Dear reader, I recommend reading the first article: "Not Japanese Japan. The Ainu are the first samurai." - this will help to get a holistic perception of the topic.
Disputed Islands? Indeed, it is worth betting …
For the first time, Kamchatka Ainu came into contact with Russian merchants at the end of the 17th century. Relations with the Amur and North Kuril Ainu were established in the 18th century. The first Russian Cossacks who arrived on Sakhalin Island even mistook the Ainu for the Russians, so much like Europeans.
The Ainu were considered the Russians, who differed in race from their Japanese enemies, friends, and by the middle of the 18th century more than one and a half thousand Ainu had taken Russian citizenship. When the Japanese first came into contact with the Russians, they could not distinguish them from the Ainu because of their physical resemblance and named them red Ainu (Ainu with blond hair). It was only at the beginning of the 19th century that the Japanese realized that the Russians and the Ainu are two different peoples.
18th century map of Japan - without Hokkaido island.
The Ainu fought with the Japanese not only in the south of Hokkaido, but also in the northern part of the island of Honshu. The Kuril Islands themselves were explored and taxed by the Cossacks in the 17th century. It turns out that Russia has every reason to demand Hokkaido from the Japanese!
The fact of Russian citizenship of the inhabitants of Hokkaido was noted in a letter from Alexander I to the Japanese emperor in 1803. Moreover, this did not raise any objections from the Japanese side, let alone an official protest. Hokkaido for Tokyo was a foreign territory like Korea. When the first Japanese arrived on the island in 1786, the Ainu, bearing Russian names and surnames, came out to meet them. And more than that - Christians of the faithful persuasion!
The Japanese swung.
Promotional video:
In 1845, Japan unilaterally declared sovereignty over all of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Emperor Nicholas I immediately fought back diplomatically. Only the weakening of Russia due to the Crimean War that began in 1853 led to the occupation of the southern part of Sakhalin by the Japanese. Under the terms of the St. Petersburg Treaty of 1875, the Kurils were ceded to Japan, along with the Ainu living on them. Subsequently, the Bolsheviks, in 1925, condemned the previous government, which gave the Russian lands to Japan.
Judging by the historical facts, it turns out that in 1945, historical justice was only restored. The army and navy of the USSR partially returned the original Russian territories.
Japanese genocide
Until the end of the 18th century, Hokkaido (at that time it was called Ezo, or Ezo, that is, "wild", "land of the barbarians") was not too interested in the Japanese rulers. Dainniponshi (History of Great Japan), written at the beginning of the 18th century, mentions Ezo in the section on foreign states. Although already in the middle of the 15th century, the daimyo (large feudal lord) Takeda Nobuhiro decided at his own peril and risk to press the Ainu of southern Hokkaido and built the first permanent Japanese settlement there. Since then, foreigners sometimes called Ezo Island differently: Matmai (Mats-mai) after the clan founded by Nobuhiro.
New lands had to be taken with a fight. The Ains offered stubborn resistance. The numerical and technological superiority of the Japanese (consulted by British and French officers) did not give the indigenous people any chance. After the suppression of the last mass demonstration in August 1669, the surviving Ainu fled to the mountains. The contractions continued for another month. In an effort to decapitate the enemy's troops, the Japanese lured the Ainu leader Shakusyain, together with other commanders for negotiations, and killed (not particularly like the followers of Bushido … but the British - quite). The resistance was broken. From free people who lived according to their own customs and laws, all of them, young and old, turned into forced laborers of the Matsumae clan.
Therefore, many Ainu fled to their fellow tribesmen on Sakhalin, southern and northern Kuriles. There they felt relatively safe - there were no Japanese here yet.
Ainu family.
In 1785, the Japanese reached the northern Ainu Islands, where they again began to exterminate them. Residents were forbidden to trade with the Russians and the crosses and other signs that testify to the belonging of the islands to Russia were destroyed. Here the Ainu were actually in the position of slaves.
In 1807, a Russian expedition moved to Iturup. "The duty called on us," wrote Captain Khvostov, "to free the Ainu from the tyranny of the Japanese." The Japanese garrison on Iturup, seeing the Russian ships, fled inland. Ainam was announced "about the expulsion of the Japanese, since Iturup belongs to Russia."
The Ainu sided with the Russians during the Russo-Japanese Wars of the 19th century. However, after their defeat in the 1905 war, the Russians abandoned them to their fate. Hundreds of Ainu were destroyed and their families were forcibly transported to Hokkaido by the Japanese. As a result, the Russians failed to recapture the Ainu during the Second World War. Only a few Ainu representatives decided to stay in Russia after the war. More than 90% left for Japan.
Ainu in Japan. And then they suffered the most difficult fate: the Japanese transported all the North Kuril Ainu to the island of Shikotan, took away all their fishing gear and boats, and forbade them to go to sea without permission; instead, the Ainu were recruited to various jobs, for which they received rice, vegetables, some fish and sake. A lot of freedom-loving Ainu died in the first year. The destruction of the traditional way of life of the Kuril Ainu led to the fact that most of the inhabitants of the reservation died. However, the terrible fate of the Kuril Ainu very soon became known to the foreign public. The reservation was liquidated. The handful that survived - no more than 20 people, sick and impoverished - were taken to Hokkaido.
Afterword
Today there are very few Ainu left, about 25,000 people. They live mainly in the north of Japan and are almost completely assimilated by the population of this country. In Russia, the AINA nationality does not officially exist.
The Soviet, and then the Russian government fought to no avail with the Japanese claims to the islands of the Sakhalin ridge, completely forgetting about their rights to the island of Hokkaido and the people who inhabited it, who took Russian citizenship (for some reason, not surprising).