2013 January 11 Commentary on the article “How to deal with rising housing and communal services tariffs?” Medvedev correctly identified and posed the question. But how to decide, let him, as the head of government, think for himself. He has an apparatus, ministers, and how successful it will be depends on his position.

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 out, he set off on a long journey. On the first night he stopped for the night at beautiful house, where the 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 beautiful home, 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 lay through the Black, White and Red Mountains, which could 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 upon returning home, take one of the daughters as his wife, and 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 it increased specific gravity agriculture and livestock farming. 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 made 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 them, 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 should 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, his inherent individual trait, for example: Selfish, Dirty, Fair, Good Orator, 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 the fingertips of your right hand over the palm of your left, 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 his wife, his children, the rest of his relatives and, finally, 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- "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 to 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. The bear was tied to special place, tried to feed them 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 the war with the Japanese went on 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.

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 destined for military service from birth; 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 was later adopted by the Japanese, calling it “” or “” (as, by the way, is the cult of the sword, special shelves for swords, spears, and bows). 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.

There is also interesting information about the signs of ownership of the Ainu - they put them on arrows, weapons, and dishes special signs, passed down from generation to generation, so as not to confuse, for example, whose arrow hit the beast, 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.

“...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- the oldest population of the 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 the usual people of the Mongoloid race, epicanthus (“Mongolian” fold of the eyelid), 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 quickly 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 information about 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, restricted 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” to 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

When, in the 17th century, Russian explorers reached the “farthest east,” where, as they thought, the firmament of the earth connected with the firmament of heaven, but they found a boundless sea and numerous islands, they were amazed at the appearance of the natives they met. Before them appeared people overgrown with thick beards, with wide eyes like those of Europeans, with large, protruding noses, looking like men from southern Russia, like residents of the Caucasus, like overseas guests from Persia or India, like gypsies - like anyone but on the Mongoloids, whom the Cossacks saw everywhere beyond the Urals.

First of all: where did a tribe come from in a continuous Mongoloid massif that is anthropologically, roughly speaking, inappropriate here? Nowadays the Ainu live on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, and in the past they inhabited a very wide territory - the Japanese Islands, Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, the south of Kamchatka and, according to some data, the Amur region and even Primorye up to Korea. Many researchers were convinced that the Ainu were Caucasians. Others argued that the Ainu are related to the Polynesians, Papuans, Melanesians, Australians, Indians...

The ancient Ainu or their ancestors created amazingly beautiful ceramics, mysterious dogu figurines, and in addition, it turned out that they were perhaps the earliest farmers in the Far East, if not in the world. It is not clear why they completely abandoned both pottery and agriculture, becoming fishermen and hunters, essentially taking a step back in cultural development. The Ainu legends tell of fabulous treasures, fortresses and castles, but the Japanese and then the Europeans found this tribe living in huts and dugouts. The Ainu have a bizarre and contradictory interweaving of the features of the northern and southern inhabitants, elements of high and primitive cultures. With their entire existence, they seem to deny conventional ideas and customary patterns of cultural development.

In the 1st millennium BC. e. Migrants began to invade the lands of the Ainu, who were later destined to become the basis of the Japanese nation. For many centuries, the Ainu fiercely resisted the onslaught, and sometimes quite successfully. Around the 7th century. n. e. for several centuries a boundary was established between the two peoples. There were not only military battles on this border line. There was trade and intense cultural exchange. It happened that the noble Ainu influenced the policies of the Japanese feudal lords. The culture of the Japanese was significantly enriched at the expense of their northern enemy. Even traditional religion Japanese, Shintoism, shows obvious Ainu roots; of Ainu origin, the hara-kiri ritual and the Bushido complex of military valor. Japanese ritual Gohei's sacrifice has clear parallels with the installation of inau sticks by the Ainu... The list of borrowings can be continued for a long time.

During the Middle Ages, the Japanese increasingly pushed the Ainu to the north of Honshu, and from there to Hokkaido. In all likelihood, some of the Ainu had long before moved to Sakhalin and the Kuril ridge... unless the resettlement process went in a diametrically opposite direction. Now only an insignificant fragment remains of this people. Modern Ainu live in the southeast of Hokkaido, along the coast, as well as in the valley of the large Ishikari River. They have undergone strong ethnoracial and cultural assimilation, and to an even greater extent cultural assimilation, although they still try to preserve their identity.

Although today, due to centuries-old mixing and a large number of interethnic marriages, it is difficult to meet “pure” Ainu, Caucasian features are noticeable in their appearance: a typical Ainu has an elongated skull shape, an asthenic physique, a thick beard (facial hair is not typical for Mongoloids) and thick, wavy hair. hair. Ainu speak special language, not related to Japanese or any other Asian language. Among the Japanese, the Ainu are so famous for their hairiness that they have earned the contemptuous nickname "Hairy Ainu". Only one race on Earth is characterized by such significant hair - the Caucasian.

During the reign of Yamato, around 500 BC, Japan expanded its territory into east direction, in connection with which the Ainu were partly pushed to the north, partly assimilated. During the Meiji period - 1868-1912. - they received the status of former aborigines, but, nevertheless, continued to be discriminated against. The first mention of the Ainu in Japanese chronicles dates back to 642; information about them appeared in Europe in 1586.

American anthropologist S. Lorin Brace, from Michigan State University in the journal Science Horizons, No. 65, September-October 1989. writes: “the typical Ainu is easily distinguished from the Japanese: he has lighter skin, denser body hair and a more prominent nose.”

Brace studied about 1,100 crypts of the Japanese, Ainu and other Asians ethnic groups and came to the conclusion that representatives of the privileged samurai class in Japan are in fact descendants of the Ainu, and not the Yayoi (Mongoloids), the ancestors of most modern Japanese. Brace further writes: “.. this explains why the facial features of representatives ruling class so often different from modern Japanese. Samurai - descendants of the Ainu acquired such influence and prestige in medieval Japan that they became related to ruling circles and brought into them the blood of the Ainu, while the rest of the Japanese population were mainly descendants of the Yayoi."

So, despite the fact that information about the origin of the Ainu is lost, their external data indicate some kind of advancement of whites who reached the very edge of the Far East, then mixed with the local population, which led to the formation of the ruling class of Japan, but, at the same time, a separate group of descendants of white newcomers - the Ainu - are still discriminated against as a national minority.