Social structure and spatial application of the name-giving prohibition of the Ainu in the early 1800s

Abstract

It is known that a few influential Ainu, who were accompanied by subordinate persons, hunted and traded freely in the eastern part of Hokkaido, northern Japan. Then, around the 1850s under the influence of policy by the Wajin-Japanese, these influential persons nearly disappeared. Furthermore, it is also known that the name-giving prohibition as an element of Ainu culture was applied widely, not only among individual settlement dwellers, but among the inhabitants of each district in the 1850s. The name-giving prohibition among the Ainu dictated that the name of a living neighbor or a dead person should not be given to another individual. However, neither the social structure nor the name-giving prohibition among the Ainu in the early 1800s has been clearly documented previously. The purpose of this study was to reconstruct the social structure of Ainu society in the early 1800s and to investigate the spatial range of the application of the name-giving prohibition. The findings of the analysis are as follows: 1) The study area consisted of five districts: Etorohu in 1800, Akkeshi in 1803, Shizunai in 1812, Takashima in 1822, and southeast Sakhalin in 1828. The average number of persons who lived in the same household were within the range of 3.4 persons in the Etorohu district to 7.2 persons in southeast Sakhalin (mean 5. 0 persons). Household members were classified into two types : core members and lodgers. The core members of the household consisted of the household head, his or her spouse, and his or her son and / or daughter in many cases. The lodgers of the household consisted of persons who lodged in from other households. The average number of settlement dwellers was within the range of 26. 2 persons in southeast Sakhalin to 51. 2 persons in Akkeshi (mean 33. 5 persons per settlement). 2) A total of 1,386 persons were recognized to be socially subordinate to masters of those, 94.0% (1,303/1,386) of the subordinate persons lodged in the same household with their masters. The presence of lodgers in other households was found in all five districts. Of the total number of households in all five districts, 35.4% (333/941) included at least one lodger from a different household. Especially in southeast Sakhalin, 79.2% (228/288) of the total number of households included at least one lodger. In the case of households including at least one lodger, the number of lodgers per household was within the range of one to 14 persons. The average number of lodgers per household was 4.5 persons. Those four or five persons probably had come to lodge in the same household from many different households, because they were not close relatives. Therefore the ratio of lodgers (the number of lodgers from different households/total number of inhabitants) was 48.8 % (1, 019/2, 089) in southeast Sakhalin. This subordination to others and/or the custom of housing lodgers in other households was recognized as one of the features of the social structure of the Ainu in the early 1800s. 3) In the five districts, no one had the same name as that of a living member within the same household. This was true even in the case of households including nonrelatives as lodgers. The ratio of persons who contravened the prohibition against taking the name of a living neighbor within the same settlement (the number of persons whose names were the same as those of living persons in the same settlement/total number of inhabitants) was within the range of 0% to 0. 09% by district. When the study area is expanded from settlement to district, the ratio of persons who contravened the name-giving prohibition was within the range of 0.3% to 1.69%. The name-giving prohibition was widely applied, not only among individual household members and settlement dwellers, but also among the inhabitants of each district. 4) The five districts studied were located very far from each other. Furthermore, there was difference of three to 28 years among the data collected. Nevertheless, the ratio of persons who contravened the name-giving prohibition dictating that the name of a living neighbor or a dead person should not be given to another individual was only in the range of 0% to 1. 6%. Therefore it is estimated that at least information on the names of living as well as dead persons was exchanged among inhabitants of the five districts. Furthermore, it is also estimated that such information pertaining to individual names was exchanged among inhabitants throughout all Ainu lands, based on the broad distribution of the five districts studied.