The Ainos of Yezo naturally claim our attention first, because it is believed that they were the aboriginal people of Japan proper, and were afterwards displaced by the Japanese,—a displacement similar to that of our North American savages by the English colonists. Whether the Ainos are autochthonous or not, will not be discussed here. That they are a savage race, without written language,—a race which formerly occupied the northern part of the main island of Japan, and were gradually forced back to Yezo, where they still live in scattered communities,—are facts which are unquestionable. How far the Aino house to-day represents the ancient Aino house, and how [pg 337] many features of the Japanese house are engrafted upon it, are points difficult to determine.
The Ainos that I saw in the Ishikari valley, on the west coast of Yezo, and from Shiraoi south on the east coast, all spoke Japanese, ate out of lacquer bowls, used chop-sticks, smoked small pipes, drank sake, and within their huts possessed lacquer boxes and other conveniences in which to stow away their clothing, which had probably been given them in past times by the Japanese, and which were heirlooms. On the other hand, they retained their own language, their long, narrow dug-out; used the small bow, the poisoned arrow, and had an arrow-release of their own; adhered to their ancestral forms of worship and their peculiar methods of design, and were quite as persistent in clinging to many of their customs as are our own Western tribes of Indians. That they are susceptible to change is seen in the presence of a young Aino at the normal school in Tokio, from whom I derived some interesting facts concerning archery.
Fig. 306.—Aino house, Yezo.
Briefly, the Aino house, as I saw it, consists of a rude frame-work of timber supporting a thatched roof; the walls being [pg 338] made up of reeds and rush interwoven with stiffer cross-pieces. Within, there is a single room the dimensions of the house. In most houses there is an L, in which is the doorway, which may in some cases be covered with a rude porch. The thatched roof is well made and quite picturesque, differing somewhat in form from any thatched roof among the Japanese,—though in Yamato, as already mentioned, I saw features in the slope of the roof quite similar to those shown in some of the Aino roofs.
Fig. 307.—Aino house, Yezo.
Entering the house by the low door, one comes into a room so dark that it is with difficulty one can see anything. The inmates light rolls of birch-bark that one may be enabled to see the interior; but every appearance of neatness and picturesqueness which the hut presented from without vanishes when one gets inside. Beneath one's feet is a hard, damp, earth floor; directly above are the blackened and soot-covered rafters. Poles supported horizontally from these rafters are equally greasy and blackened, and pervading the darkness is a dirty and strong fishy odor. In the middle of the floor, and occupying considerable space, is a square area,—the fireplace. On its two sides mats are spread. A pot hangs over the smoke, for there appears to [pg 339] be but little fire; and at one side is a large bowl containing the remains of the last meal, consisting apparently of fish-bones,—large sickly-looking bones, the sight of which instantly vitiates one's appetite. The smoke, rebuffed at the only opening save the door,—a small square opening close under the low eaves,—struggles to escape through a small opening in the angle of the roof. On one side of the room is a slightly raised floor of boards, upon which are mats, lacquer-boxes, bundles of nets, and a miscellaneous assortment of objects. Hanging from the rafters and poles are bows, quivers of arrows, Japanese daggers mounted on curious wooden tablets inlaid with lead, slices of fish and skates' heads in various stages, not of decomposition, as the odors would seem to imply, but of smoke preservation. Dirt everywhere, and fleas. And in the midst of the darkness, smoke, and squalor are the inmates,—quiet, demure, and gentle to the last degree. Figs. 306 and 307 give an idea of the appearance of two Aino houses of the better kind, but perhaps cannot be taken as a type of the Aino house farther north on the island.