The Ainu are a white race. The mystery of the Ainu, the aborigines of Japan

In the heat of the ongoing dispute between Russia and Japan for the right to own the Kuril Islands, it is somehow forgotten that the true owners of these lands are the Ainu. Few people know that this mysterious people created one of the most ancient cultures in our world. According to some scientists, the Ainu culture is older than the Egyptian one. The average person knows that the Ainu are an oppressed minority in Japan. But few people know that there are Ainu in Russia, where they also do not feel comfortable. Who are the Ainu, what kind of people are they? What is their difference from other peoples, to whom they are related on this Earth in origin, culture and language.

The oldest population of the Japanese archipelago

Ainu, or Ainu, means literally "man". The names of many other peoples, such as, for example, “nanay”, “Mansi”, “hun”, “nivkh”, “Turk” also mean “man”, “people”, “people”. The Ainu are the oldest population of the Japanese islands of Hokkaido and a number of nearby islands. They once lived on lands that now belong to Russia: in the lower reaches of the Amur, i.e. on the mainland, in the south of Kamchatka, on Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Currently, the Ainu remain mainly only in Japan, where, according to official statistics, there are about 25,000 people, and according to unofficial data, more than 200,000. There they are mainly employed in the tourism business, serving and entertaining tourists hungry for exotic things. In Russia, according to the results of the 2010 census, only 109 Ainu were recorded, of which 94 Ainu were in the Kamchatka Territory.

Mysteries of origin

Europeans who encountered the Ainu in the 17th century were surprised by their appearance. Unlike the Asian Mongoloids, i.e. with a Mongolian fold of the eyelid, sparse facial hair, the Ainu were very “hairy and shaggy”, had thick black hair, large beards, high but wide noses. Their Australoid facial features were similar to European ones in a number of ways. Despite living in a temperate climate, in the summer the Ainu wore loincloths, like equatorial southerners. Existing hypotheses of scientists about the origin of the Ainu as a whole can be combined into three groups.

The Ainu are related to the Indo-European/Caucasian race- J. Batchelor, S. Murayama and others adhered to this theory. But recent DNA research has decisively removed this concept from the agenda of scientists. They showed that no genetic similarity with Indo-Europeans and Caucasian populations was found among the Ainu. Only the “hairy” resemblance to the Armenians: the world maximum hairiness among Armenians and Ainu is 6 points. Compare photos - very similar. The world minimum for beard and mustache growth, by the way, belongs to the Nivkhs. In addition, Armenians and Ainu are brought together by another external similarity: the consonance of the ethnonyms Ay - Ain (Armenians - Ay, Armenia - Hayastan).

The Ainu are related to the Austronesians and came to the Japanese Islands from the south- this theory was put forward by Soviet ethnography (author L.Ya. Sternberg). But this theory was not confirmed either, because it has now been clearly proven that the Ainu culture in Japan is much older than the culture of the Austronesians. However, the second part of the hypothesis - about the southern ethnogenesis of the Ainu - has survived due to the fact that the latest linguistic, genetic and ethnographic data suggest that the Ainu may well be distant relatives of the Miao-Yao people living in Southeast Asia and Southern China.

The Ainu are related to Paleo-Asian peoples and came to the Japanese Islands from the north and/or from Siberia- this point of view is held mainly by Japanese anthropologists. As you know, the theory of the origin of the Japanese themselves also starts from the mainland, from the Tungus-Manchu tribes of the Altai family of Southern Siberia. "Paleo-Asian" means "ancient Asian". This term was proposed by the Russian researcher of the peoples of the Far East, Academician L. I. Shrenk. In 1883, in his monograph “On the Aliens of the Amur Region,” Schrenk presented an interesting hypothesis: once in ancient times, almost all of Asia was inhabited by peoples who differed from the representatives of the Mongoloid race (Mongols, Turks, etc.) and spoke their own special languages.

Then the Paleo-Asians were supplanted by the Mongoloid Asians. And only in the Far East and Northeast Asia were the descendants of Paleo-Asians left: the Yukaghirs of Kolyma, the Chukchi of Chukotka, the Koryaks and Itelmens of Kamchatka, the Nivkhs at the mouth of the Amur and on Sakhalin, the Ainu in northern Japan and on Sakhalin, the Eskimos and Aleuts of Komandor and Aleut and other regions Arctic. The Japanese consider the Ainu to be mestizos of Australoids and Paleo-Asians.

Ancient inhabitants of Japan

According to the main anthropological characteristics, the Ainu are very different from the Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Mongols-Buryat-Kalmyks, Nivkhs-Kamchadals-Itelmens, Polynesians, Indonesians, aborigines of Australia and, in general, the Far East. It is also known that the Ainu are only close to the people of the Jomon era, who are the direct ancestors of the Ainu. Although it is unknown where the Ainu came from to the Japanese islands, it has been proven 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 southern third of Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands.

This has been proven by archaeological excavations and Ainu names of places: Tsushima - “distant”, Fuji - the deity of the hearth of the Ain, Tsukuba (tu ku pa) - “the head of two bows”, Yamatai - “the place where the sea cuts the land”, Paramushir - “wide island”, Urup - salmon, Iturup - jellyfish, Sakhalin (Sakharen) - wavy land in Ainu. It has also been established that the Ainu appeared on the Japanese islands around 13 thousand years BC. and created a very highly developed Neolithic culture of Jomon (12-3 thousand years BC). Thus, Ainu ceramics are considered the oldest in the world - 12 thousand years old.

Some believe that the legendary Yamatai state of the Chinese chronicles is the ancient Ainu state. But the Ainu are an unliterate people, their culture is the culture of hunters, fishermen and gatherers of the primitive system, who lived dispersedly in small settlements at a great distance from each other, who did not know agriculture and cattle breeding, although they already had onions and ceramics. They practically did not engage in agriculture or nomadic cattle breeding. The Ainu created an amazing system of life activity: in order to maintain harmony and balance in the natural environment, they regulated the birth rate, preventing population explosions.

Thanks to this, they never created large villages, and their main units were small settlements (in Ainu - utar/utari - “people living in one place near one river”). They, gatherers, fishermen and hunters, needed a very large territory to survive, so the small villages of the Neolithic primitive Ainu were far removed from each other. Even in ancient times, this type of economy forced the Ainu to settle scatteredly.

Ainu as an object of colonization

From the middle of the Jomon era (8-7 thousand years BC), groups from southeast Asia who spoke Austronesian languages ​​began to arrive on the Japanese islands. Then they were joined by colonists from southern China, who brought the culture of agriculture, primarily rice - a very productive crop that allowed a very large number of people to live in a small area. At the end of Jomon (3 thousand BC), Altai-speaking pastoralists arrived on the Japanese Islands, who gave rise to the Korean and Japanese ethnic groups. The established state of Yamato is pushing back the Ainu. It is known that both Yamatai and Yamato viewed the Ainu as savages and barbarians. The tragic struggle of the Ainu for survival went on for 1500 years. The Ainu were forced to migrate to Sakhalin, Amur, Primorye and the Kuril Islands.

Ainu - the first samurai

Militarily, the Japanese were inferior to the Ainu for a very long time. Travelers of the 17th-19th centuries. noted the amazing modesty, tact and honesty of the Ainu. I.F. Krusenstern wrote: “The Ainu people are meek, modest, trusting, polite, respectful of property... unselfishness, frankness are their usual qualities. They are truthful and do not tolerate deception.” But this characteristic was given to the Ainu when they had lost all fighting spirit after only three centuries of Russian colonization. Meanwhile, the Ainu were a very warlike people in the past. For 1.5-2 thousand years they heroically fought for the freedom and independence of their homeland - Ezo (Hokkaido).

Their military detachments were led by leaders, who in peacetime were the heads of villages - “utar”. Utar had a paramilitary organization, like the Cossacks. Among the weapons, the Ainu loved swords and bows. In battle, they used both armor-piercing arrows and spiked arrowheads (to better cut through armor or get the arrow stuck in the body). There were also Z-shaped tips, apparently adopted from the Manchus/Jurjens. The Japanese adopted the art of combat, the samurai code of honor, the cult of the sword, and the ritual of hara-kiri from the warlike, and therefore invincible, Ainu. The Ainu swords were short, 50 cm long, adopted from the Tonzi, also warlike aborigines of Sakhalin, conquered by the Ainu. The Ainu warrior - dzhangin - famously fought with two swords, not recognizing shields. It is interesting that in addition to swords, the Ainu wore two daggers on their right hip ("cheyki-makiri" and "sa-makiri"). Cheiki-makiri was a ritual knife for making sacred shavings "inau" and performing the ritual of ritual suicide - hara-kiri. The Japanese, only by adopting many of the techniques of war and the spirit of a warrior from the Ainu, and finally inventing cannons, turned the situation around and established their dominance.

Almost all researchers, including Russians, note that Japanese domination in Ezo (Hokkaido), despite the injustice of any colonial administration, was not as savage and cruel as on the northern islands subject to Russia, pointing to waves of flights Ainu from Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and other lands of Russia to Japan, Hokkaido-Ezo.

Ainu in Russia

Ainu migrations to these territories began, according to some sources, in the 13th century. How they lived before the arrival of the Russians is a virtually unexplored question. The Russian colonization of the Ainu was no different from the Siberian conquest: pogrom, conquest, taxation. The abuses were also of the same type: repeated imposition and knocking out of yasak by ever new detachments of Cossacks, and so on. The Ainu, a proud people, flatly refused to pay tribute and accept Russian citizenship. By the end of the 18th century. The fierce resistance of the Ainu was broken.

Doctor Dobrotvorsky wrote that in the middle of the 19th century. in Southern Sakhalin near Busse Bay there were 8 large Ainu settlements, with at least 200 people in each. After 25 years there was not a single village. Such an outcome was not uncommon in the Russian area of ​​Ainu villages. Dobrotvorsky saw the reasons for the disappearance in devastating wars, low birth rates “due to the infertility of the Ainok” and diseases: syphilis, scurvy, smallpox, which “decimated” small nations. Under Soviet rule, the Ainu were subjected to political persecution - before and after the war they were declared “Japanese spies.” The most “smart” Ainu corresponded with the Nivkhs. Nevertheless, they were caught and moved to Commanders and other places where they assimilated, for example, with the Aleuts and other peoples.

“Nowadays, an Aino, usually without a hat, barefoot and in ports tucked above the knees, meeting you on the road, curtsies to you and at the same time looks affectionately, but sadly and painfully, like a loser, and as if he wants to apologize for the beard he has grown a big one, but he still hasn’t made a career for himself,” wrote the humanist A.P. with great bitterness. Chekhov in his "Sakhalin Island". Nowadays there are 109 Ainu people left in Russia. Of these, there are practically no purebreds. Chekhov, Kruzenshtern, and the Polish exile Bronislaw Pilsudski, a voluntary ethnographer and patriot of the Ainu and other small peoples of the region, are a small handful of those who raised their voices in defense of this people in Russia.

Ainu in Japan

In Japan, according to unofficial data, there are 200,000 Ainu. On June 6, 2008, the Japanese Diet recognized the Ainu as a separate national minority. Now various events are held here, and government assistance is provided to this people. The life of the Ainu in material terms is practically no different from the life of the Japanese. But the original Ainu culture practically serves only tourism and, one might say, acts as a kind of ethnotheater. The Japanese and the Ainu themselves exploit ethno-exotica for the benefit of tourists. Do they have a future if there is no language, ancient, guttural, but native, thousand-year-old, and if the spirit is lost? Once warlike and proud. A single language as the code of the nation, and the proud spirit of self-sufficient fellow tribesmen - these are the two fundamental bases of the nation-people, two wings that lift it into flight.

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

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

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

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

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

Modern anthropologists distinguish two ancestors of the Ainu: the first were tall, while the second were very short. The former are similar to the finds in Aoshima and date back to the Late Stone Age, the latter are similar to the skeletal finds in Miyato.

Economy and society

Ainu religion and mythology

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

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

The Ainu refused to be photographed or sketched by researchers. This is explained by the fact that the Ainu believed that photographs and various images of them, especially naked or with little clothing, took away part of the life of the person depicted in the photograph. There are several cases of confiscation by the Ainu of sketches made by researchers studying the Ainu. By our time, this superstition has become obsolete and took place only at the end of the 19th century.

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

Fight against invaders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ainu after the Meiji Restoration

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

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

On June 6, 2008, the Japanese parliament recognized the Ainu as an independent national minority, which, however, did not change the situation in any way and did not lead to an increase in self-awareness, because all the Ainu are completely assimilated and are practically no different from the Japanese. They often know much less about their culture than Japanese anthropologists and do not strive to support it, which is explained by long-term discrimination against the Ainu. At the same time, Ainu culture itself is completely put at the service of tourism and, in fact, represents a type of theater. The Japanese and the Ainu themselves cultivate exoticism for the needs of tourists. 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 was, according to Emiko Onuki-Tierney, brought by the Japanese from Switzerland in the 1920s and only then introduced among the Ainu.

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

Language

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

See also

Notes

1. アイヌ生活実態調査 (undefined) . 北海道. Retrieved August 18, 2013.
2. All-Russian Population Census 2010.  Official results with expanded lists by the ethnic composition of the population and regions. : see: COMPOSITION OF THE POPULATION GROUP “PERSONS WHO INDICATED OTHER ANSWERS ABOUT NATIONAL BELIEF” BY ENTITIES OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION)
3. Pallas P. S. Comparative dictionaries of all languages and adverbs. - reprint. ed. - M., 2014. - P. 45.
4. Arutyunov S. A. Ainy.
5. Poisson, B. 2002, The Ainu of Japan, Lerner Publications, Minneapolis, p.5.
6. 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
7. 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)
8. Atsushi Tajima, Masanori Hayami, Katsushi Tokunaga, Takeo Juji, Masafumi Matsuo, Sangkot Marzuki, Keiichi Omoto and Satoshi Horai, "Genetic origins of the Ainu inferred from combined DNA analyzes of maternal and paternal lineages," Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 49, Number 4 / April, 2004
9. R. Spencer Wells et al., "The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2001 August 28; 98(18): 10244-10249
10. Ivan Nasidze, Dominique Quinque, Isabelle Dupanloup, Richard Cordaux, Lyudmila Kokshunova, and Mark Stoneking, "Genetic Evidence for the Mongolian Ancestry of Kalmyks," American Journal of Physical Anthropology 126:000-000 (2005)

“...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 his 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 person". 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. The Europeans, who encountered the Ainu only in the 17th century, were struck 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, an unusual thick and long hair on their heads, they wore huge beards (often reaching the waist) and mustaches (they had to be held 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 after the 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 in ten settlements, restricted their movement around the island, fought in every possible way against the traditional culture, traditional beliefs of the Ainu, and tried to force the Ainu to live in the Japanese way.

And in 1933, all the Ainu were “converted” to Japanese subjects, assigned Japanese surnames, and the younger generation subsequently 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

What do we know about this unique Russian people AIN - AINOS - AIN - AINU?
AINUMOSIRI - land of the Ainu.

View map of Russia 1871: http://atlases.narod.ru/maps/atl1871/map61.djvu
http://atlases.narod.ru/maps/atl1871/map03.djvu

There was a time when the first Ainu descended from
Countries of clouds to earth, fell in love with her, took up
hunting and fishing to eat, dance
and have children. (Ainu legend)

Aino are truthful and do not tolerate deception.
Kruzenshtern was absolutely delighted with them;
listing their wonderful spiritual qualities,
he concludes: "Such truly rare qualities,
which they owe not to elevated education,
but nature alone aroused me
that feeling that I consider this people to be the best
of all the others that are known to me to this day"
(A.P. Chekhov)

A.P. Chekhov said: “The Ainu are a meek people,
modest, good-natured, trusting, sociable,
polite, respectful of property; brave on the hunt
and... even intelligent.”

In 1853 N.V. Busse recorded his conversation
with the old Aino people who remembered the time
their independence and said:
"Sakhalin is the land of the Ain, there is no Japanese land on Sakhalin."

The first Japanese colonists were fugitives or
those who visited foreign land and were expelled from Japan for this.
(A.P. Chekhov)

...among the Ainu villages... – The Ainu are the oldest population of Japan
islands (known there since the 2nd millennium BC), Kuril Islands and
South Sakhalin. Racially they are close to Caucasians,
linguistic connections have not been clearly identified. At the time described, the number
the Ainu on Sakhalin numbered up to 3 thousand people,
on the island of Hokkaido - up to one and a half million.
They are now almost extinct. (Nikolai Pavlovich Zadornov)

What did the Ainu give to Russia? This is Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands!
The Ainu called themselves by various tribal names - “soya-untara”, “Chuvka-untara”. The word “Ainu”, by which they are accustomed to be called, is not at all the self-name of this people; it only means “man”. The Japanese called the Ainu the word "ebisu".

What we know about the Ainu is that they are white-skinned people; anthropologists classify them as depegmented Australoids, like the black-skinned Papuans, who are bearded, unlike the Japanese Mongoloids. Very similar to Russians according to explorers. After all, the external similarity between Russian explorers and the Ainu was simply amazing. It even deceived the Japanese. In the first messages from the Japanese, the “RUSSIANS” in Hokaido-Matmae are referred to as “RED-RED AIN”.

AINUMOSIRI - land of the Ainu.

The Ainu accepted Russian citizenship, and their lands became part of Russia - Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and Matsmai - Iesso - Hokkaido. In those days, Hokkaido - MATSMAI was considered the largest and southernmost island of the Kuril Islands.

Russian decrees of 1779, 1786 and 1799 indicate that the inhabitants of the southern Kuril Islands - the Ainu - had been Russian subjects since 1768 (in 1779 they were exempt from paying tribute - yasak) to the treasury, and the southern Kuril Islands were considered Russia as its own territory.

The fact of the Russian citizenship of the Kuril Ainu and the Russian ownership of the entire Kuril ridge is also confirmed by the Instruction of the Irkutsk Governor A.I. Bril to the chief commander of Kamchatka M.K. Bem in 1775, and the “yasash table” - the chronology of the collection in the 18th century. c Ainu - inhabitants of the Kuril Islands, including the southern ones (including the island of Matmai-Hokkaido), the mentioned tribute-yasaka.

In the Ainu language, Sakhalin - "SAKHAREN MOSIRI" - "wave-shaped land", Iturup means "best place", Kunashir - Simushir means "a piece of land - a black island", Shikotan - Shiashkotan (word endings "shir" and "kotan" mean respectively "plot of land" and "settlement").

With their good nature, honesty and modesty, the Ainu made the best impression on Krusenstern. When they were given gifts for the fish they delivered, they took them in their hands, admired them and then returned them. It was with difficulty that the Ainu managed to convince them that this was being given to them as property. In relation to the Ainu, Catherine the Second also prescribed to be kind to the Ainu and not to tax them, in order to alleviate the situation of the new Russian sub-South Kuril Ainu.

Decree of Catherine II to the Senate on the exemption from taxes of the Ainu, the population of the Kuril Islands who accepted Russian citizenship in 1779.

Eya I.V. commands that the shaggy Kurilians - the Ainu, brought into citizenship on the distant islands - should be left free and no tax should be demanded from them, and henceforth the peoples living there should not be forced to do so, but try to continue what has already been done with them by friendly treatment and affection for the expected benefit in trades and trade acquaintance.

The first cartographic description of the Kuril Islands, including their southern part, was made in 1711-1713. according to the results of the expedition of I. Kozyrevsky, who collected information about most of the Kuril Islands, including Iturup, Kunashir and even the “Twenty-Second” Kuril Island MATMAI (Matsmai), which later became known as Hokkaido.

It was precisely established that the Kuril Islands were not subordinate to any foreign state. In the report of I. Kozyrevsky in 1713. it was noted that the South Kuril Ainu “live autocratically and are not subject to citizenship and trade freely.”

It should be especially noted that Russian explorers, in accordance with the policy of the Russian state, having discovered new lands inhabited by the Ainu, immediately announced the inclusion of these lands into Russia, began their study and economic development, carried out missionary activities, and imposed tribute (yasak) on the local population.

During the 18th century, all the Kuril Islands, including their southern part, became part of Russia. This is confirmed by the statement made by the head of the Russian embassy N. Rezanov during negotiations with the commissioner of the Japanese government K. Toyama in 1805 that “north of Matsmaya (Hokkaido) all lands and waters belong to the Russian emperor and that the Japanese did not extend their possessions further."

The 18th-century Japanese mathematician and astronomer Honda Toshiaki wrote that “... the Ainu look at the Russians as their own fathers,” since “true possessions are won by virtuous deeds. Countries forced to submit to force of arms remain, at heart, unconquered.”

By the end of the 80s. In the 18th century, enough evidence of Russian activity in the Kuril Islands was accumulated so that, in accordance with the norms of international law of that time, the entire archipelago, including its southern islands, belonged to Russia, which was recorded in Russian state documents. First of all, we should mention the imperial decrees (recall that at that time the imperial or royal decree had the force of law) of 1779, 1786 and 1799, which confirmed the Russian citizenship of the South Kuril Ainu (then called the “shaggy Kurilians”), and the islands themselves were declared possession Russia.

In 1945, the Japanese evicted all the Ainu from Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands to Hokkaido, while for some reason they left on Sakhalin a labor army of Koreans brought by the Japanese and the USSR had to accept them as stateless persons, then the Koreans moved to Central Asia, and now Russian Federation, few people are not familiar with this hardworking ethnic group, even Luzhkov’s deputy is Korean.

The fate of the AIN in Hokkaido - MATSMAI is hidden behind seven seals, like the fate of the Slavs - the LUGIANs in Germany.
Information reaches us that there are about 20 thousand Ainu people left, that there is an intensified process of Japaneseization of the Ainu, whether young people know the Ainu language is a big question, just like with the Slavs - the Lusatians, about whom we know that the Lusatian Slavic schools in Germany are being closed under any pretext .

According to the 1897 census of the Russian Empire, 1,446 people on Sakhalin indicated Ainu as their native language. The Ainu language does not belong to any language family (isolate); Currently, the Ainu of Hokkaido have switched to Japanese, the Ainu of Russia - to Russian, very few people of the older generation in Hokkaido - Matsmai still remember the language a little. By 1996, there were no more than 15 people who fully spoke Ainu. At the same time, speakers of dialects from different areas practically do not understand each other. The Ainu did not have their own writing, but there was a rich tradition of oral creativity, including songs, epic poems and stories in verse and prose.

Russia we can recall historical examples of how the Ainu of northern Hokkaido - Matsmaya at the end of the 18th - 1st half of the 19th centuries swore allegiance to the Russian government. And if so, then in response to the demand of the “northern territories” Russia can put forward a counter-demand of the “southern territories”.

Although the Japanese organized a real genocide of the Ainu, justifying their actions by saying that its representatives were supposedly “ebisu” (savages) and “teki” (beasts). However, the Ainu were not “barbarians”. Their Jomon culture is one of the oldest in the world. According to various sources, it appeared 5-8 thousand years ago, when no one had ever heard of Japanese civilization. According to many ethnographers, it was from the Ainu that the Japanese adopted many of their customs and cultural features, from the seppuku ritual to the sacred Shinto complex and imperial attributes, including jasper pendants. Perhaps the Japanese were brought to the Ainu islands - AINUMOSIRI, as labor for agriculture, since the Ainu themselves did not engage in agriculture. So, for example, the Mongols have the ends of their shoes turned upside down, since a Mongol cannot disturb the land, and the people of Daura (Dauria-Chita region) were engaged in agriculture for the Mongols, so the Daurs were evicted by the Chinese so that Russia would not have the support of this agricultural people.

From the 8th century The Japanese did not stop slaughtering the Ainu, who fled from extermination to the north - to Hokkaido - Matmai, the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin. Unlike the Japanese, the Russian Cossacks did not kill them. After several skirmishes, normal friendly relations were established between the similar-looking blue-eyed and bearded aliens on both sides. And although the Ainu flatly refused to pay the yasak tax, no one killed them for it, unlike the Japanese. However, the turning point for the fate of this people was 1945. Today only 12 of its representatives live in Russia, but there are many “mestizo” from mixed marriages.

The destruction of the “bearded people” - the Ainu in Japan stopped only after the fall of militarism in 1945. However, cultural genocide continues to this day.

It is significant that no one knows the exact number of Ainu on the Japanese islands. The fact is that in “tolerant” Japan there is often still a rather arrogant attitude towards representatives of other nationalities. And the Ainu were no exception: their exact number is impossible to determine, since according to Japanese censuses they are not listed either as a people or as a national minority.

According to scientists, the total number of Ainu and their descendants does not exceed 16 thousand people, of which no more than 300 are purebred representatives of the Ainu people, the rest are “mestizo”. In addition, the Ainu are often left with the least prestigious jobs. And the Japanese are actively pursuing a policy of assimilation and there is no talk of any “cultural autonomy” for them.

People from mainland Asia came to Japan around the same time that people first reached America. The first settlers of the Japanese islands - YOMON (ancestors of the AIN) reached Japan twelve thousand years ago, and YOUI (ancestors of the Japanese) came from Korea in the last two and a half millennia.

Work has been done in Japan that gives hope that genetics can resolve the question of who the ancestors of the Japanese are. Along with the Japanese living on the central islands of Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu, anthropologists distinguish two other modern ethnic groups: the Ainu from the island of Hokkaido in the north and the Ryukyu people living mainly on the southernmost island of Kinawa.

One theory is that these two groups, the Ainu and Ryukyuan, are descendants of the original Yomon settlers who once occupied all of Japan and were later driven from the central islands north to Hokkaido and south to Okinawa by the Youi newcomers from Korea.

Mitochondrial DNA research conducted in Japan only partially supports this hypothesis: it showed that modern Japanese from the central islands have much in common genetically with modern Koreans, with whom they share much more of the same and similar mitochondrial types than with the Ainu and Ryukuyans.

However, it is also shown that there are practically no similarities between the Ainu and Ryukyu people. Age assessments have shown that both of these ethnic groups have accumulated certain mutations over the past twelve thousand years - this suggests that they are indeed descendants of the original Yeomon people, but also proves that the two groups have not had contact with each other since then.

Most modern Japanese living in Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu share many mitochondrial sequences with modern Koreans, which proves their maternal kinship with the Yōi and indicates secondary, relatively recent migrations. However, among the Japanese there are quite a few who are descendants of the Yomon and are closely related on the maternal side to either the Ryukyu or the Ainu.

Militarily, the Japanese were inferior to the Ainu for a very long time, and only after several centuries of constant skirmishes, what was later called “samurai” was formed from the Japanese military detachments defending the northern borders of Yamato. Samurai culture and samurai fighting techniques largely go back to Ainu fighting techniques and contain many Ainu elements.

On my own behalf, I would suggest to the leadership of Russia and Japan in the “northern territories” in Russia and in the “southern territories” - Hokkaido - Matsmai, that each of the states create autonomy for the Ainu - Ainu and allow the Ainu from both autonomies to move freely across state borders between Russia and Japan and allow the Ainu to trade seafood, and not poachers who export the entire catch to Japan.

Russia is the peoples and their lands that constitute it,
and Russians are the “cement” that unites the peoples of Russia.

*************From the discussion of the material about the Ainah******************

Andrey Belkovsky AINY - Ainumosiri

A good article, but it’s worth finding out more about the Ainu, especially about their life as part of Russia-USSR.

There is a good book by Taxami “Who are you, Ainu” and “Peoples of Siberia” edited by Levin (1959 IMHO)

The Ainu and their fellow tribesmen were spread rot by both the Japanese and ours (ours cleared southern Kamchatka, Sakhalin, and especially the Kuril Islands of the Ainu - after the 18th century, it was the Kuril Islands that were the core of the Ainumoshiri).

I even reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (on the problems of the Southern Kuril Islands) that the best option is to create the state of Ainumosiri there and help the Ainu who survived there to live normally.

The Ainu are the people of Oceania, northern Australoids, and there is positive American experience in granting independence to such structures. Kiribati, Vanuatu and Nauru are alive and thriving.

With the advent of Soviet power, the Ainu twice - before and after the war - turned out to be Japanese spies. The smartest ones corresponded with the Nivkhs (from whom they took Sakhalin).

It’s funny - the Nivkhs have the world minimum for beard and mustache growth, the Ainu and Armenians have the world maximum (under 6 points).

Before the revolution, the Ainu were also resettled in the Commanders. Now they have assimilated with the Aleuts - as part of the former Badaev family.
In the lower part of the village of Nikolskoye on Bering Island there was until the 1980s the toponym "Ainsky End".
Among the Badaev-Kuznetsovs there are people with increased beard growth for Aleuts.
Andrey Belkovsky

************************* From the historical chronicle of the Ainu********************* ****

Initially, the Ainu lived on the islands of what is now Japan, which were called Ainumoshiri - the land of the Ainu, until they were pushed north by the proto-Japanese Yayoi (Mongoloids). The Ainu came to Sakhalin in the 13th-14th centuries, “finishing” 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 Hokkaido (then called “Ezo”) (the earliest evidence of skirmishes with the Ainu dates back to 660 BC). Currently, there are only a few reservations for the Ainu on Hokkaido, where Ainu families live.

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.

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 a 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 embankment (also called "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.

The Ainu preferred the bow as a weapon. 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. In combat, both “regular” armor-piercing arrowheads and spiked arrowheads were used (possibly to better cut through armor or to get an arrow stuck in a wound). There were also tips of an unusual, Z-shaped cross-section, which were most likely borrowed from the Manchus or Jurgens (information has been preserved that in the Middle Ages the Sakhalin Ainu fought back a large army that came from the mainland).

Arrowheads were made of metal (early ones were made of obsidian and bone) and then coated with monkshood 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. The Ainu warrior - dzhangin - 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.

In addition to swords, the Ainu carried 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 "harakiri" or "seppuku" (as, by the way, the cult of the sword, special shelves for sword, spear, bow). Ainu swords were put on public display only during the Bear Festival. An old legend says: “A long time ago, after this country was created by God, there lived an old Japanese man and an old Ainu. The Ainu grandfather was ordered to make a sword, and the Japanese grandfather: money (it is further explained why the Ainu had the cult of swords, and among the Japanese - the 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.

Sundress-type armor was made from bearded seal leather ("sea hare" - a type of large seal). In appearance, such armor 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, which scare away evil spirits and generally have magical significance. 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.

In fact, the Ainu 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 the lips (the result was a kind of half-smile - half-mustache), as well as the names of some (very good quality) swords - “toncini”.

It is curious that the Ainu warriors - Dzhangins - were noted as very warlike; they were incapable of lying.

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

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

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

Over the years, the Ainu repeatedly rebelled against the Japanese (in Ainu “chizhem”), but each time they lost. The Japanese invited the leaders to their place to conclude a truce. Piously honoring the customs of hospitality, the Ainu, trusting like children, 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. (In a similar way, the Germans dealt with the princes of the Polabian Slavs - the Lusatians; the Germans locked the invited princes in the house and set the house on fire.)

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov talks about Ainakh-AYNO

The indigenous population of Southern Sakhalin, the local foreigners, when asked who they are, do not name either a tribe or a nation, but simply answer: Aino. This means a person. In Schrenk's ethnographic map, the area of ​​distribution of the Aino, or Ainu, is indicated with yellow paint, and this paint completely covers the Japanese island of Matsmai and the southern part of Sakhalin to Terpeniya Bay. They also live on the Kuril Islands and are therefore called Kuriles by the Russians. The numerical composition of the Aino living on Sakhalin has not been determined precisely, but there is no doubt that this tribe is disappearing, and moreover, with extraordinary speed.

Doctor Dobrotvorsky, who 25 years ago served in Southern Sakhalin*, says that there was a time when there were 8 large Ain villages near Busse Bay alone and the number of inhabitants in one of them reached 200; near Naiba he saw traces of many villages. For his time, he speculatively cites three figures taken from different sources: 2885, 2418, 2050, and considers the last one to be the most reliable. According to the testimony of one author, his contemporary, from the Korsakov post in both directions along the shore there were Ain villages. I didn’t find a single village near the post and saw several Ain yurts only near Bolshoy Tacoe and Siyantsy. In the “Report on the number of foreigners living in 1889 in the Korsakov District,” the numerical composition of the Aino is determined as follows: 581 men and 569 women.

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* After him, two serious works remained: “The Southern Part of Sakhalin Island” (extracted from a military medical report). - "News of the Sib. Department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society", 1870, vol. I, ЉЉ 2 and 3, and "Ainsk-Russian Dictionary".

Dobrotvorsky considers the reasons for the disappearance of the Aino to be the devastating wars that allegedly took place once on Sakhalin, the low birth rate due to the infertility of the Aino, and most importantly, disease. They always suffered from syphilis and scurvy; There was also probably smallpox*.

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* It is difficult to imagine that this disease, which caused devastation in Northern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, would spare Southern Sakhalin. A. Polonsky writes that the Aino leave the yurt in which the death occurred and instead build another one in a new place. This custom apparently originated in those days when the Aino, in fear of epidemics, left their infected homes and settled in new places.

But all these reasons, which usually determine the chronic extinction of foreigners, do not explain why the Ainos are disappearing so quickly, almost before our eyes; after all, in the last 25 - 30 years there have been no wars or significant epidemics, and yet during this period of time the tribe has decreased by more than half. It seems to me that it would be more accurate to assume that this rapid disappearance, similar to melting, is due not to the extinction alone, but also to the migration of the Aino to neighboring islands.

Before the occupation of Southern Sakhalin by the Russians, the Aino were almost in serfdom to the Japanese, and it was all the easier to enslave them because they were meek, unresponsive, and most importantly, they were hungry and could not do without rice*.
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* The Ainos told Rimsky-Korsakov: “Sizam sleeps, and the Aino works for him: he cuts down the forest, catches fish; the Aino doesn’t want to work, the Sizam beats him.”

Having occupied Southern Sakhalin, the Russians freed them and until recently protected their freedom, protecting them from insults and avoiding interfering in their internal lives. In 1885, escaped convicts massacred several Ain families; They also say that some Ain musher who refused to carry mail was whipped with rods, and there were attempts on the chastity of Ainki, but this kind of oppression and insult is spoken of as isolated and extremely rare cases. Unfortunately, the Russians did not bring rice with freedom; With the departure of the Japanese, no one caught fish anymore, earnings stopped, and the Aino began to experience hunger. Like the Gilyaks, they could no longer feed themselves on fish and meat alone—they needed rice, and so, despite their dislike for the Japanese, driven by hunger, they began, as they say, to move to Matsmai.

In one correspondence ("Voice", 1876, No. 16) I read that a deputation from the Aino came to the Korsakov post and asked to be given work or at least seeds for growing potatoes and to teach them how to cultivate land for potatoes; the work was allegedly refused, and they promised to send potato seeds, but they did not fulfill the promises, and the Aino, in poverty, continued to move to Matsmai. Another correspondence dating back to 1885 (Vladivostok, No. 38) also says that the Aino made some statements that, apparently, were not respected, and that they strongly wanted to get out of Sakhalin to Matsmai.

The Aino are dark-skinned, like gypsies; they have large thick beards, mustaches and black hair, thick and coarse; their eyes are dark, expressive, meek. They are of average height and have a strong, stocky build, their facial features are large and rough, but in them, in the words of the sailor V. Rimsky-Korsakov, there is neither a Mongolian flattening nor a Chinese narrow-eyed look. They find that bearded Ainos are very similar to Russian men. In fact, when an Aino puts on his robe like our chuika and girds himself, he becomes like a merchant’s coachman*.

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* In Schrenk's book, which I already mentioned, there is a table with a picture of the Aino. See also the book of fr. Gelvald "Natural history of tribes and peoples", vol. II, where the Aino is depicted at full height, in a robe.

The body of the Aino is covered with dark hair, which sometimes grows thickly in tufts on the chest, but it is still far from shaggy, while the beard and hairiness, which is so rare among savages, amazed travelers who, upon returning home, described the Aino as shaggy. And our Cossacks, who took tribute from them in the Kuril Islands in the last century, also called them shaggy.

The Aino live in close proximity to peoples whose facial hair is sparse, and it is no wonder that their wide beards present ethnographers with considerable difficulty; Science has not yet found a real place for the Aino in the racial system. Aino is classified either as a Mongolian or as a Caucasian tribe; one Englishman even found that these were the descendants of Jews abandoned on the Japanese islands at the time. At present, two opinions seem most likely: one, that the Aino belong to a special race that once inhabited all the East Asian islands, the other, belonging to our Schrenk, that they are a Paleo-Asian people, long ago displaced by Mongol tribes from the Asian mainland to its island outskirts, and that the route of this people from Asia to the islands lay through Korea.

In any case, the Aino moved from south to north, from warm to cold, constantly changing better conditions for worse. They are not warlike and do not tolerate violence; it was not difficult to conquer, enslave or displace them. They were driven out of Asia by the Mongols, from Nippon and Matsmaya by the Japanese, on Sakhalin the Gilyaks did not allow them above Taraika, on the Kuril Islands they met the Cossacks and thus eventually found themselves in a hopeless situation. Nowadays, an Aino, usually without a hat, barefoot and in ports tucked above the track, meets you on the road, curtsies to you and at the same time looks affectionately, but sadly and painfully, like a loser, and as if he wants to apologize for having a beard He's grown up big, but he still hasn't made a career for himself.

For details about the Aino, see Schrenk, Dobrotvorsky and A. Polonsky*. What was said about food and clothing among the Gilyaks also applies to the Aino, with the only addition that the lack of rice, the love for which the Aino inherited from their great-grandfathers who once lived on the southern islands, constitutes a serious deprivation for them; They don't like Russian bread. Their food is more varied than that of the Gilyaks; in addition to meat and fish, they eat various plants, shellfish and what Italian beggars generally call frutti di mare**. They eat little by little, but often, almost every hour; the gluttony characteristic of all northern savages is not noticeable in them. Since infants have to switch from milk directly to fish and whale oil, they are weaned late.

Rimsky-Korsakov saw how an Ainka was sucked by a child of about three years old, who was already moving perfectly on his own and even had a large knife on his belt. Clothes and homes show a strong influence from the south - not the Sakhalin one, but the real south. In the summer, the Aino wear shirts woven from grass or bast, but earlier, when they were not so poor, they wore silk robes. They don’t wear hats; in the summer and all autumn until the snow, they walk barefoot. Their yurts are smoky and stinking, but still much lighter, neater and, so to speak, more cultured than those of the Gilyaks. Near the yurts there are usually drying rooms with fish, spreading a dank, suffocating smell far around; dogs howl and squabble; Here you can sometimes see a small log cage in which a young bear sits: he will be killed and eaten in the winter at the so-called bear festival.

I saw one morning how a teenage Ainsk girl fed a bear, pushing dried fish dipped in water onto it on a spatula. The yurts themselves are made of knurling and planks; the roof, made of thin poles, is covered with dry grass. Inside there are bunks along the walls, above them there are shelves with various utensils; here, in addition to skins, bubbles of fat, nets, dishes, etc., you will find baskets, mats and even a musical instrument. The owner usually sits on the bunk and incessantly smokes a pipe, and if you ask him questions, he answers reluctantly and briefly, although politely. In the middle of the yurt there is a fireplace with wood burning; smoke escapes through a hole in the roof.

A large black cauldron hangs on a hook above the fire; there is a boiling soup in it, gray, foamy, which, I think, a European would not eat for any money. There are monsters sitting near the cauldron. As respectable and handsome as Aino men are, their wives and mothers are so unattractive. The authors call the appearance of Ain women ugly and even disgusting. The color is dark yellow, parchment, the eyes are narrow, the features are large; uncurly, coarse hair hangs across the face in patties, like straw on an old barn, the dress is unkempt, ugly, and for all that - extraordinary thinness and an senile expression. Married women paint their lips something blue, and from this face they completely lose their human image and likeness, and when I had occasion to see them and observe the seriousness, almost severity, with which they stir the pots with spoons and skim off the dirty foam, then I it seemed that I was seeing real witches. But girls and girls do not make such a repulsive impression***.
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A. Polonsky's study of the "Kuril Islands" was published in "Notes of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society", 1871, volume IV.
** fruits of the sea (Italian).

*** N.V. Busse, who rarely spoke kindly about anyone, by the way, attests to the ain: “In the evening, a drunken ain, known to me as a big drunkard, came to me. He brought his wife with him, and as far as I could understand , in order to sacrifice loyalty to her marital bed and thereby lure good gifts from me.

Ainka, quite beautiful, seemed ready to help her husband, but I pretended that I did not understand their explanations... Leaving my house, the husband and wife, without ceremony, in front of my window and in sight of the sentry, repaid their debt to nature. In general, this Ainka did not show much feminine shame. Her breasts were hardly covered by anything. Ainki wear the same dress as men, that is, several open short robes, belted low with a sash. They don’t have shirts or underwear, and therefore the slightest disorder in their dress reveals all the hidden charms.” But even this stern author admits that “among the young girls there were some quite pretty ones, with pleasant and soft features and ardent black eyes.” Be that as it may, the Ainka is greatly retarded in physical development; she ages and fades before the man. Perhaps this should be attributed to the fact that during the centuries-long wanderings of the people, the lion's share of hardships, hard work and tears fell to the woman.

Ainos never wash their faces and go to bed without undressing. Almost everyone who wrote about the Aino spoke highly of their morals. The general voice is that these people are meek, modest, good-natured, trusting, sociable, polite, respectful of property, brave in hunting and; in the words of Dr. Rollen, La Perouse's companion, even intelligent. Unselfishness, frankness, faith in friendship and generosity constitute their usual qualities. They are truthful and do not tolerate deception. Kruzenshtern was completely delighted with them; having listed their wonderful spiritual qualities, he concludes: “Such truly rare qualities, which they owe not to exalted education, but only to nature, aroused in me the feeling that I consider this people to be the best of all the others that are known to me to this day.”* And Rudanovsky writes: “More.” there cannot be a peaceful and modest population, such as we met in the southern part of Sakhalin." Any violence arouses disgust and horror in them.

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* These are the qualities: “When we visited one Ain dwelling on the shore of Rumyantsev Bay, I noticed in its family, which consisted of 10 people, the happiest harmony, or, one could almost say, perfect equality between its members. Having been in it for several hours, We could in no way recognize the head of the family. The elders did not express any signs of command against the young ones. When giving them gifts, no one showed the slightest form of displeasure that he received less than the other. They provided us with all kinds of services."

In conclusion, a few words about the Japanese in the history of South Sakhalin. The Japanese first appeared in the south of Sakhalin only at the beginning of this century, but not earlier. In 1853, N.V. Busse recorded his conversation with the old Ainos, who remembered the time of their independence and said: “Sakhalin is the land of the Ainus, there is no Japanese land on Sakhalin.” The first Japanese colonists were fugitive criminals or those who had visited foreign soil and were expelled from Japan for this.

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Other materials about the Ainu in the community:
http://www.icrap.org/ru/Chasanova-9-1.html photographs of the Ainu
http://community.livejournal.com/anthropology_ru/114005.html
http://www.svevlad.org.rs/knjige_files/ajni_prjamcuk.html

Http://www.icrap.org/Folklor_sachalinskich_Ainov.html
TALES AND LEGENDS OF THE SAKHALI AIN

Http://kosarev.press.md/Ain-jap-1.htm
http://lord-trux.livejournal.com/46594.html
http://anthropology.ru/ru/texts/akulov/east06_13.html
http://leit.ru/modules.php?name=Pages&pa=showpage&pid=1326
http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/vs/article/2877/
http://www.sunhome.ru/religion/11036
http://www.4ygeca.com/ainy.html
http://stud.ibi.spb.ru/132/sobsvet/html/Ajni1.html
http://www.icrap.org/ru/sieroszewski8-1.html
http://www.hrono.ru/dokum/1800dok/185401putya.html
http://kosarev.press.md/Contact-models.htm
http://glob.us-in.net/gusev_67.php

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