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Ainu people



For more information see Ainu creation myth.

The Ainu are traditionally animists, believing that everything in nature has a kamuy (spirit or god) on the inside. There is a hierarchy of the kamuy. The most important is grandmother earth (fire), then kamuy of the mountain (animals), then kamuy of the sea (sea animals), lastly everything else. They have no priests by profession. The village chief performs whatever religious ceremonies are necessary; ceremonies are confined to making libations of rice beer, uttering prayers, and offering willow sticks with wooden shavings attached to them. These sticks are called inau (singular) and nusa (plural). They are placed on an altar used to "send back" the spirits of killed animals. The Ainu people give thanks to the gods before eating and pray to the deity of fire in time of sickness. They believe their spirits are immortal, and that their spirits will be rewarded hereafter by ascending to kamuy mosir (Land of the Gods).

Some Ainu in the north are members of the Russian Orthodox Church.

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Institutions

Ainu cultural promotion center and museum, in Sapporo (Sapporo Pirka Kotan)
Ainu cultural promotion center and museum, in Sapporo (Sapporo Pirka Kotan)

In March 1997, the Ainu were recognized by a Japanese court as an indigenous and minority people. Ainu issues did not matter in the sphere of public policy until then. There was a limited outcry when the Saru River was dammed and the upriver town of Nibutani, one of the largest traditional Ainu villages, was flooded and the land expropriated from its Ainu owners. The reservoir was designed to service an industrial development project on the coast of Hokkaido, and despite the industrial project's cancellation, the government persisted in building the dam. Two Ainu residents, Kaizawa Tadashi and Kayano Shigeru, refused to sell their land, and in 1993 filed lawsuit against the expropriation. The expropriation was upheld, and for the first time, a Japanese Court recognised that the Ainu's indigenous rights had been violated.[14]

As signatories of the United Nations Treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which was signed by Japan in 1979, the Japanese had been forced to face the issue that the Ainu were indeed indigenous and minority peoples, which supported the Ainu in their pursuit of their rights to their distinct culture and language. There are many different organizations of Ainu trying to further their cause in many different ways. There is an umbrella group of which most Hokkaido Ainu and some other Ainu are members, called the Hokkaido Utari Association, originally controlled by the government with the intention of speeding Ainu assimilation and integration into the Japanese nation-state, which now operates mostly independently of the government and is run exclusively by Ainu.

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Subgroups

  • Tohoku Ainu (from Honshū, no known living population)[citation needed]
  • Hokkaido Ainu
  • Sakhalin Ainu
  • Kuril Ainu (no known living population)
  • Kamchatka Ainu (extinct since pre-historic times)[citation needed]
  • Amur Valley Ainu (probably none remain)[citation needed]

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See also

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Notes

  1. ^ Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People
  2. ^ Sjöberg, Katarina V. (1993). The Return of the Ainu: Cultural Mobilization and the Practice of Ethnicity in Japan, Studies in Anthropology and History 9. Chur: Harwood Academic Publ.. ISBN 3718654016. 
  3. ^ The Boone Collection - Image Gallery: Ainu Artifacts. Retrieved on 2008-05-08.
  4. ^ Sato, Takehiro; et al. (2007). "Origins and genetic features of the Okhotsk people, revealed by ancient mitochondrial DNA analysis". Journal of Human Genetics 52 (7): 618–627. doi:10.1007/s10038-007-0164-z. 
  5. ^ NOVA Online – Island of the Spirits – Origins of the Ainu. Retrieved on 2008-05-08.
  6. ^ a b c Tajima, Atsushi; et al. (2004). "Genetic origins of the Ainu inferred from combined DNA analyses of maternal and paternal lineages". Journal of Human Genetics 49 (4): 187–193. doi:10.1007/s10038-004-0131-x. 
  7. ^ http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mcdonald/WorldHaplogroupsMaps.pdf
  8. ^ Hammer, Michael F.; et al. (2006). "Dual origins of the Japanese: common ground for hunter-gatherer and farmer Y chromosomes". Journal of Human Genetics 51 (1): 47–58. doi:10.1007/s10038-005-0322-0. 
  9. ^ Tanaka, Masashi; et al. (2004). "Mitochondrial Genome Variation in Eastern Asia and the Peopling of Japan". Genome Research 14: 1832–1850. doi:10.1101/gr.2286304. 
  10. ^ Shigematsu, Masahito; et al. (2004). "Morphological affinities between Jomon and Ainu: reassessment based on nonmetric cranial traits". Anthropological Science 112 (2): 161–172. doi:10.1537/ase.00092. 
  11. ^ a b c d Fogarty, Philippa. "Recognition at last for Japan's Ainu", BBC News, BBC, 2008-06-06. Retrieved on 2008-06-07. 
  12. ^ The Japan Times | Diet officially declares Ainu indigenous
  13. ^ Russian Empire Census of 1897: Totals Russian Empire Census of 1897: Sakhalin (Russian)
  14. ^ Toward a Genuine Redress for an Unjust Past: The Nibutani Dam Case - [1997] MurUEJL 16

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References and further reading

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

  • Batchelor, John (1901). "On the Ainu Term `Kamui", The Ainu and Their Folklore. London: Religious Tract Society. 
  • Etter, Carl [1949] (2004). Ainu Folklore: Traditions and Culture of the Vanishing Aborigines of Japan. Whitfish, MT: Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 1417976977. 
  • Fitzhugh, William W.; Dubreuil, Chisato O. (1999). Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0295979127. 
  • Honda Katsuichi (1993). Ainu Minzoku (in Japanese). Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun Publishing. ISBN 4022565772. 
  • Ichiro Hori (1968). Folk Religion in Japan: Continuity and Change, Haskell lectures on History of religions 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
  • Junko Habu (2004). Ancient Jomon of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521776708. 
  • Kayano, Shigeru (1994). Our Land Was A Forest: An Ainu Memoir. Westview Press. ISBN 0813318807. ISBN 9780813318806.
  • Landor, A. Henry Savage (1893). Alone with the Hairy Ainu. Or, 3,800 miles on a Pack Saddle in Yezo and a Cruise to the Kurile Islands. London: John Murray. 
  • Siddle, Richard (1996). Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415132282. 
  • Starr, Frederick (1905). "The Hairy Ainu of Japan". Proceedings of the Second Yearly Meeting of the Iowa Anthopological Association. Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa. 
  • Walker, Brett (2001). The Conquest Of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520227360. 
  • Article on the Ainu in Japan's Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity.

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