who are the ainu? course hero

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Who are the Ainu?

^ "The Ainu: one of Russia's indigenous peoples". Voice of Russia. Archived from the original on March 5, 2012. ^ Tanaka, Takayuki (March 3, 2017).

How did the Ainu hunt?

They hunted in groups with dogs. Before the Ainu went hunting, particularly for bear and similar animals, they prayed to the god of fire, the house guardian god, to convey their wishes for a large catch, and to the god of mountains for safe hunting. The Ainu usually hunted bear during the spring thaw.

What happened to the Ainu people?

However historical studies clearly show that the commercial- and exploitation colonialism of the Ainu begun many centuries before that. While deep scars of historical economic, social and physical suffering remains, the Ainu continue to face oppression in Japanese society.

What do the Ainu believe about the soul?

An important concept in the Ainu belief system is the soul. Most beings in the Ainu universe have a soul, and its presence is most conspicuous when it leaves the body of the owner. When one dreams, one's soul frees itself from the sleeping body and travels to places where one has never been.

Who are the Ainu in Japan?

The Ainu are an indigenous people from the northern region of the Japanese archipelago, particularly Hokkaido.

What are the Ainu known for?

The Ainu called Hokkaido “Ainu Moshiri” (“Land of the Ainu”), and their original occupation was hunting, foraging and fishing, like many indigenous people across the world. They mainly lived along Hokkaido's warmer southern coast and traded with the Japanese.

Who are Ainu related to?

The Ainu have often been considered to descend from the diverse Jōmon people, who lived in northern Japan from the Jōmon period ( c. 14,000 to 300 BCE). One of their Yukar Upopo, or legends, tells that "[t]he Ainu lived in this place a hundred thousand years before the Children of the Sun came".

Who were the Ainu and what happened to them?

The Japanese began colonizing Ainu territory in the 1st millennium ce. Over the centuries, and despite armed resistance, these indigenous peoples lost most of their traditional lands; eventually they were resettled in the northernmost reaches of the Japanese archipelago.

Who are the Ainu quizlet?

Who are the Ainu? The Ainu are the descendants of the first Japanese people (25 000 years ago).

Where are Ainu from?

The Ainu, the aboriginal inhabitants of northernmost island (Hokkaido) of the Japanese Archipelago, are ethnic minority population in Japan. They generally show unique physical characteristics such as hairiness, wavy hair, and deep-set eyes, which are very different from those of the ordinary Japanese.

What is the Ainu religion?

Ainu were traditionally animists, believing that all things were endowed with a spirit or god (kamuy). The Ainu lived closely entwined with nature, their livelihoods relying on hunting, gathering and fishing.

What did the Ainu look like?

Physically, the Ainu stand out distinctly from the Japanese as a separate ethnic group. Ainu people tend to have light skin, a stout frame, deep-set eyes with a European shape, and thick, wavy hair. Full-blooded Ainu may have even had blue eyes or brown hair.

Are the Ainu genetically different from Japanese?

We compared genome-wide SNP data of the Ainu, Ryukyuans and Mainland Japanese, and found the following results: (1) the Ainu are genetically different from Mainland Japanese living in Tohoku, the northern part of Honshu Island; (2) using Ainu as descendants of the Jomon people and continental Asians (Han Chinese, ...

What did Japan do to the Ainu?

The Meiji government outlawed the Ainu language, putting restrictions on the Ainu Peoples' traditional livelihood, dispossessing them of their land, and imposing a new way of life. Salmon fishing and deer hunting were banned, which worsened the situation of Ainu people.

Are the Ainu Russian or Japanese?

The Ainu, also known as Aynu, are an indigenous people of Japan and Eastern Russia. According to recent research, the Ainu people originated from a merger of two other cultures: the Okhotsk and Satsumon, one of the ancient cultures believed to have originated during the Jōmon period on the Japanese Archipelago.

What type of lifestyle did the Ainu lead?

Traditional Lifestyles of the Ainu For the most part, traditional Ainu life focused on meeting the daily needs of families. Men's duties included hunting, fishing, crafting tools, and leading worship. They set spring traps laced with poison and trained dogs to capture large game like deer and bear.

How did the Japanese treat the Ainu?

The Meiji government outlawed the Ainu language, putting restrictions on the Ainu Peoples' traditional livelihood, dispossessing them of their land, and imposing a new way of life. Salmon fishing and deer hunting were banned, which worsened the situation of Ainu people.

Are Ainu people still alive?

The Ainu people are historically residents of parts of Hokkaido (the Northern island of Japan) the Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin. According to the government, there are currently 25,000 Ainu living in Japan, but other sources claim there are up to 200,000.

Is Ainu a dead language?

Only the Hokkaido variant survives, the last speaker of Sakhalin Ainu having died in 1994. Hokkaido Ainu is a moribund language, though attempts are being made to revive it....Ainu language.Hokkaido AinuNative speakers5+ (2018)Language familyAinu Hokkaido AinuWriting systemKatakana (current) Latin (current)Language codes12 more rows

What did the government say about the Ainu?

The government immediately followed with a statement acknowledging its recognition, stating, "The government would like to solemnly accept the historical fact that many Ainu were discriminated against and forced into poverty with the advancement of modernization , despite being legally equal to (Japanese) people.".

Where are the Ainu from?

The Ainu or the Aynu ( Ainu: アィヌ, Aynu, Айну; Japanese: アイヌ, romanized : Ainu; Russian: Айны, romanized : Ayny ), also known as the Ezo (蝦夷) in historical Japanese texts, are an East Asian ethnic group indigenous to Northern Japan, the original inhabitants of Hokkaido (and formerly North-Eastern Honshū) and some of its nearby Russian territories ( Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, Khabarovsk Krai and the Kamchatka Peninsula ).

What is the purpose of the Ainu Museum?

The museum promotes the culture and habits of the Ainu people who are the original inhabitants of Hokkaidō. Upopoy in Ainu language means "singing in a large group". The National Ainu Museum building has images and videos exhibiting the history and daily life of the Ainu.

How did the Ainu suffer?

The Ainu have historically suffered from economic and social discrimination as the government as well as people in contact with the Ainu regarded them as a dirty and primitive barbarians. The majority of Ainu were forced to be petty laborers during the Meiji Restoration, which saw the introduction of Hokkaidō into the Japanese Empire and the privatization of traditional Ainu lands. The Japanese government during the 19th and 20th centuries denied the rights of the Ainu to their traditional cultural practices, most notably the right to speak their language, as well as their right to hunt and gather. These policies were designed to fully integrate the Ainu into Japanese society with the cost of erasing Ainu culture and identity. The Ainu's position as manual laborers and their forced integration into larger Japanese society have led to discriminatory practices by the Japanese government that can still be felt today. The vast majority of Yamato Japanese men are believed to have compelled Ainu women to partner with them as local wives. Intermarriage between Japanese and Ainu was actively promoted by the Ainu to lessen the chances of discrimination against their offspring. As a result, many Ainu are indistinguishable from their Japanese neighbors, but some Ainu-Japanese are interested in traditional Ainu culture. For example, Oki, born as a child of an Ainu father and a Japanese mother, became a musician who plays the traditional Ainu instrument tonkori. There are also many small towns in the southeastern or Hidaka region where ethnic Ainu live such as in Nibutani ( Niputay ). Many live in Sambutsu especially, on the eastern coast.

How long did the Ainu live?

The Ainu were becoming increasingly marginalized on their own land—over a period of only 36 years, the Ainu went from being a relatively isolated group of people to having their land, language, religion and customs assimilated into those of the Japanese.

Why were the Ainu people forced to move to other fishing grounds?

Ainu kotan were also forced to move near fishing grounds so that the Japanese could secure a labor force. When the Japanese moved to other fishing grounds, Ainu kotan were also forced to accompany them.

How many Ainu are there in Japan?

Official estimates place the total Ainu population of Japan at 25,000. Unofficial estimates place the total population at 200,000 or higher, as the near-total assimilation of the Ainu into Japanese society has resulted in many individuals of Ainu descent having no knowledge of their ancestry.

Where are the Ainu from?

That is all that is commonly known about them. Still, there are Ainu in Russia. These two women, filmed by a Russian ethnographer from the Far East, look with curiosity at the huts in a reservation, something that Russia doesn't have, while shyly telling a Hokkaido Ainu that they know how to make the fold in their costume correctly.

Where did the Ainu come from?

The first is the "northern theory" - namely, that they came from the land in the north, later settled by the Mongols and Chinese. The second is that their ancestors are from Polynesia, because the Ainu have many similarities in dress, rituals, religion and tattoos to the inhabitants of Oceania.

What is the Utari association in Hokkaido?

Hokkaido has the Utari association, a network of Ainu educational and cultural centers with 55 branches. In Russia, the Ainu have nothing. All the textbooks are in English or Japanese and brought from abroad. "We have tried to cooperate with Russian authorities, but then are forced to give up.

What did the Ainu look like?

Aleksandr Gertsen / Wikipedia. There is another curious detail: Initially, the Ainu looked more like Europeans than Asians. Krasheninnikov himself and other early Russian explorers described them as similar to Russian peasants with dark skin or to Gypsies, but not at all like the Japanese, Chinese or Mongols.

How many people were Ainu in 2010?

In 2010, during the latest all-Russian census, 109 people described themselves as Ainu. But, at the insistence of the government of the Kamchatka Territory, they were not registered as Ainu. Five years later, the Ainu registered themselves as a non-commercial organization, but it was disbanded by a court decision.

How far back do Ainu go?

The Ainu are believed to go back 15,000 years - further back than the Sumerians or Egyptians. For this reason, some people say the Ainu are not just a people, but a whole "Ainu race".

Why were the Ainu not allowed to call themselves the Ainu?

In the Russian Empire they were not allowed to call themselves the ‘Ainu’ people, because the Japanese claimed that all the lands inhabited by them were part of Japan. For their part, the Ainu lived both on islands claimed by Japan and on the islands in Russia's possession.

What is the Ainu?

Ainu: The Indigenous People of Japan. Japan, like any other nation, is an ocean of diversity, home to multiple minority groups. One of these groups is Japan's indigenous people , or the Ainu. These hunter-gatherers worshipped nature and animals, spoke a language unrelated to any other, and had unusual customs like tattooing their lips.

What do Ainu believe?

The Ainu, just like the Japanese people, were animists and believed that all things are inhabited by spirits known as kamuy. While there are many gods in Ainu belief, one of the most important is known as Kim-un Kamuy, or the god of bears and the mountains. All animals are thought to be the manifestations of gods on Earth in Ainu culture, however, ...

How are Ainu different from Japanese?

You can see just by the appearance of the Ainu that traditional Ainu culture is significantly different from Japanese culture. First of all, both men and women keep their hair at shoulder length and wear traditional Ainu garb. Men, never shaving after a certain age, usually have full beards, and women undergo mouth tattooing to signify their coming to adulthood.

Why do Ainu sacrifice bears?

Traditionally, the Ainu sacrificed bears in order to release the kamuy within them to the spirit world. One tradition, called lotame, involves the raising of a young bear cub as if it were an Ainu child and then sacrificing once it has come of age.

What happened to the Ainu during the Meiji Restoration?

Under the Meiji Restoration, the Ainu had their traditional lands taken from them and their language and cultural practices were outlawed. It's a depressingly familiar story, and the damage done is only recently being addressed.

How many Ainu people are there in Japan?

According to the government, there are currently 25,000 Ainu living in Japan, but other sources claim there are up ...

What weapons did the Ainu use?

Unlike the Japanese, the Ainu always cooked their food, never eating anything raw. Common hunting weapons included poisoned spears and bow and arrows. One way that the Ainu were similar to the Japanese is in the way of religion.

What is the story of the Ainu?

The Story of the Ainu. The northern parts of Honshu, Hokkaido, and its surrounding islands did not originally belong to Japan. The area was the home of aboriginal people, the Ainu. However, due to the Japanese government’s aim to expand their power and influence, the Ainu gradually saw themselves deprived of their land, language and customs.

How did the Ainu influence the Japanese?

Although some argue that the historical trade between Ainu and Japanese (taking form in the 1400s) contributed to peaceful, cultural exchange, one must not overlook the severe harassment and misuse of power that Japan acted upon the Ainu. Policies on family separation, forced marriage to Japanese citizens, slavery and obligatory assimilation to become “Japanese” continued throughout centuries. Resistance from the Ainu resulted in repeated wars with Japan. The Koshamain’s War (1475), Shakushain’s revolt (1669-1672) and the Menashi–Kunashir rebellion (1789) are a few examples.

How many Ainu are there in Japan?

Now, Ainu are considered to be Japanese citizens and, according to Hiroshi Maruyama, director of the Centre for Environmental and Minority Policy Studies (CEMiPoS), it’s estimated that there are about 20,000 people in Hokkaido who identify themselves as Ainu today.

What was the Ainu land?

The area was the home of aboriginal people, the Ainu. However, due to the Japanese government’s aim to expand their power and influence, the Ainu gradually saw themselves deprived of their land, language and customs. Japanese settler colonialism of the Ainu land emerged in 1868. However historical studies clearly show that ...

Why are the Ainu still oppressed?

Because although the occupation of the Ainu and their land is said to have ended in 1997, the Ainu is still far from being a decolonized people. Due to the evident remains of Japan’s colonial legacy ...

How can indigenous groups inspire each other?

By sharing difficult experiences and progress related to decolonization, indigenous groups can inspire and learn from each other. At the present, Maruyama is working on a campaign for the amendment of the Ainu Policy Promotion Act of 2019 in accordance with international human rights standards. With the use of a questionnaire he plans to make Ainu voices heard and the present Act can be reviewed and amended in 2024.

How many dialects are there in Ainu?

The Foundation for Ainu Culture has published educational textbooks in eight Ainu dialects. These dialects, which may as well be referred to as languages, make up the Ainu language family. It is considered a language family isolate meaning it has no connections or roots with other languages known today.

Where are the Ainu from?

The Ainu are a people whose traditional homeland lay in Hokkaido, southern Sakhalin, and the Kurile islands, although their territory once included southern Kamchatka and the northern part of the main Japanese island (Honshu). Scholarly controversies over their cultural, racial, and linguistic identities remain unresolved.

What is the Ainu belief system?

An important concept in the Ainu belief system is the soul. Most beings in the Ainu universe have a soul, and its presence is most conspicuous when it leaves the body of the owner. When one dreams, one's soul frees itself from the sleeping body and travels to places where one has never been.

What are the main deities in the Ainu pantheon?

Besides the bears, the important deities or kamuy include foxes, owls (which are considered to be the deity of the settlement), seals, and a number of other sea and land animals and birds. The importance of each varies from region to region. In addition, the Ainu pantheon includes the fire goddess (Iresu-Huchi), the goddess of the sun and moon (in some regions they are separate deities), the dragon deity in the sky, the deity of the house, the deity of the nusa (the altar with inaw ritual sticks), the deity of the woods, and the deity of water.

How long do Ainu raise bears?

A bear cub, captured alive either while still in a den or while ambling with its mother upon emerging from the den, is usually raised by the Ainu for about a year and a half. At times women nurse these newborn cubs.

What is the theme of the Ainu epic poem?

A major theme in the Ainu epic poems treats human combat with demons. Characteristically, the deities never directly deal with the demons; rather, they extend their aid to the Ainu, if the latter behave properly. Of all the rituals of the Ainu, the bear ceremony is by far the most elaborate.

Why are shamans consulted?

Shamans are consulted in order to obtain diagnosis and treatment for these illnesses . When a soul has been mistreated, it exercises the power to punish. The deities, in contrast, possess the power to punish or reward the Ainu at will.

Who killed the bear in the Hokkaido Ainu?

After the bear is taken out of the "bear house," situated southwest of the host's house, the bear is killed by the Sakhalin Ainu with two pointed arrows. The Hokkaido Ainu use blunt arrows before they fatally shoot the bear with pointed arrows; then they strangle the already dead or dying bear between two logs.

What do Ainu people do?

Their traditional dress included bark cloth, often decorated with geometric designs. Although the Ainu were predominantly a hunting and gathering culture, some members also engaged in shifting agriculture, a method in which fields are used for a few seasons and then abandoned so as not to exhaust the soil. Animism was the traditional religion. The most important ritual took place over several years and involved the capture of a bear cub that was then raised as a member of the family; at a designated time, the bear was ritually killed. Having treated the bear well in life, the Ainu believed that in death its spirit would ensure the well-being of its adoptive community.

Where did the Ainu live in the 20th century?

Throughout the 20th century, large numbers of ethnic Japanese settled on Hokkaido and intermarried with the Ainu. Although most Ainu rituals are no longer enacted in a strictly traditional manner, they continue to be celebrated through events at museums and festivals.

Why did the Ainu interbreed with animals?

For a variety of reasons, late 19th-century Japanese pseudoscience fixated on Ainu hairiness and postulated many preposterous notions for its cause, claiming, for instance, that the Ainu interbred with animals in order to produce hirsute children.

When did the Ainu language change?

The traditional Ainu language, an isolate with a number of dialects, had been almost completely supplanted by Japanese by the early 21st century; a language-revitalization movement initiated formal instruction in Ainu in the 1980s. Ainu couple in ceremonial dress, Hokkaido, Japan. The Ainu once lived on all four major Japanese islands.

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Overview

The Ainu are the indigenous people of the lands surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, including Hokkaido Island, Northeast Honshu Island, Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula and Khabarovsk Krai, before the arrival of the Yamato Japanese and Russians. These regions are referred to as Ezo (蝦夷) in historical Japanese texts.

Names

This people's most widely known ethnonym, "Ainu" (Ainu: アィヌ; Japanese: アイヌ; Russian: Айны) means "human" in the Ainu language, particularly as opposed to kamui, divine beings. Ainu also identify themselves as "Utari" ("comrade" or "people"). Official documents use both names.

History

The Ainu are the native people of Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kurils. Early Ainu-speaking groups (mostly hunters and fishermen) migrated also into the Kamchatka Peninsula and into Honshu, where their descendants are today known as the Matagi hunters, who still use a large amount of Ainu vocabulary in their dialect. Other evidence for Ainu-speaking hunters and fishermen migratin…

Origins

The Ainu have often been considered to descend from the diverse Jōmon people, who lived in northern Japan from the Jōmon period (c. 14,000 to 300 BCE). One of their Yukar Upopo, or legends, tells that "[t]he Ainu lived in this place a hundred thousand years before the Children of the Sun came".
Recent research suggests that the historical Ainu culture originated from a me…

Military service

Ainu men were first recruited into the Japanese military in 1898. Sixty-four Ainu served in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), eight of whom died in battle or from illness contracted during military service. Two received the Order of the Golden Kite, granted for bravery, leadership or command in battle.
During World War II, Australian troops engaged in the hard-fought Kokoda Track campaign (July–…

Language

In 2008 Hohmann gave an estimate of fewer than 100 remaining speakers of the language; other research (Vovin 1993) placed the number at fewer than 15 speakers. Vovin has characterised the language as "almost extinct". As a result of this, the study of the Ainu language is limited and is based largely on historical research. Historically, the status of the Ainu language was rather hig…

Culture

Traditional Ainu culture was quite different from Japanese culture. According to Tanaka Sakurako from the University of British Columbia, the Ainu culture can be included into a wider "northern circumpacific region", referring to various indigenous cultures of Northeast Asia and "beyond the Bering Strait" in North America.

Religion

The Ainu are traditionally animists, believing that everything in nature has a kamuy (spirit or god) on the inside. The most important include Kamuy-huci, goddess of the hearth, Kim-un-kamuy, god of bears and mountains, and Repun Kamuy, god of the sea, fishing, and marine animals. Kotan-kar-kamuy is regarded as the creator of the world in the Ainu religion.

Smiling Women and Very Hairy Men

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The "Joker smile" is a lip tattoo, a distinctive feature of Ainu women. In the past, they would start having it "scarified" from the age of seven: Using a ceremonial knife, cuts were made in the corners of the lips, and charcoal was rubbed into the cuts. Every year several new lines would be added and the "smile" would be compl…
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The Unknown Race

  • The Ainu arebelieved to go back15,000 years - further back than the Sumerians or Egyptians. For this reason, some people say the Ainu are not just a people, but a whole "Ainu race". There are two theories about their origin. The first is the "northern theory" - namely, that they came from the land in the north, later settled by the Mongols and Chinese. The second is that their ancestors are fro…
See more on rbth.com

Erased from History

  • In the Russian Empire they were not allowed to call themselves the ‘Ainu’ people, because the Japanese claimed that all the lands inhabited by them were part of Japan. For their part, the Ainu lived both on islands claimed by Japan and on the islands in Russia's possession. At some point, it became shameful and simply dangerous to call oneself an A...
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The Present

  • In 2010, during the latest all-Russian census, 109 people described themselves as Ainu. But, at the insistence of the government of the Kamchatka Territory, theywere notregistered as Ainu. Five years later, the Ainu registered themselves as a non-commercial organization, but it was disbanded by a court decision. The reason? Officially, because “no Ainu exist”. "This means that …
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