The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800This model monograph is the first scholarly study to put the Ainu--the native people living in Ezo, the northernmost island of the Japanese archipelago--at the center of an exploration of Japanese expansion during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the height of the Tokugawa shogunal era. Inspired by "new Western" historians of the United States, Walker positions Ezo not as Japan's northern "frontier" but as a borderland or middle ground. By framing his study between the cultural and ecological worlds of the Ainu before and after two centuries of sustained contact with the Japanese, the author demonstrates with great clarity just how far the Ainu were incorporated into the Japanese political economy and just how much their ceremonial and material life--not to mention disease ecology, medical culture, and their physical environment--had been infiltrated by Japanese cultural artifacts, practices, and epidemiology by the early nineteenth century. Walker takes a fresh and original approach. Rather than presenting a mere juxtaposition of oppression and resistance, he offers a subtle analysis of how material and ecological changes induced by trade with Japan set in motion a reorientation of the whole northern culture and landscape. Using new and little-known material from archives as well as Ainu oral traditions and archaeology, Walker poses an exciting new set of questions and issues that have yet to be approached in so innovative and thorough a fashion. |
Contents
The Consolidation of the EarlyModern Japanese State in the North | 17 |
Shakushains War | 48 |
The Ecology of Ainu Autonomy and Dependence | 73 |
Symbolism and Environment in Trade | 99 |
The Sakhalin Trade DIPLOMATIC AND ZOOLOGICAL BALANCE | 128 |
The Kuril Trade RUSSIA AND THE QUESTION OF BOUNDARIES | 155 |
Epidemic Disease Medicine and the Shifting Ecology of Ezo | 177 |
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Common terms and phrases
Ainu and Japanese Ainu chiefs Ainu communities Ainu elders Ainu society Akkeshi Andō audiences became bunka casi ceremonial chōshi chūsei Collection for Northern commercial cultural deer disease domain Early Modern Japan early-modern eastern Ezo eburiko Edo shogunate Emishi epidemic Ezo hōki fish fisheries Fukuyama Castle gifts hawks Hidaya Hideyoshi Hirosaki HMSS hōki Hokkaido University Hokkaido University Library Hoppō hunting Ibid Ieyasu ikken iomante Ishikari Island Iturup Japan Japanese Kaiho Mineo Kakizaki kamuy kenkyū Kinsei Ezochi kokudaka Kurils Kushihara land Matsumae domain Matsumae family Matsumae Hironaga Matsumae lords Matsumae officials Matsumae Yasuhiro Matsumae's merchants Mogami Mogami Tokunai Nihon Norihiro Northern Studies NSSSS omusha Onibishi political Qing RCNS region rekishi Resource Collection ritual Russian saké Sakhalin Ainu Sakoku salmon Santan Sapporo Satō sea cucumber Shakushain Shiranushi shiryō shogunal officials Shōjirō smallpox Sōya subsistence Takakura Shin'ichirō Tokyo trade in Ezo trading posts Tsugaru ittōshi University Press Urup village Wajinchi Yoshihiro
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