本稿は中国黒竜江省の松花江(スンガリー川)沿岸にある敖其(アオチ)と
呼ばれる赫哲族の村に最近新設された博物館での展示を一つの材料として,赫
哲族あるいはナーナイと呼ばれるアムール川流域(主に松花江下流域,ウス
リー川流域とウスリー川河口より下流のアムール川流域)に広く居住する人々
についての文化表象と歴史表象の統合を図り,さらに文化人類学(以下「人類
学」と略称する),民族学による歴史研究の方法と民族誌の内容の通時的相対
化という問題を検討することを目的としている。従来多くの民族誌で「未開の
漁撈狩猟民族」あるいは「自然と共生する文化を持つ民族」という扱いを受け
てきた彼らは,実際には中国,日本,韓国・朝鮮を含む東アジア,北東アジア
の歴史の中で重要な役割を果たしたキープレイヤーだった。しかし,近代国家
の統治の下で,「未開民族」,「異教徒」などのレッテルと共に最低の社会階層
に位置づけられ,彼らが優先的権利を有していた資源からも疎外され,貧困状
態に陥り,一見「未開」な状態に見える生活を強いられた。そこを人類学者や
民族学者に調査され,それを普遍的な状態として民族誌の中で喧伝されてきた。
本稿では,歴史史料に登場する17 世紀以来の彼らの祖先たち,特にゲイケル・
ハラと呼ばれる赫哲族=ナーナイの一つの有力な氏族集団の祖先たちの活動を
分析することで,民族誌に書かれている内容を無条件で受容してはならないこ
とを指摘すると共に,民族文化の紹介の場として最も普及している博物館施設
において,歴史を加味した新しい文化像をいかに展示すればよいかを検討する。
In this paper I will discuss the integration of the cultural and historical
representations of the hunter-gather societies of Northeast Asia. More concretely,
I will analyze the ethnography, a museum exhibition, and historical
documents concerning the Nanai-Heje people of the Khabarovsk region of
Russia and Heilongjiang Province of China, to correlate the contents of the
ethnography written by anthropologists and ethnologists with regional history
and to establish a new historical-cultural representation of this people.
In many kinds of ethnography, the Nanai-Heje people have been
described as poor and uncivilized hunter-gatherers in the North, as if they
had maintained a subsistence system, material culture, life style, social organization,
and belief system unchanged since the Stone Age or Bronze Age.
However, historical documents of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
centuries tell us that their genealogical and cultural ancestors played a decisive
role in the establishment of the control of the Qing dynasty (the last Chinese
dynasty established by the Manchurian people) over Northeast Asia and
that some of them were appointed chiefs, officers, and even generals of the
Manchurian army, and administrative officials of the dynasty. These facts
mean that they were civilized people and key players in history, and that they
often experienced drastic culture change in accordance with changes in political
and economic conditions.
Analysis of the historical documents also reveals that their poverty and
social status as seen at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth
century were results of the policies of modernized countries, which
deprived them of their rights to natural resources and commercial activities, in
order to monopolize these for the enrichment of the countries and their governing
classes. Anthropologists and ethnologists observed and described them
only in this situation. One should not simply believe their ethnography as a
general representation of their culture without any suspicions.
In this paper I will analyze historical documents on the Geiker hala, one
of the clans of the Nanai-Heje people, and an exhibition at a museum in a
Heje village named Aoqi, located on the right bank of the Sungari River near
Jiamusu. This museum exhibits the history and culture of this clan, because
its members founded the village. Based on this analysis, I will discuss how
to integrate the cultural and historical representations of the hunter-gathers of
Northeast Asia, and how to establish a more appropriate exhibition of their
culture in ethnological and regional museums.