This essay examines the methodical and practical reconstruction of
cultural ethnography from material culture, taking up, as an example for
analysis, the Kuril Ainu and their material culture, which has no successors
today.
First, folk tools of the Kuril Ainu kept in Japan are compiled. The
main part of the compiled materials were collected by Ryuzo Torii during
his ethnological investigation in the Chishima (Kuril) Islands in
1899, and the rest include what government officials collected on their
way to Northern Chishima before the Kuril Ainu were forced to emigrate
to Shikotan Island in 1884. Torii's ethnological investigation was done
in order to prove his own theory explaining the origin of the Japanese
people, and the materials (folk tools of the Kuril Ainu) collected on this
occasion were influenced by this motive. He also attempted to restore
and record the unmodernized life-style of the Kuril Ainu, so only traditional
tools were the objects of his collection.
Considering this, on analyzing the folk tools of the Kuril Ainu compiled
for this study, it is necessary to pay special attention to the nature
of these materials and to amend this bias. The methods of analysis are
as follows: calculation of the ratios of kinds of raw materials composing
folk tools collected by Torii, those collected by other people, and archaeological
materials of the Kuril Ainu; comparison of the ratios to
discover the degree of bias inherent in the materials; compensation for
the bias in compilation of the tools of the Kuril Ainu.
Secondly, the tools compiled as above are classified according to
their uses, characteristics of their form and manufacture are observed and
recorded, and a scale drawing of representative examples of each tool is
made (in the following studies dealing with individual materials, this
scale drawing will be indispensable in order to introduce the typological
analysis) .
It becomes possible to propose a new outlook on facts for which
records are lacking or insufficient in the existing ethnography. For example,
(1) it can be reconfirmed that the Kuril Ainu adapted themselves to
a marine environment, fishing and hunting for a certain long period,
migrating from island to island; (2) while today the Hokkaido Ainu and
the Kuril Ainu are recognized as having once belonged to the same
cultural and ethnic group, they regarded each other as different: this is a
tendency which can be traced back rather a long time in their history; (3)
it is proved that iron and cotton products imported from Japan and
Russia greatly influenced the traditional raw materials of everyday tools
and the expression of sexual differences in their manufacture, and that at
last they brought about a revolution in the whole system of folk tools;
(4) in existing ethnography and historical documents, relations between
the Kuril Ainu and the Sakhalin Ainu are rarely recorded, but this essay
points out some direct contacts between them.
Today, when many traditional cultures are being rapidly changed
and destroyed, some leaving no successors, the importance of an attempt
to reconstruct cultural ethnography from a study of material culture in
everyday tools will increase.
物質文化からの民族文化誌的再構成の試み : クリールアイヌを例として
KH_021_2_003.pdf
(11.57MB)
