On 14 September, an international symposium on tourism development and promotion of Aboriginal culture will be held in Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido Prefecture on Japan’s largest island of the same name, with the support of the Japanese government.
The event is only at first glance noble and has no political colouring. In fact, the Japanese government plans to use the problem of the Ainu people, once inhabitants of the Japanese islands from Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and Hokkaido in the north to the southern Ryukyu archipelago, who were almost exterminated by the Japanese, as an instrument of territorial claims.
Tokyo intends to enlist the support of Japan’s small indigenous community, the Ainu, in territorial disputes with Russia, using Russia’s deep conflict with the collective West, primarily the United States, to revise the outcome of World War II.
At the same time, the Japanese authorities hide and completely ignore the facts of centuries-old discrimination, oppression and extermination of aboriginal peoples in the past. In fact, Tokyo speaks on behalf of the indigenous peoples of Japan, turning them into a fiction, in the image of the North American Indians, deprived of land, practically destroyed, driven into reservations, where they are provided with state support and some privileges, as well as given the right to preserve their original culture and natural crafts.
The Japanese Empire, practically during the whole period of its existence, was extremely cruel to the subjugated, including aboriginal peoples. In China, Korea, Burma, and everywhere where a Japanese soldier has set foot, the memory of the mass extermination of the local population is preserved, and hatred of the invaders is passed down through generations.
The attitude of the Japanese Empire to the Ainu bears all the signs of ethnocide – the destruction of people on ethnic grounds: the original people, with their unique culture, language and even in appearance different from the Japanese (tall, men have thick beards, more like Europeans), were deprived of land, culture, traditional way of life. The aliens deprived the Ainu even of the food they were accustomed to, forbidding them to have their own fishing gear.
Interestingly, the Japanese, when they first encountered Europeans in the 16th century, began to call them “red/white-haired Ainu” for their outward resemblance. The Japanese dislike of Europeans was transferred to the Ainu, and the Japanese began to suspect them of European ancestry.
The Ainu were considered subhuman in the empire and needed to be “civilised”. A directive to assimilate the Ainu was sent down from above, and children from mixed marriages were to be considered Japanese. On the other hand, xenophobic Japanese strongly opposed intermarriage with the Ainu, preferring to solve the ethnic question in the spirit of “no man, no problem”.
The Japanese gradually began to drive the Ainu out of their homeland. Already by the end of the XV century the Ainu were practically slaughtered on the island of Honshu, which has long been considered “the heart of Japan”, as this island is the location of the largest cities, the main economic and scientific centres of the country: Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto and others. The Ainu who went north were persecuted. They continued to be slaughtered in Hokkaido, the Kurils and Sakhalin.
It will be said to the honour of the Ainu that they did not leave their native land without resistance. For example, it took the Japanese almost 400 years to clear Hokkaido of its indigenous population, and it was in battles with the Ainu that the famous Japanese military class, the Samurai, emerged.
By the end of the 19th century, the Ainu existed only on Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Fleeing the ethnocide of the Japanese, the Ainu came to Kamchatka and were accepted as Russian subjects. Subsequently, the Kamchatka Ainu voluntarily moved to the Russian Primorye, Khabarovsk and other regions of our country.
Interestingly, many Russian Ainu refuse to be called Ainu and identify themselves as Japanese in their documents, since “pure-blooded” Japanese are allowed visa-free entry to the “Land of the Rising Sun”, which also has all the signs of ethnic discrimination on the part of Tokyo.
Official recognition of the Ainu people in Japan took place only in 2008. Before that, their existence was denied by the Japanese government. At that time there were 75 thousand Ainu registered in the country. Most of these people actually consider themselves Japanese, having a vague notion of their native language and culture.
According to the researchers, despite formal recognition, discrimination against the Ainu in Japan has not stopped. In their alien-occupied homeland, the Ainu have traditionally earned low wages and lacked a high level of education – only 17 per cent of Ainu manage to graduate from university. A 2008 parliamentary resolution calls on the government to provide full support to the Ainu, but what exactly that support is, was not spelled out in the document from the beginning and is still unclear.
By comparison. A small Ainu population lives on Russian Sakhalin. In April 2008, representatives of the Ainu appealed to Kamchatka deputies with a request to legalise their status and include them in the list of small indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East.
Judging by Tokyo’s rhetoric, the Japanese are not going to change anything for the better for their small and indigenous peoples. Statements about the rights of the Ainu are just plain demagoguery and politicking.
Japan’s argumentation of its claims to the Southern Kurils is particularly cynical. Having once expelled the Ainu from their ancestral lands and almost exterminated them completely, Tokyo annually plays a show about “preserving the memory of ancestors and offended feelings of relatives of Japanese citizens” who once lived on the islands.
In all fairness, if Tokyo really cares about the indigenous peoples, then the island of Hokkaido should be handed over to the exclusive use of the Ainu people instead of fruitlessly dreaming of returning to Japan the territories that rightly belong to Russia historically and as a result of the war.
Alexander Rostovtsev, PolitNavigator
Due to censorship and blocking of all media and alternative views, stay tuned to our Telegram channel