Reading notes on Yomiuri Shinbun: "Hokkaido Ainu Representative Travels to Tokyo to Request Protection" (1895/2/5)

This article purports to be an overview of a meeting between an Ainu "chief" (酋長), Santotsutei, with unnamed Japanese officials in Tokyo. What we learn from this meeting is in some ways quite stunning. And, I say "purports" because the conclusion of the article, and the nature of the specific "request for protection" is suspicious in context.

But the key points that the Ainu representative makes are as follows:

1. The nature of Japanese settlement led by the Hokkaido government, and of making Hokkaido a new Japanese territory (新版図), is extremely aggressive, and akin to the invasion of one rival state by another. 
2. Hokkaido prefectural statistics clearly show that Ainu numbers are rapidly decreasing. These statistics, according to the article, are based on Ainu living in households located in towns and villages. However, as Ainu livelihood is assaulted, and their condition in villages worsens, many Ainu escape into the interior of the island, and outside of the purview of the Japanese state, and thereby not existing on paper. The Ainu representative argues that while official statistics show Ainu numbers as being as low as 8,400 people, actual numbers may have been closer to 26,000 people.
3. The Ainu economy before wide-scale Japanese settler colonialism was based on villages along the ocean shore. In the summer Ainu would fish and engage in agriculture, and in winter they would hunt. These villages were prosperous. However, as these villages were taken over by ethnic Japanese, Ainu were forced further into the interior, where they established villages along rivers, and continued a similar livelihood. However, settlers were encouraged by the government to move into these riverside areas too, taking more and more Ainu territory. 
4. Animal pelts became the only product that the Ainu produced. The yearly statistics between 1891 and 1893 show that on average the Ainu collected 56,000 furs on average per year. Each fur was worth around 1.5 yen, meaning the yearly total was worth around 80,000 yen. [Note: Here, it seems that the journalist editorializes by suggesting if given "encouragement" (奨励) and "protection" (保護), profits could be "not few indeed". Moreover, while 80,000 yen was a huge amount of money in those days, this number doesn't seem to account for hunting equipment, middle-men taking their cut, expensive licence fees that Ainu were subject to, or the simple fact that if there were 26,000 Ainu, and the 80,000 yen were to be divided up evenly, that's still only 3.5 yen per person per year, which is a tiny amount.]
5. A secondary industry for the Ainu was husbandry. Horses were seen as a "specialty product" for Hokkaido and this reputation stemmed originally from Ainu horse breeding. However, pastures were nationalized as crown land and from there, was divided up for use by the military, or given to "capitalists" (資本家). The loss of this industry caused considerable suffering.
6. Financial aid, or Ainu collective property "protected" by the Japanese government has either been mismanaged or siphoned off. We see an example of this such as a donation for schools of about 300 yen, or an donation from Japan's royal family of of about 3,000 yen, however, Ainu, according to the article, have no knowledge of where this money is, or how much of it remains. Moreover, in other cases, Ainu were pressured to sell their land on the pretense of rumours about the high prices of building houses. And, the amassed wealth of Ainu who were forcibly moved to Hokkaido from Karafuto and the Kuriles' by the Japanese government had a collective wealth of 12,000 yen, which has gone missing. The Karafuto and Kurile Ainu do not know where it's being kept or how much of it remains. [Note: All this is keeping in mind that Ainu at this time did not have control of their own assets, and it was being squandered, mismanaged, or stolen by Japanese officials.]

Strangely, after this brutally candid account of the effects of Japanese settler colonialism on the Ainu economy, we're told to pity and cry for the Ainu, and the article closes by stating that Santotsutei is requesting Ainu land to be parcelled into private lots to be protected by the government. I can't help but feel very suspicious that this is what Santotsutei would have actually concluded, especially since Ainu collective property being privatized, like with Aboriginal people elsewhere, was the colonial goal, and this process of privatization was effectively a form of primitive accumulation. Moreover, what would privatization have to do with the huge amount of missing Ainu money? It wouldn't, moreover, do anything to give back the vast majority of Hokkaido that was claimed in 1869 as crown land to the Ainu, including the vast pasture lands mentioned in the article. But it but would have legitimized this land theft. So, while I'm not denying the possibility that Santotsusei might have actually suggested this, since as David Howell showed, there were certainly Ainu who sought recognition as Japanese citizenship through assimilation as normative Japanese subjects. However, it's so removed from the rest of the critique that I can't help but be suspicious. The solution given, moreover, is coincidentally or uncoincidentally the explicit aim of the Former Aborigines Protection Act, which was being hotly debated at the time.

The question of private versus public property and how they relate to colonialism is a topic that comes up again and again in colonial era texts. The process is explored by Marx at length, and as related to settler colonialism more recently by scholars such as Glen Coulthard. But what's interesting, and I think missing from these other studies, is that Ainu land was not invaded and privatized. It was invaded and nationalized as crown land, and then privatized. This is to say, the path to privatization was through publicization. How would we consider this, legally? There were also in Hokkaido, as in any other settler colonies, numerous examples of settlers stealing Ainu land (which apparently was one of the reasons for the Former Aborigines Protection Act in the first place-- though suspiciously instead of just policing land theft more carefully). These land theft and the formally illegal settlements that came out of them is itself is interesting to consider, since the Japanese settlers were living on crown land, as Ainu land ownership was not recognized. Even after the Former Aborigines Protection Act, against Santotsutei's wishes apparently, Ainu land was not privatized, but was maintained as crown land parcelled out to families who became formally wards of the state until the land was adequately developed.