I’ve vacillated about how to include some of the additional explanations into Valley of Lamentation, and in the end I’ve just decided to deal with them all up front, rather than try and slip them in bit by bit in the voice of the original author. I think a solid primer on the setting of this tragedy is a necessity for understanding just what it going on.
I am not an expert on Japanese history (but I did minor in history) and so this chapter is a mix of material from the original book, stuff I remember from history classes, and perusings of Wikipedia. I think it’s rather accurate but don’t rely on it for anything but conversations between friends and arguments on message boards.
Hokkaidō is the northernmost of the four main Japanese islands. Though almost a quarter of Japan’s total land mass the mountainous, snowy island accounts for only 4% of Japan’s population. It is simplistic, but not entirely unfounded, to compare it to Alaska. It is, of course, much closer to the mainland, but northern Honshū (the green portion of the above map) is similarly rural and undeveloped, though not to the same degree as Hokkaidō.
The name Hokkaidō is a fairly recent one, dating back to Japanese colonization of the island beginning in the Meiji Restoration, which saw the emperor reclaim power from the shōguns, in 1868. Until then, the island was known by the Japanese as Ezo. It would, however, be more correct to say that the island was known as Ezo by the Yamato.
The Yamato are the dominant ethnic group of the Japanese isles, making up something like 99% of the population, a high enough percentage to be basically synonymous with ‘Japanese.’ However, there are small pockets of minority groups in Japan, and they are integral to the history of Ezo.
The Ainu controlled Hokkaidō and portions of northernmost Honshū. A possibly related people, the Emishi, controlled some pockets of northern Honshū as well. Though the actual origins of the Ainu are somewhat up for debate, generally they are assumed to be more closely related to southeast Asians, whereas the Japanese, or Yamato, probably originated from the Korean peninsula. For our purposes, Ainu tend to be of fairer skin and tend more towards hairiness than the Yamato.
Picture of Ainu in traditional garb cribbed from Wikipedia.
In a pattern that any students of American history will recognize, the Yamato steadily moved north, taking more and more Ainu land. The Emishi were conquered so totally that today none remain. Interbreeding of a lesser degree took place in Ezo between the Ainu and the Yamato, who ruled over the island continuously from around 1600. During the Meiji Restoration, remnants of the shōgun government fled to Ezo and took an unsuccessful stab at setting up a government-in-exile. Following this, the government, under Emperor Meiji, took more direct control of the island (now called Hokkaidō), intending to use it as a bulwark against potential Russian aggression.
Though today very few Ainu remain, elements of their language and culture remain. Many of the place names in this book end in “-betsu,” including Sankebetsu, the village where this tragedy took place, and Kotanbetsu, a nearby town. These are Japanese transliterations of Ainu place names: “-betsu” mean “river” in the Ainu language. Sankebetsu is “the village downstream from the river” and Kotanbetsu is simply “river village.” Nearby Tomamae is “the place where flowers grow” and Rikibiru is “high cliff.” Again, there’s an obvious comparison to American Indians. The people are gone but their names remain. The term Ezo, too, is preserved; many plants and animals indigenous to Hokkaidō are known by that name, such as the Ezo brown bear.
The Ainu believe animals to be sacred, and the most sacred of these is the brown bear. At yearly sacrifices of brown bears, Ainu would drink of the blood and eat of the flesh of that year’s chosen beast. Though they were not joined in this practice, generally, by the Yamato, the Ainu fixation on bears did leave an impression on the Japanese. Throughout the former territories of the Emishi and Ainu there remain a few traditional hunters known as matagi. One need not be Ainu to be a matagi, though few of either remain today. Matagi hunters target bears in the winter, stalking them for weeks at a time before going in for the kill.
One interesting facet of the Ainu language, for our purposes, is that the word for god, kamuy, is the same as that for bear.