The Ainu group at the Saint Louis Exposition

by Frederick Starr

SANTUKNO.

All formalities having been thus observed, we were ready to leave. Money was supplied for securing the necessary equipment for the house at Saint Louis and for bringing all to the railroad and we told them when they must appear at Sapporo. In the morning, our only conveyances were two small-box, single-horse, two-wheeled carts. One of these we loaded full with our baggage. Into the other Manuel and I crowded ourselves, sitting on the board bottom, with our legs stretched stiffly crosswise of the cart. When Mr. Batchelor chose to ride, we all three adopted some sort of a kneeling or crouching position. Progress was slow and uncomfortable. Sometimes we stopped to make photographs, and on one such stop were able to test this statement in Mr. Batchelor’s book: “They cut the fat part of the legs of both males and females at the joint near the pelvis, and then bind the wound up with the leather-like layers of the fungus mycelium found between the bark and the wood of dead oak, elm, or ash trees.” I had been questioning him about this practice, raising a query as to its purpose and its generality. As we were passing through a village, we met a woman with a baby in her arms, and Mr. Batchelor inquired of her in regard to it. After a little hesitation, she showed me the baby, a little girl perhaps less than a year old. It had been cut only on the left side, back on the inside of the leg, just below the buttocks. The cut had healed, but the scar was quite plain. The woman said they do it with babies that kick and squirm too much. While the practice is probably not general it is certainly common and widespread, occurring in several, if not all, villages.

Our progress was so desperately slow that, by the time we reached Sarabuto, we had almost given up hope of reaching Azuma for the night. We were taking tea and cakes at the little tea-house, when a basha came along making its homeward journey empty. We gladly hired it, taking some luggage into it with us and dividing the rest between the two carts. We then rode away in comparative comfort and at a much improved speed. From Mukawa, we walked a little to stretch our legs, but then rode steadily on to Azuma, arriving at about four o’clock. The luggage came in later. We were impressed by the preparations the little town was making against Russian attack. The four Russian gunboats are being watched for. Seven men patrol the coast day and night. At a signal of two bells from the tower, the women, the aged, and the helpless are to flee for shelter inland; at four strokes every able-bodied man and boy is to seize the nearest thing that can serve as a weapon and rush to meet the enemy. And no doubt similar arrangements of desperate bravery are being made at every miserable fishing village along this coast!

In the morning we took the basha of yesterday and a second one for luggage and started early. It was bitterly cold and from time to time we ran to warm our feet. At Yubutsu we turned directly from the sea and struck for the little station of Numanohata. Here at 9.40 a. m. we took train for Sapporo, where we had to spend a few days, packing, completing preparations, and waiting for our people. Here I had the opportunity of examining the Japanese books and manuscripts relative to the Ainu, in the governmental library of the Hokkaido. The Japanese have been much interested in the Ainu and have written many works about them. Most famous and best known is the San Goku Tsuran Zusetsu, by a Rin Shihei. It was published in 1785 and consists of a volume of text and five volumes of maps. It is more commonly found in manuscript than printed. It is abundantly illustrated with pictures of men and women, dress, ornaments, tools, and scenes of daily life. In one picture three Ainu boys are playing the game of “javelin and ring,” but instead of using javelins are piercing the rolling ring with arrows shot from bows. In a family scene, the father smokes a pipe, but looks around for a moment at the baby, who seems to point reproachfully at his mother, who is giving her breast to the bear cub and not to him; in a cage near by is a captive bird, perhaps an eagle, waiting sacrifice. In still another picture, the hunter, from his canoe on the sea, hurls a harpoon at a seal. The drawings of articles are carefully made and serve well for comparison with modern specimens. On the whole the book gives interesting information regarding the Ainu of one hundred and twenty years ago. The most diligent of the Japanese writers about the Ainu, however, is Matsuura Takeshiro, a geographer, who made a loving study of the island of Yezo, publishing many books between 1850 and 1865. He takes each section of the island in detail and describes it from the points of view of topography, flora, fauna, and ethnology. Almost all of his many books are illustrated and the pictures are often strikingly true to life. Takeshiro was a skillful artist and sometimes painted kakemono, or hanging scrolls, with Ainu scenes. One of these is now owned by Professor Miyabe, the accomplished botanist of the agricultural college at Sapporo. It is a simple picture, of few lines and delicate coloring, but it is living. It represents Ainu in boats on the sea gathering kelp. The picture is an heirloom, having been given to Professor Miyabe’s father by the artist, who was his friend. At the house of Mr. Ishikara, a mining engineer to whom I had been recommended, I was shown some manuscript maps made by the old geographer. They are marvels of patient work and surpass in their enormous amount of detail in the matter of local place-names. Among the pictures in Takeshiro’s books we have excellent material regarding the Ainu of a half century ago. My own interest in these Japanese books relative to Ainu began in 1891 at the little Museum of Rotterdam in Holland; it had been nourished by MacRitchie’s book, The Ainos, which depended absolutely upon such books for its material; it now flamed and during my brief stay in Japan I brought together quite a library of such books. I now know of more than forty printed Japanese works that treat of the Ainu, most of which are in my collection. But the printed books are but a small part of the material representing Japanese observation. Many more than forty works still exist only in manuscript, some probably in but a single copy. There are at Sapporo a goodly number of such manuscripts, among them one so beautifully and delicately illustrated that I have had both texts and pictures carefully copied. At Hakodate and at Tokio are many more of these unpublished manuscripts, some of which surely deserve publication. We cherish the hope of finding some one who will help us to put some of these quaint and interesting books into print. To be sure, those without pictures would mean nothing to the English reader, but, until they are in print and accessible, they mean nothing to the students of Japan.

Among these works are many which narrate the wars between the Ainu and the Japanese. To-day, recognizing the passive and too yielding nature of the Ainu, it is difficult to imagine them as warlike. In hunting, it is true, they are brave enough, even reckless. But, if they were ever warriors, they are to-day a broken-spirited and subdued people. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, according to Japanese accounts, they were great fighters. Even the names of some great chiefs and descriptions of their deeds of bravery are consigned to writing.

The Ainu were the old population of Japan and probably occupied all the islands, even down to Kiushiu, the southmost. Over the whole area Ainu names are sprinkled. Even the name of sacred Fuji-san, the divine mountain, seems to be Ainu. As the ancestors of the Japanese entered Japan from the south, they drove back the unhappy Ainu before them. The encroachment was gradual, but constant; little by little the Ainu retreated to the north. Not very long ago there were still many in the northern part of the main island; to-day there are none. Yezo, the Kurils, and Saghalien (now Russian territory) were their final strongholds. But now Yezo is filling with vigorous, incoming Japanese, before whom undoubtedly the Ainu must yield. His little villages, sprinkled here and there over the island, along the river-courses or on the sea coast, will disappear. His life of hunting and fishing is already almost a thing of the past. To-day the Ainu is “a ward,” to be guarded by a paternal government, to be “elevated” by civilization. He is forbidden to make arrow poison, he is subject to game laws, he may no longer have his girls tattooed, he must send the children to school, he must learn “the ways of industry,” and till the soil; it is the old story. We know it as Japan does. We, too, have wards to be “improved.”

Our Ainu party duly appeared with bag and baggage. They reported that, at their leaving, there was a gathering of the village and much weeping, since they were looked upon as dead men never again to be seen in the old home. We had learned immediately on our return to Sapporo that Bete Goro was anxious to go with us, but had hesitated about taking him. Goro is young, shaves, wears Europeanized, not to say Japanized, clothing. To be sure, he still wears Ainu leggings with fine embroidery. He is dreadfully conventional; instead of whittling inao, he knits stockings! Now, all this is highly commendable, but it is no qualification for figuring in an Ainu group at the Exposition. But, Goro was lively and happy and anxious to go. That was something, and we believed his influence would do much to cheer the somewhat morose Yazo, the timid Shirake, and the group that were mourned as dead. So we decided he should go. We should leave his wife, daughter of old Penri’s widow, behind, in expectation of an event of importance to the Ainu community. Mr. Batchelor was asked to communicate the decision, and Goro was summoned to his study. A moment later Mr. Batchelor called us to see “what ails this crazy fellow.” Goro, who had seated himself upon the floor, was beside himself with joy. He hugged himself, chuckled, laughed, swayed from side to side, literally rolled upon the floor. With his accession our party was complete. Nine Ainu made up the group—old Sangyea, his wife Santukno, their little daughter Kin, Kutoroge the bear-hunter, his wife Shitratek, and their baby girl Kiko, Yazo, his wife Shirake, and Bete Goro. We marched the whole company to the police station, where they were identified, their documents examined and passports issued permitting them to leave Japan with us.

We had, however, during this time at Sapporo, made one side trip. Piratori and the other Saru towns were so far from the railroad that it had seemed best not to bring an Ainu house from there. So we again took the railroad, passed Tomakomai and Numanohita, and got off the train at Shiraoi, a railroad town of considerable size. The part of the town along the track is Japanese. The Ainu portion, forming perhaps two-thirds of the whole town, lies between the Japanese quarter and the sea. Old Parapita had already been sent to find a house and, promptly on our arrival, the village chief Shupanram took us to the one selected. It was small, but typical; the shem, however, was less than of normal size, so we bought a second very small house to supply material for a shem of normal proportions in Saint Louis. The two houses together cost forty yen (twenty dollars, U. S. currency) and we ordered twenty yen’s worth more of thatching. The chief summoned laborers, men, women and children, the people who had been living in our house, moved out at once, and the work of demolition began. We then took a walk through the town. In some respects it is unlike the Saru River villages and is, perhaps, typical of seaside towns within reach of Japanese influence. The houses are massed quite closely together; many—most of them—are protected or sheltered by breaks or guards of bamboo, built especially at the west doorway; there was an almost complete absence of storehouses—such a conspicuous feature in the Saru villages. But there seems to be the same care in location with regard to the east and west, the same relative position of nusa, east window, sacred corner, and shem. The Ainu here are fine types. Tall, well-built men are common, one might say, the rule. The average difference of stature between males of Shiraoi and the Saru towns is certainly considerable. Mr. Batchelor tells me that the people of the northern towns near the western coast, as Ishikari, are shorter than those at Piratori. While the stature at Shiraoi is great, the heavy growth of body hair and the great beards are as at Piratori. Notwithstanding Japanese neighbors and the railroad the people at Shiraoi are conservative, and dress, ornament, utensils, and customs might be studied here as well as in some more remote villages. The life is undoubtedly influenced by the location of the village at the seashore, but we had no opportunity to study what peculiarities might be due to that. Nusas are fine and numerous, and there are bear skulls on many of them. Here we noticed more conspicuously than elsewhere a secondary nusa, or rather a little group of inao stuck into a hillock made of the refuse from the millet-mortar. More than ever, too, were we impressed with the coyote-like appearance of the dogs, which were here numerous.

We had observed two or three men passing, dressed in ceremonial costume and wearing crowns. Crowns with bearheads carved from wood occur here, as elsewhere, but crowns decorated with real bear claws, one or two, in place of the carved head of wood, are common. Learning that a drinking festival was in progress, we went to the place. It was truly an astonishing and impressive sight. Everything in the house was decorated with inao shavings. The sacred east window and the treasure corner were hung with them. Along the two sides of the fireplace were squatted eleven or twelve old men, all wearing their embroidered ceremonial costumes and their crowns. All held moustache-lifters in their hands and before some of them stood cups of millet beer. Four freshly cut inao were set in line west of the fireplace; next came three skulls wrapped in inao shavings, in a tray; next were two high inao and a large bowl of millet-beer. When we entered, all the old men stroked their beards. The leader of the feast sat in the middle of the line, at the fireplace, with a bowl of millet beer before him. He went through the whole elaborate salutation to Mr. Batchelor and then to me. A second old man did the same. The master of the feast then offered to make libation and drink in Mr. Batchelor’s honor, which offer was refused; a similar offer to me was refused by proxy. The feast was then resumed. Two or three young men were assisting, bringing beer, and otherwise serving. A cup of beer was passed out through the east window to someone outside, and we withdrew to see what was done there. Three blackbeards were worshiping. One took an inao from a pile of stakes, where it had stood and bore it to the east window; a servant, inside, passed out a bowl of beer; the carrier of the inao, taking the moustache-lifter that lay across the cup, dipped it and sprinkled the inao. He then carried this to the nusa, and placed it in position. The other two had remained standing at the east window; the bearer, returning, took his place between the others, one of whom now received a cup of millet beer and a moustache-stick from the man inside; he sprinkled both of his companions and spilled a little of the drink upon the ground; the second then received a cup and stick and did the same; the third, the central one, who had placed the inao, then received the cup and made libation, but did not sprinkle his companions. All three then walked to the nusa and sprinkled drops with the moustache-stick. All of this was done with great decorum and seriousness and was accompanied by prayer. We would gladly have seen the remainder of this festival, but could not stay. The three negatives we made of it were all failures. The ceremonial was to secure fine weather; it had long been bad and a change was greatly desired. The prayers seem to have been efficacious, for the next day dawned gloriously.