Indigenous Japan - The Jomon and Ainu

The Jomon

Jōmon people (縄文人, Jōmon jin) is the generic name of the populations that lived in the Japanese archipelago during the Jōmon period (c. 14,000 to 300 BCE). The Jōmon people constituted a coherent population but displayed geographically-defined regional subgroups. Population genomic data from various Jōmon period samples show that they diverged from other East Asian people 30,000 to 20,000 years ago. After their migration into the Japanese archipelago in 15,000 to 20,000 BCE.

The Jōmon people predominantly descended from an Ancestral East Asian population expanding out of Mainland Southeast Asia or the southeastern Himalayan region. Geneflow from Upper-Paleolithic groups of Northern Eurasia and Siberia was detected in local Jōmon period samples from Hokkaido and Tohoku. Evidence suggests that the ethnic roots of the Jōmon period population was rather heterogeneous and that migration routes can be traced back to ancient Northeast Asia, the Tibetan plateau, ancient Taiwan and paleolithic Siberia.

Their culture of the Jōmon people was largely based on food collection and hunting, but it is also suggested that the Jōmon people practiced early agriculture. They gathered tree nuts and shellfish, were involved in hunting and fishing, and also practiced some degree of agriculture. The Jōmon people also used stoneware and pottery, and generally lived in pit dwellings. Some elements of modern Japanese culture may have come from the Jōmon culture. Among these elements are the precursory beliefs to modern Shinto, some marriage customs, some architectural styles, and possibly some technological developments such as lacquerware, laminated yumi, metalworking, and glass making.

It is suggested that the religion of the Jōmon people was similar to early Shinto (specifically Ko-Shintō) and possibly shamanism. Other similar religions are the Ryukyuan and Ainu religions.

The Ainu

The Ainu are the indigenous people of the lands surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, including Hokkaido Island, Northeast Honshu Island, Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula, and Khabarovsk Krai, before the arrival of the Yamato Japanese and Russians. These regions are referred to as Ezo (蝦夷) in historical Japanese texts.

This people's most widely known ethnonym, "Ainu" (Ainu: アィヌ; Japanese: アイヌ; Russian: Айны) means "human" in the Ainu language, particularly as opposed to kamui, divine beings. Ainu also identify themselves as "Utari" ("comrade" or "people"). Official documents use both names.

The Ainu have often been considered to descend from the diverse Jōmon people, who lived in northern Japan from the Jōmon period (c. 14,000 to 300 BCE). One of their Yukar Upopo, or legends, tells that "the Ainu lived in this place a hundred thousand years before the Children of the Sun came." Recent research suggests that the historical Ainu culture originated from a merger of the Okhotsk culture with the Satsumon culture, cultures thought to have derived from the diverse Jōmon-period cultures of the Japanese archipelago. The Ainu economy was based on farming, as well as on hunting, fishing and gathering. The direct ancestors of the later Ainu people formed during the late Jōmon period from the combination of the local but diverse population of Hokkaido, long before the arrival of contemporary Japanese people. Lee and Hasegawa suggest that the Ainu language expanded from northern Hokkaido and may have originated from a relative more recent Northeast Asian/Okhotsk population, who established themselves in northern Hokkaido and had significant impact on the formation of Hokkaido's Jōmon culture.

The Ainu believe that everything in nature has a kamuy (spirit or god) on the inside. The most important include Kamuy-huci, goddess of the hearth, Kim-un-kamuy, god of bears and mountains, and Repun Kamuy, god of the sea, fishing, and marine animals. Kotan-kar-kamuy is regarded as the creator of the world in the Ainu religion. The Ainu have no priests by profession; instead the village chief performs whatever religious ceremonies are necessary. Ceremonies are confined to making libations of sake, saying prayers, and offering willow sticks with wooden shavings attached to them. These sticks are called inaw (singular) and nusa (plural). They are placed on an altar used to "send back" the spirits of killed animals. Ainu ceremonies for sending back bears are called Iyomante. The Ainu people give thanks to the gods before eating and pray to the deity of fire in time of sickness. They believe that their spirits are immortal, and that their spirits will be rewarded hereafter by ascending to kamuy mosir (Land of the Gods). The Ainu are part of a larger collective of indigenous people who practice "arctolatry" or bear worship. The Ainu believe that the bear holds particular importance as Kim-un Kamuy's chosen method of delivering the gift of the bear's hide and meat to humans. John Batchelor reported that the Ainu view the world as being a spherical ocean on which float many islands, a view based on the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. He wrote that they believe the world rests on the back of a large fish, which when it moves causes earthquakes.

(Source Wikipedia)

The Indigenous Japan: Ainu Music

(MP3 Googledrive Access)