Aino Clothing—Holiday Dress—Domestic Architecture—Household Gods—Japanese
Curios—The Necessaries of Life—Clay Soup—Arrow Poison—Arrow-Traps—Female
Occupations—Bark Cloth—The Art of Weaving.
AINO clothing, for savages, is exceptionally good. In the winter it
consists of one, two, or more coats of skins, with hoods of the same, to
which the men add rude moccasins when they go out hunting. In summer
they wear kimonos, or loose coats, made of cloth woven from the split
bark of a forest tree. This is a durable and beautiful fabric in various
shades of natural buff, and somewhat resembles what is known to fancy
workers as “Panama canvas.” Under this a skin or bark-cloth vest may or
may not be worn. The men wear these coats reaching a little below the
knees, folded over from right to left, and confined at the waist by a
narrow girdle of the same cloth, to which is attached a rude,
dagger-shaped knife, with a carved and engraved wooden handle and sheath.
Smoking is by no means a general practice; consequently the pipe and
tobacco-box are not, as with the Japanese, a part of ordinary male
attire. Tightly-fitting leggings, either of bark-cloth or skin, are worn
by both sexes, but neither shoes nor sandals. The coat worn by the women
reaches half-way between the knees and ankles, and is quite loose and
without a girdle. It is fastened the whole way up to the collar-bone;
and not only is the Aino woman completely covered, but she will not
change one garment for another except alone or in the dark. Lately a
Japanese woman at Sarufuto took an Aino woman into her house, and
insisted on her taking a bath, which she absolutely refused to do till
the bath-house had been made quite private by means of screens. On the
Japanese woman going back a little later to see what had become of her,
she found her sitting in the water in her clothes; and on being
remonstrated with, she said that the gods would be angry if they saw her
without clothes!
Many of the garments for holiday occasions are exceedingly handsome,
being decorated with “geometrical” patterns, in which the “Greek fret”
takes part, in coarse blue cotton, braided most dexterously with scarlet
and white thread. Some of the handsomest take half a year to make. The
masculine dress is completed by an apron of oblong shape decorated in the
same elaborate manner. These handsome savages, with their powerful
physique, look remarkably well in their best clothes. I have not seen a
boy or girl above nine who is not thoroughly clothed. The “jewels” of
the women are large, hoop earrings of silver or pewter, with attachments
of a classical pattern, and silver neck ornaments, and a few have brass
bracelets soldered upon their arms. The women have a perfect passion for
every hue of red, and I have made friends with them by dividing among
them a large turkey-red silk handkerchief, strips of which are already
being utilised for the ornamenting of coats.
The houses in the five villages up here are very good. So they are at
Horobets, but at Shiraôi, where the aborigines suffer from the close
proximity of several grog shops, they are inferior. They differ in many
ways from any that I have before seen, approaching most nearly to the
grass houses of the natives of Hawaii. Custom does not appear to permit
either of variety or innovations; in all the style is the same, and the
difference consists in the size and plenishings. The dwellings seem
ill-fitted for a rigorous climate, but the same thing may be said of
those of the Japanese. In their houses, as in their faces, the Ainos are
more European than their conquerors, as they possess doorways, windows,
central fireplaces, like those of the Highlanders of Scotland, and raised
sleeping-places.
The usual appearance is that of a small house built on at the end of a
larger one. The small house is the vestibule or ante-room, and is
entered by a low doorway screened by a heavy mat of reeds. It contains
the large wooden mortar and pestle with two ends, used for pounding
millet, a wooden receptacle for millet, nets or hunting gear, and some
bundles of reeds for repairing roof or walls. This room never contains a
window. From it the large room is entered by a doorway, over which a
heavy reed-mat, bound with hide, invariably hangs. This room in Benri’s
case is 35 feet long by 25 feet broad, another is 45 feet square, the
smallest measures 20 feet by 15. On entering, one is much impressed by
the great height and steepness of the roof, altogether out of proportion
to the height of the walls.
The frame of the house is of posts, 4 feet 10 inches high, placed 4 feet
apart, and sloping slightly inwards. The height of the walls is
apparently regulated by that of the reeds, of which only one length is
used, and which never exceed 4 feet 10 inches. The posts are scooped at
the top, and heavy poles, resting on the scoops, are laid along them to
form the top of the wall. The posts are again connected twice by
slighter poles tied on horizontally. The wall is double; the outer part
being formed of reeds tied very neatly to the framework in small, regular
bundles, the inner layer or wall being made of reeds attached singly.
From the top of the pole, which is secured to the top of the posts, the
framework of the roof rises to a height of twenty-two feet, made, like
the rest, of poles tied to a heavy and roughly-hewn ridge-beam. At one
end under the ridge-beam there is a large triangular aperture for the
exit of smoke. Two very stout, roughly-hewn beams cross the width of the
house, resting on the posts of the wall, and on props let into the floor,
and a number of poles are laid at the same height, by means of which a
secondary roof formed of mats can be at once extemporised, but this is
only used for guests. These poles answer the same purpose as shelves.
Very great care is bestowed upon the outside of the roof, which is a
marvel of neatness and prettiness, and has the appearance of a series of
frills being thatched in ridges. The ridge-pole is very thickly covered,
and the thatch both there and at the corners is elaborately laced with a
pattern in strong peeled twigs. The poles, which, for much of the room,
run from wall to wall, compel one to stoop, to avoid fracturing one’s
skull, and bringing down spears, bows and arrows, arrow-traps, and other
primitive property. The roof and rafters are black and shiny from wood
smoke. Immediately under them, at one end and one side, are small,
square windows, which are closed at night by wooden shutters, which
during the day-time hang by ropes. Nothing is a greater insult to an
Aino than to look in at his window.
On the left of the doorway is invariably a fixed wooden platform,
eighteen inches high, and covered with a single mat, which is the
sleeping-place. The pillows are small stiff bolsters, covered with
ornamental matting. If the family be large there are several of these
sleeping platforms. A pole runs horizontally at a fitting distance above
the outside edge of each, over which mats are thrown to conceal the
sleepers from the rest of the room. The inside half of these mats is
plain, but the outside, which is seen from the room, has a diamond
pattern woven into it in dull reds and browns. The whole floor is
covered with a very coarse reed-mat, with interstices half an inch wide.
The fireplace, which is six feet long, is oblong. Above it, on a very
black and elaborate framework, hangs a very black and shiny mat, whose
superfluous soot forms the basis of the stain used in tattooing, and
whose apparent purpose is to prevent the smoke ascending, and to diffuse
it equally throughout the room. From this framework depends the great
cooking-pot, which plays a most important part in Aino economy.
Household gods form an essential part of the furnishing of every house.
In this one, at the left of the entrance, there are ten white wands, with
shavings depending from the upper end, stuck in the wall; another
projects from the window which faces the sunrise, and the great god—a
white post, two feet high, with spirals of shavings depending from the
top—is always planted in the floor, near the wall, on the left side,
opposite the fire, between the platform bed of the householder and the
low, broad shelf placed invariably on the same side, and which is a
singular feature of all Aino houses, coast and mountain, down to the
poorest, containing, as it does, Japanese curios, many of them very
valuable objects of antique art, though much destroyed by damp and dust.
They are true curiosities in the dwellings of these northern aborigines,
and look almost solemn ranged against the wall. In this house there are
twenty-four lacquered urns, or tea-chests, or seats, each standing two
feet high on four small legs, shod with engraved or filigree brass.
Behind these are eight lacquered tubs, and a number of bowls and lacquer
trays, and above are spears with inlaid handles, and fine Kaga and Awata
bowls. The lacquer is good, and several of the urns have _daimiyô’s_
crests in gold upon them. One urn and a large covered bowl are
beautifully inlaid with Venus’ ear. The great urns are to be seen in
every house, and in addition there are suits of inlaid armour, and swords
with inlaid hilts, engraved blades, and _répoussé_ scabbards, for which a
collector would give almost anything. No offers, however liberal, can
tempt them to sell any of these antique possessions. “They were
presents,” they say in their low, musical voices; “they were presents
from those who were kind to our fathers; no, we cannot sell them; they
were presents.” And so gold lacquer, and pearl inlaying, and gold
niello-work, and _daimiyô’s_ crests in gold, continue to gleam in the
smoky darkness of their huts. Some of these things were doubtless gifts
to their fathers when they went to pay tribute to the representative of
the Shôgun and the Prince of Matsumæ, soon after the conquest of Yezo.
Others were probably gifts from _samurai_, who took refuge here during
the rebellion, and some must have been obtained by barter. They are the
one possession which they will not barter for _saké_, and are only parted
with in payment of fines at the command of a chief, or as the dower of a
girl.
[Picture: Aino Gods]
Except in the poorest houses, where the people can only afford to lay
down a mat for a guest, they cover the coarse mat with fine ones on each
side of the fire. These mats and the bark-cloth are really their only
manufactures. They are made of fine reeds, with a pattern in dull reds
or browns, and are 14 feet long by 3 feet 6 inches wide. It takes a
woman eight days to make one of them. In every house there are one or
two movable platforms 6 feet by 4 and 14 inches high, which are placed at
the head of the fireplace, and on which guests sit and sleep on a
bearskin or a fine mat. In many houses there are broad seats a few
inches high, on which the elder men sit cross-legged, as their custom is,
not squatting Japanese fashion on the heels. A water-tub always rests on
a stand by the door, and the dried fish and venison or bear for daily use
hang from the rafters, as well as a few skins. Besides these things
there are a few absolute necessaries,—lacquer or wooden bowls for food
and _saké_, a chopping-board and rude chopping-knife, a cleft-stick for
burning strips of birch-bark, a triply-cleft stick for supporting the
potsherd in which, on rare occasions, they burn a wick with oil, the
component parts of their rude loom, the bark of which they make their
clothes, the reeds of which they make their mats,—and the inventory of
the essentials of their life is nearly complete. No iron enters into the
construction of their houses, its place being supplied by a remarkably
tenacious fibre.
[Picture: Plan of an Aino House]
I have before described the preparation of their food, which usually
consists of a stew “of abominable things.” They eat salt and fresh fish,
dried fish, seaweed, slugs, the various vegetables which grow in the
wilderness of tall weeds which surrounds their villages, wild roots and
berries, fresh and dried venison and bear; their carnival consisting of
fresh bear’s flesh and _saké_, seaweed, mushrooms, and anything they can
get, in fact, which is not poisonous, mixing everything up together.
They use a wooden spoon for stirring, and eat with chopsticks. They have
only two regular meals a day, but eat very heartily. In addition to the
eatables just mentioned they have a thick soup made from a putty-like
clay which is found in one or two of the valleys. This is boiled with
the bulb of a wild lily, and, after much of the clay has been allowed to
settle, the liquid, which is very thick, is poured off. In the north, a
valley where this earth is found is called Tsie-toi-nai, literally
“eat-earth-valley.”
The men spend the autumn, winter, and spring in hunting deer and bears.
Part of their tribute or taxes is paid in skins, and they subsist on the
dried meat. Up to about this time the Ainos have obtained these beasts
by means of poisoned arrows, arrow-traps, and pitfalls, but the Japanese
Government has prohibited the use of poison and arrow-traps, and these
men say that hunting is becoming extremely difficult, as the wild animals
are driven back farther and farther into the mountains by the sound of
the guns. However, they add significantly, “the eyes of the Japanese
Government are not in every place!”
Their bows are only three feet long, and are made of stout saplings with
the bark on, and there is no attempt to render them light or shapely at
the ends. The wood is singularly inelastic. The arrows (of which I have
obtained a number) are very peculiar, and are made in three pieces, the
point consisting of a sharpened piece of bone with an elongated cavity on
one side for the reception of the poison. This point or head is very
slightly fastened by a lashing of bark to a fusiform piece of bone about
four inches long, which is in its turn lashed to a shaft about fourteen
inches long, the other end of which is sometimes equipped with a triple
feather and sometimes is not.
The poison is placed in the elongated cavity in the head in a very soft
state, and hardens afterwards. In some of the arrow-heads fully half a
teaspoonful of the paste is inserted. From the nature of the very slight
lashings which attach the arrow-head to the shaft, it constantly remains
fixed in the slight wound that it makes, while the shaft falls off.
Pipichari has given me a small quantity of the poisonous paste, and has
also taken me to see the plant from the root of which it is made, the
_Aconitum Japonicum_, a monkshood, whose tall spikes of blue flowers are
brightening the brushwood in all directions. The root is pounded into a
pulp, mixed with a reddish earth like an iron ore pulverised, and again
with animal fat, before being placed in the arrow. It has been said that
the poison is prepared for use by being buried in the earth, but Benri
says that this is needless. They claim for it that a single wound kills
a bear in ten minutes, but that the flesh is not rendered unfit for
eating, though they take the precaution of cutting away a considerable
quantity of it round the wound.
[Picture: Weaver’s Shuttle]
Dr. Eldridge, formerly of Hakodaté, obtained a small quantity of the
poison, and, after trying some experiments with it, came to the
conclusion that it is less virulent than other poisons employed for a
like purpose, as by the natives of Java, the Bushmen, and certain tribes
of the Amazon and Orinoco. The Ainos say that if a man is accidentally
wounded by a poisoned arrow the only cure is immediate excision of the
part.
I do not wonder that the Government has prohibited arrow-traps, for they
made locomotion unsafe, and it is still unsafe a little farther north,
where the hunters are more out of observation than here. The traps
consist of a large bow with a poisoned arrow, fixed in such a way that
when the bear walks over a cord which is attached to it he is
simultaneously transfixed. I have seen as many as fifty in one house.
The simple contrivance for inflicting this silent death is most
ingenious.
The women are occupied all day, as I have before said. They look
cheerful, and even merry when they smile, and are not like the Japanese,
prematurely old, partly perhaps because their houses are well ventilated,
and the use of charcoal is unknown. I do not think that they undergo the
unmitigated drudgery which falls to the lot of most savage women, though
they work hard. The men do not like them to speak to strangers, however,
and say that their place is to work and rear children. They eat of the
same food, and at the same time as the men, laugh and talk before them,
and receive equal support and respect in old age. They sell mats and
bark-cloth in the piece, and made up, when they can, and their husbands
do not take their earnings from them. All Aino women understand the
making of bark-cloth. The men bring in the bark in strips, five feet
long, having removed the outer coating. This inner bark is easily
separated into several thin layers, which are split into very narrow
strips by the older women, very neatly knotted, and wound into balls
weighing about a pound each. No preparation of either the bark or the
thread is required to fit it for weaving, but I observe that some of the
women steep it in a decoction of a bark which produces a brown dye to
deepen the buff tint.
The loom is so simple that I almost fear to represent it as complicated
by description. It consists of a stout hook fixed in the floor, to which
the threads of the far end of the web are secured, a cord fastening the
near end to the waist of the worker, who supplies, by dexterous rigidity,
the necessary tension; a frame like a comb resting on the ankles, through
which the threads pass, a hollow roll for keeping the upper and under
threads separate, a spatula-shaped shuttle of engraved wood, and a roller
on which the cloth is rolled as it is made. The length of the web is
fifteen feet, and the width of the cloth fifteen inches. It is woven
with great regularity, and the knots in the thread are carefully kept on
the under side. {271} It is a very slow and fatiguing process, and a
woman cannot do much more than a foot a day. The weaver sits on the
floor with the whole arrangement attached to her waist, and the loom, if
such it may be called, on her ankles. It takes long practice before she
can supply the necessary tension by spinal rigidity. As the work
proceeds she drags herself almost imperceptibly nearer the hook. In this
house and other large ones two or three women bring in their webs in the
morning, fix their hooks, and weave all day, while others, who have not
equal advantages, put their hooks in the ground and weave in the
sunshine. The web and loom can be bundled up in two minutes, and carried
away quite as easily as a knitted soft blanket. It is the simplest and
perhaps the most primitive form of hand-loom, and comb, shuttle, and
roll, are all easily fashioned with an ordinary knife.
[Picture: A Hiogo Buddha]