The mysterious people of the Ainu have lived in the Far East since time immemorial, their way of life has been preserved even with the arrival of the Russians. Everything began to change at the end of the 19th century after the aggravation of relations between Russia and Japan.
Bearded people
Ainu (or Ainu) literally means "man." The original habitat of this ethnic group is the south of Kamchatka, the Kuriles, Sakhalin, the lower reaches of the Amur, as well as the Japanese islands. According to scientists, the first Ainu appeared here about 15 thousand years ago, but it is not known where they came from.
The Europeans, who first encountered the Ainu in the 17th century, were amazed at their appearance: fair-faced, with a European cut of eyes, men with a thick beard and mustache - they were strikingly different from the neighboring peoples of the Mongoloid type.
The traditional activities of the Ainu have always been hunting and fishing. As weapons, they mainly used a short sword, knives and a bow, often with poisoned arrows.
There are two hypotheses for the migration of the Ainu. The first one says that the Ainu came to the Far East from Northern Siberia, the second points to the southern islands of the Pacific Ocean.
The latter version seems more plausible, since the Ainu have some closeness to the aborigines of Australia and Polynesia: the structure of the face and nose, a spiral ornament on clothing, loincloths like those of equatorial tribes, a bow similar to the weapon of the Polynesians.
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The popular version about the relationship of the Ainu with the Europeans, in particular, with the Caucasian race, has not been confirmed. The results of DNA analysis did not reveal any genetic relationship between the Ainu and Indo-Europeans.
From about 500 BC e. from the Japanese islands, the Ainu began to displace aliens of the Mongoloid type - the ancestors of the modern Japanese. However, although small in number, the warlike Ainu for a long time did not allow strangers to drive them out of their habitable places. But due to the increased influx of conquerors, they still had to concentrate in the territories of Hokkaido, the Kuriles and Sakhalin.
Acquaintance
For the first time, Russian pioneers met the Ainu at the end of the 17th century in Kamchatka. Relations with the Amur and North Kuril Ainu were established only in the 18th century. The Ainu were immediately recognized as Russian friends; by the middle of the 18th century, about one and a half thousand representatives of this ethnos had taken Russian citizenship.
Curiously, when the Japanese first came into contact with the Russians, they hardly distinguished them from the Ainu, although the Russians themselves clearly saw the difference: the Ainu were darker, mostly dark-eyed. In the description of the first Russian explorers, the Ainu looked more like gypsies.
Ivan Kruzenshtern wrote: “The Ainu people are meek, modest, trusting, polite, respecting property … Selflessness, frankness are their usual qualities. They are truthful and do not tolerate deception."
Unfortunately, the Ainu increasingly began to be subjected to exploitation and oppression by the Russians. Even Russian scholars admitted that the position of the Ainu in Japanese Hokkaido was much better than in the Kurils belonging to Russia. Already in the middle of the 19th century, the Russian Ainu gradually began to move to Japanese territories.
Doctor Dobrotvorsky, who worked in the Far East, noted that “in the middle of the 19th century, in the southern Sakhalin, near the Busse Bay, there were 8 large Ainu settlements, 200 people in each minimum. After 25 years, not a single village remained."
The navigator Ivan Kruzenshtern, the writer Anton Chekhov, and the exiled Polish ethnographer Bronislav Pilsudski somehow tried to defend the rights of the Ainu, but no one heard their voices in defense of the small people.
Exodus
When, under the terms of the St. Petersburg Treaty of 1875 ("on the exchange of territories"), the Kurils were ceded to Japan, all Kuril Ainu settlements automatically moved to the Land of the Rising Sun along with the islands. Only 83 representatives of this ethnic group wished to remain in the Russian Empire. They reported this on September 18, 1877 upon arrival in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.
The tsarist government offered the remaining Ainu to move to the reservation on the Commander Islands, to which they refused. For four months the Ainu wandered on foot until they reached the Kamchadal village of Yavino, where they decided to settle. Later, another Ainu settlement, Golygino, grew up nearby. A census carried out in 1897 stated that 57 Ainu live in Golygino, 33 in Yavino.
After the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, the situation of the Russian Ainu became even worse. In fact, they were left to fend for themselves. All the remaining Ainu were asked to go to Japan. As a result, over 90% of representatives of this ethnic group left Russia.
In Soviet times, the Ainu were no better treated. In particular, the new authorities destroyed Golygino and Yavino, sending all residents to the village of Zaporozhye in the Ust-Bolsheretsky district of the Kamchatka Territory. Over time, they assimilated with the Kamchadals.
Many other Ainu are even less fortunate. In the 1930s, people with Ainu surnames were exiled to the GULAG - for some reason the authorities considered them Japanese. The Ains began to change their surnames to Russians without exception. In 1979, the ethnonym "Ainu" was deleted from the list of ethnic groups in the USSR: the people were declared extinct.
Nevertheless, the Ainu survived. According to the results of the 2010 census, 109 people called themselves Ainu, 94 of them live in Kamchatka. However, according to ethnologists, there are practically no purebred Ainu in Russia.
But they survived in Japan. According to official figures, there are about 25,000 people on the Japanese islands. Almost all of them are engaged in the field of tourism - they serve and entertain tourists thirsty for exotic things.
In 2008, the Japanese parliament recognized the Ainu as a national minority. Now the Japanese authorities are holding special events aimed at supporting the small ethnic group. Today, in material terms, the life of the Ainu is practically no different from the life of the indigenous Japanese.