CHAPTER XXVIII.

The Ainu Superstitions--Morals--Laws and Punishments.

I cannot begin this chapter better than by saying that Ainu religious ideas are essentially chaotic. They recognise no supreme God, and no intelligent Creator; and they cannot be called polytheists, for indeed they are not _worshippers_ of any power--taking the word in its full meaning. The Ainu worship nothing.

If they have any belief at all it is an imperfect kind of Totemism, and the central point of that belief is their own descent from the "bear." This does not include the smallest reverence for their ancestor. They capture their "Totem" and keep it in captivity; they speak to it and feed it; but no prayers are offered to it. When the bear is fat, it is taken out of the cage to be ill-treated and baited by all the men present. It is tied to a stake and a pole is thrust into its mouth; and when the poor beast has been sufficiently tortured, pricked with pointed sticks, shot at with blunted arrows, bruised with stones, maddened with rage and ill-usage, it is killed outright, and, "ancestor" as it may be, it makes the chief dish and _raison d'être_ of a festival, where all the members of the tribe partake of its flesh. The owner of the hut in which the feast takes place then sticks the skull on to a forked pole, and sets it outside with the others at the east end of his hut. The skin is made into garments, or is spread on the ground to sleep on.

In addition to this rudimentary kind of Totemism--if I may call it so--the Ainu show a certain amount of fear and respect for anything which supports their life or can destroy it. This, however, is under the form of an "instinct" rather than a "religious feeling." Dumb animals of any kind are similarly affected by powers which they cannot explain; but as we would not think for a moment that when a dog is barking at the moon the dog is worshipping the orb of night, or when it basks in the sun that it is offering prayers and reverence to the orb of day, no more should we think that the Ainu, who are not much above dumb animals, worship all they respect and fear.

If other writers, most of whom have never visited the Ainu country, had not written on this subject, I would have limited myself to saying that the Ainu, properly speaking, have no religion, but as certain untenable theories and false ideas have been published, I feel bound to state what I know on the subject, that, so far as I can, I may correct these erroneous impressions. I regard myself as qualified to speak with some authority, as I am the _only_ foreigner who has seen and studied _all_ the different tribes of Ainu in Yezo and the Kuriles; while other writers, the few who have actually been there, have based their statements on a few half-castes or Ainu in the more civilised part of southern Yezo, collecting from them ideas left behind by previous travellers, and offering them to the public as purely Ainu. That these hasty travellers and cursory writers have been deceived, or have deceived themselves, is not astonishing; for it must be borne in mind that the Ainu language is as poor in words as the Ainu brain is deficient in thoughts. Thus it is no easy matter to explain to an Ainu what is meant by "religion," by "divinities," and by "worship." The nearest approach can be made only by comparisons and analogies, which often lead far from the point aimed at. Like all savages and barbarians, the Ainu are more apt to answer as they think will please the questioner than to give a definition of their own beliefs. The manner in which a question is put gives the keynote to the reply, which is in no sense an independent statement of their own thoughts.

For instance, if you were to say to an Ainu, "You are old, are you not?" he would answer "Yes"; but if you asked the same man, "You are not old, are you?" he would equally answer "Yes." Knowingly speaking the truth is not one of their characteristics; indeed, they do not know the difference between falsehood and truth. This is a common failing with all savages as well as with all Orientals; but with the Ainu it is even more accentuated; and when, in addition to this, the difficulty of making them understand exactly what one means is taken into consideration, it is not astonishing that a traveller arrives at a wrong conclusion if the utmost pains be not taken in pursuing one's investigations.

Of course the Ainu who have come in contact with Japanese know of a God, and some of them, at the instigation of Japanese _bonzes_, have become nominal Buddhists. Benry, at Piratori, showed me a small Buddhist shrine, of Japanese manufacture, which had been put up on a neighbouring hill. All the time I stayed at Piratori I never observed any Ainu worship at it. One day I saw two boys throwing stones at it, but that could hardly be called an act of reverence, even among my hairy friends.

On my inquiring as to the origin and use of the shrine, I was told by some that it was erected to the God of the Japanese. Benry, who was always "well informed," both in things that he knew and those that he did not know, said that it was built in honour of Yoshitsune, the Japanese personage who, as we have seen, is the hero in semi-Ainu legends, and whose image or spirit, according to travellers' tales, is worshipped by the Ainu.

It always appeared strange to me that the Piratori Ainu had this Japanese hero in their legends, but still more strange that they should make him their deity. Yet what was most singular of all was, that with the exception of Benry and a few others at Piratori, no other Ainu I met in any other part of Yezo seemed to know about Yoshitsune--or Okikurumi, as he is sometimes called by them; and, moreover, they knew nothing of his doings, or of the reason of his being worshipped. The Ainu of the Tokachi knew nothing whatever of this personage.

The Ainu idea of soul is always associated with "breath" or "life;" and as for the resurrection of the body and the future life of the soul, they have never even dreamt of it. Metempsychosis is equally unknown to them.

As my readers have seen, in the description of a burial the implements and weapons which belonged to a deceased person are buried with him. The articles, however, previous to being thrown into the grave, are smashed to pieces; for the idea is, not that the dead body should profit by these things in the other world, but that no other person should make use of what had been his property in this. The reasoning power of the Ainu does not carry him beyond what is purely material; his mind has never been trained to go beyond that limit, and he finds that he can live well within it. Like all animals, he is guided by his instinct, which tells him what is good and what is bad for him; but as to any attempt to find out _why_ such things are good or bad for him, he is utterly at a loss, and has to give up the quest. Though not devoid of a rudimentary kind of shrewdness, the Ainu is dense and ignorant to the last degree, and just as he is reluctant to adopt new modes of living, so he is unable to accept new ideas or larger thoughts. The mere conception of a Superior Being, who is the Maker of all things and above all things, is far beyond the comprehension of any Ainu. Eating and drinking are what he principally lives for. He does not thirst for knowledge, nor strive after the Divine; and he has no creed of any kind and no formula of sacrifice or worship, which two conditions are essential to even the most elementary religion.

What the Ainu do really possess in the way of supernaturalism is the ordinary savage's credulous superstition, which manifests itself in certain charms or fear of certain omens. However, after that degree they take the world as it comes. They have no idea of who made it, and they are not anxious to learn. The sun, the moon, bears, salmon, water, fire, mountains, trees, are all things for which an Ainu has a dumb kind of regard, not amounting to reverence, as he knows that he could not live without them. This has led some persons to define these objects as the principal divinities of the Ainu, and to call the people themselves polytheists. The word _Kamoi_, or _Kamui_, has been rendered as "god," gods "divinity." Now, what does the word _Kamoi_, or _Kamui_, really mean? Translated literally it means "old" or "ancient"; but amongst a hundred other meanings it also denotes "large," "beautiful," "strange," "it," "the man," "he who," &c. In fact, it is used to qualify anything, whether good or bad; and in some ways corresponds to our adjectives "wonderful," "awful," "grand "; but assuredly the Ainu do not by this word mean to designate the objects thus described as so many gods. Anything for which they entertain respect or fear is described as _Kamoi_, or _Kamui_, which thus is applied to the sun, the moon, the stars, mountains, rivers, old trees, bears, salmon, large stones, &c., not with the intention of making them divinities, but simply to specify their power, greatness, or antiquity. The word is applied to every kind of thing, animate or inanimate, good or bad, respected or derided, dreaded or revered, admired or abhorred. It is sometimes a prefix, sometimes an affix, and is the most universal attribute the Ainu world or language contains. We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion, that either the Ainu are polytheists or pantheists to such an extent as occasionally to make everything and everybody a god; or else, that translators have given their own, and a greatly exaggerated, meaning to the word _Kamui_, and that these so-called gods are not gods at all. To me there is no alternative opinion on the matter. The Ainu have no gods in our sense.

Basing conclusions on wrong premises, writers on the Ainu religion have been naturally led astray altogether. For instance, the composite word _Kotan-kara-kamui_,[39] which a learned missionary has translated "Creator," only means "the man who made the village"--a description which hardly corresponds to the grandeur attributed to the words by its imaginative translator.

[39] _Kotan_, village, place, site; _kara_, to make, build; _kamui_, the man, ancient, strength.

Then again, _Kamui kotan_, which according to some means "the home of God," in its real signification is "an ancient village; a beautiful place." When _Kamui_ is applied to persons, it is generally a suffix; when to things, it is a prefix.

But let us come to the _inao_, which by some have been called the "Ainu gods," by others "Divine symbols." These _inao_ are willow-wands, with shavings depending from the upper end, sometimes from the middle, and occasionally from near the lower end as well.

The larger wands are about four feet in length, and have either one or two bunches of shavings at the upper end only. They go by the name of _inao netuba_, or "big _inao_." Other smaller _inao_, like the _Chisei-kara-inao_,[40] are kept in the house, and stuck in the eastern corner of the hearth, and in the wall directly opposite the entrance door. Some of the _inao_ are shaved upwards from the bottom, others downwards from the top; and one, a big _inao_, is often thrust through the small window facing the east. Sometimes they are placed about singly, especially inside the huts; but outside, close to the eastern wall, I have often seen eight or ten standing together in a row. When so taken collectively they are called _nuza_. On Volcano Bay, up the Saru River, and on the Lake Kutcharo, where it is the custom of the Ainu to make trophies of the skulls of bears and deer which have been killed in the hunt, one or two _inao_ are placed at the foot of the trophy. Sometimes, but very rarely, a whole _nuza_ is to be seen in front of a trophy; but in most cases the _nuza_ I saw were near huts that had no trophy at all, and, as I say, only very seldom were they in front of the trophy itself, unless a bear feast was going on. I am therefore under the impression that these _nuza_ are only put up when some festival takes place, and that they are not kept there permanently. I remember that at Piratori there were no _inao_ and no _nuza_ outside Benry's house, but on the day that the festival took place one was put up, and several _inao_ were placed inside the hut, in the hearth and on the north wall. Likewise, a _nuza_ was put up on the same day at the east end of the hut in which the feast was given, and the inside was also adorned with _inao_ of various sizes and descriptions. Each _inao_ is pointed at the lower end, so as to be easily stuck in the ground. The _inao_ of all sizes and shapes impressed me as being mostly for ornament. Then some are held as charms against misfortune and disease; but they never impressed me as being offerings to the gods. _Inao_ are placed near springs, so that the good water may not turn into pestilential, and occasionally _inao_ of a peculiar shape are hung in the doorway of newly-built huts. They are made of a number of small willow sticks tied together, from which hang five or six bunches of shavings; they are hung horizontally, and not in a vertical position, like the other _inao_. They are very uncommon, and only used on certain specified occasions. For example, when a child is born an _inao_, in the shape of a doll, is made of a bunch of reeds folded double and tied with a string about an inch from the bend, which thus forms the head; it is then tied lower down to indicate the waist. By dividing the reeds into two equal portions they produce a pair of legs, and a stick is then passed through the reeds between the head and the waist to form the arms. When this doll is made it is placed near the infant, so that should any disease or misfortune, in the shape of a kind of evil spirit, be tempted to enter the child's body, it may be averted, and enter the doll instead. Should a person fall ill new _inao_ are stuck in the hearth, as the Ainu share our own idea that evil spirits dwell mostly in fire; others are placed near the sick person. They are not meant as offerings to the gods for his or her quick recovery, but merely to bring good luck to the individual whose body they think has been taken possession of by "animals inside," or, in other words, evil spirits.

[40] _Chisei_, house, dwelling, hut; _kara_, make; also, have.

Even at the present day in England and on the Continent horseshoes for luck are hung over entrance doors, and if a horseshoe be fastened on to a stable-door, the beasts within are supposed to be held free from accidents and illness.

In Spain and Italy little red rags tied to a small wand, not dissimilar in shape to a small Ainu _inao_, are stuck in flower-pots near windows, over beds, doors, and up chimneys, to keep witches at bay, red being a powerful exorcist in the way of colours, and as good as the "running stream which witches dare not cross." Some hysterical women have declared that they have seen witches hiding in the smoke of the boiling _Pentola_ (the earthenware pot in which the soup is boiled)--but that on seeing the red rags they vanished, and never visited the house again. Italian and Spanish women and children almost invariably carry charms round their necks, that are to keep them safe from harm; and, furthermore, when a child falls ill, one or more red rags are fastened to its bed before a doctor is sent for. Then, again, people suffering from epileptic fits have often been supposed to be "possessed," and beaten to death or burnt alive, so that the evil spirit which was in them should thus be destroyed. It must be borne in mind that not many centuries ago similar beliefs were prevalent even in free and enlightened England.

If we compare these beliefs with those of the Ainu, we find that they differ very little either in form or substance. In place of the witches which our own ancestors, modern Italians, and Spaniards, and some benighted peasantry still to be found in the West of England, believed, and do still believe in, the Ainu have imaginary animals or evil spirits. The wands and red rags of our Latin neighbours are represented by their _inao_; and our lucky horseshoe is with them the horizontal _inao_. Charms are worn by the Ainu men, women, and children; and when going to war or to hunt the men carry a block of wood to which their knife or sword is attached, and on the right-hand side of which hangs a small _inao_.

These blocks of wood are flattened, and are elliptical at both ends. Their length varies from four to fifteen inches, and sometimes ornaments--generally circles--are carved on them. A string is fastened on one side so as to sling them to the shoulder; but they are usually carried under the arm. They are supposed to protect the carrier from accidents, and also to bring him good fortune.

We see, then, that similar ideas are entertained by utterly different peoples thousands of miles distant from one another; and that certain superstitious beliefs left on this side of the globe find their parallel among the hairy people on the other. Of course with them it is natural that their beliefs should count for more than with Europeans, as civilisation has not in any way enlarged or improved their minds; but it seems to me unfair that the same identical beliefs should go under the name of _superstitions_ when applied to Europeans, and called the "Ainu religion" when practised by the hairy inhabitants of Northern Japan. Though to this I know it may be replied that, as all things spring from germs, so these ignorant superstitions of the Ainu may be in a manner called their religion, as the germ of a more developed system--the cotyledonous state of what might grow into a more advanced spirituality. Like the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Ainu wave their moustache-lifters, during their libations, towards the sun, the fire, and the person who has paid for the wine, before they address themselves to the large wooden bowls wherein lies their happiness; but this also is not a religious ceremony, and no religious feeling whatever is connected with it. It is a mere _toast_--part of their etiquette--which exactly corresponds to the German "_Prosit_," or to our English "Your good health." The Ainu of course have no special high-days, no Sundays, no religious services, no prayers, no priests, no sacrificial priests, no churches, and no bells; but they can "swear"; and as the Neapolitans invoke their saints, so they occasionally call the sun, the moon, the fire, and everything else, all sorts of bad names if things do not go as they ought. This "swearing" has been defined as _Ainu praying_ by one authority on the Ainu religion; moreover, the same authority calls the Ainu a "distinctly religious people," and an "exceedingly religious race!" To anyone who visits a country and regards all that he finds from one point of view only, it is not difficult to interpret words and things in accordance with the preconceived idea; but however high the principles sought to be established, I do not consider a man justified in attributing to definite facts an importance and significance to which they have no claim. I have no doubt that a native who had associated with or been in the employment of a Christian would make statements in accordance with his master's belief as it had been taught him; but it is incorrect to offer these "borrowed statements" as the religious beliefs of a whole nation.

I shall not discuss this question at greater length; but for the sake of readers who are interested in the subject it may be well to make two or three more statements before closing this chapter. The Ainu do not know of a heaven and hell; but in one of the latest publications on the aborigines of Japan we are told that they do; and, moreover, that they are fully aware of the resurrection of the body in the other world!

Even assuming, for the moment, that the Ainu are theists, or polytheists, after what we have heard of their gods, this is a somewhat surprising statement. It will be remembered that anything good or bad, dreaded or repulsive, respected or not respected, is qualified by the Ainu as _Kamui_, and we shall attribute for a while the imaginary meaning of "God" to the word. Now, if everything and everybody, good or bad, is equally a god, I myself fail to see the necessity of a hell, as the chances are that all the gods would inhabit heaven. This alone serves to show how absurd the theory is; but I wish to give the exact translation of the words _Kando_ and _Teine-pokna-moshiri_, which are said to be the two Ainu expressions for "heaven" and "hell."

_Kando_ means "sky," not "heaven." _Teine-pokna-moshiri_[41] stands for the "wet earth under(ground)." As the Ainu are in the habit of burying their dead, I find it more rational to apply to the words in question the meaning of a "burial-place," a "cold place of rest" rather than that of Hades or Gehenna.

[41] _Teine_, wet; _pokna_, under; _moshiri_, earth, place, island.

"They" (the Ainu), says a learned missionary, "seem to conceive of men and women as living in large communities in the other world in the same way and under the same conditions as they do in this, excepting that they can know no death." In other words, resurrection of the body and eternal life.

Strange to say, the writer of the same lines asserted in the "Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan,"[42] that "The Ainu _know nothing_ of a resurrection of the body."

[42] Vol. X., Part II., §6.

It must not be argued that because they have no religion the Ainu are bad people. They are far from it. They are decidedly not moral, for nothing is immoral among them. The Ainu must be considered more as animals than as human beings. When we speak of a dog, we do not ask whether it is a moral dog, but only if it is a good dog. The same can be said of the Ainu. We cannot compare them to ourselves, nor judge them by our own standard of morality. Taken by themselves they are gentle, kind, brave, and above everything they are simple. Their language, manners, customs, arts, habits, as we have seen, are the very simplest and rudest possible. Thus, it is absurd to suppose that such simple brains could entertain high religious ideas. If they had brains enough to compass high religious beliefs they would long ago have used those brains in bettering their miserable condition and filthy mode of living. They would have striven to make the beginnings of a history and a literature, or at least to have devised or adopted some mode of writing with which they could preserve these high ideas, and pass them on from generation to generation. Even their language is so poor in words as to hardly express their everyday wants. The Ainu are low in the scale of humanity. They have always been low; they have not sunk, for they have never risen. They have never done any harm in this world, and they will never do any good.

The Ainu are without laws, which, paradoxical as it sounds, to a great extent makes them good. People are never so good as when no harm can be done. There are indeed few crimes among them; no voluntary infanticides; very very rarely murders; no suicides; little theft, and as little treachery among people of the same tribe. Though usually retiring and reserved, they are hospitable on special occasions, and generous with what little they possess. The young show an instinctive reverence for the aged, without considering it a virtue or a duty. Cowardice is despised by the Ainu, but courage, endurance of pain, and hardship, drunkenness, and similar qualities, are looked on as the chief virtues in men. Punishments are seldom inflicted by Ainu on any of their tribesmen, and the crime must indeed be great to raise the whole community against the criminal. If by rare chance some great evil has been done, the chief of the village and all the men assemble, and decide on the punishment to be inflicted. Flogging is the general punishment for the lesser crimes, which, according to Ainu ideas, are theft and assault. The murder of a tribesman is sometimes punished by cutting the tendons of the hands and feet of the murderer, thus disabling him from hunting or fishing. If, however, the man murdered was of another tribe, or a Japanese, this Draconian kind of justice is not administered. Quarrels among tribesmen are settled by private retribution, and no one interferes either one way or the other. These quarrels, however, very seldom occur, as the Ainu are naturally a peaceful people. Imprisonment does not exist, for the simple reason that the Ainu have no prisons. They do not know what a prison is; neither is capital punishment practised by them. According to their own ideas they are not cruel to children, for we seldom see them wilfully ill-treating them; but according to civilised notions Ainu women make shockingly bad mothers. They love, but they do not look after, nor practically take care of, their little ones after these are about a year and a half old; and as to washing them, combing their hair, educating them, or trying to cure them of the thousand and one wretched skin diseases, which come chiefly by their own neglect, an Ainu mother puts her hand to these things no more than the men put theirs to the building of a temple or the creation of a literature. This neglect is not with them, as it would be with us, an intolerable crime, but is the natural result of their animal instinct as contradistinguished from rational development. For if a baby is not old enough at one and a half years of age to take care of himself, he is of no good as an Ainu. It is needless to add that, in these circumstances, most of them are of no good, and that the percentage of infantile deaths is appalling to a civilised mind.