History+KM

History

The Ainu came to Ezo (Hokkaido). The land was considered worthless because it hadn’t been grown rice in the area. Therefore the Matsumae were limited to set up items for trade in furs and dried meat. In the 19th century, a directed Matsumae Ezo at fishing ports and forced the former hunter-gatherers on fishing boats and ports to work. 1869 Ezo Hokkaido was considered a colony of Japan, and the land was released for settlement by Japanese. There have been attempts to give the Ainu a land and turn them into farmers, but these attempts failed. The traditional Ainu culture was there and by that the growing Japanese nationism finally got destroyed. Through slaveries, destruction of their culture and failed attempts to settle them as farmers, many Ainu ended in poverty and alcoholism.



The Ainu of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands were able to maintain their culture a little longer free of foreign influences. Toward the end of the 19th Century, the Ainu living on the Nordkurilen converted to Russian-Orthodox Church and also spoke Russian. After the islands were in Japan, was most closely brought up in a forced relocation Shikotan according to the Japanese islands, where it decimated by poor living conditions, clung to their Christian faith and independently set up a church. A part migrated to Kamchatka. When the Soviet army occupied at the end of World War II, the southern Kuril Islands, including Shikotan, emigrated to the remaining Ainu of Hokkaido. The Kurile Ainu are now considered extinct. The last known Kuril Ainu-wife died in 1972 and was buried in a church. Only in the 1970s, there were first state supported reconstruction efforts, even from the motive of promoting tourism.

Some have left Hokkaido Ainu and settle in other parts of Japan, where they are no longer recognized as a minority status and therefore do not suffer disadvantages. Till now, there is racism against the Ainu in the Japanese society. Since the Ainu people are more hairy than normal Japanese, they are therefore looked on as primitive. Also, the Ainu are looked on as a poor people. Efforts to preserve the Ainu culture is slow, and are also looked on as inadequate. Today many of the Ainu speak the language that their ancestors spoke, political recognition as an indigenous people. In June 2008 the Japanese decided to Parliament a resolution in which the Ainu were first recognized as a culturally distinct indigenous people. The resolution contained no concrete measures to promote Ainu, but calls for the establishment of an expert body to advise the government on policy issues relating to the Ainu, and refers to the 2007 adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of the United Nations.

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