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Indigenous Diplomacy: Sakhalin Ainu (Enchiw) in the Shaping of Modern East Asia (Part 1: Traders and Travellers)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
Indigenous people are often depicted as helpless victims of the forces of eighteenth and nineteenth century colonial empire building: forces that were beyond their understanding or control. Focusing on the story of a mid-nineteenth century diplomatic mission by Sakhalin Ainu (Enchiw), this essay (the first of a two-part series), challenges that view, suggesting instead that, despite the enormous power imbalances that they faced, indigenous groups sometimes intervened energetically and strategically in the historical process going on around them, had some impact on the outcome of these processes. In Part 1, we look at the story of one Sakhalin Ainu family over multiple generations in order to highlight the strategic place of the Sakhalin Ainu in cross-border relationships – particularly in the relationship between China and Japan – from the early eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.
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Notes
1 Sakhalin Ainu also refer to themselves as ‘Enchiw’, the Sakhalin Ainu equivalent of the Hokkaido term ‘Ainu’, meaning ‘human being’. I have used the transliteration of Setokurero's name given by Busse and by Mikhail Mikhailovich Dobrotvorskii. Dobrotvorskii was a linguist who wrote the first Ainu-Russian dictionary, and paid close attention to the transcription of Ainu names, and he also knew Setokurero personally (see Mikhail Mikhailovich Dobrotvorskii, Ainsko-Russkii Slovar’, Kazan, Universiteskaya Tipografiya, 1876, p. 46). Japanese official sources of the day generally transcribe his name as Shitokureran, with the final ‘-an’ clearly being 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 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 i Zimoyu”: Otchyoty Leitenata N. V. Rudanovskovo 1853–1854 gg.’, reprinted in Vestnik Sakhalinskovo Muzeya, no. 10, 2002, pp. 137–166, citation from p. 145. Rudanovskii transcribes 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 Muragaki Yosaburō, who met Setokurero on his visit to Sakhalin in 1854, described him as being over 60 at that time (cited in Akizuki Toshiyuki, Nichiro Kankei to Saharin-tō: Bakumatsu Meiji Shoki no Ryōdo Mondai, Tokyo, Chikuma Shobō, 1994, p. 129); Nikolai Vasilyevich Rudanovskii 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 Vestnik Sakhalinskovo 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 time of 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 that when his Russian force landed at Kushunkotan, almost the first word that the local Ainu inhabitants said to them was ‘Americans’. The rather predictable response from the Russians was to explain that they were not American but that ‘the Americans want to come to Sakhalin and that therefore we want to settle with them [the Ainu] in order to protect them from the Americans’; Busse, Ostrov Sakhalin, p. 23.
8 See, for example, Sei Wada, ‘The Natives of the Lower reaches of the Amur as Represented in 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., Harvard University Press, 1970; Sasaki Shirō, ‘Amūru Shimoryūiki no Shominzoku no Shakai, Bunka ni okeru Shinchō Shihai no Eikyō ni tsuite’, Kokuritsu Minzokugaku Hakubutsukan Kenkyū Hōkoku, vol. 14, pp. 661–711; Matsuura Shigeru, Shinchō no Amūru Seisaku to Shōsū Minzoku, 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 Hoppō Gengo 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. Santan Kōeki to Ezo Nishiki, Sapporo, Hokkaidō Kaitaku Kinenkan, 1996; Brett Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001, Chapter 5; Deriha Kōji, ‘Kinsei Makki ni okeru Ainu no Mōhi Jūshu Katsudō nit suite: Mōhi Kōeki no Shiten kara’, Kokuritsu Minzokugaku Hakubutsukan Kenkyū Hōkoku, vol. 34, pp. 97–163.
10 For example, E. G. Ravenstein, The Russians on the Amur: Its Discovery, Conquest and Colonisation, London, Trübner and Co, 1861; F. A. Golder, Russian Expansion on the Pacific, 1641–1850, Cleveland, Arthur H. Clark Company, 1914; A. I Alekseyev, Amursaya Ekspeditsiya 1849-1855, Moscow, Mysl, 1974; A. V. Smolyak, Etnicheskiye Prosessy Narodov niznego Amura i Sakhalin, Moscow, Nauka, 1975; Shiro Sasaki, ‘A History of the Far East Indigenous Peoples’ Transborder Activities Between the Russian and Chinese Empires', Senri Ethnological 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 and Indigenous Trading in Maritime Northeast Asia: A Comprehensive Review of the Histories of Hokkaido, 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: Precolonial Ethnic and Cultural Processes Along the Coast Between Hokkaido and the Bering Strait, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2015
16 Leopold von Schrenck, Reisen und Vorschungen, St. Petersburg, Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vol. 3, Part 1, 1881, pp. 16-17.
17 For example, drawing on material collected by Jesuit missionaries Jean François Gerbillon and Thomas Pereira, who visited the Amur region in the 1680s while acting as interpreters between the Chinese and Russians during the Nerchinsk negotiations, French Jesuit historian Jean Baptiste du Halde (1674–1743) wrote that the Chinese emperor had sent Manchus to Sakhalin in boats belonging to the ‘Ke Tschng Ta Tse’ or ‘Fiatta’ [Nivkh] who ‘live on the shores of the sea and trade with the inhabitants of the western part of the island [of Sakhalin]‘; 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 the documents are to a people called the ‘Chi-li-mi’ (the term generally used in early Chinese texts 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’, in Russia'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 of Okhotsk’, 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 of the Far East Indigenous Peoples’ Transborder Acitivies', pp. 167–180.
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 the Island 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 in Manchuria. I use it here because it was the name by which he was commonly known thereafter. See, for example, Matsumae Hironaga, Matsumae Shi, reprinted in Ōtomo Kisaku ed., 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 the Manchu version of his name, which was given as ‘Yabirinu’, and the Japanese version which was given as ‘Yaepikaran’, and the Ainu honorific naming convention of adding ‘-ainu’ to the end of the names of elders.
33 For example, a number of the Santan traders whom Japanese officials met in Sakhalin and Sōya in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were actually Ainu who had been taken to Santan territory, and important information that the Japanese collected about Manchuria came from these Ainu Santan traders; see Nakamura Koichirō, Karafuto Zakki, in Takakura 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 Ajia Kenkyū, 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, Hokkaido Shuppan 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 son Yayenkur, observes that when Santan and Amur Nivkh travelled to Nayoro they were required to 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 Tetsudō Kabushiki Kaisha, Tōdatsu Kikō (1942 reprint), Tokyo, Manshū Nichinichi Shinbun Tōkyō Shibu, 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 Matsumae Hironaga in 1781, gives the names of the ‘islands’ as ‘Icha, Botton, Sumukotamuru (a large island), Haaton, Suteya and Toshiri’; see Matsumae, Matsumae Shi, p. 130; the second, given by 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. ‘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) until 1794, but Mogami Tokunai, who visited Nayoro in 1792, describes Yayenkurainu as being the region'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 Japanese officials who visited Sakhalin in 1801, includes as description of Yōchite's tomb; see Kondō Morishige, 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 his son 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 of Shirotoma, 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 does not name him there), as being the son of Yayenkurainu and the grandson of Yōchite. The most logical explanation is that the position of hala-i-da passed from Yayenkurainu to his brother Shirotoma 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 direct successor to Shirotoma. See Matsuura Takeshirō (ed. Yoshida Takazō), Sankō Ezo Nisshi, vol. 2, Tokyo, Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1971, p. 222; also Umeki Takaaki, Saharin: Matsuura Takeshirō 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 Carl Friedrich 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 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 as Haikaramushi or Haekarashamushi, close to the site of the present day city of Kholmsk. See Tajima Yoshiya, ‘Kinseiki, Meiji Shoki, Hokkaido, Karafuto, Chishima no Umi de Sōgyō Shita Kishū Gyōmin / Shōnin’, Chita Hantō no Rekishi to Genzai, no. 19, pp. 57–78, 2015, citation from 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, trans and ed Akizuki Toshiyuki, Saharintō Senryō Nikki 1853–1854: Roshiajin ga Mita Nihonjin to Ainu, Tokyo, Heibonsha, 2003, pp. 6–40, citation from pp. 21–22; Akizuki, Nichiro Kankei to Saharintō, pp. 248–251; see also David Howell, Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society and 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-tō Keibi Mikomisho’, in Okamoto Ryōnosuke ed., Nichiro Kōshō Hokkaidō Shikō, Tokyo, Fūgetsu Shoten, 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.