Where, as they thought, the earthly firmament was connected with the heavenly firmament, and there were an endless 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, like those of Europeans, eyes, with large, protruding noses, similar to the men of southern Russia, to the inhabitants of the Caucasus, to overseas guests from Persia or India, to gypsies, to anyone, just not on the Mongoloids, whom the Cossacks saw everywhere beyond the Urals.
Pathfinders christened them Kurils, Kurilians, endowing them with the epithet "furry", and they themselves called themselves "Ainu", which means "man".
Since then, researchers have been struggling with countless mysteries of this people. But to this day they have not come to a definite conclusion.
Japan is not only Japanese, but also Ain. In fact, there are two peoples. It is a pity that few people know about the second.
Legend has it that the deity gave Ayin a sword and money to the Japanese. And this is reflected in real story... The Ains were better warriors than the Japanese. But the Japanese were more cunning and took the gullible like the children of the Ain with cunning, while adopting their military technique. Harakiri also came to the Japanese from the Ain. The Jomon culture, as has now been proven by scholars, was also created by the Ainami.
Studying Japan is impossible without studying both peoples.
The Ainu people are recognized by most researchers as the natives of Japan; they inhabit the Japanese island of Hokkaido and the Russian Kuril Islands, as well as about. Sakhalin.
The most curious feature of the Ainu is their noticeable to this day external difference from the rest of the population of the Japanese islands.
Although today, due to centuries of 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 (for Mongoloids, facial hair is uncharacteristic) and thick, wavy hair. The Ainu speak a special language that is not related to either 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 a significant hair cover - Caucasoid.
The Ainu language is unlike Japanese or any other Asian language. The origin of the Ainu is unclear. They entered Japan through Hokkaido between 300 AD. BC. and 250 AD (Yayoi period) and then settled in the northern and eastern regions the main Japanese island of Honshu.
During the reign of Yamato, about 500 BC, Japan expanded its territory in an eastward direction, in connection with which the Ainu were partly pushed northward, 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, in Europe information about them appeared in 1586.
American anthropologist S. Lauryn Brace, from Michigan State University in the magazine "Horizons of Science", No. 65, September-October 1989. writes: "The typical Ainu is easy to distinguish from the Japanese: he has lighter skin, thicker body hair and a more prominent nose."
Brace studied about 1,100 crypts of Japanese, Ainu and other Asian ethnic groups and came to the conclusion that representatives of the privileged class of samurai in Japan are actually descendants of the Ainu, and not Yayoi (Mongoloids), the ancestors of most modern Japanese. Brace goes on to write: “..this explains why the ruling class so often differ from modern Japanese. Samurai - the descendants of the Ainu acquired such influence and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with the ruling circles and brought the blood of the Ainu into them, while the rest of the Japanese population was mainly the descendants of the Yayoi.
So, despite the fact that information about the origin of the Ainu has been lost, their external data indicate some kind of advancement of the Whites, who reached the very edge of the Far East, then mixed with 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.
That was a long time ago. There was a village in the middle of the hills. An ordinary village in which ordinary people lived. There is a very kind family among them. The family had a daughter, Aina, the kindest of all. The village lived its usual life, but one day at dawn a black wagon appeared on the village road. Black horses were driven by a man dressed in all black. He was very happy about something, smiled broadly, sometimes laughed. There was a black cage on the cart, and in it a little fluffy Bear was sitting on a chain. He was sucking on his paw, and tears were still flowing from his eyes. All the people of the village looked out the windows, went out into the street and were indignant: how shameful it is for a black man to keep on a chain, torture the white Bear. People only resented and spoke words, but did nothing. Only a kind family stopped the black man's carriage, and Aina began to ask him to release the unfortunate Bear Cub. The stranger smiled and said that he would release the beast if someone gave up their eyes. All were silent. Then Aina stepped forward and said that she was ready for it. The black man laughed out loud and opened the black cage. The White Fluffy Bear came out of the cage. And kind Aina lost her sight. While the villagers looked at the Bear Cub and spoke sympathetic words to Aine, the black man on the black cart disappeared, no one knows where. The bear didn’t cry anymore, but Aina was crying. Then the White Bear took the rope in its paws and began to lead Aina everywhere: in the village, over the hills and meadows. This did not last very long. And once the people of the village looked up and saw that the white fluffy Bear was leading Ainu straight into the sky. Since then, the little Bear has been leading Aina across the sky. They are always visible in the sky so that people remember good and evil ...
The Ainu are a kind of people that occupy a special place among the many small peoples of the Earth. Until now, he enjoys such attention in world science that many much larger peoples did not receive. They were a beautiful and strong people, whose whole life was connected with the forest, rivers, sea and islands. Language, Caucasian features, luxurious beards sharply distinguished the Ainu from the neighboring Mongoloid tribes.
In ancient times, the Ainu inhabited a number of areas of Primorye, Sakhalin, Honshu, Hokkaido, the Kuril Islands, and the south of Kamchatka. They lived in dugouts, erected frame houses, wore southern-type loincloths and wore closed fur clothing like the inhabitants of the north. The Ainu combined knowledge, skills, customs and techniques of taiga hunters and coastal fishermen, southern gatherers of seafood and northern marine 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 procreate children.”
The Ainu have families who believe that their genus originated as follows:
“Once the boy thought about the meaning of his existence and, in order to get to know it, set off on a long journey. On the first night, he stopped for the night in a beautiful house, where a girl lived, who had left him to spend the night, saying that "news has already come about such a little boy." The next morning it turned out that the girl could not explain to the guest the purpose of his existence and he had to go further - to the middle sister. Reaching beautiful house, he turned to another beautiful girl and received food and lodging from her. In the morning she, without explaining the meaning of existence to him, sent him to his younger sister. The situation repeated itself, except that the younger sister showed him the way through the Black, White and Red Mountains, which can be lifted by moving the oars stuck at the foot of these mountains.
Passing the Black, White and Red mountains, he gets to the “God's mountain”, on top of which there is a golden house.
When the boy entered the house, something appears from its depths that resembles either a person or a clot of fog, which demands to listen to him and explains:
“You are the boy who must begin to bring people into the world as such with a soul. When you came here, you thought that you spent the night in three places for one night, but in fact you lived for one year. " It turns out that the girls were the Goddess of the Morning Star, who gave birth to a daughter, the Star of Midnight, who gave birth to a boy, and the Star of the Evening, who gave birth to a girl. The boy is ordered to way back take your children, and upon returning home, take one of the daughters to be your wife, and marry your son to another daughter, in which case you will bear children; and they, in turn, if you give 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 revealed to the world previously unknown ethnic groups and discovering traces of mysterious peoples who lived on the islands earlier. Some of them, along with the Nivkhs and Uilta, were the Ainu or Ainu, who inhabited Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands 2–3 centuries ago and the Hokkaido Island belonging to Japan.
Ainu language- a puzzle for researchers. Until now, its relationship with other languages of the world has not 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 consider the "twenties". They do not have such concepts as “hundred”, “thousand”. The Ainu express the number 100 as "five twenty", 110 - "six twenty without ten." The counting system is complicated by the fact that one cannot add to the "twenty", one can only subtract from them. So, for example, if an Ainu wants to report that he is 23 years old, he will say: "I am seven years old plus ten years subtracted from twice twenty years."
The basis of the economy Since ancient times, the Ainu have been fishing and hunting for sea and forest beast... They got everything they needed for life not far from their home: fish, game, edible wild plants, elm bast and nettle fiber for clothing. Farming was almost never done.
Hunting weapons The Ainu made up a bow, a long knife and a spear. Various traps and traps were widely used. In fishing, the Ainu have long used "marek" - a prison with a movable swivel hook that captures fish. Fish were often caught at night, attracting it with the light of torches.
As the island of Hokkaido was more and more densely populated by the Japanese, hunting lost its dominant role in the life of the Ainu. At the same time, the share of agriculture and domestic livestock raising has increased. The Ainu began to cultivate millet, barley, and potatoes.
National Ainu cuisine consists mainly of plant and fish food. The hostesses know many different recipes for jellies, soups from fresh and dried fish. In former times, a special kind of whitish clay served as a common seasoning for food.
National dress of the Ainu- a robe decorated with bright ornaments, a fur band or a wreath. Previously, the material for clothing was woven from strips of bast and nettle fibers. Now the national clothes are sewn from purchased fabrics, but they are decorated with rich embroidery. Almost every Ainu village has its own special embroidery pattern. Having met an Ainu in national dress, one can accurately determine which village he is from.
Embroidery on men's and women's clothing are different. A man will never wear clothes with "female" embroidery, and vice versa.
Until now, on the faces of Ainu women, you can see a wide tattooed border around the mouth, something like a painted mustache. The forehead and arms are decorated with a tattoo to the elbow. Tattooing is a very painful process, so it is usually stretched out over several years. A woman most often tattoos her arms and forehead only after marriage. In choosing a life partner, the Ainu woman enjoys much greater freedom than the women of many other peoples of the East. The Ainu quite rightly believe that the issues of marriage concern first of all those who enter into it, and to a lesser extent everyone around, including the parents of the groom and the bride. Children are required to listen to the parent's word with respect, after which they are free to do as they wish. An Ainu girl is recognized as having the right to woo a young man she likes. If the matchmaking meets an agreement, the groom leaves his parents and moves to the bride's house. Having married, a woman retains her former name.
The Ainu pay a lot of attention to the upbringing and education of children. First of all, they believe, a child must learn to obey his 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 a child speaks to adults only when they themselves turn to him. He should be in full view of adults all the time, but at the same time not make noise, not 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 path in the forest and much more. The upbringing of girls is the responsibility of the mother. In cases where children violate the established rules of behavior, commit mistakes or misconduct, parents tell them various instructive legends and stories, preferring this means of influencing the child's psyche to physical punishment.
Ainu give names to children not immediately after birth, as Europeans do, but at the age of one to ten years, or even later. Most often, the name of the Ainu reflects the distinctive property of his character, his inherent individual trait, for example: Selfish, Dirty, Fair, Good orator, stutterer, etc.
The originality of the Ainu is so great that some anthropologists distinguish this ethnos as a special "small race" - the Kuril. By the way, in Russian sources they are sometimes called: "furry smokers" or simply "smokers" (from "kuru" - a person). Some scientists consider them to be the descendants of the Jomon people, who came from the ancient Pacific continent of Sunda, and the remains of which are the Great Sunda and Japanese Islands.
In favor of the fact that it was the Ainu who inhabited the Japanese islands, their name in the Ainu language speaks: "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 clashes, which occurred mainly due to the rude behavior of some Russian tradesmen or military personnel. The most common form of their communication was the exchange of goods. With the Nivkhs and other peoples, the Ainu either fought or entered into inter-tribal 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 almost the earliest farmers in the Far East, if not in the world.
Some of the customs and norms of etiquette observed by the Ainu.
If you, for example, want to enter someone else's house, then before crossing the threshold, you must cough several times. After that, you can enter, provided, however, that you are familiar with the owner. If you are visiting him for the first time, you should wait until the owner himself comes out to meet you.
Entering the house, you need to go around the hearth on the right and, without fail crossing your bare feet, sit on the mat opposite the owner of the house sitting in a similar position. There is no need to say any words yet. Coughing politely several times, fold your hands in front of you and rub the palm of your left with the tips of the fingers of your right hand, then vice versa. The owner will express his attention to you by repeating the movements after you. During this ceremony, you need to inquire about the health of your interlocutor, wish that heaven would bestow prosperity on the owner of the house, then to his wife, his children, the rest of his relatives and, finally, his native village. After that, without stopping rubbing your palms, you can summarize 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 go in a more relaxed atmosphere. Rubbing your palms will take at least 20-30 minutes. This is in line with the Ainu notions of politeness.
Ainu representatives adhere to a tradition called a funeral ritual. During it, Ainu is killed by a bear wintering in a cave along with her newly born offspring, and the babies are taken from the dead mother.
Then, over the course of several years, representatives of the Ainu raise small bears, but they eventually kill them too, as it becomes life-threatening to watch and care for an adult bear. The funeral ceremony related to the soul of the bear is an essential part of the Ainu religious practices. It is believed that during this ritual, a person helps the soul of a divine animal to go to the other world.
Over time, the killing of bears was prohibited by the council of elders of this unusual people, and now, even if such a ritual is performed, it is only as a theatrical performance. Nevertheless, there are rumors that to this day, real funeral ceremonies continue to be held, but all this is kept in the strictest confidence.
Another of the Ainu traditions involves the use of so-called special prayer sticks. They are used as a method of communicating with the gods. Various engravings on prayer sticks are made to identify the owner of the artifact. In the past, it was believed that prayer sticks contain all the prayers that the wearer addressed to the gods. The creators of such tools for the administration of 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 stands facing a 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 cloth, or even without cloth at all. The game ends when the beaten screams or jumps to the side. In its place comes another ... There is one trick here. To win in "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 a stick.
In the 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 pray - inau. With their help, the Ainu express their respect to the gods, convey their wishes, requests to bless people and forest animals, thank the gods for what they have done. Ainu come here to pray when they go hunting or on a long journey, or when they return.
Inau can also be found on the seashore, in places where people go fishing. Here, the gifts are intended for the two brothers of the sea. The eldest of them is evil, he brings various troubles to the fishermen; the youngest is kind, patronizing people. The Ainu show respect to both gods, but, of course, have sympathy only for the second.
The Ainu understood: if they want not only they, but also their children and grandchildren to live on the islands, they need to be able not only to take from nature, but also to preserve it, otherwise in a few generations there will be no forest, fish, animals and birds. All Ainu were deeply religious people. They inspired all natural phenomena and nature as a whole. This religion is called animism.
The main thing in their religion was the kamui. Kamui is a god to be worshiped, but it is also a beast to be killed.
The most powerful kamui gods are the gods of the sea and mountains. The sea god is a killer whale. This predator was especially revered. The Ainu were convinced that the killer whale sends whales to people and that every whale that was thrown away was considered a gift, in addition, the killer whale sends shoals of salmon to its elder brother, the mountain taiga god, every year. On the way, these shoals were wrapped in the villages of the Ainu, and salmon has always been the main food of this people.
Not only among the Ainu, but also among other peoples, precisely those animals and plants were sacred and were surrounded by worship, on the presence of which the well-being of people depended.
The mountainous god was a 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 reverence for the totem through certain rituals. The animal that personifies the totem is protected and revered, it is forbidden to kill and eat it. However, once a year it was ordered to kill and eat the totem.
One of these legends speaks of the origin of the Ainu. In one western country, the king wanted to marry his own daughter, but she fled across the sea with her dog. There, across the sea, she had children, from whom the Ainu went.
The Ainu treated dogs with great care. Each family tried to acquire a good pack. Returning from a trip or hunting, the owner did not enter the house until he 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 an animal and a person: 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 holiday... Relatives and invitees from many villages came to participate in this event. For four years, a bear cub was raised in one of the Ainu families. He was given the best food. And now the animal, raised with love and diligence, one day it was planned to kill. On the morning of the day of the killing, the Ainu made a mass cry in front of the bear's cage. After that, the beast was taken out of the cage and decorated with shavings, ritual jewelry was put on. Then he was led through the village, and while those present with noise and shouts distracted the animal's attention, the young hunters jumped one after another on the animal, pressing against it for a moment, trying to touch the head, and immediately jumped back: a kind of ritual of “kissing” the animal. They tied the bear in a special place, tried to feed it with festive food. Then the elder pronounced a farewell speech in front of him, described the labors and merits of the inhabitants of the village who raised the divine beast, set out the wishes of the Ainu, which the bear had to pass on to his father, the mountain-taiga god. Honor "send", i.e. Any hunter could be awarded to kill a bear from a bow, at the request of the owner of the animal, but it had to be a stranger. It was necessary to hit exactly the heart. The meat of the animal was placed on spruce paws and distributed taking into account seniority and nobility. The bones were carefully collected and taken to the forest. Silence was established in the village. It was believed that the bear was on its way, and the noise could knock it off the road.
The decree of Empress Catherine II of 1779: "... leave the shaggy Kurilians free and do not demand any collection from them, and continue not to force the peoples living there to do this, but try to be friendly and gentle ... to continue the familiarity already established with them."
The empress's edict was not fully observed, and yasak was collected from the Ainu until the 19th century. The trusting Ainu took their word for it, and if the Russians somehow kept it in relation to them, then the war was going on with the Japanese until the last breath ...
In 1884, all the North Kuril Ainu were resettled by the Japanese to Shikotan, 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 divine ancestors ...
The Russian imperial administration, and then the Soviet one, due to the ill-conceived ethnopolitics towards the inhabitants of Sakhalin, forced the Ainu to migrate to Hokkaido, where their descendants live today in an amount of about 20 thousand people, having achieved only in 1997 the legislative right to be an “ethnic group " in Japan.
Now the Ainu, who live near the sea and rivers, are trying to combine agriculture with animal husbandry and fishing in order to insure against failure in any kind of economy. Agriculture alone cannot feed them, because the lands left by the Ainu are dry, stony, and barren. Many Ainu are forced today to leave their native villages and go to work in the city or to logging. But even there they are far from always able to find work. Most Japanese entrepreneurs and fishmongers do not want to hire Ainu, and if they give them jobs, then the dirtiest and least paid.
The discrimination that the Ainu are subjected to makes them consider their nationality almost a misfortune, trying to get as close as possible in language and way of life to the Japanese.
Collegiate YouTube
1 / 4
✪ How the Japanese stole Japan. Where did the Ainu go? Who are samurai
✪ Ainu is a mystery for anthropologists. By anthropologist Aili Marnitsa
✪ Ainu in Russia
✪ The first samurai were not Japanese at all
Subtitles
History
Origin
The origin of the Ainu is currently unclear. Europeans who encountered the Ainu in the 17th century were amazed at their appearance. Unlike the usual kind of people of the Mongoloid race with dark skin, Mongolian folds of the century, sparse facial hair, the Ainu had unusually thick hair covering their heads, wore huge beards and mustaches (holding them with special sticks while eating), the Australoid features of their faces a number of features were similar to European ones. Despite living in temperate climates In the summer, the Ainu wore only loincloths, like the inhabitants of the equatorial countries. There are many hypotheses about the origin of the Ainu, which can generally be divided into three groups:
- Ainu are related to Caucasians (Caucasian race) - this theory was adhered to by J. Bachelor, 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 the 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 relationship are not [ ] were confirmed, if only because the Ainu culture in Japan is much older than culture the Austronesians in Indonesia, the hypothesis of the southern origin of the Ainu itself now seems more promising due to the fact that recently certain linguistic, genetic and ethnographic data have appeared that suggest that the Ainu may be distant relatives of the Miao-Yao people living in the South China and Southeast Asia. Among the Ainu, happlogroups D and C are widespread. .
So far, it is known for certain that in terms of the main anthropological indicators, the Ainu are very different from the Japanese, Koreans, Nivkhs, Itelmens, Polynesians, Indonesians, aborigines of Australia and, in general, all populations of the Far East and the Pacific Ocean, and they are close only to the people of the Jomon era, who are the direct ancestors of the historical Ainu. Basically, there is no big mistake in equating the Jomon people with the Ainu.
On the Japanese islands, the Ainu appeared about 13 thousand years BC. NS. 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 archaeological site and toponymy data, for example: Tsushima - tuyma- "distant", Fuji - hutsi- "grandmother" - Kamui of the hearth, Tsukuba - Tu ku pa- "head of two bows" / "two-bowed mountain", Yamatai - I am ma 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, the second were very short. The former are similar to the finds at Aoshima and date back to the late Stone Age, the latter with the skeletons at Miyato.
Economy and society
Religion and mythology of the Ainu
Ainu shamans were primarily considered [ by whom?] as "primitive" magico-religious specialists who performed the so-called individual rituals. They were considered [ by whom?] less important than monks, priests, and other religious specialists who represented 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 were associated with the cult of the bear and the eagle. The bear symbolizes the spirit of the hunter. Bears were bred 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 lives in the head of a bear, so the main part of the sacrifice was cutting off the head of the animal. After that, 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 bowl passed in a circle, which symbolized participation in the ritual.
The Ains refused to be photographed or sketched by researchers. This is due to the fact that the Ainu believed that photographs and their various images, especially naked or with a small amount of clothing, took away part of the life of the person depicted in the photograph. There are several known cases of Ainu confiscation 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 ideas, one of the animals belonging to the "forces of evil" or demons is a snake. The Ainu do not kill snakes, despite the fact that they are a source of danger, since they believe that the evil spirit inhabiting the body of the snake, after killing it, will leave its body and enter 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
From about the middle of the Jomon period, other ethnic groups began to arrive in the Japanese islands. Initially, migrants arrive from Southeast Asia (SEA) and South China. Migrants from Southeast Asia mainly speak Austronesian languages. They settle mainly on southern islands the Japanese archipelago and begin to practice agriculture, namely rice growing. Since rice is a very productive crop, it allows a 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 culture of the Neolithic Ainu. 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 the Yayoi period, several ethnic groups from Central Asia arrived in 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 Yamato State is formed, an era of constant war begins between the Yamato State and the Ainu. A study of the DNA of the Japanese showed that the dominant Y-chromosomal haplogroup in the Japanese is haplogroup D, that is, that Y-chromosomal haplogroup that is found in 80% of the Ainu, but is almost absent in Koreans [ ] (haplogroup C3 is also found in the Ainu with a frequency of about 15%). This suggests that the people of the Jomon anthropological type ruled, and not the Yayoi [ ]. It is also important to bear in mind here that there were different groups of Ainu: some were engaged 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 considered as "savages" and the Yamatai state).
The confrontation between the Yamato state and the Ainu lasted for 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 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 described 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 most powerful are the emisi. Men and women they unite randomly, who is the father, who is the son - does not differ. In winter they live in caves, in summer in nests [in trees]. They wear animal skins, drink raw blood, the elder and younger brothers do not trust each other. They climb the mountains like birds, rush through the grass like wild animals. Goodness is forgotten, 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 tribesmen, violate the borders or, having reconnoitred where the fields and mulberries are, rob the people of the Yamato country. If they are attacked, they hide in the grass, if they are pursued, they climb the mountains. From ancient times to this day, they do not obey the lords of Yamato. " Even if we consider that most of this text from "Nihon Shoki" is a standard characteristic 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 was formed what later became known as "samurai". Samurai culture and samurai combat techniques largely go back to Ainu fighting techniques and carry many Ainu elements, and some samurai clans are Ainu in origin, the most famous is the Abe clan.
In 780, the Ainu leader Aterui raised an uprising against the Japanese: on the Kitakami River he managed to defeat a detachment of 6 thousand soldiers sent. Later, the Japanese managed to capture Ateruya by bribery and execute him in 803. In 878, the Ainu revolted and burned the Akita fortress, but then they reached an agreement with the Japanese. In northern Honshu, there was also an Ainu uprising in 1051.
Only in the middle of the 15th century, a small group of samurai led by Takeda Nobuhiro managed to cross over to Hokkaido, which was then called Ezo (here it should be noted that the Japanese called the Ainu ezo - 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 to be the founder of the Matsumae clan, which ruled the island of Hokkaido until 1798, when the government passed into the hands of 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), performances of the Ainu in 1512-1515, in 1525, under the leadership of the leader Tanasyagashi (1529), Tariikonna (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 actions, in essence, were not only the "Ainu struggle against the Japanese," and there were many Japanese among the rebels. It was not so much the struggle of the Ainu against the Japanese as the struggle of the inhabitants of Ezo Island for independence from the central government. It was a struggle for control over profitable trade routes: a trade route to Manchuria passed through Ezo Island.
The most significant of all the speeches was the Syagusian uprising. According to many testimonies, Syagusian did not belong to the Ainu aristocracy - a nisp, but was simply a kind of charismatic leader. Obviously, not all Ainu supported him in the beginning. It should also be borne in mind that throughout the war with the Japanese, the Ainu for the most part operated in separate local groups and never assembled large formations. Through violence and coercion, Syagusian managed to come to power and unite very many Ainu under his rule. southern regions Hokkaido. It is likely that in the course of the implementation of his plans, Syagusyain crossed out some very important principles and constants of the Ainu culture. It can even be argued 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 that he understood that it is absolutely necessary for the Ainu to master modern technologies (in the broad sense of the word), if they want and continue to continue an independent existence.
In this regard, Syagusyan was perhaps one of the most progressive people of the Ainu culture. Initially, Syagusyan's actions were very successful. He managed to almost completely destroy the troops of Matsumae and expel the Japanese from Hokkaido. Tsashi (fortified settlement) Syagusyaina was located in the area of the modern city of Shizunai at the highest point at the confluence of the Shizunai River into the Pacific Ocean. However, his uprising was doomed, like all others, previous and subsequent actions.
Ainu culture is a hunting culture, a culture that has never known large settlements, in which the local group was the largest social unit. The Ainu seriously believed that all the tasks set before them by the outside world could be solved by the forces of one local group. In the Ainu culture, a person meant too much to be used as a cog [ ], which was typical for cultures based on agriculture, and especially 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 leased these plots to tax farmers who were in charge of all the affairs. They recruited assistants: translators and supervisors. Translators and overseers committed many abuses: they cruelly treated 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 "moral correction", the complete lack of rights of the Ainu was combined with the constant humiliation of their ethnic dignity. Petty, reduced to absurdity regulation of life was aimed at paralyzing the will of the Ainu. Many young Ainu were withdrawn from their traditional surroundings and sent by the Japanese to various jobs, for example, the Ainu from central regions Hokkaido were sent to work in the seafields of Kunashira and Iturup (which were also colonized by the Japanese at that time), where they lived in unnaturally crowded conditions, unable to maintain their 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 is trying to open his trading posts on the then independent Ainu Kunashir, the leader of Kunashira - Tukinoe does not allow him to do this, seizes all the goods brought by the Japanese, and sends the Japanese back to Matsumae, in response to this the Japanese declare economic sanctions against Kunashira, and after 8 years of blockade, Tukinoe allows Hidaya to open several trading posts on the island, the population immediately falls into bondage to the Japanese, after a while the Ainu, led by Tukinoe and Ikitoi, revolt against the Japanese and very quickly gain the upper hand, but several Japanese escape. reaches the capital of Matsumae and the Matsumae clan sends troops to suppress the rebellion.
Ainu after the Meiji restoration
After the suppression of the uprising of the Ainu of Kunashir and Menasi, the central shogunal government sent a commission. Central government officials recommended revising the policy towards the aboriginal population: abolish cruel decrees, appoint doctors to each district, teach the Japanese language, agriculture, and gradually introduce them to Japanese customs. So assimilation began. The real colonization of Hokkaido began only after the Meiji restoration that took place in 1868: men were forced to cut their beards, women were forbidden to tattoo their lips and wear traditional Ainu clothes. Also in early XIX centuries, bans were imposed on the conduct of Ainu rituals, in particular, 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 was 845,000 Japanese and only 18,000 Ainu. The period of the most brutal Japaneseization of the Hokkaido Ainu began. In 1899, the Law on the Patronage of the Aboriginal Population was adopted: each Ainu family was entitled to a land plot with an exemption for 30 years from the moment it was received from land and local taxes, as well as from registration payments. The same law allowed passage through the lands of the Ainu only with the approval of the governor, provided for the issuance of seeds to the poor Ainu families, as well as the provision of medical care and the construction of schools in the Ainu villages. In 1937, it was decided 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-consciousness, because all Ainu are completely assimilated and practically do not differ from the Japanese in any way, they often know much less about their culture than the Japanese. anthropologists and do not seek to support it, which is explained by the long-term discrimination of the Ainu. At the same time, the Ainu culture itself is completely at the service of tourism and, in fact, is a kind of theater. The Japanese and the Ainu themselves cultivate exotic things for tourists. The most striking example is 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, according to Emiko Onuki-Tierni, was brought by the Japanese from Switzerland in the 1920s and only then was introduced among the Ainu.
Ainu scholar Emiko Onuki-Tierni also stated: “I agree that Ainu traditions are disappearing and the traditional way cat no longer exists. Ainu often live among the Japanese, or form separate areas / districts within the village / city. I share Simeon's annoyance with some English-language publications that provide inaccurate portrayal of the Ainu, including the misconception that they continue to live in the traditional way. cat.»
Language
The Ainu language is viewed as an isolated language by modern linguistics. The position of the Ainu language in the genealogical classification of languages is still unclear. In this respect, the situation in linguistics is similar to that 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 Ocean. At present, the Ainu have completely switched to Japanese, and the Ainu can be practically considered dead. In 2006, about 200 people out of 30,000 Ainu spoke the Ainu language. Different dialects are well understood. In historical times, the Ainu did not have their own writing, although, perhaps, there was a letter at the end of the Jomon era - the beginning of Yayoi. Currently, the practical Latin or katakana is used to write the Ainu language. Also, the Ainu had their own mythology and rich traditions of oral creativity, including songs, epic poems and legends in poetry and prose.
see also
Notes (edit)
- アイヌ生活実態調査 (unspecified) ... 北海道. Date of treatment August 18, 2013.
- All-Russian population census 2010. Official totals with extended lists by ethnic composition of the population and by regions. : see: COMPOSITION OF THE POPULATION GROUP "PERSONS INDICATING OTHER ANSWERS ABOUT NATIONAL BELONGING" BY SUBJECTS OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION)
- Poisson, B. 2002, The Ainu of Japan, Lerner Publications, Minneapolis, p. 5.
- Michael F. Hammer, Tatiana M. Karafet, Hwayong Park, Keiichi Omoto, Shinji Harihara, Mark Stoneking and Satoshi Horai, "Dual origins of the Japanese: common ground for hunter-gatherer and farmer Y chromosomes," Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 51, Number 1 / January, 2006
- Yali Xue, Tatiana Zerjal, Weidong Bao, Suling Zhu, Qunfang Shu, Jiujin Xu, Ruofu Du, Songbin Fu, Pu Li, Matthew Hurles, Huanming Yang and Chris Tyler-Smith, "Male demography in East Asia: a north-south contrast in human population expansion times, " Genetics 172: 2431-2439 (April 2006)
When, in the 17th century, Russian explorers reached the "farthest east", where, as they thought, the earthly firmament united with the heavenly firmament, and there were a vast 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, like those of Europeans, eyes, with large, protruding noses, similar to the men of southern Russia, to the inhabitants of the Caucasus, to overseas guests from Persia or India, to gypsies, to anyone, just not on the Mongoloids, whom the Cossacks saw everywhere beyond the Urals.
Pathfinders christened them Kurils, Kurilians, endowing them with the epithet "furry", and they themselves called themselves "Ainu", which means "man".
Since then, researchers have been struggling with countless mysteries of this people. But to this day they have not come to a definite conclusion.
Smokers(Kurils, Kuril men, Kuril Kamchadals). This people once inhabited the island of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, as well as southern part Kamchatka from the Bolshoi River in the west and Avacha Bay in the east - this part of the peninsula was called the Kuril land (many confuse it with the Kuril Islands, discovered and developed a little later than Kamchatka).
The Kuril Islands got their name from the name of the people who inhabited them. "Kuru" in the language of these people meant "man", "Kuril" or "Kuril" they were called by the Cossacks, and they called themselves "Ainu", which in its meaning differed little from "kuru". The Kuril or Ainu culture has been traced by archaeologists for at least 7,000 years. They lived not only in the Kuriles, which they called "Kuru-misi", that is, "the land of people", but also on the island of Hokkaido ("Ainu-moshiri"), and in the southern part of Sakhalin. In their appearance, language and customs, they significantly differed both from the Japanese in the south and from the Kamchadals in the north.
Self-name"Ainu" means "man" or "man". The origin of the people remains unclear. Ainu is often referred to as an Australoid, but these assumptions are based on the similarity of facial features, physique, hairline, etc. Recent Research make it possible to assume their close racial ties with the Tungus, Altaians and other inhabitants of the Urals and Siberia. The Ainu appeared on the Japanese islands about 8-7 thousand years ago, creating the Neolithic Jomon culture.
Ainu word ainu(plural also Ainu or ainu utara), from which the Russian Ainu, Ainu are derived, was not previously the self-name of the entire ethnos. This term began to come into wide use during the Edo period (1603-1868), around the 18th century, and from the 19th century. became widespread. Aiku, used with a touch of honor and meaning "man", "noble man", "real man", "a person belonging to the Ainu people", began to be used by representatives of the Ainu ethnos in the face of Japanese colonial expansion as an opposition in order to separate the natives from the Japanese, which they called "sisam". According to one of the Ainu versions, originating in legends, the term ainu comes from the name of the first ancestor of the Ainu - Aioia (Aioina).
Before the spread of the self-designation common to all Ainu, individual local groups of the aboriginal population of the Japanese islands had, however, their own designations, which mainly reflected the names of localities, rivers, etc., that is, the names of habitats. Ayny river basin Sarah, for example, called themselves saru utara- "people of the Saru area", the aborigines who lived on the Soya Peninsula were called soy utara or yaun utara- "inhabitants of Soya" or "inhabitants of the northern part of Hokkaido", the Ainu of the east of the island - utara dude and menashi utara(literally, "people of the Manasi ridge"), etc. In Ainu prayers and oral legends, the word entiu or enthu, also used as a self-name. This term is consistent with the words enju (enzu)- "person" and enju utara- "people" found in the language of the Sakhalin Ainu. For the ancient inhabitants of Hokkaido or the Ainu lands, the Ainu also had a certain general name - kurumse.
In Russian sources of the 17th century, that is, already during the campaign along the Amur of V. Poyarkov, the Ainu began to be called "black people" or kuyami... and on the Okhotsk coast in the 18th century. they were called kuwami... Representatives of the Ainu ethnos, who lived in the south of Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands, were designated by the Russians as "Kurils", "Kurilians", "Shaggy Kurilians". At the same time, among them stood out the "near Kurils" - the Ainu of Kamchatka and the Shumshu Islands, the "distant Kurils" - the Ainu of the Paramushir Island and neighboring islands, and the "Kykh Kurils" - the Ainu population of the Urup, Iturup, and Kunashir Islands. In the middle of the 18th century. Russian explorer of the north-east of Siberia, S. P. Krasheninnikov, suggested that the Ainu of Kamchatka and the Shumshu Islands, who mixed with the Itelmens, should be called "Indirect Kurils", in contrast to the purebred "Direct Kurils" of the Paramushir Island.
S.P. Krasheninnikov believed, and, obviously, rightly, that the name "kurila" is a distorted Ainu word by Russian servicemen kushi[Krasheninnikov, 1948, p. 155]. Most likely, this name comes, as already noted, from the Ainu words ku, chickens, kuru, gur, guru- "human". Probably, it was from these words of the Ainu language that came Russian name islands of the North Pacific Ocean - the Kuril Islands, "islands inhabited by the Kuril Islands", or "Kuril Islands". In due time, following SP Krasheninnikov and GV Steller, the most prominent scientists, experts in the Kuril Islands, geographers DN Anuchin, LS Berg, and others shared this opinion. Modern scientists also share this opinion. The Aleutian Islands may have been named according to the same principle.
Population census Russian Empire In 1897, 1,446 people indicated Ainu as their native language, almost all of them on Sakhalin (at that time all of Sakhalin belonged to Russia, and the Kuriles belonged to Japan; southern Sakhalin went to Japan after the war of 1904-05.)
After the Soviet-Japanese war of 1945, most of the Ainu of Sakhalin and the Kuriles, together with the Japanese, were evicted (partly also voluntarily emigrated) to Japan. On February 7, 1953, K. Omelchenko, authorized by the Council of Ministers of the USSR for the protection of military and state secrets in the press, in a secret order indicated to the chiefs of departments of the USSR Glavlit (censors): "It is prohibited to publish in the open press any information about the Ainu people in the USSR." This ban did not last long; in the early 1970s, the publication of Ainu folklore resumed.
At present, there are almost no Ainu left in Russia, but in Japan, starting from the period of intensive Japanese colonization of the island of Hokkaido, the Ainu were considered "barbarians", "savages" and social marginalized (Japanese concept in Japanese, ebisu, used to denote the Ainu, also means "barbarian, savage"). In order to gain positions in society, they actively Japaneseized themselves, hid their origins, adopted Japanese names, language and culture, and their numbers throughout the 19th-20th centuries. has been sharply reduced and is declining.
The Ainu language does not belong to any language family (isolate); At present, the Ainu of Hokkaido switched to Japanese, the Ainu of Russia - to Russian, and the Ainu can practically be considered dead (very few people of the older generation in Hokkaido still remember the language a little. By 1996, no more than 15 people were fully proficient in Ainu). The Ainu did not have their own writing, but there were rich traditions of oral creativity, including songs, epic poems and legends in poetry and prose. Some researchers (Edo Nyland) compare the language of the Ainu and Basque.
Several times I was convinced that many do not know who the Ainu are - the indigenous inhabitants of the Kuril Islands. Therefore, I offer this article.
Needless to say, Mercator was persecuted by the church, but this is more about his Septentrionalium Terrarum Descriptio map. ancient land, the present Antarctica, our forbidden past.
Here is a map of 1512, on it, of course, there is already Germany, but the territory of Russia is also clearly marked, which borders on the German conquered lands. The territory of Russia there is designated not by Tartary as usual, but in general, together with Muscovy - Rvssiae, Rusy, Rosa, Russia. The current, by the way, the Barents Sea was then called the Murmansk
Here is a map of 1663, here the territory of Muscovy is highlighted in white, and through it there are inscriptions, the most prominent
this is Pars Europa Russia Moskovia on the white part of where today's Europe is
Siberia In the red territory, it is also called by the Greeks and pro-Westerners Tartaria, Tartaria
Below, on the green Tartaria Vagabundorum Independens, where Mongolia and Tibet were previously and now, which were under the protectorate and protection of Russia, from China.
Through the green and red regions of Tartaria Magna, Great Tartary, that is, Russia
Well, at the bottom right, there is a yellow area Tartaria Chinensis, Sinarium, China Extra Muros, a border and trade territory, also controlled by Russia.
Below is a light green area of Imperum China, China, it is easy to imagine how relatively small it was then and how much land, under Peter and the Romanov Jews in general, went to them.
Below is the yellow area Magni Mogolis Imperium India, Indian Empire. etc.
This myth was necessary for the Jews who carried out a bloody baptism in order to justify the huge number of Slavs they killed (after all, in the then Kiev region alone, nine out of twelve million people, Slavs, were destroyed, which is also proved by archaeologists who confirm the fact of a sharp decline in the population, villages, villages, at the time of baptism), and wash your hands with this lie before the people. Well, most of the current cattle, pickled and zombified in advance from their school years by the state program, they still believe in them and figure it out, at least just for themselves in no hurry
Somewhere in the middle of this time, these centuries, while the church turmoil was going on in Russia and many peoples remained abandoned, one of them is the Ains, the inhabitants of what was once our Far Eastern Islands.
Now, there is reason to believe that not only in Japan, but also on the territory of Russia, there is a part of this ancient indigenous people. According to preliminary data from the last census, held in October 2010, there are more than 100 Ains in our country. The fact itself is unusual, because until recently it was believed that the Ainu lived only in Japan. They guessed about this, but on the eve of the census, employees of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences noticed that, despite the absence of Russian peoples in the official list, some of our fellow citizens persistently continue to consider themselves Ainu and have good reasons for this.
As studies have shown, the Ains, or Kamchadal smokers, did not disappear anywhere, they simply did not want to recognize them for many years. And yet Stepan Krasheninnikov, a researcher of Siberia and Kamchatka (18th century), described them as Kamchadal Kuriles. The very name "Ainu" comes from their word "man" or "worthy man" and is associated with military operations. And according to one of the representatives of this nationality in an interview with the famous journalist M. Dolgikh, the Ainu fought with the Japanese for 650 years. It turns out that this is the only nation that remains today, who from ancient times held back the occupation, resisted the aggressor - the Japanese, who were, in fact, Koreans, who moved to the islands and formed another state.
It has been scientifically established that about 7 thousand years ago the Ainu inhabited the north of the Japanese archipelago, the Kuriles and part of Sakhalin and, according to some sources, part of Kamchatka and even the lower reaches of the Amur. The Japanese who came from the south gradually assimilated and drove the Ainu to the north of the archipelago - to Hokkaido and the southern Kuriles.
According to experts, in Japan the Ainu were considered "barbarians", "savages" and social outcasts. The hieroglyph used to denote the Ainu means "barbarian", "savage", now the Japanese also call them "hairy Ainu" for which the Ainu dislike the Japanese. At the end of the XIX century. about one and a half thousand Ainu lived in Russia. After the Second World War, they were partly evicted, partly they left along with the Japanese population. Some of them mingled with the Russian population of the Far East.
Outwardly, the representatives of the Ainu people very little resemble their closest neighbors - the Japanese, Nivkhs and Itelmens. The Ains are the White Race.
According to the Kamchadal Kurils themselves, all the names of the islands of the southern ridge were given by the Ainu tribes who once inhabited these territories. By the way, it is wrong to think that the names of the Kuril Islands, Kuril Lake, etc. arose from hot springs or volcanic activity. It's just that the Kurils, or Kuril people, live here, and "kuru" in Ainu is the people. It should be noted that this version destroys the already flimsy basis of the Japanese claims to our Kuril Islands. Even if the name of the ridge comes from our Ainu. This was confirmed during the expedition to the island. Matua. There is the Ainu bay, where the oldest Ainu camp was discovered. From the artifacts it became clear that from about 1600 they were precisely the Ainu.
Therefore, according to experts, it is very strange to say that the Ainu have never been in the Kuriles, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, as the Japanese are doing now, assuring everyone that the Ainu live only in Japan, so they supposedly need to give up the Kuril Islands. This is purely untrue. In Russia, there are the Ainu - an indigenous people who also have the right to consider these islands as their ancestral lands.
American anthropologist S. Lauryn Brace, from Michigan State University in the magazine "Horizons of Science", No. 65, September-October 1989. writes: "The typical Ainu is easy to distinguish from the Japanese: he has lighter skin, thicker hair, a beard, which is unusual for Mongoloids, and a more prominent nose."
Brace studied about 1,100 crypts of Japanese, Ainu and other Asian ethnic groups and came to the conclusion that representatives of the privileged class of samurai in Japan are actually descendants of the Ainu, and not Yayoi (Mongoloids), the ancestors of most modern Japanese. Brace goes on to write: “... this explains why the facial features of the ruling class are so often different from those of today's Japanese. Samurai - the descendants of the Ainu acquired such influence and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with the ruling circles and brought the blood of the Ainu into them, while the rest of the Japanese population was mainly the descendants of the Yayoi.
It should also be noted that in addition to archaeological and other features, the language has been partially preserved. There is a dictionary of the Kuril language in the "Description of the Land of Kamchatka" by S. Krasheninnikov. In Hokkaido, the dialect spoken by the Ainu is called saru, in Sakhalin it is called reichishka. The Ainu language differs from Japanese in syntax, phonology, morphology, and vocabulary. Although there have been attempts to prove that they have family ties, the overwhelming majority of modern scholars reject the assumption that the relationship between languages goes beyond the contact relationship, involving the mutual borrowing of words in both languages. In fact, no attempt to link the Ainu language to any other language has received widespread acceptance, so it is now assumed that the Ainu language is a separate language.
In principle, according to the well-known Russian political scientist and journalist P. Alekseev, the problem of the Kuril Islands can be solved politically and economically. To do this, it is necessary to allow the Ainu (evicted by the Soviet government to Japan in 1945) to return from Japan to the land of their ancestors (including their original area - the Amur region, Kamchatka, Sakhalin and all the Kuriles, creating at least following the example of the Japanese (it is known that the parliament Japan only in 2008 did they recognize the Ainu as an independent national minority), the Russian dispersed autonomy of an "independent national minority" with the participation of the indigenous Ainu of Russia. We have neither people nor funds for the development of Sakhalin and the Kuriles, but the Ainu do. The Ainu who migrated from Japan, according to experts, can give an impetus to the economy of the Russian Far East, precisely by forming not only on the Kuril Islands, but also within Russia, a national autonomy.
Japan, according to P. Alekseev, will be out of work, tk. there the displaced Ainu will disappear (displaced pure Japanese are negligible), and here they can settle not only in the southern part of the Kuril Islands, but throughout their original range, our Far East, eliminating the emphasis on the southern Kuriles. Since many of the Ainu deported to Japan were our citizens, it is possible to use the Ainu as allies against the Japanese, restoring the dying Ainu language. The Ainu were not allies of Japan and never will be, but they can become allies of Russia. But unfortunately this ancient people we ignore it to this day. With our pro-Western government, which feeds Chechnya for a gift, which deliberately flooded Russia with people of Caucasian nationality, opened up unhindered entry for emigrants from China, and those who are clearly not interested in preserving the Peoples of Russia should not think that they will pay attention to the Ains. only civil initiative will help here.
As noted by the leading researcher of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Academician K. Cherevko, Japan exploited these islands. In their law there is such a thing as "development through trade exchange". And all the Ainu - both conquered and unconquered - were considered Japanese, were subject to their emperor. But it is known that even before that, the Ainu paid taxes to Russia. True, this was of an irregular nature.
Thus, it is safe to say that Kurile Islands belong to the Ainu, but, one way or another, Russia must proceed from international law... According to him, i.e. according to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan abandoned the islands. There are simply no legal grounds for revising the documents signed in 1951 and other agreements today. But such matters are resolved only in the interests of big politics, and I repeat that only their fraternal people, that is, we, can help this people from the outside.
