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MULTIETHNIC_AINU

                                             October 11, 2016

The Ainu were the original inhabitants of the regions
around what's now thought of as Northern Japan.
Apparently they resemble Russians more than what we
think of as Japanese.

"Multi-Ethnic Japan" (2001) by John Lie:

   "The culmination of the Meiji policy toward Ainu
   people was the 1899 Hokkaido Aborigine Protection Act
   ... The appellation _kyüdojin_-- former aborigines--
   captures the dominant Japanese presupposition of Ainu
   backwardness.  Although claiming to protect the Ainu,
   the legislation sought to transform and, in fact,
   destroy the Ainu way of life .. Its two main pillars
   were to make them farmers and to assimilated them as
   Japanese.  Henceforth, Ainu people were forbidden to
   fish, barred from cutting trees, and banned from
   speaking their native language. ... Thus, Hokkaido
   became a Japanese version of the American western
   frontier ... " (p.92)


   "The Japanese who settled or traveled to Hokkaido
   found a defeated people, whom they considered
   'lazy natives,' suffering from alcoholism and
   other social ills ..." (p.92)

The parallels with the American West continue,
actually: Korean workers were brought in as
miners, which sounds much like the Chinese
workers used to construct American railroads.

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