The Japanese captured the "Japanese" islands, destroying the native inhabitants
Everyone knows that Americans are not the indigenous population of the United States, just like the current population South America. Did you know that the Japanese are also not the indigenous population of Japan? Who then lived on these islands before them?...
Before them, the Ainu lived here, a mysterious people whose origins still have many mysteries. The Ainu lived next to the Japanese for some time, until the latter managed to push them north. The fact that the Ainu are the ancient masters of the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands is evidenced by written sources and numerous names of geographical objects, the origin of which is associated with the Ainu language. And even the symbol of Japan - the great Mount Fuji - has in its name the Ainu word “fuji”, which means “deity of the hearth”. According to scientists, the Ainu settled the Japanese islands around 13,000 BC and formed the Neolithic Jomon culture there.
The Ainu did not engage in agriculture; they obtained food by hunting, gathering and fishing. They lived in small settlements, quite distant from each other. Therefore, their habitat was quite extensive: the Japanese islands, Sakhalin, Primorye, the Kuril Islands and the south of Kamchatka.
Around the 3rd millennium BC, Mongoloid tribes arrived on the Japanese islands, who later became the ancestors of the Japanese. The new settlers brought with them the rice crop, which made it possible to feed themselves. a large number population in a relatively small area. Thus began difficult times in the life of the Ainu. They were forced to move to the north, leaving their ancestral lands to the colonialists.
But the Ainu were skilled warriors, fluent with bows and swords, and the Japanese were unable to defeat them for a long time. A very long time, almost 1500 years. The Ainu knew how to wield two swords, and on their right hip they carried two daggers. One of them (cheyki-makiri) served as a knife for committing ritual suicide - hara-kiri.
The Japanese were able to defeat the Ainu only after the invention of cannons, by which time they had learned a lot from them in terms of military art. The samurai code of honor, the ability to wield two swords and the mentioned hara-kiri ritual - these would seem to be characteristic attributes Japanese culture were actually borrowed from the Ainu.
Scientists are still arguing about the origin of the Ainu.
But the fact that this people is not related to other indigenous peoples of the Far East and Siberia is already a proven fact. Characteristic their appearance is very Thick hair and a beard in men, which representatives of the Mongoloid race lack. For a long time it was believed that they may have common roots with the peoples of Indonesia and the Pacific Aborigines, since they have similar facial features. But genetic studies ruled out this option as well.
And the first Russian Cossacks who arrived on the island of Sakhalin even mistook the Ainu for Russians, they were so unlike the Siberian tribes, but rather resembled Europeans. The only group of people from all the analyzed variants with whom they have a genetic relationship were the people of the Jomon era, who presumably were the ancestors of the Ainu. The Ainu language is also very different from the modern linguistic picture of the world, and a suitable place has not yet been found for it. It turns out that during their long isolation the Ainu lost contact with all other peoples of the Earth, and some researchers even distinguish them into a special Ainu race.
Ainu in Russia
The Kamchatka Ainu first came into contact with Russian merchants at the end of the 17th century. Relations with the Amur and North Kuril Ainu were established in the 18th century. The Ainu considered the Russians, who were racially different from their Japanese enemies, as friends, and by the middle of the 18th century, more than one and a half thousand Ainu accepted Russian citizenship. Even the Japanese could not distinguish the Ainu from the Russians because of their external similarity (white skin and Australoid facial features, which are similar to Caucasoid ones in a number of ways). Compiled under the Russian Empress Catherine II, “Spatial Land Description Russian state", included in the composition Russian Empire not only all the Kuril Islands, but also the island of Hokkaido.
The reason is that ethnic Japanese did not even populate it at that time. The indigenous population - the Ainu - were recorded as Russian subjects following the expedition of Antipin and Shabalin.
The Ainu fought with the Japanese not only in the south of Hokkaido, but also in the northern part of the island of Honshu. The Cossacks themselves explored and taxed the Kuril Islands back in the 17th century. So, Russia can demand Hokkaido from the Japanese.
The fact of Russian citizenship of the inhabitants of Hokkaido was noted in a letter from Alexander I to the Japanese Emperor in 1803. Moreover, this did not cause any objections from the Japanese side, much less official protest. To Tokyo, Hokkaido was a foreign territory like Korea. When the first Japanese arrived on the island in 1786, they were met by Ainu bearing Russian names and surnames. And what’s more, they are true Christians! Japan's first claims to Sakhalin date back to 1845. Then Emperor Nicholas I immediately gave a diplomatic rebuff. Only the weakening of Russia in subsequent decades led to the occupation of the southern part of Sakhalin by the Japanese.
It is interesting that in 1925 the Bolsheviks condemned the previous government, which gave Russian lands to Japan.
So in 1945, historical justice was only restored. The army and navy of the USSR resolved the Russian-Japanese territorial issue by force. Khrushchev signed the Joint Declaration of the USSR and Japan in 1956, Article 9 of which stated:
“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, meeting the wishes of Japan and taking into account the interests of the Japanese state, agrees to the transfer to Japan of the islands of Habomai and the island of Shikotan, however, that the actual transfer of these islands to Japan will be made after the conclusion of the Peace Treaty between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Japan” .
Khrushchev's goal was the demilitarization of Japan. He was willing to sacrifice a couple of small islands in order to remove American military bases from the Soviet Far East. Now, obviously, we are no longer talking about demilitarization. Washington clung to its “unsinkable aircraft carrier” with a death grip. Moreover, Tokyo’s dependence on the United States even increased after the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Well, if this is so, then the gratuitous transfer of the islands as a “gesture of goodwill” loses its attractiveness. It is reasonable not to follow Khrushchev’s declaration, but to put forward symmetrical claims based on known historical facts. Shaking ancient scrolls and manuscripts, which is normal practice in such matters.
An insistence on giving up Hokkaido would be a cold shower for Tokyo. We would have to argue at the negotiations not about Sakhalin or even about the Kuril Islands, but about our own this moment territories. I would have to defend myself, make excuses, prove my right. Russia would thus go from diplomatic defense to offensive. Moreover, China’s military activity, nuclear ambitions and readiness for military action by the DPRK and other security problems in the Asia-Pacific region will give another reason for Japan to sign a peace treaty with Russia.
But let's go back to the Ainu
When the Japanese first came into contact with the Russians, they called them the Red Ainu (Ainu with blond hair). Only in early XIX centuries, the Japanese realized that Russians and Ainu are two different people. However, to the Russians the Ainu were "hairy", "swarthy", "dark-eyed" and "dark-haired". The first Russian researchers described the Ainu as looking like Russian peasants with dark skin or more like gypsies.
The Ainu sided with the Russians during the Russo-Japanese Wars of the 19th century. However, after defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the Russians abandoned them to their fate. Hundreds of Ainu were killed and their families were forcibly transported to Hokkaido by the Japanese. As a result, the Russians failed to recapture the Ainu during World War II. Only a few Ainu representatives decided to stay in Russia after the war. More than 90% went to Japan.
Under the terms of the St. Petersburg Treaty of 1875, the Kuril Islands were ceded to Japan, along with the Ainu living there. 83 Northern Kuril Ainu arrived in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on September 18, 1877, deciding to remain under Russian control. They refused to move to reservations on the Commander Islands, as they were offered Russian government. After which, from March 1881, for four months they traveled on foot to the village of Yavino, where they later settled.
Later the village of Golygino was founded. Another 9 Ainu arrived from Japan in 1884. The 1897 census indicates a population of 57 in Golygino (all Ainu) and 39 in Yavino (33 Ainu and 6 Russians). Both villages were destroyed by the Soviet authorities, and the residents were resettled to Zaporozhye, Ust-Bolsheretsk region. As a result, three ethnic groups assimilated with the Kamchadals.
The Northern Kuril Ainu are currently the largest Ainu subgroup in Russia. The Nakamura family (South Kuril on the paternal side) is the smallest and has only 6 people living in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. There are a few on Sakhalin who identify themselves as Ainu, but many more Ainu do not recognize themselves as such.
Most of the 888 Japanese living in Russia (2010 census) are of Ainu origin, although they do not recognize it (pure-blooded Japanese are allowed to enter Japan without a visa). The situation is similar with the Amur Ainu living in Khabarovsk. And it is believed that none of the Kamchatka Ainu are left alive.
Epilogue
In 1979, the USSR deleted the ethnonym “Ainu” from the list of “living” ethnic groups in Russia, thereby declaring that this people had become extinct on the territory of the USSR. Judging by the 2002 census, no one entered the ethnonym “Ainu” in fields 7 or 9.2 of the K-1 census form. There is information that the Ainu have the most direct genetic connections through the male line, oddly enough, with the Tibetans - half of them are carriers of the close haplogroup D1 (the D2 group itself is practically not found outside the Japanese archipelago) and the Miao-Yao peoples in southern China and in Indochina.
As for female (Mt-DNA) haplogroups, the Ainu group is dominated by group U, which is also found among other peoples of East Asia, but in small numbers. During the 2010 census, about 100 people tried to register themselves as Ainu, but the government of the Kamchatka Territory rejected their claims and recorded them as Kamchadals.
In 2011, the head of the Ainu community of Kamchatka, Alexey Vladimirovich Nakamura, sent a letter to the Governor of Kamchatka Vladimir Ilyukhin and the Chairman of the local Duma Boris Nevzorov with a request to include the Ainu in the List of Indigenous Peoples small peoples North, Siberia and Far East Russian Federation. The request was also rejected. Alexey Nakamura reports that in 2012 there were 205 Ainu registered in Russia (compared to 12 people registered in 2008), and they, like the Kuril Kamchadals, are fighting for official recognition. The Ainu language became extinct many decades ago.
In 1979, only three people on Sakhalin could speak Ainu fluently, and the language became completely extinct there by the 1980s. Although Keizo Nakamura spoke Sakhalin-Ainu fluently and even translated several documents into Russian for the NKVD, he did not pass on the language to his son. Take Asai, the last person who knew the Sakhalin Ainu language, died in Japan in 1994.
Until the Ainu are recognized, they are noted as people without nationality, like ethnic Russians or Kamchadals. Therefore, in 2016, both the Kuril Ainu and the Kuril Kamchadals were deprived of the rights to hunting and fishing, which the small peoples of the Far North have.
Everyone is aware that Americans are not the indigenous population of the United States, just like the current population of South America. Did you know that the Japanese are not the indigenous population of Japan?
Who then lived in these places before them?
Before them, the Ainu lived here, a mysterious people whose origins still have many mysteries. The Ainu lived next to the Japanese for some time, until the latter managed to push them north.
Settlement of the Ainu in late XIX century.
The fact that the Ainu are the ancient masters of the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands is evidenced by written sources and numerous names of geographical objects, the origin of which is associated with the Ainu language.
And even the symbol of Japan - the great Mount Fuji - has in its name the Ainu word “fuji”, which means “deity of the hearth”. According to scientists, the Ainu settled the Japanese islands around 13,000 BC and formed the Neolithic Jomon culture there.
The Ainu did not engage in agriculture; they obtained food by hunting, gathering and fishing. They lived in small settlements, quite distant from each other. Therefore, their habitat was quite extensive: the Japanese islands, Sakhalin, Primorye, the Kuril Islands and the south of Kamchatka.
Around the 3rd millennium BC, Mongoloid tribes arrived on the Japanese islands, who later became the ancestors of the Japanese. The new settlers brought with them the rice crop, which allowed them to feed a large population in a relatively small area. Thus began difficult times in the life of the Ainu. They were forced to move to the north, leaving their ancestral lands to the colonialists.
But the Ainu were skilled warriors, fluent with bows and swords, and the Japanese were unable to defeat them for a long time. A very long time, almost 1500 years. The Ainu knew how to wield two swords, and on their right hip they carried two daggers. One of them (cheyki-makiri) served as a knife for committing ritual suicide - hara-kiri.
The Japanese were able to defeat the Ainu only after the invention of cannons, by which time they had learned a lot from them in terms of military art. The samurai code of honor, the ability to wield two swords and the mentioned hara-kiri ritual - these seemingly characteristic attributes of Japanese culture were actually borrowed from the Ainu.
Scientists are still arguing about the origin of the Ainu.
But the fact that this people is not related to other indigenous peoples of the Far East and Siberia is already a proven fact. A characteristic feature of their appearance is very thick hair and a beard in men, which representatives of the Mongoloid race lack. It has long been believed that they may have common roots with the peoples of Indonesia and the Pacific Aborigines, as they have similar facial features. But genetic studies ruled out this option as well.
And the first Russian Cossacks who arrived on the island of Sakhalin even mistook the Ainu for Russians, they were so unlike the Siberian tribes, but rather resembled Europeans. The only group of people from all the analyzed variants with whom they have a genetic relationship were the people of the Jomon era, who presumably were the ancestors of the Ainu.
The Ainu language is also very different from the modern linguistic picture of the world, and a suitable place has not yet been found for it. It turns out that during their long isolation the Ainu lost contact with all other peoples of the Earth, and some researchers even distinguish them into a special Ainu race.
Ainu in Russia
The Kamchatka Ainu first came into contact with Russian merchants at the end of the 17th century. Relations with the Amur and North Kuril Ainu were established in the 18th century. The Ainu considered the Russians, who were racially different from their Japanese enemies, as friends, and by the middle of the 18th century, more than one and a half thousand Ainu accepted Russian citizenship. Even the Japanese could not distinguish the Ainu from the Russians because of their external similarity (white skin and Australoid facial features, which are similar to Caucasoid ones in a number of ways).
Compiled under the Russian Empress Catherine II, the “Spatial Land Description of the Russian State” included not only all the Kuril Islands, but also the island of Hokkaido into the Russian Empire.
The reason is that ethnic Japanese did not even populate it at that time. The indigenous population - the Ainu - were recorded as Russian subjects following the expedition of Antipin and Shabalin.
The Ainu fought with the Japanese not only in the south of Hokkaido, but also in the northern part of the island of Honshu. The Cossacks themselves explored and taxed the Kuril Islands back in the 17th century. So Russia can demand Hokkaido from the Japanese
The fact of Russian citizenship of the inhabitants of Hokkaido was noted in a letter from Alexander I to the Japanese Emperor in 1803. Moreover, this did not cause any objections from the Japanese side, much less official protest. To Tokyo, Hokkaido was a foreign territory like Korea. When the first Japanese arrived on the island in 1786, they were met by Ainu bearing Russian names and surnames. And what’s more, they are true Christians!
Japan's first claims to Sakhalin date back to 1845. Then Emperor Nicholas I immediately gave a diplomatic rebuff. Only the weakening of Russia in subsequent decades led to the occupation of the southern part of Sakhalin by the Japanese.
It is interesting that in 1925 the Bolsheviks condemned the previous government, which gave Russian lands to Japan.
So in 1945, historical justice was only restored. The army and navy of the USSR resolved the Russian-Japanese territorial issue by force.
Khrushchev signed the Joint Declaration of the USSR and Japan in 1956, Article 9 of which stated:
“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, meeting the wishes of Japan and taking into account the interests of the Japanese state, agrees to the transfer to Japan of the islands of Habomai and the island of Shikotan, however, that the actual transfer of these islands to Japan will be made after the conclusion of the Peace Treaty between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Japan” .
Khrushchev's goal was the demilitarization of Japan. He was willing to sacrifice a couple of small islands in order to remove American military bases from the Soviet Far East.
Now, obviously, we are no longer talking about demilitarization. Washington clung to its “unsinkable aircraft carrier” with a death grip. Moreover, Tokyo’s dependence on the United States even increased after the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Well, if this is so, then the gratuitous transfer of the islands as a “gesture of goodwill” loses its attractiveness.
It is reasonable not to follow Khrushchev’s declaration, but to put forward symmetrical claims based on known historical facts. Shaking ancient scrolls and manuscripts, which is normal practice in such matters.
An insistence on giving up Hokkaido would be a cold shower for Tokyo. It would be necessary to argue at the negotiations not about Sakhalin or even about the Kuril Islands, but about our own territory at the moment.
I would have to defend myself, make excuses, prove my right. Russia would thus go from diplomatic defense to offensive.
Moreover, China’s military activity, nuclear ambitions and readiness for military action by the DPRK and other security problems in the Asia-Pacific region will give another reason for Japan to sign a peace treaty with Russia.
But let's go back to the Ainu
When the Japanese first came into contact with the Russians, they called them the Red Ainu (Ainu with blond hair). Only at the beginning of the 19th century did the Japanese realize that the Russians and the Ainu were two different peoples. However, to the Russians the Ainu were "hairy", "swarthy", "dark-eyed" and "dark-haired". The first Russian researchers described the Ainu as looking like Russian peasants with dark skin or more like gypsies.
The Ainu sided with the Russians during the Russo-Japanese Wars of the 19th century. However, after defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the Russians abandoned them to their fate. Hundreds of Ainu were killed and their families were forcibly transported to Hokkaido by the Japanese. As a result, the Russians failed to recapture the Ainu during World War II. Only a few Ainu representatives decided to stay in Russia after the war. More than 90% went to Japan.
Under the terms of the St. Petersburg Treaty of 1875, the Kuril Islands were ceded to Japan, along with the Ainu living there. 83 Northern Kuril Ainu arrived in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on September 18, 1877, deciding to remain under Russian control. They refused to move to reservations on the Commander Islands, as the Russian government suggested to them. After which, from March 1881, for four months they traveled on foot to the village of Yavino, where they later settled.
Later the village of Golygino was founded. Another 9 Ainu arrived from Japan in 1884. The 1897 census indicates a population of 57 in Golygino (all Ainu) and 39 in Yavino (33 Ainu and 6 Russians). Both villages were destroyed by the Soviet authorities, and the residents were resettled to Zaporozhye, Ust-Bolsheretsk region. As a result, three ethnic groups assimilated with the Kamchadals.
The Northern Kuril Ainu are currently the largest Ainu subgroup in Russia. The Nakamura family (South Kuril on the paternal side) is the smallest and has only 6 people living in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. There are a few on Sakhalin who identify themselves as Ainu, but many more Ainu do not recognize themselves as such.
Most of the 888 Japanese living in Russia (2010 census) are of Ainu origin, although they do not recognize it (pure-blooded Japanese are allowed to enter Japan without a visa). The situation is similar with the Amur Ainu living in Khabarovsk. And it is believed that none of the Kamchatka Ainu are left alive.
Epilogue
In 1979, the USSR deleted the ethnonym “Ainu” from the list of “living” ethnic groups in Russia, thereby declaring that this people had become extinct on the territory of the USSR. Judging by the 2002 census, no one entered the ethnonym “Ainu” in fields 7 or 9.2 of the K-1 census form
There is information that the Ainu have the most direct genetic connections through the male line, oddly enough, with the Tibetans - half of them are carriers of the close haplogroup D1 (the D2 group itself is practically not found outside the Japanese archipelago) and the Miao-Yao peoples in southern China and in Indochina.
As for female (Mt-DNA) haplogroups, the Ainu group is dominated by group U, which is also found among other peoples of East Asia, but in small numbers.
During the 2010 census, about 100 people tried to register themselves as Ainu, but the government of the Kamchatka Territory rejected their claims and recorded them as Kamchadals.
In 2011, the head of the Ainu community of Kamchatka, Alexey Vladimirovich Nakamura, sent a letter to the Governor of Kamchatka Vladimir Ilyukhin and the Chairman of the local Duma Boris Nevzorov with a request to include the Ainu in the List of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation.
The request was also rejected.
Alexey Nakamura reports that in 2012 there were 205 Ainu registered in Russia (compared to 12 people registered in 2008), and they, like the Kuril Kamchadals, are fighting for official recognition. The Ainu language became extinct many decades ago.
In 1979, only three people on Sakhalin could speak Ainu fluently, and the language became completely extinct there by the 1980s.
Although Keizo Nakamura spoke Sakhalin-Ainu fluently and even translated several documents into Russian for the NKVD, he did not pass on the language to his son.
Take Asai, the last person who knew the Sakhalin Ainu language, died in Japan in 1994.
Until the Ainu are recognized, they are noted as people without nationality, like ethnic Russians or Kamchadals.
Therefore, in 2016, both the Kuril Ainu and the Kuril Kamchadals were deprived of the rights to hunting and fishing, which the small peoples of the Far North have.
The explorers dubbed them Kurils, Kurilians, endowing them with the epithet “shaggy”, and they called themselves “Ainu”, which means “man”. Since then, researchers have been struggling with the countless mysteries of this people. But to this day they have not come to a definite conclusion.
First of all: where did a tribe come from in a continuous Mongoloid massif that is anthropologically, roughly speaking, inappropriate here? Nowadays the Ainu live on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, and in the past they inhabited a very wide territory - the Japanese Islands, Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, the south of Kamchatka and, according to some data, the Amur region and even Primorye up to Korea. Many researchers were convinced that the Ainu were Caucasians. Others argued that the Ainu are related to the Polynesians, Papuans, Melanesians, Australians, Indians...
Archaeological data convinces of the extreme antiquity of Ainu settlements on the Japanese archipelago. This especially confuses the question of their origin: how could the people of the Old Stone Age overcome the enormous distances separating Japan from the European west or the tropical south? And why did they need to exchange, say, the fertile equatorial belt for the harsh northeast?
The ancient Ainu or their ancestors created amazingly beautiful ceramics, mysterious dogu figurines, and in addition, it turned out that they were perhaps the earliest farmers in the Far East, if not in the world. It is not clear why they completely abandoned both pottery and agriculture, becoming fishermen and hunters, essentially taking a step back into cultural development. The Ainu legends tell of fabulous treasures, fortresses and castles, but the Japanese and then the Europeans found this tribe living in huts and dugouts. The Ainu have a bizarre and contradictory interweaving of the features of the northern and southern inhabitants, elements of high and primitive cultures. With their entire existence, they seem to deny conventional ideas and customary patterns of cultural development.
Ainu and Japanese
The Ainu were a warlike, brave and freedom-loving people. Japanese samurai did not like to invade their lands unless they had a significant numerical advantage, experiencing the northern fear of the “hairy savages” with their poisoned, striking arrows. Ancient historical work“Nihonseki” (720) testifies “The Ainu are by nature brave and fierce and are very good shooters. They constantly keep their arrows in their hair, love to carry out robberies and run as fast as if they were flying.”
Japanese chronicles claim that the management of new administrative units handed over to representatives of the “royal house”. However, the Soviet researcher M.V. Vorobyov found that this was not quite the case. The managers were often the leaders of local clans who expressed their allegiance to the tenno. And among them there were also Ainu and their descendants from mixed marriages.
Russian ethnographer D.N. Anuchin reported that the government of the Mikado (tenno, emperor of Japan) encouraged marriages of the victorious Japanese with the conquered Ainu, especially with their powerful clans, and many noble Japanese families descend from these marriages. N.V. Kuehner wrote: “Some of the conquered Ainu leaders entered the Japanese feudal elite as princes or their assistants and, undoubtedly, there were also many mixed marriages...”
The culture of the Japanese was significantly enriched at the expense of their northern enemy. As the Soviet scientist S.A. points out. Arutyunov, Ainu elements played a significant role in the formation of samuraiism and the ancient Japanese religion - Shinto.
The ritual of hara-kiri and the complex of military valor of bushido are of Ainu origin. The Japanese ritual of sacrificing Gohei has clear parallels with the installation of inau sticks by the Ainu... The list of borrowings can be continued for a long time.
Rituals. Bear holiday
A special attitude towards the bear was characteristic of all peoples northern hemisphere who lived in the taiga and tundra. The cult of the bear was widespread among the peoples of Siberia and the Far East. The custom of holding a “bear festival” was equally characteristic of both the ancient Ainu and Nivkhs. This refers specifically to the bear festival of the so-called Amur type - about an animal reared in a cage.
The bear was revered as the ancestor of the totem, which should not be killed or eaten. Gradually this ban weakened. But after hunting and eating meat, the bear had to be appeased and its “rebirth” ensured. The main rituals of the holiday were dedicated to this, and remained unchanged until the mid-twentieth century.
Ainu language
Ainu language (Ainu. アイヌ イタク ainu so, Japanese アイヌ語 ainugo) - the language of the Ainu,
The Ainu language and culture date directly back to the Jomon era - the Japanese Neolithic (ceramic dating for the Japanese mainland: 13000 BC - 500 BC)
In Hokkaido and the Kuril Islands, Jomon continued until the last third of the 19th century).
Apparently, we can safely say that in the Jomon era, the Ainu language was spoken on all the Japanese islands, from the Ryukyu Islands to Hokkaido. At the end, or perhaps even towards the middle of the Jomon era, the Ainu language spread to the Kuril Islands, the lower Amur, the southern part of Sakhalin and the southern third of Kamchatka.
When the colonization of Hokkaido began, at first the Matsumae shoguns ordered that the Aina should not be taught Japanese under any circumstances, so that it would be easier to exploit them, but after 1799 (the uprising on Kunashir Ya Kunne Siri “Black Island”) a decree was issued ordering the Aina to be taught Japanese language. The process of assimilation began. But the assimilation of the Hokkaido Ainu began on a grand scale only after the Meiji Ishin Revolution. It all started with school education, which was conducted in Japanese. Only a few people tried to create an education system for Ainu children in their own language: Batchelor, who taught children the Ainu language in Latin transcription, Furukawa and Penriuk, who contributed to the creation of private schools for Ainu. Such private schools did not last very long, because the Japanese from the very beginning created various obstacles for them.
The joint education of Ainu children and Japanese children, as well as comprehensive massive Japaneseization, led to the fact that by the middle of the 20th century, most Ainu dialects had sunk into oblivion. “According to the expression of the most prominent Japanese linguist Hattori Shiro, the head of the first and, apparently, the last mass survey of Ainu dialects carried out in the 50s, its participants “got on the last bus”; now most of the described dialects no longer exist.”
In Southern Sakhalin (Karafuto Governorate), which was much less Japaneseized than Hokkaido, the Ainu language was used as a language of everyday communication, and before the Russian-Japanese War, the Ainu language was used in interethnic communication: ““foreigners” of Sakhalin, as noted in the “Sakhalin Calendar” for 1898, “they also have a good command of Ainu, which is a common language on the island for all almost foreign tribes among themselves, with the local administration and Japanese fish farmers.” [Taxami S. 251]
After the end of World War II, most of the Sakhalin Ainu ended up in Hokkaido. Until recently, there were only a few people, very advanced in age, who spoke the Sakhalin dialect of Raichishka.
The Ainu language practically fell out of use in the 1920s. Most Ainu now speak Japanese. In the early 90s, the movement for the revival of the Ainu language intensified in Japan. The activist of the movement was a member of the Japanese parliament Kayano Shigeru. Thanks to his activities, the publication of a newspaper in the Ainu language began and many Ainu are beginning to learn their language.
Scientists about the Ainu
American anthropologist S. Lorin Brace, from Michigan State University in the journal Science Horizons, No. 65, September-October 1989. writes: “the typical Ainu is easily distinguished from the Japanese: he has lighter skin, denser body hair and a more prominent nose.”
Brace studied about 1,100 crypts of Japanese, Ainu and other Asian ethnic groups and came to the conclusion that representatives of the privileged samurai class in Japan are in fact descendants of the Ainu, and not the Yayoi (Mongoloids), the ancestors of most modern Japanese.
April 8, 2011, 12:46 pmBrace further writes: “.. this explains why the facial features of representatives of the ruling class are so often different from modern Japanese. Samurai - descendants of the Ainu acquired such influence and prestige in medieval Japan who intermarried with the ruling circles and brought Ainu blood into them, while the rest of the Japanese population were mainly descendants of the Yayoi."
Few people know that the indigenous population of Japan were the Ainu - a white people who appeared on the islands about 13 thousand years ago. They created amazingly beautiful ceramics, mysterious dogu figurines resembling a man in a modern space suit, and, in addition, it turned out that they were perhaps the earliest farmers in the Far East. It is not clear why they later completely abandoned both pottery and agriculture, becoming fishermen and hunters, essentially taking a step back in cultural development? Ainu legends tell of fabulous treasures, fortresses and castles, but the Japanese and then the Europeans found this tribe living in huts and dugouts. 
In the IV-I centuries BC. Migrants began to invade the lands of the Ainu - the Mongoloid tribes, who at that time poured from the Korean Peninsula to the east, who were later destined to become the basis of the Japanese nation. For many centuries, the Ainu fiercely resisted the onslaught and, at times, quite successfully. Around the 7th century. AD for several centuries a boundary was established between the two peoples. There were not only military battles on this border line. There was trade and intense cultural exchange. It happened that the noble Ainu influenced the policies of the Japanese feudal lords... 
The culture of the Japanese was significantly enriched at the expense of their northern enemy. The traditional religion of the Japanese - Shintoism - shows obvious Ainu roots; The ritual of hara-kiri and the complex of military valor “Bushido” are of Ainu origin. Representatives of the privileged class of samurai in Japan are in fact descendants of the Ainu (and everywhere we are shown samurai of exclusively Mongoloid type. Therefore, the facial features of representatives of the ruling class of medieval Japan are often very different from modern Japanese. Samurai - descendants of the Ainu - acquired such influence and prestige in medieval Japan, having become related to the ruling circles, brought in the blood of the Ainu, while the rest of the Japanese population were mainly descendants of the Mongoloids. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Aryan swastika became the most widespread in Japanese heraldry. Its image is the monom (coat of arms). many samurai families - Tsugaru, Hachisuka, Hasekura and others 
At the same time, the Ainu suffered a terrible fate - the same as later the Indians in North America. Beginning in the 17th century, they were subjected to merciless genocide and forced assimilation, and soon became a minority in Japan. Unfortunately, this process of movement of the “south” to the “north” can still be observed today, both in Russia and in Europe. To date, there are only 30,000 Ainu in the world. 
New lands had to be taken with battle. The Ainu put up stubborn resistance. People's memory has preserved the names of the most courageous defenders of their native land. One of these heroes is Shakusyain, who led the Ainu uprising in August 1669. The old leader led several Ainu tribes. In one night, 30 merchant ships arriving from Honshu were captured, then the fortress on the Kun-nui-gawa river fell. Supporters of the Matsumae house barely had time to hide in the fortified town. A little more and... Here I immediately remember the American film "The Last Samurai" with Tom Cruise in leading role. Hollywood people obviously knew the truth - the last samurai was indeed a white man, but they twisted it, turning everything on its head, so that people would never know it. The last samurai was not a European, did not come from Europe, but was an Ainu - a native inhabitant of Japan. His ancestors lived on the islands for thousands of years!. The surviving Ainu fled to the mountains. The contractions continued for another month. Deciding to rush things, the Japanese lured Shakusyain along with other Ainu military leaders into negotiations and killed them. Resistance was broken. From free people, living according to their own customs and laws, all of them, young and old, turned into forced laborers of the Matsumae clan. The relations established at that time between the victors and the vanquished are described in the diary of the traveler Yokoi: “...Translators and overseers committed many bad and vile deeds: they cruelly treated the elderly and children, raped women. If the Esosians began to complain about such atrocities, then more in addition, they received punishment..." Therefore, many Ainu fled to their fellow tribesmen on Sakhalin, the southern and northern Kuril Islands. There they felt relatively safe - after all, there were no Japanese here yet. We find indirect confirmation of this in the first description of the Kuril ridge known to historians. The author of this document is Cossack Ivan Kozyrevsky. He visited the north of the ridge in 1711 and 1713 and asked its inhabitants about the entire chain of islands, right up to Matmaya (Hokkaido). The Russians first landed on this island in 1739. The Ainu who lived there told the expedition leader, Martyn Shpanberg, that on the Kuril Islands “... there are a lot of people, and those islands are not subject to anyone.” In 1777, Irkutsk merchant Dmitry Shebalin was able to bring one and a half thousand Ainu into Russian citizenship in Iturup, Kunashir and even Hokkaido. The Ainu received from the Russians strong fishing gear, iron, cows, and over time, rent for the right to hunt near their shores. Despite the arbitrariness of some merchants and Cossacks, the Ainu (including the Ezo) sought protection from Russia from the Japanese. Perhaps the bearded, big-eyed Ainu saw relatives and natural allies in the people who came to them, so sharply different from the Mongoloid tribes and peoples who lived around them. After all, the external similarity between our explorers and the Ainu was simply amazing. It even deceived the Japanese. In their first messages, Russians are referred to as “red-haired Ainu” ... "