Okamoto Bunpei was a member of what seems to have been essentially a lobby group, Hokumonsha (the Northern Gate Society). This group formed in the late Tokugawa period to advocate the aggressive colonization of Ainu lands to stop them, and perhaps Japan with them, from falling into the hands of the Russian Empire. Okamoto in particular was an early colonist in Karafuto, or Sakhalin, and wrote this text as a sort of treatise on how to effectively colonize the island. Southern Karafuto at this time was inhabited by in reality only a small number of permanent Japanese settlers, who were joined by Russian citizens of various nationalities -- many of them criminals and political prisoners. And, of course, the Karafuto Ainu are the Indigenous people of the southern half of the island, though today the vast majority of them, after waves of Japanese and Soviet ethnic cleansing campaigns, reside in Hokkaido and Honshu.
It seems that Okamoto moved to Karafuto in part to put his money where his mouth with some official government support. However, the situation was far from ideal with the colony teetering on collapse, which may have contributed to the decision to formally cede it to the Russian Empire. However, in this context, Okamoto's text may be interpreted as policy suggestions designed to develop the colony economically.
While I intend to read more later on, I quickly went through the short section on the Karafuto Ainu which, keeping in the spirit of the text, was both a critique of existing policies toward the Ainu as well as suggestions for future policies. Okamoto's views are interesting in part because of how differently things actually went, and in retrospect come across as in many ways a continuation of Tokugawa-era direct rule policies.
Taken as a whole, these retrograde policies can be understood as 'winning the hearts and minds' of the Ainu as part of a defense against Russian encroachment while at the same time, assimilating them to the degree that the would be understood internationally as firmly under Japanese suzerainty. As Russians were, according to the new Meiji government's own admission, comparatively kind to the Ainu, Okamoto felt that Japan would have to essentially bribe them, continuing the buiku system from a half century prior. For this, Okamoto suggests, alcohol is "incomparable" in its ability to "tame the barbarians (imin)". Moreover, he suggests keeping a clear distance from Ainu religious practice, going so far as to suggesting Japanese settlers from cutting down willow trees which are used for Ainu religious paraphernalia. One might wonder what Marx with his "opiate of the masses" view of organized religion would make of this pairing.
Okamoto then reaffirms the official Japanese policies of providing a brown rice stipend for the elderly, infants, the disabled, and the sick. He warns, however, that the "stupid (gumai)" Ainu are apt to lie to get more rice and recommends colonial administrators become well aware of the situation and be prepared to punish infractions. Okamoto further chastises the former shogunate for being overly generous with its rice stipends and recommends forcing the Ainu into unpaid labour to compensate for rice beyond what Okamoto imagines would be the right amount to win their loyalty.
With this aid, he warns against using underhanded methods to control the Ainu, and returning to similar policies such as his more 'liberal' stance toward Ainu religion, suggests that Japan would have to be fair in its dealings to properly defend against the Russians, and ends by suggesting teaching them handwriting, arithmetic, and farming and intermarrying poor (as in impoverished) Japanese women to the Ainu, and in turn Ainu women to Japanese settlers.
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