Agriculture of Hokkaido
Covers the historic agricultural methods of Ainu people.
Location: Hokkaido, Japan
Crops and Agriculture on Hokkaido
The Ainu are best known as hunters and fishermen, but they also possess a long history of agriculture separate from the Japanese. Chilly Hokkaido is generally not suitable for rice production. The ancestors of the Ainu instead learned to grow hardier crops between 700 and 1200 CE. Satsumon people are known to have planted millet, barley, wheat, flax, beans, and hemp. Their descendants on Hokkaido continued their farming tradition, growing everything but the rice they traded from the Japanese. Sakhalin Island, farther north, was less suited to agriculture.[1]
The staple crop of the Ainu was millet, a cold-tolerant cereal with a short growing season. Each household kept a small plot measuring 2500 to 4000 square feet. Women did most of the farm work. They sowed their crops in spring, harvested them in fall, and then stored the surplus for winter.[2] Most of their vegetables were imports from Japan, but they grew a type of turnip called atane, native to Hokkaido.[3] Historic farmers did not fertilize their fields, believing it was offensive to interfere with the plans of the gods.[4]
Transitioning to a Farming Lifestyle
For centuries, the Ainu never needed to adopt a fully agrarian lifestyle. While rice and millet supported their diets, families also survived on fish, venison, and gathered foods. This changed with growing Japanese influence on Hokkaido. As fish and game disappeared, the Ainu relied more and more on their farms and trade with the Japanese. Laws from the Matsumae period first banned Ainu farms to encourage the continued trade of valuable animals. They later reversed the policy, forbidding hunting and fishing in the Ainu fashion. Today, many Ainu people are still farmers in Hokkaido.[5]
Gathered Edible Plants of the Ainu
Ainu women also gathered plants from nearby forests and beaches. Summer was known as 'the year of women.' Mothers, daughters, and young sons ventured into the woods together to collect plants for food, tools, cloth, and medicine. They searched for lily bulbs, or the 'backbone of food,' along with berries, leeks, and wild grapes, among other species. Plants like mugwort, mistletoe, columbine, burdock, reeds, and elm all served medicinal or practical uses.[5][6]
Bibliography
Gary W. Crawford "Advances in Understanding Early Agriculture in Japan," Current Anthropology 52, no. 4 (2011): 331-345. doi:10.1086/658369.
Neil Gordon Munro, Ainu Creed and Cult (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 3.
"Agriculture," Ainu Museum, Ainu Museum, accessed November 06, 2016.
John Batchelor, The Ainu of Japan (London: Religious Tract Society, 1892), 255-257.
Vicki Cummings, Peter Jordan, and Marek Zvelebil, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 1060-1063.
John Batchelor, The Ainu and Their Folk-Lore (London: Religious Tract Society, 1901), 292-293.
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