White Ainu: Despised by the Japanese, Who Created Japanese Culture

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Japan has not always been populated by Asians. It took them a long time to conquer the islands from the tribes who are now known as the Ainu or Ainu. The Japanese despised the Ainu as barbarians, almost animals, but they were finally able to defeat them only when the guns appeared. Moreover, a lot came to Japanese culture from the savages they despised, including the phenomena that are considered basic for Japanese culture.

Bearded, fair skinned, ancient

The Ainu were not the only "savage" tribes that Asians faced on the Japanese islands, but they were the most belligerent and most visible in appearance. The colonists saw men with bushy eyebrows and beards, very fair skin, eyes without overhanging lids, and women with a tattooed black smile. The thick and thick hair on the heads of the men was dumped in mats - for natural protection in battle. Where did such unusual people for Asia come from on the Japanese islands, they argued for a very long time. They were considered the descendants of ancient Europeans, the northern branch of the Australoids and even the great-grandchildren of aliens - after all, according to the legend of the Ainu, their ancestors descended from the sky.

Archaeologists found common patterns on the unique ceramics of the Ainu - the oldest in the world, at the same time rough and covered with the finest, most complex ornaments - and the ceramics of the Pacific peoples. Modern linguists tend to consider the Ainu language an isolated branch of the Malay-Polynesian group - and, by the way, linguists attribute some of modern Japanese words to Austronesian origin. But geneticists claim that the population of Tibet and the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean is closest to the Ainu. That is, the Ainu, most likely, do not belong to any of the modern large races, since they underwent evolution from one of the ancient Asian races in isolation of the islands.

The Ainu have the most reduced set of teeth known to anthropologists. This means that for the longest time, if not all, then almost all other peoples of the world, they eat food cooked on fire. However, centuries before the arrival of the Asiatic conquerors, the Ainu had never learned to cultivate the land. They lived by fishing, hunting and gathering, so they had to put villages quite far from each other. Such sparseness played into the hands of the conquerors - if there were super-warlike Ainu, every man who knew how to fight and walked with weapons, many more - and the Asians would not have been able to gain a foothold on the islands.

Where did the Japanese get the samurai

More than half of the examined representatives of noble Japanese families carry the blood of the Ainu. This is surprising when you consider not only the long war of the Asians with the Ainu, but also the contempt for the indigenous tribes centuries after their final conquest, until very recently. It seems that at one time the Japanese rulers managed to cleverly split the Ainu, lure into their service - along with various benefits and maintaining a high position - the leaders of individual villages, possibly together with the subjects who turned into the first "samurai" - then more simply "warriors" (bushi).

In any case, the samurai code literally copies the military customs and sacred rituals of the Ainu. The cult of the sword, the suicide of honor - ripping open the belly, special separate shelves for weapons, allowed in the way that icons are hung in other cultures - all this came to the Japanese along with the Ainu deserters. A recognizable outline for those who have seen samurai armor also have Ainu armor made of plant materials. In addition, it is likely that it was the defectors who introduced into use many geographical names that have Ainu roots. For example, Tsushima, Fuji, Tsukuba.

The coats of arms of Japanese samurai usually depict either plants or animals, but without a clue about this it is difficult to guess - the images are so geometrized. Kimonos were often decorated with the same geometrized patterns. There is a version that this style originally imitated the tattoos that covered the bodies of the Ainu warriors. By the way, about the kimono: the Ainu wore spacious robes without fasteners, made of nettle fiber. Asians' clothes were much less like kimonos than these robes.

The samurai have similarities with the Ainu and the custom of strictly regulating the birth rate. Usually noble Japanese used strong warming of the testicles for temporary sterilization. Perhaps this method was also taken from the indigenous population.

Not only the military

It is believed that the beliefs and customs of the Ainu strongly influenced the formation of Shintoism. Ainu, just like Shintoists, saw spirits in trees, mountains and unusual animals. Ainu, like Shintoists, believed that the world was created by a goddess, and she had a brother-god - just like in the story with the Japanese goddess Amaterasu. Mount Fujiyama was also sacred to the Ainu, they believed that it embodies the god of fire Fuji.

The most daring hypothesis-lovers draw a connection between the blackening of the teeth of sexually mature Japanese women and the black tattoo-smile on the face of Ainu women. But the blackening of the teeth had at least a practical meaning, saving the enamel during pregnancy, and the smile that the girls had been imposed for years had no meaning, except for a religious one, so the continuity here seems questionable.

A separate story, of course, is worth clue to an ancient tradition: why did Ainu women get smile tattoos.