Ideas About the Common Origin of the Japanese and the Ainu During the Tokugawa (1603–1867) and Meiji (1868–1912) Periods

Abstract

Over the past century and a half, Japan has been debating whether it is a monoethnic nation-state or whether there are representatives of ethnic groups other than the Japanese living in it. In this article, I attempt to consider in a historical perspective the place of the Ainu in the discussion about the Japanese nation, in particular the idea about the common origin of the Japanese and the Ainu.

The formation of Japanese ideas about the world as divided into peoples with a set of distinctive features dates back to the Tokugawa era (1603–1867). At the same time, the concept of “Ezo,” a name for the Ainu at that time, acquires the character of an ethnonym, which in the previous epochs rather meant the inhabitants of the country’s remote periphery, not affected by the beneficial civilizing influence of the emperor. In the earliest descriptions of the Ainu, Japanese authors continued to rely on the Chinese civilizational narrative, presenting the Ainu as the exact opposite of the Japanese and focusing on the differences. At the same time, at the end of the 18^th century, ideas about the common origin of the Japanese and the Ainu were first voiced, based on the similarity of some cultural practices and common vocabulary.

During the Meiji period (1868–1912), attitudes towards the idea of the common origin of the Japanese and the Ainu were ambivalent. In discussions about the Japanese nation, the Ainu could act in a variety of roles: as an indigenous people displaced by the Japanese “invaders,” as the closest relative and therefore a natural object of assimilation, as an integral element of the “mixed” Japanese people, and as a subordinate people at the lowest level of the hierarchy.