The Ainu are the original inhabitants of the Japanese islands. Nordic Ainu - the original inhabitants of the Japanese Ainu Islands in Japan now

Few people know, but the Japanese are not the indigenous population of Japan. Before them lived on the islands Ainu, mysterious people, the origin of which is still a lot of mystery. The Ainu lived side by side with the Japanese for some time, until they were driven north.

That The Ainu are the ancient masters of the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, according to written sources 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. the Japanese islands, Sakhalin, Primorye, the Kuril Islands and the south of 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 well known that The Ainu came to the islands of the Sea of Japan and founded the Neolithic Jomon culture there (13,000 BC - 300 BC).

Ainu did not practice agriculture they foraged for food hunting, gathering and fishing. They lived along the rivers on the islands of the archipelago, in small settlements quite remote from each other.

hunting weapons The Ainu consisted of a bow, a long knife and a horn. Various traps and traps were widely used. In fishing, the Ainu have long used the "marek" - a spear with a movable swivel hook that captures the fish. Fish were often caught at night, attracting them with the light of torches.

As the island of Hokkaido became increasingly densely populated by the Japanese, hunting lost its dominant role in the life of the Ainu. At the same time, the share of agriculture and domestic animal husbandry 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 ingenuity.

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

The legend of the origin of the Ainu.

That was a long time ago. There was a village among the hills. An ordinary village where ordinary people lived. Among them is a very kind family. The family had a daughter, Aina, the kindest of all. The village lived a normal life, but one day at dawn a black wagon appeared on the village road. The black horses were driven by a man dressed in all black. He was very happy about something, smiled broadly, sometimes laughed. There was a black cage on the wagon, and in it a small fluffy Bear cub was sitting 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 it is for a black man to chain, torturing white teddy bear. People only resented 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 Bear cub. The stranger smiled and said that he would release the beast if anyone gave their eyes. Everyone was silent. Then Aina stepped forward and said that she was ready for it. The black man laughed out loud and opened the black cage. The white fluffy Teddy bear came out of the cage. And kind Aina lost her sight. While the villagers were looking at Little Bear and saying sympathetic words to Aina, the black man on the black wagon disappeared to no one knows where. The little bear no longer cried, but Aina cried. Then the white Bear cub took the rope in his paws and began to lead Aina everywhere: through the village, over hills and meadows. This did not go on for very long. And then one day the people of the village looked up and saw that white fluffy Bear cub leads Aina straight to the sky, and leads Aina across the sky. Ursa Major leads Ursa Minor and is always visible in the sky so that people remember good and evil...

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

The main celebration of the Ainu is the bear festival, on which Relatives and guests came from many villages. For four years, a bear cub was raised in one of the Ainu families. He was given the best food, the bear cub was prepared for a ritual sacrifice. In the morning, on the day of the bear sacrifice, The Ainu organized mass crying in front of the bear's cage. After that, the animal was taken out of the cage and decorated with shavings, ritual jewelry was put on. Then he was led through the village, and while those present distracted the attention of the beast with noise and shouts, the young hunters jumped on the bear one by one, clinging to him for a moment, trying to touch his head, and immediately jumped back: a peculiar rite of "kissing" the beast. The bear was tied up in a special place, they tried to feed it with festive food. The elder uttered a farewell word in front of him, described the labors and merits of the inhabitants of the village who raised the divine beast, set out the wishes of the Ainu, which the bear was 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 could be awarded to any hunter, at the request of the owner of the animal, but he must have been a visitor. Had hit right in the heart. The meat of the animal was laid on spruce paws and distributed taking into account seniority and generosity. The bones were carefully collected and taken to the forest. There was silence in the village. It was believed that the bear was already on its way, and the noise could lead it astray.

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

For a long time it was believed that the Ainu may have common roots with the peoples of Indonesia and the natives. Pacific Ocean because they have similar facial features. But genetic research excluded this option.

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

Ainu appearance

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

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

Russian explorers - the Cossacks, conquering Siberia, reached the Far East. Arriving on the island of Sakhalin, the first Russian Cossacks even mistook the Ainu for Russians, so they were not like the Siberian tribes, but rather resembled Europeans.

Here is what he wrote Cossack Yesaul Ivan Kozyrev about the first meeting: “Fifty people dressed in skins poured out to meet. They looked without fear and were of an unusual appearance - hairy, long-bearded, but with white faces and not slanting, like the Yakuts and Kamchadals.

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

The Ainu pay much attention upbringing and education of children. First of all, they think The child must learn to obey the elders! In the unquestioning obedience of the child to his parents, older brothers and sisters, adults in general, the future warrior was brought up. The obedience of the child, from the Ainu point of view, is expressed, in particular, in the fact that the child speaks with adults only when asked, when he is contacted. The child must be in full view of adults at all times., but at the same time do not make noise, do not bother them with your presence.

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

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

Ainu war with the Japanese

IN soon the idealistic life of the Ainu in the Japanese archipelago was prevented 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 allowed a large number of people to feed 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 the 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 who were fluent in bow and sword, and the Japanese failed to defeat them for a long time. A very long time, almost 1500 years .

The new state of Yamato, which arose in the III-IV centuries, begins an era of constant war with the Ainu. IN 670 Yamoto renamed Nippon (Japan). "Among the Eastern savages the strongest are Emishi", - testify the Japanese chronicles, where the Ainu appear under the name "emishi".

The Japanese demonized the recalcitrant people, calling the Ainu savages, but the Japanese for quite a long time yielded to the savages - the Ainu militarily. A record of a Japanese chronicler made in 712 : « When our exalted ancestors descended on a ship from the sky, on this island (Honshu) they found several wild peoples, among them the wildest were the Ainu.

Ainu. 1904

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

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

The origins of the samurai cult are in the martial art of the Ainu, not the Japanese. As a result of thousands of years of wars with the Ainu, the Japanese adopted a special military style from the Ainu. culture - samurai, originating from the millennial military traditions of the Atzni. 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", which means "deity of the hearth."

The Japanese were able to defeat the Ainu only after the invention of cannons, having managed to to adopt many techniques of military art from the Ainu. The code of honor of the samurai, the ability to wield two swords and the mentioned hara-kiri ritual - many consider the 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 tradition to draw mustaches for women, so they looked like young warriors. This tradition says that Ainu women were also warriors, along with men they fought like Despite all the prohibitions from the Japanese government, even in the twentieth century, the Ainu were tattooed, 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 rite was taught to the ancestors of the Ainu by the gods, the mother-progenitor of all living things - Oki Kurumi Turesh Mahi (Okikurumi Turesh Machi), the younger sister of the creator god Okikurumi .

The tradition of tattooing was passed down through the female line, drawing on the daughter's body was applied 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, Anglo-Germanic roots. Ainu language strongly stands out from the modern linguistic picture of the world, and so far they have not found a suitable place for it. During the long isolation the Ainu have lost contact with all other peoples of the Earth, and some researchers even single them out as special Ainu race.

ethnographers wrestling with the question where in these harsh lands people appeared, wearing swing (southern) type of clothing. Their national casual wear - dressing gowns , decorated with traditional ornaments, festive - white.

Ainu national clothes - dressing gown, decorated bright ornament, fur hat or wreath. Previously, clothing material was woven from strips of bast and nettle fibers. Now the national clothes of the Ainu are sewn from purchased fabrics, but decorated with rich embroidery. Almost each Ainu village has its own special embroidery pattern. Having met an Ainu in national dress, one can accurately determine from which village he is from. Embroidery on men's and women's clothing differ. A man will never wear clothes with "female" embroidery, and vice versa.

Russian travelers were also struck by the fact 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 give 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 have almost completely assimilated with the population of Japan. The culture of the Ainu goes into oblivion along with its secrets.

Decree of Empress Catherine II of 1779: “... leave the furry smokers free and do not require any collection from them, and henceforth the peoples living there should not be forced to do so, but try to be friendly and affectionate ... to continue the acquaintance already established with them.”

The decree of the empress was not fully respected, and yasak was collected from the Ainu until the 19th century. The gullible Ainu took their word for it, and if the Russians somehow kept him in relation to them, then with the Japanese there was a war to the last breath ...

In 1884, the Japanese resettled all the North Kuril Ainu on the island of Shikotan, where the last of them died in 1941.The last Ainu man on Sakhalin died in 1961, after burying his wife, he, as befits a warrior and the ancient laws of his amazing people, made himself "Eritokpa", ripping open the stomach 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 in Russia - 205 people .

According to the "National Accent" through the mouth Alexei Nakamura, head of the Ainu community, « Ainu or Kamchadal smokers did not disappear anywhere, 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 operations. After all, we fought the Japanese for 650 years.”

There is one ancient people on earth that has been simply ignored for centuries, and more than once was subjected to persecution and genocide in Japan due to the fact that by 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 the preliminary data of the latest population census, held in October 2010, there are more than 100 Ainu people in our country. The fact itself is unusual, because until recently it was believed that the Ainu live only in Japan. This was suspected, 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 Ainami and have good reasons for this.

As studies have shown - the Ainu, or KAMCHADAL KURILTS - did not disappear anywhere, they simply did not want to recognize them for many years. But even Stepan Krasheninnikov, an explorer of Siberia and Kamchatka (XVIII century), described them as Kamchadal smokers. The very name "Ainu" comes from their word for "man", or "worthy man", and is associated with military operations. And according to one of the representatives of this nationality in an interview with the well-known journalist M. Dolgikh, the Ainu fought the Japanese for 650 years. It turns out that this is the only people left to this day, who from ancient times held back 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 already about 7 thousand years ago the Ainu inhabited the north of the Japanese archipelago, the Kuriles and part of Sakhalin and, according to some sources, part of Kamchatka and even the lower reaches of the Amur. The Japanese who came from the south gradually assimilated and forced out the Ainu to the north of the archipelago - to Hokkaido and the southern Kuriles.
Hokaido now hosts the largest concentrations of Ainu families.

According to experts, in Japan, the Ainu were considered "barbarians", "savages" and social marginals. The hieroglyph used to designate the Ainu means "barbarian", "savage", now the Japanese call them "hairy Ainu" for which the Ainu of the Japanese do not like.
And here the policy of the Japanese against the Ainu is very well traced, 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 dislike for the Japanese probably exists not only because of the ridiculous nicknames addressed to them, but also probably because the Ainu, let me remind you, have been subjected to genocide and persecution by the Japanese for centuries.

At the end of the XIX century. about one and a half thousand Ainu lived in Russia. After the Second World War, they were partly evicted, partly left on their own along with the Japanese population, others remained, returning, so to speak, from their hard and protracted service for centuries. 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.
Ainu is 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 Kuriles, Kuril Lake, etc. arose from hot springs or volcanic activity.
It's just that the Kurils, or Kurilians, live here, and "kuru" in Ainu means the 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 about. Matua. There is an 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 Kuriles, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, as the Japanese are doing now, assuring everyone that the Ainu live only in Japan (after all, archeology says otherwise), so they, the Japanese, allegedly need to give the Kuril Islands. This is pure untruth. In Russia there are Ainu - the indigenous White People, who have a direct right to consider these islands their ancestral lands.

American anthropologist S. Lauryn Brace, from Michigan State University in Horizons of Science, No. 65, September-October 1989. writes: "The typical Ainu is 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 Japanese, Ainu, and other tombs and concluded that the upper class samurai in Japan were actually descendants of the Ainu, and not the Yayoi (Mongoloids), the ancestors of most modern Japanese.

The history of the Ainu estates resembles the history of the higher castes in India, where the highest percentage of the White man haplogroup R1a1

Brace further writes: “... this explains why the facial features of the representatives of the ruling class are so often different from modern Japanese. The real Samurai, the descendants of the 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 was mainly descendants of the Yayoi.

It should also be noted that, in addition to archaeological and other features, the language was partially preserved. There is a dictionary of the Kuril language in the "Description of the Land of Kamchatka" by S. Krasheninnikov.
In Hokkaido, the dialect spoken by the Ainu is called saroo, but in SAKHALIN it is reychishka.
As it is not difficult to understand, the Ainu language differs from the Japanese language in terms of syntax, phonology, morphology and vocabulary, etc. Although there have been attempts to prove that they are related, the vast majority of modern scholars reject the suggestion that the relationship between languages goes beyond contact relationships, involving mutual borrowing of words in both languages. In fact, no attempt to tie the Ainu language to any other language has been widely accepted.

In principle, according to the well-known 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 Ainam (partially evicted to Japan in 1945) to return from Japan to the land of their ancestors (including their original habitat - the Amur Region, Kamchatka, Sakhalin and all the Kuriles, creating at least following the example of the Japanese (it is known that the Parliament of Japan only in 2008 did he still recognize the Ainu as an independent national minority), the Russian dispersed autonomy of an "independent national minority" with the participation of the Ainu from the islands and the Ainu of Russia.
We have neither people nor funds for the development of Sakhalin and the Kuriles, but the Ainu have. The Ainu, who migrated from Japan, according to experts, can give impetus to the economy of the Russian Far East, namely, by forming not only in the Kuril Islands, but also within Russia, national autonomy and reviving their family and traditions in the land of their ancestors

Japan, according to P. Alekseev, will be out of work, because. the displaced Ainu will disappear there, and here they can settle not only in the southern part of the Kuriles, but throughout their original range, our Far East, eliminating the emphasis on the southern Kuriles. 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 this ancient People is ignored to this day.
With our pro-Western government, which feeds Chechnya for nothing, which deliberately flooded Russia with people of Caucasian nationality, opened unhindered 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 Ainu, only CIVIL INITIATIVE will help here.

As noted by the leading researcher of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Academician K. Cherevko, Japan exploited these islands. In their law there is such a thing as "development through trade exchange." And all the Ainu - both conquered and unconquered - were considered Japanese, were subject to their emperor. But it is known that even before that, the Ainu gave taxes to Russia. True, it was irregular.

Thus, it is safe to say that the Kuril Islands belong to the Ainu, but, one way or another, Russia must proceed from international law. According to him, i.e. Under the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan renounced the islands. There are simply no legal grounds for revising the documents signed in 1951 and other agreements today. 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 from the outside.

As studies have shown, the Ainu, or Kamchadal smokers, did not disappear anywhere, they simply did not want to be recognized for many years. But even Stepan Krasheninnikov, an explorer of Siberia and Kamchatka (XVIII century), described them as Kamchadal smokers. The very name "Ainu" comes from their word for "man", or "worthy man", and is associated with military operations. And according to one of the representatives of this nationality in an interview with the well-known journalist M. Dolgikh, the Ainu fought the Japanese for 650 years. It turns out that this is the only people left to this day, who from ancient times held back 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.

Hokaido now hosts the largest concentrations of Ainu families.

According to experts, in Japan, the Ainu were considered "barbarians", "savages" and social marginals. The hieroglyph used to denote the Ainu means "barbarian", "savage", now the Japanese also call them "hairy Ainu" for which the Ainu do not like the Japanese.
And here the policy of the Japanese against the Ainu is very well traced, 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 dislike for the Japanese probably exists not only because of the ridiculous nicknames addressed to them, but also probably because the Ainu, let me remind you, have been subjected to genocide and persecution by the Japanese for centuries.

In appearance, representatives of the Ainu people very little resemble their closest neighbors - the Japanese, Nivkhs and Itelmens.
Ainu is 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 Kuriles, Kuril Lake, etc. arose from hot springs or volcanic activity. It’s just that the Kurils, or Kurilians, live here, and “kuru” in Ainu means the People.

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

American anthropologist S. Lauryn Brace, from the University of Michigan, in the journal Horizons of Science, No. 65, September-October 1989, writes: “a typical Ainu is easy to distinguish from the Japanese: he has lighter skin, thicker body hair, beard , which is unusual for the Mongoloids, and a more protruding nose.

The history of the Ainu estates resembles the history of the higher castes in India, where the highest percentage of the White man haplogroup R1a1

It should also be noted that, in addition to archaeological and other features, the language was partially preserved. There is a dictionary of the Kuril language in the "Description of the Land of Kamchatka" by S. Krasheninnikov. In Hokkaido, the dialect spoken by the Ainu is called saroo, but in SAKHALIN it is reychishka.
As it is not difficult to understand, the Ainu language differs from the Japanese language in terms of syntax, phonology, morphology and vocabulary, etc. Although there have been attempts to prove that they are related, the vast majority of modern scholars reject the suggestion that the relationship between languages goes beyond contact relationships, involving mutual borrowing of words in both languages. In fact, no attempt to tie the Ainu language to any other language has been widely accepted.

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

The Ainu were not allies of Japan and never will be, but they can become allies of Russia. But unfortunately this ancient People is ignored to this day.

Twenty years ago, the magazine "Vokrug Sveta" published an interesting article "Arrived from heaven, "Real people"". Here is a small snippet from this most interesting material:

“... The conquest of huge Honshu progressed slowly. Even at the beginning of the 8th century AD, the Ainu held the entire northern part of it. Military happiness passed from hand to hand. And then the Japanese began to bribe the Ainu leaders, reward them with court titles, relocate entire Ainu villages from the occupied territories to the south, and create their own settlements in the vacant place. Moreover, seeing that the army was unable to hold the occupied lands, the Japanese rulers decided on a very risky step: they armed the settlers leaving for the north. This was the beginning of the service 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 in the north of Honshu small villages of incompletely assimilated Ainu. 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 very interested in the Japanese rulers. Written at the beginning of the 18th century, the Dainniponshi (History of Great 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 peril and risk to press the Ainu of southern Hokkaido and built the first permanent Japanese settlement there. Since then, foreigners have sometimes called Ezo Island otherwise: Matmai (Mats-mai), after the name of the Matsumae clan founded by Nobuhiro.

New lands had to be taken with a fight. The Ainu offered stubborn resistance. People's memory has preserved the names of the most courageous defenders of their native land. One such hero is Shakushayin, 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 House of Matsumae barely had time to hide in the fortified town. A little more and...

But the reinforcements sent to the besieged arrived in time. The former owners of the island retreated behind Kun-nui-gawa. The decisive battle began at 6 o'clock in the morning. Japanese warriors clad in armor looked with a grin at the attacking crowd of hunters untrained in the regular formation. 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 glitter of the tips of their spears? The cannons answered the arrows falling at the end...

(Here I immediately recall the American film "The Last Samurai" with Tom Cruise in the title role. Hollywood obviously knew the truth - the last samurai was really a white man, but distorted it, turning everything upside down, so that people would never recognize her. The last the samurai was not a European, did not come from Europe, but was a native of Japan.His ancestors lived on the islands for thousands of years! ..)

The surviving Ainu fled to the mountains. The fights continued for another month. Deciding to hurry things up, the Japanese lured Syakusyain, along with other Ainu commanders, into negotiations and killed him. The resistance was broken. From free people who lived according to their 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 winners and the vanquished are described in the diary of the traveler Yokoi:

“... The translators and overseers did many bad and vile deeds: they mistreated the elderly and children, raped women. If the Ezos 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 Kuriles. 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 the Cossack Ivan Kozyrevsky. He visited in 1711 and 1713 in the north of the ridge and asked its inhabitants about the entire chain of islands, up to Matmai (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 many people, and those islands are not subject to anyone."

In 1777, the Irkutsk merchant Dmitry Shebalin was able to bring 1,500 Ainu into Russian citizenship in Iturup, Kunashir, and even in Hokkaido. The Ainu received from the Russians strong fishing gear, iron, cows, and eventually rent for the right to hunt near their shores.

Despite the arbitrariness of some merchants and Cossacks, the Ainu (including the Ezos) sought protection from the Japanese from Russia. Perhaps the bearded, big-eyed Ainu saw in the people who came to them natural allies, so sharply different from the Mongoloid tribes and peoples living around. After all, the outward resemblance of our explorers and the Ainu was simply amazing. It fooled even the Japanese. In their first reports, Russians are referred to as “red-haired Ainu” ... "

That was a long time ago. There was a village among the hills. An ordinary village where ordinary people lived. Among them is a very kind family. The family had a daughter, Aina, the kindest of all. The village lived a normal life, but one day at dawn a black wagon appeared on the village road. The black horses were driven by a man dressed in all black. He was very happy about something, smiled broadly, sometimes laughed. There was a black cage on the wagon, and in it a small fluffy Bear cub was sitting on a chain. He sucked his paw, and tears flowed from his eyes. All the people of the village looked out of the windows, went out into the street and were indignant: how shameful it is for a black man to keep on a chain, torturing a white Bear cub. People only resented and said words, but did nothing. Only a kind family stopped the black man's cart, and Aina began to ask him to let the unfortunate Bear cub go. The stranger smiled and said that he would release the beast if anyone gave their eyes. Everyone was silent. Then Aina stepped forward and said that she was ready for it. The black man laughed out loud and opened the black cage. The white fluffy Teddy bear came out of the cage. And good Aina lost her sight. While the villagers were looking at Little Bear and saying sympathetic words to Aina, the black man on the black wagon disappeared to no one knows where. The little bear no longer cried, but Aina cried. Then the white Bear cub took the rope in his paws and began to lead Aina everywhere: through the village, over the hills and meadows. This did not go on for very long. And then one day the people of the village looked up and saw that a white fluffy Bear cub was leading Aina straight into the sky. Since then, the little Bear cub has been leading Aina across the sky. They are always visible in the sky so that people remember good and evil ...

The Ainu are a peculiar people, occupying a special place among the many small peoples of the Earth. Until now, he enjoys such attention in world science, which many much larger nations have not been honored with. It was a beautiful and strong people, whose whole life was connected with the forest, rivers, sea and islands. Language, Caucasoid facial features, 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 the south of Kamchatka. They lived in dugouts, built frame houses, wore southern-style loincloths and used closed fur clothing like the inhabitants of the north. The Ainu combined the knowledge, skills, customs and techniques of taiga hunters and coastal fishermen, southern collectors of seafood and northern sea hunters.

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

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

“Once upon a time, the boy thought about the meaning of his existence and, in order to find out, went on a long journey. On the first night, he stopped for the night in a beautiful house, where a girl lived, who left him to spend the night, saying that "the news has already come 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 had to go further - to the middle sister. When he 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 repeated itself, except that the younger sister showed him the way through the Black, White and Red mountains, which can be raised by moving the oars stuck at the foot of these mountains.

Passing the mountains Black, White and Red, he gets to the "mountain of God", on 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 should initiate the fact that people as such with a soul are born. When you came here, you thought that you spent the night in three places for one night, but in fact you lived for one year. 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 is ordered to pick up his children on the way back, and on returning home to take one of the daughters as his wife, and marry the son to another daughter, in which case you will bear children; and they, in turn, if you give to each other, they will multiply. This will be the people." Returning, the boy acted as he was ordered on the “mountain of God”.

"That's the way people have multiplied." Thus ends the legend.

In the 17th century, the first explorers who arrived on the islands discovered to the world previously unknown ethnic groups and finding 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, the Kuril Islands and Hokkaido, which belongs to Japan, 2-3 centuries ago.

Ainu language- a puzzle for researchers. Until now, its relationship with other languages of the world has not 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 in twenties. They do not have such concepts as "hundred", "thousand". The Ainu express the number 100 as “five twenty”, 110 - “six twenty without ten”. The counting system is complicated by the fact that you cannot add to the "twenties", you can only take away 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 Ainu from ancient times were fishing and hunting for sea and forest animals. Everything they needed for life they got close to home: fish, game, edible wild plants, elm bast and nettle fiber for clothing. Farming was almost non-existent.

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

Ainu national clothes- a dressing gown decorated with bright ornaments, a fur collar or a wreath. Previously, clothing material was woven from strips of bast and nettle fibers. Now national clothes are sewn from purchased fabrics, but decorated with rich embroidery. Almost every Ainu village has its own special embroidery pattern. Having met an Ainu in national dress, one can accurately determine from which village he is from.

Embroidery on men's and women's clothing differ. A man will never wear clothes with "female" embroidery, and vice versa.

Until now, on the faces of Ainu women, one can see a wide tattoo border around the mouth, something like a painted mustache. Tattoos adorn the forehead and arms to the elbow. Getting a tattoo is a very painful process, so it is usually stretched out over several years. A woman most often tattoos her arms and forehead only after marriage. In choosing a life partner, the Ainu woman enjoys much more freedom than the women of many other peoples of the East. The Ainu quite rightly believe that the issues of marriage concern primarily those who enter into it, and to a lesser extent all those around them, including the parents of the bride and groom. Children are required to listen with reverence to the parent's word, after which they are free to do as they wish. The Ainu girl is recognized to have the right to marry a young man she likes. If the matchmaking meets with consent, the groom leaves his parents and moves to the bride's house. When married, a woman retains her former name.

The Ainu pay much attention to the upbringing and education of children. First of all, they believe, the child must learn to obey the elders: their 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 with adults only when they themselves turn to him. He should be in full view of adults all the time, but at the same time not make noise, not 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 path in the forest and much more. The upbringing of girls is the responsibility of the mother. In cases where children violate the established rules of behavior, commit missteps or misconduct, parents tell them various instructive legends and stories, preferring this means of influencing the child's psyche to physical punishment.

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 of the Ainu reflects the distinctive property of his character, his inherent individual trait, for example: Selfish, Dirty, Fair, Good speaker, Stutterer, etc. The Ainu have no nicknames, they are not needed with such a system of names.

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

In favor of the fact that it was the Ainu who inhabited the Japanese islands, their name in the Ainu language speaks: "Ainu Mosiri", i.e. "world/land of the Ainu". The Japanese for centuries 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 that occurred mainly due to the rude behavior of some Russian fishermen or the military. The most common form of their communication was barter. The Ainu sometimes fought with the Nivkhs and other peoples, then 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 norms of etiquette observed by the Ainu.

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

Entering the house, it is necessary to go around the hearth on the right and, having crossed your bare legs without fail, sit on a mat opposite the owner of the house sitting in a similar position. No words need to be said yet. Coughing politely several times, fold your hands in front of you and rub the palm of your left with the fingertips of your right hand, 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 would grant prosperity to the owner of the house, then his wife, his children, the rest of his relatives and, finally, his native village. After that, without ceasing to rub your palms, you can briefly state the purpose of your visit. When the owner starts stroking 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 go on in a more relaxed atmosphere. Rubbing your palms will take at least 20-30 minutes. This corresponds to the Ainu notions of politeness.

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

Then, for several years, representatives of the Ainu raise small bear cubs, but in the end they also kill them, since it becomes life-threatening to monitor and care for an adult bear. The funeral ceremony, which is directly related to the soul of a bear, is a major part of the religious customs of the Ainu. It is believed that during this ritual, a person helps the soul of a divine animal to go to the other world.

Over time, the killing of bears was banned 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. Nevertheless, there are rumors that to this day real funeral ceremonies continue to be held, but all this is kept in the strictest confidence.

Another of the Ainu traditions 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 the prayer sticks to identify the owner of the artifact. In the past, it was believed that prayer sticks contained all the prayers that the owner addressed to the gods. The creators of such instruments for the performance of 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 stands facing the wooden pole and holds it tightly with his hands, while the other beats him on his bare back with a long stick wrapped in soft cloth, or even no matter at all. The game ends when the victim lets out a scream or jumps to the side. Another takes its place... There is one trick here. To win in "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 among the audience, but in fact, barely touch the partner's back with a stick.

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

Inau can also be found on the seashore, in places where they go fishing. Here the gifts are intended for two sea-gods-brothers. The eldest of them is evil, he brings various troubles to the fishermen; the younger one is kind, patronizing people. The Ainu show reverence for both gods, but, of course, they 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 not only to take from nature, but also to preserve it, otherwise in a few generations there will be no forest, fish, beast and bird. All Ainu were deeply religious people. They spiritualized all the phenomena of nature and nature as a whole. This religion is called animism.

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

The most powerful kamui gods are the gods of the sea and mountains. The sea god is a killer whale. This predator was especially revered. The Ainu were convinced that the killer whale sends whales to people and each discarded whale was considered a gift, in addition, every year the killer whale sends salmon shoals to its elder brother, the god of the mountain taiga, in processions of its subjects. On the way, these shoals were wrapped in the villages of the Ainu, and salmon has always been the main food of this people.

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

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

One of these legends speaks of the origin of the Ainu. One Western country the king wanted to marry his own daughter, but she fled across the sea with her dog. There, across the sea, her children were born, 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 the full. In bad weather they were kept in the house.

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

The main celebration of the Ainu is the bear festival. Relatives and guests from many villages came to participate in this event. For four years, a bear cub was raised in one of the Ainu families. He was given the best food. And now the animal, raised with love and diligence, one fine day was planned to be killed. On the morning of the day of the murder, the Ainu staged a mass cry in front of the bear's cage. After that, the animal was taken out of the cage and decorated with shavings, ritual jewelry was put on. Then he was led through the village, and while those present distracted the attention of the beast with noise and shouting, the young hunters jumped on the animal one by one, clinging to it for a moment, trying to touch the head, and immediately jumped back: a kind of rite of “kissing” the beast. The bear was tied up in a special place, they tried to feed it with festive food. Then the elder pronounced a farewell word in front of him, described the labors and merits of the villagers who raised the divine beast, set out the wishes of the Ainu, which the bear was supposed to convey to his father, the mountain taiga god. Honor "send", i.e. Any hunter could be awarded to kill a bear from a bow, at the request of the owner of the animal, but it had to be a visitor. It had to hit right in the heart. The meat of the animal was placed on spruce paws and distributed taking into account seniority and generosity. The bones were carefully collected and taken to the forest. There was silence in the village. It was believed that the bear was already on its way, and the noise could lead him astray.

The decree of the empress was not fully respected, and yasak was collected from the Ainu until the 19th century. The gullible Ainu took their word for it, and if the Russians somehow kept him in touch with them, then there was a war with the Japanese to the last breath ...

In 1884, the Japanese resettled all the North 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 one, due to an ill-conceived ethnic policy towards the inhabitants of Sakhalin, forced the Ainu to migrate to Hokkaido, where their descendants live today in the amount of about 20 thousand people, having achieved only in 1997 the legislative right to be an “ethnic group " in Japan.

Now the Ainu, who live near the sea and rivers, try to combine agriculture with animal husbandry and fishing in order to insure against failure in any kind of economy. Agriculture alone cannot feed them, because the lands left by the Ainu are dry, stony, and barren. Many Ainu today are forced to leave their native villages and go to work in the city or for logging. But even there they are not always able to find work. Most Japanese entrepreneurs and fishermen do not want to hire the Ainu, and if they give them work, then the dirtiest and least paid.

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

The Far Eastern lands keep many unsolved mysteries, one of them is the mystery of the origin of the people Ainu. The most ancient people inhabited, according to archaeological excavations and references in ancient manuscripts of different peoples, the lands of Japan, Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, Kamchatka, the mouth of the Amur already 13 thousand years BC.

Russian and European sailors and, visiting these lands back in the 17th century, were very surprised to find settlements of people outwardly very similar to them, and the Japanese, on the contrary, when they saw the first Europeans, called them "red-haired Ainu", the external similarity was so obvious for them.

Ainu, fair-skinned owners of more open eyes like Europeans, unlike their neighbors Itelmens, Chukchis, Evens, Japanese and other peoples, thick dark blond hair, full beard, mustache and increased body hair, Stepan Krasheninnikov called them "hairy smokers" by the way, the name of the Kuril Islands and the Kuriles, came from the Ainu "kuru" or "guru" - people, person, in general, many Ainu names have been preserved in these lands: Sakhalin - Saharan Mosiri "wavy land", endings in words "kotan" And "shire" means "land", "a piece of land", Shikotan - "land of Shi",Kunashir - "the land of Kuna".

Language Ainu is not similar to any other language in the world, it is considered a separate language, although some names are very curious, for example woman in Ainu "mat" (s), A death is heaven. "Ainu" stands for "real people", "real man" unlike the world and who possessed the spirit - "kamui", but were not like people, very reminiscent of the words for which all animals were "People".

Ainu tried to live in harmony with and spiritualized the whole world around them. The intermediary between them and the world of spirits - kamui, served inau- a stick, one end of which was split into twisting fibers, it was decorated and an offering was made, and then they were asked to convey their request to some spirit.

The most important and great spirit is considered to be the "Great Heavenly Serpent", who, flying to heaven, forgot his inau sticks, and in order not to return, he turned them into willows.

One of the national features was a female tattoo around the lips, similar to a mustache or a smile, and clothes were decorated with spiral patterns.

According to legend and archaeological excavations, Ainu fragments of some mighty ancient civilization, the founders of the Jomon culture and, possibly, the legendary state of Yamatai, by the way, in the language Ainu "Ya ma ta i" - a place where the sea cuts the land, but then something happened and the Japanese who settled the islands found them already living in small scattered settlements - "utari", who were mainly engaged in hunting and fishing, but still kept ancient traditions, obeying no one, relying on their martial arts and the spirits of nature - "kamui", were trusting like children, not knowing and not understanding deceit, possessing exceptional honesty, like many Far Eastern peoples.

About your origin Ainu they said that a long time ago in a distant country Pan, the ruler wanted to marry his daughter, but the princess fled with her faithful dog across the "Great Sea" and founded a new nation. Another legend says that the husband of the princess was the owner of the mountains - a bear who came to her in the form of a man. The cult of the bear was one of the main Ainu, the most important holiday is the holiday of the bear.

Japanese opposition and Ainu lasted for 2 thousand years, according to the Japanese, when they came to the islands, "barbarians" lived there and the most ferocious of them were Ainu.

Ainu were skilled warriors - "jungins", fought without shields with two short, slightly curved swords, although bows with armor-piercing arrowheads soaked in poison were preferable "sukuru" from the root of econite and spider venom, or fighting mallets, which were used as a sling or flail. They carried quivers for arrows and swords on their backs, for which they were called "people with arrows sticking out of their hair."

The Japanese did not like to meet them in open battle, they said that "one emishi or ebisu ("barbarian" as they disdainfully called the Ainu) was worth a hundred people." The legend of the Ainu says that once upon a time there were grandfather-Ain and grandfather-Japanese, God settled them on these lands and ordered Ainu make a sword, and the Japanese have money, so Ainu there was a cult of the sword, and the Japanese had money.

Another feature of the Ainu military operations is to end them at the "negotiating table". The leaders of the warring parties gathered for a feast, where they discussed the terms of a truce, and often they became relatives. This later killed them, when the Japanese at the feast simply killed the leaders of the Ainu, and this also led to the fact that the ruling elite of Japan outwardly differs from the rest of the people, because there were many Ainu among them.

Ainu having become related to the privileged class of the Japanese, they brought with them their religion, culture, martial arts, many Japanese names and now they sound in the Ainu language - "Tsushima" - distant, "Fuji" - grandmother, spirit or kamuy of the hearth.

The national Japanese religion, Shintoism, has Ainu roots, as well as the "Bushido" complex of military prowess, and the "hara-kiri" ritual, and the culture and martial arts of the samurai. Initially, some samurai clans were Ainu.

The fate of the rest of the people Ainu tragic, they had to endure cruel oppression by the Japanese, almost genocide, someone managed to move from the Japanese islands to the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin and Kamchatka, under the protection of Russia, but in the harsh times of Stalinist repressions, for one Ainu surname could be sent to the Gulag, so many changed their surnames, and the children did not even suspect their nationality.

Today, 104 people live in Kamchatka, who call themselves descendants of the Ainu and are trying to achieve recognition as the indigenous population, there are practically no "pure" Ainu left, a few descendants of the Ainu live at the mouth of the Amur, the Sakhalin Ainu preferred to call themselves Japanese, this gives them the right to visa-free entry to Japan, about 20 thousand descendants of the Ainu live in Japan itself.

The 20th century went through the fate of many peoples like a heavy roller, one of them being the Ainu. The language is forgotten, only the records of our and Japanese researchers who studied the culture of the Ainu remained, and the scientific world still cannot unravel the mystery of the origin of this amazing people.

Who knows, maybe it was their ancestors who lived in, or maybe they inhabited a single mainland at one time, or maybe they are the descendants of those who once came to these lands from mysterious country Hyperborea...

All about car tuning

The Ainu are the original inhabitants of the Japanese islands. Nordic Ainu - the original inhabitants of the Japanese Ainu Islands in Japan now

Hokaido now hosts the largest concentrations of Ainu families.

The history of the Ainu estates resembles the history of the higher castes in India, where the highest percentage of the White man haplogroup R1a1