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Ainu Buildings

Until recently, the Ainu, the indigenous people of northern Japan, lived in small, seasonal settlements (kotan), located in food-gathering areas. For example, in spring they lived along the seashore where they collected fish and seaweed; in summer they lived in the mountains where they hunted animals and collected wild vegetables and berries; and in winter they lived in valleys protected from wind and snow.

Traditional Dwellings

The simplest type of dwelling was a kashi. It consisted of a tripod whose sides were covered with branches and woven mats. It was large enough to provide shelter from the rain for a family of four or five. When more room was needed, a beam was placed between two sets of tripods and the sides enclosed to create a kucha, which housed up to ten people.

A chise, a larger house with a roof set on walls, allowed enough space to stand up, make a fire, and do other kinds of indoor work. Upon entering a chise from the semu (entrance and storage area), one found a large room with small windows and an earth floor, in the middle of which was a square fire pit with mats on both sides. On one side of the room was a raised area on which were placed articles such as lacquer boxes and sacred objects made of shaved wood (inaw). Hanging from the smoke-blackened rafters were bows and arrows for hunting.

Traditionally, chise houses were constructed on a river bank so that the sacred objects could face upstream where the gods were believed to reside. A chise lasted around ten years or longer, depending upon how well it was constructed and maintained.

The chise house shown in the drawing on this page has walls and roof consisting of bundles of reeds or bamboo grass attached to poles tied horizontally to the main frame. Smoke holes are left at the top. The ridge is covered with a cap weighted down with wooden poles that are tied to the rafters. To the left of the main building are two toilets, one for males and one for females. To the right of the building is a cage where a bear cub was raised until it was large enough to be killed in the most important of the Ainu ceremonies. The slain bear was eaten in a ritual feast and its skull adorned and honored. To the right of the bear cage is a small elevated storehouse, reminiscent of Jōmon kura. In the foreground is a garden, behind which is a drying rack. Vegetables were supplemented by salmon and wild meat such as deer.

Winter houses, called toi-chise (“house of dirt”), were built by erecting a roof over a pit and covering it with earth to retain the heat. This type of house was observed in Sakhalin as late as 1946. Dwellings in spring and summer villages were built with less substantial materials, such as poles covered with reeds or grass.

Early photograph by Kinoshita Seizō of an Ainu couple in traditional costume in front of their house.

A traditional Ainu house with entrance/storage room attached to a larger room. The house shown here is based on a model at the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka.

CONSTRUCTION OF A PORO-CHISE BUILDING

When the poro-chise (large house) at the Ainu Museum in Shiraoi, Hokkaido, burned in 1996, the museum staff undertook its reconstruction using traditional building principles they had learned from elders over the years. First, vertical posts were buried in the ground and purlins were attached to the top to create the walls. Ceiling beams were used to connect the two side walls to create a solid framework. For the roof, two tripods were erected on top of the frame and connected with a ridgepole, leaving smoke holes at both ends. Rafters were run from the wall purlins to the ridgepole, and small poles were attached horizontally across the rafters. The finished roof was covered with fishnets, and overlapping reed bundles were tied vertically to the roof frame, starting with the bottom row. Reed bundles on the top row were bent over the ridge and covered with additional small bundles to create a unique ridge shape. Small horizontal poles were fastened on the outside of the vertical wall posts for attaching reed bundles to build the walls. More small poles were attached horizontally over the reeds to help hold them in place. Window holes were cut and fitted with coverings that are pulled by ropes from inside to close the openings.

A poro-chise (large house) building under construction at Shiraoi in 1996. The floor and walls of the finished house have been covered with mats. The roof beams remain exposed. The shelf on the wall is for holding ceremonial objects. A large spark deflector hangs over the recessed fire pit.

Traditional Religion

Traditional Ainu religion was organized around a cult in which a bear cub was captured and raised by an Ainu woman. In recent times, the cub was raised in a cage until grown, when it was ritually killed and eaten in the Iyomante ceremony. The skull was adorned, worshipped, and paraded through the village in a rite designed to free the spirit of the bear and to maintain good relations with the spirit world.

Decline of Traditional Culture

The traditional way of life of the Ainu continued until around the end of the Edo Period. In 1899, the government enacted the Hokkaido Ainu Preservation Law, encouraging the Ainu to live in perma-nent villages and to cultivate the land. However, there was little land available, as Japanese (Wajin) had been immigrating to Hokkaido since the fifteenth century. Laws prohibiting traditional customs and food-gathering practices led to the decline of traditional culture and language, as well as to an overall lower standard of living.

In the twentieth century, the Hokkaido prefectural government established housing programs for the Ainu but the houses were so small and poorly built that the Ainu preferred to live in traditional style houses next to the government buildings. In 1997, the Diet passed a new law advocating research on Ainu culture and supporting the preservation of Ainu language, customs, and traditions. It remains to be seen if this law will improve the situation of the Ainu. Ainu leaders are attempting to revitalize traditional culture by teaching the Ainu language and traditional customs to young people. There are only a few elders, however, who possess this kind of knowledge, so the task is daunting and the outcome uncertain.

There are around twenty-four reconstructed chise in Hokkaido and three more in other areas. However, none are actually used as living quarters at present. The way of life of contemporary Ainu is not that much different from that of the larger population, into which they have, for the most part, been assimilated.