Ainu people. Japanese are not native to Japan
What do we know about this unique Russian people AINS - AINOSY - AINO - AINU?
AINUMOSIRI is the land of the Ainu.
See the 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
The countries of clouds to the earth, loved her, took up
hunting and fishing to eat, dance
and bear children. (Ainu legend)
The 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 an exalted education,
but nature alone, aroused in me
that feeling that I consider this people the best
of all the others that are still known to me "
(A.P. Chekhov)
A. P. Chekhov said: “The Ainu are a meek people,
humble, good-natured, gullible, sociable,
polite, respectful of property; on the hunt brave
and ... even intelligent. "
In 1853 N.V. Busse recorded his conversation
with the old aino who remembered the time
independence and said:
"Sakhalin is the land of the Ains, there is no Japanese land on Sakhalin."
The first Japanese colonists were fugitive criminals or
those who have been in a foreign land and for this are expelled from Japan.
(A.P. Chekhov)
... among the Ainu villages ... - The Ainu are the oldest population of the Japanese
islands (known there since the II millennium BC), the Kuriles and
South Sakhalin. On racial grounds close to Caucasians,
linguistic connections have not been precisely identified. At the described time, 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. (Nikolay Pavlovich Zadornov)
What have the AINS given to Russia? This is Sakhalin and the Kuriles!
The Ainu called themselves by various tribal names - "soya-untara", "chuvka-untara". The word "Ainu", which they are used to calling, 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, these are white-skinned people, anthropologists classify them as depigmented Australoids, like the black Papuans, bearded, unlike the Japanese Mongoloids. Very similar to the Russians according to the reports of the explorers. After all, the outward resemblance of Russian explorers and Ainu was simply amazing. It deceived even the Japanese. In the first messages of the Japanese, "RUSSIANS" on Hokaido - Matmai are referred to as "RED AINS".
AINUMOSIRI is the land of the Ainu.
The Ainu accepted Russian citizenship, and their lands became part of Russia - Sakhalin, Kuril Islands and Matsmai - Iesso - Hokkaido. At that time, Hokkaido - Matsmai was considered the largest and most southern island of the Kuril Islands.
Russian decrees of 1779, 1786 and 1799 indicate that the inhabitants of the southern Kuriles - the Ainu since 1768 were Russian subjects (in 1779 they were exempted from paying tribute to the treasury - yasak), and the southern Kuril Islands were considered Russia as its own territory.
The fact of Russian citizenship of the Kuril Ainu and the belonging of Russia to 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. from the Ainu - residents of the Kuril Islands, including the southern ones (including the island of Matmai-Hokkaido), the mentioned tribute -yasaka.
In the language of the Ainu Sakhalin - "SAKHAREN MOSIRI" - "undulating land", Iturup means " the best place", Kunashir - Simushir means" a piece of land - a black island ", Shikotan - Shiashkotan (the ending words" shir "and" kotan "mean" a piece of land "and" settlement ", respectively).
With their good nature, honesty and modesty, the Ainu made the best impression on Krusenstern. When they were given gifts for the fish delivered, they took them in their hands, admired them and then returned them. With difficulty, the Ainu managed to explain that they were given this property. In relation to the Ainu, Catherine the Second prescribed - to be gentle with the Ainu and not to tax them, in order to alleviate the situation of the new Russian Podda-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 took Russian citizenship in 1779.
Eya I.V. commands the shaggy Kuril-Ainu, brought into citizenship on the distant islands, to leave free and not to demand any collection from them, and not to force the peoples living in Tamo to do so, but to try to continue the already established with them with friendly treatment and affection for the desired benefit in crafts 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 MATMAY (Matsmai), which later became known as Hokkaido.
It was precisely established that the Kurils did not obey any foreign state. In the report of I. Kozyrevsky in 1713. it was noted that the South Kuril Ainu "live independently and not in citizenship and trade freely."
It should be especially noted that the Russian explorers, in accordance with the policy of the Russian state, discovering new lands inhabited by the Ainu, immediately announced the inclusion of these lands in Russia, began their study and economic development, conducted missionary activities, and imposed tribute (yasak) on the local population.
Throughout the 18th century, all the Kuril Islands, including their southern part, became part of Russia. This is also confirmed by the statement made by the head of the Russian embassy N. Rezanov during negotiations with the representative of the Japanese government K. Toyama in 1805 that "north of Matsmai (Hokkaido island) all the lands and waters belong to the Russian emperor and that the Japanese did not extend further their possessions. "
The 18th century Japanese mathematician and astronomer Honda Toshiaki wrote that “... the Ainu regard Russians as their own fathers”, since “real possessions are won by virtuous deeds. Countries forced to obey the force of arms remain unconquered at heart. "
By the end of the 80s. In the 18th century, the facts of Russian activity in the Kuril Islands were ample enough to consider the entire archipelago, including its southern islands, as belonging to Russia, in accordance with the norms of international law of that time, which was recorded in Russian state documents. First of all, one 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 "furry Kuril"), and the islands themselves were declared Russia.
In 1945, the Japanese evicted all the AINS from Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands to Hokkaido, while for some reason they left on Sakhalin a labor army from Koreans brought by the Japanese and the USSR had to accept them as stateless persons, then the Koreans moved to Central Asia, and now they RF, few people are not familiar with this hardworking ethnic group, even the deputy of Luzhkov is Korean.
The fate of the AINOV in Hokkaido - Matsmai is hidden behind seven seals, like the fate of the Slavs - LUZHICHAN 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 the youth know the Ainu language is a big question, like with the Slavs - Lusatians, about whom we know that Lusatian schools of Slavs in Germany are closed under any pretext ...
According to the census of the population of the Russian Empire in 1897, 1446 people indicated Ainu as their native language on Sakhalin. The Ainu language does not belong to any language family (isolate); at present, the Ainu of Hokkaido switched to Japanese, the Ainu of Russia - to Russian, very few people of the older generation in Hokkaido - Matsmai still remember the language a little. By 1996, no more than 15 people were fully proficient in Ainu. At the same time, speakers of dialects of different localities practically do not understand each other. The Ainu did not have their own writing, but there were rich traditions of oral creativity, including songs, epic poems and legends in poetry and prose.
Russia can recall historical examples of how the Ainu of northern Hokkaido - Matsmai 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 for the "southern territories".
Although the Japanese organized a real genocide of the Ains, justifying their actions by the fact that its representatives were allegedly "ebisu" (savages) and "teki" (animals). 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 heard of Japanese civilization. According to many ethnographers, it was from the Ainu that the Japanese adopted many of their customs and cultural features, ranging from the seppuku rite to the sacred Shinto complex and imperial attributes, including jasper pendants. Perhaps the Japanese were brought to the Ainu Islands - AINUMOSIRI, as a labor force for agriculture, since the Ainu themselves were not engaged in agriculture. So, for example, among the Mongols, the ends of the shoes are wrapped upward, since the Mongols cannot disturb the earth, and the Daur people (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 VIII 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 outwardly blue-eyed and bearded aliens on both sides. And although the Ainu flatly refused to pay the yasak tax, no one, unlike the Japanese, killed them for this. However, 1945 became a turning point for the fate of this people. Today only 12 of its representatives live in Russia, but there are many "mestizos" from mixed marriages.
The destruction of the "bearded people" - the Ainu in Japan stopped only after the fall of militarism in 1945. However, the 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 a rather arrogant attitude towards representatives of other nationalities. And the Ainu were no exception: their exact number cannot be determined, since according to Japanese censuses they do not appear either as a people or as a national minority.
According to scientists, the total number of the Ainu and their descendants does not exceed 16 thousand people, of which there are no more than 300 purebred representatives of the Ainu people, the rest are “mestizos”. In addition, the Ainam are often left with the least prestigious jobs. And the Japanese are actively pursuing a policy of their assimilation and there is no question of any "cultural autonomies" for them.
People from mainland Asia came to Japan at about the same time that people first reached America. The first settlers of the Japanese islands - YOMON (ancestors of the AINS) reached Japan twelve thousand years ago, and the yoi (ancestors of the Japanese) came from Korea in the last two and a half millennia.
In Japan, work has been done that allows us to hope that genetics will be able to solve 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 more modern ethnic groups: the Ainu from the island of Hokkaido in the north and the Ryukyu, who live mainly on the southernmost island of Okinawa.
One theory is that these two groups, the Ainu and Ryukyu, are the descendants of the first yomon settlers who once occupied all of Japan, and were later driven from the central islands north to Hokkaido and south to Okinawa by yoi aliens from Korea.
A study of mitochondrial DNA carried out in Japan only partially confirms this hypothesis: it showed that modern Japanese from the central islands have very much in common genetically with modern Koreans, with whom they have much more identical and similar mitochondrial types than with Ainu and Ryukyu people.
However, it is also shown that there are practically no similarities between the Ainu and Ryukyu people. The age estimate showed that both of these ethnic groups have accumulated certain mutations over the past twelve millennia - this suggests that they are indeed descendants of the original Yeomon people, but also proves that the two groups have not been in contact with each other since then.
Most modern Japanese living in Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu have many common mitochondrial sequences with modern Koreans, which proves their maternal affinity with the yoi 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 either with 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 from the Japanese military detachments defending the northern borders of Yamato was formed what was later called "samurai". Samurai culture and samurai combat techniques are largely derived from Ainu fighting techniques and carry many Ainu elements.
On my own behalf, I would suggest that the leadership of Russia and Japan in the "northern territories" in Russia and in the "southern territories" - Hokkaido - Matsmai, for each of the states to create autonomy for AINU - AINU and allow Ainu from both autonomies to move freely across the state borders between Russia and Japan and allow the Ainu to trade in seafood, and not the poachers exporting the entire catch to Japan.
Russia is the peoples and their lands that make up it,
and the Russians are the "cement" that unites the peoples of Russia.
************* From the discussion of the material about the Ains ******************
Andrey Belkovsky AINY - Ainumosiri
It's a good article, but it's worth learning more about the Ainu, especially about their life in Russia-USSR.
There is a good book by Taksami "Who are you, Ainu" and "Peoples of Siberia" under the editorship of Levin (1959 IMHO)
The Ainu and their fellow tribesmen were rotten by both the Japanese and ours (ours cleaned the Ainu from southern Kamchatka, Sakhalin, and especially the Kuriles - after the 18th century it was the Kurils that were the core of Ainumosiri).
I even reported to the Foreign Ministry (on the problems of the South Kuriles) that the best option is to create the state of Ainumosiri there and help the Ainu survivors to live there normally.
The Ainu are the people of Oceania, the northern Australoids, and there is a positive American experience in granting independence to such structures. Kiribati, Vanuatu and Nauru live and flourish.
When Soviet power came to power, the Ainu twice - before the war and after - turned out to be completely Japanese spies. The smartest corresponded with the Nivkhs (from whom they took Sakhalin).
It's funny - the Nivkhs have the world minimum of beard and mustache growth, the Ainu and Armenians have the world maximum (under 6 points).
Before the revolution, the Ainu were also resettled to the Commanders. Now they have assimilated with the Aleuts - as part of the former Badaev family.
Until the 1980s, in the lower part of the village of Nikolskoye, the Bering Island had the toponym "Ainsky End".
Among the Badayev-Kuznetsovs there are people with increased beards for the Aleuts.
Andrey Belkovsky
************************** From the historical chronicle of the Ainu ********************* ****
Initially, the Ainu lived on the islands of present-day Japan, which were called Ainumosiri - the land of the Ainu, until they were pushed to the north by the Yayoi (Mongoloids) proraapanese. The Ainu came to Sakhalin in the XIII-XIV centuries, "having finished" the settlement in the beginning. XIX century. Traces of their appearance were also found in Kamchatka, in Primorye and the Khabarovsk Territory. Many toponymic names of the Sakhalin region bear Ainu names: Sakhalin (from "SAKHAREN MOSIRI" - "undulating land"); the islands of Kunashir, Simushir, Shikotan, Shiashkotan (the endings "shir" and "kotan" mean "a piece of land" and "settlement", respectively).
It took the Japanese more than 2 thousand years to occupy the entire archipelago up to Hokkaido (then it was called "Ezo") (the earliest evidence of clashes with the Ainu dates back to 660 BC). Currently, there are only a few Ainu reservations on Hokkaido, where Ainu families live.
The first Russian seafarers who studied Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands were surprised to note the Caucasoid facial features, thick hair and beards unusual for Mongoloids.
The Ainu population was a socially stratified group ("utar"), headed by families of leaders by the right of succession to power (it should be noted that the Ainu clan followed the female line, although the man was naturally considered the main one in the family). Utar was built on the basis of fictitious kinship and had a military organization. The ruling families, who called themselves "utarpa" (head of utara) or "nishpa" (leader), represented a layer of the military elite. Men of "high origin" were assigned to military service from birth, high-born women spent their time at embroidery and shamanic rituals ("tusu").
The chief's family had a dwelling inside a fortification ("chas"), surrounded by an earthen embankment (also called "chas"), usually under the cover of a mountain or cliff protruding above the terrace. The number of embankments often reached five or six, which alternated with ditches. Together with the chief's family, there were usually servants and slaves ("ushiyu") inside the fortification. The Ainu did not have any centralized power.
Of the weapons, the Ainu preferred the bow. It was not for nothing that they were called "people with arrows sticking out of their hair" because they wore quivers (and swords, by the way, too) behind their backs. The bow was made from elm, beech or large spindle tree (tall shrub, up to 2.5 m high with very strong wood) with whalebone overlays. The bowstring was made of nettle fibers. The plumage of the arrows consisted of three eagle feathers.
A few words about combat tips. In combat, both "regular" armor-piercing and spiked arrowheads were used (perhaps for better cutting through armor or getting an arrow stuck in a wound). There were also arrowheads of an unusual, Z-shaped section, which were most likely borrowed from the Manchus or Dzhurdzheni (information has been preserved that in the Middle Ages the Sakhalin Ainu rebuffed a large army that came from the mainland).
Arrowheads were made of metal (the early ones were made of obsidian and bone) and then coated with aconite poison "suruku". The aconite root was crushed, soaked and placed in a warm place for fermentation. A stick with poison was applied to the spider's leg, if the leg fell off, the poison is ready. Due to the fact that this poison quickly decomposed, 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 - jangin - fought with two swords, not recognizing shields. The guards of all swords were removable and were often used as decorations. There is evidence that some guards were specially polished to a mirror finish to scare away evil spirits.
In addition to swords, the Ainu wore two long knives ("cheiki-makiri" and "sa-makiri"), which were worn on the right thigh. Cheiki-makiri was a ritual knife for making sacred shavings "inau" and performing the ritual "pere" or "erytokpa" - a ritual suicide, which was later adopted by the Japanese, calling it "hara-kiri" or "seppuku" (as, incidentally, the cult of the sword, special shelves for a sword, spear, bow). The 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 man. Ainu grandfather was ordered to make a sword, and a Japanese grandfather: money (further explains why the Ainu had the cult of swords, and the Japanese have a thirst for money. 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 was combat beaters - small rollers with a handle and a hole at the end, made of hard wood. On the sides, the beaters were supplied with metal, obsidian or stone thorns. The beaters were used both as a brush and as a sling - a leather belt was threaded through the hole. A well-aimed blow from such a beater killed immediately, at best (for the victim, of course) - it disfigured forever.
The Ainu did not wear helmets. They had natural long, thick hair that tied into a tangle, forming a kind of natural helmet.
The sarafan armor was made of bearded seal skin ("bearded seal" - a kind of large seal). In appearance, such armor may seem cumbersome, but in fact it practically does not restrict movement, allows it to bend and squat freely. Thanks to the numerous segments, four layers of leather were obtained, which with equal success reflected the blows of swords and arrows. Red circles on the chest of the armor symbolize the three worlds (upper, middle and lower worlds), as well as shamanic discs - "roofing felts", scaring away evil spirits and generally having magical significance. Similar circles are also depicted on the back. Such armor is fastened in front with the help of numerous strings. There was also short armor, like a jersey 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 Pro-Japanese adopted almost everything from them. Why not assume that some elements of martial arts were not adopted either?
Only such a duel has survived to this day. Opponents, holding each other by the left hand, struck with clubs (the Ainu specially trained their backs to pass this endurance test). Sometimes these clubs were replaced with knives, and sometimes they just fought 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. For example, they conquered Sakhalin from the Tonzi - a short people, really the indigenous population of Sakhalin. From "tonzi" Ainu women adopted the habit of tattooing lips and skin around the lips (a kind of half-smile - half-beads), as well as the names of some (very good quality) swords - "tonzini".
It is curious that the Ainu warriors - the Dzhangins - were noted as very warlike, they were incapable of lying.
Also interesting is information about the ownership marks of the Ainu - they put special signs on arrows, weapons, dishes, passed down from generation to generation, in order, for example, not to confuse whose arrow hit the beast, to whom this or that thing belongs. There are more than one and a half hundred such signs, and their meanings have not yet been deciphered. Rock inscriptions were found near the flock (Hokkaido) and on the sharp Urup.
There were also pictograms on "ikunisi" (sticks for maintaining a whisker while drinking). To decipher the signs (which were called "epasi itokpa") it was necessary to know the language of 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 one hundred people. There was a belief that they could fog up.
Over the years, the Ainu more than once raised an uprising against the Japanese (in Ainu "siskin"), 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 did not succeed in other methods of suppressing the uprising. (In a similar way, the Germans dealt with the princes of the Polabian Slavs - the Lusatians, the invited princes were locked in the house and the house was set on fire.)
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov talks about the Ainakh-AINO
The indigenous population of South Sakhalin, the local foreigners, when asked who they are, do not name either the tribe or the nation, but simply answer: Aino. This means - a person. In the ethnographic map of Shrenk, the area of \u200b\u200bdistribution of the Aino, or Ainu, is marked with yellow paint, and this paint completely covers the Japanese island of Matsmai and the southern part of Sakhalin up to the Terpeniya Bay. They also live on the Kuril Islands and are therefore called Kurils among the Russians. The numerical composition of the Ainos living on Sakhalin is not precisely determined, but there is no doubt that this tribe is disappearing, and, moreover, with extraordinary speed.
Doctor Dobrotvorsky, 25 years ago, who served in South Sakhalin *, says that there was a time when there were 8 large Ain villages near the 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 fortuitously cites three figures taken from different sources: 2885, 2418, 2050, and he considers the latter the most reliable. According to the testimony of one author, his contemporary, from the Korsakov post in both directions along the coast there were Ain villages. I did not find a single village near the post and saw several Ain yurts only near Bolshoi Takoe and Siyantsy. In the "Vedomosti on the number of foreigners living in 1889 in the Korsakov district," the number of Aino is determined as follows: 581 men and 569 women.
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* After him there were two serious works: "The southern part of Sakhalin Island" (extracted from the military medical report). - "Izvestia of the Siberian Department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society", 1870, vol. I, nos. 2 and 3, and "Ainsko-Russian dictionary".
Dobrotvorsky believes that the reasons for the disappearance of the Aino are devastating wars, as if they once took place on Sakhalin, an insignificant birth rate due to the infertility of Ainok, and, most importantly, illness. They always had syphilis, scurvy; there was 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 have spared Southern Sakhalin. A. Polonsky writes that the yurt in which the deceased happened is abandoned by the Aino and another is being built in its place in a new place. Such a custom apparently originated at a time 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 Aino disappear so quickly, almost before our eyes; after all, in the last 25 - 30 years there were no wars, no significant epidemics, and meanwhile, during this period of time the tribe has decreased by more than half. I think it would be more accurate to assume that this rapid disappearance, similar to melting, is not due to extinction alone, but also from the migration of the Aino to neighboring islands.
Before the occupation of South Sakhalin by the Russians, the Ainos were almost in serfdom with the Japanese, and it was all the easier to enslave them because they are meek, unrequited, and most importantly, they were hungry and could not do without rice *.
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* Aino told Rimsky-Korsakov: "Sizam is asleep, but Aino works for him: he chops wood, catches fish; Aino does not want to work - Sizam pounds him."
Having occupied South Sakhalin, the Russians freed them and until recently protected their freedom, protecting them from insults and avoiding interfering in their internal life. Escaped convicts slaughtered several Ain families in 1885; They also say that some Ainets-musher was carved with rods, who refused to carry mail, and there were attempts on the chastity of Ainks, but this kind of oppression and insults are spoken of as isolated and extremely rare cases. Unfortunately, the Russians, along with freedom, did not bring rice; with the departure of the Japanese, no one was fishing, earnings ceased, and the Ainos began to experience hunger. Like the Gilyaks, they could no longer feed on fish and meat alone - they needed rice, and so, despite their dislike of the Japanese, prompted by hunger, they began, as they say, to move to Matsmai.
In one correspondence (Golos, 1876, no.16), I read that a deputation from the Aino came to the Korsakov post and asked for work or at least seeds for growing potatoes and teach them how to cultivate the land for potatoes; the job was allegedly refused, and they promised to send potato seeds, but they did not fulfill the promises, and the Aino, in distress, continued to move to Matsmai. Other correspondence dating back to 1885 (Vladivostok, Љ 38) also says that the Aino made some statements that apparently were not respected, and that they strongly desire to get out of Sakhalin for Matsmai.
Aino is dark as gypsies; they have big, bushy beards, mustaches and black hair that is thick and coarse; their eyes are dark, expressive, gentle. They are of medium height and build strong, stocky, facial features are large, rough, but in them, according to the expression of the sailor V. Rimsky-Korsakov, there is neither Mongolian flattening nor Chinese narrow-eyed. They find that bearded Aino are very similar to Russian peasants. Indeed, when an Aino puts on his robe like our chuyka and belts it, he becomes like a merchant coachman *.
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* In Schrenk's book, which I have already mentioned, there is a table with the image of the Aino. See also the book fr. Helwald's "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 on the chest, in bunches, but furry is still far away, while the beard and hairiness, which is such a rarity among savages, amazed travelers, who, upon returning home, described the Aino as hairy. And our Cossacks, who took yasak from them in the Kuril Islands in the last century, also called them furry.
Aino live in close proximity to peoples whose facial hair is notable for its scarcity, and it is not surprising, therefore, that their wide beards put ethnographers in considerable difficulty; science has not yet found a real place for the Aino in the racial system. The Aino is sometimes referred to as a Mongolian or a Caucasian tribe; one Englishman even found that they were the descendants of Jews who were abandoned in the days of Ona on the Japanese islands. At present, two opinions seem to be the most probable: one that the Aino belong to a special race that once inhabited all the East Asian islands, the other, belonging to our Shrenk, that this is a Paleo-Asian people, long ousted by the Mongol tribes from the Asian mainland to its insular outskirts, and that the way 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 belligerent, do not tolerate violence; it was not difficult to conquer, enslave or supplant them. From Asia they were driven out by the Mongols, from Nippon and Matsmai by the Japanese, on Sakhalin the Gilyaks did not let them higher than Taraika, on the Kuril Islands they met with the Cossacks and thus ended up in a hopeless situation. At present, the Aino, usually without a hat, barefoot and in ports tucked above the track, meeting you on the way, makes a curtsy to you and at the same time looks affectionately, but sadly and painfully, like a loser, and as if wants to apologize for having a beard. he grew up big, and he still hasn't made a career for himself.
For details on Aino, see Shrenk, 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 Ainos inherited from their great-grandfathers who once lived on the southern islands, is a serious privation for them; They don't like Russian bread. Their food is more varied than that of the Gilyaks; besides meat and fish, they eat various plants, shellfish and what the Italian beggars call frutti di mare **. They eat little by little, but often, almost every hour; the gluttony characteristic of all northern savages is not noticed in them. Since babies have to go from milk directly to fish and whale oil, they are weaned late.
Rimsky-Korsakov saw ainka being sucked by a child of about three years old, who already moved perfectly and even had a knife on his belt, like a big one. On clothes and dwellings one can feel the strong influence of the south - not Sakhalin, but the real south. In the summer, the Ainos wear shirts woven of grass or bast, and earlier, when they were not so poor, they wore silk robes. They do not wear hats; they walk barefoot in summer and all autumn until the snow. Their yurts are smoky and smelly, but nevertheless they are much lighter, neater and, so to speak, more cultured than those of the Gilyaks. Drying houses with fish are usually located near the yurts, spreading a dank, suffocating smell far around; dogs howl and gnaw; right there you can sometimes see a small log cage in which a young bear sits: he will be killed and eaten in winter at the so-called bear festival.
I saw one morning how a teenage girl from Ain was feeding a bear, thrusting dried fish dipped in water on a spatula. The yurts themselves are made of knuckle and boards; the roof, made of thin poles, was covered with dry grass. Inside the walls stretch bunks, above their shelves with various utensils; here, in addition to skins, bubbles with grease, nets, dishes, etc., you will find baskets, mats and even a musical instrument. The owner usually sits on the bunk and, without ceasing, 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 hearth on which firewood is burning; smoke escapes through a hole in the roof.
A large black cauldron hangs above the fire; it boils ear, gray, frothy, which, I think, a European would not eat for any money. Monsters are sitting near the cauldron. As solid and handsome Ainu men are, so unattractive are their wives and mothers. The authors call the appearance of the Ain women ugly and even disgusting. The color is dark yellow, parchment, the eyes are narrow, the features are large; uncurly, coarse hair hangs over his face in patches, like straw in an old barn, the dress is unkempt, ugly, and with all that - an extraordinary thinness and senile expression. Married people paint their lips in something blue, and from this face they completely lose their human image and likeness, and when I had to see them and observe that seriousness, almost severity with which they stir with spoons in cauldrons and remove dirty foam, then I I seemed to see real witches. But girls and girls do not make such a repulsive impression ***.
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A. Polonsky's research "Kuriles" was published in "Notes of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society", 1871, volume IV.
** fruits of the sea (ital.).
*** N. V. Busse, who rarely spoke graciously of someone, by the way, so attests ainok: "In the evening a drunk ain, known to me as a big drunkard, came to me. He brought his wife with him, and how much I could understand , with the aim of sacrificing loyalty to her marital bed and thus extorting good gifts from me.
Ainka, quite beautiful by herself, seemed to be ready to help her husband, but I pretended not to understand their explanations ... Leaving my house, my husband and wife without ceremony in front of my window and in the sight of the sentry paid their debt to nature. In general, this ainka did not show great female shame. Her breasts were hardly covered by anything. Ainki wear the same dress as men, that is, several open-back short robes, belted low with a sash. They do not have shirts and underwear, and therefore the slightest disorder in their dress reveals all hidden charms. "But even this stern author admits that" among the young girls there were some pretty pretty, with pleasant and soft features and ardent black eyes. " Be that as it may, the ainka is far behind in physical development, she ages and fades before the man. Perhaps this should be attributed to the fact that during the centuries-old wanderings of the people, the lion's share of hardships, hard work and tears fell on a woman.
Aino never wash, go to bed without undressing. Almost everyone who wrote about Aino spoke of their morals from the best side. The general voice is such that these people are meek, modest, good-natured, trusting, communicative, polite, respectful of property, brave on the hunt and; in the words of Dr. Rollen "a, La Perouse's companion, even intelligent. Unselfishness, frankness, faith in friendship and generosity are their usual qualities. They are truthful and do not tolerate deception. Kruzenshtern came from them in complete delight; he concludes: "Such truly rare qualities, which they owe not to an exalted education, but to nature alone, aroused in me the feeling that I regard this people as the best of all the others that are still known to me." * And Rudanovsky writes: "More there can be no peaceful and modest population, which 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 visiting our one Ainsky dwelling on the shores of the Rumyantsev Bay, I noticed in this family, which consisted of 10 people, the happiest agreement, or, almost one might say, perfect equality between the members. we could in no way recognize the heads of the family. The elders did not express any signs of domination against the young. When giving them gifts, no one showed the slightest kind of displeasure that he got less than the other. They vied with us to provide us with all kinds of services. "
In conclusion, a few words about the Japanese in the history of South Sakhalin. For the first time the Japanese 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 Aino people who remembered the time of their independence and said: "Sakhalin is the land of the Ainos, there is no Japanese land on Sakhalin." The first Japanese colonists were either fugitive criminals or those who had been in a foreign land and were expelled from Japan for this.
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Other materials about the Ainu community:
http://www.icrap.org/ru/Chasanova-9-1.html photos 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
FAIRY TALES AND TRADITIONS OF THE SAKHALIN AINS
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\u003dPages&pa\u003dshowpage&pid\u003d1326
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
Ainu (Ainu) - a mysterious tribe, because of which scientists from different countries have broken a great many copies. They are white-faced and straight-eyed (men are also distinguished by strong hairiness) and in their appearance they are strikingly different from other peoples of East Asia. They are clearly not Mongoloids, rather they tend to the anthropological type of Southeast Asia and Oceania.
Ainu in traditional costumes. 1904 year
Hunters and fishermen, who for centuries almost did not know agriculture, the Ainu nevertheless created an unusual and rich culture. Their ornamentation, carvings and wood sculptures are amazing in beauty and invention; their songs, dances and legends are beautiful, like any genuine creations of the people.
Every nation has a unique history and distinctive culture. Science, to a greater or lesser extent, knows the stages of the historical development of this or that ethnic group. But there are peoples in the world, the origin of which remains a mystery. And today they continue to excite the minds of ethnographers. These ethnic groups primarily include the Ainu - the aborigines of the Far Eastern region.
They were an interesting, beautiful and naturally healthy people who settled on the Japanese islands, southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. They called themselves various tribal names - "soya-untara", "chuvka-untara". The word "Ainu", which they used to call, is not the self-name of this people. It means "man." These aborigines have been identified by scientists as a separate Ainu race, combining Caucasian, Australoid and Mongoloid features in appearance.
The historical problem with the Ainu is that of their racial and cultural origin. Traces of the existence of this people were found even in the places of Neolithic sites on the Japanese islands. The Ainu are the oldest ethnic community. Their progenitors are the carriers of the "jomon" culture (literally "rope ornament"), which dates back almost 13 thousand years (on the Kuril Islands - 8 thousand years).
The scientific study of the Jomon sites was initiated by the German archaeologists F. and G. Siebold and the American Morse. The results they obtained varied significantly among themselves. If the Siebolds confidently asserted that the Jomon culture was the work of the ancient Ainu, then Morse was more careful. He did not agree with the point of view of his German colleagues, but at the same time stressed that the Jomon period was significantly different from the Japanese.
And what about the Japanese themselves, who called the Ainu the word "ebi-su"? Most of them did not agree with the conclusions of the archaeologists. For them, the aborigines were always only barbarians, as evidenced, for example, by the record of the Japanese chronicler, made in 712: “When our exalted ancestors descended from the sky on a ship, on this island (Honshu) they found several wild peoples, among them the wildest there were the Ainu. "
But as evidenced by archaeological excavations, the ancestors of these "savages" long before the appearance of the Japanese on the islands created a whole culture there, which any nation can be proud of! That is why the official Japanese historiography made attempts to correlate the creators of the Jomon culture with the ancestors of the modern Japanese, but not with the Ainu.
Yet most scholars agree that the Ainu culture was so viable that it influenced the culture of its oppressors, the Japanese. As Professor S. A. Arutyunov points out, the Ainu elements played an essential role in the formation of samurai and the ancient Japanese religion - Shinto.
So, for example, the Ainu warrior - jangin - had two short swords, 45-50 cm long, slightly curved, with one-sided sharpening and fought with them, not recognizing shields. In addition to swords, the Ainu carried two long knives ("cheiki-makiri" and "sa-makiri"). The first was a ritual knife for making sacred shavings "inau" and performing the ritual "pere" or "erytokpa" - a ritual suicide, which the Japanese later adopted, calling it hara-kiri, or seppuku (as, by the way, the cult of the sword, special shelves for the sword, spears , onion).
The 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 man. The Ainu grandfather was ordered to make a sword, and the Japanese grandfather was ordered to make money. It further explains why the U-Ainu had a cult of swords, while the Japanese had a thirst for money. The Ainu condemned their neighbors for money-grubbing.
The Ainu did not wear helmets. From nature, they had long, thick hair, which was knotted into a mats, forming a semblance of a natural helmet. Very little is currently known about the martial art of the Ainu. It is believed that the Pro-Japanese adopted almost everything from them. In fact, the Ainu fought not only with the Japanese.
For example, they conquered Sakhalin from the Tonzi - a short people, really the indigenous population of Sakhalin. It remains to add that the Japanese were afraid of an open battle with the Ainu, they conquered and drove them out by cunning. An ancient Japanese song said that one "emishi" (barbarian, ain) is worth one hundred people. There was a belief that they could fog up.
Initially, the Ainu lived on the islands of Japan (then it was called Ainumosiri - the land of the Ainu), until they were pushed to the north by the Proto-Japanese. They came to the Kuriles and Sakhalin already in the XIII-XIV centuries. Traces of their stay were also found in Kamchatka, in Primorye and Khabarovsk Territory.
Many toponymic names of the Sakhalin Oblast bear Ainu names: Sakhalin (from “Saharen Mosiri” - “undulating land”); the islands of Kunashir, Simushir, Shikotan, Shiashkotan (the endings "shir" and "kotan" mean "a piece of land" and "settlement", respectively). It took the Japanese more than two thousand years to occupy the entire archipelago up to Hokkaido (then it was called Ezo) (the earliest evidence of clashes with the Ainu dates back to 660 BC).
There are enough facts about the cultural history of the Ainu, and it would seem that it is possible to calculate their origin with a high degree of accuracy.
Firstly, it can be assumed that in time immemorial, the entire northern half of the main Japanese island of Honshu was inhabited by tribes that are either the direct ancestors of the Ainu or are very close to them in their material culture. Second, there are two known elements that formed the basis of the Ainu ornament - a spiral and a zigzag.
Thirdly, there is no doubt that the starting point of the Ainu beliefs was primitive animism, that is, the recognition of the existence of a soul in any creature or object. Finally, the social organization of the Ainu and the method of their production have been studied quite well.
But it turns out that the factual method does not always justify itself. For example, it has been proven that the spiral ornament has never been the property of the Ainu alone. It was widely used in the art of the inhabitants of New Zealand - the Maori, in the decorative drawings of the Papuans of New Guinea, among the Neolithic tribes living in the lower reaches of the Amur.
Is this a coincidence or traces of the existence of certain contacts between the tribes of East and Southeast Asia in some distant period? But who was the first and who took over the discovery? It is also known that bear worship and cult were spread over vast territories of Europe and Asia. But among the Ainu, it is sharply different from those of other peoples, for only they fed the sacrificial bear cub with the breast of a woman-nurse!
Ainu and the cult of the bear
The Ainu language also stands apart. At one time it was believed that it was not related to any other language, but now some scientists are bringing it closer to the Malay-Polynesian group. And linguists discovered Latin, Slavic, Anglo-Germanic and even Sanskrit roots in the Ainu language. In addition, ethnographers are still struggling with the question - where did people come from in these harsh lands wearing a swing (southern) type of clothing.
The robe, made from wood fibers and decorated with traditional ornaments, looked equally good on men and women. Festive white robes were sewn of nettle. In the summer, the Ainu wore a loincloth of the southern type, and in the winter they sewed clothes for themselves from fur. They used salmon skins to make moccasins down to their knees.
The Ains were in turn ranked among the Indo-Aryans, and among the Australoids and even Europeans. The Ainu themselves considered themselves to have flown from heaven: “There was a time when the first Ainu descended from the Land of Clouds to the earth, fell in love with it, engaged in hunting, fishing in order to eat, dance and bear children” (from the Ainu tradition). Indeed, the life of these amazing people was completely connected with nature, sea, forest, islands.
They, engaged in gathering, hunting, fishing, combined the knowledge, skills and abilities of many tribes and peoples. For example, like taiga people, they went hunting; collected seafood like southerners; they beat the sea beast like the inhabitants of the north. The Ainu strictly kept the secret of mummification of the dead and the recipe for the deadly poison extracted from the root of the aconite plant, with which they impregnated the tips of their arrows and harpoons. They knew that this poison quickly decomposes in the body of the killed animal and the meat can be eaten.
The tools and weapons of the Ainu were very similar to those used by other communities of prehistoric people who lived in similar climatic and geographical conditions. True, they had one significant advantage - they had obsidian, which the Japanese islands are rich in. When processing obsidian, the edges were smoother than those of flint, so that the arrowheads and axes of the Jomon can be attributed to the masterpieces of Neolithic production.
The most important weapons were the bow and arrow. The production of harpoons and fishing rods made of deer antlers reached a high level of development. In a word, both the tools and weapons of the Jomon people are typical of their time, and it is somewhat unexpected only that people who did not know either agriculture or cattle breeding lived in rather numerous communities.
And how many mysterious questions were raised by the culture of this people! The ancient Ainu created pottery of amazing beauty by hand molding (without any device for turning dishes, and even more so a potter's wheel), decorating it with fancy rope ornaments, and mysterious dogu figurines.
Jomon pottery
Everything was done by hand! Nevertheless, jomon ceramics has a special place in primitive ceramics in general - nowhere does the contrast between the polish of its ornament and the extremely low "technology" look more striking than here. Moreover, the Ainu were almost the earliest farmers of the Far East.
And again the question! Why did they lose these skills, becoming only hunters and fishermen, having essentially taken, thereby in development, a step backward? Why in the most bizarre way do the Ainu have intertwined features of different peoples, elements of high and primitive cultures?
Being a very musical people by nature, the Ainu loved and knew how to have fun. We carefully prepared for the holidays, of which the bear was the most important. The Ainu deified everything around them. But they especially revered the bear, the snake and the dog.
Leading a seemingly primitive life, they gave the world inimitable examples of art, enriched the culture of mankind with incomparable mythology and folklore. With all their appearance and life, they seemed to deny the well-established ideas and customary schemes of cultural development.
Ainu women had a smile tattoo on their faces. Culturologists believe that the tradition of drawing a “smile” is one of the oldest in the world, followed by representatives of the Ainu people for a long time. Despite all the prohibitions by the Japanese government, even in the twentieth century, the Ainu were tattooed, it is believed that the last “correctly” tattooed woman died in 1998.
Only women were tattooed; it was believed that the ancestor of all living things, Okikurumi Turesh Machi, the younger sister of the Creator God Okikurumi, taught the Ainu ancestors this rite. The tradition was passed along the female line, the drawing on the girl's body was applied by her mother or grandmother.
In the process of "Japaneseization" of the Ainu people, tattooing of girls was banned in 1799, and in 1871 a strict ban was proclaimed in Hokkaido, since it was considered that the procedure was too painful and inhumane.
For the Ainu, rejection of tattoos was unacceptable, since it was believed that in this case the girl would not be able to marry, and after death to find peace in the afterlife. It is worth noting that the ceremony was indeed cruel: for the first time the drawing was applied to girls at the age of seven, and later the “smile” was painted over for several years, the final stage was on the day of marriage.
In addition to the characteristic smile tattoo, geometric patterns could be seen on the hands of the Ainu, they were also applied to the body as a talisman.
In a word, the number of riddles increased over time, and the answers brought new problems. Only one thing is known for sure, that their life in the Far East was extremely difficult and tragic. When in the 17th century Russian explorers reached the “farthest east”, their gaze opened up to the vast majestic sea and numerous islands.
But they were more astonished by the bewitching nature of the appearance of the natives. Before the travelers appeared people overgrown with thick beards with wide, like those of Europeans, with large, protruding noses, similar to anyone: to men from Russia, to inhabitants of the Caucasus, to gypsies, but not to Mongoloids, which Cossacks and service people are accustomed to. see everywhere beyond the Ural ridge. Pathfinders christened them "furry smokers".
Russian scientists got information about the Kuril Ainu from the "note" of the Cossack chieftain Danila Antsyferov and the Esaul Ivan Kozyrevsky, in which they informed Peter I about the discovery of the Kuril Islands and the first meeting of the Russian people with the aborigines of these places.
This happened in 1711.
“Leaving the canoes to dry, we went ashore at noon and in the evening we saw either houses or plague. Keeping the squeak at the ready - who knows what kind of people there are - we went to them. About fifty people, dressed in skins, poured out to meet them. They looked without fear and were of an extraordinary appearance - hairy, long-bearded, but with white faces and not slanted like the Yakuts and Kamchadals. "
For several days, the conquerors of the Far East, through the interpreter, tried to persuade the "furry smokers" under the sovereign's hand, but they refused such an honor, saying that they did not pay yasak to anyone and would not pay. Only the Cossacks learned that the land to which they sailed was an island, that at noon there were other islands behind it, and even further away - Matmai, Japan.
26 years after Antsyferov and Kozyrevsky, Stepan Krasheninnikov visited Kamchatka. He left behind the classic work "Description of the Land of Kamchatka", where, among other information, he gave a detailed description of the Ainu as an ethnic type. This was the first scientific description of the tribe. A century later, in May 1811, the famous navigator Vasily Golovnin visited here.
For several months the future admiral studied and described the nature of the islands and the way of life of their inhabitants; his true and colorful story about what he saw was highly appreciated by both lovers of literature and scholars. We also note this detail: Golovnin's translator was a smoker, that is, Ain, Alexey.
We do not know what name he bore "in the world", but his fate is one of the many examples of Russian contact with the Kuril people, who willingly learned the Russian language, converted to Orthodoxy and conducted lively trade with our ancestors.
The Kuril Ainu, according to eyewitnesses, were very kind, friendly and open people. Europeans, who visited the islands in different years and were usually proud of their culture, made high demands on etiquette, but they noted the gallant manner characteristic of the Ainu.
The Dutch navigator de Vries wrote:
“Their behavior towards foreigners is so simple and sincere that educated and polite people could not have behaved better. When they appear before strangers, they dress in their best clothes, forgively pronounce their greetings and wishes, bow their heads. "
Perhaps it was precisely this good nature and openness that prevented the Ainu from resisting the harmful influence of people from the mainland. The regression in their development came when they found themselves between two fires: pressed from the south by the Japanese and from the north by the Russians.
Modern Ainu
It so happened that this ethnic branch - the Kuril Ainu - was erased from the face of the Earth. Now the Ainu live in several reservations in the south and southeast of about. Hokkaido, in the Ishikari Valley. The purebred Ainu practically degenerated or assimilated with the Japanese and Nivkhs. Now there are only 16 thousand of them, and the number continues to decline sharply.
The life of the modern Ainu strikingly resembles the picture of the life of the ancient Jomon. Their material culture has changed so little over the past centuries that these changes may not be taken into account. They leave, but the burning secrets of the past continue to excite and disturb, inflame the imagination and nourish an inexhaustible interest in this amazing, original and unlike anyone else.
There is one ancient People on earth that has been simply ignored for more than one century, and more than once was persecuted and genocidal in Japan due to the fact that by its existence it simply breaks the established official false history of both Japan and Russia.
Now, there is reason to believe that not only in Japan, but also in Russia there is a part of this ancient indigenous people. According to preliminary data from the last census, held in October 2010, there are more than 100 Ains in our country. The fact itself is unusual, because until recently it was believed that the Ainu lived only in Japan. They guessed about this, but on the eve of the census, employees of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences noticed that, despite the absence of Russian peoples in the official list, some of our fellow citizens persistently continue to consider themselves Ains and have good reasons for this.
As studies have shown, the Ains, or Kamchadal smokers, did not disappear anywhere, they simply did not want to recognize them for many years. And yet Stepan Krasheninnikov, a researcher of Siberia and Kamchatka (18th century), described them as Kamchadal Kuriles. The very name "Ainu" comes from their word "man" or "worthy man" and is associated with military operations. And according to one of the representatives of this ethnic group in an interview with the famous journalist M. Dolgikh, the Ainu fought with the Japanese for 650 years. It turns out that this is the only nation that remains today, who from ancient times held back the occupation, resisted the aggressor - now the Japanese, who were, in fact, Koreans with perhaps a certain percentage of the Chinese population who moved to the islands and formed another state.
It has been scientifically established that the Ainu already inhabited the north of the Japanese archipelago, the Kuriles and part of Sakhalin and, according to some sources, part of Kamchatka and even the lower reaches of the Amur already about 7 thousand years ago. The Japanese who came from the south gradually assimilated and drove the Ainu to the north of the archipelago - to Hokkaido and the southern Kurils.
The largest clusters of Ainu families are now located on Hokaido.
According to experts, in Japan the Ainu were considered “barbarians”, “savages” and social marginalized. The hieroglyph used to denote the Ainu means "barbarian", "savage", now the Japanese also call them "hairy Ainu" for which the Ainu do not like the Japanese.
And here the policy of the Japanese against the Ainu is very well traced, since the Ainu lived on the islands even before the Japanese and had a culture many times, or even orders of magnitude, higher than that of the ancient Mongoloids of settlers.
But the theme of the Ainu's dislike for the Japanese probably exists not only because of the ridiculous nicknames addressed to them, but also probably because the Ainu, I remind you, have been subjected to genocide and persecution by the Japanese for centuries.
At the end of the XIX century. about one and a half thousand Ainu lived in Russia. After the Second World War, they were partly evicted, partly they left themselves together with the Japanese population, others remained, returning, so to speak, from their difficult and protracted service for centuries. This part mixed with the Russian population of the Far East.
Outwardly, the representatives of the Ainu people very little resemble their closest neighbors - the Japanese, the Nivkhs and the Itelmens.
The Ains are the White Race.
According to the Kamchadal Kurils themselves, all the names of the islands of the southern ridge were given by the Ain tribes who once inhabited these territories. By the way, it is wrong to think that the names of the Kuril Islands, Kuril Lake, etc. arose due to hot springs or volcanic activity. It's just that the Kurils, or Kuril people, live here, and "kuru" in Ainsky is the People.
It should be noted that this version destroys the already flimsy basis of the Japanese claims to our Kuril Islands. Even if the name of the ridge comes from our Ains. This was confirmed during the expedition to the island. Matua. There is the bay of Ainu, where the oldest site of the Ains was discovered.
Therefore, according to experts, it is very strange to say that the Ainu have never been to the Kuriles, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, as the Japanese do now, assuring everyone that the Ainu live only in Japan (after all, archeology says otherwise), therefore, they, the Japanese, supposedly you need to give up the Kuril Islands. This is purely untrue. In Russia, there are the Ainu - the indigenous White People who have a direct right to consider these islands as their ancestral lands.
American anthropologist S. Lauryn Brace, from the University of Michigan in the magazine "Horizons of Science", No. 65, September-October 1989, writes: “The typical Ainu is easy to distinguish from the Japanese: he has lighter skin, thicker hair, beard , which is unusual for Mongoloids, and a more prominent nose. "
Brace studied about 1,100 crypts of the Japanese, Ainu and other ethnic groups and concluded that the privileged samurai class in Japan are actually descendants of the Ainu, and not the Yayoi (Mongoloids), the ancestors of most modern Japanese.
The story with the Ainu estates is reminiscent of the story with the higher castes in India, where the highest percentage of the White man haplogroup is R1a1
Brace goes on to write: “... this explains why the facial features of the ruling class are so often different from those of today's Japanese. The real Samurai, the descendants of the Ainu warriors, acquired such influence and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with the rest of the ruling circles and brought in the blood of the Ainu, while the rest of the Japanese population was mainly the descendants of the Yayoi. "
It should also be noted that apart from archaeological and other features, the language has been partially preserved. There is a dictionary of the Kuril language in the "Description of the Land of Kamchatka" by S. Krasheninnikov. In Hokkaido, the dialect spoken by the Ainu is called saru, but in SAKHALIN it is called reichishka.
It is not difficult to understand that the Ainu language differs from the Japanese language also in syntax, phonology, morphology and vocabulary, etc. Although there have been attempts to prove that they have family ties, the overwhelming majority of modern scholars reject the assumption that the relationship between languages \u200b\u200bgoes beyond the contact relationship, involving the mutual borrowing of words in both languages. In fact, no attempt to link the Ainu language to any other language has been widely accepted.
In principle, according to the well-known Russian political scientist and journalist P. Alekseev, the problem of the Kuril Islands can be solved politically and economically. To do this, it is necessary to allow the Ainam (partially resettled to Japan in 1945) to return from Japan to the land of their ancestors (including their original area - the Amur region, Kamchatka, Sakhalin and all the Kuriles, creating at least following the example of the Japanese (it is known that the Japanese parliament only in 2008 did he recognize the Ainov as an independent national minority), the Russian dispersed autonomy of an “independent national minority” with the participation of the Ains from the islands and the Ains of Russia.
We have neither people nor funds for the development of Sakhalin and the Kuriles, but the Ains do. The Ainu who migrated from Japan, according to experts, can give impetus to the economy of the Russian Far East, precisely by forming not only on the Kuril Islands, but also within Russia, national autonomy and reviving their family and traditions in the land of their ancestors.
Japan, according to P. Alekseev, will be out of work, because the displaced Ainu will disappear there, and in our country they can settle not only in the southern part of the Kuril Islands, but throughout their original area, our Far East, eliminating the emphasis on the southern Kuriles. Since many of the Ainu deported to Japan were our citizens, the Ainu can be used as allies against the Japanese, restoring the dying Ainu language.
The Ainu were not allies of Japan and never will be, but they can become allies of Russia. But unfortunately we ignore this ancient People to this day.
As noted by the leading researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Academician K. Cherevko, Japan exploited these islands. In their law there is such a thing as "development through trade exchange." And all the Ainu - both conquered and unconquered - were considered Japanese, were subject to their emperor. But it is known that even before that, the Ainu paid taxes to Russia. True, this was of an irregular nature.
Thus, it is safe to say that the Kuril Islands belong to the Ainam, but, one way or another, Russia must proceed from international law. According to it, i.e. according to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan abandoned the islands. There are simply no legal grounds for revising the documents signed in 1951 and other agreements today. But such matters are resolved only in the interests of big politics, and I repeat that only its Brotherly people, that is, We, can help this people from outside.
Twenty years ago, the magazine "Vokrug Sveta" published an interesting article "Arrived from Heaven," Real People ". We provide a small excerpt from this very interesting material:
“… The conquest of huge Honshu was progressing slowly. At the beginning of the 8th century AD, the Ainu held their entire northern part. Military happiness passed from hand to hand. And then the Japanese began to bribe the Ainu leaders, award them with court titles, resettle entire Ainu villages from the occupied territories to the south, and create their own settlements in the vacant place. Moreover, seeing that the army was unable to hold onto the occupied lands, the Japanese rulers decided on a very risky step: they armed the settlers leaving to the north. This was the beginning of the serving nobility of Japan - the samurai, who turned the tide of the war and had a huge impact on the history of their country. However, the 18th century still finds small villages of the incompletely assimilated Ainu in the north of Honshu. Most of the indigenous islanders partly died, and partly managed to cross the Sangar Strait even earlier to their fellow tribesmen in Hokkaido - the second largest, northernmost and most sparsely populated island of modern Japan.
Until the end of the 18th century, Hokkaido (at that time it was called Ezo, or Ezo, that is, "wild", "land of the barbarians") was not too interested in the Japanese rulers. Written at the beginning of the 18th century, Dainniponshi (History of Great Japan), consisting of 397 volumes, mentions Ezo in the section devoted to foreign countries. Although already in the middle of the 15th century, the daimyo (large feudal lord) Takeda Nobuhiro decided at his own peril and risk to press the Ainu of southern Hokkaido and built the first permanent Japanese settlement there. Since then, foreigners sometimes called Ezo Island differently: Matmai (Mats-mai), after the Matsumae clan founded by Nobuhiro.
New lands had to be taken with a fight. The Ains offered stubborn resistance. The people's memory has preserved the names of the most courageous defenders of their native land. One such hero is Shakushain, who led the Ainu uprising in August 1669. The old leader led several Ainu tribes. In one night, 30 merchant ships arriving from Honshu were captured, then a fortress on the Kun-nui-gawa river fell. House Matsumae supporters barely managed to hide in the fortified town. A little more and ...
But the reinforcements sent to the besieged were in time. The former owners of the island retreated behind Kun-nui-gawa. The decisive battle began at 6 am. The Japanese warriors, clad in armor, looked with a grin at the crowd of hunters untrained in regular formation running to attack. Once these screaming bearded men in armor and hats made of wooden plates were a formidable force. Now who will be scared by the glitter of their spearheads? The cannons responded to the arrows falling on the fly ...
(Here the American film "The Last Samurai" with Tom Cruise in the title role is immediately remembered. The Hollywood people clearly knew the truth - the last samurai was indeed a white man, but they misinterpreted it, turning everything upside down so that people would never recognize her. The samurai was not a European, did not come from Europe, but was a native of Japan. His ancestors lived on the islands for thousands of years! ..)
The surviving Ainu fled to the mountains. The contractions continued for another month. Deciding to hurry things up, the Japanese lured Syakusyain along with other Ainu commanders into negotiations and killed him. The resistance was broken. From free people who lived according to their own customs and laws, all of them, young and old, turned into forced laborers of the Matsumae clan. The relationship established at that time between the conquerors and the vanquished is described in the traveller's journal Ekoi:
“... The translators and overseers did many bad and vile deeds: they cruelly treated the elderly and children, raped women. If the Ezos began to complain about such atrocities, then in addition they received punishment ... "
Therefore, many Ainu fled to their fellow tribesmen on Sakhalin, the southern and northern Kuriles. There they felt relatively safe - there were no Japanese here yet. We find indirect confirmation of this in the first description of the Kuril ridge known to historians. The author of this document is the Cossack Ivan Kozyrevsky. He visited in 1711 and 1713 in the north of the ridge and asked its inhabitants about the whole chain of islands, up to Matmai (Hokkaido). The Russians first landed on this island in 1739. The Ainu who lived there told the head of the expedition, Martyn Shpanberg, that on the Kuril Islands "... there are many people, and those islands are not subject to anyone."
In 1777, the Irkutsk merchant Dmitry Shebalin was able to bring into Russian citizenship one and a half thousand Ainu in Iturup, Kunashir and even Hokkaido. The Ainu received from the Russians strong fishing tackle, iron, cows, and eventually rent for the right to hunt near their shores.
Despite the arbitrariness of some merchants and Cossacks, the Ainu (including the Ezo) sought protection from the Japanese in Russia. Perhaps the bearded big-eyed Ainu saw in the people who came to them natural allies, so sharply different from the Mongoloid tribes and peoples who lived around them. After all, the outward resemblance between our explorers and the Ainu was simply amazing. It deceived even the Japanese. In their first reports, Russians are referred to as “red-haired Ainu” ... "
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There is one ancient People on earth that has been simply ignored for more than one century, and has been persecuted in Japan more than once because by its existence it simply breaks the established official false history of both Japan and Russia.
In order for you to better understand what the Great Border People of the Ains are part of, which has survived to this day, we will make a small digression and clarify what Russia used to be.
As you know, Russia used to be different from now, small peoples did not live separately from us, we existed together as a single people, we Rus, Ukrainians Malorosy and Belorussy. At least half of Europe belonged to us, there were no Scandinavian countries (later countries acquired their status, but remained satellites of Russia for a long time), nor Germany (East Prussia was conquered by the Teutonic Order in the 13th century and the Germans are not the indigenous population of East Prussia.) Nor Denmark, etc. then it was not, all this was part of Russia. This is evidenced by the old maps, where Rus is Tartary, or Grande Tartarie or Mogolo, Mongolo Tartarie, Mongolo (on stress) Tartary.
Here is one of the Mercator cards
It is worth mentioning that Mercator was persecuted by the church, but this is already a topic rather about his map Septentrionalium Terrarum Descriptio. ancient land, today's Antarctica, our forbidden past.
Here is a map of 1512, on it, of course, there is already Germany, but the territory of Russia is also clearly marked, which borders on the German conquered lands. The territory of Russia there is designated not by Tartary as usual, but in general, together with Muscovy - Rvssiae, Rusy, Rosa, Russia. The current, by the way, the Barents Sea was then called the Murmansk
2.
Here is a map of 1663, here the territory of Muscovy is highlighted in white, and through it there are inscriptions, the most prominent
This is Pars Europa Russia Moskovia on the white part of where today's Europe is
Siberia In the red territory, also called by the Greeks and pro-Westerners Tartaria, Tartaria
Below, on the green Tartaria Vagabundorum Independens, where Mongolia and Tibet were earlier and now, which were under the protectorate and protection of Russia, they were from China.
Through the green and red regions of Tartaria Magna, Great Tartary, that is, Russia
Well, at the bottom right, there is a yellow area Tartaria Chinensis, Sinarium, China Extra Muros, border and trade territory, also controlled by Russia.
Below is a light green area of \u200b\u200bImperum China, China, it is easy to imagine how relatively small it was then and how much land, under Peter and the Romanov Jews in general, went to them.
Below is the yellow area Magni Mogolis Imperium India, Indian Empire. etc.
3.
This myth was necessary for the Jews who carried out bloody baptism in order to justify the huge number of Slavs they killed (after all, only in one of the then Kiev region nine out of twelve million people, Slavs, were destroyed, which is also proved by archaeologists who confirm the fact of a sharp decline in the population, villages, villages, at the time of baptism), and wash your hands with this lie before the people. Well, most of the current cattle, pickled and zombified in advance by the state program since their school years, they still believe in them and figure it out, even if they are just in no hurry for themselves
Somewhere in the middle of this time, these centuries, while in Russia there was a church turmoil and many peoples remained abandoned, one of them is the Ains, the inhabitants of what was once our Far Eastern Islands.
Now, there is reason to believe that not only in Japan, but also in Russia there is a part of this ancient indigenous people. According to preliminary data from the last census, held in October 2010, there are more than 100 Ains in our country. The fact in itself is unusual, because until recently it was believed that the Ainu lived only in Japan. They guessed about this, but on the eve of the census, employees of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences noticed that, despite the absence of Russian peoples in the official list, some of our fellow citizens persistently continue to consider themselves Ainu and have good reason for this.
As studies have shown, the Ains, or Kamchadal smokers, did not disappear anywhere, they simply did not want to recognize them for many years. And yet Stepan Krasheninnikov, a researcher of Siberia and Kamchatka (18th century), described them as Kamchadal Kuriles. The very name "Ainu" comes from their word "man" or "worthy man" and is associated with military operations. And according to one of the representatives of this ethnic group in an interview with the famous journalist M. Dolgikh, the Ainu fought with the Japanese for 650 years. It turns out that this is the only nation that remains today, who from ancient times held back the occupation, resisted the aggressor - the Japanese, who were, in fact, Koreans, who moved to the islands and formed another state.
It is scientifically established that about 7 thousand years ago the Ainu inhabited the north of the Japanese archipelago, the Kuriles and part of Sakhalin and, according to some sources, part of Kamchatka and even the lower reaches of the Amur. The Japanese who came from the south gradually assimilated and drove the Ainu to the north of the archipelago - to Hokkaido and the southern Kuriles.
4.
According to experts, in Japan, the Ainu were considered "barbarians", "savages" and social outcasts. The hieroglyph used to designate the Ainu means "barbarian", "savage", now the Japanese also call them "hairy Ainu" for which the Ainu dislike the Japanese. At the end of the XIX century. about one and a half thousand Ainu lived in Russia. After World War II, they were partly evicted, and partly they left themselves together with the Japanese population. Part mixed with the Russian population of the Far East.
Outwardly, the representatives of the Ainu people very little resemble their closest neighbors - the Japanese, Nivkhs and Itelmens. The Ains are the White Race.
5.
According to the Kamchadal Kurils themselves, all the names of the islands of the southern ridge were given by the Ainu tribes who once inhabited these territories. By the way, it is wrong to think that the names of the Kuril Islands, Kuril Lake, etc. arose due to hot springs or volcanic activity. It's just that the Kurils, or Kuril people, live here, and "kuru" in Ainu is the people. It should be noted that this version destroys the already flimsy basis of the Japanese claims to our Kuril Islands. Even if the name of the ridge comes from our Ainu. This was confirmed during the expedition to the island. Matua. There is the Ainu bay, where the oldest Ainu camp was discovered. From the artifacts it became clear that from about 1600 they were precisely the Ainu.
Therefore, according to experts, it is very strange to say that the Ainu have never been in the Kuriles, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, as the Japanese are doing now, assuring everyone that the Ainu live only in Japan, so they supposedly need to give up the Kuril Islands. This is purely untrue. In Russia there are Ainu - an indigenous people who also have the right to consider these islands as their ancestral lands.
American anthropologist S. Lauryn Brace, from Michigan State University in Horizons of Science, No. 65, September-October 1989. writes: "The typical Ainu is easy to distinguish from the Japanese: he has lighter skin, thicker hair, a beard, which is unusual for Mongoloids, and a more prominent nose."
Brace studied about 1,100 crypts of Japanese, Ainu and other Asian ethnic groups and came to the conclusion that representatives of the privileged class of samurai in Japan are in fact descendants of the Ainu, and not Yayoi (Mongoloids), the ancestors of most modern Japanese. Brace goes on to write: “... this explains why the facial features of the ruling class are so often different from those of today's Japanese. Samurai - the descendants of the Ainu acquired such influence and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with the ruling circles and brought in the blood of the Ainu, while the rest of the Japanese population was mainly the descendants of the Yayoi.
It should also be noted that apart from archaeological and other features, the language has been partially preserved. There is a dictionary of the Kuril language in the "Description of the Land of Kamchatka" by S. Krasheninnikov. In Hokkaido, the dialect spoken by the Ainu is called saru, in Sakhalin it is called reichishka. The Ainu language differs from Japanese in syntax, phonology, morphology, and vocabulary. Although there have been attempts to prove that they have family ties, the overwhelming majority of modern scholars reject the assumption that the relationship between languages \u200b\u200bgoes beyond the contact relationship, involving the mutual borrowing of words in both languages. In fact, no attempt to link the Ainu language to any other language has received widespread acceptance, so it is now assumed that the Ainu language is a separate language.
In principle, according to the famous Russian political scientist and journalist P. Alekseev, the problem of the Kuril Islands can be solved politically and economically. To do this, it is necessary to allow the Ainu (evicted by the Soviet government to Japan in 1945) to return from Japan to the land of their ancestors, (including their original area - the Amur region, Kamchatka, Sakhalin and all the Kuriles, creating at least following the example of the Japanese (it is known that the parliament Japan only in 2008 recognized the Ainu as an independent national minority), the Russian dispersed autonomy of an "independent national minority" with the participation of the indigenous Ainu of Russia. We have neither people nor funds for the development of Sakhalin and the Kuriles, but the Ainu do. In Japan, the Ainu, according to experts, can give an impetus to the economy of the Russian Far East, precisely by forming not only on the Kuril Islands, but also within Russia, national autonomy.
Japan, according to P. Alekseev, will be out of work, because the displaced Ainu will disappear there (the displaced pure Japanese are negligible), and in our country they can settle not only in the southern part of the Kuril Islands, but throughout their original area, our Far East, eliminating the emphasis on the southern Kuriles. Since many of the Ainu deported to Japan were our citizens, it is possible to use the Ainu as allies against the Japanese, restoring the dying Ainu language. The Ainu were not allies of Japan and never will be, but they can become allies of Russia. But unfortunately we ignore this ancient People to this day. With our pro-Western government, which feeds Chechnya for a gift, which deliberately flooded Russia with people of Caucasian nationality, opened up unhindered entry for emigrants from China, and those who are clearly not interested in preserving the Peoples of Russia should not think that they will pay attention to the Ains, only civil initiative will help here.
As noted by the leading researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Academician K. Cherevko, Japan exploited these islands. In their law there is such a thing as "development through trade exchange." And all the Ainu - both conquered and unconquered - were considered Japanese, were subject to their emperor. But it is known that even before that, the Ainu paid taxes to Russia. True, this was of an irregular nature.
Thus, it is safe to say that the Kuril Islands belong to the Ainu, but one way or another, Russia must proceed from international law. According to it, i.e. according to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan abandoned the islands. There are simply no legal grounds for revising the documents signed in 1951 and other agreements today. But such matters are resolved only in the interests of big politics and I repeat that only their fraternal people, that is, we, can help this people from outside.
Initially they lived on the islands of Japan (then it was called Ainumosiri - land of the Ainu), until they were pushed northward by the Proto-Japanese. They came to Sakhalin in the XIII-XIV centuries, having “finished” the settlement in the beginning. XIX century. Traces of their appearance were also found in Kamchatka, in Primorye and the Khabarovsk Territory. Many toponymic names of the Sakhalin Oblast have Ainu names: Sakhalin (from “SAKHAREN MOSIRI” - “undulating land”); the islands of Kunashir, Simushir, Shikotan, Shiashkotan (the endings “shir” and “kotan” mean “a piece of land” and “settlement”, respectively).
It took the Japanese more than 2 thousand years to occupy the entire archipelago up to and including (then it was called "Ezo") (the earliest evidence of clashes with the Ainu dates back to 660 BC). Subsequently the Ainu almost all degenerated or assimilated with the Japanese and Nivkhs... Currently, there are only a few reservations in Hokkaido, where Ainu families live. The Ainu are perhaps the most mysterious people in the Far East.
The first Russian navigators who studied Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands were surprised to note the Caucasian facial features, thick hair and beards unusual for Mongoloids. A little later, ethnographers wondered for a long time - where did people wearing a swing (southern) type of clothing come from in these harsh lands, and linguists discovered Latin, Slavic, Anglo-Germanic and even Indo-Aryan roots in the Ainu language. The Ains were counted among the Indo-Aryans, and among the Australoids and even Caucasians. In short, the number of riddles kept growing, and the answers brought new problems.
Here is a brief summary of what we know about the Ainu:
AIN SOCIETY
The Ainu population was a socially stratified group (“utar”), headed by families of leaders by the right of succession to power (it should be noted that the Ainu clan followed the female line, although the man was naturally considered the main one in the family). “Utar” was built on the basis of a fictitious kinship and had a military organization. The ruling families, who called themselves “utarpa” (head of utara) or “nishpa” (leader), represented a layer of the military elite. Men of “high birth” were assigned to military service from birth, high-born women spent their time at embroidery and shamanic rituals (“tusu”).
The chief's family had a dwelling inside a fortification ("chas"), surrounded by an earthen embankment (also called "chas"), usually under the cover of a mountain or rock protruding above the terrace. The number of embankments often reached five or six, which alternated with ditches. Together with the family of the leader, there were usually servants and slaves (“ushiyu”) inside the fortification. The Ainu did not have any centralized power.
WEAPON
The Ainu preferred weapons. No wonder they were called “people with arrows sticking out of their hair” because they wore quivers (and swords, by the way, too) behind their backs. The bow was made from elm, beech or large spindle tree (tall shrub, up to 2.5 m high with very strong wood) with whalebone overlays. The bowstring was made of nettle fibers. The plumage of the arrows consisted of three eagle feathers.
A few words about combat tips. In combat, both “ordinary” armor-piercing and spiked arrowheads were used (perhaps for better cutting through armor or getting an arrow stuck in a wound). There were also arrowheads of an unusual, Z-shaped section, which were most likely borrowed from the Manchus or Dzhurdzheni (information has been preserved that in the Middle Ages they resisted a large army that came from the mainland).
Arrowheads were made of metal (the early ones were made of obsidian and bone) and then coated with aconite poison “suruku”. The aconite root was crushed, soaked and placed in a warm place for fermentation. A stick with poison was applied to the spider's leg, if the leg fell off, the poison is ready. Due to the fact that this poison quickly decomposed, it was widely used in hunting large animals. The arrow shaft was made of larch.
The Ainu swords were short, 45-50 cm long, slightly curved, with one-sided sharpening and a one-and-a-half-handed handle. Ainu Warrior - Jangin - fought with just two swords, not recognizing shields. The guards of all swords were removable and were often used as decorations. There is evidence that some guards were specially polished to a mirror finish to scare away evil spirits. Except swords ainu carried two long knives (“cheiki-makiri” and “sa-makiri”), which were worn on the right thigh. Cheiki-makiri was a ritual knife for making sacred shavings “inau” and performing the ritual “pere” or “erytokpa” - a ritual suicide, which was later adopted by the Japanese, calling “” or “” (as, by the way, the cult of the sword, special shelves for sword, spear, bow). The Ainu swords were put on public display only during the Bear Festival. An old legend says: Long ago, after this country was created by God, there lived an old Japanese man and an old Ainu man. The Ainu grandfather was ordered to make a sword, and the Japanese grandfather was ordered to make money (further it is explained why the Ainu had a cult of swords, and the Japanese had a thirst for money. The Ainu condemned their neighbors for money-grubbing). They treated spears rather coolly, although they exchanged them with the Japanese.
Another detail of the Ainu warrior's weapons was combat beaters - small rollers with a handle and a hole at the end, made of hard wood. On the sides, the beaters were supplied with metal, obsidian or stone thorns. The beaters were used both as a brush and as a sling - a leather belt was threaded through the hole. A well-aimed blow of such a beater killed immediately, at best (for the victim, of course) - it disfigured forever.
The Ainu did not wear helmets. They had natural long, thick hair that tied into a tangle, forming a kind of natural helmet.
Now let's move on to the armor. The sarafan armor was made of bearded seal skin (“bearded seal” - a kind of large seal). In appearance, such armor (see photo) may seem bulky, but in fact it practically does not restrict movement, allows you to freely bend and squat. Thanks to the numerous segments, four layers of leather were obtained, which with equal success reflected 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 discs, “toli”, scaring away evil spirits and generally having magical significance. Similar circles are also depicted on the back. Such armor is fastened in front with the help of numerous strings. There was also short armor, like a jersey 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 Pro-Japanese adopted almost everything from them. Why not assume that some elements of martial arts were not adopted either?
Only such a duel has survived to this day. Opponents, holding each other by the left hand, struck with clubs (the Ainu specially trained their backs to pass this endurance test). Sometimes these clubs were replaced with knives, and sometimes they just fought with their hands, until the opponents lost their breath. Despite the brutality of the fight, no injuries were observed.
In fact, they fought not only with the Japanese. Sakhalin, for example, they won from the “tonzi” - a stunted people, really the indigenous population of Sakhalin. From “tonzi”, Ainu women adopted the habit of tattooing lips and skin around the lips (a kind of half-smile was obtained - half-beads), as well as the names of some (very good quality) swords - “tonzini”. Curious that ainu warriors - Jangins - were noted as very warlike, they were incapable of lying.
Information about the signs of the Ainu property is also interesting - they put special signs on arrows, weapons, dishes, passed down from generation to generation, in order, for example, not to confuse whose arrow hit the beast, who owns this or that thing. There are more than one and a half hundred such signs, and their meanings have not yet been deciphered. Rock inscriptions were found near the flock (Hokkaido) and on the sharp Urup.
There were also pictograms on “ikunisi” (sticks for maintaining a whisker while drinking). To decipher the signs (which were called “epasi Itokpa”), one had to know the language of symbols and their components.
It remains to add that the Japanese were afraid of an open battle with the Ainu and conquered them by cunning. An ancient Japanese song said that one "emishi" (barbarian, ain) is worth one hundred people. There was a belief that they could fog up.
Over the years, more than once they raised an uprising against the Japanese (in Ainu “siskin”), but each time they lost. The Japanese invited the leaders to their place to conclude a truce. Honoring the customs of hospitality, ainutrusting as children, did not think anything bad. They were killed during the feast. As a rule, the Japanese did not succeed in other methods of suppressing the uprising.
