Alone With The Hairy Ainu Part 18

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROASTING HOOK.]

Mat-making is closely allied to weaving, and is worked entirely on the same principle, but without the aid of any kind of machinery. The bulrushes are crossed and woven coa.r.s.ely, and plaited flat. One of these mats is used in Ainu huts as a door--"the _Apa Otki_." A smaller one is hung over or by the window.

Naturally, Ainu huts are somewhat draughty. The imperfectness of the door and window-fittings, the large outlet for the smoke, besides the wind which finds its way through the thatched walls, make Ainu dwellings "ideal" to anyone wis.h.i.+ng to "catch his death of cold." The Ainu do not much mind it.

The roof is low, and from it hang the winter provisions of dried salmon captured during the autumn. This gives an additional odour to the already strong scent of the hut--an "ancient fish-like smell," not redolent of the perfumes of Arabia. The smoke inside the hut is so dense when there happens to be a fire burning that one's eyes stream with involuntary tears, and one is nearly choked. When the days are short in winter the Ainu sometimes light their dwellings with a stick to which is fastened a piece of animal fat. It is hung up aloft, and when the lower end is lighted the fat slowly melting serves to feed the flame and keep this primitive lamp alight. Another mode of illumination is by firing a lighted piece of birch bark on a stick previously split at the upper end. The third way is by filling a large sh.e.l.l with fish-oil and burning in it a few strings of elm-fibre. None of these methods come much into use for everyday life, as, unlike the negroes, the Ainu are not fond of sitting up at night, except on extraordinary occasions; and when by chance they do sit up it is by the light of the fire only.

If a stranger stops for the night in an Ainu hut, he is made to sleep directly under the east window; but the family take good care to sleep all together on the north side, which is the most distant point from the door and the window. Occasional callers are received on the side nearest to the door.

The few Ainu who possess mats on which they sit during the day hang them up at night round the hut, probably to protect themselves from the liberal ventilation, which even those who are used to it find trying when a gale is blowing or the thermometer is very low.

There is no particular spot inside the hut set apart for meals, and the refuse is either thrown into a corner of the hut or flung outside the door and left there. It is difficult to say whether the inside or the outside of an Ainu hut is the dirtier. Heaps of stinking refuse are acc.u.mulated round the dwellings, and in summer-time these heaps are alive with vermin--mosquitoes, flies, _abu_, and black-flies. It is quite sufficient to move a step from the door to see a cloud of these noxious insects rise, and each one of them will have a bite at you.

Inside the house you are no better off. _Taikki_ (fleas) are innumerable, and of all sizes, not to mention other well-known but usually anonymous enemies of the human skin.

The first night I slept in an Ainu hut, though I was provided with insecticide powder, I was literally covered with bites. With my fondness for statistics I proceeded to count them, and only from my ankle to my knee I counted as many as 220. The rest of my body and my head were covered in the same proportion, but I gave up the attempt to ascertain the exact number--the task was too overwhelming. My skin, however, got so inflamed by these bites as to produce fever, which lasted two or three days. After that time I never again suffered to such an extent, perhaps owing to the fact that no free spot was left to attack, or may be from that curious process called acclimatisation.

The Ainu huts are built entirely above ground, and are used alike in winter and summer.

In olden times the hut was always destroyed at the death of its owner, or when abandoned; but in the former case the custom is seldom practised now, and in the latter they are merely left to decay.

It is singular that migrating Ainu, coming across an uninhabited hut, never live in it, but build a new one for themselves.

The Kurilsky Ainu until quite recently destroyed their huts when migrating from one island to another. They also burnt the huts of deceased persons. It is needless to say that the Ainu have no churches, no hotels, no hospitals, and no public buildings of any kind. The huts in villages are a little way from one another, and each hut has directly in front a separate storehouse, built on piles or posts so as not to be accessible to wolves, dogs, or rats. These are small structures, the architecture of which has the local characteristics of the habitations, with the exception that they are invariably on piles, while the habitations are on the ground. Clothes, furs, mats, and winter provisions of sea-weed are kept in these storehouses, and access to them is by means of a peculiar ladder. It is a mere log of wood, six or seven feet in length, pointed at one end, and with five or six incisions, which serve as steps, and remind me of the steps cut by an ice-axe in a glacier or on frozen snow. Natives go up and down these ladders with ease, even when carrying heavy weights on their heads; and good care is always taken to remove the ladder when leaving the storehouse. Women princ.i.p.ally look after these storehouses, and seem to have the whole care and control of them. I have often seen an Ainu girl--for a storehouse could hardly hold more than one--sitting on the tiny door working at her lord and master's _Atzis_ robe. Hour after hour I have seen her sitting there, working patiently till the sun has set and the darkness has come. Her materials were then stowed away; the mat at the door was let down; the ladder descended and kicked away; and sadly singing in her soft falsetto voice, she retired into the dirt and dark of her habitation.

The storehouses stand about six feet above the level of the ground, and are generally on four, six, or eight piles. Upon each pile is placed a large square piece of wood turned downwards at the sides, so as not to be accessible to rats and mice. Upon these square pieces of wood rest horizontally four rafters, forming a quadrangle about eight feet square.

The small storehouse has as a base this quadrangle, and is seldom high enough to allow of an adult to stand inside.

Storehouses are thatched like all other houses. On the upper Tokachi, however, they are covered with the bark of trees.

Next in connection with Ainu habitations comes the skull-trophy at the east end of the hut. This is on a parallel line to the hut wall, and only a few yards away from it, and is made of a number of bi-forked poles, upon which are placed the skulls of the bears, wolves, and foxes killed by the owner of the hut. The Ainu is proud of this trophy, and if the number of bear skulls is very large, he commands a certain amount of respect from his hairy brethren. There is nothing that Ainu admire more than courage, and there is nothing in the world that an Ainu desires more than to be thought brave. When he has gained this character a man becomes in a certain way the "lion" of the village. He embellishes his trophy with a _Nusa_ and _Inaos_ (willow wands with overhanging shavings--_see_ Chapter on Superst.i.tions), and he always looks on it as an evidence of his manly glory. Besides this, many Ainu possess one or two live bears kept in cages. Bear hunters often secure one or more cubs, which they bring home and allow to live in the hut like one of the family or an Irishman's pig. These cubs are nursed along with and in the same manner as the children, and Ainu say that women often put them to the breast and suckle them like their own infants. Whether this is true or not I cannot say; but though I have never seen it, and therefore cannot vouch for it, it is not unlike Ainu women to do such a thing.

When the new-comers grow big and powerful enough to be dangerous, the men make a rough cage with logs of timber, placing them one over the other in a quadrangular shape, and las.h.i.+ng them strongly together. The bear is driven into the cage, which is then roofed over; and after a couple of years of confinement, during which it is fattened, poor Bruin is killed for a bear festival. In the lower part of the cage there is a small wooden tray by which food is served to the captive.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE APE-KILAI, OR EARTH-RAKE, AS USED BY PIRATORI AINU.]

On the north-east coast of Yezo I have also seen smaller cages, in which foxes, eagles, or other animals are kept; and I always noticed the care which Ainu took to feed up the imprisoned animals. That "charity begins at home" is true even among the hairy people; for if they are kind to animals it is only for the sake of making a good meal of them on the first occasion that presents itself.

It may be as well to state that the Ainu have never been known to make pottery. What they have of the kind is imported and sold to or exchanged with them by the j.a.panese. If I were an Irishman I should say that real Ainu pottery is made of wood. Nevertheless, large sh.e.l.ls are often used by them as drinking vessels where wooden bowls are not obtainable. It is a common occurrence in Ainu households that one bowl is used by several individuals, and a more common occurrence still that none of the bowls are ever washed or cleaned after having been used.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MORTAR.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PESTLE.]

The small Ainu porch which stands frequently at the entrance of Ainu huts answers the purpose of a stackhouse, and in it is stored the firewood used in the house. The wooden mortar and the long pestle are kept in a corner under the porch. In the more civilised parts of Yezo these pestles and mortars are general, as the natives use them for pounding millet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BONE SPOON.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WOODEN SPOONS AS USED BY THE MORE CIVILISED AINU.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PESTLE AND MORTAR USED FOR POUNDING SALMON.]

The pure Ainu live princ.i.p.ally on animal food--fish and meat--sea-weed, and some kinds of roots and herbs, which they find on the mountains.

Metallurgy is utterly unknown to the Ainu. Until of late years they possessed nothing made of metal. Their arrows had bamboo or bone heads; tin or iron cooking utensils they had none; and the blades of their knives were and are of j.a.panese origin. Some of these blades are very old, and were acquired by the Ainu in the battles which they fought against the j.a.panese; others have been got by barter-metal exchanged for skins of animals.

Furthermore, save the weaving-loom, the Ainu possess no machinery of their own make. This too, as we have seen, is but a very rude and simple kind of machine. The application of wind or water power to economise human labour is in no way known to them; thus they have no windla.s.ses, no pumps, no bellows, no windmills, no waterwheels; neither have they any signs of the rudest form of machinery moved by manual power which they have imagined and made for themselves. Furthermore, they are very loth to accept those mechanical means of economising labour which are employed by their neighbours the j.a.panese.

The Ainu are very conservative, little as they may have to preserve.

They show a great dislike to change or reform their habits and customs, or to improve themselves in any way. Worse they could certainly not be.

They have no ancestral attachment which makes them unwilling to discard their rude practices for more civilised ways; but, acting according to their instincts, and not by their intelligence, they preserve customs which seem inconvenient and unpractical to us, which habit has rendered familiar and pleasant to them.

Various natives in other parts of the world show signs of an earlier state of civilisation, but the Ainu do not. They have never had a past civilisation, they are not civilised now, and what is more, they will never be civilised. Civilisation kills them. As a hog delights in filth, so the Ainu can only live in dirt, neglect, and savagery of personal habits. They are made that way, and they cannot help it. They are excluded from progress by an impa.s.sable barrier. They have many miseries in their life, but no greater misery could befall an Ainu than to be forced to lead a civilised existence. Even after they have been educated in j.a.panese schools, when they return home, in a short time they forget all they have learned, and discard their acquired civilisation for the old, free, untrammelled mountain life; the wild habits of the woods and sea-sh.o.r.e; the nakedness of summer and the stifling squalor of the one small dingy hut in winter; the uncombed hair and matted beard; the putrid flesh of salmon, and the vile compound they revel in till they get gloriously drunk and b.e.s.t.i.a.l.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AINU PIPE-HOLDER AND TOBACCO POUCH, AS USED BY THE MORE CIVILISED AINU.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AINU KNIFE, WITH ORNAMENTED SHEATH.]

CHAPTER XXI.

Ainu Art, Ainu Marks, Ornamentations, Weapons--Graves and Tattoos.

The expression of ideas by graphic signs is utterly unknown to the Ainu.

They have no alphabet, and furthermore, they have no methods whatever of writing. Hence the utter incapacity of the hairy people to record events, time, or circ.u.mstances in their history; for even the system of picture-writing is not known to them.

Thus they have neither graven records nor any form of visible history; and tradition transmitted from mouth to mouth is all they have by way of historic continuity. The nearest approach made to graphic signs is in the owner's marks, which we occasionally find on some of their implements. The moustache-lifter is the article on which this mark is most commonly found. What these marks are meant to represent I do not know for certain; but I believe that Fig. 1 is supposed to convey the idea of a house, and Fig. 2 that of a boat; Fig. 3 a bear cage, and 4 the mere result of fancy. Even these marks are only rarely found, and have probably been suggested by j.a.panese writing.

The ill.u.s.tration shows the four specimens which I found carved on moustache-lifters.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 1 2 3 4]

Closely allied with writing is, of course, map-drawing and ornamentations. Map drawing can be dismissed at once, like that famous chapter on snakes in Iceland, as the Ainu know nothing of it.

Rough ornamentations on bone and wooden implements are their only artistic efforts. Truthful representations of figures and animals are seldom attempted,[37] but conventionalised symbols, suggested by and based on certain forms of animal or vegetable life, are occasionally used for ornamentation.

[37] The only attempt at animal representation is the small bear-head in chiefs' crowns.

The Ainu have no rock-sculptures, and can neither paint nor draw in any form; what they have are mere simple wood-carvings. But only a few have any apt.i.tude for even this crude work, though of course they are not all alike. As with us we have people who are artistic and people who are Philistine, so with the Ainu, in that very humble degree which is to Western art what an acorn is to an oak.

Like all early work, Ainu art--if we may call it so--aims at a certain uniformity, especially in leaf-portraiture, so as to produce a somewhat symmetrical pattern; for at all times geometry has been the mother of design.

An Ainu does not go for his models direct to Nature, neither does he servilely copy his neighbour's work; but he gets his ideas indirectly from both these sources, and through inability to copy accurately, negligence in close study, and some amount of native imagination combined, varies the design which he has seen to such an extent as to make it in a sense original. The talent shown by different men in the art of carving varies considerably, even in men of the same tribe; while certain tribes show both apt.i.tude and fondness for these ornamentations, whereas others have little of either.

It is the Ainu of the upper Is.h.i.+kari River who chiefly excel in these carved ornamentations. The knife represented in the ill.u.s.tration comes from Kamikawa, and was carved with the point of a knife by the chief of the Ainu there. It took the man many months to accomplish, and it is by far the best specimen of Ainu workmans.h.i.+p that I saw in Yezo, though the ornamentations on it are not purely Ainu in character.

This man was a genius as compared to other Ainu, and his ideas of form and precision were considerably more developed than in most of his race.