The Japanese are not native to Japan

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Everyone knows that Americans are not the native population of the United States, just like the current population of South America. Did you know that the Japanese are not native to Japan? Who then lived in these places before them?

Before them, the Ainu lived here, a mysterious people, in the origin of which there are still many mysteries. The Ainu coexisted with the Japanese for some time, until the latter managed to force them out to the north.

Settlement of the Ainu at the end of the 19th century

The fact that the Ainu are the ancient masters of the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands is evidenced by written sources and numerous names of geographical objects, the origin of which is associated with the Ainu language.

And even the symbol of Japan - the great Mount Fujiyama - has in its name the Ainu word "fuji", which means "deity of the hearth". Scientists believe that the Ainu settled on the Japanese islands around 13,000 BC and formed the Neolithic Jomon culture there.

The Ainu were not engaged in agriculture, they obtained food by hunting, gathering and fishing. They lived in small settlements, quite remote from each other. Therefore, the area of their residence was quite extensive: the Japanese islands, Sakhalin, Primorye, the Kuril Islands and the south of Kamchatka.

Around the 3rd millennium BC, Mongoloid tribes arrived on the Japanese islands, who later became the ancestors of the Japanese. The new settlers brought with them the rice culture, which made it possible to feed a large number of the population in a relatively small area. Thus began the hard times in the life of the Ainu. They were forced to move to the north, leaving the colonialists their ancestral lands.

But the Ainu were skilled warriors, perfectly wielding bow and sword, and the Japanese did not manage to defeat them for a long time. For a very long time, almost 1500 years. The Ains knew how to handle two swords, and they carried two daggers on their right thigh. One of them (cheiki-makiri) served as a knife for committing ritual suicide - hara-kiri.

The Japanese were able to defeat the Ainu only after the invention of cannons, having managed by that time to learn a lot from them in terms of the art of war. The samurai code of honor, the ability to wield two swords and the aforementioned hara-kiri ritual - these seemingly characteristic attributes of Japanese culture were actually borrowed from the Ainu.

Scientists still argue about the origin of the Ainu

But the fact that this people is not related to other indigenous peoples of the Far East and Siberia is already a proven fact. A characteristic feature of their appearance is very thick hair and a beard in men, which representatives of the Mongoloid race are deprived of. For a long time it was believed that they may have common roots with the peoples of Indonesia and the natives of the Pacific Ocean, since they have similar facial features. But genetic research ruled out this option as well.

And the first Russian Cossacks who arrived on the island of Sakhalin even mistook the Ainu for the Russians, so they were not like Siberian tribes, but rather resembled Europeans. The only group of people out of all the analyzed variants with whom they have a genetic relationship was the people of the Jomon era, who presumably were the ancestors of the Ainu.

The Ainu language also strongly stands out from the modern linguistic picture of the world, and they have not yet found a suitable place for it. It turns out that during the long period of isolation, the Ainu lost contact with all other peoples of the Earth, and some researchers even distinguish them into a special Ainu race.

Ainu in Russia

For the first time, the Kamchatka Ainu came into contact with Russian merchants at the end of the 17th century. Relations with the Amur and North Kuril Ainu were established in the 18th century. The Ainu were considered the Russians, who differed in race from their Japanese enemies, as friends, and by the middle of the 18th century more than one and a half thousand Ainu had taken Russian citizenship. Even the Japanese could not distinguish the Ainu from the Russians because of their external resemblance (white skin and Australoid facial features, which in a number of features are similar to Caucasians).

Compiled under the Russian Empress Catherine II "Spatial Land Description of the Russian State", included the Russian Empire included not only all the Kuril Islands, but also the island of Hokkaido.

The reason - the ethnic Japanese at that time did not even populate it. The indigenous population - the Ainu - were recorded as Russian subjects following the expedition of Antipin and Shabalin

The Ainu fought with the Japanese not only in the south of Hokkaido, but also in the northern part of the island of Honshu. The Kuril Islands themselves were explored and taxed by the Cossacks in the 17th century. So that Russia may demand Hokkaido from the Japanese

The fact of Russian citizenship of the inhabitants of Hokkaido was noted in a letter from Alexander I to the Japanese emperor in 1803. Moreover, this did not cause any objections from the Japanese side, let alone an official protest. Hokkaido for Tokyo was a foreign territory like Korea. When the first Japanese arrived on the island in 1786, the Ainu with Russian names and surnames came out to meet them. And what is more, they are orthodox Christians!

Japan's first claims to Sakhalin date back only to 1845. Then Emperor Nicholas I immediately fought back diplomatically. Only the weakening of Russia in the following decades led to the occupation of the southern part of Sakhalin by the Japanese.

It is interesting that the Bolsheviks in 1925 condemned the previous government, which gave the Russian lands to Japan.

So in 1945, historical justice was only restored. The army and navy of the USSR resolved the Russian-Japanese territorial issue by force.

Khrushchev in 1956 signed the Joint Declaration of the USSR and Japan, article 9 of which read:

"The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, meeting the wishes of Japan and taking into account the interests of the Japanese state, agrees to the transfer of the Habomai Islands and the Sikotan Island to Japan, however, that the actual transfer of these islands to Japan will be made after the conclusion of the Peace Treaty between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Japan." …

Khrushchev's goal was to demilitarize Japan. He was willing to sacrifice a couple of small islands in order to remove American military bases from the Soviet Far East.

Now, obviously, we are no longer talking about demilitarization. Washington has a stranglehold on its "unsinkable aircraft carrier". Moreover, Tokyo's dependence on the United States even increased after the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Well, if so, then the free transfer of the islands as a "gesture of goodwill" is losing its attractiveness.

It is reasonable not to follow the Khrushchev declaration, but to put forward symmetrical claims, relying on well-known historical facts. Shaking the ancient scrolls and manuscripts is normal practice in such matters.

An insistence on surrendering Hokkaido would be a cold shower for Tokyo. It would be necessary to argue at the talks not about Sakhalin or even about the Kuriles, but about their own territory at the moment.

You would have to defend yourself, make excuses, prove your right. Russia from diplomatic defense would thus go over to the offensive.

Moreover, the military activity of China, nuclear ambitions and readiness for military actions of the DPRK and other security problems in the Asia-Pacific region will give another reason for Japan to sign a peace treaty with Russia.

But back to the Ainu

When the Japanese first came into contact with the Russians, they named them Red Ainu (Ainu with blond hair). It was only at the beginning of the 19th century that the Japanese realized that the Russians and the Ainu were two different peoples. However, for the Russians, the Ainu were "hairy", "dark-skinned", "dark-eyed" and "dark-haired."The first Russian researchers described the Ainu as similar to Russian peasants with dark skin or more like gypsies.

The Ainu sided with the Russians during the Russo-Japanese Wars of the 19th century. However, after the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the Russians abandoned them to their fate. Hundreds of Ainu were destroyed and their families were forcibly transported to Hokkaido by the Japanese. As a result, the Russians failed to recapture the Ainu during World War II. Only a few Ainu representatives decided to stay in Russia after the war. More than 90% left for Japan.

Under the terms of the St. Petersburg Treaty of 1875, the Kurils were ceded to Japan, along with the Ainu living on them. 83 North Kuril Ainu arrived in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on September 18, 1877, deciding to remain under Russian rule. They refused to move to the reservations on the Commander Islands, as suggested by the Russian government. After that, from March 1881, for four months they walked to the village of Yavino, where they later settled.

Later, the village of Golygino was founded. Another 9 Ainu arrived from Japan in 1884. The 1897 census indicates 57 people in the population of Golygino (all - Ainu) and 39 people in Yavino (33 Ainu and 6 Russians) [11]. Both villages were destroyed by the Soviet power, and the inhabitants were resettled to Zaporozhye, Ust-Bolsheretskiy district. As a result, three ethnic groups assimilated with the Kamchadals.

The North Kuril Ainu are currently the largest subgroup of Ainu in Russia. The Nakamura family (paternal South Kuril) is the smallest and has only 6 people living in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. There are several people on Sakhalin who define themselves as Ainu, but much more Ainu do not recognize themselves as such.

Most of the 888 Japanese living in Russia (2010 census) are of Ainu origin, although they do not recognize this (purebred Japanese are allowed to enter Japan without a visa). A similar situation is with the Amur Ainu living in Khabarovsk. And it is believed that none of the Kamchatka Ainu survived.

epilogue

In 1979, the USSR deletes the ethnonym "Ainu" from the list of "living" ethnic groups in Russia, thereby proclaiming that this people has died out on the territory of the USSR. Judging by the 2002 census, no one entered the ethnonym "Ainu" in fields 7 or 9.2 of the K-1 census form

There is such information that the most direct genetic ties in the male line of the Ainu have, oddly enough, with the Tibetans - half of them are carriers of the close haplogroup D1 (the D2 group itself practically does not occur outside the Japanese archipelago) and the Miao-Yao peoples in southern China and in Indochina.

As for the female (Mt-DNA) haplogroups, the U group dominates among the Ainu, which is also found in other peoples of East Asia, but in small numbers.

During the 2010 census, about 100 people tried to register themselves as Ainu, but the government of the Kamchatka Territory rejected their claims and recorded them as Kamchadals

In 2011, the head of the Ainsky community of Kamchatka, Alexei Vladimirovich Nakamura, sent a letter to the governor of Kamchatka, Vladimir Ilyukhin, and the chairman of the local duma, Boris Nevzorov, with a request to include the Ainu in the List of Indigenous Minorities of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation.

The request was also denied.

Alexey Nakamura reports that 205 Ainu were noted in Russia in 2012 (compare with 12 people who were noted in 2008), and they, like the Kuril Kamchadals, are fighting for official recognition. The Ainu language became extinct many decades ago.

In 1979, only three people on Sakhalin could speak Ainu fluently, and there the language became extinct by the 1980s.

Although Keizo Nakamura spoke Sakhalin-Ainu fluently and even translated several documents into Russian for the NKVD, he did not pass on the language to his son.

Take Asai, the last person to know the Sakhalin Ainu language, died in Japan in 1994.

Until the Ainu are recognized, they are celebrated as people without nationality, like ethnic Russians or Kamchadals.

Therefore, in 2016, both the Kuril Ainu and the Kuril Kamchadals were deprived of the rights to hunting and fishing, which the small peoples of the Far North have.

Today there are very few Ainu left, about 25,000 people. They live mainly in the north of Japan and are almost completely assimilated by the population of this country.