From the History of the Sakhalin Ainu – Forced Migrants, 1875-1948

Abstract

Over the course of their long history, the Ainu people retained their cultural identity in the Far Eastern Islands (Honshu, Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril). In the nineteenth century, the Ainu were still subdivided into the Kuril, Sakhalin (Karafuto), and Hokkaido groups, which had distinct ways of life and language dialects. The article discusses some aspects of the history of the group of Sakhalin Ainu (endonym: enchiw) in 1875-1948 and focuses on the causes of their forced migrations as well as the specificities of their assimilation in the context of confrontation between Russia and Japan in the Far East. During the period under consideration, the people experienced three migration waves: in 1875, a part of the population was forcibly displaced and resettled to Hokkaido; in 1905, following the defeat of Russia in the war with Japan, the people returned to Sakhalin; during the third migration of the late 1940s, nearly all of the Sakhalin Ainu abandoned their native lands, and they live in Japan nowadays.