Chapter 3The Ainu People, Their Homeland, and History

3.1 Names and self-designation

aynu ‘person, human being’ also serves as an ethnic self-designation. The expressions aynu itak 'Ainu language' and aynu mosir 'Ainu land' extend this use to language and territory. Janhunen distinguishes the collective utar 'people' from its possessed form utari 'relatives', used in the sense 'our people'. He also discusses enciw as a self-designation associated with Sakhalin Ainu Janhunen (2022: §2(4)).

Older publications use several names and spellings, including Aino, Ezo, and Kuril. Their reference depends on the period and the writer. In particular, Janhunen cautions against equating the populations called Emishi in early Japanese sources with the historical Ainu in every respect Janhunen (2022: §3(1), §4).

3.2 Historical range

The documented regional varieties of Ainu come from Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. Historical accounts also place Ainu communities in northern Honshu and southern Kamchatka. Janhunen distinguishes these areas from the smaller Ainu presence on the Asian mainland, which he associates with trade through the lower Amur region Janhunen (2022: §2(1–3)). These distributions changed through migration, language shift, colonial settlement, and forced relocation.

Evidence for an earlier distribution on Honshu includes place names and proposed lexical borrowings. Janhunen's account centres on northern Honshu; Vovin argues for a much wider earlier presence on the basis of names and proposed Ainu loans in Old Japanese Janhunen (2022: §3(1)); Vovin (2022: §§1–2) ‹contested›. The geographical conclusions depend on those etymologies and their chronology. The proposals are examined in Chapter 164 (Ainu Loans and Place Names in Japanese).

Within Hokkaido, the documentary record distinguishes varieties associated with Saru, Chitose, Shizunai, Horobetsu, Ishikari, Tokachi, and other areas. Their grammatical and phonological differences are surveyed in Chapter 159 (Dialect Classification and Dialectometry). The availability of records for each variety is treated separately in Chapter 9 (The Dialect Sample and the Corpus-Quantification Method).

3.3 Social setting of the recorded language

Historical Ainu communities combined fishing, hunting, gathering, gardening, and trade in proportions that varied with locality and season. Janhunen describes both maritime and inland activities, together with exchanges linking Hokkaido and Sakhalin to the Amur region Janhunen (2022: §2(2), §2(5)). This regional and economic variation forms part of the setting of the recorded narratives and conversations.

Oral literature preserves several kinds of speech and performance. Heroic epics, divine songs, prose narratives, and prayers differ in their conventions and grammatical patterning Endō (2022); Okuda (2022). A narrated event also has its own participants, time, and place, which may differ from those of the recording session. These distinctions matter for the interpretation of person indexes, quotation, and evidential expressions; see Chapter 149 (Oral-Literary Genres and Their Regional Names) and Chapter 150 (Narrative Person and Reported Speech).

3.4 Prehistory and archaeological interpretation

Janhunen connects the spread of ancestral Ainu from Honshu to Hokkaido with the Satsumon culture, conventionally dated to approximately 700–1200 CE in his account. He links later expansion northward to contact with populations associated with the Okhotsk culture Janhunen (2022: §3(1–3)). This is a reconstruction combining linguistic, historical, and archaeological evidence. The identification of an archaeological population with a particular language remains an inference.

In the same account, the language, material culture, and ancestry of historical Ainu communities have partly different histories. Language could spread through a population adopting it, as well as through migration. Janhunen therefore separates continuity of the Ainu linguistic lineage from the emergence of the cultural complex documented in later centuries Janhunen (2022: §4). His placement of that lineage among the languages of Jōmon Japan leaves the identities and relationships of the other prehistoric languages unresolved.

The linguistic evidence recoverable through comparison of Ainu varieties and internal reconstruction is discussed in Chapter 156 (Proto-Ainu Reconstruction: Segments and Prosody). Proposed connections with other language families are assessed in Chapter 5 (The Genetic Position of Ainu: Isolate Status and Macro-Comparison Controversies).

3.5 Trade and colonial boundaries

Contact with Japanese traders and officials produced early word lists and practical records of Ainu. Refsing describes this documentary tradition in her history of research Refsing (1986: 17–18). Its purposes and transcription conventions affect the linguistic evidence it preserves; see Chapter 6 (The History of Ainu Language Description and Previous Research) and Chapter 14 (Historical Orthographies and the Batchelor Tradition).

On Sakhalin, Ainu communities had sustained contact with Nivkh and Uilta communities. The Santan trade connected this region with the lower Amur and the Japanese islands Janhunen (2022: §2(2)). Japanese and Russian expansion subsequently changed the political boundaries across Ainu territories. The 1875 Treaty of St. Petersburg assigned Sakhalin to Russia and the Kuril Islands to Japan; after 1905, southern Sakhalin was under Japanese administration until 1945 Janhunen (2022: §2(1)). The linguistic consequences of northern contact are examined in Chapter 165 (Northern Contact and Borrowing).

3.6 Colonization and language shift

The expansion of Japanese settlement after 1869–1870 transformed the demographic and political position of Ainu communities in Hokkaido Janhunen (2022: §2(1)). Ōno describes the pressures that led families to shift to Japanese, including discrimination and restrictions on Ainu use in schools. He distinguishes those restrictions from a general legal prohibition of the language, for which he reports no record Ōno (2022: §2).

Forced relocation also affected the survival of regional varieties. The Northern Kuril Ainu were moved to Shikotan in 1884; Sakhalin Ainu communities were displaced to Hokkaido after 1945. Janhunen relates the subsequent loss of these varieties to the disruption of their speech communities Janhunen (2022: §2(3)). Hokkaido records likewise reflect language shift, but its timing and the opportunities for recording differed between places and families. Speaker biographies are therefore part of the evidence for each collection.

3.7 Recognition and language revitalization

The 1997 Ainu Culture Promotion Act established a framework for support of cultural activity, including language programmes. Ōno describes the 2008 parliamentary resolution on indigenous recognition and the 2019 legislation that replaced the 1997 act, alongside the establishment of Upopoy in Shiraoi Ōno (2022: §6, §7.3). The museum is one part of Upopoy, which also includes a park and memorial facilities.

Language revitalization also has a longer local history, including recording work by Ainu speakers and community teaching initiatives. Ōno traces Kayano Shigeru's language school in Nibutani to 1983 and the Ainu Association's organized language classes to 1987 Ōno (2022: §4). These activities and their implications for language use are discussed in Chapter 4 (The Sociolinguistic Situation: Endangerment and Revitalization).