The Plural Society of the Ainus and the Japanese in Hokkaido

Abstract

i) Similar facts to those found in the so-calld “plural society” of the white and the native in south-eastern Asia may be observed, in the process of Japanese modernization, everywhere in japan, for instance in the suburbs of some large cities and isolated mountain villages. Especially in Hokkaido social contact and assimilation between the Ainus, the minority, and the Japanese in the process of Japanese colonization provides a typical case of the formation and dissolution of a plural society.
ii) In the commercial colony period before the 17th century the plural society had not yet been formed in Hokkaido, but in the 18th century many fishery colonies were built at different parts on the sea coast of the island and the exploitation colony period then attained continued till the Meiji Era opened. During this period Japanese merchant colonists carried on many fishery colonies employing many native Ainus by compulsion, and as the social contact between Ainus and Japanese became closer and closer, a sort of plural society was formed.
iii) Since the Meiji era, Hokkaido, it may be said, has been an emigration colony of Japan and as the number of the Japanese immigrants there increased rapidly, the Ainus come to form the racial minority. By this time the Ainus had compelled to give up hunting and fishing on which they had once lived and turn to agriculture. Thus they were assimilated economically, socially and culturally with the Japanese. Then the half-breeds between the two races gradually increased, and the plural society entered the stage of dissolution.
iv) This blood-mix process has greatly advanced by to-day, and the present Ainus, whose number amounts to about 17000, are mostly half-breed. But the blood difference that still remains and is taken into consideration in such cases as marriage prevents the complete assimilation of the Ainus with the Japanese. Accordingly the plural society of the two races cannot by expected to disappear completely. In the Biratori district on the Saru River of south-west Hokkaido, a region where large Ainu groups still exist, the above-mentioned process has been most typical. The Ainu people in the district hesitate leaving their native place, chiefly because they have their reserved farm land there, though there are several reasons beside this. Thus the Ainu community is now still maintained there.