Modern Japan is one of the most monoethnic
countries in the world, and it is easy to believe that it has always been this way. However, the land of the rising sun has always
been home to many unique peoples. Among them are the Ainu: the long-bearded,
free-spirited bear hunting animists of the isle of Hokkaido. In this video, we will put a spotlight on
these forgotten aborigines of Japan, providing an introduction to their mysterious culture,
and telling the story of their ultimately doomed struggle against Japanese expansion. The Ainu subsisted off bear liver and dried
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channel! The Ainu are an ancient people whose ancestors
have inhabited the Hokkaido, the Kuril islands, and Kamchatka for millennia. They call their traditional territory “Ainu
Mosir”, which means “a peaceful land where the Ainu dwell”, while the word Ainu itself
simply means ‘human’. Their language, now unfortunately moribund,
is an isolated tongue with no known ties to any of the major language families. As a result of their seemingly primitive culture
and non-east Asian appearance, the Japanese often dismissed them as “Hairy Barbarians”,
perceiving them as little more than savages. For most of history, the Ainu remained outside
the authority of the Empire. It was only in the last 3 centuries that the
Tokugawa and Meiji regimes subjugated them - albeit not without many years of fierce
resistance from the natives. The origins of the Ainu are shrouded in history,
but their legends claim that they have been in northern Japan “for a hundred thousand
years before the children of the sun came.” The full story is a little more complex. The first humans arrived in the Japanese archipelago
around 40,000 years ago via great glacial land bridges during the last ice age. These were the forebears of Japan’s first
peoples, the Jomon, who lived primarily as hunter-gatherers using stone tools. By 5000BC, they had developed a complex material
culture, most famous for its iconic pottery. Around 1000BC, new migrants began arriving
in southern Japan from the Korean peninsula and the Yangtze river delta. These were the Yayoi, who were the principal
ancestors of the modern Japanese people and they introduced many innovations, including
agriculture based on wet-rice cultivation, as well as bronze and iron tools. Over the next centuries, Yayoi tribes gradually
displaced or assimilated the Jomon , establishing various petty rice kingdoms from southern
Kyushu to central Honshu, each ruled by a different clan. By 300AD, the Yamato clan had emerged as the
most powerful, uniting them under their banner and forming the earliest rendition of the
Japanese Empire. Meanwhile, in the north successors of the
Jomon, known as epi-Jomon, continued to thrive. Around the 5th century AD, a Siberian tribe
known as the Oktohsk diffused into these late-Jomon territories via Sakhalin island. These two cultures would be the primary building
blocks of the emerging Ainu, which emerged as a recognizably unique culture as a result
of the merging of the epi-Jomon, and the northern sea-folk. The Ainu were a people divided on tribal lines
and thus had regional differences among them, making it difficult to account for cultural
shifts over their centuries-long existence. Much like their Jomon ancestors, the Ainu
lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle: During the spring, they chased brown bears coming
out of hibernation, while sika deer, rabbit, raccoon dogs, and foxes were stalked year-round. Ainu innovations made them excellent hunters. They coated their arrows and spears with aconite
poison, created sound decoys called Ipakke-ni which mimicked the cry of a buck, and set
up ingenious bow-traps rigged to self-fire when an animal triggered a tripwire. Perhaps the most crucial and spiritual aspect
of Ainu subsistence was the salmon hunt, which occurred in autumn . Caught in abundance,
salmon was then dried to last the year-round. Ainu clothing was made from wild sources provided
by the forest and rivers. The typical Ainu garb was a long robe called
the attus, woven from the bark fiber of a rare type of elm tree. Creating an attus took skill, as the process
of rendering tree bark into a fabric took months. Shoes made of deer hide and dried salmon skin
were also common, and men were often seen wearing a head-dress woven from grapevines. Ceremonial clothing for festivals and weddings
featured technicolored geometric designs, which fulfilled the ritual function of protecting
its wearer from hostile spirits. Personal grooming and bodily modifications
played an important role: mouth tattoos were common among women as a coming-of-age rite,
and were applied by cutting the area around the lips with a knife, then injecting cooking
ash under the skin. Men had long beards, which they never shaved
past a certain age. The Ainu dwelled primarily in small villages
on the banks of rivers, and had no equivalent to the great cities of Japan. Their humble homes were well adapted for the
rugged northern landscape and were made of a framework of wooden pillars and crossbeams,
with the walls and roof filled in by dense bundles of thatch made of cogon grass. In the interior, a sunken hearth was dug,
where a fire was lit to keep the well insulated building warm. An Ainu home was a highly ritualized space
with a designated spot for every family member or guest around the firepit. The Ainu were animists who saw Nature to be
inhabited by innumerous divine beings known as Kamuy, which could be in anything, the
trees, the rivers, the animals, even in human tools. The Ainu home was enshrined with various live-in
gods. For example, the fire pit was the home of
the Ape-Kamuy, the spirit of fire, and had to be kept clean. Even the toilet had a spirit- named Rukor
Kamuy, a noble being who would always be the first to help the household in times of danger. The most important spirit was Kim-un-kamuy,
the God of mountains and bears. The Ainu honoured him with a ritual called
the Iomante, where a bear cub was captured from the wild, then pampered as an honoured
guest for two years, with some legends even claiming it was fed with the breast milk of
Ainu mothers. When the two years had elapsed, the bear would
be ritually slaughtered by arrows, allowing its spirit to return to the heavens, where
it would tell the great bear spirit of the honour shown to it by human folk. The Ainu lived in a symbiotic relationship
with their gods. In their eyes, the humans took care of the
spirits by living in harmony with nature, and the spirits in turn protected humans. When the Kamuy failed to prevent accidents,
they were often scolded. The history of the Ainu people is a saga defined
primarily by their relationship with the Japanese. Our story begins in the 8th century, in northern
Honshu, where the Emishi tribes dwelled. With their distinctly hirsuite appearance,
they were probably related to the Ainu and like them were a collection of indigenous
tribes that lived outside of the authority of the Yamato Emperor. The Emperors of the Nara and early Heian periods
had long plotted to conquer them and from 709 onwards, the Japanese began building forts
in Emishi territory. In response, the proudly independent Emishi
began raiding Yamato lands and this escalated into all out war in 773. Over the next 30 years, the Japanese dispatched
at least ten armies into Northern Honshu, but none were able to subjugate their long
bearded foes. The Emishi were master horse-archers, able
to easily dance circles around the Yamato forces, which were predominantly made up of
heavy infantry. However, despite many early successes, the
Emishi were still disunited tribes fighting against a centralized empire. This was a weakness the Japanese exploited
in 794, when they convinced the powerful Shiwa clan to defect over to their side, fracturing
the Emishi resistance and allowing the Yamato to subjugate them piecemeal by 811. Over the next few centuries, many Emishi fled
north to Hokkaido, where they contributed to the formation of the nascent Ainu culture. Others assimilated into the Yamato Empire,
albeit not without leaving a heavy mark on Japanese society. The adoption of Emishi war tactics by the
early Heian military is considered the beginning of the development of Samurai warfare, and
the first proto-Samurai were probably Emishi horse-archers in the Yamato Emperors’ employ. This has led to the common adage that the
Japanese spirit was built on the "Ghost of the Emishi." Having conquered all of Honshu, the Japanese
initially showed little interest in expanding into Hokkaido: Who could bother with invading
some foggy islands on the edge of the world, inhabited by hairy savages? They called these lands “Ezo”, meaning
“Barbarian Islands” and for the time being left them be. The Kamakura Shogunate, the first government
to be controlled primarily by the Samurai caste, was also the first Japanese regime
to show significant interest in the island, using it as a penal colony for political exiles. The Kamakura also appointed the Samurai clan
Andō, who themselves probably had Ainu and Emishi ancestry, to open trade with various
tribes. Left mainly to their own devices by the Japanese,
the Ainu decided to do a little expansionism of their own on the isle of Sakhalin. Their ancestors had occupied the southern
half of the isle since the 11th century, but from the early 1200s onwards, they began pushing
into it's northern half, which was the native territory of the Nivkh people, who were forced
to submit themselves to the Yuan dynasty in 1263. Consequently, around the same time that the
Samurai of Japan clashed with the great invasion fleet of Kublai Khan on the shores of Tsushima
and Kyushu, the Ainu went to war with the same Empire in the forests of Siberia. For over four decades the Mongols, alongside
their Chinese, Jurchen and Nivkh allies, struggled to pacify the sons of the Jomon. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the Ainu
put up a stubborn fight, but eventually they realized their struggle was futile, and surrendered. Thus in 1308, the Ainu of Sakhalin became
tributaries of the Great Khan. With Sakhalin under Yuan rule, the Ainu of
Hokkaido could no longer migrate northwards as they had done for centuries and this pushed
their economic interests in the opposite direction, causing many tribes to increase trade with
the Yamato to their south. Over the centuries, the Ainu slowly became
more and more dependent on the metalware, weapons, lacquer bowls, and rice they imported
from Japanese merchants. Conversely, northern Samurai clans like the
Andō grew rich from the hawk feathers, bear livers and dried fish they imported from the
Ainu. This compelled them to set up a string of
fortified trading posts on Hokkaido’s southernmost tail, marking the first time that Ainu Mosir
was directly colonized by Yamato people. As Dependent as they were on Japanese goods,
having outsiders park themselves on their front lawn made the Ainu antsy. Between 1456 and 1536, armed conflict would
flare up between Samurai clans and native tribes at least nine times. While the Ainu were not able to expel the
Japanese out of southern Hokkaido, they were at least able to avoid being exploited by
them, as their valiant resistance to Yamato dominance forced the Samurai to trade with
them on equal terms. This however, was not to last. At the turn of the 17th century, Japan had
emerged out of nearly 150 years of brutal civil war. By 1600, the firebrand Daimyo Tokugawa Ieyasu
had finished bringing the last of the Empire’s feuding Samurai Lords to heel, thereby establishing
a Shogunate that would rule over a unified Japan for the next 250 years. In 1606, the Tokugawa bakufu ordered the construction
of a castle on the southern tip of Hokkaido, bequeathing it upon the Matsumae Samurai clan,
who were tasked with the defense of Japan’s northern frontier against the unruly barbarians
that dwelled beyond. To that end, the Matsumae were granted exclusive
rights over the Ezo trade in 1644. This development was bad tidings for the Ainu. Much of their trade leverage over the Japanese
had come from their ability to freely pick and choose which local Daimyos they wished
to do business with, a privilege they were now stripped of. What had once been a relationship of mutual
exchange was reduced into a crooked trade monopoly as the Matsumae set up forts along
Hokkaido’s eastern coast where they regularly gouged the natives. The Ainu, being so dependent on Japanese rice
and ironware, had no choice but to accept the exorbitant rates forced on them. To compound matters, the increasing amounts
of fish and animals the Ainu hunted to sell into Japanese hands put a strain on the natural
environment, disrupting the traditional Ainu lifestyle. One chieftain forlornly remarked that his
tribe could not catch even one bear cub for their annual Iomante festival. Things got worse in the 1630s, when gold was
discovered in inland Hokkaido, enticing many Japanese miners to push deeper into Ainu territory
than any outsider ever had. Over time, increasing land and resource scarcity
brought Ainu chiefdoms into conflict with one another. As fate would have it, one of these tribal
wars would escalate into the last great hurrah of Ainu independence against the Yamato tide. By 1660, the two greatest Ainu chieftains
of Hokkaido were Onibishi, who ruled the Hae tribe, and Shakushain, an 80-year-old leader
of the Shibuchari tribe. Their two clans came to blows in 1666 when
the Shibuchari refused to provide a bear cub for the Hae’s Iomante ritual, and a Hae
hunter poached a valuable crane on Shibuchari land. As an internecine blood feud ensued, the elderly
Shakushain led his warriors in a successful raid into Hae lands, chasing his Ainu foes
into a Matsumae mining camp, which he put to the torch, killing the rival chieftain
Onibishi in the process. This was a crossroads for Shakushain. The octogenarian probably never intended to
start an outright rebellion against the Japanese, but he knew that by destroying a Japanese
mining camp, he had certainly invited a violent reprisal from the Matsumae lords to his south. Thus, the great Ainu chieftain doubled down,
and launched a war upon the Yamato to rid their exploitative influence from Ainu Mosir
for good. By June of 1669, Shakushain had rallied some
19 tribes to his banner, comprising over 3,000 warriors. With his confederation of freedom fighters,
he carved a bloody path of destruction across his native island, destroying Japanese trading
forts, mining camps and merchant ships, massacring those within. The Matsumae were a small clan, and were only
able to muster 80 Samurai to fight this uprising, but luck was on their side. As Shakushain stabbed south for Castle Matsumae,
his advance was thwarted by torrential rain and floodwaters, allowing the small Japanese
platoon to force his retreat through a withering hail of musket fire. Despite this, the Matsumae knew they were
still direly outnumbered, and thus begrudgingly called for help from their rival Samurai clans. Some 700 armed soldiers arrived from northern
Honshu in the following months, striking north into Shakushains’ lands. The Ainu put up a dogged resistance, but despite
outnumbering their foe, their poison-tipped arrows were unable to penetrate Samurai armour,
nor were their spears a match for Samurai matchlock rifles. At the end of 1669, Shakushain saw the writing
on the wall, and surrendered. Ainu and Matsumae leaders exchanged gifts
and a ritual drinking party was held to celebrate the new peace, during which Shakushain and
his top warriors imbibed themselves in a fountain of saké. Yet, Samurai hospitality proved to be a mask
hiding treachery. Perhaps fearing that Shakushain would once
more rise up against them, they had the drunk chieftain and his closest followers massacred. This reignited the war, but by 1672, the heavily
outgunned Ainu were once again brought to submission. After Shakushain’s doomed revolt, the Matsumae
clan re-established their trade hegemony over all Ezo, building 60 more fortified outposts
in the region. Most Ainu villages retained autonomy on paper,
but the aborigines of Hokkaido were now fully dependent on the Empire of the Rising Sun,
and over the next two centuries, their land, way of life, and their culture would all slip
out of their hands. Amidst increasing fears that the Russian Empire
would seek to expand their influence into Hokkaido, the Tokugawa Shogunate took direct
control over the island in 1806 and implemented a policy of forceful assimilation aimed to
fully integrate it into the Japanese nation. Ainu men were forced to become indentured
servants, and only clothed and fed properly if they gave up their native language and
culture and became Japanese, while Ainu women were forcibly married to Japanese men. As a result of these oppressive policies,
the Ainu population on Hokkaido plummeted from 80,000 in 1806 to 15,000 just sixty years
later. 1868 marked the Meiji restoration movement,
where the Japanese overthrew the rule of the Samurai and began to rapidly modernize their
country. In the vein of creating a unified national
identity, Ainu assimilation policies only intensified. The late 19th century saw the Meiji government
encourage mass Japanese migration to Hokkaido, turning the Ainu into a minority in their
own homeland. Ainu were forced to learn Japanese and adopt
Japanese names. Traditional customs, like women’s facial
tattoos and the extremely important iomante bear festival were outlawed. The traditional Ainu way of life was eradicated,
with salmon fishing, tree-felling, traditional house building, and dugout canoe making all
becoming illegal. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Ainu
became almost entirely assimilated into mainstream Japanese society, with the word ‘Ainu’
itself becoming a byword for perversity and backwardness. Still, the Ainu have survived into the modern
age, a tiny community of less than 1,000 can be found in their ancestral territories of
Sakhalin and the Kuril islands, where they struggle for recognition from the Russian
Government to this day. The rest live mainly in Hokkaido, where a
population of 25,000 maintains its identity amidst a sea of 5 million ethnic Japanese. Nevertheless, there is hope on the horizon. In June of 2008, the Japanese government officially
recognized the Ainu as a distinct indigenous people of Hokkaido, and affirmed their right
to their traditional lifestyle. The modern Ainu have a long road ahead of
them, but the will to revive their culture from the ashes is strong. No doubt in time, the ancient aborigines of
Japan’s past, will contribute to the multicultural spirit of the nations’ future. More videos on the history of Japan are on
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we will catch you on the next one.
Indigenous people are deeply criminally underrated cultures.
I am thankful that Japan is recognizing the Joman.
Japanese: Two storms saving you from Mongol invasion
Ainu: Just fight them back lol.
Being unsuccessful two times the Mongols did consider invading Japan from the north. Perhaps the Ainu ironically saved Japan from Mongol invasion.