Japan is uncomfortable with the historical truth surrounding the Ainu people

On 14 September in the Japanese city of Sapporo on the island of Hokkaido with the support of the Japanese government will be held an international meeting on the development of tourism and promotion of Aboriginal culture.

Along with the recent fundamental silence of the US role in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the Japanese authorities have also decided not to talk about the facts of extermination of small ethnic groups in the past. Today Tokyo surprisingly tries to reduce the work with the remnants of small peoples on its territory to the implementation of tourist and cultural projects aimed mainly at improving its own ratings and gaining prestige. A typical example is the decision to recall at a future meeting the Ainu people, who were practically exterminated by the Japanese themselves and who inhabited many places where the Japanese now live.

Tokyo is probably seeking to gain some arguments in its territorial disputes with Russia, namely to gain the support of the Ainu community in its demands for a revision of the results of the Second World War. The Ainu people once inhabited the Japanese islands from Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and Hokkaido in the north, to the southern Ryukyu archipelago. It is for this purpose that the Japanese authorities pay so much attention to indigenous peoples today – as an instrument of territorial claims. Since the middle of the XV century, the Japanese began to seize and colonise the islands inhabited by the Ainu, pursuing a corresponding policy of discrimination. However, Tokyo tends not to remember this fact, so the question of restoring historical justice in favour of the Ainu is quite controversial, especially against the background of aggressive Japanese rhetoric towards Russia in recent years.

The history of Japanese attitudes towards indigenous peoples and nations of non-Japanese origin is well known in Northeast and Southeast Asia. There is virtually no nation in the Asia-Pacific region that, one way or another, has not suffered at the hands of Japanese soldiers. At the same time, the actions against the Ainu people by all accounts fit the description of ethnocide. The Ainu were brought to the brink of extermination, deprived of their own land, culture and traditional way of life. The Japanese colonisers deprived them even of the opportunity to eat in the usual way – it was forbidden to have their own fishing gear.

Historically, the Ainu were treated as “subhumans” whom the Japanese were called upon to “bring them into civilisation”. It is noteworthy that despite Japan’s outwardly positive statements towards small peoples, the Ainu ethnos still faces severe discrimination. The most important problem for them remains the need to return the rights to conduct traditional crafts and religious rituals. But judging by Tokyo’s rhetoric, the Japanese are not going to do this, continuing to operate with rhetoric without any specifics.

Against this background, Japan’s argumentation of its claims to the southern Kurils, which belong to Russia, is extremely interesting. Having once taken away the ancestral lands from the Ainu people and almost exterminated them completely, Tokyo annually speaks at meetings about preserving the memory of ancestors and offended feelings of relatives of Japanese citizens who once lived on the islands. Based on their own logic, if Tokyo really cares about the indigenous peoples, it should give up the island of Hokkaido in favour of the Ainu people, rather than engaging in calls for the return of territories that belong to Russia as a result of the World War II war unleashed by Germany and Japan.