The Ainu are an ethnic group, distinct from the Japanese, that live today almost exclusively

on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. They were traditionally hunters-gatherers and
fishermen. They hunted bear, sea otter, deer and other animals, gathered wild plants and
fished for whales, seal lions, swordfish and salmon on the open seas until they were driven
inland by the Japanese. The Ainu traditionally were not a homogeneous group and were
usually divided into three groups which are the Kurile Ainu, who lived on the Kurile Islands
in present day eastern Russia, Sakhalin Ainu, who lived on the northern Sakhalin Island in
present-day eastern Russia, and Hokkaido Ainu, who lived on Hokkaido and southern
Sakhalin Island. The Ainu are quickly vanishing as a distinct and separate group of people.
There are only a few hundred pure blooded Ainu left. Government surveys counted 23,782
pure and mixed blood Ainu in Hokkaido in 2006 and several thousand in Tokyo and about a
thousand in other places in Japan. Most live in the Hidaka district of Hokkaido, southeast of
Sapporo. An Ainu cultural organization said the true number of Ainu could actually be higher
because many Ainu do not admit their ethnic background to avoid discrimination.
Geography
For historical reasons (primarily the Russo-Japanese War), nearly all Ainu live in Japan.
There is, however, a small number of Ainu living on Sakhalin, most of them descendants of
Sakhalin Ainu who were evicted and later returned. There is also an Ainu minority living at
the southernmost area of the Kamchatka Peninsula and on the Kurile Islands. However, the
only Ainu speakers remaining live solely in Japan. There, they are concentrated primarily on
the southern and eastern coasts of the island of Hokkaid.
Due to intermarriage with the Japanese and ongoing absorption into the predominant culture,
few living Ainu settlements exist. Many "authentic Ainu villages" advertised in Hokkaido are
simply tourist attractions.
Physical Characteristics
Ainu are shorter than the Japanese people, with lighter skin, robust body and short limbs.
Unlike typical Mongoloids, their hair is wavy and the body hair is abundant, Ainu men grow
their beards and moustaches thick and wiry. Considered a sign of beauty, to the point that
married women tattoo their lower face to mimic a beard. Ainu have not such pronounced

almond - shaped eyes and lack the Mongoloid fold of the eye; the nose is large and straight.
All these point to their origin in Polynesia or southeastern Asia.
Language
The Ainu language is significantly different from Japanese in its syntax, phonology,
morphology, and vocabulary. Although there have been attempts to demonstrate a relationship
between the two languages, the majority of modern scholars deny that the relationship goes
beyond contact and the mutual borrowing of words between Japanese and Ainu. No attempt
to show a relationship between Ainu and any other language has gained wide acceptance, and
Ainu is currently considered to be a language isolate.
Education
Traditionally children were educated at home. Grandparents recited poems and tales while
parents taught practical skills and crafts. From the late nineteenth century on, Ainu were
educated in Japanese schools. Many concealed their Ainu background.
Occupation
The Ainu were basically a hunting-gathering population but fish from the sea, rivers, and
lakes was an important source of food for most Ainu. Ainu men fished and hunted sea and
land mammals, while women were responsible for gathering plants and storing food for the
cold season. Large animals such as bear, deer (in Hokkaid), musk deer, and reindeer (in
Sakhalin) were usually caught using individual techniques of hunting, although cooperation
among individuals sometimes took place, especially among the Hokkaid Ainu. They used
the bow and arrow, the set - trap bow, the spear, and various kinds of traps for hunting land
mammals, often combining different methods. The hunting techniques of the Hokkaid Ainu
were on the whole technologically more developed than those of other Ainu. They used
trained dogs for hunting, and, in some areas, even for fishing. In addition, they used aconite
and stingray poison for hunting, which ensured that wounded animals would fall to the
ground within a short distance. Large fish such as trout and salmon were important foods,
obtained by means of detachable spearheads. The Ainu also used nets, various traps, weirs,
and the line and fishhook.

Animal domestication was most highly developed among the Sakhalin Ainu, who engaged in
selective breeding to create strong and intelligent male sled dogs and in castration of the dogs
to preserve their strength for pulling the sleds, which were an important means of
transportation during the harsh winters. The Hokkaido Ainu alone engaged in small-scale
plant domestication prior to the introduction of agriculture by the Japanese government.
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
Hokkaid women related through females comprise a corporate group, the exact nature of the
group is unclear. Among these Hokkaid 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.
From the age of 12, women started a long process of tattooing, marking the lips, hands and
arms over a three-year period. When the process was complete, usually around age 15 or 16,
she was eligible for marriage. Tattooing was a womans domain and only women tattooed
each other. The Japanese government banned tattooing in the Edo period for being cruel
and, presumably, because tattooing was associated with felonious activity in Japan.
Some marriages were arranged by parents whereas others were mutual consent. When a man
wanted to propose to a woman, he went to her house where a simple procedure was
conducted to decide whether theyd be betrothed. The girl would serve her suitor a bowl of
rice, and he would eat half the rice and hand the bowl back to her. If she took kindly to this
gesture and finished the other half, that was taken as a sign of acceptance of the proposal.
However, if she put the rice down next to her, ignoring it, that was a rejection.At the wedding
ceremony, the couple would repeat the rice bowl ritual with both parties finishing their half.
When children came along, babies were given nicknames until around age two or three, after
which they were bestowed a permanent name.

Religious Beliefs
The Ainu believe that gods or their incarnations are found in every phenomenon and object,
including natural phenomena from the sun, moon, thunder, wind, water and fire, to animals,
plants, and implements that are related to human life. On every occasion, prayers are offered
and various ceremonies observed. There is the house guardian, the god of fire, the god of
windows, the god of the hearth, the god of entrances, the god of yards, the mountain god, the
sea god, the lake god, the river god, the nursing god, the hunting god, animal gods of bears
and owls, and the gods of pots, mortars and boats. Thus, numerous gods usually guard man
and provide food, while at times disciplining him harshly. These gods, however, are not
absolute beings. Man is able to argue with them when they commit errors regarding man.
Gods are of help to man and therefore are appreciated by him, while man is also expected to
serve gods. Gods and man exist in a relationship of mutual assistance.
The gods, disguising themselves as men and leading lives similar to those of man at "kamuy
moshir" (eastern Heaven), at all times guard man and send down food such as salmon and
deer to the "Ainu moshir" (homeland). The gods also disguise themselves as animals, plants
and objects, for example they pretend to be bears by wearing bear skins and bestowing food,
animal skins, daily utensils such as pots and bowls, and boats. On the other hand, through
ceremonies, man offers wine, dried salmon, and "inaw," sacred shaved stick, which are
supposed to delight the gods. In addition to the above gods, there are also evil gods and other
malevolent deities who cause man disease and mishap. In particular, smallpox (called
"pakorkamuy") was so feared that magic ceremonies were observed to scare away its related
evil gods.
The most important person in the Ainu village was the shaman, the person treating with the
spirits. The shaman had, in his service, other animal spirits, which, at his will, helped him in
his spells, and with whose help the shaman discovered the causes of the malfunctions of the
villagers and took remedy against them. His main function was to cure the diseases.
When asked for help, the shaman wait for the sunset; in that moment, he approached the ill
person, played a bass drum to call the evil spirits that produced the ailment, agitated his wand,
with sound yells invoked the spirits of the animals that help him, danced in an uncontrolled
way and, in the end, he fell in trance; at his 'return', before the amazed eyes of the assistance,
he extracted, out of the body of the patient (using a skilled trick), the cause of the disease: a

stick, a stone, a small toad or an insect. Once this operation was executed, the healing was
immediate. However, if the patient died (fact that often occurred), this was due to the
subsequent intervention of an evil spirit.
The Ainu have traditionally practiced a religion centered around blood - sacrifice and bear
rituals. The rituals were traditionally carried out by shaman who carried sacred sticks. Ainu
rituals that are still practiced often have Japanese elements such as offerings of rice, sake and
swords.
As an expression of thanks for filling the world with life, the Ainu ritually sacrificed animals
such as owls, foxes and bears during important occasions to send their spirits back to the
spiritual worlds. In contrast, the Japanese show their thanks to the spirits by offering gifts.
Ainu shaman are believed to have the power to travel to the world of the dead and bring back
spirits to the world of the living. They have usually been men but sometimes have been
women. They have traditionally held high status and have been called upon to cure ailments
by going into a trance and calling on certain spirits that can help with a particular ailment.
The Ainu had great reverence for bears, bears They hunted them, kept them as pets, and
performed exorcisms involving bear spirits. Sometimes bear cubs were caught and nursed by
women. The bear supplied fur and meat and brought gifts from the deities and was regarded
as the important mountain god in disguise.
The most important Ainu rite was the iyomante, or the bear sending ritual. Conducted in the
spring, it was essentially a funeral ritual for the most important Ainu deity and was intended
to give the bear and mountain god spirit a proper send off before it returned to the mountains.
A female bear and her cubs were caught. The bear was killed and her spirit was sent to the
gods in a special ceremony. Her cubs were then raised by the Ainu for several years and they
too were returned to the gods.
During the ceremony people donned their best clothes and there was a lot of drinking,
dancing and feasting. Prayers were said to the fire, house and mountain gods. The bear was
taken from the bear house and killed with arrows and by strangling it between logs. The bear
was then skinned and dressed and placed before an altar hung with treasures and then placed
through a sacred window. The ceremony ended when the head of the bear was placed on the

altar and arrows are fired to the east so its spirit could return to the mountains. Among some
Ainus a male bear was killed and its penis, head and other body parts were taken to a sacred
place on the mountains. The four day long ceremony was supposed to send the bear back to
the mountains gods as an honored messenger of the village.
Without guns, the Ainu killed bears using bamboo arrows poisoned with a preparation made
from the roots of a small purple-flowered plant called are Aconitum yesoense . Hunters tested
the potency of the poison by placing a tiny bit on their tongue or between their fingers. If
there was a burning sensation it was strong enough. When struck by a poisoned arrow the
bear ran 50 to 100 meters and collapsed as a result of the fast-acting poison.
Bears that were ritually killed and eaten were bears captured as cubs that were usually raised
for about two years in the local community. The cub was raised by village women who often
took turns nursing them with their own breasts. Noako Maeda, curator at the Noboribersu
Bear Park, has studied the Ainu and bears and suckled bear cubs with her breasts. She told the
writer Terry Domico they nurse very gently, more gently than her own children.
The ceremony was presided over by the community leader. Even though iyomante was
prohibited by the Japanese it was practiced into the 20th century. The Japanese government
formally forbade the Ainu bear festival in the early 1960s. Today, watered down versions of
the festivals are sometimes performed for tourists. The Ainu continue to worship and revere
bears but they no longer ritually kill them.
Lifestyle
Today the Ainu live in homes similar to other Japanese. In the old days they migrated
between summer camps set up along the coast and winter settlements further inland, often
along rivers. The inland houses were semi-underground pit houses. The settlements tended to
be small, with no more than five ro six families.Nuclear families were more important than
extended families. Rights to hunting grounds was passed down through male relatives. Some
groups practiced polygamy. As a rule they was rarely any social or political group larger than
the settlement groups. Major decision were traditionally made elders by within the settlement
group.

Ainu men traditionally fished for trout and salmon with nets, traps and weirs and hunted bear
and deer with bow and arrow, spears and traps while the women collected plants. Dogs were
used for hunting and sometimes fishing. Spear points and arrow heads were often tipped with
stingray poison or a poison made from purple flowersto ensure that wounded animals didn't
run away too far.
The Ainu used large dugout canoes that were about 10 meters long and 80 centimeters wide
made from large logs. They took to the rough seas off Hokkaido in these canoes, which were
usually not seaworthy in their own right. It is believed that the Ainu lashed two dugouts
together to make a primitive sort of catamaran.
Formerly, an Ainu house was made of poles and thatch plant. It was well insulated and had a
firepit at the center of the main room. An opening below each end of the ridge allowed smoke
to escape. Between three and twenty such houses formed a village community
called kotan. Houses were built close enough together that a voice would reach in case of
emergency, and far enough apart that fire would not spread. A kotan was usually located by
waters for convenient fishing but also in the woods to remain safe from floods and close to
gathering grounds. If necessary, the kotan moved from place to place in search of a better
livelihood.
The Ainu traditional robe was made of the woven fibers of inner elm bark. It was worn with a
woven sash similar in shape to the sash worn with a mainland Japanese kimono. The male
robe was calf-length. In winter a short sleeveless jacket of deer or other animal fur was also
worn. The female robe was ankle-length and worn over a long undershirt with no front
opening. The robes were hand-embroidered or appliqued with rope designs. A pointed edge at
the tip of each front flap was characteristic of the Saru region.The traditional Ainu costume is
still worn on special occasions. However, in everyday life the Ainu wear international style
clothing similar to that worn by other Japanese people.
Traditional foods included salmon, ezoshika deer, and wild plants and grasses. Dishes served
at Ainu restaurants include venison, toasted smoked salmon with mountain vegetables;
ezoshika deer with garlic, apple and other ingredients, thinly-sliced frozen salmon, potato
starch dumplings, salmon and vegetable soup, and gyoja-nunniku, a plant native to Hokkaido
that can be boiled, grilled, rolled in meat or prepared with egg and rice or added to soup.
Gyoja-nunniku has a smell that is as strong as garlic and it is believed to keep evil away.

Tradition
Men and women alike cut their hair level with the shoulders at the sides of the head, but
trimmed it semicircularly behind. Men, never shaving after a certain age, usually have full
beards and moustaches, and women undergo mouth tattooing to signify their coming to
adulthood. Ainu women had black tattoos, resembling clown smiles, around their lips. Their
primarily purpose was to help unmarried women to attract husbands and were regarded as a
sign of virtue. The females begin tattooing their mouths and lips at an early age of 10-12.
Once the tattooing process has been completed, typically around the ages of 14-15, the
female is then considered to be a woman and fit for marriage. The women tattooed their
mouths, arms, clitorides, and sometimes their foreheads, starting at the onset of puberty.
These tattoos were made by injecting cooking ash into small knife cuts made around the
women's lips. The first cuts were made in a small semicircle on a girl's upper lip when she
was only two or three years of age and a few incisions were added every year until she was
married.
The

Ainu

culture

is

believed

to

be

derived

from

the agricultural Satsumon

culture, prevalent in Hokkaido and northern Honshu. They were a society of huntergatherers, hunting and fishing live game such as deer, bear, and salmon. All protein
consumed were cooked, usually in form of stews with herbs and roots. This is opposed to
traditional Japanese, where consumption of raw proteins is not uncommon.
The spirit-sending festival, called i-omante, either for a bear or striped owl, was the most
important Ainu festival. I-omante, the bear, was observed once in five or ten years. After
three days of reverence to a bear cub, accompanied by prayers, dancing, and singing, it was
shot with arrows. The head was decorated and placed at the altar, while the meat was eaten by
the members of the village community. The spirit, while visiting this world, had temporarily
adopted the form of a bear; the bear ritual released the spirit from the form so it could return
to the other realm. Similar festivals are observed by many northern peoples.
Heritage
The Ainu have handed down a vast bode of oral traditions. The main categories are yukar and
oina (longer and shorter epic poems in literary Ainu), uwepekere and upasikma (old tales and
autobiographical stories, both in prose), lullabies, and dance songs. Yukar usually refers to

heroic poetry, chanted mainly by men, dealing with demigods and humans. It also includes
oina or kamui yukar, shorter epics chanted principally by women about the gods. The Saru
region of south central Hokkaido is particularly known as the homeland of many bards and
storytellers.
Yukar was narrated by the fireside for a mixed gathering of men, women, and children. Men
sometimes reclined and beat time on their bellies. Depending upon the piece, yukar lasted all
night or even for a few nights. There were also festival songs, group dance-songs, and
stamping dances.
The best known Ainu musical instrument is the mukkuri, a mouth harp made of wood. Other
instruments included coiled-bark horns, straw flutes, skin drums, five-string zithers, and a
type of lute.
Ainu Museum, popularly known as "Porotokotan" was established in 1976 as the Shiraoi
Foundation for the Preservation of Ainu Culture. This cultural education facility aims to carry
out comprehensive educational promotion projects, such as the transmission, preservation,
research and study of Ainu culture. In 1984, the Ainu Folk Museum was added to this facility
to exhibit both tangible and intangible Ainu cultural assets and to perform academic research
and study. In 1990, the facility was reopened under the auspices of The Ainu Museum
Foundation, A big statue stands at the entrance of porotokotan. This is called the kotankorkur
statue (the statue of the chief), and the height is 16 metres. This statue is the symbol of the
museum.
The design of the museum, as an outdoor museum, is divided into the modern and "kotan"
zones, in the latter of which a complete reproduction of a "kotan" (village) is arranged,
including several "chise" (houses), "pu" (a storehouse for food), "heper set" (a bear cage), and
"chip" (a canoe). Inside a "chise", explanations on Ainu history and culture are given, and
traditional dances are performed at all times for the visitors. The museum houses about 5,000
Ainu folk materials and about 200 articles of minority groups of the northern regions,
including of the Nivkh, Uilta, Sami, and Inuit, of which 1,500 articles are on permanent
display. The library of the museum includes about 100 Ainu paintings and about 6,000 books
and other literature.

AINU ETHNICITY

CULTURAL DIVERSITY

BARNABAS S. S. RATUWALU

Written by,

Sarah Ancelia Sastrasuteja

Industrial Engineering / 004201400043
Jalan Ki Hajar Dewantara, Jababeka Education Park,
Cikarang, West Java 17550
http://www.president.ac.id

MINANGKABAU ETHNICITY

CULTURAL DIVERSITY

BARNABAS S. S. RATUWALU

Written by,

Sharon Ancelia Sastrasuteja

Industrial Engineering / 004201400044
Jalan Ki Hajar Dewantara, Jababeka Education Park,
Cikarang, West Java 17550
http://www.president.ac.id