Ainu people lay ancient claim to Kurile Islands
The hunters and fishers who lost their land to the Russians
and Japanese are gaining the confidence to demand their rights,
Recently the local governments of Sakhalin in the
Russian Far East and Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, held a meeting for
concerned citizens from both sides on the Kurile Islands dispute. At the
meeting, which was held in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, current Russian
residents of the Kuriles and former Japanese residents expelled by Stalin in
1948 were given the opportunity to speak.
Everything was going well, with the Russians delving into
historical details and the Japanese offering money for the territories, until
Tokuhei Akibe stood up. Mr Akibe is from the Ainu people, an ethnic minority
who live mostly on Hokkaido and who have been fighting discrimination by the
Tokyo government for years. 'The Kuriles are not Russian, and they are not
Japanese either,' said Mr Akibe, who was wearing traditional Ainu robes and an
embroidered headband. 'We were the first inhabitants of these islands, and
lived there before this territorial problem even appeared.' Some Russians
laughed nervously while Japanese listeners studied their shoe-laces.
Mr Akibe produced a map of the Russian Far East, the Kurile
Islands and northern Japan, showing the extent of Ainu settlements throughout
the region up to the beginning of this century. Fishers and hunters, the Ainu
had occupied the Kuriles for centuries before the Russians and the Japanese
discovered them in the 19th century. 'You (Russians and Japanese) should both
remember the historical rights of the Ainu when you conduct your negotiations,'
he said.
The historical rights of the Ainu have not been given much
attention until now, particularly by Japan, where most of them live. There are
about 25,000 Ainu in Japan, and some on the Russian island of Sakhalin. Until
the last century the Ainu lived in relative peace, living off the fish, bear,
deer and other wildlife on Hokkaido and the smaller Kurile Islands to the
north. But almost simultaneous expansion by Japan and Russia in the middle of
the last century squeezed them out of their habitats. A Japanese government
also forced the Ainu to adopt Japanese names, and banned them from fishing and
hunting, reducing them to poverty much like the dispossession of the Australian
Aborigines. The Ainu are an embarrassment to Japan which likes to maintain that
it is an ethnically homogenous society.
The Ainu have been constant victims of discrimination, and
even today many Japanese families would strenuously object if their daughter or
son wanted to marry an Ainu. Coming originally from Siberia, the Ainu have more
body hair than other Japanese - leading a Japanese travel agency in 1981 to
promote a tour of Hokkaido including 'a visit to a village of the famous hairy
Ainu'.
But in the past 10 years, encouraged by the worldwide trend
of indigenous people to reassert their own tradtions, the Ainu have grown in
confidence. 'The Ainu are reviving their old culture,' said Jiro Suzuki, a
professor of social anthropology at Tokyo's Sokka University.
The campaign by the Ainu to remind people of their historic
ties to the Kuriles may not come to much, but Mr Akibe hopes it at least will
raise the profile of the Ainu from 'famous hairy people' to human beings who
happen to have a different culture to mainstream Japan.
Geography
Kuril Islands is an archipelago in
Sakhalin oblast(province), far-eastern Russia. The archipelago
extends for 1,200 km from the southern tip of the Kamchatka (Russia) to
the northeastern corner of Hokkaido island (Japan) and separates the Sea
of Okhotsk from the Pacific Ocean. The 56 islands cover 15,600 square km.
The chain is part of the belt of geologic instability
circling the Pacific and contains at least 100 volcanoes, of which 35 are still
active, and many hot springs. Earthquakes and tidal waves are common;
the nidal wave of 1737 attained a height of 64 metres, one of the
highest on record.
Parallel to the chain, in the Pacific floor, is the Kuril
Trench, which reaches a depth of more than 10.5 km. The climate in the islands
is severe, with long, cold, snowy winters and cool, wet, foggy summers. The
average annual precipitation is 760–1,000 mm, most of which falls as snow,
which may occur in any month from the end of September to the beginning of
June. Vegetation ranges from tundra on the northern islands to dense
forest on the larger southern islands. The only significant occupation
is fishing, especially for crab, although some vegetables are grown on the
southern islands.
The principal centres are the towns of Kurilsk on Iturup,
the largest island, and Severo-Kurilsk on Paramushir. Some vegetables are grown
on the southern islands.
Iturup, the lrgest iland has 3,139 square kilometers It
is the largest and northernmost island in Russia's southern Kurils.
The island was Japanese territory until the end of
the Second World War in 1945, when Soviet forces took possession of
all the Kurils and forced out Japanese residents. Iturup is located near the
southern end of the Kuril chain, between Kunashiri (19 km to the
SW) and Urup (37 km to the NE). The town of Kurilsk,
administrative center of Kurilsky District, is located roughly midway along its
western shore.
Iturup and Urup are separated by the Vries Strait,
named after Dutch explorer Maarten Gerritsz Vries, the first recorded
European to explore the area.
History
The Kurils, as nearby Sakhalin Island were originally
inhabited by the Ainu, and they were later settled by the Russians and
Japanese, following several waves of exploration in the 17th and 18th
centuries. In the meanwhile, the Ainu from Kurils and Sakhalin were expelled
from their lands to Hokkaido island in Japan. Only a few remain in their
traditional islands.
In 1855 Japan and Russia concluded the Treaty of Shimoda,
which gave control of the four southernmost islands to Japan and the remainder
of the chain to Russia. In the Treaty of Saint Petersburg, signed by those two
countries in 1875, Russia ceded possession of the Kurils to Japan in exchange
for uncontested control Sakhalin island. In 1945, as part of the Yalta
agreements (formalized in the 1951 Treaty of Peace with Japan), the
islands were ceded to the Soviet Union, and the Japanese population was
repatriated and replaced by Soviets. Japan still claims historical rights to
the southernmost islands and has tried repeatedly to persuade the Soviet Union
and, from 1991, Russia to return those islands to Japanese soveereignty.
The chances of this happening are minimal.
As of 2013, 19,434 people inhabited the Kuril Islands. These
include ethnic Russians, Ukranians, Belarusians, Tatars, Nivkhs, and
Ainus. Russian Orthodoxy and Islam are the only religions with significant
following among the population. Some of the villages are permanently
manned by Russian soldiers (especially in Kunshir following recent tensions).
Others are inhabited by civilians, which are mostly fishermen, workers of the
fish factories, dockers, and social sphere workers (policemen, medics,
teachers, etc.). Recent construction works on the islands attracts a lot of
migrant workers from the rest of Russia and former USSR. As of 2014, there were
only 8 inhabited islands out of a total of 56. Iturup Island is over
60% ethnically Ukrainian.
References:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ainu-people-lay-ancient-claim-to-kurile-islands-the-hunters-and-fishers-who-lost-their-land-to-the-1552879.html
(Terry McCarthy)
