SDHF Newsletter No.362 Leaving the Ainu Issue Unaddressed Will Make Another Ukraine

Leaving the Ainu Issue Unaddressed Will Make Another Ukraine
Sawada Kenichi,

Japan Society for Ainu Studies

Mr. Sawada Kenichi sent the above-mentioned statement to the CCPR-International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, whose 136 Session is scheduled 10 October 2022 – 04 November 2022. His statement is uploaded on the official site as stated bellow:

Mr. Sawada’s statement: https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CCPR/Shared%20Documents/JPN/INT_CCPR_CSS_JPN_49219_E.pdf

As mentioned in his statement, the Russian Federation is beginning to express its

territorial ambitions toward Hokkaido through the Ainu issue. A written request that Russia should establish an Ainu autonomous province to place part of Hokkaido under its control has been submitted to President Putin from within Japan. Claims such as “Ainu are of the Russian origin” and “Russia has all rights to Hokkaido” are completely wrong. These claims made in Japan and overseas that encourage the division of Hokkaido are caused by the obscure document of the Japanese government that recognized the Ainu. Leaving such a situation unaddressed is very dangerous. We should not give Russia a pretext for invading Hokkaido.

However, recent scientific DNA research shows that the Ainu are undoubtedly descendants of the Jomon Japanese people. On May 13, 2019, Japan’s leading research institutions, including the National Museum of Nature and Science, National Institution of Genetics and the University of Tokyo, announced the joint research result that the Ainu inherit 70% of the DNA of the Jomon people. The Ainu continuously inhabited Hokkaido at least since the Jomon period (more than 10,000 years ago).

Furthermore, the “Research content” of the article “Ancient Jomon genome sequence analysis sheds light on migration patterns of early East Asian populations” by the University of Tokyo, the University of Tokyo Graduate School and Kanazawa University, released on August 25, 2020, says that ‘IK002 (note: bone of a Jomon individual excavated from the Ikawazu shell-mound site in Aichi Prefecture), a mainland Jomon individual, was found to cluster with the Ainu.’ This result coincides with the whole-genome sequencing of the Hokkaido Jomon people, which indicates that the Ainu people are the oldest lineage of inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago, and, at the same time, they are likely to be one of the direct descendants of the founding population of East Eurasians.

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact