Otters, Herring and Sake: Ainu-Japanese-Russian interdependencies and the Kunashiri-Menashi Uprising of 1789

• In Event: The Mist-Covered Borderland – Early Modern Ainu-Japanese-Russian Relations in Ezo

Abstract

During the second half of the 18th century, the centers of gravity of Japanese and Russian settlements in Ainu territory grew closer together, and a demographic shift started to emerge in the Ezo region. By the 1780s, the Northeast of Ezochi (Menashi) and the southernmost tip of Kunashir had become the nerve center of inter-ethnic contacts, a regional hub of Ainu-Japanese-Russian trade and contraband, as well as an active center for herring fisheries.

As such, this region became the locus of unique phenomena, most notably of a complex web of economic interdependencies between the Ainu, the Russians (mainly i͡asak collectors and sea-otter hunters), and the Japanese (merchant houses, the Matsumae domain and the bakufu), and of a plethora of political, commercial, intra- and inter-ethnic tensions. These included tensions between Ainu and Russians for control of resources, between Japanese and Russians for commerce with the Ainu, between Japanese merchant houses and the Matsumae domain for effective regional control, among Ainu chieftains for supremacy in the Kurilian trade, and between Ainu and Japanese for Ainu autonomy and subsistence.

In this presentation, I examine the culmination of these phenomena, the 1789 Kunashiri-Menashi Uprising, and its consequences on regional political and commercial sovereignty. I aim to show how and to what extent Ainu-Russian-Japanese relations well beyond the Tokugawa realm’s borders, and the turning point that is the Kunashiri-Menashi Uprising, durably and irrevocably changed Ainu-Japanese and Matsumae-Edo relations, and ultimately influenced the region in terms of shogunal perception, effective Japanese dominion, and Ainu autonomy.

Author

• Noémi Godefroy, Centre d'Etudes Japonaises