Ainu tribe. Ainu - the indigenous inhabitants of the Japanese islands photo. Scientists still argue about the origin of the Ainu

There is one ancient People on earth that we have simply ignored for more than one century, and more than once was subjected to persecution and genocide in Japan due to the fact that with 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 on the territory of Russia there is a part of this ancient indigenous people. According to preliminary data from the latest population census, held in October 2010, there are more than 100 Ainov in our country. The fact itself is unusual, because until recently it was believed that the Ainu live only in Japan. They guessed about this, but on the eve of the population 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 stubbornly continue to consider themselves Ain and have good reason for this.

As research has shown, the Ainu, or Kamchadal Kurils, did not disappear anywhere, they just did not want to recognize them for many years. But Stepan Krasheninnikov, a researcher of Siberia and Kamchatka (XVIII century), described them as Kamchadal Kurils. The name "Ainu" itself comes from their word for "man", or "worthy man", and is associated with military operations. And as one of the representatives of this nation claims in a conversation with the famous journalist M. Dolgikh, the Ainu fought with the Japanese for 650 years. It turns out that this is the only people remaining to this day who, from ancient times, restrained 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 Kuril Islands and part of Sakhalin and, according to some data, part of Kamchatka and even the lower reaches of the Amur about 7 thousand years ago. The Japanese who came from the south gradually assimilated and pushed the Ainu to the north of the archipelago - to Hokkaido and the southern Kuril Islands.

The largest concentrations of Ainu families are now located in Hokaido.

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 Japanese do not like the Ainu.
And here the Japanese policy against the Ainu is very clearly visible, 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 Mongoloid settlers.

But the topic of the Ainu’s hostility towards the Japanese probably exists not only because of the ridiculous nicknames addressed to them, but also probably because the Ainu, let me remind you, were subjected to genocide and persecution by the Japanese for centuries.

At the end of the 19th century. About one and a half thousand Ainu lived in Russia. After World War II, they were partly evicted, partly they left along with the Japanese population, others remained, returning, so to speak, from their difficult and centuries-long service. This part mixed with the Russian population of the Far East.

In appearance, representatives of the Ainu people very little resemble their closest neighbors - the Japanese, Nivkhs and Itelmens.
The Ainu are the White Race.

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 Ainu Bay, where the oldest Ainu site was discovered.

Therefore, according to experts, it is very strange to say that the Ainu have never been in the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, as the Japanese are doing now, assuring everyone that the Ainu live only in Japan (after all, archeology says the opposite), so they, the Japanese, supposedly the Kuril Islands need to be given back. This is completely untrue. In Russia there are Ainu - the indigenous White People who have the direct right to consider these islands their ancestral lands.

American anthropologist S. Lorin Brace, from Michigan State University, in the journal Science Horizons, No. 65, September-October 1989, writes: “a typical Ainu can be easily distinguished from the Japanese: he has lighter skin, thicker body hair, beards , which is unusual for Mongoloids, and a more protruding nose.”

Brace studied about 1,100 crypts of Japanese, Ainu and other ethnic groups and came to the conclusion that members of the privileged samurai class in Japan are in fact descendants of the Ainu, and not the Yayoi (Mongoloids), the ancestors of most modern Japanese.

The story of the Ainu classes is reminiscent of the story of the upper castes in India, where the highest percentage of the White man's haplogroup is R1a1

Brace further writes: “.. this explains why the facial features of representatives of the ruling class are so often different from modern Japanese. The real Samurai, the descendants of Ainu warriors, gained such influence and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with the rest of the ruling circles and introduced Ainu blood into them, while the rest of the Japanese population were mainly descendants of Yayoi."

It should also be noted that in addition to archaeological and other features, the language has been partially preserved. There is a dictionary of the Kuril language in “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.
As it is not difficult to understand, the Ainu language differs from the Japanese language in syntax, phonology, morphology and vocabulary, etc. Although there have been attempts to prove that they are related, the vast majority of modern scientists reject the assumption that the relationship between the languages goes beyond contact relations, involving the mutual borrowing of words in both languages. In fact, no attempt to link the Ainu language to any other language has gained widespread acceptance.

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 (partially evicted to Japan in 1945) to return from Japan to the land of their ancestors (including their ancestral habitat - the Amur region, Kamchatka, Sakhalin and all the Kuril Islands, creating at least following the example of the Japanese (it is known that the Japanese Parliament only in 2008 did it recognize the Ainov as an independent national minority), the Russian dispersed autonomy of an “independent national minority” with the participation of the Ainov from the islands and the Ainov of Russia.

We have neither the people nor the funds for the development of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, but the Ainu do. The Ainu who migrated from Japan, according to experts, can give impetus to the economy of the Russian Far East by forming national autonomy not only in the Kuril Islands, but also within Russia and reviving their clan and traditions in the land of their ancestors.

Japan, according to P. Alekseev, will be out of business, because there the displaced Ainu will disappear, but here they can settle not only in the southern part of the Kuril Islands, but throughout their entire original range, our Far East, eliminating the emphasis on the southern Kuril Islands. 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 still ignore this ancient People.

As noted by 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. Their law includes such a concept as “development through trade exchange.” And all the Ainu - both conquered and unconquered - were considered Japanese and were subject to their emperor. But it is known that even before that the Ainu gave taxes to Russia. True, this was irregular.

Thus, we can say with confidence that the Kuril Islands belong to the Ainu, but, one way or another, Russia must proceed from international law. According to him, i.e. According to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan renounced the islands. Today there are simply no legal grounds for revising the documents signed in 1951 and other agreements. 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.

Twenty years ago, the magazine “Around the World” published an interesting article “Real People Who Arrived from Heaven.” We present a small fragment from this interesting material:

“...The conquest of huge Honshu progressed slowly. Even at the beginning of the 8th century AD, the Ainu held its entire northern part. Military happiness passed from hand to hand. And then the Japanese began to bribe the Ainu leaders, reward them with court titles, resettle entire Ainu villages from the occupied territories to the south, and create their own settlements in the vacated areas. Moreover, seeing that the army was unable to hold the captured lands, the Japanese rulers decided to take a very risky step: they armed the settlers who were 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 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 barbarians”) was not of much interest to the Japanese rulers. Written in the early 18th century, Dainniponshi (History of Greater Japan), consisting of 397 volumes, mentions Ezo in the section on foreign countries. Although already in the middle of the 15th century, the daimyo (large feudal lord) Takeda Nobuhiro decided at his own risk to oust the Ainu of southern Hokkaido and built the first permanent Japanese settlement there. Since then, foreigners have sometimes called Ezo Island differently: Matmai (Mats-mai) after the name of the Matsumae clan founded by Nobuhiro.

New lands had to be taken with battle. The Ainu put up stubborn resistance. People's memory has preserved the names of the most courageous defenders of their native land. One of these heroes is Shakusyain, 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 the fortress on the Kun-nui-gawa river fell. Supporters of the Matsumae house barely had time to hide in the fortified town. A little more and...

But the reinforcements sent by the besieged arrived in time. The former owners of the island retreated beyond Kun-nui-gawa. The decisive battle began at 6 o'clock in the morning. The Japanese warriors clad in armor looked with a grin at the crowd of hunters untrained in regular formation running to attack. Once upon a time, these screaming bearded men in armor and hats made of wooden plates were a formidable force. And now who will be afraid of the shine of the tips of their spears? The cannons responded to the falling arrows...

(Here I immediately remember the American film “The Last Samurai” with Tom Cruise in the title role. Hollywood people clearly knew the truth - the last samurai was really a white man, but they twisted it, turning everything upside down, so that people would never know it. The Last the samurai was not a European, did not come from Europe, but was a native inhabitant 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 rush things, the Japanese lured Shakusyain along with other Ainu military leaders into negotiations and killed them. 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 relations established at that time between the victors and the vanquished are described in the diary of the traveler Yokoi:

“...Translators and overseers committed many bad and vile deeds: they cruelly treated the elderly and children, raped women. If the Esosians 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 Kuril Islands. There they felt relatively safe - after all, 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 Cossack Ivan Kozyrevsky. He visited the north of the ridge in 1711 and 1713 and asked its inhabitants about the entire chain of islands, right up to Matmaya (Hokkaido). The Russians first landed on this island in 1739. The Ainu who lived there told the expedition leader, Martyn Shpanberg, that on the Kuril Islands “... there are a lot of people, and those islands are not subject to anyone.”

In 1777, Irkutsk merchant Dmitry Shebalin was able to bring one and a half thousand Ainu into Russian citizenship in Iturup, Kunashir and even Hokkaido. The Ainu received from the Russians strong fishing gear, iron, cows, and over time, 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 Russia from the Japanese. Perhaps the bearded, big-eyed Ainu saw in the people who came to them natural allies, who were so sharply different from the Mongoloid tribes and peoples who lived around them. After all, the external similarity between our explorers and the Ainu was simply amazing. It even deceived the Japanese. In their first messages, Russians are referred to as “red-haired Ainu” ... "

Few people know, but the Japanese are not the indigenous population of Japan. Before them, people lived on the islands Ainu, mysterious people, the origin of which still has many mysteries. The Ainu lived alongside the Japanese for some time until they were pushed north.

That the Ainu are the ancient masters of the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, written sources indicate and numerous names of geographical objects, the origin of which is associated with Ainu language.

Scientists still argue about the origin of the Ainu. Ainu territory was quite extensive: Japanese islands, Sakhalin, Primorye, Kuril Islands and southern Kamchatka. The fact that the Ainu are not related to other indigenous peoples of the Far East and Siberia is already a proven fact.

It is known for certain that The Ainu came to the islands of the Sea of Japan and founded the Neolithic Jomon culture there (13,000 BC - 300 BC).

The Ainu did not engage in agriculture, they got food hunting, gathering and fishing. They lived along the rivers on the islands of the archipelago, in small settlements quite distant from each other.

Hunting weapons The Ainu consisted of a bow, a long knife and a spear. Various traps and snares were widely used. In fishing, the Ainu have long used a “marek” - a spear with a movable rotating hook that catches fish. Fish were often caught at night, attracted by the light of torches.

As the island of Hokkaido became increasingly populated by the Japanese, hunting lost its dominant role in the life of the Ainu. At the same time, the share of agriculture and livestock raising increased. The Ainu began to cultivate millet, barley, and potatoes.

Hunters and fishermen, the Ainu created an unusual and rich Jomon culture , characteristic of peoples with a very high level of development. For example, they have wooden products with unusual spiral ornaments and carvings, amazing in beauty and invention.

The ancient Ainu created an extraordinary ceramics without a potter's wheel, decorating it with fancy rope patterns. The Ainu amaze with their talented folklore heritage: songs, dances and stories.

The legend of the origin of the Ainu.

That was a long time ago. There was a village among the hills. An ordinary village in which ordinary people lived. Among them is a very kind family. The family had a daughter, Aina, who was the kindest of all. The village lived its usual life, but one day at dawn a black cart appeared on the village road. The black horses were driven by a man dressed all in black. He was very happy about something, smiled widely, and sometimes laughed. There was a black cage on the cart, and a small fluffy Teddy Bear was sitting in it on a chain. He sucked his paw, and tears flowed from his eyes. All the people of the village looked out the windows, went out into the street and were indignant: how shameful is it not for a black man to be kept on a chain and tormented? white bear cub. People were only indignant and said words, but did nothing. Only a kind family stopped the black man's cart, and Aina began to ask him to released the unfortunate Little Bear. The stranger smiled and said that he would release the beast if someone gave up his eyes. Everyone was silent. Then Aina stepped forward and said that she was ready for this. The black man laughed loudly and opened the black cage. The white fluffy Teddy Bear came out of the cage. And kind Aina lost her sight. While the villagers looked at the Little Bear and spoke sympathetic words to Aina, the black man on the black cart disappeared to no one knows where. The little bear didn't cry anymore, but Aina cried. Then the white Bear cub took the string in his paws and began to lead Aina everywhere: around the village, along the hills and meadows. This didn't last very long. And then one day the people of the village looked up and saw that The white fluffy Teddy Bear leads Aina straight into the sky, and leads Aina across the sky. The Big Dipper leads the Little Dipper and is always visible in the sky, so that people remember about good and evil...

The Ainu have a cult of the bear. differed sharply from similar cults in Europe and Asia. Only The Ainu fed a sacrificial bear cub at the breast of a female nurse!

The main celebration of the Ainu is the bear festival, on which Relatives and invitees from many villages gathered. For four years, one of the Ainu families raised a bear cub. The best food was given to him, and the bear cub was prepared for ritual sacrifice. In the morning, on the day of the sacrifice of the bear cub, The Ainu staged a mass cry in front of the bear's cage. After which the animal was taken out of the cage and decorated with shavings, and ritual jewelry was put on. Then he was led through the village, and while those present distracted the animal’s attention with noise and shouts, the young hunters, one after another, jumped on the bear, pressing against it for a moment, trying to touch its head, and immediately jumped away: a peculiar ritual of “kissing” the beast. They tied the bear in a special place and tried to feed it festive food. The elder pronounced a farewell word in front of him, described the works and merits of the village residents who raised the divine beast, and outlined the wishes of the Ainu, which the bear had to convey to his father - the mountain taiga god. It is an honor to “send” the beast to the forefather, i.e. killing a bear with a bow any hunter could be awarded, at the request of the animal’s owner, but he must have been a visitor. Had hit right in the heart. The meat of the animal was placed on spruce paws and distributed taking into account seniority and birth. The bones were carefully collected and taken into the forest. Silence reigned in the village. It was believed that the bear was already on the way, and the noise could lead him off the road.

The genetic relationship of the Ainu with the people of the Neolithic Jomon culture, who were the ancestors of the Ainu, has been proven.

It has long been believed that the Ainu may have common roots with the peoples of Indonesia and the Pacific Aborigines, as they have similar facial features. But genetic research This option was also excluded.

The Japanese are sure that the Ainu are related to Paleo-Asian (?) peoples and came to the Japanese islands from Siberia. Recently there have been suggestions that The Ainu are relatives of the Miao-Yao, living in Southern China.

Appearance of the Ainu

The appearance of the Ainu is quite unusual: they have Caucasian features, they have unusually thick hair, wide eyes, and fair skin. A characteristic feature of the appearance of the Ainu is very thick hair and beard in men, what representatives of the Mongoloid race are deprived of. Thick long hair, matted into tangles, replaced helmets for the Ainam warriors.

Russian and Dutch travelers left many stories about the Ainu. According to their testimony, The Ainu are very kind, friendly and open people. Even Europeans who visited the islands over the years noted the characteristic Ainu gallantry of manners, simplicity and sincerity.

Russian explorers - Cossacks, conquering Siberia, reached the Far East. Arrived On the island of Sakhalin, the first Russian Cossacks even mistook the Ainu for Russians, they were so unlike the Siberian tribes, but rather resembled Europeans.

This is what I wrote Cossack captain Ivan Kozyrev about the first meeting: “About fifty people dressed in skins poured out. They looked without fear and had an extraordinary appearance - hairy, long-bearded, but with white faces and not slanted, like the Yakuts and Kamchadals.”

It can be said that The Ainu looked like anyone: the peasants of the south of Russia, the inhabitants of the Caucasus, Persia or India, even the gypsies - but not the Mongoloids. These unusual people called themselves Ainami, which means “real person”, but the Cossacks dubbed them “Kurils”, adding an epithet - "shaggy". Subsequently Cossacks met Kurils throughout the Far East - on Sakhalin, southern Kamchatka, and the Amur region.

The Ainu pay a lot of attention education and training of children. First of all, they believe, a child must learn to obey his elders! In the child's unquestioning obedience to his parents, older brothers and sisters, adults in general, a future warrior was being raised. The obedience of a child, from the Ainu point of view, is expressed, in particular, in the fact that a child speaks to adults only when asked when he is addressed. The child must be in sight of adults at all times, but at the same time do not make noise, do not bother them with your presence.

The Ainu do not give names to children immediately after birth, as Europeans do, but at the age of one to ten years, or even later. Most often, the name Aina reflects a distinctive property of his character, an individual trait inherent in him, for example: Selfish, Dirty, Fair, Good Orator, Stutterer, etc. Ainu have no nicknames, these are their names.

Ainu boys are raised by the father of the family. He teaches them to hunt, navigate the terrain, choose the shortest road in the forest, hunting techniques and use of weapons. The upbringing of girls is entrusted to the mother. In cases where children violate established rules of behavior, commit mistakes or misdeeds, parents tell them various instructive legends and stories, preferring this means of influencing the child’s psyche to physical punishment.

War of the Ainu with the Japanese

IN Soon the idealistic life of the Ainu on the Japanese archipelago was interrupted by migrants from Southeast Asia and China - Mongoloid tribes who later became the ancestors of the Japanese. New settlers brought culture with them rice , which made it possible to feed a large population in a relatively small area. Having formed Yamato State, they began to threaten the peaceful life of the Ainu, so some of them moved to Sakhalin, the lower Amur, Primorye and the Kuril Islands. The remaining Ainu began an era of constant wars with the state of Yamato, which lasted about a thousand years.

The first samurai were not Japanese at all.

The Ainu were skilled warriors, fluent with bows and swords, and the Japanese were unable to defeat them for a long time. A very long time, almost 1500 years .

The new state of Yamato, which arose in the 3rd-4th centuries, begins an era of constant war with the Ainu. IN 670 Yamoto renamed Nippon (Japan). "Among the Eastern Savages the strongest are emisi", - testify to Japanese chronicles, where the Ainu appear under the name “Emisi”.

The Japanese demonized the rebellious people, calling the Ainu savages, but the Japanese for quite a long time were inferior to the savages - the Ainu - militarily. A recording by a Japanese chronicler made in 712 : « When our exalted ancestors descended from the sky on a ship, on this island (Honshu) they found several savage peoples, among them the most savage were the Ainu.”

Ainu. 1904

The Japanese were afraid of an open battle with the Ainu and recognized that one warrior is worth a hundred Japanese . There was a belief that particularly skilled Ainu warriors could create fog in order to hide unnoticed by their enemies.

The Ainu knew how to deal with two swords, and on the right hip they wore two daggers . One of them (cheyki-makiri) served as a knife for committing ritual suicide - hara-kiri.

The origins of the cult of samurai are in the martial art of the Ainu, not the Japanese. As a result of thousands of years of war with the Ainu, the Japanese adopted a special military style from the Ainu culture - samurai, originating from the thousand-year-old military traditions of the Atsni. And some of the samurai clans, by their origin, are still considered Ainu.

Even the symbol of Japan - the great Mount Fuji - has in its name The Ainu word "fuji" means "hearth deity".

The Japanese were able to defeat the Ainu only after the invention of guns, having managed to adopt many techniques of military art from the Ainu. The samurai code of honor, the ability to wield two swords and the mentioned hara-kiri ritual - considered by many to be characteristic attributes of Japanese culture, but in fact these military traditions were borrowed by the Japanese from the Ainu.

In ancient times, the Ainu had the tradition of drawing mustaches on women, so they looked like young warriors. This tradition suggests that Ainu women were also warriors, along with men they fought like Despite all the bans from the Japanese government, even in the 20th century, Ainu got tattoos, it is believed that the latter the tattooed woman died in 1998.

Tattoos in the form of a lush mustache above the upper lip were applied exclusively by women , it was believed that this ritual was taught to the ancestors of the Ainu gods, the mother-progenitor of all living things - Oki-kurumi Turesh Mahi (Okikurumi Turesh Machi) younger sister of the Creator God Okikurumi .

The tradition of tattooing was passed down through the female line; the design was applied to the daughter’s body by her mother or grandmother.

In the process of “Japanization” of the Ainu people in 1799, a strict ban on tattooing Ainu girls was introduced , and in 1871 In Hokkaido, a second strict ban was proclaimed because it was believed that the procedure was too painful and inhumane.

The Ainu language is also a mystery; it has Sanskrit, Slavic, Latin, and Anglo-Germanic roots. Ainu language strongly stands out from the modern linguistic picture of the world, and a suitable place has not yet been found for it. During prolonged isolation the Ainu lost contact with all other peoples of the Earth, and some researchers even identify them as a special Ainu race.

Ethnographers struggling with the question - where in these harsh lands did people wearing loose (southern) type of clothing come from? Their national everyday wear - dressing gowns , decorated with traditional patterns, festive - white.

National clothes of the Ainu - robe decorated bright ornament, fur hat or wreath. Previously, clothing material was woven from strips of bast and nettle fibers. Now the Ainu national clothes are sewn from purchased fabrics, but they are decorated with rich embroidery. Almost Each Ainu village has its own special embroidery pattern. When you meet an Ainu in national clothes, you can unmistakably determine which village he is from. Embroidery on men's and women's clothing differ. A man would never wear clothes with “feminine” embroidery, and vice versa.

Russian travelers were also amazed that In summer, the Ainu wore a loincloth.

Today there are very few Ainu left, about 30,000 people, and they live mainly in the north of Japan, in the south and southeast of Hokkaido. Other sources voice a figure of 50 thousand people, but this includes first-generation mestizos with an admixture of Ainu blood - there are 150,000 of them, they are almost completely assimilated with the population of Japan. The Ainu culture is fading into oblivion along with its secrets.

Decree of Empress Catherine II of 1779: “...leave the shaggy Kuril residents free and not demand any tax from them, and in the future do not force the peoples living there to do so, but try with friendly treatment and affection... to continue the acquaintance already established with them.”

The empress's decree was not fully observed, and yasak was collected from the Ainu until the 19th century. The trusting Ainu took their word for it, and if the Russians somehow held him in relation to them, then There was a war with the Japanese until the last breath...

In 1884, the Japanese resettled all the Northern Kuril Ainu to the island of Shikotan, where the last of them died in 1941.The last Ainu man on Sakhalin died in 1961, when he buried his wife. he, as befits a warrior and the ancient laws of his amazing people, made himself “erythokpa”, ripping open the belly and releasing the soul to the divine ancestors...

It is believed that there are no Ainu in Russia. This small people who once inhabited lower reaches of the Amur, Kamchatka, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands , completely assimilated. It turned out that the Russian Ainu were not lost in the common ethnic sea. At the moment they are in Russia – 205 people .

As reported by “National Accent” through the mouth of Alexey Nakamura, leader of the Ainu community, « the Ainu or Kamchadal Kurils never disappeared, They just didn’t want to recognize us for many years. The self-name "Ainu" comes from our word for "man" or "worthy man" and is associated with military activities. We fought the Japanese for 650 years.”

That was a long time ago. There was a village among the hills. An ordinary village in which ordinary people lived. Among them is a very kind family. The family had a daughter, Aina, who was the kindest of all. The village lived its usual life, but one day at dawn a black cart appeared on the village road. The black horses were driven by a man dressed all in black. He was very happy about something, smiled widely, and sometimes laughed. There was a black cage on the cart, and a small fluffy Teddy Bear was sitting in it on a chain. He sucked his paw, and tears flowed from his eyes. All the people of the village looked out the windows, went out into the street and were indignant: what a shame for a black man to keep a white bear cub on a chain and torment him. People were only indignant and said words, but did nothing. Only a kind family stopped the black man’s cart, and Aina began to ask him to release the unfortunate Little Bear. The stranger smiled and said that he would release the beast if someone gave up his eyes. Everyone was silent. Then Aina stepped forward and said that she was ready for this. The black man laughed loudly and opened the black cage. The white fluffy Teddy Bear came out of the cage. And good Aina lost her sight. While the villagers looked at the Little Bear and spoke sympathetic words to Aina, the black man on the black cart disappeared to no one knows where. The little bear didn't cry anymore, but Aina cried. Then the white Bear cub took the string in his paws and began to lead Aina everywhere: around the village, along the hills and meadows. This didn't last very long. And then one day the people of the village looked up and saw that the white fluffy Teddy Bear was leading Aina straight into the sky. Since then, little Bear has been leading Aina around the sky. They are always visible in the sky so that people remember good and evil...

The Ainu are a unique people, occupying a special place among the many small nations of the Earth. Until now, he enjoys such attention in world science that many much larger nations have not received. They were a beautiful and strong people, whose whole life was connected with the forest, rivers, sea and islands. Their language, Caucasian facial features, and luxurious beards sharply distinguished the Ainu from neighboring Mongoloid tribes.

In ancient times, the Ainu inhabited a number of regions of Primorye, Sakhalin, Honshu, Hokkaido, the Kuril Islands, and southern Kamchatka. They lived in dugouts, built frame houses, wore loincloths of the southern type and used closed fur clothing like residents of the north. The Ainu combined the knowledge, skills, customs and techniques of taiga hunters and coastal fishermen, southern seafood gatherers and northern sea hunters.

“There was a time when the first Ainu descended from the Land of Clouds to the earth, fell in love with it, took up hunting and fishing in order to eat, dance and bear children.”

The Ainu have families who believe that their gens originated as follows:

“Once upon a time, a boy thought about the meaning of his existence and, in order to find it out, he set off on a long journey. On the first night, he stopped for the night in a beautiful house where a girl lived, who left him overnight, saying that “news has already arrived about such a little boy.” The next morning it turned out that the girl could not explain to the guest the purpose of his existence and he should go further - to his middle sister. Having reached a beautiful house, he turned to another beautiful girl and received food and lodging from her. In the morning, she, without explaining to him the meaning of existence, sent him to his younger sister. The situation was repeated, except that the younger sister showed him the road through the Black, White and Red Mountains, which could be raised by moving the oars stuck at the foot of these mountains.

Having passed the Black, White and Red mountains, he gets to the “God’s mountain”, on the top of which stands a golden house.

When the boy entered the house, something appears from its depths, resembling either a person or a clot of fog, which demands to listen to him and explains:

“You are the boy who must initiate the birth of people as such with a soul. When you came here, you thought that you spent one night in three places, but in fact you lived in one year each.” It turns out that the girls were the Goddess of the Morning Star, who gave birth to a daughter, the Midnight Star, who gave birth to a boy, and the Evening Star, who gave birth to a girl. The boy receives orders on the way back to pick up his children, and on returning home to take one of the daughters as his wife, and to marry the son to another daughter, in which case you will give birth to children; and, in turn, if you give them to each other, they will multiply. These will be the people.” Returning, the boy did as he was told on “God’s mountain.”

“This is how people multiplied.” This is how the legend ends.

In the 17th century, the first explorers who arrived on the islands discovered to the world previously unknown ethnic groups and discovering traces of mysterious peoples who lived on the islands earlier. One of them, along with the Nivkhs and Uilta, were the Ainu or Ainu, who inhabited Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands and the Japanese island of Hokkaido 2-3 centuries ago.

Ainu language- a mystery for researchers. Its relationship with other languages of the world has not yet been proven, although linguists have made many attempts to compare the Ainu language with other languages. It was compared not only with the languages of neighboring peoples - Koreans and Nivkhs, but also with such “distant” languages as Hebrew and Basque.

The Ainu have a very original counting system.. They count as "twenties". They do not have such concepts as “hundred”, “thousand”. The Ainu express the number 100 as “five twenty,” and 110 as “six twenty minutes to ten.” The counting system is complicated by the fact that you cannot add to twenties, you can only subtract from them. So, for example, if an Ain wants to say that he is 23 years old, he will say this: “I am seven years old plus ten years subtracted from twice twenty years.”

The basis of the economy The Ainu have been fishing and hunting sea and forest animals since ancient times. They obtained everything they needed for life close to home: fish, game, edible wild plants, elm bast and nettle fiber for clothing. There was almost no farming at all.

National Ainu cuisine consists mainly of plant and fish foods. Housewives know many different recipes for jellies, soups from fresh and dried fish. In earlier times, a special type of whitish clay served as a common seasoning for food.

National clothes of the Ainu- a robe decorated with bright ornaments, a fur band or wreath. Previously, clothing material was woven from strips of bast and nettle fibers. Nowadays, national clothes are sewn from purchased fabrics, but they are decorated with rich embroidery. Almost every Ainu village has its own special embroidery pattern. When you meet an Ainu in national clothes, you can unmistakably determine which village he is from.

Embroidery on men's and women's clothing differ. A man would never wear clothes with “feminine” embroidery, and vice versa.

To this day, on the faces of Ainu women you can still see a wide tattoo border around the mouth, something like a painted mustache. The tattoo is used to decorate the forehead and arms up to the elbow. Getting a tattoo is a very painful process, so it usually takes several years. A woman most often tattoos her hands and forehead only after marriage. In choosing a life partner, an Ainu woman enjoys much more freedom than women of many other peoples of the East. The Ainu quite rightly believe that marriage issues concern primarily those who enter into it, and to a lesser extent everyone around them, including the parents of the bride and groom. Children are required to listen respectfully to their parents' word, after which they are free to do as they wish. An Ainu girl is granted the right to marry the young man she likes. If the matchmaking is accepted, the groom leaves his parents and moves into the bride's house. After getting married, a woman retains her previous name.

The Ainu pay a lot of attention to raising and teaching children. First of all, they believe, a child must learn to obey elders: his parents, older brothers and sisters, adults in general. Obedience, from the Ainu point of view, is expressed, in particular, in the fact that the child speaks to adults only when they themselves turn to him. He must be in full view of adults at all times, but not make noise or bother them with his presence.

The boys are raised by the father of the family. He teaches them to hunt, navigate the terrain, choose the shortest road in the forest and much more. The upbringing of girls is entrusted to the mother. In cases where children violate established rules of behavior, commit mistakes or misdeeds, parents tell them various instructive legends and stories, preferring this means of influencing the child’s psyche to physical punishment.

The Ainu do not name their children immediately after birth, as Europeans do, but at the age of one to ten years, or even later. Most often, the name of an Ainu reflects a distinctive property of his character, an individual trait inherent in him, for example: Selfish, Dirty, Fair, Good Orator, Stutterer, etc. The Ainu do not have nicknames, there is no need for them with such a naming system.

The uniqueness of the Ainu is so great that some anthropologists distinguish this ethnic group into a special “small race” - the Kuril. By the way, in Russian sources they are sometimes called: “shaggy Kurilians” or simply “Kurilians” (from “kuru” - person). Some scientists consider them to be descendants of the Jomon people, who emerged from the ancient Pacific continent of Sunda, and the remnants of which are the Greater Sunda and Japanese Islands.

The fact that it was the Ainu who populated the Japanese islands is supported by their name in the Ainu language: “Ainu Mosiri”, i.e. "world/land of the Ainu." For centuries, the Japanese either actively fought with them or tried to assimilate them by entering into interethnic marriages. The relations of the Ainu with the Russians as a whole were initially friendly, with isolated cases of military skirmishes, which occurred mainly due to the rude behavior of some Russian fishermen or military personnel. The most common form of their communication was barter. The Ainu either fought with the Nivkhs and other peoples or entered into intertribal marriages. They created amazingly beautiful ceramics, mysterious dogu figurines resembling a man in a modern space suit, and, in addition, it turned out that they were perhaps the earliest farmers in the Far East, if not in the world.

Some customs and etiquette observed by the Ainu.

If, for example, you want to enter someone else's house, then before crossing the threshold, you need to cough several times. After this you can enter, provided, however, that you know the owner. If you come to him for the first time, you should wait until the owner himself comes out to meet you.

Upon entering the house, you need to go around the fireplace to the right and, without fail crossing your bare legs, sit on the mat opposite the owner of the house sitting in a similar position. There is no need to say any words yet. After coughing politely several times, fold your hands in front of you and rub the fingertips of your right hand over the palm of your left, then vice versa. The owner will express his attention to you by repeating your movements. During this ceremony, you need to inquire about the health of your interlocutor, wish that heaven will grant prosperity to the owner of the house, then to his wife, his children, the rest of his relatives and, finally, to his native village. After this, without ceasing to rub your palms, you can briefly outline the purpose of your visit. When the owner begins to stroke his beard, repeat the movement after him and at the same time console yourself with the thought that the official ceremony will soon end and the conversation will take place in a more relaxed atmosphere. Rubbing your palms will take at least 20-30 minutes. This corresponds to Ainu ideas of politeness.

Representatives of the Ainu adhere to a tradition called funeral ritual. During it, Aina is killed by a she-bear hibernating in a cave along with her newly born offspring, and the babies are taken from the dead mother.

Then, for several years, the Ainu representatives raise small cubs, but ultimately kill them too, since monitoring and caring for an adult bear becomes life-threatening. The funeral ceremony directly related to the soul of the bear is a central part of Ainu religious customs. It is believed that during this ritual, a person helps the soul of a divine animal go to the other world.

Over time, the killing of bears was prohibited by the council of elders of this unusual nation, and now even if such a ritual is carried out, it is only as a theatrical performance. However, there are rumors that to this day, real funeral ceremonies continue to be held, but all this is kept in the strictest confidence.

Another Ainu tradition involves the use of so-called special prayer sticks. They are used as a method of communicating with the gods. Various engravings are made on prayer sticks to identify the owner of the artifact. In the past, prayer sticks were believed to contain all the prayers the owner made to the gods. The creators of such instruments for religious rites put a lot of effort and labor into their craft. The end result was a work of art, one way or another reflecting the spiritual aspirations of the customer.

The most popular game is "ukara". One of the players faces the wooden pole and holds onto it tightly with his hands, while the other hits him on his bare back with a long stick wrapped in soft material, or even without any material at all. The game ends when the person being beaten screams or jumps to the side. Another takes its place... There is one trick here. To win at ukara, one must have not so much tolerance for pain as the ability to strike in such a way as to create the illusion of a strong blow for the audience, but in fact barely touch the partner’s back with the stick.

In Ainu villages, near the eastern wall of houses, you can see planed willow sticks of various sizes, decorated with a bunch of shavings, in front of which the Ainu perform prayers - inau. With their help, the Ainu express their respect to the gods, convey their wishes, requests to bless people and forest animals, and thank the gods for what they have done. The Ainu come here to pray when going hunting or on a long journey, or when returning.

Inau can also be found on the seashore, in places where they go fishing. Here the gifts are intended for the two brother sea gods. The eldest of them is evil, he brings various troubles to the fishermen; the younger one is kind and protective of people. The Ainu show respect to both gods, but naturally have sympathy only for the second.

The Ainu understood: if they want not only them, but also their children and grandchildren to live on the islands, they need to be able to not only take from nature, but also preserve it, otherwise in a few generations there will be no forest, fish, animals and birds left. All Ainu were deeply religious people. They spiritualized all natural phenomena and nature in general. This religion is called animism.

The main thing in their religion was kamui. Kamui- a god who should be revered, but he is also a beast who is killed.

The most powerful Kamui gods are the gods of the sea and mountains. Sea god - killer whale. This predator was especially revered. The Ainu were convinced that the killer whale sent whales to people, and each discarded whale was considered a gift; in addition, the killer whale every year sends shoals of salmon to its elder brother, the mountain taiga god, in processions of its subjects. These shoals were turned into Ainu villages along the way, and salmon has always been the main food of these people.

Not only among the Ainu, but also among other peoples, those animals and plants on whose presence the well-being of people depended were sacred and were surrounded by worship.

The mountain taiga god was the bear- the main revered animal of the Ainu. The bear was the totem of this people. A totem is a mythical ancestor of a group of people (animal or plant). People express their respect to the totem through certain rituals. The animal representing the totem is protected and revered; it is forbidden to kill or eat it. However, once a year it was prescribed to kill and eat the totem.

One of these legends talks about the origin of the Ainu. In one Western country, the king wanted to marry his own daughter, but she ran away overseas with her dog. There, across the sea, she gave birth to children, from whom the Ainu descended.

The Ainu treated dogs with care. Each family tried to acquire a good pack. Returning from a trip or from a hunt, the owner did not enter the house until he had fed the tired dogs to their fill. In bad weather they were kept in the house.

The Ainu were firmly convinced of one fundamental difference between animals and humans: a person dies “completely,” an animal only temporarily. After killing an animal and performing certain rituals, it is reborn and continues to live.

The main celebration of the Ainu is the bear festival. Relatives and invitees from many villages came to participate in this event. For four years, one of the Ainu families raised a bear cub. They gave him the best food. And so the animal, raised with love and diligence, was planned to be killed one fine day. On the morning of the killing, the Ainu staged a mass cry in front of the bear's cage. After which the animal was taken out of the cage and decorated with shavings, and ritual jewelry was put on. Then he was led through the village, and while those present distracted the beast’s attention with noise and shouts, the young hunters, one after another, jumped on the animal, pressing against it for a moment, trying to touch its head, and immediately jumped away: a kind of ritual of “kissing” the beast. They tied the bear in a special place and tried to feed it festive food. Then the elder said a farewell word to him, described the works and merits of the village residents who raised the divine beast, and outlined the wishes of the Ainu, which the bear had to convey to his father, the mountain taiga god. Honor to “send”, i.e. Any hunter could be honored to kill a bear with a bow, at the request of the animal’s owner, but it had to be a visitor. You had to hit it right in the heart. The meat of the animal was placed on spruce paws and distributed taking into account seniority and birth. The bones were carefully collected and taken into the forest. Silence reigned in the village. It was believed that the bear was already on the way, and the noise could lead him off the road

The empress's decree was not fully observed, and yasak was collected from the Ainu until the 19th century. The trusting Ainu took his word for it, and if the Russians somehow kept it in their relationship with them, then there was a war with the Japanese until their last breath...

In 1884, the Japanese resettled all the Northern Kuril Ainu to Shikotan Island, where the last of them died in 1941. The last Ainu man on Sakhalin died in 1961, when, having buried his wife, he, as befits a warrior and the ancient laws of his amazing people, made himself an “erytokpa”, ripping open his stomach and releasing his soul to the divine ancestors...

The Russian imperial administration, and then the Soviet, due to ill-conceived ethnopolitics towards the inhabitants of Sakhalin, forced the Ainu to migrate to Hokkaido, where their descendants live today in the number of approximately 20 thousand people, having only achieved the legislative right to be an “ethnic group” in 1997 " in Japan.

Now the Ainu, living near the sea and rivers, try to combine agriculture with animal husbandry and fishing in order to insure against failure in any type of farming. Agriculture alone cannot feed them, because the lands remaining with the Ainu are dry, rocky, and infertile. Many Ainu today are forced to leave their home villages and go to work in the city or to logging. But even there they cannot always find work. Most Japanese entrepreneurs and fisheries owners do not want to hire Ainu, and if they do give them work, it is the dirtiest and least paid.

The discrimination that the Ainu are subjected to makes them consider their nationality almost a misfortune, and try to get as close as possible to the Japanese in language and way of life.

Several times I was convinced that many people did not know who the Ainu were - the indigenous inhabitants of the Kuril Islands. Therefore, I propose this article.

Is it worth mentioning that Mercator was persecuted by the church, but this is already a topic rather about his map Septentrionalium Terrarum Descriptio. ancient land, present-day Antarctica, our forbidden past.

Here is a map from 1512, naturally Germany is already on it, but the territory of Rus' is also clearly indicated, which borders on the German conquered lands. The territory of Rus' there is designated not by Tartary as usual, but in general, together with Muscovy - Rvssiae, Rus, Rosy, Russia. The current Barents Sea was then called the Murmansk Sea

Here is a map from 1663, here the territory of Muscovy is highlighted in white, and through it there are inscriptions that stand out the most

this is Pars Europa Russia Moskovia on the white part where is today's Europe

Siberia In the red territory, also called Tartaria by the Greeks and pro-Westerners, Tartaria

Below on the green Tartaria Vagabundorum Independens, where Mongolia and Tibet were previously and still are, which were under the protectorate and protection of Rus', them from China.

Through the green and red regions of Tartaria Magna, Great Tartaria, that is, Rus'

Well, below on the right is the yellow region of Tartaria Chinensis, Sinarium, China Extra Muros, border and trade territory, also controlled by Russia.

Below is the light green region of Imperum 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, was given to them.

Below is the yellow area Magni Mogolis Imperium India, Indian Empire. etc.

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, in the then Kyiv region alone, nine out of twelve million people, Slavs, were destroyed, which is also proven by archaeologists, confirming the fact of a sharp reduction in population, villages, at the time of baptism), and wash your hands with this lie before the people. Well, most of the current rednecks, marinated and zombified in advance since their school years by the state program, still believe in them and figure it out, even if they’re just in no hurry for themselves
Somewhere in the middle of this time, these centuries, while there was pro-church turmoil in Rus' and many peoples remained abandoned, some of them were the Ainu, the inhabitants of what was once our Far Eastern islands.

Now, there is reason to believe that not only in Japan, but also on the territory of Russia there is a part of this ancient indigenous people. According to preliminary data from the latest population census, held in October 2010, there are more than 100 Ainov 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 population 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 stubbornly continue to consider themselves Ainu and have good reason for this.

As research has shown, the Ainu, or Kamchadal Kurils, did not disappear anywhere, they simply did not want to be recognized for many years. But Stepan Krasheninnikov, a researcher of Siberia and Kamchatka (XVIII century), described them as Kamchadal Kurils. The name "Ainu" itself comes from their word for "man", or "worthy man", and is associated with military operations. And as one of the representatives of this nation claims in a conversation with the famous journalist M. Dolgikh, the Ainu fought with the Japanese for 650 years. It turns out that this is the only people remaining to this day who, from ancient times, restrained the occupation and resisted the aggressor - the Japanese, who were, in fact, Koreans who moved to the islands and formed another state.

It has been scientifically established that the Ainu about 7 thousand years ago inhabited the north of the Japanese archipelago, the Kuril Islands and part of Sakhalin and, according to some data, part of Kamchatka and even the lower reaches of the Amur. The Japanese who came from the south gradually assimilated and pushed the Ainu to the north of the archipelago - to Hokkaido and the southern Kuril Islands.

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 Japanese do not like the Ainu. At the end of the 19th century. About one and a half thousand Ainu lived in Russia. After World War II, they were partly evicted, partly they left along with the Japanese population. Some mixed with the Russian population of the Far East.

In appearance, representatives of the Ainu people very little resemble their closest neighbors - the Japanese, Nivkhs and Itelmens. The Ainu are the White Race.

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. originated from hot springs or volcanic activity. It’s just that the Kuril Islands, or Kurilians, live here, and “Kuru” in Ainu means 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 Ainu Bay, where the oldest Ainu site was discovered. From the artifacts it became clear that from about 1600 it was the Ainu.

Therefore, according to experts, it is very strange to say that the Ainu have never been in the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, as the Japanese are doing now, assuring everyone that the Ainu live only in Japan, so they supposedly need to give the Kuril Islands. This is completely untrue. In Russia there are the Ainu - an indigenous people who also have the right to consider these islands their ancestral lands.

American anthropologist S. Lorin Brace, from Michigan State University in the journal Science Horizons, No. 65, September-October 1989. writes: “a typical Ainu is easy to distinguish from the Japanese: he has lighter skin, thicker body hair, beards, which is unusual for the Mongoloids, and a more protruding 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 samurai class in Japan are in fact descendants of the Ainu, and not the Yayoi (Mongoloids), the ancestors of most modern Japanese. Brace further writes: “.. this explains why the facial features of representatives of the ruling class are so often different from modern Japanese. The samurai, descendants of the Ainu, gained such influence and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with the ruling circles and introduced Ainu blood into them, while the rest of the Japanese population were mainly descendants of the Yayoi."

It should also be noted that in addition to archaeological and other features, the language has been partially preserved. There is a dictionary of the Kuril language in “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 are related, the vast majority of modern scientists reject the assumption that the relationship between the languages goes beyond contact relations, 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, so it is currently 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 (who were evicted by the Soviet government to Japan in 1945) to return from Japan to the land of their ancestors (including their ancestral habitat - the Amur region, Kamchatka, Sakhalin and all the Kuril Islands, creating at least following the example of the Japanese (it is known that the parliament Japan only in 2008 did the Ainu still recognize an independent national minority), Russian dispersed autonomy of an “independent national minority” with the participation of the indigenous Ainu of Russia. We have neither the people nor the means to develop Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, but the Ainu do. The Ainu who migrated from Japan, according to experts, can give impetus to the economy of the Russian Far East, precisely by forming national autonomy not only on the Kuril Islands, but also within Russia.

Japan, according to P. Alekseev, will be out of business, because there the displaced Ainu will disappear (there are negligible numbers of displaced pure Japanese), but here they can settle not only in the southern part of the Kuril Islands, but throughout their entire original range, our Far East, eliminating the emphasis on the southern Kuril Islands. Since many of the Ainu deported to Japan were our citizens, it is possible to use the Ainu as allies against the Japanese by 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 still ignore this ancient People. With our pro-Western government, which feeds Chechnya for free, which deliberately filled Russia with people of Caucasian nationality, opened unimpeded 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 Ainov, Only civil initiative will help here.

Thus, we can say with confidence that the Kuril Islands belong to the Ainu, but, one way or another, Russia must proceed from international law. According to him, i.e. According to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan renounced the islands. Today there are simply no legal grounds for revising the documents signed in 1951 and other agreements. But such matters are resolved only in the interests of big politics, and I repeat that only its fraternal people, that is, we, can help this people.

Not everyone knows that the Japanese are by no means the natives of the Japanese islands. Long before their appearance, the archipelago was inhabited by the Ainu, a mysterious tribe that causes a lot of controversy in the scientific world. White-skinned, not narrow-eyed (and men also have “increased hairiness”), just by their appearance, the Ainu are strikingly different from the Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and other Mongoloids living in the neighborhood. The Ainu are clearly not Mongoloids. Outwardly, they look either like the inhabitants of Oceania or like Europeans.

The main hypotheses regarding the origin of the Ainu boil down to the following:

The Ainu are related to Caucasians (in ancient times they migrated across all of Asia);
The Ainu are related to the inhabitants of Oceania and sailed to the Japanese Islands from the South;
The Ainu are related to the Paleo-Asian peoples and came to the Japanese Islands from the North or from Siberia.

Differences between Japanese and Ainu

Appearing on the Japanese islands about 13 thousand years ago, the Ainu created the Neolithic Jomon culture. They inhabited not only the Japanese islands, but also the southern part of Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and the southern third of Kamchatka.

If the appearance of the Ainu indicates that there is nothing in common between them and the Japanese, then their way of life differs from the way of life of the Japanese (whose ancestors moved to the islands from China) in an even more striking way.

The Japanese have been cultivating rice since ancient times. It is from there that their collectivism, extraordinary performance, and the desire not to stand out from the team, but to be, originate. The Ainu are people of a completely different type. Collectivism, in which the personal qualities of an individual person are leveled out, dissolving into the general mass, and the person himself becomes a kind of “cog” of the system, is not even close to the Ainu. From childhood, the Ainu were taught to take responsibility for themselves; from childhood, they were instilled with courage and self-confidence - qualities necessary for a hunter. The Ainu did not engage in agriculture at all, but instead fed themselves by hunting, gathering and fishing. What kind of rice is there! The Ainu didn’t even know what it was. Their diet consisted mainly of fish, shellfish and the meat of sea animals. they ate in incredible quantities, and therefore, near the remains of ancient Ainu settlements, archaeologists find mountains of gutted shells.

Given this way of life, it was vital for the Ainu to maintain natural balance, avoiding population explosions. The Ainu never had large settlements. The Ainu villages were located far from each other (so that no one would disturb anyone), for the same reason, even in ancient times, the Ainu populated all the islands of the Japanese archipelago.

Confrontation of peoples

But when settlers from Southeast Asia and China, and then several tribes from Central Asia, began to arrive on the Japanese islands, the natural balance was disrupted. Agriculture (and rice production in particular) allows you to produce huge amounts of food in a limited area of territory. Therefore, the colonists multiplied rapidly. The Ainu were forced to make room and go north - the island of Hokkaido, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands. But the Japanese got them there too. However, the Ainu also did not intend to give up their territory. For a long time (from the eighth to almost the fifteenth century), the border of the Yamato state passed in the area of the modern city of Sendai, and the northern part of the island of Honshu (the main Japanese island) was very poorly developed by the Japanese.

All this time (about a millennium and a half) there were relations between the Ainu and the Japanese.

This is how one of the Japanese chronicles describes the Ainu.

“Among the eastern savages, the most powerful are the Emisi. Men and women are united randomly; who is the father and who is the son does not differ. In winter they live in caves, in summer in nests (in trees). They wear animal skins, drink raw blood, older and younger brothers to each other. They climb mountains like birds, and rush through the grass like wild animals. They forget what is good, but if harm is done to them, they will certainly take revenge. Also, having hidden arrows in their hair and tied a blade, they, having gathered in a crowd of fellow tribesmen, violate the borders or, having scouted out where the fields and mulberries are, rob the people of the country of Yamato. If they are attacked, they hide in the grass; if they are pursued, they climb into the mountains. From ancient times to this day they do not obey the lords of Yamato."

There were much fewer Ainu, but each of their warriors was worth several dozen Japanese. For a long time, the Japanese lost, but in the end they crushed the Ainu in numbers, as well as with the help of such “forbidden techniques” as bribing leaders. The Japanese bribed the Ainu leaders and awarded them titles. But still, things moved slowly. In order to speed up the process, the Japanese rulers took extreme measures. They armed the settlers going north.

Thus, the samurai class was born - the serving nobility, which later became a kind of calling card of the Land of the Rising Sun. But, it must be said that the samurai adopted very, very many things, including strategy, tactics, fighting techniques and traditions, from their sworn rivals, the Ainu. On the island of Honshu, the surviving Ainu were assimilated by the Japanese. True, some of them moved to the northernmost of the Japanese islands, Hokkaido (the Japanese themselves called it Ezo, that is, “wild,” “land of barbarians”)

Only in the middle of the 15th century did the large feudal lord Takeda Nobuhiro manage to found the first fortified settlement in Hokkaido. It took more than two centuries to conquer this island, and only in 1669 was the Ainu resistance broken. The firearms supplied to the Japanese rulers by the Europeans had their say.

The further fate of the Ainu is tragic. The Japanese actually turned them into slaves. They confiscated fishing equipment and dogs, and banned hunting. Currently, there are no more than 25 thousand Ainu left. But even now they retain their originality.

Ainu culture

The Ainu pantheon of gods mainly consists of "kamuy" - the spirits of various animals, such as the bear, killer whale, snake, eagle, as well as mythical characters such as Ayoina, the creator and teacher of the Ainu. and also “unti-kamuy” - a female deity, the goddess of the hearth, to whom, unlike other deities, people can turn directly.

Until the end of the 19th century, the Ainu sacrificed a specially raised one, which one of the women of the community had breastfed for several years. They tried to invite as many guests as possible to this event, and after the ritual killing, the bear’s head was placed in the eastern window of the house (a sacred place in every Ainu home); according to legend, the spirit of the bear resides in the bear’s head. Each person present at the ceremony had to drink the bear's blood from a special cup passed around, which symbolized the division of the bear's power among those present and emphasized their involvement in the ritual before the gods.

But the Ainu considered the Heavenly Serpent to be the greatest spirit. He was revered and feared at the same time. This cult has common features with the religious beliefs of the aborigines of Australia and Micronesia, the inhabitants of Sumatra, Kalimantan, Taiwan and the Philippines. The Ainu never kill snakes because they believe that the evil spirit living in the body of the snake, after killing the snake, will leave its body and move into the body of the killer. In addition, the Ainu believe that a snake can crawl into a sleeping person's mouth and take over his mind, causing the unfortunate person to go crazy.

A special place in Ainu rituals is occupied by the so-called "inau". This is how the Ainu call a variety of objects that are almost impossible to unite by common origin. In different cases they are given different explanations. Most inaus are man-made and decorated with bunches of long shavings. “Inau” are a kind of intermediaries, “helping” the Ainu “negotiate” with the gods.

An interesting point: the spiral pattern, very common among the Ainu, is also widespread among the Maori, the inhabitants of New Zealand, in the decorative designs of the Papuans of New Guinea, among the Neolithic tribes who lived in the lower reaches of the Amur, as well as many peoples of Oceania. (By the way, a spiral is nothing more than an image of a snake). This is unlikely to be a coincidence and, most likely, certain contacts took place between these peoples. But where does this spiral come from? Who was the first to use the spiral pattern, and who adopted it and made it their own?

In general, the art of the Ainu, their songs, dances, stories, ornaments, bone carvings and wooden sculptures are amazingly beautiful and talented, especially for a people who have lived in isolation for a long time.

By the beginning of the new era, the Ainu were in the Neolithic stage in their development, but, nevertheless, the culture of the Ainu had a huge influence on the culture of their conquerors and gravediggers, the Japanese. Ainu elements formed the basis of both Shintoism, the ancient religion of the Land of the Rising Sun, and in the formation of the samurai class.