Ainu people origin and settlement. MIUKI MIKADO • Virtual Japan. Ancient inhabitants of Japan

“...Embracing each other, the Heavenly Serpent and the Sun Goddess merged into the First Lightning. Rumbling joyfully, they descended to the First Earth, causing the top and bottom to appear by themselves. Snakes created the world, and with it Ayoinu, who created people, gave them crafts and the ability to survive. Later, when Ioina's children settled in large numbers around the world, one of them - the king of the country Pan - wished to marry own daughter. There was no one around who would not be afraid to go against the will of the ruler. In despair, the princess ran away with her beloved dog across the Great Sea. There, on a distant shore, her children were born. From them came the people who call themselves Ainu, which means “Real people”.

Ainu - ancient population Japanese Islands. The Ainu called themselves by various tribal names - “Soya-untara”, “Chuvka-untara”, and the very name “Ainu” or “Ainu”, which they used to call them, is not at all the self-name of this people, it only means “man” , " real man" The Japanese called the Ainu the word "emishi" or "ebisu", which in Ainu means "sword", or "people of the sword".

The Ainu also lived on the territory of Russia - in the lower reaches of the Amur, in the south of Kamchatka, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

But at present, the Ainu remain mainly only in Japan, and according to official data, their number in Japan is 25,000, but according to unofficial statistics, it can reach 200,000 people.

In Russia, according to the results of the 2010 census, 109 Ainu were recorded, of which 94-in the Kamchatka region.

Origin

The origin of the Ainu remains unclear. Europeans, who encountered the Ainu only in the 17th century, were amazed by their appearance- unlike ordinary people Mongoloid race, epicanthus (“Mongolian” eyelid fold), sparse facial hair, the Ainu had a European facial phenotype, and, moreover, unusually thick and long hair on their heads, they wore huge beards (often reaching the waist) and mustaches (they had to be held down with special chopsticks while eating). Despite living in a fairly temperate climate, in the summer the Ainu wore only loincloths, like the inhabitants of equatorial countries.

Currently, among anthropologists and ethnographers 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 (Caucasian race), according to the theory of 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 the Soviet ethnographer L. Ya. Sternberg and it was this theory that dominated Soviet ethnography.
• The Ainu are related to Paleo-Asian peoples and came to the Japanese Islands from the north of Siberia, this is the point of view of most Japanese anthropologists.

Japanese colonists rapidly settled the island of Hokkaido, where the Ainu mostly lived, and in 1903 the population of Hokkaido consisted of 845 thousand Japanese and only 18 thousand Ainu.

Thus began the period of the most brutal Japaneseization of the Ainu of Hokkaido.

It should be noted that on Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, where there were Russians, the Ainu gravitated towards them - many Ainu spoke Russian and were Orthodox.

The Russian colonial order, despite many abuses by yasak collectors and armed conflicts provoked by the Cossacks, was much softer than the Japanese. In addition, the Ainu lived in their traditional environment, they were not forced to radically change their way of life, and were not reduced to the status of slaves. They lived in the same place where they lived before the arrival of the Russians and were engaged in traditional hunting and sea fishing.

However, in 1875, all of Sakhalin was assigned to Russia, and all of the Kuril Islands were transferred to Japan.

An ethnic catastrophe occurred - the Japanese transported all the Ainu from the Northern Kuril Islands to the island of Shikotan, took away all their fishing gear and boats and forbade them to go to sea without permission. Instead of traditional hunting and fishing, the Ainu were involved in various hard jobs, for which they received rice, vegetables, some fish and sake, which absolutely did not correspond to their traditional diet, which consisted of meat from sea animals and fish. In addition, the Kuril Ainu found themselves in unnaturally crowded conditions on Shikotan. The consequences of the ethnocide were not long in coming - many Ainu died in the first year.

The terrible fate of the Kuril Ainu very soon became known to the Japanese and foreign public and the reservation was liquidated, and the surviving Ainu, only 20 people, sick and impoverished, were taken to Hokkaido. Back in the 70s of the twentieth century there was data on 17 Kuril Ainu, however, how many of them came from Shikotan is still unclear.

The Russian administration of Sakhalin dealt mainly with the northern part of the island, leaving the southern part to the tyranny of Japanese industrialists, who, realizing that their stay on the island would be short-lived, sought to exploit its natural resources as intensively as possible and cruelly exploited the Ainu.

And then Russo-Japanese War, when southern Sakhalin turned into the governorate of Karafuto and began to be intensively populated by the Japanese, the newcomer population many times exceeded the Ainu.

In 1914, the Japanese authorities gathered all the Ainu of Karafuto into ten populated areas, limited their movement around the island, fought in every possible way against traditional culture, traditional beliefs Ainu, and tried to force Ainu to live in Japanese.

And in 1933, all the Ainu were “converted” into Japanese subjects and appropriated Japanese surnames, and the younger generation later received Japanese names.

After the Soviet-Japanese War of 1945 and the surrender of Japan, the majority of the Ainu of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, along with the Japanese, were evicted (and some also voluntarily emigrated) to Japan.

On February 7, 1953, the Commissioner of the Council of Ministers of the USSR for the protection of military and state secrets in the press, K. Omelchenko, in a secret order, indicated to the heads of departments of the Glavlit of the USSR (censors): “it is prohibited to publish in the open press any information about the Ainu people in the USSR.” This ban lasted until the early 1970s, when publication of Ainu folklore resumed.

Modern Ainu, although recognized on June 6, 2008 by the Japanese Diet an independent national minority, completely assimilated and practically no different from the Japanese, often much fewer Japanese anthropologists know about their culture, and they do not strive to support it, which is explained by the long-term discrimination of the Ainu by the Japanese.

Currently, Ainu culture in Japan is completely put at the service of tourism and, in fact, is a kind of theater; both the Japanese and the Ainu themselves cultivate “exoticism” only for the needs of tourists.

A.A. Kazdym
Academician of the International Academy of Sciences
Academician of the International Academy of Sciences
Ecology and Life Safety, member of MOIP

On this moment in Japan there are 25,000 Ainu, and in Russia - 109, which is due to the repatriation of the Ainu, as Japanese citizens from Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands after World War II and great assimilation. However, they still continue to live on Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and Hokkaido, as the original, most ancient inhabitants of these places.
And finally, one of the national Ainu tales as recorded by Russian researchers:
On the sable hunt
“I went hunting in the taiga. I went far. Having gone down the mountain to a small river, I built myself a hut and set up an inau behind it so that I could have luck in the hunt.
Then I set sable traps both near the river and on the trees that fell across it - animals like to run across them, and further in the taiga. He set a lot of traps.
At night I slept in the hut, and early in the morning, when the sun gold chain to the top of the mountain and began to pull myself out of the distant sea, I went to check the traps. Oh, how pleased I was to see the prey in the first trap, and the second, and the third, and many more. I tied the caught sables into a large bundle and walked cheerfully towards my hut.
When I crossed the river, I looked at the hut and was very surprised - smoke was rising from it.
Who was it that flooded my hearth, however?
I carefully crept up to the hut and heard a sound similar to the sound of boiling water. Strange. What kind of person came into my hut and cooked something? And it already smells. And tasty, though.
I entered. Oh-ho-ho-ho! Yes, this is my wife! How did she think of finding me? I’ve never found it, but here I come.
And my wife sat in my place and prepared dinner.
“Let’s take off your shoes,” she said. - I'll dry your shoes.
I took off my shoes, gave her my shoes, and I kept looking at her carefully and thinking: is this my wife? It seems like it’s not mine and it seems like it’s not mine. We need to find out somehow.
Sit down and eat,” she said. - I'm tired from hunting. I started eating, but I kept thinking: somehow she doesn’t look like my wife. No, it's not like that. It's probably some kind of evil spirit. It became scary, however. What should we do anyway?
Suddenly the woman stood up and said:
Well, I'll go. She said so and left.
I looked out of the hut and looked after her. “Isn’t this a bear?” - I thought. And that’s just what I thought, really - the woman turned into a bear. She roared loudly and, clubfoot, went into the taiga.
Of course I was scared. Inau was placed around the entire hut. At night I slept lightly and restlessly. And in the morning I went to check the traps again. Oh-ho-ho-ho, how many sables we caught! Never came across so many!
Returning home, I remembered how the ancient old people told me: sometimes forest dwellers come to the Ainu in the guise of a man or a woman to help them hunt. The old people call them people of the forest. This means that the forest woman came to me, and not my wife. The wife, of course, could not help so well on the hunt. But she did. Well done, though!"

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 who inhabited, according to archaeological excavations and mentions in ancient manuscripts different nations, lands of Japan, Sakhalin, 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, fair-skinned people with more open eyes like Europeans, unlike their neighbors the Itelmens, Chukchi, Evens, Japanese and other peoples, have 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 - "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 settled 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, the most important holiday is the 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 they sound in the Ainu language - "Tsushima" is distant, "Fuji" - grandmother, spirit or kamuy of the hearth.

The national Japanese religion Shintoism has Ainu roots, as well as “Bushido”, a complex of military valor, and the “Harakiri” ritual, and culture and martial arts 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 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...

Who are the Ain? Wowanych Wowan

Ainu (Wikipedia 2013)

(Wikipedia 2013)

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