Moribito Will Pierce Your Soul

Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit

An Anime Review - Bonus Content

Studio: Production I.G |  Released: 2007 |  Duration: 26 Episodes | Streaming on: HiDive

Hey Everyone!

If you found your way here from somewhere other than our YouTube channel and you want to learn more about the plot and creative process of Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, as well as some of its characters and themes, then be sure to click on our video linked below. 

However, if you came for the real-life history that inspired the story of Moribito, then stick around and travel to the past with us as we explore some of the conflicts between the Ainu people and the Japanese right here on our blog! 

Let’s get this history class started!  

Now, we hope you’re ready to delve further into what makes the “World” of the Moribito series feel so unbelievably realistic. Honestly, Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit should be a master class on how to give depth to a story. One of the reasons that it was so successful in presenting viewers with a world that was full of such rich cultures and history was due to the author of the Moribito book series, Nahoko Uehashi. Uehashi took her background in anthropology and heavily infused it into her worldbuilding to give us layer upon layer of believability and immersion. By taking real events from our own world history, and disguising it in a fantasy or supernatural setting, is a creative technique that many writers and directors have employed which allows audiences to explore and discuss topics that might be too close to home and therefore, too difficult to examine or take in without our preconceived biases. We covered this a bit already, in our Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust post if you want to see more examples. For Moribito specifically though, we believe that Uehashi was referencing Japan’s dark and complicated history with the Ainu. 

This tale of lost cultures that went extinct due to being conquered by foreign adversaries and being forced to (if they were lucky) be assimilated into this new way of living is not a new one. But this specific one about the Ainu might be one that many in the West have never heard of.       

So I guess the next question is who are the Ainu? But to truly answer that query we’ll have to look a little further back in history and start at - 

How was the Japanese Archipelago populated? 

Well, way back, when early hominids started migrating out of Africa and across the world, they began to inhabit new territories as they went, usually following the coastlines. Now, during this time sea levels were much lower, and the Japanese archipelago was still connected to the Asian continent by land. This made it easier to travel to Japan and various groups of hominids made migrations there over thousands of years. The culmination of all these migrations was a group known as the Jomon people, and they had a mix of DNA from Austronesia, Tibet, China and Siberia. After the sea level began to rise, the Japanese archipelago was cut off from the mainland. This seclusion and the vast size of Japan, which included a large range of environments and temperatures, allowed the Jomon to develop their own unique cultures. Eventually, two main cultures rose to the top within the Jomon. To the North emerged the Ainu, and to the South the Ryukyuans.

During this time, the Japanese archipelago was called Ezo. 

Then, around 300 BCE, a new migration began to take place, and people from mainland Asia travelled through the Korean peninsula to Ezo. It is suspected that these people were driven from their homes due to the effects of the Chinese expansion during the Qing rule. The migrants brought wet rice farming and metallurgy with them and began to inhabit the western side of the central part of Ezo (what is modern-day SW Kyushu). The newcomers mixed with some of the indigenous people, and the resulting population is generally referred to as the Yayoi. 

The Yayoi essentially became the wedge, so to speak, that pushed the Ainu further North and the Ryukyuans further South. Not being able to compete with their agricultural methods or the metal tools forged by the Yayoi, the Ainu and Ryukyuans were pushed aside. 

Who are the Ainu?

So who are the Ainu? As we just mentioned, the Ainu are an indigenous people from the northern regions of Japan. Their social structure was fundamentally tied to nature and influenced by the fact that they were predominantly a hunting and fishing community. They had some very basic forms of agriculture and harvested root vegetables, however it wasn’t their main source of food. 

Each family lived in their own huts called Chise, and a group of these was called a Kotan. They had homes for the hot months and homes for the colder ones, moving between the two and following the animals that they hunted. 

The Ainu are animists who believe that every single thing contains the soul of a god (Kamuy). And because they believe a part of a god’s spirit inhabits all things, everything should be respected with the same reverence. Everything is used to the fullest because it is considered to be a gift from the gods and should be treated with respect. They also had shamanistic rituals in which their soul became free to travel across the planes of the spirit world. 

In Moribito, you can see that Uehashi draws from this as some of the Yaku's beliefs are very similar. The Yaku are similarly animists who live in tune with nature. We also witness Tanda go to the spirit world, Naygu, by leaving his body.  

Because they were secluded from the continent, the Ainu developed quite a unique language in the sense that it doesn’t come from a protolanguage, meaning it can’t actually be linked to other languages. And because they had no writing system, everything was recorded through memory and relayed orally. Their history and legends were told in a never-ending epic chant known as the Yukara. 

As fascinating as that might all be to us now, back then this uniqueness unfortunately marked them as “Other” which led to many conflicts with their new neighbours.  

What were the conflicts between the Ainu and the Japanese?

The Yayoi being able to find their footing within this new land would continue to expand their territory which they would go on to subsequently call the Yamato State. The ease with which they were able to adapt and take over led to a developed sense of superiority over the indigenous peoples, often referring to them as barbarians. This thought was reinforced thanks to the influence the Yayoi, who were now referred to as the Japanese, were increasingly being exposed to from China and the Korean Peninsula. This sense of superiority over less advanced peoples was a way of thinking that would rapidly spread among the high societies and soon the general population as well. And so the idea of the Ainu being lesser was solidified in their minds, which allowed for unfair treatment. Of course, this obviously created tensions and ultimately led to a few rebellions.

One such rebellion is the Koshamain’s revolt in 1457, named after the Ainu leader who led the battle and is known as one of the earliest revolts by the Ainu against Japanese rule. 

The catalyst that kicked off the rebellion is said to have been an argument between a young Ainu man and a Japanese blacksmith over the quality and price of a short sword he had commissioned. The fight got very heated, and by the end of it, the blacksmith had ended up stabbing the young Ainu man with the blade, killing him. The Ainu chief, Koshamain, of the clan the young man was from led other angry Ainu against the Japanese. It was ended by Takeda Nobuhiro who launched a surprise attack on the Ainu, killing Koshamain and his sons in a sea of arrows. 

The consequences of this rebellion were that after the rebellion was quelled the Yamato state began enforcing new restrictions. A major one was that the Ainu were no longer allowed to carry their weapons or use metal or sharp-edged tools. 

Despite these restrictions, trade continued between the two. Of course, the Ainu had been trading with the surrounding areas for hundreds of years, but as time went on the Ainu became more and more reliant on the goods they received through trade with the Japanese. In fact, these items became so integral to their way of life, that some saw this as an opportunity to exploit them. The Japanese knew that the Ainu needed these things so they began raising prices and lowering quality. This in turn caused the Ainu to resort to selling more and more of their goods which resulted in overhunting and a saturation of the market which led to the value of their items going down. Up until then, the Ainu had been very conscious of their reliance on nature and so they took care to allow it to replenish and were careful to never overharvest their resources. But now due to the markets being skewed against them, clans had to decide between starvation or not allowing nature time to replenish itself. Either choice would be devastating, but many chose the latter, which caused a spike in desperation among the Ainu as well as aggressive competition for whatever dwindling resources there were.

But that wasn’t the only problem the Ainu faced. As trade increased so did contact with various groups of people who carried infectious diseases and epidemics that the Ainu just had no immunization against. Smallpox and syphilis became rampant.

These things all created growing tensions between the Ainu clans which culminated in the Shakushain’s rebellion in 1669.

In 1668, two Ainu clans got into a dispute over local resources. This was the Hae clan, whose leader was called Onibishi, and the much larger Shibuchari clan, which was at the time led by Shakushain. These two rival clans were said to have had years of bad history between them.

Anyways the constant disputes began interfering with trade, which meant that the Japanese were losing money. Now, because of the financial interest that the Japanese had they continuously interfered in Ainu matters, which caused all the Ainu to unite against the Japanese. 19 separate clans in fact banded together to fight back against the increasing control of the Yamato state, and in 1669, Shakushain, the Shibuchari chieftain led the revolt. This was the largest fight between the Ainu and the Japanese. 

A cease-fire was eventually called, and a banquet was held to exchange gifts and sign a new peace treaty. After the signing of the treaty and a few drinks the Japanese killed all the unarmed and inebriated Ainu generals…(I guess honour wasn’t a thing yet). Historians who were there to record the event noted that Shakushain began to suspect something had been put in his drink when his limbs started to go numb, and shouted at the Matsumae (the leader of the Japanese representatives) for having betrayed them with dirty tricks before he was cut down. (This is some Red Wedding level back-stabbing going on.) 

   

The consequence of that rebellion was that even more restrictions were placed on the Ainu by the Yamato State. As the years went on the Ainu were reduced to a life of near-slavery, as their people starved. To make sure they complied the Japanese continued to routinely threaten the Ainu with either killing them or their dogs who were crucial to their way of life.

 

Some areas were much worse than others, and a particularly horrible one was the Kunari and Menashi regions which were controlled by Kyube Hidaya. Any Japanese who travelled to Honshu for seasonal work were allowed to forcefully take any Ainu woman as a temporary companion. This meant that even if they were already married or had children they could still be taken, and any Ainu men who resisted were killed with poison. The Ainu were also being taxed, and if they couldn’t pay the full amount their children would be taken from them. Families were torn apart, women were raped, people were starving, and people were being forced into hard labour camps. 

These horrible conditions unsurprisingly sparked one last rebellion, the Kunari Menashi rebellion of 1789. This was a final attempt to push the Yamato influence out of Ainu lands. 

To the Ainu, they were desperately fighting not only for the survival of their people and way of life, but also for their culture, customs, history, and everything else that was being stolen from them by the Japanese.

The Japanese government was forced to send more soldiers North to deal with the uprising, but it wasn’t until the government asked some elderly Ainu elites for their help to stop the conflicts that the rebellion truly died down. See to the Ainu elders, they felt that the survival of their people was more important than the survival of their culture. In the end, 37 Ainu rebels were beheaded as punishment. 

The Japanese then used these rebellions as a sign that the Ainu were not Yamato citizens. This, of course, was all part of a larger political strategy being used by the Matsumae clan, whose control of the Northern region would only continue so long as it needed defending from hostile savages. And the surest way to ensure that was to continue to perpetuate the fact that the Ainu were nothing like the Japanese, that they were “other”.  

During this time, the Ainu were prohibited from speaking Japanese or travelling outside their designated lands. They were barred from wearing Japanese clothing or engaging in any Japanese culture. With this, the Matsumae would drive home the point that there was a clear distinction between the two. 

What Japan's determination to present a United Front meant for the Ainu

This “othering” of the Ainu only changed when Japan stepped onto the international stage. Fearing that foreign countries might try to use the Ainu’s hostility towards the Japanese as a way to weasel their way into the North and weaken Japan’s hold on the land. The Tokugawa government of Japan was determined to portray a unified Japan to the outside world. And saying that the Ainu were Japanese was a way to have an irrefutable claim over the land in the North. Therefore, in 1868, without consulting the Ainu, Japan absorbed all of Ezo into itself and renamed it Hokkaido. 

They then placed even more restrictions on the Ainu. Now, they weren’t even allowed to go hunting or fishing, nor could they have access to their ancestral hunting grounds. These resources were to be reserved for Japanese merchants to exploit. The Ainu were only allowed to use some of their land on the condition that it be used solely for farming.

During this time, the Ainu were also forbidden from practicing their traditions, they had to hide any indicators that showed their Ainu ethnicity. They could no longer wear earrings, or tattoo themselves. Specific hairstyles or facial hair were banned. They also weren’t allowed to speak their language. Many were sent to live on Ainu-specific reservations where they were sent to schools for re-education. There, they learnt the Japanese language and way of life. This meant that much of their oral history was lost during this time. In all, almost 1000 Ainu were forced from their homes and displaced. 

Then, in 1899, the Japanese government passed the Hokkaido Former Natives Protection Act. Unlike the name would suggest this act did the opposite of protecting the Ainu and instead stripped them of their indigenous identity. This meant that they were now classified as ‘former aborigines’ and were forced to register as Japanese citizens and even change their names to Japanese ones. The plan was to absorb the Ainu, in essence erasing them from Japan. This was all so that Europe would view Japan as a monoethnic state, and they hoped that this display of unity and homogeny would deter Europe from attempting to colonize Japan.   

We see Japan do something similar again after WW2. In an attempt to show not only outsiders but also the Japanese people themselves that the Japanese are all one people. However, this time, it seems to have been more as a way of fostering solidarity whilst presenting a new Japanese identity to the world stage.  

So where are the Ainu now?

Well, it took over 109 years, but in 2008, the Japanese government officially replaced the Hokkaido Former Natives Protection Act with the Ainu Cultural Protection Act. However, it wasn’t until 2019 that the Ainu were officially recognized as an Indigenous group. Since then there has been a surge in movements to revitalize and protect the Ainu culture and history.

So there you have it, a “brief” history of the Ainu. Of course, we’re no experts on the matter so we’d encourage anyone interested in the topic to do their own research, and if you find any interesting nuggets we left out, please share them in the comments. This was a fascinating topic to research though, and we had a lot of fun going down all these rabbit holes and learning more on the subject. We might have to take a break from such a large and demanding research topic next time though. These long essay posts keep throwing off our release schedules! haha 

Till next time,

~ Stay Obsessed