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Book Review
| The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion. By Brett L. Walker. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. xii + 332 pp. Illustrations, tables, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $40.00
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| How many English speakers know of the Ainu, who have been living in the northern part of Japan? Even most modern Japanese know very little about them because the Ainu were "absorbed" into Japan. Brett Walker sheds light on this process by searching out extensive Japanese-language archives. First, he challenges the sakoku (isolation) thesis by showing how actively the Edo (Tokyo) shogunate promoted commerce with foreign countries through the four ports of Ryukyu, Nagasaki, Tsushima and Ezo (Hokkaido). Second, he presents Ezo not as a frontier location but as a "middle ground," employing the "New Western history's" understanding of American Indian-European interaction. |
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Walker impressively reveals the dynamic trading link between China and Japan through Sakhalin or Kuril. It brought various cultural changes to the Ainu, too, for some of their ceremonies accepted materials from Japan. However, the author fails to mention whether the Japanese brought Buddhism or Confucianism to the Ainu. European colonization was always accompanied by Christian missionaries as advance guards who converted native peoples. That is why the Tokugawa shogunate prohibited communication with European countries except for the Dutch, who promised not to propagate Christianity. Although religion is not a main theme of this work, still he should have discussed it. |
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Regarding ecological aspects, Walker should have mentioned the role of potatoes, presumably brought into Ezo in 1706. If potatoes had become a common food among the Ainu, starvation after the destruction of their subsistence life might have been alleviated, or they could have depended less on rice and sake. The reduction of game such as deer by overhunting also caused starvation. The author discusses the commercial value of eagles in detail, but little is mentioned about the wolf, which was another important predator in Hokkaido and was eradicated around 1900 by American methods. I hope the author will further clarify such ecological factors in future research. |
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It is understandable that writing a history of a completely different culture is demanding. From this viewpoint, this is an amazing work. The author paid careful attention to the order of surname and first name when mentioning Japanese individuals. However, he used the mileage system to express distances. A similar inconsistency occurs when he mentions "eastern Ezo" both as the absolute eastern part of Hokkaido and the places located relatively east of Matsumae town. Still, Walker's work supplies indispensable information for scholars with an extensive knowledge of the history and geography of Japan. |
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Reviewed by Taiichi Ito, associate professor of natural areas planning at the Institute of Agricultural and Forest Engineering, University of Tsukuba, Japan. Dr. Ito has published an essay in Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture, Michel Conan, ed. (Dumbarton Oaks, 2000). |
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