My book was about the Ainu of Northern Japan. Just north of the main land of Japan is the island called Hokkaido. There is a v shape at the bottom and this is where the Ainu live. They have been living there since at least 642 AD. There are four theories on the Ainu origins. The first says the Ainu ancestors arrived first to the island and grew to great numbers around 3,000 BC. In Ainu legend these people are known as korpokkur. The korpokkur lived in dirt houses and use stone tools. The second says the Ainu were the aboriginal settlers of the island. After the Neolithic period, another group of people from Mongolia entered the island and mixed their characteristics with that of the original Ainu. Third, The Ainu are part of the Aryan family that went west. They originated in Central Asia. Ancient Indic people and Iranians should have the same characteristics as these early Ainu according to the third theory. The fourth theory says the Ainu belong to a very early race. The Polynesians and the Ainu have a common ancestor, but it's not of Mongolian or Caucasian origins. It could be a mixture of both. Also a lot of support is behind this last theory. From 658 to at least 1615 they had encounters with the main land Japanese, who I will call Wajin from here. Sometimes they were the aggressors and sometimes they were just defending themselves. The Authors' purpose for the fieldwork was to study the social change of the Ainu and to find remnants of their past culture. In order the Authors go through and describe the Ainu based on: Residential patterns, Social lives, kinship, marriage patterns, educational patterns, religion, politics, status, and the problem the Ainu face today is summarized. My report focuses on kinship and marriage. The Ainu appear to be a disappearing people on the outset. The Authors (Peter Geiser and mostly C. C. Peng) study how such things happen and the result of the loss of Ainu Culture. The loss of the Ainu as a separate people has been a slow intentional process by the Japanese government since 1799. They began to instill Wajin values, religion and customs upon them. Until around 1850 these attempts were rather half-assed and were failing.

The Meiji Era was the beginning o f the Assimilation of the Ainu into full Wajin citizens. First they tried to change the Ainu from hunters and fishers to agriculturist. This began in 1882, but was rather unsuccessful. The government gave the Ainu land to cultivate, tools, education on land management, and seeds. The Ainu stayed with their traditional means subsistence and loaned out the land to Wajin farmers. In 1889, the government stepped up their effort and enforced an incentive program. The Ainu would be given educational benefits and a form of social security once they were physically unable to make the land produce. There were stopped from renting out there land also. The government would take back land if it was not being used or if they found out that it was being lent out. "The Ainu were given 9,650 hectares of land in 1889 and an average of 2.7 hectares was given to each family." (p.13) By 1909, on average each family kept .9 hectares of land and by 1968 it was down to 75% of one hectare. The land was sold, given away, deserted, but most of it was lost in land reform. This move to turn the Ainu in to Agriculturist had destructive effects on them. Before the movement the men would go out and hunt food and the women would undertake the domestic duties which included cultivating small plots of land about 300 sq. Meters. The women could easily control this amount of land. When they had of use the larger land plots the men were to learn how to work the land. The farming had made classes and status more defined. Before they had an egalitarian society. The people used what ever they caught or made for the day or shared amongst the community. The farming system allowed accumulation of wealth to happen. So naturally some were better at the new way of life than others and became richer under the new system. This was a change form the classlessness of before.

The Ainu family was rather small. It consists of Father, Mother, and children. Along with other families, about 13 on average, would live in a Kotan. Living with extended family was rare and usually consisted of widowed family members. Death of a spouse would change your life back to how it was before you got married and dissolved connection to your late spouse's family. A widower would have a new home built new his kinsmen, the old house was burnt down. A widow went to live with her brother of her mother's brother. Children of opposite sex would be split up. Male children would live with the father's relatives and female children lived with Mother's relatives. In the Ainu language, which they don't speak anymore, a widow was called cise sak menoko or woman without a home. Terms of relatives have changed to the Japanese terminology and have also had their detrimental affects on the Ainu. The traditional Ainu terms included ekasi and huci for grandfather and grandmother, respectively, on either the maternal or paternal side. Ona is your dad. Unu is your mother. Wife is maci and husband is hoku. Son is po and daughter is matnepo. These terms are not cognitive it is simply the relation of the individual. For example daughter is matnepo that consist of maci-ne-po and literally would mean po who will become mat or wife-to-be son. Besides Ona (dad) and unu (mom) all other terms are terms of reference and address. The terms of address for ona and unu are iyapo (daddy) and hapo (mommy), but these may also be terms of reference when kukor (my) is added, for example, kukor iyapo (my daddy). Gender is very important in for names. For example, a male Ego will call a female sibling (matepa) something different than a female Ego will call the same female sibling (mataki). Here it is easier to see that mat is similar to female in English. The Author explains that po is more likely to be offspring-of. So matnepo (daughter) is offspring to become women. Whether they are your or your wife's sister's or brother's kids all nephew and niece types are referred to as them same. A strange gender-less term, mitpo, applies to all grandchildren. Which also shows up in great grandchildren (san mitpo).

Descent groups of the Ainu are neither patrilineal nor matrilineal, but and amalgamation of the two. It was very hared for me to understand because it was explained using the Ainu terms without English translations. So unless I took the time to learn the Ainu language it will seem foggy. The complexity is that brothers and sisters have different descent groups. It is called juxtaposed descent. It seems a brother would trace patrilineal and a sister will trace matrilineal. All males on your father's side shared, a emblem or seal, itokpa. It was passed from father to sons. Members of this group shared the same deities, which must be worshiped. The eldest son would inherit the lions share of the father's wealth, but the youngest would gain the father's house. The same happens with the woman. At the time of her betrothal a girl would receive gifts and a girdle-type belt known as an upsor, kut, or a pon kut. The upsor was the same type as her mother's upsor. The women also received tattoos traditionally. One at puberty, the second around 15 years of age, and a third before she got married (around 19). Women were tattooed to appear similar to the gods of the culture. The demons wouldn't mess with the gods, so they also won't mess with a tattooed woman. Again the Japanese have broken this tradition by outlawing tattoos.

A woman was not allowed to marry the son or brother of any female relative having the same type of upsor as hers. So a man couldn't marry a woman who had the same type of upsor as his sister's or mother's. The same policy holds with the itokpa. So parallel cousins cannot marry, but cross cousins can. "The Ainu practice a blend of polygamy that combines polygyny and levirate and a blend of polygyny and sororate, but no polyandry."(p.135) Marriage was looked as a way to perpetuate the descent group of the people involved. The Ainu practiced Levirate and Sororate cautiously. The eldest brother had the priority to inherit the wife of his younger brother if he died. A second rule says a younger brother could inherit an older brother's wife as ling as he wasn't the oldest. The brother usually picked the inheritor just before he died. There must be more conditions to this because earlier the Author said the widow goes back and lives with her matrikin. Sororate allows that a man could marry his wife's sister if that sister was next to he wife younger in age, whether his wife was dead or not. The Ainu were forbidden to marry a brother's wife's sister, until that brother died. The Ainu were also kind of patrilocal, that is a man and his wife would move near the man's family.

Over time, members of a Kotan would all be excluded from marrying each other. 3 solutions to this came about. The first is the Relaxation of the Rule of complementation. This has to do with the gender-less term for grandchildren, mitpo. After several generations parallel cousins could marry through the system. A man could marry someone matrilaterally related someone several times removed. The second is called Reciprocation. It is a form of Bridal Exchange from on Kotan to another. This came in two flavors. The first says if a bride married someone from a different Kotan, then her daughter had to go back to the bride's original Kotan. The other version says someone of matrilineal descent group has to be sent. This ensured a supply of marriageable cross cousins. The third was adoption. Adoption was also a population control device. If a couple couldn't produce a son, a son-in-law could be adopted. He will live in the foster parent's Kotan. He will inherit the father's itokpa, but still be allowed to marry any female of the Kotan including his adoptive sister. Failure to bear a male child was often enough for a divorce because someone was needed to carry the itokpa and worship the ancestors. The wife would also want a daughter for the same reason. The relaxation rule only occurs for the male, so while a male could trace his descent group 14 or 15 generations back a female could only trace her's for 5 or 6. So a female desired an adoptive daughter even more and the wife's line could die out completely if there were no female children. In the Ainu community a bias for female children developed. This complements the Japanese who have son bias. The adopted children have equal rights of succession and inheritance as that o natural offspring.

Often Wajin females are adopted in to the family, are taken around 2 years of age, and not registered under any government agency. They are called moraiko. The family may adopt as much as 3 or 4 of the moraiko's brothers and sisters even if they can't afford it. Though not explained, a huge influx of moraiko happened from 1920 to 1940. Adoption rate is about the same as the infant mortality rate, about 10%. The need of males was not as great because an adopted son-in-law could inherit the itokpa and worship the ancestors. The daughter-in-laws could not be adopted and inherit the upsor. Also a couple with no children could adopt a female moraiko who'd inherit the upsor and her husband, if he wants, could inherit the itokpa of the moraiko's father.

Adoption has been a great agent in social change to the Ainu. Physically most have been mixed with Wajin characteristics. As a culture, mixed marriages have become normal and desired. There's a table in the book on p. 151 that surveyed 105 Ainu people about their preference for marriage. 5.7% would marry Ainu, 31.4% had no preference, 41% desired a non-Aniu, 6.7% said must be non-Ainu, and 15.2 % was other. Children will rebuke their parents for not marrying a Wajin. A strong self-hatred has developed recently. Upon being interviewed an Ainu said that they would rather marry a criminal Wajin that n a pure Ainu. Others would like to lessen their Ainu features. The richest Ainu in a certain area had a reputation for looking down upon fellow Ainu. They have a great in-group prejudice, indeed. The infusion of Wajin females had a lasting effect on Ainu marriage patterns. Also moraiko run in the family, that is moraiko would raise moraiko of their own. 70% of moraiko children have married non-moraiko Wajin. While lower class Ainu can marry lower class Wajin, an upper class Wajin would never knowingly marry even an upper class Ainu. So upper class Ainu will usually marry a similar classed mixed Ainu to keep their place in society. The overwhelming majority will keep their "Ainuness" a secret if possible, even from their children, and move into Japanese society.

The Authors don't mention much about themselves and their fieldwork. I know the two authors met while doing work in 1968 and the book was printed in 1977. I think they were there since the early 60's and stopped mid 70's. Research methods consisted mainly of interviews and reading at a local university. The problem of social change was well documented and supported. C.C. Peng wrote most of the book and his chapters were more interesting. I thought the book was very informative and straightforward. I selected this book because I'm interested in Japan and plan on living there, so this book taught me about this Ainu sub culture.