This is the first in a two part series on the people living to the Northeast of Yamato, in the areas of Tohoku and Hokkaido. They are called in the Chronicles, the Emishi and the Mishihase, and these designations appear to refer to areas that include the Epi-Jomon and later Satsumon cultures as well as members of the Okhotsk Sea Culture, all archaeological designations for various people whom we know primarily through their archaeological remains. We also discuss a bit about how all of this ties in (or doesn't) with the modern Ainu, and why we don't necessarily use that term until much later in the historical record.

For more, check out our podcast blog at: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-116

Rough Transcript

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 116: The People of the North, Part 1

A soldier stood watch on the Nutari Barrier. It was only a few years old—built to define and defend the boundaries between the lands under Yamato rule and the untamed wilds, beyond. Looking behind him, the soldier could see the smoke from the nearby settlement, also newly constructed, which would supply him and his fellow guards with food and clothing while they took their turn at the border.

Looking outwards, the soldier wondered what life beyond the barrier was like. He had seen people crossing through, mostly with various trade goods. For the most part, they didn’t seem all that different, but he had heard stories: stories of wild men and women who lived in caves and slept under the trees. They were hunters who knew the woods and could easily slip through areas that didn’t even have roads. As one traveled further north, things grew only more wild and untamed—or so the stories said. Giant bears with paws as large as a human head roamed the land—he’d seen a skin once and it was massive. The people of the north fought with them and, or so he’d heard, even kept them as pets.

Further, well beyond the pale, there were people who lived on the sea. They traveled between islands in the frozen north, and hunted the beasts of the ocean. They were few, but they were mighty people.

A chill went through the soldier’s spine. He’d only ever heard stories of most of these outsiders, and even then it was hard to tell what was truth and what was merely exaggeration. He had never actually gone out to see it himself, though he’d met some who claimed they had.

It gave him some sense of worth that he was out here, defending the settled, civilized lands of his people from the wild, ungoverned tribes beyond the border. That said, he hoped with all his heart that things remained peaceful. Yes, it would certainly be better that way for all involved.

We are just starting out the second reign of Takara Hime, which started in the year 655. For her first reign, the Chroniclers would give her the title of Kougyoku Tennou, but when she retook the throne they named her Saimei.

As we talked about in the last couple of episodes, there was a lot going on at this point, not just on the archipelago, but in the rest of Asia as well. We’ll summarize that briefly just to set the stage for the beginning of Takara Hime’s reign, but this episode we’re going to primarily focus on the expansion of Yamato authority throughout the rest of the archipelago, or at least the rest of Honshu. In this context, we’ll be talking extensively about the people that the Chronicles call the Emishi, since this section of the Chronicles contains numerous entries that give us our clearest look, to date, at who they were, at least from a Yamato perspective. We’ll also be looking at another group in the north, known to us as the Mishihase, for whom we have even less information.

As this whole episode got a bit long, we are going to be doing this in two parts. This episode, I’d like to introduce you to some of the terms, discuss some of the problems and considerations around these topics, and touch on what we know based largely on the archaeological record. In the second episode we’ll focus on the narrative as it appears in the Nihon Shoki, which hopefully will be something that makes more sense once we have that archaeological context. While there are certainly some things that appear to coincide between the two narratives, there are a lot of differences. Archaeology can help us understand the material culture, and give us some insights into the lifeways of a particular group of people, but it doesn’t let us know what they said, and rarely gives us information about a particular event.

Before we dive into this, I think it would be useful to touch on terms that we are going to be using this episode, and next. I mention this because while we are dealing with the past, our story of the past is very much affecting the lives of people in the present. Most specifically, the lives of the Ainu people of Hokkaido, and how their history and experience intertwines with the concept of the “Emishi” that we see in the Chronicles. So let’s explore these terms, and see where it takes us.

First, I should probably make a note about the difference between “Wa” and “Yamato”, at least as I’m using it in this episode. When I use “Wa” I’ll be referring to the ethnic group, while “Yamato” refers to the state. For the most part, as we are focused on the historical state forming in central Honshu, we’ll talk about Yamato, or the State of Yamato. That is a political entity that is majority Wa in its make-up, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t Wa people outside of the Yamato state, nor that Yamato was made up of only people who identified, ethnically as Wa. As we’ve seen, the Yamato state also included immigrants who identified as people of Baekje, Silla, Goguryeo, and even Emishi.

Next, the Emishi. The term “Emishi” is an exonym used by Yamato to describe those who are outside of Yamato’s borders and controls, especially up in Tohoku. By “exonym”, I mean that it’s a term imposed from outside – in this case, by Yamato – on the group of people known as the Emishi, because we really don’t know what they called themselves.

Moreover, the term “Emishi” is complex, and doesn’t necessarily describe a single, monolithic ethnic group or culture – more a group of possible ethnicities, that occupied a particular “slot” relative to Yamato cultural identity, namely that of outsiders. The Chronicles refer to several different geographic regions as “Emishi”, situated relative to the core of the Yamato polity -- but the archeological evidence is much more nuanced.

A prime example are the studies carried out on the “Emishi” mummies of the Oshu Fujiwara, a 12th century ruling elite who lived in Hiraizumi and who were considered “Emishi” by the court in Heian-kyo—modern Kyoto. In studying the mummies, it was determined that they were closely related to the Wa people of Japan and the Kinki region. This finding is important and I’ll come back to it in a bit, but the takeaway is that “Emishi” doesn’t automatically mean physical or cultural differences like we might assume. There were likely ethnic Wa Emishi, along with Emishi who were more closely connected with the indigenous people—descendants of the Jomon and possible ancestors to the later Ainu people.

Finally, the Ainu. It’s extremely likely that some of the people that the Chroniclers called “Emishi” may have been the ancestors of the Ainu people of today. But the correspondence is definitely not one-to-one, as some historians used to think. And since this is a sensitive topic with ongoing patterns of inequity and silenced voices, it’s important to lay some groundwork before going further. For my part, I would like to do my best to introduce the people and the history as we know it with as little bias as I can manage, but please realize that there are certainly controversies around this area and open wounds that have not yet healed.

The modern Ainu are the indigenous inhabitants of Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Kuril islands. They also once inhabited the very northern part of Tohoku. In their own language, Ainu Itak, these islands are part of Ainu Mosir, the Lands of the Ainu, and “Ainu” itself is simply a word for “humans” or “people”. While there are many cultural and linguistic ties to the Japanese—they have been neighbors for centuries—they are culturally distinct, and their language, Ainu Itak, is considered a linguistic isolate, with no known relatives outside of the Ainu homelands.

The relationship between the Ainu and the Wa people—the general term for ethnic Japanese—has been one of tension and conflict born of colonization. In the 19th century in particular, the nation of Japan claimed Hokkaido and began to settle it. The wide open spaces were great for new industries, such as cattle ranching, which could supply dairy and beef, two things that had come into vogue with other aspects of Western culture. I won’t get into the entire history of it, but the Japanese government used tactics similar to those used in the United States against indigenous populations, often forcing people to speak Japanese instead of their native language in a paternalistic attempt to quote-unquote “civilize” the Ainu people. Only relatively recently have the Ainu been accorded some protections in Japanese law.

For our part, the study of Ainu history has long been one conduct...