Kirkch01's List: Ainu: family, marriage and kinship

• Marriage

   

  The Ainu people had various types of marriage. A child was promised in marriage by arrangement between his or her parents and the parents of his or her betrothed or by a go-between. When the betrothed reached a marriageable age, they were told who their spouse was to be. There were also marriages based on mutual consent of both sexes. In some areas, when a daughter reached a marriageable age, her parents let her live in a small room called "tunpu" annexed to the southern wall of her house. The parents chose her spouse from men who visited her.
• The age of mdrriage was 17-18years old for men and 15-16 years for women, who were tattooed. At these ages, both sexes were regarded as adults.

• When a man proposed to a women, he visited her house, ate half a full bowl of rice handed to him by her, and returned the rest to her. If the woman ate the rest, she accepted his proposal. If she did not, and put it beside her, she rejected his proposal. When a man became engaged to a woman or they learned that their engagement had been arranged, they exchanged gifts with each other. He sent her a small engraved knife, a workbox, a spool and other gifts. She sent him embroidered clothes, coverings for the back of the hand, Ieggings, and other handmade clothes. According to some books, many "yomeiri" marriages, in which a bride went to the house of a bridegroom with her belongings to become a member of his family, were conducted in the old days.

   

  The yomeiri marriage was conducted in the following manner. A man and his father brought to the house of a woman betrothal gifts, including a sword, a treasured sword, an ornamental quiver, a sword guard, and a woven basket (hokai). If they agreed to marry, the man and his father would bring her to their house or the man would stay at her house for a while and then bring her to his house.

   

  At the wedding ceremony, participants prayed to the god of fire. Bride and bridegroom respectively ate half of the rice served in a bowl, and other participants were entertained.

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• Kinship, Marriage, and Family

   

  There are some basic features of sociopolitical organization that are shared by most of the Ainu groups, although their finer workings vary from region to region. Among most Ainu groups, the nuclear family is the basic social unit, although some extended families are present. In most Ainu settlements, males related through a common male ancestor comprise the core members who collectively own a hunting ground or a river with good fish runs. Although some scholars emphasize that among the Ainu along the Saru River in Hokkaidō women related through females comprise a corporate group, the exact nature of the group is unclear. Among these Hokkaidō Ainu, an individual is prohibited from marrying a cousin on his or her mother's side. Among most Ainu groups, a few prominent males in the community practice polygyny.

• The Ainu family was rather small. It consists of Father, Mother, and children.   Along with other families, about 13 on average, would live in a Kotan. Living   with extended family was rare and usually consisted of widowed family members.   Death of a spouse would change your life back to how it was before you got married   and dissolved connection to your late spouse's family. A widower would have   a new home built new his kinsmen, the old house was burnt down. A widow went   to live with her brother of her mother's brother. Children of opposite sex would   be split up. Male children would live with the father's relatives and female   children lived with Mother's relatives.
• In the Ainu language, which they don't   speak anymore, a widow was called cise sak menoko or woman without a home. Terms   of relatives have changed to the Japanese terminology and have also had their   detrimental affects on the Ainu. The traditional Ainu terms included ekasi and   huci for grandfather and grandmother, respectively, on either the maternal or   paternal side. Ona is your dad. Unu is your mother. Wife is maci and husband   is hoku. Son is po and daughter is matnepo. These terms are not cognitive it   is simply the relation of the individual. For example daughter is matnepo that   consist of maci-ne-po and literally would mean po who will become mat or wife-to-be   son. Besides Ona (dad) and unu (mom) all other terms are terms of reference   and address. The terms of address for ona and unu are iyapo (daddy) and hapo   (mommy), but these may also be terms of reference when kukor (my) is added,   for example, kukor iyapo (my daddy). Gender is very important in for names.   For example, a male Ego will call a female sibling (matepa) something different   than a female Ego will call the same female sibling (mataki). Here it is easier   to see that mat is similar to female in English. The Author explains that po   is more likely to be offspring-of. So matnepo (daughter) is offspring to become   women. Whether they are your or your wife's sister's or brother's kids all nephew   and niece types are referred to as them same. A strange gender-less term, mitpo,   applies to all grandchildren. Which also shows up in great grandchildren (san   mitpo).
• Descent groups of the Ainu are neither patrilineal nor matrilineal, but and   amalgamation of the two. It was very hared for me to understand because it was   explained using the Ainu terms without English translations. So unless I took   the time to learn the Ainu language it will seem foggy. The complexity is that   brothers and sisters have different descent groups. It is called juxtaposed   descent. It seems a brother would trace patrilineal and a sister will trace   matrilineal. All males on your father's side shared, a emblem or seal, itokpa.   It was passed from father to sons. Members of this group shared the same deities,   which must be worshiped. The eldest son would inherit the lions share of the   father's wealth, but the youngest would gain the father's house. The same happens   with the woman. At the time of her betrothal a girl would receive gifts and   a girdle-type belt known as an upsor, kut, or a pon kut. The upsor was the same   type as her mother's upsor. The women also received tattoos traditionally. One   at puberty, the second around 15 years of age, and a third before she got married   (around 19). Women were tattooed to appear similar to the gods of the culture.   The demons wouldn't mess with the gods, so they also won't mess with a tattooed   woman. Again the Japanese have broken this tradition by outlawing tattoos
• A woman was not allowed to marry the son or brother of any female relative   having the same type of upsor as hers. So a man couldn't marry a woman who had   the same type of upsor as his sister's or mother's. The same policy holds with   the itokpa. So parallel cousins cannot marry, but cross cousins can. "The Ainu   practice a blend of polygamy that combines polygyny and levirate and a blend   of polygyny and sororate, but no polyandry."(p.135) Marriage was looked as a   way to perpetuate the descent group of the people involved. The Ainu practiced   Levirate and Sororate cautiously. The eldest brother had the priority to inherit   the wife of his younger brother if he died. A second rule says a younger brother   could inherit an older brother's wife as ling as he wasn't the oldest. The brother   usually picked the inheritor just before he died. There must be more conditions   to this because earlier the Author said the widow goes back and lives with her   matrikin. Sororate allows that a man could marry his wife's sister if that sister   was next to he wife younger in age, whether his wife was dead or not. The Ainu   were forbidden to marry a brother's wife's sister, until that brother died.   The Ainu were also kind of patrilocal, that is a man and his wife would move   near the man's family.

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• In 1899 the Japanese parliament enacted the Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act, a law designed to achieve the assimilation of the Ainu population of northern Japan. The paradoxes of this piece of legislation are evident even from its title. The phrase "former Aborigines" was supposed to emphasize the fact that the Ainu were now citizens of a rapidly modernizing Japan, destined to merge their identity with that of the majority population. Yet, by singling the Ainu out as former Aborigines, and subjecting them to patronizing and oppressive assimilation measures, the Protection Act in fact helped to ensure the survival of prejudice and discrimination against the Ainu within the modern Japanese state.
• The Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Law was to survive for almost a century. Although some of its most unpopular sections were repealed in the 1930s, it was not until May 1997 that it finally disappeared from the Japanese statute book, to be replaced by a new Ainu Cultural Promotion Law.
• 1997, indeed, marked something of a watershed in relations between the Ainu people and the Japanese state. In the same year, a district court in the northern island of Hokkaido ruled that the government had failed to respect Ainu cultural heritage and sacred sites when it expropriated land belonging to two Ainu residents for the construction of a dam in the village of Nibutani. The compulsory acquisition of the land had therefore been illegal.

• The Colonization of Ainu Moshir

   

  Until the middle of the nineteenth century, "Ainu moshir" ["the land of the Ainu"] covered most of the island of Hokkaido, as well as the southern half of Sakhalin and the islands of the Kuril Archipelago (which are now part of the Russian Federation). Earlier, Ainu occupation had extended further south, into the main Japanese island of Honshu. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Ainu society felt the growing impact of the gradual northward expansion of the Japanese state. Japanese merchants established trading posts along the Hokkaido coastline; exchanging goods like rice and ironware for fish and seaweed, and for the Chinese brocades which Ainu traders bought from the Asian continent. Gradually, however, the Japanese presence became more intrusive, provoking several waves of armed resistance from the Ainu. The last major conflict, the Battle of Kunashir-Menash, took place in 1789. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, most Ainu people continued to speak their own language and maintain their own spiritual and material traditions, even though a growing number were persuaded or forced to work for Japanese-run fishing enterprises.
• While asserting Japan's right to independent nationhood, Japanese scholars adopted notions of "progress" and "civilization" which defined the Ainu as "prehistoric hunter gatherers," destined either to extinction or to assimilation into the majority population. As in other parts of the world so too in Hokkaido, the land occupied by the original inhabitants was seen as "terra nullius" to be claimed by the state and distributed to colonial settlers. Ainu were required to adopt Japanese names and speak the Japanese language. Ainu communities were also often moved to remote areas to make room for new Japanese towns and villages. By the early 1880s, the Ainu population of Hokkaido, officially estimated at around 17,000, was already vastly outnumbered by a Japanese settler population of approximately 250,000. (It is worth observing though that given high levels of intermarriage, adoption, and social prejudice, official counts of the Ainu should always be treated with some caution.)
• The Ainu, however, have never been passive victims of colonization. By the early twentieth century, a number of Ainu leaders were voicing resistance to the prejudice that they were experiencing in Japanese society. One of the more interesting instances of protest took place in 1927 when Kaizawa Hiranosuke, an Ainu villager from Nibutani, wrote to the government demanding the right for Ainu and other Indigenous people to be represented at the Congress of Asian Peoples in Nagasaki, an event being organized to promote Japan's status as a leader in the Asian struggle against colonialism.
• It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that Ainu activists began to place growing emphasis on the maintenance or revival of disappearing craft skills, rituals, and modes of Indigenous knowledge.
• Among them was Kayano Shigeru, who put together the large collection of Ainu artifacts now displayed in the Ainu Cultural Museum at Nibutani.
• In 1987 Ainu representatives participated for the first time in the deliberations of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations. Interaction with Indigenous peoples worldwide gave encouragement to the Ainu cause, and promoted renewed debate amongst activists about issues such as Indigenous knowledge, resource rights and self-determination.
• So began a prolonged campaign, which led to the passing of the 1997 Cultural Promotion Law.
• So far, the law's most obvious result has been to focus attention on the fundamental question, "how and by whom is `Ainu cultural heritage' defined?" The whole notion of "cultural heritage," as embodied in the new law, implies notions of continuity rather than change, stability and order rather than conflict.
• But as Ainu commentator Tahara Ryoko points out in a recent collection of essays on the new law, "Ainu culture is not limited to language or ceremonies or dance. It is Ainu life itself. Whatever happens every day within the household is Ainu culture."

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• History of the Ainu
• Hokkaido, the Northern island of Japan where the Ainu has inhabited, is full of natural resources based on rich river systems. Because of the fact and the location, the land of the Ainu had been both, Japanese and Russian's interests and the Ainu had been a target of extermination in order for them to obtain the flourished land.
• 1400's The first contact with Japanese from main island and the Ainu engaged in peaceful trade with the Japanese 
  1457  The Battle of Kosyamain: 
  1669  The Battle of Syaksyain 
  1789  The Battle of Kunashiri-Menasi: Japanese succeeded to integrate the Northern island by defeating the Ainu for previous three battles 
  1869  Mass immigration of Japanese to Hokkaido started with the encouragement of the new western ideal government to develop the Hokkaido, Sakhalin and Kuril became under control of Russian 
  1871  Enactment of the registration; The Ainu became the common with prohibition of their traditional way of living and enforcement of use of Japanese 
  1878  The Ainu is given the status of former aborigines
• View on the change of the Ainu Population 
  As we can see in the following table and graph, the change in the Ainu population clearly indicates the evidence of Japanese exploitation of the Ainu which enforced them to give up their tradition and culture. We can not overlook Ainu's physical and psychological struggle over the abrupt change in their life style of which has been suffered with low economic income as well as harsh discrimination. I believe the struggle is one of the main causes of decreasing population. The population of the Ainu rapidly decreased between 1822 and 1873; about 7000 Ainu died over 50 years. The reason behind the rapid decrease of the population is thought to be the spread of epidemics, such as small pox, measles, cholera and tuberculosis beside the enforcement of Japanese culture and labor. Parallel to the uprising movement in 1960's, the Ainu population also has increased about 6000. Today, the Ainu population seems to be stable with small fracture in numbers.

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