.

The Ainu treated dogs with care. Each family tried to acquire a good pack. Returning from a trip or from a hunt, the owner did not enter the house until he had fed the tired dogs to their fill. In bad weather they were kept in the house.

The Ainu were firmly convinced of one fundamental difference between animals and humans: a person dies “completely,” an animal only temporarily. After killing an animal and performing certain rituals, it is reborn and continues to live.

The main celebration of the Ainu is the bear festival. Relatives and invitees from many villages came to participate in this event. For four years, one of the Ainu families raised a bear cub. They gave him the best food. And so the animal, raised with love and diligence, was planned to be killed one fine day. On the morning of the killing, the Ainu staged a mass cry in front of the bear's cage. After which the animal was taken out of the cage and decorated with shavings, and ritual jewelry was put on. Then he was led through the village, and while those present distracted the beast’s attention with noise and shouts, the young hunters, one after another, jumped on the animal, pressing against it for a moment, trying to touch its head, and immediately jumped away: a kind of ritual of “kissing” the beast. They tied the bear in a special place and tried to feed it festive food. Then the elder said a farewell word to him, described the works and merits of the village residents who raised the divine beast, and outlined the wishes of the Ainu, which the bear had to convey to his father, the mountain taiga god. Honor to “send”, i.e. Any hunter could be honored to kill a bear with a bow, at the request of the animal’s owner, but it had to be a visitor. You had to hit it right in the heart. The meat of the animal was placed on spruce paws and distributed taking into account seniority and birth. The bones were carefully collected and taken into the forest. Silence reigned in the village. It was believed that the bear was already on the way, and the noise could lead him off the road

Decree of Empress Catherine II of 1779: “...leave the shaggy Kuril residents free and not demand any tax from them, and in the future do not force the peoples living there to do so, but try with friendly treatment and affection... to continue the acquaintance already established with them.”

The empress's decree was not fully observed, and yasak was collected from the Ainu until the 19th century. The trusting Ainu took his word for it, and if the Russians somehow kept it in their relationship with them, then there was a war with the Japanese until their last breath...

In 1884, the Japanese resettled all the Northern Kuril Ainu to Shikotan Island, where the last of them died in 1941. The last Ainu man on Sakhalin died in 1961, when, having buried his wife, he, as befits a warrior and the ancient laws of his amazing people, made himself an “erytokpa”, ripping open his stomach and releasing his soul to the divine ancestors...

The Russian imperial administration, and then the Soviet, due to ill-conceived ethnopolitics towards the inhabitants of Sakhalin, forced the Ainu to migrate to Hokkaido, where their descendants live today in the number of approximately 20 thousand people, having only achieved the legislative right to be an “ethnic group” in 1997 " in Japan.

Now the Ainu, living near the sea and rivers, try to combine agriculture with animal husbandry and fishing in order to insure against failure in any type of farming. Agriculture alone cannot feed them, because the lands remaining with the Ainu are dry, rocky, and infertile. Many Ainu today are forced to leave their home villages and go to work in the city or to logging. But even there they cannot always find work. Most Japanese entrepreneurs and fisheries owners do not want to hire Ainu, and if they do give them work, it is the dirtiest and least paid.

The discrimination that the Ainu are subjected to makes them consider their nationality almost a misfortune, and try to get as close as possible to the Japanese in language and way of life.

With dark skin, a Mongolian fold of the eyelid, sparse facial hair, the Ainu had unusually thick hair covering their heads, wore huge beards and mustaches (while eating, holding them with special chopsticks), the Australoid features of their faces were similar to European ones in a number of ways. Despite living in a temperate climate, in the summer the Ainu wore only loincloths, like the inhabitants of equatorial countries. There are many hypotheses about the origin of the Ainu, which can generally be divided into three groups:

• The Ainu are related to the Caucasians (Caucasian race) - this theory was adhered to by J. Batchelor and S. Murayama.
• The Ainu are related to the Austronesians and came to the Japanese Islands from the south - this theory was put forward by L. Ya. Sternberg and it dominated Soviet ethnography.
• The Ainu are related to Paleo-Asian peoples and came to the Japanese Islands from the north/from Siberia - this point of view is mainly held by Japanese anthropologists.

Despite the fact that Sternberg’s constructions about the Ainu-Austronesian kinship are not [ ] were confirmed, if only because the culture of the Ainu in Japan is much older than the culture of the Austronesians in Indonesia, the hypothesis of the southern origin of the Ainu itself currently seems more promising due to the fact that certain linguistic, genetic and ethnographic data have recently appeared that allow us to assume what the Ainu can be distant relatives Miao-Yao people living in Southern China and Southeast Asia. Among the Ainu, Y-chromosomal haplogroup D is common, with a frequency of about 15% Y-chromosomal haplogroup C3 is also found .

So far, it is known for certain that in terms of basic anthropological indicators, the Ainu are very different from the Japanese, Koreans, Nivkhs, Itelmens, Polynesians, Indonesians, Australian aborigines and, in general, all populations of the Far East and the Pacific Ocean, and are close only to the people of the Jomon era, who are the direct ancestors of the historical Ainu. In principle, there is no great mistake in equating the people of the Jomon era with the Ainu.

The Ainu appeared on the Japanese Islands around 13 thousand years BC. e. and created the Neolithic Jomon culture. It is not known for certain where the Ainu came from to the Japanese islands, but it is known that in the Jomon era the Ainu inhabited all the Japanese islands - from Ryukyu to Hokkaido, as well as the southern half of Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and the southern third of Kamchatka - as evidenced by the results of archaeological excavations and data place names, for example: Tsushima - Tuima- “distant”, Fuji - Huqi- “grandmother” - kamuy of the hearth, Tsukuba - tu ku pa- “head of two bows” / “two-bow mountain”, Yamatai - I'm mom and- “the place where the sea cuts the land.” Also, a lot of information about place names of Ainu origin in Honshu can be found in the works of Kindaichi Kyosuke.

Modern anthropologists distinguish two ancestors of the Ainu: the first were tall, while the second were very short. The first are similar to the finds in Aoshima and date back to the late stone age, the second - with finds of skeletons in Miyato.

Economy and society

Ainu religion and mythology

Ainu shamans were primarily considered [ by whom?] as “primitive” magico-religious specialists who carried out the so-called. individual rituals. They were considered [ by whom?] less important than the monks, priests and other religious professionals who represented the people and religious institutions, and also less important than those who performed duties in complex rituals.

The practice of sacrifice was widespread among the Ainu until the end of the 19th century. The sacrifices had a connection with the cult of the bear and the eagle. The bear symbolizes the spirit of the hunter. The bears were raised specifically for the ritual. The owner in whose house the ceremony was held tried to invite as many guests as possible. The Ainu believed that the spirit of a warrior resides in the head of a bear, so the main part of the sacrifice was cutting off the head of the animal. After this, the head was placed at the eastern window of the house, which was considered sacred. Those present at the ceremony had to drink the blood of the slain beast from a cup passed around, which symbolized participation in the ritual.

The Ainu refused to be photographed or sketched by researchers. This is explained by the fact that the Ainu believed that photographs and various images of them, especially naked or with little clothing, took away part of the life of the person depicted in the photograph. There are several cases of confiscation by the Ainu of sketches made by researchers studying the Ainu. By our time, this superstition has outlived itself and took place only in late XIX century.

According to traditional beliefs, one of the animals that belongs to the “forces of evil” or demons is the snake. The Ainu do not kill snakes, despite the fact that they are a source of danger, because they believe that the evil spirit living in the body of the snake, after killing it, will leave its body and inhabit the body of the killer. The Ainu also believe that if a snake finds someone sleeping on the street, it will crawl into the sleeping person's mouth and take control of his mind. As a result, the person goes crazy.

Fight against invaders

Around the middle of the Jomon period, other ethnic groups began to arrive in the Japanese islands. First, migrants arrive from Southeast Asia (SEA). Migrants from Southeast Asia mainly speak Austronesian languages. They settle mainly in the Ryukyu Archipelago and the south-eastern part of the island of Kyushu. The migration of the Ainu to Sakhalin, the lower Amur, Primorye and the Kuril Islands begins. Then, at the end of the Jomon period - the beginning of Yayoi, several ethnic groups from East Asia arrived on the Japanese islands, mainly from the Korean Peninsula, as evidenced by the O2b haplogroup common among modern Japanese and Koreans. Some researchers directly connect the migration with the Han-Gojoseon War, which resulted in the rapid spread of the Yayoi culture across the Japanese archipelago. The very first discovered and possibly the oldest settlement of the 3rd century BC. e. The “Yoshinogari site” is located in the north of the island of Kyushu and belongs to the archaeological culture of the proto-Japanese. They were engaged in cattle breeding, hunting, farming and spoke the Puyo dialect. This ethnic group gave rise to the Japanese ethnicity. According to the Japanese anthropologist Oka Masao, the most powerful clan of those migrants who settled on the Japanese islands developed into what later became known as the "tenno clan."

When the Yamato State takes shape, an era of constant war begins between the Yamato State and the Ainu. A study of Japanese DNA showed that the dominant Y-chromosomal haplogroup among the Japanese is the subgroup O2b1, that is, that Y-chromosomal haplogroup that is found in 80% of the Japanese, but is almost absent among the Ainu [ ] Among the Ainu, haplogroup C3 occurs with a frequency of about 15%. This indicates that the Jomon and Yayoi peoples were significantly different from each other. It is also important to keep in mind that there were different groups of Ainu, some involved in gathering, hunting and fishing, while others created more complex social systems. And it is quite possible that those Ainu, with whom the Yamato state later waged war, were also considered “savages” by the Yamatai state.

The confrontation between the state of Yamato and the Ainu lasted almost one and a half thousand years. For a long time (from the 8th to almost the 15th century), the border of the Yamato state passed in the area of ​​the modern city of Sendai, and the northern part of the island of Honshu was very poorly developed by the Japanese. Militarily, the Japanese were inferior to the Ainu for a very long time. This is how the Ainu are characterized in the Japanese chronicle “Nihon Shoki”, where they appear under the name emisi/ebisu; word emisi apparently comes from the Ainu word emus - “sword” [ ] : “Among the eastern savages, the strongest are the Emisi. Men and women are united randomly; who is the father and who is the son does not differ. In winter they live in caves, in summer in nests [in trees]. They wear animal skins and drink raw blood, the older and younger brothers do not trust each other. They climb mountains like birds, and rush through the grass like wild animals. They forget what is good, but if harm is done to them, they will certainly take revenge. Also, hiding arrows in their hair and tying a blade under their clothes, they, having gathered in a crowd of fellow tribesmen, violate the borders or, having scouted out where the fields and mulberries are, rob the people of the country of Yamato. If they are attacked, they hide in the grass; if they are pursued, they climb into the mountains. From ancient times to this day they do not obey the lords of Yamato.” Even if we take into account that most of this text from the Nihon Shoki is a standard description of any “barbarians”, borrowed by the Japanese from the ancient Chinese chronicles “Wenxuan” and “Liji”, the Ainu are still characterized quite accurately. Only after several centuries of constant skirmishes, from the Japanese military detachments defending the northern borders of Yamato, what was later called “samuraiism” was formed. Samurai culture and samurai fighting techniques largely go back to Ainu fighting techniques and contain many Ainu elements, and individual samurai clans are Ainu in origin, the most famous being the Abe clan.

In 780, the Ainu leader Aterui rebelled against the Japanese: on the Kitakami River he managed to defeat a sent detachment of 6 thousand soldiers. The Japanese later managed to capture Aterui through bribery and execute him in 803. In 878, the Ainu rebelled and burned the Akita fortress, but then came to an agreement with the Japanese. There was also an Ainu revolt in northern Honshu in 1051.

Only in the middle of the 15th century, a small group of samurai led by Takeda Nobuhiro managed to cross to Hokkaido, which was then called Ezo, (here it should be noted that the Japanese called the Ainu edzo - 蝦夷 or 夷 - emishi/ebisu, which meant “barbarians”, “savages” ") and founded the first Japanese settlement on the southern tip of the island (on the Oshima Peninsula). Takeda Nobuhiro is considered the founder of the Matsumae clan, which ruled the island of Hokkaido until 1798, when control was then taken over by the central government. During the colonization of the island, the samurai of the Matsumae clan constantly had to face armed resistance from the Ainu.

Of the most significant performances, it should be noted: the struggle of the Ainu under the leadership of Kosyamain (1457), the performances of the Ainu in 1512-1515, in 1525, under the leadership of the leader Tanasyagashi (1529), Tarikonna (1536), Mennaukei (Hanauke) (1643 year) and under the leadership of Syagusyain (1669), as well as many smaller performances.

It should be noted, however, that these performances, in essence, were not only the “Ainu struggle against the Japanese,” since there were many Japanese among the rebels. It was not so much the struggle of the Ainu against the Japanese, but the struggle of the inhabitants of the island of Ezo for independence from the central government. It was a struggle for control of profitable trade routes: the trade route to Manchuria passed through the island of Ezo.

The most significant of all the uprisings was the Syagusyain uprising. According to many testimonies, Syagusyain did not belong to the Ainu aristocracy - nispa, but was simply some kind of charismatic leader. Obviously, not all Ainu supported him at first. It should also be taken into account here that throughout the war with the Japanese, the Ainu for the most part acted in separate local groups and never assembled large formations. Through violence and coercion, Syagushain managed to come to power and unite many of the Ainu of the southern regions of Hokkaido under his rule. It is likely that in the course of implementing his plans, Syagusyain crossed out some very important establishments and constants of Ainu culture. One can even argue that it is quite obvious that Syagusyain was not a traditional leader - an elder of a local group, but that he looked far into the future and understood that the Ainu absolutely needed to master modern technologies(in the broad sense of the word) if they want to continue to exist independently.

In this regard, Syagusyain was perhaps one of the most progressive people of Ainu culture. Initially, Syagusyain's actions were very successful. He managed to almost completely destroy Matsumae's troops and drive the Japanese out of Hokkaido. The Tsasi (fortified settlement) of Syagusyaina was located in the area of ​​the modern city of Shizunai at the highest point where the Shizunai River flows into the Pacific Ocean. However, his uprising was doomed, like all other previous and subsequent uprisings.

The Ainu culture is a hunting culture, a culture that never knew large settlements, in which the largest social unit was the local group. The Ainu seriously believed that all the tasks set before them external world, can be solved by the forces of one local group. In Ainu culture, a person meant too much to be used as a cog [ ], which was typical for cultures based on agriculture, and in particular rice growing, which allows a very large number of people to live in an extremely limited area.

The management system in Matsumae was as follows: the samurai of the clan were given coastal plots (which actually belonged to the Ainu), but the samurai did not know how and did not want to engage in either fishing or hunting, so they rented out these plots to tax farmers who handled all the affairs. They recruited assistants: translators and overseers. Translators and overseers committed many abuses: they abused the elderly and children, raped Ainu women, and swearing at the Ainu was the most common thing. The Ainu were actually in the position of slaves. In the Japanese system of “correction of morals,” the complete lack of rights of the Ainu was combined with the constant humiliation of their ethnic dignity. Petty, absurd regulation of life was aimed at paralyzing the will of the Ainu. Many young Ainu were removed from their traditional surroundings and sent by the Japanese to various works, for example, the Ainu from central regions Hokkaido were sent to work in the maritime fisheries of Kunashir and Iturup (which at that time were also colonized by the Japanese), where they lived in unnaturally crowded conditions, unable to maintain a traditional way of life.

In fact, here we can talk about the genocide of the Ainu. All this led to new armed uprisings: the uprising in Kunashir in 1789. The course of events was as follows: the Japanese industrialist Hidaya tried to open his trading posts in the then independent Ainu Kunashir, but the leader of Kunashir, Tukinoe, did not allow him to do this, seized all the goods brought by the Japanese, and sent the Japanese back to Matsumae. In response to this, the Japanese announced economic sanctions against Kunashir. After 8 years of blockade, Tukinoe allowed Hidaya to open several trading posts on the island. The population immediately fell into bondage to the Japanese. After some time, the Ainu, led by Tukinoe and Ikitoi, rebelled against the Japanese and very quickly gained the upper hand. However, several Japanese managed to escape and reach the capital Matsumae. As a result, the Matsumae clan sent troops to suppress the rebellion.

Ainu after the Meiji Restoration

After the suppression of the Ainu uprising of Kunashir and Menasi, the central shogunal government sent a commission. Central government officials recommended revising the policy towards the indigenous population: canceling cruel decrees, appointing doctors to each district, training Japanese language, agriculture, gradually introduce them to Japanese customs. Thus began assimilation. The real colonization of Hokkaido began only after the Meiji Restoration, which took place in 1868: men were forced to cut their beards, women were forbidden to have lip tattoos and wear traditional Ainu clothing. At the beginning of the 19th century, bans were introduced on Ainu rituals, especially Iyomante.

The number of Japanese colonists in Hokkaido grew rapidly. So, in 1897, 64,350 people moved to the island, in 1898 - 63,630, and in 1901 - 50,100 people. In 1903, the population of Hokkaido consisted of 845 thousand Japanese and only 18 thousand Ainu. The period of the most brutal Japaneseization of the Hokkaido Ainu began. In 1899, the Law on the Protection of the Aboriginal Population was adopted: each Ainu family was entitled to a plot of land with exemption for 30 years from the date of receipt from land and local taxes, as well as from registration fees. The same law allowed travel through Ainu lands only with the sanction of the governor, provided for the distribution of seeds to poor Ainu families, as well as the provision of medical care to the poor and the construction of schools in Ainu villages. In 1937, a decision was made to educate Ainu children in Japanese schools.

On June 6, 2008, the Japanese parliament recognized the Ainu as an independent national minority, which, however, did not change the situation in any way and did not lead to an increase in self-awareness, because all the Ainu are completely assimilated and are practically no different from the Japanese. They often know much less about their culture than Japanese anthropologists and do not strive to support it, which is explained by long-term discrimination against the Ainu. At the same time, Ainu culture itself is completely put at the service of tourism and, in fact, represents a type of theater. The Japanese and the Ainu themselves cultivate exoticism for the needs of tourists. Most shining example- the “Ainu and Bears” brand: in Hokkaido, in almost every souvenir shop you can find small figurines of bear cubs carved from wood. Contrary to popular belief, the Ainu had a taboo on carving bear figurines, and the aforementioned craft was, according to Emiko Onuki-Tierney, brought by the Japanese from Switzerland in the 1920s and only then introduced among the Ainu.

Ainu researcher Emiko Onuki-Tierney also argued: “I agree that Ainu traditions are disappearing and the traditional way kotan no longer exists. Ainu often live among the Japanese, or form separate areas/districts within a village/city. I share Simeon's frustration with some English-language publications that give an inaccurate portrayal of the Ainu, including the misconception that they continue to live following a traditional path kotan» .

Language

The Ainu language is considered by modern linguistics to be isolated. The position of the Ainu language in the genealogical classification of languages ​​still remains unknown. In this respect, the situation in linguistics is similar to the situation in anthropology. The Ainu language is radically different from Japanese, Nivkh, Itelmen, Chinese, as well as other languages ​​of the Far East, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Currently, the Ainu have completely switched to the Japanese language, and Ainu can almost be considered dead. In 2006, approximately 200 people out of 30,000 Ainu spoke the Ainu language. Different dialects are well understood. IN historical time the Ainu did not have their own writing, although they may have had a writing at the end of the Jomon era - the beginning of Yayoi. Currently, the practical Latin script or katakana is used to write the Ainu language. The Ainu also had their own mythology and rich oral traditions, including songs, epic poems and stories in verse and prose.

see also

Notes

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