"To Absent Us from Humanity:" Ainu and Population Counts under Russian and Japanese Administration
Ph.D. The historical homelands of Ainu, one of the Indigenous peoples of the Sea of Okhotsk region, are split between Russian and Japanese administration. Over the past two centuries, Russo- Japanese competition surrounding the islands we now call Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril archipelago has ha...
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ftgeorgetownuniv:oai:repository.library.georgetown.edu:10822/1064632 2023-10-09T21:55:41+02:00 "To Absent Us from Humanity:" Ainu and Population Counts under Russian and Japanese Administration Hudson, Chelsea Clare Sand, Jordan 2021 PDF 481 leaves http://hdl.handle.net/10822/1064632 en eng Georgetown University http://hdl.handle.net/10822/1064632 Georgetown University-Graduate School of Arts & Sciences History Ainu Census Japan Okhotsk Russia Soviet History Asia -- History Russia -- History Asian history Russian history thesis 2021 ftgeorgetownuniv 2023-09-12T22:46:37Z Ph.D. The historical homelands of Ainu, one of the Indigenous peoples of the Sea of Okhotsk region, are split between Russian and Japanese administration. Over the past two centuries, Russo- Japanese competition surrounding the islands we now call Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril archipelago has had profound effects on Ainu populations, as the repeated redrawing of their territorial borders and revision of their legal status has uprooted entire communities. Today, Ainu descendants across the world may number in the hundreds of thousands, but the only state entity that tracks Ainu populations is the government of Hokkaido prefecture. The central Japanese government does not include an ethnicity category in its national census; the Russian government does not formally recognize the existence of Ainu at all. I argue that population counts played an instrumental role in Ainu administration under Japan, Russia, and the Soviet Union between the beginning of Russo-Japanese territorial tensions in the early 1800s and the aftermath of the Asia-Pacific War in the late 1940s. On a broad scale, Japanese officials relied on population surveys to reinforce the idea that Ainu would vanish as a people via their assimilation into the Japanese nation, their home islands transformed into extensions of the Japanese archipelago. Conversely, Russian officials’ conviction that Ainu were too closely aligned with Japan led to their marginalization in Russian censuses, culminating in their exclusion from the list of minorities of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. In determining the parameters of the census, state officials developed restrictive definitions of Ainu identity based on cultural stereotypes, inaccurate paper records, and even physical appearance that persisted well into the twentieth century. These preconceptions of who could and could not be counted as “Ainu” were at odds with the reality of Ainu lives, as Ainu communities living across the unstable Russo-Japanese border developed complex, overlapping senses of self and ... Thesis Sakhalin Georgetown University: DigitalGeorgetown Home Islands ENVELOPE(-112.378,-112.378,67.964,67.964) Okhotsk Pacific |
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Georgetown University: DigitalGeorgetown |
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ftgeorgetownuniv |
language |
English |
topic |
Ainu Census Japan Okhotsk Russia Soviet History Asia -- History Russia -- History Asian history Russian history |
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Ainu Census Japan Okhotsk Russia Soviet History Asia -- History Russia -- History Asian history Russian history Hudson, Chelsea Clare "To Absent Us from Humanity:" Ainu and Population Counts under Russian and Japanese Administration |
topic_facet |
Ainu Census Japan Okhotsk Russia Soviet History Asia -- History Russia -- History Asian history Russian history |
description |
Ph.D. The historical homelands of Ainu, one of the Indigenous peoples of the Sea of Okhotsk region, are split between Russian and Japanese administration. Over the past two centuries, Russo- Japanese competition surrounding the islands we now call Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril archipelago has had profound effects on Ainu populations, as the repeated redrawing of their territorial borders and revision of their legal status has uprooted entire communities. Today, Ainu descendants across the world may number in the hundreds of thousands, but the only state entity that tracks Ainu populations is the government of Hokkaido prefecture. The central Japanese government does not include an ethnicity category in its national census; the Russian government does not formally recognize the existence of Ainu at all. I argue that population counts played an instrumental role in Ainu administration under Japan, Russia, and the Soviet Union between the beginning of Russo-Japanese territorial tensions in the early 1800s and the aftermath of the Asia-Pacific War in the late 1940s. On a broad scale, Japanese officials relied on population surveys to reinforce the idea that Ainu would vanish as a people via their assimilation into the Japanese nation, their home islands transformed into extensions of the Japanese archipelago. Conversely, Russian officials’ conviction that Ainu were too closely aligned with Japan led to their marginalization in Russian censuses, culminating in their exclusion from the list of minorities of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. In determining the parameters of the census, state officials developed restrictive definitions of Ainu identity based on cultural stereotypes, inaccurate paper records, and even physical appearance that persisted well into the twentieth century. These preconceptions of who could and could not be counted as “Ainu” were at odds with the reality of Ainu lives, as Ainu communities living across the unstable Russo-Japanese border developed complex, overlapping senses of self and ... |
author2 |
Sand, Jordan |
format |
Thesis |
author |
Hudson, Chelsea Clare |
author_facet |
Hudson, Chelsea Clare |
author_sort |
Hudson, Chelsea Clare |
title |
"To Absent Us from Humanity:" Ainu and Population Counts under Russian and Japanese Administration |
title_short |
"To Absent Us from Humanity:" Ainu and Population Counts under Russian and Japanese Administration |
title_full |
"To Absent Us from Humanity:" Ainu and Population Counts under Russian and Japanese Administration |
title_fullStr |
"To Absent Us from Humanity:" Ainu and Population Counts under Russian and Japanese Administration |
title_full_unstemmed |
"To Absent Us from Humanity:" Ainu and Population Counts under Russian and Japanese Administration |
title_sort |
"to absent us from humanity:" ainu and population counts under russian and japanese administration |
publisher |
Georgetown University |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10822/1064632 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-112.378,-112.378,67.964,67.964) |
geographic |
Home Islands Okhotsk Pacific |
geographic_facet |
Home Islands Okhotsk Pacific |
genre |
Sakhalin |
genre_facet |
Sakhalin |
op_source |
Georgetown University-Graduate School of Arts & Sciences History |
op_relation |
http://hdl.handle.net/10822/1064632 |
_version_ |
1779319684344053760 |