Chapter VIII: Among the “hairy” Ainu

The most interesting thing about Hokkaido or Yezo, the big northern island of Japan, is that it is the home of the Ainu. This primitive race are not at all like the Japanese. No one knows exactly where they came from. They have no written language of their own and therefore all that is known about their history is in the form of legends and traditions told by father to son, or mother to daughter. The Ainu were living in almost all the islands of Japan when the Japanese came up from the south, or wherever it was they came from, and conquered them.

If you see an Ainu and a Japanese side by side, the Ainu looks larger and stronger, with features more like our own. He does not have almond-shaped eyes. But his race was no match for the Japanese. They were like prize fighters or football players who have trained only their bodies and given little attention to their minds. While the Japanese were studying and becoming more and more civilized, the Ainu were improving only their muscles, so that when the clash came they were almost helpless against the more clever invaders.

Hundreds of years ago the Japanese drove them entirely off the main island, and now Japanese settlers are crowding them still higher into the hills of the cold northern island, planting the fertile lowlands themselves. So you find hamlets, clusters of huts, of the Ainu among the uncultivated hills, and in places along the seacoast of Hokkaido, and sometimes even on the Kuriles and Sakhalin. In a way they are treated by the Japanese as we treat the Indians on our reservations; but they are left more to shift for themselves.

An Ainu house, thatched with straw, looks very primitive. The children
look primitive too, but very likely they are just as happy as if
they lived in a more civilized way.
]

I visited several Ainu villages during my journey through Hokkaido. You can tell them as far off as you can see them, because the houses are different from those of the Japanese. The walls are usually made of reeds, almost like cornstalks, set upright and bound together with poles. The roof is made of coarse straw, and generally put on in thick layers overlapping one another, so that at a distance it seems to be covered with huge shingles. Inside, there is no floor, only the earth, and few beds or other furniture. There may be a small garden about the house, tended by the women more often than by the men. However, the men are good fishermen, and groups of them could be seen mending their nets and big trays woven like baskets, which are used for the drying of fish. The Ainu men are brave hunters, often using only spears, or knives, or bows and arrows to kill the big savage brown bears that inhabit the forests of Yezo. Curiously enough, they not only kill and eat bears but worship them. Their religion is a very simple one, a kind of nature-worship, such as the traveler often finds among people who have always lived out of doors. A part of their worship is to put a bear cub in a crude log cage before the house and fatten it at the same time that they worship it, finally killing it for a great religious feast and putting another cub in its place.

This curious tribe is often called the “hairy” Ainu and sometimes the “white men of Japan.” Though their features are heavy and their noses blunt, some scientists think that they are really Caucasians, like us, rather than Mongolians, like the Japanese and Chinese. But we would hardly call them white men, though a few generations of living indoors and using soap and hot water might make a great difference. Nor did they seem to me especially hairy. To be sure, the old men all had long thick beards, but such beards used to be popular among old men in America. The young Ainu seem to be sensitive about this reputation for hairiness, and most of them now shave, and dress like the Japanese. But to their Japanese conquerors, who, like the Chinese and other Mongolian neighbors, hardly have any need for a razor, these primitive bearded men seem very hairy.

Ainu fishermen mending their trays for drying fish.
]

I was not nearly so much surprised by the beards of the Ainu men as by the long mustaches of the women! For hundreds of years it has been an Ainu custom to tattoo the faces of the girls, especially on the upper lip. It is said that kitchen soot is used for this, along with some native dye that gives it a bluish color, so that by the time she marries, the Ainu girl has a blue mustache flaring up at the ends in a very jaunty way. Sometimes there is a little tattooed beard on the lower lip also, and blue decorations on other parts of the face and body. But the Ainu girls seem to be giving up this interesting custom, and even the old women often hold a corner of their garments across their faces to hide their mustaches from the stranger.

Here is an Ainu who has welcomed Japanese ways and adopted some of the
clothing introduced from Europe and America.
]

Queer Customs of the Ainu

The Ainu, especially the old chiefs, have some very ceremonial ways. If the visitor knows how to win the friendship of primitive people, he may persuade the chiefs to put on their elaborate tribal robes instead of the commonplace, everyday garments they seem to have taken partly from the Japanese and partly from the Western world. The women have gaudy costumes that include huge beads and queer earrings. When the men visit one another and engage in formal conversation, they spread a grass mat, take off their sandals, and squat with their feet in front of them, not on their heels, like the Japanese. When they meet, they show politeness by stroking their beards and rubbing their own palms together.

The Ainu are decreasing so rapidly that scientists fear they will soon disappear entirely. Their miserable straw huts without floors are not suitable dwellings for the long, cold Hokkaido winters. They have no doctors, and when a man, or even a child, falls ill they do nothing but wrap him in a blanket and let nature cure him if it can. The typical Ainu are disappearing also because many of them have intermarried with the Japanese, and their descendants have some of the qualities of each race. But the chief cause of their decrease is that they drink too much hard liquor.

Anyone who gives or sells liquor to our Indians is likely to be severely punished; but the Japanese do not take so serious an attitude toward strong drink. Their Indians, as we might call the Ainu, drink on every possible occasion. Drinking is a part of the ceremonial at weddings, funerals and religious feasts. The drink is usually _sake_, or Japanese rice-whiskey, and for the ceremonies there are very elaborate wooden cups, with a thin flat stick to keep the beard and long mustache out of the way, reminding us of the “mustache cups” that used to be given our bearded grandfathers at Christmas and on their birthdays. The men drink slowly, but as they also drink often and usually for long periods, they do themselves much harm.

The women are not allowed to drink, at least during ceremonies; besides, they have very little time for such things, because they have to do almost all the work, except hunting and fishing. In some parts of Hokkaido they still make the ceremonial garments of elm bark, weaving and embroidering it to look like cloth. But most of the Ainu now wear cheap Japanese cotton, and are losing many of their picturesque customs.

An Amusing Occurrence

The Ainu did not seem at all savage, but rather friendly. It would have been hard for me to realize that they are really savages, had it not been for a certain experience with one of their chiefs. I had been wandering most of the afternoon about a large village, taking photographs. Some of the people ran away at sight of my camera, and some merely stared at it as if wondering what that strange little machine could be. But many people in other parts of the world act in the same way. Either they do not know what photography is or they are afraid that anyone who gets a picture of them on a film can do them harm by hurting the picture.

The old Ainu chief who later threatened to strike me with a plow,
standing before a typical Ainu house roofed with overlapping layers
of thatch.
]

Suddenly an old chief who must have been a very strong man indeed in his prime, came running down one of the sandy lanes that take the place of streets in an Ainu village. A small boy who had been following me made a queer noise that was part grunt and part shriek, as if he were trying to warn me of trouble. I had already photographed this old man, so I could not imagine what had made him angry, unless perhaps he had just discovered what my camera was. He walked up to me and thrust his face so close to mine that I could feel his breath and see the separate hairs in his great bushy snow-white beard and his long uncut locks. His liquid black eyes, which reminded me of the eyes of a wild animal, were blazing with rage. He did not seem to know a word of Japanese, so the little I knew of that language did not help me to find out what he was angry about. In a great bass voice that could be heard all over the village, he shouted something in his own tongue, which, of course, I could not understand.

Apparently he was ordering me to do something, and became more and more angry because I did not do it. Suddenly he ran to a house near by and picked up a plow! It was merely a wooden plow, with no iron about it, yet it was heavy for all that. But this sturdy old man lifted it high above his head in one hand and acted as if he were about to strike me with it. Because it makes any American feel cowardly to run away, I stood my ground, half turning to close the camera before he could break it, ready to dodge if the plow began to descend. The chief was shrieking like a true wild man, quite different from the angry tones of civilized races. Yet he had perhaps been somewhat tamed by being all his life under the rule of the Japanese, for instead of striking me he merely continued to flourish the plow. Finally he threw it down and grasped me by my coat lapel.

I tried to pull away, but his grip was like that of a tiger’s claw. I caught him by one thumb and gave it a quick twist, as boys in a quarrel sometimes do. He grunted with pain and let go. As I walked away, he continued to bellow, with most of the people of the village gazing at us from their doorways. Savages are like children in many ways, and this one acted so much like a boy who wanted to fight but was afraid to do so because the teacher might catch him at it, that I could not help laughing.

Generally the Ainu are such simple, kindly people, even though the Japanese do call them “barbarians,” that I was sorry not to be able to understand and obey the old chief. I had no desire to offend this ancient leader of a much abused yet very likable race. But you will agree with me that no one likes to have a plow waved over his head.