Alone With The Hairy Ainu Part 24

The Ainu idea of soul is always a.s.sociated with "breath" or "life;" and as for the resurrection of the body and the future life of the soul, they have never even dreamt of it. Metempsychosis is equally unknown to them.

As my readers have seen, in the description of a burial the implements and weapons which belonged to a deceased person are buried with him. The articles, however, previous to being thrown into the grave, are smashed to pieces; for the idea is, not that the dead body should profit by these things in the other world, but that no other person should make use of what had been his property in this. The reasoning power of the Ainu does not carry him beyond what is purely material; his mind has never been trained to go beyond that limit, and he finds that he can live well within it. Like all animals, he is guided by his instinct, which tells him what is good and what is bad for him; but as to any attempt to find out _why_ such things are good or bad for him, he is utterly at a loss, and has to give up the quest. Though not devoid of a rudimentary kind of shrewdness, the Ainu is dense and ignorant to the last degree, and just as he is reluctant to adopt new modes of living, so he is unable to accept new ideas or larger thoughts. The mere conception of a Superior Being, who is the Maker of all things and above all things, is far beyond the comprehension of any Ainu. Eating and drinking are what he princ.i.p.ally lives for. He does not thirst for knowledge, nor strive after the Divine; and he has no creed of any kind and no formula of sacrifice or wors.h.i.+p, which two conditions are essential to even the most elementary religion.

What the Ainu do really possess in the way of supernaturalism is the ordinary savage's credulous superst.i.tion, which manifests itself in certain charms or fear of certain omens. However, after that degree they take the world as it comes. They have no idea of who made it, and they are not anxious to learn. The sun, the moon, bears, salmon, water, fire, mountains, trees, are all things for which an Ainu has a dumb kind of regard, not amounting to reverence, as he knows that he could not live without them. This has led some persons to define these objects as the princ.i.p.al divinities of the Ainu, and to call the people themselves polytheists. The word _Kamoi_, or _Kamui_, has been rendered as "G.o.d,"

G.o.ds "divinity." Now, what does the word _Kamoi_, or _Kamui_, really mean? Translated literally it means "old" or "ancient"; but amongst a hundred other meanings it also denotes "large," "beautiful," "strange,"

"it," "the man," "he who," &c. In fact, it is used to qualify anything, whether good or bad; and in some ways corresponds to our adjectives "wonderful," "awful," "grand "; but a.s.suredly the Ainu do not by this word mean to designate the objects thus described as so many G.o.ds.

Anything for which they entertain respect or fear is described as _Kamoi_, or _Kamui_, which thus is applied to the sun, the moon, the stars, mountains, rivers, old trees, bears, salmon, large stones, &c., not with the intention of making them divinities, but simply to specify their power, greatness, or antiquity. The word is applied to every kind of thing, animate or inanimate, good or bad, respected or derided, dreaded or revered, admired or abhorred. It is sometimes a prefix, sometimes an affix, and is the most universal attribute the Ainu world or language contains. We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion, that either the Ainu are polytheists or pantheists to such an extent as occasionally to make everything and everybody a G.o.d; or else, that translators have given their own, and a greatly exaggerated, meaning to the word _Kamui_, and that these so-called G.o.ds are not G.o.ds at all. To me there is no alternative opinion on the matter. The Ainu have no G.o.ds in our sense.

Basing conclusions on wrong premises, writers on the Ainu religion have been naturally led astray altogether. For instance, the composite word _Kotan-kara-kamui_,[39] which a learned missionary has translated "Creator," only means "the man who made the village"--a description which hardly corresponds to the grandeur attributed to the words by its imaginative translator.

[39] _Kotan_, village, place, site; _kara_, to make, build; _kamui_, the man, ancient, strength.

Then again, _Kamui kotan_, which according to some means "the home of G.o.d," in its real signification is "an ancient village; a beautiful place." When _Kamui_ is applied to persons, it is generally a suffix; when to things, it is a prefix.

But let us come to the _inao_, which by some have been called the "Ainu G.o.ds," by others "Divine symbols." These _inao_ are willow-wands, with shavings depending from the upper end, sometimes from the middle, and occasionally from near the lower end as well.

The larger wands are about four feet in length, and have either one or two bunches of shavings at the upper end only. They go by the name of _inao netuba_, or "big _inao_." Other smaller _inao_, like the _Chisei-kara-inao_,[40] are kept in the house, and stuck in the eastern corner of the hearth, and in the wall directly opposite the entrance door. Some of the _inao_ are shaved upwards from the bottom, others downwards from the top; and one, a big _inao_, is often thrust through the small window facing the east. Sometimes they are placed about singly, especially inside the huts; but outside, close to the eastern wall, I have often seen eight or ten standing together in a row. When so taken collectively they are called _nuza_. On Volcano Bay, up the Saru River, and on the Lake Kutcharo, where it is the custom of the Ainu to make trophies of the skulls of bears and deer which have been killed in the hunt, one or two _inao_ are placed at the foot of the trophy.

Sometimes, but very rarely, a whole _nuza_ is to be seen in front of a trophy; but in most cases the _nuza_ I saw were near huts that had no trophy at all, and, as I say, only very seldom were they in front of the trophy itself, unless a bear feast was going on. I am therefore under the impression that these _nuza_ are only put up when some festival takes place, and that they are not kept there permanently. I remember that at Piratori there were no _inao_ and no _nuza_ outside Benry's house, but on the day that the festival took place one was put up, and several _inao_ were placed inside the hut, in the hearth and on the north wall. Likewise, a _nuza_ was put up on the same day at the east end of the hut in which the feast was given, and the inside was also adorned with _inao_ of various sizes and descriptions. Each _inao_ is pointed at the lower end, so as to be easily stuck in the ground. The _inao_ of all sizes and shapes impressed me as being mostly for ornament. Then some are held as charms against misfortune and disease; but they never impressed me as being offerings to the G.o.ds. _Inao_ are placed near springs, so that the good water may not turn into pestilential, and occasionally _inao_ of a peculiar shape are hung in the doorway of newly-built huts. They are made of a number of small willow sticks tied together, from which hang five or six bunches of shavings; they are hung horizontally, and not in a vertical position, like the other _inao_. They are very uncommon, and only used on certain specified occasions. For example, when a child is born an _inao_, in the shape of a doll, is made of a bunch of reeds folded double and tied with a string about an inch from the bend, which thus forms the head; it is then tied lower down to indicate the waist. By dividing the reeds into two equal portions they produce a pair of legs, and a stick is then pa.s.sed through the reeds between the head and the waist to form the arms. When this doll is made it is placed near the infant, so that should any disease or misfortune, in the shape of a kind of evil spirit, be tempted to enter the child's body, it may be averted, and enter the doll instead. Should a person fall ill new _inao_ are stuck in the hearth, as the Ainu share our own idea that evil spirits dwell mostly in fire; others are placed near the sick person. They are not meant as offerings to the G.o.ds for his or her quick recovery, but merely to bring good luck to the individual whose body they think has been taken possession of by "animals inside," or, in other words, evil spirits.

[40] _Chisei_, house, dwelling, hut; _kara_, make; also, have.

Even at the present day in England and on the Continent horseshoes for luck are hung over entrance doors, and if a horseshoe be fastened on to a stable-door, the beasts within are supposed to be held free from accidents and illness.

In Spain and Italy little red rags tied to a small wand, not dissimilar in shape to a small Ainu _inao_, are stuck in flower-pots near windows, over beds, doors, and up chimneys, to keep witches at bay, red being a powerful exorcist in the way of colours, and as good as the "running stream which witches dare not cross." Some hysterical women have declared that they have seen witches hiding in the smoke of the boiling _Pentola_ (the earthenware pot in which the soup is boiled)--but that on seeing the red rags they vanished, and never visited the house again.

Italian and Spanish women and children almost invariably carry charms round their necks, that are to keep them safe from harm; and, furthermore, when a child falls ill, one or more red rags are fastened to its bed before a doctor is sent for. Then, again, people suffering from epileptic fits have often been supposed to be "possessed," and beaten to death or burnt alive, so that the evil spirit which was in them should thus be destroyed. It must be borne in mind that not many centuries ago similar beliefs were prevalent even in free and enlightened England.

If we compare these beliefs with those of the Ainu, we find that they differ very little either in form or substance. In place of the witches which our own ancestors, modern Italians, and Spaniards, and some benighted peasantry still to be found in the West of England, believed, and do still believe in, the Ainu have imaginary animals or evil spirits. The wands and red rags of our Latin neighbours are represented by their _inao_; and our lucky horseshoe is with them the horizontal _inao_. Charms are worn by the Ainu men, women, and children; and when going to war or to hunt the men carry a block of wood to which their knife or sword is attached, and on the right-hand side of which hangs a small _inao_.

These blocks of wood are flattened, and are elliptical at both ends.

Their length varies from four to fifteen inches, and sometimes ornaments--generally circles--are carved on them. A string is fastened on one side so as to sling them to the shoulder; but they are usually carried under the arm. They are supposed to protect the carrier from accidents, and also to bring him good fortune.

We see, then, that similar ideas are entertained by utterly different peoples thousands of miles distant from one another; and that certain superst.i.tious beliefs left on this side of the globe find their parallel among the hairy people on the other. Of course with them it is natural that their beliefs should count for more than with Europeans, as civilisation has not in any way enlarged or improved their minds; but it seems to me unfair that the same identical beliefs should go under the name of _superst.i.tions_ when applied to Europeans, and called the "Ainu religion" when practised by the hairy inhabitants of Northern j.a.pan.

Though to this I know it may be replied that, as all things spring from germs, so these ignorant superst.i.tions of the Ainu may be in a manner called their religion, as the germ of a more developed system--the cotyledonous state of what might grow into a more advanced spirituality.

Like the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Ainu wave their moustache-lifters, during their libations, towards the sun, the fire, and the person who has paid for the wine, before they address themselves to the large wooden bowls wherein lies their happiness; but this also is not a religious ceremony, and no religious feeling whatever is connected with it. It is a mere _toast_--part of their etiquette--which exactly corresponds to the German "_Prosit_," or to our English "Your good health." The Ainu of course have no special high-days, no Sundays, no religious services, no prayers, no priests, no sacrificial priests, no churches, and no bells; but they can "swear"; and as the Neapolitans invoke their saints, so they occasionally call the sun, the moon, the fire, and everything else, all sorts of bad names if things do not go as they ought. This "swearing" has been defined as _Ainu praying_ by one authority on the Ainu religion; moreover, the same authority calls the Ainu a "distinctly religious people," and an "exceedingly religious race!" To anyone who visits a country and regards all that he finds from one point of view only, it is not difficult to interpret words and things in accordance with the preconceived idea; but however high the principles sought to be established, I do not consider a man justified in attributing to definite facts an importance and significance to which they have no claim. I have no doubt that a native who had a.s.sociated with or been in the employment of a Christian would make statements in accordance with his master's belief as it had been taught him; but it is incorrect to offer these "borrowed statements" as the religious beliefs of a whole nation.

I shall not discuss this question at greater length; but for the sake of readers who are interested in the subject it may be well to make two or three more statements before closing this chapter. The Ainu do not know of a heaven and h.e.l.l; but in one of the latest publications on the aborigines of j.a.pan we are told that they do; and, moreover, that they are fully aware of the resurrection of the body in the other world!

Even a.s.suming, for the moment, that the Ainu are theists, or polytheists, after what we have heard of their G.o.ds, this is a somewhat surprising statement. It will be remembered that anything good or bad, dreaded or repulsive, respected or not respected, is qualified by the Ainu as _Kamui_, and we shall attribute for a while the imaginary meaning of "G.o.d" to the word. Now, if everything and everybody, good or bad, is equally a G.o.d, I myself fail to see the necessity of a h.e.l.l, as the chances are that all the G.o.ds would inhabit heaven. This alone serves to show how absurd the theory is; but I wish to give the exact translation of the words _Kando_ and _Teine-pokna-mos.h.i.+ri_, which are said to be the two Ainu expressions for "heaven" and "h.e.l.l."

_Kando_ means "sky," not "heaven." _Teine-pokna-mos.h.i.+ri_[41] stands for the "wet earth under(ground)." As the Ainu are in the habit of burying their dead, I find it more rational to apply to the words in question the meaning of a "burial-place," a "cold place of rest" rather than that of Hades or Gehenna.

[41] _Teine_, wet; _pokna_, under; _mos.h.i.+ri_, earth, place, island.

"They" (the Ainu), says a learned missionary, "seem to conceive of men and women as living in large communities in the other world in the same way and under the same conditions as they do in this, excepting that they can know no death." In other words, resurrection of the body and eternal life.

Strange to say, the writer of the same lines a.s.serted in the "Transactions of the Asiatic Society of j.a.pan,"[42] that "The Ainu _know nothing_ of a resurrection of the body."

[42] Vol. X., Part II., --6.

It must not be argued that because they have no religion the Ainu are bad people. They are far from it. They are decidedly not moral, for nothing is immoral among them. The Ainu must be considered more as animals than as human beings. When we speak of a dog, we do not ask whether it is a moral dog, but only if it is a good dog. The same can be said of the Ainu. We cannot compare them to ourselves, nor judge them by our own standard of morality. Taken by themselves they are gentle, kind, brave, and above everything they are simple. Their language, manners, customs, arts, habits, as we have seen, are the very simplest and rudest possible. Thus, it is absurd to suppose that such simple brains could entertain high religious ideas. If they had brains enough to compa.s.s high religious beliefs they would long ago have used those brains in bettering their miserable condition and filthy mode of living. They would have striven to make the beginnings of a history and a literature, or at least to have devised or adopted some mode of writing with which they could preserve these high ideas, and pa.s.s them on from generation to generation. Even their language is so poor in words as to hardly express their everyday wants. The Ainu are low in the scale of humanity.

They have always been low; they have not sunk, for they have never risen. They have never done any harm in this world, and they will never do any good.

The Ainu are without laws, which, paradoxical as it sounds, to a great extent makes them good. People are never so good as when no harm can be done. There are indeed few crimes among them; no voluntary infanticides; very very rarely murders; no suicides; little theft, and as little treachery among people of the same tribe. Though usually retiring and reserved, they are hospitable on special occasions, and generous with what little they possess. The young show an instinctive reverence for the aged, without considering it a virtue or a duty. Cowardice is despised by the Ainu, but courage, endurance of pain, and hards.h.i.+p, drunkenness, and similar qualities, are looked on as the chief virtues in men. Punishments are seldom inflicted by Ainu on any of their tribesmen, and the crime must indeed be great to raise the whole community against the criminal. If by rare chance some great evil has been done, the chief of the village and all the men a.s.semble, and decide on the punishment to be inflicted. Flogging is the general punishment for the lesser crimes, which, according to Ainu ideas, are theft and a.s.sault. The murder of a tribesman is sometimes punished by cutting the tendons of the hands and feet of the murderer, thus disabling him from hunting or fis.h.i.+ng. If, however, the man murdered was of another tribe, or a j.a.panese, this Draconian kind of justice is not administered.

Quarrels among tribesmen are settled by private retribution, and no one interferes either one way or the other. These quarrels, however, very seldom occur, as the Ainu are naturally a peaceful people. Imprisonment does not exist, for the simple reason that the Ainu have no prisons.

They do not know what a prison is; neither is capital punishment practised by them. According to their own ideas they are not cruel to children, for we seldom see them wilfully ill-treating them; but according to civilised notions Ainu women make shockingly bad mothers.

They love, but they do not look after, nor practically take care of, their little ones after these are about a year and a half old; and as to was.h.i.+ng them, combing their hair, educating them, or trying to cure them of the thousand and one wretched skin diseases, which come chiefly by their own neglect, an Ainu mother puts her hand to these things no more than the men put theirs to the building of a temple or the creation of a literature. This neglect is not with them, as it would be with us, an intolerable crime, but is the natural result of their animal instinct as contradistinguished from rational development. For if a baby is not old enough at one and a half years of age to take care of himself, he is of no good as an Ainu. It is needless to add that, in these circ.u.mstances, most of them are of no good, and that the percentage of infantile deaths is appalling to a civilised mind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 1, 7, INAO-NETUBA. 2, 3, 4, 5, CHISEI-KARA-INAO. 6, A PESTLE OR POUNDER.]

CHAPTER XXIX.

Marital Relations, and Causes that Limit Population.

The laws of marriage in the Ainu country are not very stringent; in fact, there are no laws. If a young man takes a fancy to a pretty hairy maid, and the maid reciprocates his affections, all they have to do is to go and live together, and there is no Mrs. Grundy to be scandalised at the want of closer forms and ceremonies. There is no function to celebrate the occasion; there are no wedding presents, no bridesmaids, no officiating clergyman, and no old slipper flung after the happy pair as soon as the knot is tied. The bridegroom either goes to live in his bride's hut, or, if he does not care for his mother-in-law, he will bring his lady-love to his own father's hut. Usually, however, the two, especially if their respective families are large, prefer to build a hut of their own. The honeymoon is spent in house-building, and while the bride carries the loads of timber and long reeds, the bridegroom accomplishes the more difficult task of putting them together as well as he can for future shelter. All goes well with the happy couple until the roof has to be lifted up bodily and perched on the forked poles, during which process "family rows" generally begin. But they do not last long, and when the house is finished, though not decorated, home peace reigns within, and the bridegroom, as we have already seen, proceeds to ornament his chief treasure--his wife--with tattoos on her arms. This idyllic state of things is not specially permanent, for soon after this first marriage the Ainu feels that he would like another wife, and, without thinking twice about it, he marries again. Though savage and barbarian, the Ainu is shrewd enough not to take his second wife to live with his first, for he knows what the result would be, human nature being the same in Yezo as it is in London, and jealousy as strong among the tattooed women of the hairy people as among the fair-skinned daughters of the West. All women are bad enough when out of temper, but the Ainu women are pre-eminent in this respect. Our shock-haired bigamist calls his first wife _poro-machi_--"great wife," and he calls the other _pon-machi_--"small wife;" and as long as the two females do not live under the same roof they are all happy with the arrangement.

If, indeed, he chooses to have more than these two wives he thinks small blame to himself. There is no bar of any kind in his code to his having a third "half;" but this seldom happens now, for the women are not in such over abundance in the Ainu country as to allow each man to indulge in a "triple alliance." The Ainu are therefore polygamists when they can find the third woman, and almost always bigamists when this is possible.

The wife does not take her husband's name, for no Ainu has a family surname; and each man or woman is called after some peculiarity which he or she possesses, or after some event or accident which has befallen them. For instance, _Una-charo_, a man's name, means "Sprinkled-ashes,"

and _Yei-Ainu_, "Dangerous Ainu," &c.; and _Korunke_, a woman's name, means "Ice-eater;" _Reoback_, "Who burst three times," and so on, each person having a different name, which is nothing more than a nick-name.

When the girl gets married she does not drop this nick-name, neither, as has been said, does she take her husband's name, though sometimes she is called So-and-So's wife. Supposing that Miss Burst-three-times were to marry Mr. Sprinkled-ashes, she would be Mr. Sprinkled-ashes' wife, and would still be called by her maiden name, Burst-three-times.

It is impossible to quote exact statistics of the Ainu population, and whether the women outnumber the men, but from my own observation I should think that females are in excess of the males in some districts, and about even in others.

The man, naturally, is the lord and master of the household, and the wife is like a kind of inferior being or a slave, whose duty it is to obey her male companion. She has to yield in everything, whether she is right or wrong; she is occasionally beaten; she never takes active part in any of her husband's Baccha.n.a.lian revels; but though she leads a sad kind of life, a life of hard work and no pleasure, she does not seem to be any the worse for it. There are wives, of course, who, as in other countries, give a "pretty rough time" to their husbands; but in the Ainu country these are certainly the exception. As there is no ceremony of marriage, there is naturally no "divorce;" but if an Ainu gets sick of his wife, all he has to do is to leave her and go elsewhere, or else to banish her from his hut. This, however, very seldom happens, for that rare creature the henpecked Ainu husband is willing to put up with a lot; and though brave enough to encounter single-handed a bear, the hairy man is by no means valiant enough to face his wife's temper; while, for all that she is practically a slave, and personally an inferior, is sometimes in Ainuland, as everywhere else, the strongest factor in the domestic sum.

As long as the wife does her duty well as a "beast of burden," little more is required from her. Her morals, as far as I could make out, are not well looked after. Adultery is not considered a crime. I do not mean by this that adultery is practised on principle, for it is not so: there is no reason whatever why it should be, for each man has his own wife or wives; but if adultery were practised by any members of a community, what we consider a dreadful crime would be regarded as a mere "joke"

among the hairy people. The husband, like any other animal, dumb or not, would naturally resent the intrusion, but the community would in no way interfere, or punish the offender. A girl is considered fit to be married when she is about sixteen years of age; a man about twenty, or as soon as the body is fully developed.

People as a rule marry in the same village. It is but seldom that a girl marries a man or a man a girl of a different village. Villages, as we have seen, are generally composed of only a few houses, and the result of this strict endogamy is, that marriages take place among very near relations. In very small villages of only one or two houses, the father has been known to marry his own daughter, the uncle his own niece, &c.

But enough of this. The result of this dreadful state of affairs is, that the race is rapidly dying out, destroyed by consumption, lunacy, and poverty of blood. All the members of one village are necessarily related to one another; and, as I have demonstrated in a previous chapter, this is the main cause why certain diseases are common to one community and utterly unknown to others, and certain hereditary talents or tendencies are frequent in one village and imperceptible in the next.

The Ainu seem to have no Platonic love; their love is purely s.e.xual. It is not to be wondered at, in a country where marital relations are so peculiar, that very little love is felt for children beyond a certain age. The mother suckles her own child usually for seven or eight months.

She can bear children till she is about thirty-five, though some who seem to be much older are still fruitful. It was difficult to ascertain this fact for no Ainu knows his own age. As far as I could learn fertility is neither hindered nor checked in any way--either by adopting a peculiar diet or by other practices. On the other hand, many a woman is sterile, and many are also affected with the most horrible of all diseases. I am inclined to think, however, that this special malady was imported to Yezo with j.a.panese civilisation, for it is in the more civilised parts of the Ainu country that it is most frequent.

There is probably no country in the world where there is so much loss of infant life due to want, accidents, and diseases, as with the Ainu.

Abortion is common, owing to the severe exertion of the mother during pregnancy; and many a child dies not many days after birth for the same reason, and consequent disappearance of milk in the mother's b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The greater mortality of children, however, is between the age of six and ten. Only a small percentage of these poor creatures live to take part in the game of life; while many succ.u.mb to ill-treatment and the most horrible skin eruptions. Thus we have a good explanation of the frightful rapidity with which the Ainu race is fast disappearing.

Naturally, those few who survive grow strong and healthy; but their great fondness for alcoholic drinks, which they can now so easily procure from the j.a.panese, destroys even them.

One is generally struck in Ainuland by the number of old men and children, and by the almost entire lack of young fellows between the age of fifteen and thirty. This is due mainly to the great increase of mortality in children during the last two generations. The sadness which seems to oppress the Ainu, and which we see depicted on the face of each individual, is nothing but the outcome of this degeneration of the race.

As a race the Ainu will soon be extinct. I dare say that in fifty years from now--probably not so long--not one of the hairy savages, who were once the masters of Sakhalin, Yezo, the Kuriles, Kamschatka, and the whole of the southern j.a.panese Empire, will be left. Not one of these strange people--soft, good, and gentle, but savage, brave, and disreputable--will live to see their country civilised; and in the life which they have led of filth and vice they will die in front of that greater scourge, civilisation, leaving behind no traces of themselves, of their past, of their history, nor of their present--nothing but a faint recollection, a tradition, that in Yezo and the Kuriles died the last remains of those curious people, the Hairy Ainu.

APPENDIX.