Alone With The Hairy Ainu Part 21

The body when standing still is a trifle inclined forward, but when walking the inclination is greatly increased.

The body is well balanced, and this inclination is partly due to the head being abnormally large for the body; also to the habit of keeping the knees slightly bent either when standing still or when in motion.

The women, through carrying heavy weights on the head, are straighter than men when standing as well as when walking without a burden. Their spinal column describes a gentle curve inwards, while with men it has a slight tendency outwards. When an Ainu is standing at rest his arms hang by his side, the palms of the hands are turned inwards with a small inclination towards the front. But a pose which is even more characteristic than this is when both hands are placed in front, the fingers of the right hand overlapping those of the left. When sitting this is their invariable att.i.tude, but in walking the arms hang by the side, and no swing is given to them to help the motion. In running, the arms are bent, and sometimes the hands are kept half opened about the level of the shoulders.

The Ainu legs, notwithstanding their greater muscular power than that of the arms, are neither stout nor well-developed--but they are wiry. The hips are narrow, and the legs are slightly curved.

The gait is energetic but not fast, each step being flat, with the foot firmly planted on the ground. When in motion the feet are perfectly straight, and move parallel to each other, and at each step the heel and toes touch the ground at the same time--an undeniable proof that the body is well balanced when they walk.

The Ainu walk mostly unshod, and the average length of the step in men is twenty-six inches (from heel of left to tip of right foot), and in women about twenty inches. The average number of steps to the minute is ninety-two in men and ninety-eight in women. Where the Ainu is seen at his best is when he is riding bareback. He sits so firmly that animal and rider seem to be only one body. The knees are slightly bent, and the legs and feet hang so that the toes are a great deal lower than the heels, and are also turned in. No voluntary muscular contraction is affected on the muscles of the legs; for if the knees are bent this is because of the shape of the horse's body, and if the rider "sticks" on his steed it is merely by the counterbalance of the dead weight of his two legs. The body of the rider is quite erect when riding gently, but on increasing speed the body is thrown backwards, the legs remaining in the same position. The single rein is held in the right hand resting on the horse's mane, and the left arm habitually hangs or rests on the rider's leg. When feeding in his hut, the Ainu sits cross-legged, but in places where he can lean against something, or out in the open, he squats, bearing his weight on both feet, but with the legs bent to such an extent that his head is on a level with his knees. Often his arms are rested on the knees themselves, and food is pa.s.sed with the hands to the mouth, to be then torn by the teeth. No forks, spoons, or chopsticks are used by the thoroughbred Ainu; but j.a.panese influence has induced some of the more civilised specimens of Volcano Bay and Piratori to give up partly the use of mother Nature's forks and take to the _Hashi_ (chopsticks), also to adopt some ugly tin spoons as the sign of their adherence to civilisation. Lastly, when asleep the Ainu generally lie flat on the back. Sleeping on the right side and resting the head on the bent elbow is also a common posture; and when sleeping for a short period of time during the day I have often seen men still sitting, bring up their legs, cross their arms on their knees, and then rest the head on the arms; thus placidly having a "nap" without waking up with a stiff neck, stiff legs, and "pins and needles" in their arms, which would be the sure result if the average European tried that mode of repose.

Most Ainu have no bedding of any kind, and most of them sleep on hard rough planks or on the ground itself. Some of the people, however, sleep on bear-skins in winter, as it keeps them warm, and the colder the night the closer all the members of the family pack together to warm each other with their natural heat. A strange peculiarity, when Ainu are asleep, lying flat on their back, is, that instead of keeping both legs fully stretched out, one, or sometimes both, are raised and bent, with the sole of the foot planted on the ground. This peculiarity is chiefly noticeable in men, and I have observed it many times, especially in old people. The reason of it is this. The Ainu having no pillow, the head has to be turned so far back to rest on the ground itself that action at the other end of the body is necessary to counterbalance the strain on the spine. I came to this conclusion by being often placed in the same circ.u.mstances as the hairy people themselves, when I found that lying flat on my back on the hard unpillowed ground, if the legs were straightened only a small portion of the spine between the shoulders was supported, but by raising the legs the whole spinal column rested on the level surface.

As we have now seen the Ainu asleep in a "comfortable att.i.tude," we shall leave them for the present, and I shall take my readers to examine their clothes, their ornaments, and their tattoos.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ATZIS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ATZIS, AFTER j.a.pANESE PATTERN.]

CHAPTER XXIV.

Ainu Clothes, Ornaments, and Tattooing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WINTER BEAR-SKIN COAT.]

The Ainu men generally go naked in summer time, but in some parts of Yezo civilisation has forced them to adopt cheap j.a.panese clothes. It must not be supposed from this that the real Ainu never wear any clothes at all, for indeed on grand occasions they dress gaudily enough, but always in a rude, elementary kind of way. For winter use they sew together the skins of either bear or deer, fox or wolf, making a kind of sleeveless jacket, which protects the chest, the shoulders, and the back. Another kind of fur garment of deer-skin is longer and has sleeves, is large at the shoulders, and very narrow at the wrist, as a still further protection against the cold. This deer-skin coat is mostly worn by women as an under-garment. Besides these fur garments for winter weather, they wear the _atzis_, a long reddish-yellow wrapper, made of the woven fibre of the _Ulmus campestris_. It has sleeves similar to the deer-skin coat, only these sleeves are a great deal wider.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BACK OF ATZIS.]

On the southern coast some of the civilised tribes have either adopted j.a.panese _kimonos_ altogether, or make their _atzis_ after the same pattern, to ingratiate themselves with their masters, on the principle of imitation being the sincerest flattery, and perhaps also because they come cheaper in the end. The _atzis_ reaches below the knees, and is folded round the body. It is kept in position by a girdle or belt of the same material, or of bear or sea-lion skin. This _atzis_ is ornamented with embroidery both back and front, round the sleeves, round the neck, and all round the border, or, as we should say, hem. The embroideries are done in j.a.panese coloured cottons and threads. The colours are invariably red, blue, and white, on a background of this yellow _Ulmus campestris_ cloth. They have the same characteristic patterns, and are identical with the ornaments on knife-sheaths, drinking-bowls, moustache-lifters, &c., as the readers will find in the chapter on the "Arts of the Ainu." Men and women wear _atzis_ of the same shape, only those of the women are longer than those of the men, and reach nearly to the feet. Moreover, the patterns which are embroidered on the men's dresses are not considered suitable for the women's, and _vice versa_.

Women--who, by the way, do all these embroideries--have to content themselves with the simplest patterns devisable--a mere thin line of blue st.i.tches; but they give to the men a more elaborate ornament. They first sew on heavy bands of material, which then they embroider in highly complicated patterns, thus giving a much heavier and handsomer appearance to the male _atzis_. In winter the sleeveless fur jacket is sewn over the _atzis_, and, as has been said, women wear the deer-skin gown as an under-garment. Ainu embroideries vary considerably, not only in different tribes and different villages, but also in each family, according to the talent and patience possessed by the embroidress. It takes an affectionate wife a year or longer to ornament the elm-bark dress of her beloved husband, and in the case of a chief's robe the work never comes to an end, as additions are constantly made. Children have an extremely simple embroidery, when any, round the sleeves and hem of the _atzis_, but never any, simple or elaborate, either on the back or front.

I have often seen women working patiently hour after hour while sitting on the tiny door of their storehouses; and the result of their labour would be half an inch of coa.r.s.e st.i.tching, which for them was a great work of art. Most Ainu now possess needles of j.a.panese manufacture, but in former days they had only bone needles, and instead of fine well-dyed j.a.panese thread were obliged to be content with the fibre of the elm tree dyed black. The ornamentations on the _atzis_ of Ainu who have no j.a.panese needles are necessarily a great deal coa.r.s.er and simpler than those which are done with steel needles and cotton threads. The essential characteristics are the same in both. In sewing together skins for winter garments fish-bone needles are often used up to this day.

These embroidered clothes, when new, are only worn on grand occasions, as at a bear festival, or when paying a visit to a neighbouring village.

A few rags const.i.tute the usual every-day costume, and no difference is made between the in-door and the out-of-door clothing. In fact, most Ainu sleep in their clothes, such as they are.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "HOSHI."]

One article of dress which is worn by all alike, young and old, male or female, is the _hoshi_, or leggings. Like their gowns, these are sometimes made of the inner fibre of the elm-tree bark and sometimes of rushes and reeds plaited as in the ordinary rush matting. When of elm-tree bark, they are often embroidered in the upper part, as can be seen in the ill.u.s.tration. They are fastened just under the knee by means of the two upper strings, then wrapped tightly round the leg and bound round the ankle with the lower and longer ribbon. The Ainu go barefooted in the summer, but during the winter months, when the cold is too severe for this, they cover their feet with moca.s.sins and long boots made of salmon-skin, and often of deer-skin. When the Ainu goes for a long journey or a hunt, during which he has to traverse rough ground, he generally protects his skin boots--the soles of which would soon be destroyed by the sharp stones and ice--by slipping over them a pair of thick rope sandals, which protect the sides, the back, the toes, and sole of the foot. If to this inventory be added a head-gear consisting of a band wound round the head, and an occasional ap.r.o.n, the whole of the Ainu wardrobe is catalogued. This band, which is worn princ.i.p.ally by women, is untied and removed when saluting or meeting a man, whether on the road or in the woods. A j.a.panese towel often takes the place of the native manufacture. I am inclined to think that this custom of covering the head has been acquired from the j.a.panese, as none of the Ainu of the Upper Tokachi--the only pure ones remaining--wore anything in the shape of band or kerchief, while it is extremely common with the Ainu of Volcano Bay and Piratori to wear these unbecoming towels. At Piratori the Ainu women give a more artistic character to this ugly headgear by embroidering it in front and wearing it like a tiara. An ap.r.o.n is occasionally worn by Ainu, but this too, in my opinion, has been borrowed from the j.a.panese. Ainu clothes often get undone, owing to their shape, and therefore Ainu men sometimes wear these ap.r.o.ns, but rather because they are made to wear them than from native modesty or inclination to be commonly decent. I have seen Ainu on the north-east coast of Yezo and on Lake Kutcharo wear coa.r.s.e hats of matted rushes.

When laid flat, these hats have a diameter of about thirty inches; but when worn, they are folded in two, and kept in this position by a string tied under the chin and pa.s.sed through the hat. They are used princ.i.p.ally in winter as a protection against the snow. The Ainu care more to adorn than to clothe themselves. A few gla.s.s beads, a metal earring, a silver coin, or anything that shines, can make a man or a woman as happy as a king. Intoxicants come first of all things, but after them there is nothing in this world that Ainu cherish more than personal ornaments, and this is, of course, even truer of women than of men. What strikes a stranger when looking at an Ainu for the first time is, as I have already said, the size of their metal earrings and heavy gla.s.s necklaces. As the Ainu cannot work in metals or make gla.s.s, these ornaments have been purchased from j.a.panese, Chinese, and Corean adventurers, and many costly skins of bears, foxes, wolves, or seals are gaily bartered for a few beads, worth next to nothing. The Ainu is fond of metals, but he does not know the difference between one and the other. All that glitters is gold for him; and if it is not gold then it must be silver. Therefore some Ainu are known to have invested all their fortune of valuable furs for a pair of bra.s.s earrings, and, what is more, they have never grudged the bargain! Previous to the importation of these worthless articles their ornaments were made of wood, bone, and sh.e.l.ls, of which "survivals" are still to be seen with the Ainu of the Upper Tokachi.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOOTS TO BE SOAKED IN WATER SO AS TO TAKE SHAPE OF FOOT, AND TO BE KEPT UP WITH A STRING.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DEER-SKIN SHOE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TARRA OR HEAD-BAND.]

The large circular earrings are much prized: men and women alike wear them. Many men, however, do not wear these metal earrings, but prefer instead a long strip of red or black cloth, or skin.

The lobes of the ears are frequently torn down by wearing these heavy earrings from early childhood, and they know not how to mend them by sewing them. Another hole is sometimes bored in the upper and sound part.

Ainu women of civilised districts occasionally wear metal finger-rings, but these are of course of foreign make, and imported.

Ainu _menokos_ (girls) seem to have no partiality for bracelets or amulets, but necklaces are the dream of their life. The delight of an Ainu woman in a new necklace is in proportion to the size and number of the beads. A woman who possesses one of extra large beads is envied by all her less fortunate neighbours; and she who has several strings is at once admired and hated by all the womankind of the village. For, indeed, Ainu women are "human" enough to know how to hate each other! The beads which most take their fancy are the blue, black, white, or metal ones.

The larger beads in the necklace are in front; and the rough wooden pendants with bits of bone, metal, or broken beads inlaid in it, which hang to the necklace, rest on the breast. Large j.a.panese sword-hilts are often used as pendants by the Volcano Bay natives.

The Ainu of the Upper Tokachi region had none of these beads, but a rough wooden pendant was suspended round their neck by a leather string.

Girdles are worn by men and women for two purposes--first, to keep their clothes together; next, to support the large knives which the Ainu always carry with them.

The Ishikari Ainu who lived formerly in Sakhalin wear leather belts, and the women wear besides a peculiar cloth headgear. Both these articles are ornamented with drops of melted lead and Chinese cash sewn on to the cloth.

These are all the articles of clothing and ornament which are in common use among the Ainu. None of them are worn as symbols of rank, or to denote virginity. No Ainu can explain why he or she wears one thing more than another, except for the reason that he or she likes it. There are no Ainu laws as regards clothing, and with the exception of the "chief,"

who on special occasions dresses more gaudily, and wears a crown made either of willow-tree shavings or dried sea-weed, with a small carved-wood bear head in front, they all dress pretty much alike. A chief could not be distinguished from a commoner by his everyday clothing.

Speaking of personal ornamentation, I may as well describe the way in which the hair is dressed, and also the tattoo-marks.

Little care is taken of the long hair, which reaches down to the shoulders. It is never washed, nor brushed, nor combed. At the back it is cut in a semicircle round the neck. Over the forehead the men shave a small part of the long hair, which, falling over their eyes, is uncomfortable to them; but women do not. Until lately this shaving was done with sharp sh.e.l.ls, and wives shaved their husbands. The process was said to be rather painful, and the thoughtful women have now adopted knives for that purpose, to the great delight of the stronger s.e.x. The part shaved is in the shape of a lozenge two and a half inches by two inches respectively from angle to angle. This open s.p.a.ce causes the hair to part in two different directions and hang down in large wavy curls.

The fingers are occasionally pa.s.sed through it, and then with the palms of the hands it is plastered down on both sides.

A characteristic Ainu method of making the morning "toilette" is to bend the head low and let the long hair fall over the forehead. The two hands are then placed under it on the temples, and suddenly and violently the head is shaken and thrown back, the hair being pressed down by the hands at the same time. If the first attempt at neatness is not approved of, the process is repeated two or more times. I must confess that personally I could seldom see any marked difference between a head of hair "dressed" and one "not dressed"; but it must be remembered that the Ainu have no looking-gla.s.ses, and what they think is right is of course right for them.

Formerly, when an old woman lost her husband she had her head entirely shaved, and when the hair had grown long again she repeated the process as a proof of fidelity and affection to her deceased spouse. It is very rarely done now. She used to wear a sort of cap, with an aperture at the top, round the crown of the head during the time that her hair was short; and it was inc.u.mbent on the widow to wear a look of sorrow and pain till her hair grew long again.

The Ainu men have long beards and moustaches, which are never trimmed, with the exception of the Kurilsky Ainu, who trim theirs. The beard begins to grow when they are very young, but it is shaved till they reach manhood. It is then left to grow naturally, and never touched again as long as they live. Ainu women, whom nature has not favoured with such a manly ornament, supplement their deficiency by having a long moustache tattooed on their lips. Their hands and arms are also tattooed.

The tattooing among the Ainu is limited to the fair s.e.x, and it is confined to the head and arms. Why and when the fashion was adopted is not known, and the semi-Ainu legends on the subject are very vague. One legend says that when the Ainu conquered Yezo, which was then inhabited by a race of dwarfs--"the Koro-pok-kuru"--some Koro-pok-kuru women came to the Ainu camp to beg food from them, and they did so by pa.s.sing their arms through the reed walls of the Ainu huts. One day an Ainu clutched one of these arms and pulled it in, when a tattooed pattern on the tiny arm was greatly admired by the hairy conquerors, who adopted the practice from that day.

A simpler reason is that the women, not being so hairy as the men, are humiliated by their inferiority in that respect, and try to make up for it by tattooing themselves. In support of this theory may be quoted the fact that women are only tattooed in parts which are left uncovered when clad in their long _atzis_ gowns.

The Ainu process of tattooing is a painful one. The tattoo marks are usually done with the point of a knife; not with tattooing needles, as by the j.a.panese. Many incisions are cut nearly parallel to each other.

These are then filled with cuttlefish-black. Sometimes smoke-black mixed with the blood from the incisions is used instead. On the lips the operation is so painful that it has to be done by instalments. It is begun with a small semicircle on the upper lip when the girl is only two or three years of age, and a few incisions are added every year till she is married, the moustache then reaching nearly to the ears, where at its completion it ends in a point. Both lips are surrounded by it; but not all women are thus marked. Some have no more than a semicircular tattoo on the upper lip; others have an additional semicircle under the lower lip; and many get tired of the painful process when the tattoo is hardly large enough to surround their lips. The father of the girl is generally the operator, but occasionally it is the mother who "decorates" the lips and arms of her female offspring. Besides this tattooed moustache, a horizontal line joins the eyebrows, and another line, parallel to it, runs across the forehead. The tattoo could not be of a coa.r.s.er kind. A rough geometrical drawing adorns the arms and hands of women, the pattern of one arm being often different from that of the other.

Frequently only one arm is tattooed. I never saw tattoos that went further than the elbow, neither did I see any other part of the body tattooed. The four specimens given in the ill.u.s.tration show the patterns most usual in different tribes, though each individual has some slight variations.

Fig. 1 was copied by me from the arm of a woman at Frishikobets (Tokachi River); Figs. 2 and 3 are the two arms of Kawata Tera, a girl of Tobuts (north-east coast of Yezo); and Fig. 4 is the left arm of a girl at Piratori.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TATTOO-MARKS ON WOMEN'S ARMS.]

It will be noticed that in the regions where the Ainu have come in contact with j.a.panese, rings are tattooed round the fingers, while the Tokachi Ainu women have none. In the two arms of Kawata Tera (Figs. 2 and 3) the dissimilarity of the two patterns is very marked at first sight, but on a close examination it is easy to perceive that the operator meant to carry out the same pattern on the right arm as on the left; only through his incapacity to reproduce correctly his former lines, or for other reasons, he got muddled up in the design, and left his work unfinished. If all the lines in the upper half of Fig. 3 were continued, the design would be very similar to Fig. 2.

Tattooing is considered an ornament, besides, as I have already mentioned, adding the coveted air of "virility" to women. There is no religious feeling connected with it, and the practice is rapidly dying out, as the j.a.panese men make fun of the Ainu women, who after all only tattoo their mouths and arms, while they themselves often tattoo the whole of the body. The Ainu have no rules as to when the girls are to be operated on. They are done both before and after marriage, contrary to what has been said, that the women do not tattoo themselves after they have become wives. The moustache is generally finished before a girl gets married, as she herself is anxious to be thus decorated; but there are no rules as to virginity or marriage, for the arms and hands are as often tattooed after marriage as before. Indeed, in the Ainu country, "tattooing" one's wife seems to be one of the pleasures of the honeymoon. The design of these tattoos is meant to be, but is seldom, symmetrical. The Ainu apparently execute these designs on a preconceived plan, but the results rarely come up to expectation, as no drawing of the design is prepared beforehand. The bluish-black colour of the tattoo is very permanent and strong, and many an Ainu woman is disfigured for life, who, according to our ideas, would otherwise be good-looking.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SNOW-SHOES.]