Indigenous Diplomacy: Sakhalin Ainu (Enchiw) in the Shaping ...APJ | JF 18 | 22 | 2 2 The Ainu of Sakhalin, Hokkaido and the Kurile Islands, like the Nivkh and Uilta indigenous peoples

The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 18 | Issue 22 | Number 2 | Article ID 5512 | Nov 15, 2020

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Indigenous Diplomacy: Sakhalin Ainu (Enchiw) in the Shapingof Modern East Asia (Part 1: Traders and Travellers)

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Abstract: Indigenous people are often depictedas helpless victims of the forces of eighteenthand nineteenth century colonial empirebuilding: forces that were beyond theirunderstanding or control. Focusing on the storyof a mid-nineteenth century diplomatic missionby Sakhalin Ainu (Enchiw), this essay (the firstof a two-part series), challenges that view,suggesting instead that, despite the enormouspower imbalances that they faced, indigenousgroups sometimes intervened energetically andstrategically in the historical process going onaround them, had some impact on the outcomeof these processes. In Part 1, we look at thestory of one Sakhalin Ainu family over multiplegenerations in order to highlight the strategicplace of the Sakhalin Ainu in cross-borderrelationships – particularly in the relationshipbetween China and Japan – from the earlyeighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.

Keywords: Sakhalin; Sea of Okhotsk; Ainu;China; Qing Empire; Japan; Matsumae Domain;Santan trade; indigenous people.

Part 2 – Voices and Silencers appeared inthe December 1 issue.

The Mission

In late December 1853, about six months afterUS Commodore Matthew Perry arrived inUraga Bay on his mission to ‘open’ Japan to theworld, a Sakhalin Ainu (Enchiw) elder namedSetokurero set out from the village of Nayoro

on the west coast of Sakhalin island on his owncrucial diplomatic mission.1 He travelled in aconvoy of fifteen dog sleighs through the winterblizzards, accompanied by a retinue of sometwenty Ainu elders from surrounding villagesand one Nivkh man from the Amur region ofmainland Asia.2 They were heading forKushunkotan on the southern shores ofSakhalin, where the Japanese had established afortified trading post in the early nineteenthcentury, and where the Russians had alsorecently landed to stake their rival claim to theisland. The aim of the Ainu elders’ mission wasto learn more about Russo-Japanesecompetition for control of Sakhalin, to expresstheir own views on the matter, and to seekRussian help in resisting Japanese exploitationof the Ainu.

Sakhalin Ainu Dog-Sleigh(From Kita Ezo Zusetsu, vol. 2 early 19th

Century,National Archives of Japan, Edited to

remove page breaks from image.)

The Ainu of Sakhalin, Hokkaido and the KurileIslands, like the Nivkh and Uilta indigenous

https://apjjf.org/2020/23/Morris-Suzuki.htmlhttps://www.digital.archives.go.jp/das/meta/M2019051009282956101.html,

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peoples who also inhabited Sakhalin, lived insmall self-governing villages and did not haveany single dominant chief, but Setokurero wasa particularly well known and influential elder.He was respected for his oratorical skills3, andhis village and family had a special place inSakhalin history (which we will explorefurther). His coastal community of Nayoro was– in terms of the modern concept of towns oreven villages – tiny. In 1853, it consisted of sixhouses on either bank of a small marshy river,containing a population of around fiftypeople.4 But it was a crossroads and emporiumon a far-reaching trade route whose tentaclesstretched, at one end, deep into the heartlandof the Chinese Empire, and at the other end tothe Shogunal capital of Edo (soon to becomeTokyo) and beyond.5 From the Chinese side,items l ike si lk brocade, cotton cloth,metalware, decorative blue beads, tobacco andsmoking pipes flowed into Nayoro and otherpoints on the Sakhalin trade route, and some ofthese goods (particularly Chinese brocades)travelled on to the luxury goods markets ofJapan. From the Japanese side came items suchas rice, saké, miso paste, and pots and pans.The medium of exchange was ‘soft gold’ (as theRussians called it): fur, in the form of the peltsof sable, fox, sea otters and other animalshunted by the indigenous people of the region.

Manchu Robes in Southern Sakhalin, early

19th century

(Source: Karafuto Fūzokuzū, TokyoNational Museum)

This, then, was one of just four narrowgateways through which Japan maintainedcontact with the outside world throughout itsso-called ‘closed country’ era from the earlyseventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries (theothers being Nagasaki, the Ryūkyū Kingdomand the island of Tsushima).

Ever since the end of the eighteenth century,Japanese officials and merchants had beenencroaching on Sakhalin from the south,attempting to take over direct control of thistrade. Edicts had been issued to cut the Ainuout of the commercial network, forcing theminstead to sell furs to Japanese officials, whowould then trade directly with merchants fromManchuria. These merchants were commonlyknown collectively as ‘Santan’: most came fromthe indigenous Ulchi, Nanai and Orochcommunities living in the region around themouth of the Amur River, though some weremembers of the Nivkh community, who livedboth on Sakhalin Island and on the adjacentmainland. As we shall see later, in 1853 theJapanese had not yet succeeded in establishinga monopoly over the Santan trade, andcommercial exchanges between Santan, Ainuand other Sakhalin people continued to thrivein Nayoro. Setokurero had long witnessed thegrowing presence of the Japanese in Sakhalin –he was probably over sixty years old when heset out on his mission to Kushunkotan6. But inthe past few months, the people of the Nayororegion had received reports of unsettling newdevelopments. The world around them, itseemed, was in the midst of unimaginedtransformations.

https://jpsearch.go.jp/item/cobas-46682

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A Japanese Image of Santan Traders inSakhalin

(Source: Kondō Morishige, Henyō BunkaiZukō, vol 3, Japanese National Archives).

News of the arrival of Americans in Japan hadquickly reached Sakhalin Ainu communities.7

Then in the autumn of 1853, a Russian militarycontingent landed on Sakhalin and set up campnext door to the Japanese settlement atKushunkotan. At about the same time, a smallparty of Russians arrived in Nayoro by boatfrom the Asian continent, and it became clearto the Ainu of the Nayoro region that theRussians and the Japanese were engaged in astruggle for control over their land. Onreaching Kushunkotan, Setokurero’s plan wasto meet the head of the Russian force there -Nikolai Vassilievich Busse – and present to himthe Ainu perspective on the past and future ofthe island. After meeting Busse, he and othermembers of his mission would then visitJapanese officials in Kushunkotan to negotiatewith them. In Ainu society, the key forum forresolving important disputes is the caranke – aprolonged debate in which various sides set outtheir views on an issue, and their opinions arediscussed until a solution is reached.Setokurero probably envisaged the meetingswith Busse and the Japanese officials as a formof caranke, where the Ainu representatives

would explain their ancient connection to theland of Sakhalin, learn more about theintentions of the Russians and the Japanese,and reach an agreement.

Map of Sakhalin and Surrounding Region.

(Modern place names and borders in black,historical place names in red)

Setokurero’s mission was to have an ironicending which v iv id ly i l lustrates themisunderstandings, wilful ignorance andviolence that characterised 19th centuryimperial incursions into Sakhalin, as into manyother parts of the world. But the Nayoro elder’sjourney to Kushunkotan, and the historicalcontext in which it occurred, also sheds freshlight on the indigenous history of NortheastAsia, and on the processes of imperialexpansion in the region. Above all, thehistorical role of Setokuro and his familychallenges the widespread image of theindigenous people as passive victims ofimperial forces that were beyond theirunderstanding or control. In order to makesense of that role, though we need first to lookat the wider context in which it unfolded.

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Victims of History, Makers of History:Sakhalin Islanders and the Santan Trade

The history of the Santan trade has fascinatedscholars for decades. From the point of view ofhistorians of China, it is deeply connected tothe story of the Qing Dynasty’s relationshipwith the peoples on the periphery of theChinese empire;8 for historians of Japan, it iscentral to understanding Japan’s northwardexpansion and its encroachment into Ainulands. 9 Other researchers again haveapproached the subject from the perspective ofRussian expansion into Northeast Asia.10 In the1950s, historian Hora Tomio brought a varietyof sources together in a pioneering study of theSantan trade11, and since then, scholarsincluding Akizuki Toshiyuki, Sasaki Shirō, BrettWalker, Takakura Hiroki and Deriha Kōji12 haveh e l p e d t o g i v e u s a n i n c r e a s i n g l ycomprehensive image of the networks of trade,travel and cultural exchange which spannedthe region from Hokkaido through Sakhalin tothe Amur and Maritime regions of Manchuriaand beyond.

The sources on which these scholars draw allhave their own particular biases. Qing officialdocuments emphasise the subordination of thepeoples of the periphery to Chinese rule.Japanese documents highlight the exploitativeaspects of the Santan trade, since this enabledthe Japanese Shogunate and Matsumae Domain(which acted as the intermediary in relationswith Ainu for much of the seventeenth,eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) topresent themselves as ‘saviours’ of the SakhalinAinu, thus justifying Japanese expansion in theregion. As the frontier of Japanese powermoved north , these documents a lsoincreasingly proclaimed the dominance of theJapanese over the Ainu. The writings of Russiantravellers and officials, meanwhile, tend tostress the independence of the Ainu both fromChinese and from Japanese rule, because this

(in the imperial logic of the day) meant thatthey were ‘available’ to be placed underRussian control and turned into subjects of theTsar. Triangulating these three sources ofknowledge, though, can help to present a fullerpicture of this history; and, as Brett Walker andothers have shown, Ainu oral traditions shedimportant light on indigenous perceptions ofrelations with surrounding peoples.13

Earlier works often depicted Sakhalin islandersas hapless victims of the forces that surroundedthem, but some recent writings take a differentview of the past. For example, discussing thetrans-border activities of indigenous people onthe fringes of the Chinese and Russian empiresin the mid-19th century, historian Sasaki Shirōwrites: ‘it would seem that the borders inNortheast Asia were determined without anyinvolvement by the local people. However, adetailed examination of the documents andpeople’s memories reveal some commonphenomena. The people did not tolerate thechanging conditions passively. Instead, they didtheir best to maintain a political-economicsystem that had greatly benefitted them, and,when they understood that it would beimpossible to retain it, they tried to adapt tothe new system.’14 Questions of violence andexploitation versus autonomy and agency arealways delicate ones, and in this history, allwere clearly present throughout. But the storyof Setokurero’s mission to Kushunkotanreinforces the impression that the indigenouspeople of the region did indeed ‘not tolerate thechanging condit ions pass ively ’ , butenergetically and strategically intervened inthe historical process going on around them,and, despite the huge power imbalancesinvolved, achieved some successes.

The impact of modern borderl ines ongeography and intellectual life also obscuresanother crucial feature of Sakhalin history.Because many recent studies of the region arewritten from the perspective of a particularnational history, and because modern

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ethnographic knowledge draws firm dividinglines between distinct ethnic groups, the depthand intensity of the interaction between thevarious indigenous groups of the region oftendisappears from view. Anthropological workstend to focus on one particular group: eitherthe Sakhalin Ainu or the Nivkh or the Uilta.Histories written from the standpoint ofJapanese northward expansion concentrate onthe relationship with the Ainu, while those thatdeal with the eastward expansion of Russianpower are more often concerned with relationsbetween the Russians and the Nivkh.

But indigenous oral histories, as well aseighteenth and nineteenth century writtenrecords, make it clear that the lives of the threemain indigenous groups on Sakhalin formed anintegrated whole. Each group had its ownidentity and its own language: indeed, Ainu,Nivkh and Uilta are linguistically unrelated toone another. The three groups were alsodistinguished by differing styles of dress andhad their own patterns of family relationships.The Nivkh, who had lived in Sakhalin and in thearea of the Asian mainland around the mouth ofthe Amur River at least since the 2nd-1stmillennium BCE, subsisted mainly throughfishing, hunting and the raising of domesticdogs, as did the Sakhalin Ainu, whose ancestralorigins on Sakhalin have been traced back atleast to the late Jōmon Era (roughly 1500 to300 BCE). The Uilta, who are believed to bemore recent migrants from the mainland toSakhalin, were primarily fishers, hunters andreindeer herders, and only rarely kept dogs.15

But there were also many fishing and huntingtechniques that all groups shared, and culturalpractices such as the bear ceremony were (withminor variations) common to all. The houses inwhich Ainu and Nivkh lived during the summermonths were readily distinguishable from oneanother – Nivkh people lived in wooden chaletson raised platforms, while Ainu lived incottages whose walls and roofs were coveredwith tree bark – but in winter both groups

moved back from the coast into virtuallyidentical semi-underground houses built toprovide protection from the bitter cold. Manyindigenous people (particularly Uilta) were bi-or tri-lingual, speaking the languages of theirneighbours as well as their own. In the centralareas of Sakhalin, Ainu, Uilta and Nivkhvillages sometimes stood side-by-side, everydaycontact between the groups was taken forgranted, and intermarriage was quite common.Until the mid-19th century, for example, theimportant settlement called Big Village(Porokotan in Ainu, Plyvo in Nivkh), a little overhalf way up the west coast of the island, wasinhabited by more or less equal numbers ofAinu and Nivkh, and some Ainu families alsolived alongside Nivkh families further north. Onthe east coast, Lake Taraika was surrounded bysettlements of Ainu, Nivkh and Uilta living sideby side, and Uilta and Nivkh villages stood nextto one another in a number of regionsthroughout northern Sakhalin.16 It was thearrival of foreign colonizers that was to carveharder geographical and conceptual boundariesbetween these groups.

A Winter Semi-Underground House onSakhalin



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The Emergence of the Santan Trade

The Santan trade had multiple layers. Itssubstratum was a web of voyages by theregion’s indigenous people, criss-crossing thenarrow Tartar Straits in small boats to trade orsometimes to seek marriage partners. Thesevoyages, mentioned casually in early Europeanaccounts of Sakhalin,17 had been going on sincetime immemorial. Superimposed on this localcommerce was the waxing and waninginfluence of the Chinese empire, which bothstimulated and reshaped trade between theAsian mainland and Sakhalin. As the Chineseempire expanded, indigenous communitiesliving further inland, on the upper reaches ofthe Amur River and its tributaries, obtainedincreasing access to Chinese goods, and thesewere then traded down the river to becomecrucial elements in commerce across the TartarStraits.

Contacts between the Chinese empire and thepeople of Sakhalin go back at least to the era ofMongol dominance and the establishment ofthe Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368). The officialhistory of the era, compiled soon after the endof the dynasty, records several military clashesbetween the Mongols and ancestors of theSakhalin Ainu (who were referred to in Chinesedocuments as the as ‘Ku-wu’).18 During theMing Dynasty (1368‒1644) some efforts weremade to impose the collection of tribute on theindigenous people of the Amur region andSakhalin – Wada Sei even cites a late MingDynasty record which appears to refer tomarriages between Chinese officials whotravelled to Sakhalin and local Nivkh women19 –but these tributary relationships atrophied asMing power declined. By the time Manchuleaders established China’s Qing Dynasty in1644, though, the Manchus had already begunto create their own powerful networks ofinfluence over the peoples on the easternfringes of Manchuria, and they would continue

to expand those networks throughout theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries.20

In the 1640s, the Russians made their firstappearance in the Lower Amur region.Spearheaded by miscellaneous bands ofofficials, Cossacks and private profiteers,Russian expeditions reached the shores of theSea of Okhotsk by 1643 and the mouth of theAmur River by 1644, forcing local people to payyasak (fur tax) as they went.21 These incursionsled to armed clashes between the Chinese andRussian empires in the 1680s, and in 1689 theTreaty of Nerchinsk was signed, confiningRussian activity to an area to the north of themouth of the Amur. From then until themid-19th century, the Russians retreated fromthis area, and their expansion focused insteadon the far northern areas of Chukotka and theKamchatka Peninsula. But the conflict withRussia had encouraged the Qing Dynasty tointensify its efforts to collect information onand exert power over the people of theborderlands, and the year after the signing ofthe Treaty of Nerchinsk, Manchu officials weresent to the Lower Amur and Sakhalin toinvestigate the geography and society of thearea, and to extract fur tax from local villagers.This was followed by several other visits to theisland, conducted as part of efforts by the Qingcourt to map the area.22

By the 1730s, these preliminary forays hadturned into more concerted efforts to exertQing authority over some at least of theSakhalin islanders. Control was imposedindirectly, by appointing senior figures withinindigenous communities to the status of ‘clanchief’ (hala-i-da) or ‘village chief’ (gasan-da ormokun-da).23These titles, which were identicalto the ones used to organize Manchu societyitself, made the bearer responsible for thecollection and delivery of tribute, to be paid toManchu officials in the form of furs at tributeposts set up in the Lower Amur region. Thoughdemands for tribute placed pressure on theregion’s indigenous society, they also created

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new opportunities for trade and culturalexchanges. Manchu officials gave tribute-giversallowances of rice, salt and other necessitiesduring the period of their mission, andrewarded them with valuable gifts. Tributemissions took place in the summer months, andgenerated lively events that resembled tradefairs, where many cultural and languagegroups from around the region exchangedgoods and information on the fringes of themore formal tribute ceremonies. The QingDynasty also encouraged marriages betweenselected Manchu officials and the daughters ofthe officially designated indigenous clanchiefs.24

In 1732, a group of Manchu officials travelledto Sakhalin to impose this tribute system oncommunities in the north and west of theisland. Their arrival seems to have causedconsiderable consternation amongst localvillagers. Over eighty years later, when theJapanese traveller Mamiya Rinzō reachedSakhalin, he met Nivkh villagers who recountedtheir communal memories of people fleeing intothe mountains to escape from the intruders.25

Gradually, though, many re-emerged fromhiding. People from eighteen villages, with apopulation of 146 households, were organizedinto six clans (four from Ainu communities andtwo from Nivkh communities), and hala-i-dawere appointed for each clan. One of theseclans covered the Nayoro area (referred to inthe Manchu documents of the time as ‘Yadan’).The man appointed as hala-i-da of this clan wasSetokurero’s great-grandfather Yaepikarainu.26

This marked the start of a family dynasty ofNayoro hala-i-da which continued until the timeof Setokurero’s son in the second half of thenineteenth century.

While trade links across the narrow TartarStraits between Sakhalin and the Lower Amurwere growing, Sakhalin Ainu were also tradingwith their southern Ainu neighbours across thewider and stormier straits which separate theirisland from Hokkaido (then known to the

Japanese as Ezo). The focus of trade here wasthe outpost of Sōya, in the extreme north ofHokkaido. With the establishment of Japan’sTokugawa Shogunate in the early seventeenthcentury, the domain of Matsumae (based in thesouthern tip of Hokkaido) became – from theJapanese perspective – the sole guardian ofrelations between Japan and the Ainu. In the1630s, the lords of Matsumae sent expeditionsnorthwards to investigate the still largelyunknown realms inhabited by the Ainu, andthree of these expeditions even travelled as faras Sakhalin, but this search for knowledge wasn o t f o l l o w e d u p f o r a l m o s t acentury.27 Meanwhile, in the 1680s Matsumaeestablished a trading post at Sōya, where theirofficials collected tribute from the localHokkaido Ainu. Chinese products such asbrocades, bought by Hokkaido Ainu fromSakhalin Ainu, became the most important ofthese tribute goods. 2 8 So, by the lateseventeenth century, there was a regularchannel which promoted the flow of trade fromChina via the Amur, Sakhalin and Sōya toJapan, in the process also transforming thelives of Sakhalin islanders, as foreign items likesilk, cotton and rice were incorporated intotheir everyday lives.

The social and political dimensions ofindigenous life, though, remained largelyuntouched. Villages continued to be self-governing, and social order was st i l lmaintained according to indigenous law. This isinterestingly illustrated by a case discussed bySasaki Shirō. In 1742, a Manchu official whohad married an indigenous Sakhalin womanbecame involved in a quarrel with some visitingAinu tribute givers at a tribute post on LakeKizi in the Lower Amur region, and killed anumber of the Ainu. Local Manchu officialsarrested the chief assailant, and then travelledto Sakhalin, where they presented the relativesof the victims with gifts as compensation andinvited them to Kizi to testify at the trial of theperpetrator. But the Ainu refused to attend thetrial. They had their own notions of justice and

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retribution, which were different from those ofthe Manchus and Chinese, and they rejectedthe invitation to take part in an alien system oftrial and punishment.29 Chinese and Manchuofficials had neither the intention nor thecapacity to radically alter the social andcultural basis of Sakhalin’s indigenoussocieties; but they did have the power toenforce their demands for tribute.

Yaepikarainu’s and Yōchite’s Generation:Nayoro, Manchuria and the Growth of theSantan Trade

Setokurero’s great-grandfather, the Nayoroelder Yaepikarainu, was by all accounts aformidable and ruthless man. The Japaneseofficial Mamiya Rinzō, who visited Nayoro in1809, met three Ainu men who were then intheir seventies and could remember storiesfrom the first half of the eighteenth century.According to them, on one occasion whenNivkh and other indigenous traders from theLower Amur region came to Nayoro to trade,Yaepirakainu killed more than ten of them andstole their goods. Some of the traders escapedthe slaughter and complained to Manchuofficials, who arrived in Nayoro on three shipsto bring the renegade elder to heel. A numberof those complicit in the murders were made tohand over their most valued treasures ascompensation, and Yaepirakainu, as theringleader, was forced to surrender his twos o n s , K a n n t e t s u r o s h i k e a n dYōchite30(Setokurero’s grandfather) to be takento Manchuria as hostages.31

Hostage taking was a common means by whichthe more powerful partners in the economicand political relations of the region (usuallymainlanders) imposed their will on the lesspowerful (usually Sakhalin islanders). It wasused both by Manchus and Santan, not just topunish serious crimes like Yaepirakainu’s, butalso to discipline those who fell into debt.

Debtors or their children would be taken awayto the Lower Amur region as hostages, and thispractice became increasingly common as over-hunting placed growing pressure on Sakhalin’sresources. Santan traders also sometimes tookisland women as wives, with or without theconsent of their families (and most likelywithout the consent of the women themselves).Mamiya Rinzō reported that Ainu from thesmall island of Rishiri off Hokkaido often cameto Sakhalin, and that women (particularlywidows) from Rishiri were sometimeskidnapped by Santan or sold by their ownfamilies. As a result, it was common to see‘women with tattooed mouths’, emblematic ofAinu culture, in Santan villages on the Asianmainland.32

From a Japanese Copy of the ManchuDocument appointing Yōchite as hala-i-

da,with its Chinese seal


The practice of hostage taking involvedconsiderable violence on the one side and fearon the other, and the prevalence of thispractice by the early nineteenth century wasemphasised by the Japanese Shogunate andMatsumae Domain as a reason for Japan to takeover control of the Santan trade in order to

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protect the Ainu. But it was not a system ofpermanent slavery. Hostages were oftenallowed to go back to Sakhalin once they hadworked off their debts, and those who didreturn sometimes came home with enhancedtrading networks and increased authoritybecause of their experiences of life inManchuria.33 Interestingly, despite his crime,Yaepirakainu evidently remained hala-i-da ofthe Nayoro area. He appears in Manchudocuments listing Sakhalin clan leaders in1743, 1754 and 1760; and after several years inManchuria, his son Yōchite returned to hishome village and took over the position fromhis father.34

Unlike his father – a man remembered(according to the information given by elderlyAinu to Mamiya Rinzō) as having been ‘craftyand brutal’ 3 6 ‒ Yōchite seems to havecommanded considerable respect. As a hala-i-da, his main task was to collect sea otter andsable furs from the Ainu of his region andorganize the missions to the Manchu tributepost on the Amur: a substantial task, sincethese expeditions might last for as long as fourmonths.36 His status, though, also gave him adegree of authority over the Santan traderswho came to the Nayoro region, enabling himand other hala-i-da to provide local people withsome protection from exploitation by themainlanders.37

Illustration of the Tomb of Yōchite, nearNayoro


As well as making frequent visits to Manchuria,in the 1770s Yōchite (who had by then recentlysucceeded to the position of Nayoro hala-i-da)also travelled as far as the Japanese tradingpost at Sōya where, magnificently arrayed in aManchurian silk brocade robe decorated with athree-clawed dragon, he met officials fromMatsumae Domain, to whom he presented amap he had drawn, depicting areas ofManchuria as yet unknown in Japan. TheMatsumae officials read the map as showing asea with six islands to the northeast of Santanterr i tory , but th is must have been amisinterpretation of Yōchite’s cartography,because the first ‘two islands’ were labelled‘Icha’ and ‘Botton’, clearly a reference to thecity of Ice Hoton (Ichahoton) or Sanxing(presen t day Y i l an , near Harb in inNortheastern China) 3 8 , one of the twoadministrative centres from which the QingDynasty exerted control over the Amur regionand Sakhalin (the second being Ninguta –present day Ning’an). Another name fromYōchite’s map was ‘Makuta’, which may beindicate the town of Mukden (Shenyang).39

Yōchite’s historical role and influence werereflected in the large and beautifully carvedwooden tomb near Nayoro in which he wasburied following his death, which probablyoccurred in the 1790s.40

Yayenkurainu’s and Shirotoma’sGeneration: Nayoro as Crossroads

On Yōchite’s death, the position of Nayoro hala-i-da was inherited by his son (Setokurero’sfather41) Yayenkurainu, who appears to havebegun making visits to Manchuria in his

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father’s lifetime, and continued the practice ofleading regular tribute missions to the Amurevery one or two years.42 The presentation oftribute took place in a temporary summer fortestablished by the Manchu officials at Deren onthe shores of Lake Kizi, a broad section of theAmur River some way inland from the rivermouth. Yayenkurainu, accompanied by perhapsa dozen or so other Ainu, would travel by boatup the west coast of Sakhalin, stoppingovernight at the Ainu, Uilta and Nivkh villagesalong the route until they reached a point nearCape Nakko, the headland closest to the Asiancontinent. From there they made the relativelyshort crossing to one of the small indigenousvillages on the mainland, some way south ofmouth of the Amur River, and usually draggedtheir boats overland across a pass through thehills which offered a short-cut to Lake Kizi.

Meanwhile, Manchu officials had travelleddown the river from Ice Hoton to open up theDeren tribute post, and Nivkh, Ulcha, Nanaiand other hala-i-da with hundreds of theircompanions had gathered from all over thenorth-eastern Manchurian region.43 On theirarrival, Yayenkurainu and a couple of otherprominent Ainu would immediately go to one ofthe large boats where the Manchu officialsstayed during the tribute season to pay theirrespects and receive an allowance of millet orother foodstuffs. The Ainu then built temporarycamps outside the wooden palisade whichsurrounded the tribute post, waiting until itwas their turn to take part in the formal tributeceremony. This involved paying obeisance tothree Manchu officials who were seated on adais in the central compound of the tributepost, and presenting the most valuable of thefurs that they had brought with them. Inreturn, Yayenkurainu, as hala-i-da, received aroll of silk brocade, the gasan-da in the partywere given rolls of damask, and untitledcommoners received one roll of plain cottoneach.

With the formal part of the proceedings out of

the way, the participants were then free tomove on to the equally important and doubtlessmore pleasurable task of private trading. Whilesenior officials remained aloof from the tributegivers, the lower-ranked Manchus mingledeasily with the indigenous visitors, reclining onthe grass around the palisade to chat, smokepipes, and exchange goods and gossip.Indigenous people from many parts of theregion, as well as the junior off icialsthemselves, visited each other’s temporarycamps for meals and drinks, and traded itemsl ike tobacco, a lcohol , i ronware andfabrics.44 After returning home from thesetribute missions, Yayenkurainu, like his father,was then able to travel south to the Japanesetrading post at Sōya, where in 1785 (forexample) he exchanged a length of crimsonChinese silk for several bales of rice, yeast,barrels of saké and items of clothing.45

The Scene at Deren During the TributeMission, early 19th century


By offering people like Yayenkurainu privilegedaccess to valuable goods, this system of tributeand trade clearly increased inequalities in Ainu


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society. But the friendships and commercialrelationships forged during these visits toDeren and Sōya also gave many Sakhalinislander communities a network of connectionsthat spanned a region from the borders ofKorea to the fringes of the Russian empire inone direction and to Japan in the other. Thiswas an important source of news about eventsin the world around them, and the networkswere reinforced by the frequent arrival inNayoro of Santan merchants, who often passedthrough the village on their trading journeysaround Sakhalin.

By the early nineteenth century, though, thefrequency of Yayenkurainu’s visits to Derenwas declining. This was partly for personalreasons: Yayenkurainu suffered from an eyedisease which meant that his sight was fading,and travel was becoming increasinglydifficult.46 But there were also larger forces atwork. By now, the power of the Qing state overthe Lower Amur region and Sakhalin wasgradually waning, and Manchu officials werehaving increasing difficulty in enforcing theirdemands for tribute. Meanwhile, MatsumaeDomain and the Japanese Shogunate weredeveloping a new interest in the lands to theirnorth, and Japanese officials were starting tomake an appearance even in Nayoro itself.

Japanese economic influence had graduallyextended northward up the coasts of Hokkaidotowards Sakhalin throughout the eighteenthcentury. Matsumae Domain’s trading posts inHokkaido Ainu territory were initially under thefirm control of domain officials, but during theeighteenth century they were entrusted tol icenced merchants, who often madesubstantial fortunes not just from trade but alsofrom fishing operations in which they employedAinu as forced labour. In 1771, merchantMurayama Denbei was dispatched byMatsumae to investigate the possibility ofestablishing trading and fishing bases on thesouthern shores of Sakhalin, and in 1790 thefirst Japanese trade post was set up at

Shiranushi, on the very southernmost tip of theisland. Two Japanese guard posts were alsobuilt on the island at this time: one atKushunkotan (present day Korsakov) on AniwaBay, the large gulf to the east of Shiranushi,and one at Tonnai (present day Kholmsk) on thewest coast.47 The motives behind this renewedinterest in Sakhalin were strategic as well aseconomic. A 1789 uprising by Ainu labourers inthe fisheries in north-eastern Hokkaido and onKunashir in the Kurile Islands had severelyrattled the Japanese authorities, and growingsigns of a renewed Russian presence in theregion were also arousing anxiety, particularlyfollowing an armed raid on the Japanese guardpost at Kushunkotan by a group of Russiansoldiers in 1806.48 In response, a series ofofficial Japanese expeditions were dispatchednorth to investigate Sakhalin, and in 1807 theShogunate took over direct control of Japan’sinterests in Sakhalin from Matsumae Domain.49

By the 1790s, a few intrepid Japanese officialswere making the journey as far as Nayoro,where they visited Yayenkurainu and, withconsiderable fascination, inspected the Manchuinvestiture document which he had inheritedfrom his father, as well as other messages sentby Manchu officials to the Nayoro hala-i-da. Butby the time the two prominent Shogunalscholar-officials Mamiya Rinzō (1775‒1884)and Matsuda Denjūrō (1769‒1842) reachedNayoro in 1808, Yayenkurainu’s eyesight haddegenerated to the point where he was nolonger able to make the journey to Deren,forcing him to transfer this role to his youngerbrother, Shirotoma, who was invested as hala-i-da in his place.

Matsuda, who visited Nayoro briefly in thesummer of that year, spent his one night in thevillage sleeping in an empty store hut, but wasinvited into Yayenkurainu’s house during theday, and recorded a fleeting glimpse of thewomen of the household, who so often remaininvisible in this story. Women had a powerfuland important role in Ainu society, but one that

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was largely separate from the role of men andseldom appears in the written record. In someparts of the region under their influence,Manchu officials appointed female as well asmale gasan da, with specific authority over thewomen of the village50, but there is no directevidence that this was done in Sakhalin.Women, though, clearly played an importantpart in the preparation and support for majorjourneys like the tribute missions to Deren. InYayenkurainu’s household, Matsuda met threewomen whom he describes as being agedapproximately in their forties, one of whom wasprobably Setokurero’s mother. The womenserved their Japanese visitor with woodendishes containing a popular Sakhalin delicacy –ground herring roe moistened with fish oil.51

Matsuda’s main mission in Sakhalin was toinvestigate the Santan trade and the problem ofAinu indebtedness to Santan merchants: aproblem which was increasing because ofresource depletion and growing Ainudependence on imported goods. In response tohis reports, the Shogunate issued edictsforbidding Ainu from trading directly withSantan. Those who had fallen into debt werehelped to repay their obligations, andsometimes forced to return goods for whichthey could not pay. Santan, as well as Nivkhand Uilta from northern Sakhalin, were nowrequired to travel to Shiranushi, pay respectsto the Japanese officials stationed there, andtrade directly with them. Ainu, meanwhile,could no longer present tribute at the Japaneseposts at Shiranushi and Sōya in the form ofgoods imported from Manchuria. Instead, theywere required to bring furs which the Japanesewould use to conduct their own trade with theSantan, thus reinforcing Shogunal control overcontact with the outside world.52

These new regulations had importantimplications for the communities of the region,but Japanese officials had no means ofenforcing the rules effectively, and theircapacity to impose them diminished the further

north they went. By the first decades of the19th century (as we shall see), Japanesemerchants were making growing inroads intothe southern half of Sakhalin, setting upfisheries along the coast of Aniwa Bay andbeyond. But the number of Japanese peopleactually living in Sakhalin, particularly in thewinter months, was very small indeed, andSakhalin islanders had both motive andopportunity to avoid their surveillance. TheRussian geographer and ethnographer Leopoldvon Schrenck, who led a major scientificexpedition to the Amur region and Sakhalinbetween 1854 and 1856, observed thatJapanese officials tried as hard as possible tothwart the Santan trade ‘because they like totake possession of the fur they have seizedfrom the Ainu. But they do this in a way that isseverely damaging to the latter, by taking theirgoods in part under threat of punishment andthrough compulsory measures for very lowprices, or sometimes for free, as a payment foralleged debts. So, the Ainu avoid trading withthem wherever they can, and seek to sell theirsecretly retained fur goods to the SakhalinGilyak [Nivkh] or, even better, to the AmurGilyak [Nivkh] and Olcha.’53

Sakhalin Ainu Women with Baskets of

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Food


Setokurero’s Generation: The SantanTrade in a Changing Regional Order

Setokurero regarded himself as heir to hisfather’s and grandfather’s title of hala-i-da, andlovingly preserved the family’s Manchudocuments, but by the time of his father’sdeath, the power of these documents hadfaded. During the first half of the 19th century,the Qing tribute system was crumbling fromthe fringes inwards, as Russian influence againbegan to spread into the Lower Amur region,and as private Chinese or Manchu tradersfound ways to circumvent state controls ontrade with the region’s indigenous people.54

Manchu officials were no longer able to enforcethe payment of tribute on Sakhalin islanders,and for the islanders themselves, there was lessand less reason to travel to the Lower Amur.Setokurero himself never visited Manchuria,and, as he would later tell a Russian visitor, ‘hedid not remember seeing the Manchus at hishome village. It was always only Santan orSsumeri [Nivkh] who came there for trade’.55

This shift in the regional order, though, madeNayoro more important than ever as a tradeentrepot. Santan and Amur Nivkh stopped offat the village on their way to Shinanushi totrade with the Japanese. As Schrenck noted,the purpose of these trading expeditions wasnot just to visit Shiranushi, but also ‘to tradewith the Ainu, and to obtain furs from them inreturn for cotton products, tobacco, pipes,glass beads and other Manchu-Chinese articles.This happens wherever they meet them, bothon the east and the west coast of Sakhalin. Amain point for this trade, however, is thevillage of Nayoro, not far from Kushunai,

whither the Ainu go for this purpose even froma considerable distance, from the Bay of Aniwaetc.’56 Nayoro’s significance was partly anaccident of geography. As well as being astopping point for boats travelling down thewest coast of Sakhalin to the Japanese tradingposts in the south, the village was situatedclose to the narrowest part of the island, wherea series of passes led across its mountainousspine to the rich fishing and hunting groundsaround Lake Taraika on the east coast.

From there, Ainu, Nivkh and Uilta villagers andcontinental visitors also often travelled to theRiver Tym, which flows north-eastward throughthe centre of Sakhalin into the Sea of Okhotsk,to trade with the indigenous people who livedalong its banks, far from the intrusive gaze ofJapanese officialdom.57 The Nivkh who livedclose to the Tym caught large amounts of fishand dried these on racks outside their houses,‘not only for themselves and their dogs duringthe winter, but also as an object of trade withthe Ainos, Oronchons [Uilta] and Gilyak [Nivkh]of the coast… and the Manguns [Ulchi] of theAmur. The Ainos bring to the Valley of theTymy Japanese goods, the [Uilta] furs, theothers copper, seals, Russian and Manchumerchandise’.58

But conditions for Sakhalin Ainu living furthersouth, particularly around the Bay of Aniwa andon the southern reaches of the west coast, werevery different from the situation aroundNayoro, for, by the second decade of the 19thcentury, this part of the island had entered theperiod of history that Sakhalin Ainu would laterremember as the ‘Date-Suhara Era’.59 In 1809,a business enterprise run jointly by theJapanese mercantile houses of Date and Suharawas given the right to establish fisheries inSakhalin, and by the middle of the 19th centuryit had set up 32 fishing establishments, dottedalong the shores the Bay of Aniwa, withanother 16 extending along the west coast ofthe island to a point about fifty miles south ofNayoro.60 The Suharas had first come to


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prominence in the seventeenth century as theowners of a substantial fishing enterprise basedin what is now Wakayama Prefecture insouthern Honshū, and they went on to expandinto lumber and charcoal trading, establishinga branch in Matsumae Domain in the late 18thcentury.61 There they joined forces with theDate family, a wealthy business clan fromnorth-eastern Japan who had been runningfisheries in Hokkaido for several decades.62 Bythe nineteenth century, they also had a fingerin the pie of the Santan trade, and wereshipping rice, sake and tobacco to Shiranushito be exchanged for Chinese wares.63 In theirfisheries, Suhara and Date worked on a grandscale, often using large dragnets, and by themiddle of the 19th century they wereemploying thousands of Ainu workers in theirfisheries in Hokkaido and Sakhalin.64

Map by Imai Hachikurō, Showing theLocation of the Main Japanese Fishing andTrading Posts in Hokkaido and Sakhalin

(mid-19th century, post 1838)

Sakhalin.64 (Source: Tokyo NationalMuseum)

The Sakhalin fisheries operated only in thesummer months – between about April andOctober. At the beginning of this period, ahundred or more Japanese overseers andothers would arrive in Sakhalin from Hakodatein Hokkaido, where the enterprise was based,and collect Ainu workers – men, women andsometimes children – from the surroundingvillages. Working conditions were, by allaccounts, terrible. Japanese scholar MatsuuraTakeshirō, who first visited Sakhalin in 1846,

https://jpsearch.go.jp/item/cobas-118959https://jpsearch.go.jp/item/cobas-118959

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witnessed Ainu workers being forced to live inovercrowded temporary accommodation duringthe fishing season. Discipline was brutal, andthe arriving Japanese fishing overseers not onlyregularly used their position to extort andcheat their workers, but also brought withthem illnesses such as smallpox and venerealdisease which spread among the localpopulation.65 Ainu who became ill were shut upin a shed where they were forced to drinkwater mixed with fiery red pepper. If theyrefused or were unable to drink it, they weredefined as ‘faking illness’ and sent out to workagain.66

For the local Ainu, though, it was extremelydifficult to escape labour in the fisheries, bothbecause it was enforced through violence andbecause large-scale resource exploitation bythe Suhara and Date enterprises destroyed thebasis of the subsistence fishing on which theirsurvival depended. Some, though, did flee

north to areas beyond the reach of theJapanese overseers.67 In 1822, as the Russianthreat to the north seemed for a while to bereceding, the Shogunate handed control of theregion back to Matsumae Domain, which didnothing to check the depredations of thefishery enterprises. Although Nayoro was farenough north to escape the direct impact ofthis exploitation in the first half of the 19thcentury, the Ainu of the Nayoro region werewell aware of events further south. Protestsabout the Japanese fisheries were to become acentral point of contention in Setokurero’sconfrontation with the Japanese authorities in1853.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Professor Emerita of Japanese History at the Australian NationalUniversity. Her current research focuses on the history of the indigenous people of theOkhotsk Sea region, and her most recent publications include Japan’s Living Politics:Grassroots Action and the Crises of Democracy (2020), On the Frontiers of History:Rethinking East Asian Borders (2020) and The Korean War in Asia: A Hidden History (edited,2018)[email protected]

Notes1 Sakhalin Ainu also refer to themselves as ‘Enchiw’, the Sakhalin Ainu equivalent of theHokkaido term ‘Ainu’, meaning ‘human being’. I have used the transliteration of Setokurero’sname given by Busse and by Mikhail Mikhailovich Dobrotvorskii. Dobrotvorskii was a linguistwho wrote the first Ainu-Russian dictionary, and paid close attention to the transcription ofAinu names, and he also knew Setokurero personally (see Mikhail Mikhailovich Dobrotvorskii,Ainsko-Russkii Slovar’, Kazan, Universiteskaya Tipografiya, 1876, p. 46). Japanese officialsources of the day generally transcribe his name as Shitokureran, with the final ‘-an’ clearlybeing a contraction of the honorific ‘-ainu’ added to the end of the names of senior Ainu men.Setokurero’s mission arrived at Busse’s headquarters near Kushunkotan on 7 January 1854,Julian calendar (25 December 1853, according to the Gregorian calendar); see Nikolai

https://www.amazon.com/Japans-Living-Politics-Grassroots-Democracy/dp/1108490077https://www.amazon.com/Japans-Living-Politics-Grassroots-Democracy/dp/1108490077https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/series/global-thinkers-series/frontiers-historyhttps://press.anu.edu.au/publications/series/global-thinkers-series/frontiers-historyhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/1538111896/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20https://apjjf.org/mailto:[email protected]

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Vassilievich Busse, Ostrov Sakhalin i Ekspeditsiya 1853-1854 gg, St. Petersburg, F. S.Sushchinhskii, 1872, p. 85.2 Busse, Ostrov Sakhalin, p. 85; Busse gives the number of sleighs as ten, but Rudanovskii,who probably had more opportunity to observe them, gives the figure as fifteen; see N. V.Rudanovskii (ed. I. A Samarin), ‘“Poezdki moi po Ostrovu Sakhalinu Ya Delal Osen’yu iZimoyu”: Otchyoty Leitenata N. V. Rudanovskovo 1853‒1854 gg.’, reprinted in VestnikSakhalinskovo Muzeya, no. 10, 2002, pp. 137‒166, citation from p. 145. Rudanovskiitranscribes the Ainu elder’s name as ‘Sitakurero’.3 See, for example, Rudanovskii, ‘“Poezdki moi po Ostrovu Sakhalinu”’ p. 145.4 Rudanovskii, ‘“Poezdki moi po Ostrovu Sakhaliny”’, p. 146.5 Busse, Ostrov Sakhalin, p. 72; Leopold von Schrenck, Reisen und Forschungen im Amur-Lände in den Jahren 1854-1856, Vol. 3, Part 2, St. Petersburg, Imperial Academy of Sciences,1891, pp. 610-611.6 Estimates of the Setokurero’s age vary quite widely. The Japanese official MuragakiYosaburō, who met Setokurero on his visit to Sakhalin in 1854, described him as being over60 at that time (cited in Akizuki Toshiyuki, Nichiro Kankei to Saharin-tō: Bakumatsu MeijiShoki no Ryōdo Mondai, Tokyo, Chikuma Shobō, 1994, p. 129); Nikolai VasilyevichRudanovskii in 1857 estimated him to be in his seventies – see N. V. Rudanovskii,‘Ekspeditsiya na Ov. Sakhalin v 1859 Godu s 1 Yulya po 1 Oktabrya’, reprinted in VestnikSakhalinskovo Muzeya, no. 21, 2014, pp. 75‒75, quotation from p. 58. On the other hand,Dobrotvorskii, who lived in Sakhalin between 1867 and 1872 and met Setokurero there,describes him as being a centenarian, which would have made him at least eighty at the timeof his meeting with Busse; see Dobrotvorskii, Ainsko-Russkii Slovar’, p. 46.7 It is likely that the Ainu of Nayoro knew about Perry’s arrival in Japan. Busse notes thatwhen his Russian force landed at Kushunkotan, almost the first word that the local Ainuinhabitants said to them was ‘Americans’. The rather predictable response from the Russianswas to explain that they were not American but that ‘the Americans want to come to Sakhalinand that therefore we want to settle with them [the Ainu] in order to protect them from theAmericans’; Busse, Ostrov Sakhalin, p. 23.8 See, for example, Sei Wada, ‘The Natives of the Lower reaches of the Amur as Representedin Chinese Records’, Memoirs of the Research Department of Toyo Bunko, no. 10, 1938, pp.40‒102; Robert H. G. Lee, The Russian Frontier in Ch’ing History, Cambridge Mass., HarvardUniversity Press, 1970; Sasaki Shirō, ‘Amūru Shimoryūiki no Shominzoku no Shakai, Bunka niokeru Shinchō Shihai no Eikyō ni tsuite’, Kokuritsu Minzokugaku Hakubutsukan KenkyūHōkoku, vol. 14, pp. 661‒711; Matsuura Shigeru, Shinchō no Amūru Seisaku to ShōsūMinzoku, Kyoto, Kyōto Daigaku Gakujutsu Shuppankai, 2006.9 For example, Hora Tomio, Karafuto Shi Kenkyū: Karafuto to Santan, Tokyo, Shinjusha, 1956;Kodama Kyōko, ‘18, 19 Seiki ni okeru Karafuto no Jūmin: “Santan” o Megutte’, in HoppōGengo Bunka Kenkyūkai ed., Minzoku Sesshoku: Kita no Shiten kara, Tokyo, Rokkō Shuppan,1989, pp. 31-47; Akizuki, Nichiro Kankei to Saharintō; Hokkaidō Kaitaku Kinenkan ed. SantanKōeki to Ezo Nishiki, Sapporo, Hokkaidō Kaitaku Kinenkan, 1996; Brett Walker, The Conquestof Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, Berkeley, University of CaliforniaPress, 2001, Chapter 5; Deriha Kōji, ‘Kinsei Makki ni okeru Ainu no Mōhi Jūshu Katsudō nitsuite: Mōhi Kōeki no Shiten kara’, Kokuritsu Minzokugaku Hakubutsukan Kenkyū Hōkoku,vol. 34, pp. 97‒163.

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10 For example, E. G. Ravenstein, The Russians on the Amur: Its Discovery, Conquest andColonisation, London, Trübner and Co, 1861; F. A. Golder, Russian Expansion on the Pacific,1641‒1850, Cleveland, Arthur H. Clark Company, 1914; A. I Alekseyev, AmursayaEkspeditsiya 1849-1855, Moscow, Mysl, 1974; A. V. Smolyak, Etnicheskiye Prosessy Narodovniznego Amura i Sakhalin, Moscow, Nauka, 1975; Shiro Sasaki, ‘A History of the Far EastIndigenous Peoples’ Transborder Activities Between the Russian and Chinese Empires’, SenriEthnological Studies, vol. 92, 2016, pp. 161‒193.11 Hora, Karafuto Shi Kenkyū.12 Akizuki, Nichiro Kankei to Saharintō; Sasaki, ‘History of the Far East Indigenous Peoples’Transborder Activities’; Walker, Conquest of Ainu Lands; Hiroki Takakura, ‘The Ainu andIndigenous Trading in Maritime Northeast Asia: A Comprehensive Review of the Histories ofHokkaido, Amur-Sakhalin and Chukotka’, Tōhoku Ajia Kenkyū, vol. 11, 2007, pp. 115‒136;Deriha, ‘Kinsei Makki’.13 For example, Walker, Conquest of Ainu Lands, p. 212.14 Sasaki, ‘A History of the Far East Indigenous Peoples’ Transborder Activities’, p. 185.15 See, for example, Richard Zgusta, The Peoples of Northeast Asia Through Time: PrecolonialEthnic and Cultural Processes Along the Coast Between Hokkaido and the Bering Strait,Leiden and Boston, Brill, 201516 Leopold von Schrenck, Reisen und Vorschungen, St. Petersburg, Kaiserliche Akademie derWissenschaften, Vol. 3, Part 1, 1881, pp. 16-17.17 For example, drawing on material collected by Jesuit missionaries Jean François Gerbillonand Thomas Pereira, who visited the Amur region in the 1680s while acting as interpretersbetween the Chinese and Russians during the Nerchinsk negotiations, French Jesuit historianJean Baptiste du Halde (1674‒1743) wrote that the Chinese emperor had sent Manchus toSakhalin in boats belonging to the ‘Ke Tschng Ta Tse’ or ‘Fiatta’ [Nivkh] who ‘live on theshores of the sea and trade with the inhabitants of the western part of the island [ofSakhalin]’; see J. B. du Halde, Description Géographique, Historique, Chronologique,Politique et Physique de l’Empire de Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise, vol. 4, The Hague,Henri Scheurleer, 1736, p. 14.18 Wada, ‘Natives of the Lower Reaches of the Amur River’, pp. 80-81; see also Walker,Conquest of Ainu Lands, p. 133.19 Wada, ‘Natives of the Lower Reaches of the Amur River’, p. 82. The references in thedocuments are to a people called the ‘Chi-li-mi’ (the term generally used in early Chinesetexts to refer to the Nivkh) living next to the Ku-wu (Ainu).20 Lee, The Russian Frontier in Ch’ing History, p. 43.21 Basil Dymytryshyn, E. A. P. Crowhart-Vaughan and Thomas Vaughan, ‘Introduction’, inRussia’s Conquest of Siberia: Three Centuries of Russian Eastward Expansion, vol. 1,Portland OR, Portland Historical Society, 1985, pp. xxxv‒lxx, see particularly pp. xl‒xli;‘Documents Concerning the Expedition Led by Vasilii Poiarkov from Iakutsk to the Sea ofOkhotsk’, in Dymytryshyn, Crowhart-Vaughan and Vaughan, Russia’s Conquest of Siberia, pp.209‒217.22 Matsuura, Shinchō no Amūru Seisaku, pp. 84‒87.23 See, for example, Lee, The Russian Frontier in Ch’ing History, p. 14; Sasaki, ‘A History ofthe Far East Indigenous Peoples’ Transborder Acitivies’, pp. 167‒180.

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24 Sasaki, ‘A History of the Far East Indigenous Peoples’ Transborder Activities’, p. 173.25 Mamiya Rinzō (trans. and ed. John Harrison), ‘Kita Ezo Zutsetsu or a Description of theIsland of North Ezo by Mamiya Rinzō’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society,vol. 99, no. 2, 1955, pp. 93‒117, citation from p. 116.26 Matsuura, Shinchō no Amūru Seisaku, pp. 110‒112.27 Akizuki, Nichiro Kankei to Saharintō, pp. 34‒36; Walker, Conquest of Ainu Lands, p. 139.28 See Deriha, ‘Kinsei Makki’.29 Sasaki, ‘A History of the Far East Indigenous Peoples’ Transborder Activities’, p. 174.30 Yōchite acquired this name, which was written with the Chinese characters 揚忠貞 while inManchuria. I use it here because it was the name by which he was commonly knownthereafter. See, for example, Matsumae Hironaga, Matsumae Shi, reprinted in Ōtomo Kisakued., Hokumon Sōsho, vol. 2, Tokyo, Kokusho Kankōkai, 1972, pp. 97‒316, citation from p.130.31 Mamiya Rinzō ‘Kita Ezo Zutsetsu’, p. 116.32 Mamiya, ‘Kita Ezo Zutsetsu’, 107. Thie name ‘Yaepikarainu’ is my approximation based theManchu version of his name, which was given as ‘Yabirinu’, and the Japanese version whichwas given as ‘Yaepikaran’, and the Ainu honorific naming convention of adding ‘-ainu’ to theend of the names of elders.33 For example, a number of the Santan traders whom Japanese officials met in Sakhalin andSōya in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were actually Ainu who had beentaken to Santan territory, and important information that the Japanese collected aboutManchuria came from these Ainu Santan traders; see Nakamura Koichirō, Karafuto Zakki, inTakakura Shinichirō ed., Saisenkai Shiryō, Sapporo, Hokkaidō Shuppan Kikaku Sentā, 1982,pp. 603‒650.34 See Sasaki Shirō, ‘Shinchō no Amūru Shihai no Tōchi Rinen to sono Jitsuzō’, Hokutō AjiaKenkyū, special edition no. 4, 2018, pp. 77‒99, citation from p. 92.35 Mamiya, ‘Kita Ezo Zutsetsu’, 116.36 See Nakamura Koshirō’s account of his 1801 journey to Sakhalin – Nakamura Koshirō,Karafuto Zakki, reprinted in Takakura Shinichirō ed., Saisenkai Shiryō, Sapporo, HokkaidoShuppan Kikaku Sentā, 1982, pp. 603‒650, citation from p. 619.37 Mamiya Rinzō, discussing the position of hala-i-da as it was exercised by Yōchite’s sonYayenkur, observes that when Santan and Amur Nivkh travelled to Nayoro they were requiredto show their respect to the hala-i-da and, when they travelled around neighbouring villages,had to refrain from performing illegal actions; Mamiya Rinzō (ed. Minami Manshū TetsudōKabushiki Kaisha , Tōdatsu Kikō (1942 reprint), Tokyo, Manshū Nichinichi Shinbun TōkyōShibu, 1942, p. 78.38 Sasaki, ‘Amūru Shimoryūiki no Shominzoku’, p. 707. ‘Ice’ in Manchu means ‘new’, and‘hoton’ means a fortified village or town.39 There are two somewhat different descriptions of Yōchite’s map. One, given by MatsumaeHironaga in 1781, gives the names of the ‘islands’ as ‘Icha, Botton, Sumukotamuru (a largeisland), Haaton, Suteya and Toshiri’; see Matsumae, Matsumae Shi, p. 130; the second, givenby Mogami Tokunai in the 1790s, lists them as ‘Ichiyahots, Toresu, Makuta, Maru, Haatono,Suchiatoshiri etc.’; see Mogami Tokunai, Ezo Sōshi Gohen, reprinted in Ōtomo Kisaku ed.,Hokumon Sōsho, vol. 3, Tokyo, Kokusho Kankōkai, 1972, pp. 450‒478, citation from p. 468.

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‘Haaton’ or ‘Haatono’ may be a reference to the settlement of Haoton which, according to 18th

century European maps, stood close to the site of the present-day city of Khabarovsk.40 Yōchite continues to be listed in Manchu documents as hala-i-da of Yadan (Nayoro) until1794, but Mogami Tokunai, who visited Nayoro in 1792, describes Yayenkurainu as being theregion’s ‘headman’ [otona] at that time; see Matsuura, Shinchō no Amūru Seisaku, p. 110;Mogami, Ezo Sōshi Gohen, p. 468. Kondō Morishige, who collected information from Japaneseofficials who visited Sakhalin in 1801, includes as description of Yōchite’s tomb; see KondōMorishige, Henyō Bunkai Zukō, vol 3, 1804 manuscript, Japanese National Archives, pp.15‒16. This suggests that Yōchite may have handed over some of his de facto powers to hisson by the early 1790s, and died during that decade. 41 The relationships between the generations are a little difficult to establish with certainty.Hara Tomio, after examining various sources, concluded that Setokurero was the son ofShirotoma, who in turn was the brother of Yayenkurainu and the son of Yōchite; see Hora,Karafuto Shi Kenkyū, pp. 146‒148; but Matsuura Takeshirō describes the Nayoro elder,whom he knew in the 1840s and 1850s (and who must have been Setokurero, though he doesnot name him there), as being the son of Yayenkurainu and the grandson of Yōchite. The mostlogical explanation is that the position of hala-i-da passed from Yayenkurainu to his brotherShirotoma because of the former’s failing sight, but then passed to Setokurero,Yayenkurainu’s son, who was thus the linear descendant of Yayenkurainu but the directsuccessor to Shirotoma. See Matsuura Takeshirō (ed. Yoshida Takazō), Sankō Ezo Nisshi, vol.2, Tokyo, Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1971, p. 222; also Umeki Takaaki, Saharin: MatsuuraTakeshirō no Michi o Aruku, Sapporo, Hokkaidō Shinbunsha, 1997, pp. 132‒134.42 Nakamura, Karafuto Zakki, p. 619.43 Nakamura, Karafuto Zakki, pp. 619‒630; Mamiya, Tōdatsu Kikō. pp.30‒32.44 Mamiya, Tōdatsu Kikō, pp. 30‒35.45 Walker, Conquest of Ainu Lands, p. 144.46 Mamiya, ‘Kita Ezo Zusetsu’, p. 117; see also Ōtomo Kisaku, ‘Kaisetsu’ in Ōtomo Kisaku ed.,Hokumon Sōsho, vol. 5, Tokyo, Kokusho Kankōkai, 1972, pp. 32‒33. 47 Walker, Conquest of Ainu Lands, p. 144; Akizuki, Nichiro Kankei to Saharintō, p. 38; Hora,Karafuto Shi Kenkyū, p. 66.48 Akizuki, Nichiro Kankei to Saharintō, p. 29; see also Watanabe Kyōji, Kurofune Zenya:Roshia, Ainu, Nihon no Sangokushi, Tokyo, Yōsensha, 2010, pp. 260‒275.49 Akizuki, Nichiro Kankei to Saharintō, p. 42.50 Lee, The Russian Frontier in Ch’ing History, p. 14.51 Matsuda Denjūrō, Hokuidan, reprinted in Ōtomo Kisaku ed., Hokumon Sōsho, vol. 5, Tokyo,Kokusho Kankōkai, 1972, pp. 165‒166.52 Deriha, ‘Kinsei Makki’, pp. 130-132.53 Leopold von Schrenck, Reisen und Vorschungen, vol. 3, part 2, pp. 610‒611.54 Lee, The Russian Frontier in Ch’ing History, pp. 96‒97.55 Schrenck, Reisen und Vorschungen, vol. 3, part 2, p. 623; Schrenck was quoting from CarlFriedrich Schmidt, who met Setokurero on a visit to Nayoro in 1860.56 Schrenck, Reisen und Vorschungen, vol. 3, part 2, pp. 610‒611.57 Schrenck, Reisen und Vorschungen, vol. 3, part 2, p. 604.58 Leopold von Schrenck, quoted in Ravenstein, The Russians on the Amur, p. 271; see also

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Schrenck, Reisen und Vorschungen, vol. 3, part 2, p. 530.59 See, for example, Sentoku Tarōji, Karafuto Ainu Sōwa, Tokyo, Shikōdō Ichikawa Shoten,1929, p. 13‒14.60 Suhara and Date’s northernmost fishing post was a village whose name is given asHaikaramushi or Haekarashamushi, close to the site of the present day city of Kholmsk. SeeTajima Yoshiya, ‘Kinseiki, Meiji Shoki, Hokkaido, Karafuto, Chishima no Umi de Sōgyō ShitaKishū Gyōmin / Shōnin’, Chita Hantō no Rekishi to Genzai, no. 19, pp. 57‒78, 2015, citationfrom p. 65.61 Tajima, ‘Kinseiki, Meiji Shoki’, pp. 58‒61.62 Tajima, ‘Kinseiki, Meiji Shoki’, p. 64.63 Tajima, ‘Kinseiki, Meiji Shoki’, p. 66.64 Tajima, ‘Kinseiki, Meiji Shoki’, p. 67; Akizuki Toshiyuki, ‘Kaisetsu’, in Nikolai Busse, transand ed Akizuki Toshiyuki, Saharintō Senryō Nikki 1853‒1854: Roshiajin ga Mita Nihonjin toAinu, Tokyo, Heibonsha, 2003, pp. 6‒40, citation from pp. 21‒22; Akizuki, Nichiro Kankei toSaharintō, pp. 248‒251; see also David Howell, Capitalism from Within: Economy, Societyand the State in a Japanese Fishery, Berekeley, University of California Press, 1995, pp.70‒71.65 Hori Toshitada and Muragaki Norimasa, ‘Hori Toshitada Muragaki Norimasa Karafuto-tōKeibi Mikomisho’, in Okamoto Ryōnosuke ed., Nichiro Kōshō Hokkaidō Shikō, Tokyo, FūgetsuShoten, 1898, Part 3, pp. 3‒8.66 Matsuura, Sankō Ezo Nisshi, vol. 2, p. 173; see also Hanazaki Kōhei, Shizuka na Taichi:Matsuura Takeshirō to Ainu Minzoku, Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 1993, p. 93.67 Matsuura, Sankō Ezo Nisshi, vol. 2, p. 206.