The Uilta: an Invisible Indigenous Group in Japan

How one man's journey reflects the struggles of the Uilta people in defining themselves in the wake of Japanese colonization.

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This is the concluding part of a two-part series on the history of the Uilta people and of Uilta activist Daxinnieni Geldanu/Kitagawa Gentaro. Part 1 can be found here.

The Uilta are the smallest of the three indigenous people groups of Sakhalin Island, currently falling within Russia’s internationally recognized territory. Formerly a semi-nomadic people who herded reindeer and were part of a vast trade network that stretched outwards from Sakhalin to Kamchatka, Japan, and China, the Uilta’s lifestyle was disrupted by territorial claims to their homeland made by the encroaching empires of Japan and Russia. In 1906, Sakhalin was split in two by Russia and Japan, with half the Uilta community stuck on one side or the other. In the southern half, soon to be the Japanese settler colony (and later prefecture) of Karafuto, Uilta were relocated to the manufactured “traditional village” of Otasu, where their children were educated to be model charges of the Japanese empire. All the while, they were also featured as exotic tourist attractions for visiting Japanese.

The Uilta Daxinnieni Geldanu, given the Japanese name Kitagawa Gentaro, grew up in colonial Otasu. Trained to venerate the emperor and that his people were backwards and uncivilized, in 1942 he greeted conscription into the Japanese army with great expectations. Longing to be accepted as Japanese, he eagerly participated in secret missions across the border into the Soviet side of Sakhalin. In 1945, however, his whole world came crashing down as the Soviets suddenly invaded from the north, routing the Japanese military and bringing an end to Japanese Karafuto. He soon found himself in a makeshift Soviet prison, his crime: espionage against the USSR. His life, and the history of the Uilta, had changed forever.

Consigned to the Gulags

After their harsh interrogations and perfunctory sentencing, Gentaro was elated to find himself alongside his fellow Uilta and Nivkh “war criminals” on the ferry to Vladivostok. These people were his naaneini, his compatriots. From Vladivostock, four of them together road the unending Siberian rail lines towards their individual sites of exile. Among them was Gentaro’s sister Aiko’s husband, an ethnic Evenk. Gentaro’s brother-in-law, sadly, would not survive the gulags.

Each stop on the line led to separations, as Gentaro’s compatriots were sent to connecting lines towards whatever labor camp awaited them. At long last, after many languid days and freezing nights spent staring out the barred windows of the train car, the locomotive stopped. The guards barked at Gentaro to get out. A snow-filled, desolate plain, without even a train platform, greeted him. He’d arrived at his first site of exile: the town of Kansk in Krasnoyarsk Krai, 3200 miles from his home in Otasu.

As he trudged through the snow to the Kansk Gulag, the only friend still with him was Masao. They were soon given Russian names. Geldanu, who had been Gentaro, was now Gennadiy (called Genya for short). Placed in the general prison population, Genya quickly picked up Russian while engaged in his daily drudgery.

After two years in Kansk, Genya was shifted to the neighboring gulag of Krasnoyark. There, he was reunited with his older brother Heikichi, also in exile. The two were overjoyed to be reunited, but their life in Krasnoyark was harsh. They did manual labor in the outdoors, where, exhausted and malnourished, they were battered by the Siberian winds. Genya would later recount that all his dreams were about food. Life there was so harsh that when transfer orders came in and Genya was moved to yet another gulag, he considered it to be a narrow escape from death.

Genya’s final years in the gulag system were spent in Dorgomosk. There, he was reunited with a dear childhood friend, the Nivkh Igarainu. The labor in Dorgomosk was somewhat lighter than in Krasnoyarsk, but still back-breaking. One winter’s day, Igarainu collapsed in the snow, laid low by overwork. He was only able to be buried in May, after the thaw. Genya found himself shedding tears during the burial. His only remaining link to his childhood in Otasu was gone.

Uilta, Soviet Citizens

Back in Sakhalin, the manufactured village of Otasu slowly disintegrated. The entire surrounding Japanese society evaporated piecemeal, as the hundreds of thousands unable to flee Karafuto before the Soviet takeover was complete were slowly allowed to repatriate over the next year and a half. Soviet reeducation began; the Uilta were to face repressions based on perceived loyalty to Japan. (Still, they were lucky to escape the mass purges their Uilta cousins and Nivkh neighbors across the former border had experienced in Soviet Sakhalin in ’30s, when 36% of the adult population killed or disappeared). Otasu vanished from the map in 1946, absorbed into the larger Soviet town of Poronaysk.

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The Uilta were now faced with adapting to life under a different colonial power, with an entirely seperate ideology and economic system than their previous Japanese overlords. While their status as former subjects of a Soviet enemy endangered many of their lives in the 1940s, by the 1950s, the Uilta had become part of a similar project of socialistic education and “liberation” as had the Nivkh farther north. This liberation came with the stipulation that the Uilta were now to focus on reindeer herding (which only half of the Uilta population had formerly engaged in), although now within communally owned enterprises. Their identity as indigenous people would be something they would leverage and which would be used by others throughout the Soviet period, and even until this very day. 

For many Uilta who came of age in Japanese Karafuto, however, the cultural shifts were too much to bear. Despite their abandonment by the repatriated Karafuto administration, they began petitioning the Japanese government to let them come live in Japan. From the 1950s, Japan began allowing some individuals to migrate to its territory; in 1965, a Japanese court formerly recognized that Uilta did indeed have the right to reside in Japan. Migration began, with Uilta (and some Nivkh) leaving their ancestral homes behind. The northern Hokkaido town of Abashiri became the main site of their relocation.

Adrift in Siberia

Sakhalin, Russia, Japan

In 1952, during Genya’s seventh year in captivity, he was given a commutation and set free. When Genya received this news, he felt like dancing; the idea of being a free man once again was intoxicating. Soon, however, he realized what “freedom” really meant for someone in the gulag system. He was ordered to become a “local,” and to help build a new settlement in the nearby wilderness. Just as the old Imperial Russian convict colony on Sakhalin had forced those “freed” from prison to settle on the island and build new towns, Geldanu would now have to assist the USSR in its Siberian settlement efforts.

It wasn’t all bad news; Masao, now called Vanya, was also to assist in building the settlement. Finally, the two, now fluent in Russian, were able to speak again in Uilta amongst themselves. They soon met the others who would be helping to establish this coerced village. There was Kim, a Korean; a Chinese man by the name of Zhao; Michya, from Belarus. Alongside Michya came his children, as well as his wife, Bronia.

Genya, Vanya, and Kim set to building themselves a traditional Russian-style log home. They had no idea how long they would be made to live in Siberia. The three of them began felling trees, creating wooden barrels to sell at market. The summer months were upon them, and the air was warm and clean. Genya felt a sort of unexpected joy in his new life.

A Brush with Romance

In the next year, the three began tapping sap from nearby pine trees. The sap brought in good money, and Michya’s wife, Bornia, began to assist them with their work. Genya was entranced by the beautiful, blonde-haired young woman, yet he knew nothing about her. It was an unspoken agreement in the gulags that you didn’t ask about people’s pasts.

Bronia began a flirtation with Genya which he had a difficult time resisting. He told her that he didn’t want to do wrong by her husband; Bronia merely replied that he should “throw away his boring Japanese sensibilities.” Instead, Genya began to flee whenever she came near. Thoughts of Bronia kept him up at night.

It was sometime later than Kim, the settlement busybody, informed Genya that Bronia was something called a “Lithuanian.” Genya had never heard of her people before, but was moved by the story of their history; when he learned of the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, he felt they were kindred spirits. Both their people had spent long centuries under the thumb of foreign empires.

In 1955, Genya and Vanya were suddenly informed that their full term of imprisonment was up. They were now to be repatriated – not to Sakhalin, but to Japan. The two were in a state of disbelief. They held a final farewell party with the settlement, where Michya laughingly wondered aloud at how his wife and Genya had yet to get together. The two spend a first and final night in each other’s arms, then said farewell.

A Home He’d Never Known

Back in Vladivostock after ten long years, the sight of the Japanese flag waving from the waiting ferry was enough to bring tears to Genya’s eyes. But then again, he wasn’t Genya anymore. Once more, he reverted to Gentaro – it was again time to attempt to meld into Japanese society. Gentaro alighted at Wakkanai, on the northernmost tip of Hokkaido. On a clear day, he would be able to see Sakhalin, a home now forever lost to him. The local welfare association helped get him a job doing manual labor, although he soon chose to move to Abashiri to be closer to other indigenous refugees from Sakhalin.

The Japan of 1955 was a world away from the imperial existence Gentaro had known. Japan had suffered a devastating rebuilding process after defeat in WWII. The American occupation that had ruled the country for seven long years had only ended two years previous. Japan was only just beginning its ascent towards being an economic superpower. For most in Japan, the war – and their lost vast colonial empire, of which Gentaro had been a subject – was a recent memory, but one they hoped to forget.

Gentaro soon learned that the only way he could gain employment in Abashiri was by having a Japanese family register. Getting one took a month, but more than time, it required the sacrifice of his past. More than anything, Gentaro wanted to forget that he was Uilta – he had suffered so much already because of his identity. Lest anyone suspect his indigineity, he only inserted those family members with believably Japanese names into his register. Those whose names could not be massaged into Japanese – like his still-living adoptive mother Anna – he felt forced to erase.

Gentaro, filled with guilt, still felt this was his only choice. He soon found work as a day laborer, but his desire to remain anonymously Japanese was such that he’d avoid speaking about his pre-war years to coworkers, allowing them to simply treat him as one of many returnee Japanese soldiers. When asked about why he wasn’t married, he simply clammed up. Just as he and the Uilta had never broken under Soviet interrogation, he swore he would never slip up – never reveal his true identity.

(Indeed, Gentaro would never marry, although not for lack of trying. Thrice he was engaged to be married, and thrice it was called off by the other party because of his ethnicity.)

A Family Displaced but Reunited

Life in Japan, it turned out, was in many ways just as dreary as that in Siberia. Day labor paid little, and years of hard physical work were leaving their mark on Gentaro’s body. He longed to see his family back in Sakhalin; how much better it would be if they joined him in Japan, he thought.

Three years later, his wish was granted. His sister Aiko received permission to move to Japan with her family. Excited, Gentaro embarked on the long journey to the port of Maizuru in western Japan to meet with his arriving relatives. There, he caught sight of Aiko and her children… but someone was missing. Where was his adoptive mother, Anna, who was also supposed to arrive? After some prodding, Aiko admitted to Gentaro: “she died waiting for you.”

Anna, who Gentaro had guiltily erased from his own family record for fear of being recognized as Uilta, was gone. A violent shock went through his system.

Gentaro was reunited with his adoptive father, the shaman Gergulu. He was happy to once again be amongst family after so long – but sometimes doubted the wisdom of bringing them to Japan. One of Gentaro’s nieces had arrived in Japan with a child in her arms, and had stopped off at Akita Prefecture to join her Japanese husband who had previously evacuated Sakhalin. When her husband’s parents realized she was an “Orokko,” they forced the two to get a divorce. Gentaro and Aiko’s husband had to go to Akita to retrieve her; the child was to be left behind.

There were many more difficulties for all involved. Those of Gentaro’s generation could speak Japanese; after all, they’d grown up in a Japanese colony. His nephew, however, was 17 years old and spoke nothing but Russian. Finding work for him was a problem. Adaptation to life in Japan was made more difficult by discrimination; by those who would stop at nothing to suss out their identities, no matter how hard they all tried to hide their indigeneity.

Abashiri, a Second Sakhalin

Despite all their hardships, a small community was beginning to form in Abashiri. The city became the focal point for resettling indigenous peoples from Sakhalin, and soon there were many Uilta and Nivkh living in the area. At least, then, they could rely somewhat on each other for assistance and for maintaining the memory of where they came from. Gergulu remained an important focal point of the indigenous community, shaman that he was. People still approached him to assist with health issues or other anxieties. In a sense, Abashiri had become their second Sakhalin.

Despite attempts to live a quiet life, the presence of so many indigenous people in Abashiri began to draw attention. Already, the city tourism board was making use of Abashiri’s newfound indiginiety to market to tourists; in 1950, ostensibly Uilta cultural aspects were invented and appended to an older summer fire festival in order to make it seem more “exotic.” The resulting “Orochon” Fire Festival (making use of a mistaken Russian word) even roped in Gergulu to perform a seance with the festival’s namesake, a large bonfire, while hired Ainu and Japanese children dressed in indigenous garb danced about; despite manufactured claims in Abashiri tourist brochures, the festival only bore the most superficial of resemblance to real Uilta religious ceremonies, which bothered Gentaro to no end.

Scholars also began to descend on the city in order to make the often unwilling Uilta and Nivkh subjects of their studies. As has been reported by Hokkaido Ainu for so long, these scholars tended to rub indigenous people the wrong way, or worse; they would ingratiate themselves to the Uilta as long as they needed information from them, but would then promptly disappear from their lives, leaving them as impoverished as before.

A Shisha for a Friend

One scholar, however, was different. Tanaka Ryo, a high school teacher, was convinced that he should study the Uilta families in Abashiri. He very quickly befriended Gergulu. But unlike other relationships with academics, the friendship was for life. He became like a family member to the Kitagawas, who even referred to him as part of their naaneini. For some time, Gentaro, often away from Abashiri on season construction projects, heard from Aiko of the great friend his family had made. He remained distrustful, having had such poor experiences with those curious in the Uilta. When finally he visited home and met Tanaka, he was shocked at how quickly he took a liking to the man. Before long, they were spending significant time together.

The two would spend the night drinking and talking, with Tanaka even learning to converse in Uilta. Gentaro began to express his deepest feelings to Tanaka in a way he’d never dream possible with a shisha, a Japanese. He even felt comfortable letting out his real feelings about Japanese academics.

“You researchers give us attention during your research, but after finishing it you look away from us. Do you take any care of our lives and futures?!” He then let fly an Uilta expletive. Tanaka took the message to heart.

It was Tanaka, in fact, who finally convinced Gentaro to begin re-engaging with his past as an Uilta. It all began at a lecture in Kitami…

The Okhstok People’s History Movement

The early 1970s saw the birth of a number of regional movements throughout Japan focused on unearthing forgotten or purposefully obscured local history. In a country where official narratives had so long been subject to censorship – first by the militaristic imperial government, and then by the American occupation – there was a great desire in Japan to use newfound freedoms in order to tell of histories the elites would prefer were just forgotten.

In Hokkaido, this grassroots movement – known as minshūshi (people’s history) – blossomed around the northern Hokkaido city of Kitami under the leadership of high school teacher Koike Kiko. The “people” in question were the unknown subalterns to the typically-taught histories of the elites of Japan; the forced prison laborers who died building the highways near Kitami; coerced Korean migrants; victims of indentured servitude in Sakhalin. This brand of history aimed to popularize the stories of the minorities of Japan and the discrimination they faced. As such, they often sought out Ainu and had them tell their personal stories. Meetings were usually attended by hundreds of people.

Gentaro nervously joined his new friend Tanaka as a guest speaker at one of these meetings, which had now turned its attention towards the plight of the Uilta. He found himself surprised at how candidly he spoke, and the honest reactions he received from his audience. Suddenly, he found the emotional burden he’d been carrying for decades all coming out.

He spoke of his feelings of anger at how he’d been treated by the Japanese colonizers who taught him to venerate Japan and then abandoned him; of his experiences in the gulags, and of how he’d had to hide away his identity upon finally arriving in Japan. He described the Uilta as a dying race (滅びゆく民族), whose culture was doomed to die with it. His audience listened with rapt attention, one high school girl even being brought to tears.

This began a long association between Gentaro and the Okhostk People’s History Movement. Gentaro, so used to hiding away, at attempting to negate his indigeneity, was suddenly finding his voice. From that point on, he became a regular speaker at movement events; his cooperation with Tanaka in the attempt to unearth the subaltern history of the Uilta had begun.

An Identity Restored

Gentaro’s interactions with the people’s history movement played a major role in his developing thoughts towards his own identity. Much of this came not only from interacting with sympathetic shisha like Tanaka, but also through regular meetings with fellow indigenous peoples. The 1970s was the era where the Ainu liberation movement was truly emerging in Japan, and Gentaro’s thinking greatly benefited from interactions with Ainu elders and activists.

At one such meeting at Kitami, Gendanu’s interest was piqued by the words of a visiting Ainu ekashi (elder), the venerable Yamamoto Tasuke:

“We Ainu are called ‘former aborigines.’ If we’re ‘former,’ then surely Shamo [the Ainu word for Japanese], who arrived to Hokkaido so much later than we did, are ‘new aborigines.’”

This statement resonated with Gentaro, who would late write that… “I was intrigued by this statement by Yamamoto-ekashi. If the Hokkaido Ainu are former aborigines, then surely we Uilta, who have lived on Karafuto since time immemorial, are also former aborigines. In that case, aren’t the Yamato people, who have lived on the Japanese archipelago for so long, former aborigines themselves? If the indigenous people of the Japanese archipelago are called Japanese, then we indigenous people of Karafuto can be called Karafutoans, and the indigenous Ainu of Hokkaido called Hokkaidoans. So why are Ainu called “former aborigines” and the Uilta and Nivkh called “natives?” Just how much have we feared to be called “natives,” feared to be discovered, and to what degree have we Uilta and Nivkh hidden away, living a smaller and smaller existence?”

The Appeal of the Shadows

Gentaro understood such cases far too well. He had even received letters from Uilta apologetically cutting off contact from him. As an activist, he was now appearing in newspapers and on television; for some Uilta who were friends with the newly recognizable Gentaro, the risk of being outed was too great. One woman told of how her children believed her to be an average Japanese woman. Another Uilta living in Tokyo said “my husband is even now unaware that I was Orokko… I beg of you to leave us be.” For those still successfully hidden away, the terror of being outed was all too real.

Such letters saddened Gentaro, although he understood the desire to hide. His close family, Tanaka, and the people of the people’s history movement thus remained his primary allies in attempts to right historical wrongs. It was through them that Gentaro came to understand the difference between kindness and what we might now term allyship. While many of the settler-colonists on Karafuto had treated him kindly, even in a friendly manner, they’d still used him. It wasn’t until he began interacting with activists on Hokkaido and learning about the subaltern “people’s history” of the island that Gentaro began to perceive what true allyship meant.

By July of 1975, thanks to the warm reception and active participation of those who attended the numerous meetings on the subject of Uilta culture, Gentaro’s whole outlook had changed. Only five months earlier, he’d said “We’re a disappearing tribe. Eventually, I imagine our culture will disappear as well.” Now, he was striving to protect Uilta culture alongside those attending these meetings. In a sense, Gentaro was a new man. Soon enough, his name would once again change to reflect that reality.

The Phantom Conscription

Despite his growing fame in Hokkaido in beyond, Gentaro was still in desperate financial straights. He desired more than anything to devote his time to consultation with his aging father Gergulu. Gentaro was worried that, once Gergulu passed, all his knowledge of Uilta culture would go with him. Yet Gentaro still needed to spend months at a time working precarious manual labor jobs and was still barely staying afloat. More than once he’d had to turn down a speaking engagement in order to head to distant parts of Hokkaido to work construction.

Part of this difficulty arose because Gentaro, despite his service to the Japanese military and numerous years spent in gulags as a Japanese “war criminal,” did not receive a soldier’s pension. Applications to receive such a pension, which would have lessened his financial burden, were denied. Tanaka, upset at seeing the hardscrabble life his friend endured, decided to do something about it.

In July of 1975, the people’s history movement’s “Association to Protect Orokko Rights and Culture” made a resolution requesting that Gentaro be awarded a military pension. The resolution was picked up by local media, and soon the story was being spread far and wide. Why was this indigenous soldier being denied his rightful pension? With the story now in the popular ether, it was time to take political action. Gentaro, Tanaka, and the Orokko Right’s Association decided to take the issue to the government.

At the Seat of Government

When it came time to approach the central government on the matter, there was the question of which Diet member to go through. Gentaro remembered that the Japanese Communist Party had been the only political group to really show care for him and the other Uilta. (Even today, the JCP remains a force in Japan, popular mainly for its support of common people in small local issues.) Despite some arguments that it would be better to go through bipartisan channels, Gentaro’s feelings were given precedence. They approached well-known Communist legislator Ogawasawa Sadako, who said she would gladly present their argument.

Evidence was collected from far and wide. Multiple of Gentaro’s former superiors in the Karafuto military secret service came forward, vouching for his credentials as a soldier. Multiple oral testimonies confirmed the issuance of conscription letters to the indigenous youth of Otasu village, and their service for Japan. His history in the Japanese military was established over and over; meanwhile, he shared in many tearful personal reunions with his military comrades and superiors from Karafuto, many of whom he had previously held deep grudges against.

The debate over Gentaro’s credentials for receiving a pension reached the highest levels of government. Debates were held in the Diet in Tokyo and amongst the prime minister’s cabinet, and Gentaro himself was brought to Tokyo to give testimony. Gentaro felt himself begin to hope.

Rejected by Japan

That hope, sadly, proved to be in vain. Gentaro was denied his military pension on spurious grounds. The government’s investigation proved that he had, indeed, been issued a call-up letter and served the Japanese Empire. However, it also ruled that said call-up letter had been issued without due authority. Colonized indigenes, the ruling went, were not under the purview of conscription because they had lacked family registers. Despite his experiences in the military, and despite his decade in Siberian exile, Gentaro could not officially be called a former soldier. He would receive no soldier’s pension.

Gentaro felt this ruling to be the ultimate betrayal. After all, he would ruefully reflect, even class-A war criminals received a pension. His very identity as a proud soldier of the Japanese empire had been rejected. Everything the colonial system in Karafuto had taught him, his silence during Soviet interrogations, the deaths of his Uilta and Nivkh comrades – they had been in vain. To the Japanese government, it all had nothing to do with them.

Gentaro’s life had been a series of structural betrayals. He’d felt rage at Japanese settlers who misunderstood and exoticized the Uilta; at the military higher-ups who abandoned him; at the colonization system which left his people to their fate. Now, it was the modern government who had once again let him down so terribly. And yet, from this time on, it only spurred him to more actively embrace his Uilta heritage. It was in this spirit that he and Aiko announced their commitment to living their lives as Uilta at a people’s history meeting in Kitami in 1976. From this point onwards, there would be no more “Gentaro,” nor “Genya.” There would only be Geldanu.

Uilta Forevermore

For the next decade, Geldanu worked tirelessly to allow the legacy of the Uilta of Karafuto to live on. In addition to numerous speaking engagements and newspaper and television appearances, he and Tanaka also published his autobiography, which portrayed the history and culture of the Uilta and their tribulations in Japan from a uniquely indigenous perspective. Geldanu’s prominence spurred on numerous debates in Hokkaido and beyond about Japan’s history and treatment of indigenous peoples within its realm of influence.

Such activism sometimes centered around the Uilta’s adoptive home of Abashiri. The “Orochon” Fire Festival, which continued to promote itself as an example of authentic Uilta culture, sparked an intellectual and public debate which made its way into newspapers and more. The festival’s central bonfire ceremony drew much of Geldanu’s ire. While academic works referenced an older tradition of Uilta shamans holding fire ceremonies involving dancing deep in the interior forests of Sakhalin, Gergulu insisted this had never occurred. Uilta shamanic rites were something done inside of personal homes, private ceremonies for a small audience. Enshrouded in darkness, with only the central fire pit or, later, stove light, the shaman would invoke the gods in an attempt to cast out evil spirits. It was a far cry from the public spectacle put on annually in Abashiri in their name.

By contrast, Geldanu approved of local public schools teaching Uilta embroidery patterns to students. To Geldanu, adults often invoked other cultures in appropriative, incorrect ways; in the stitchwork of children, however, he could find no lies. He was happy to see his culture passed down through their handiwork.

In August of 1978, the city of Abashiri opened the Jakka Duxuni (“storehouse of treasures” in Uilta), a small museum devoted to Uilta and Sakhalin indigenous culture. Geldanu was overjoyed. The museum, of which he was the director, was in a way his life’s work. It stored and presented Uilta, Ainu, and Nivkh traditional artifacts, clothing, instruments, and more. While many of the display pieces came from Sakhalin, some were made by the Uilta community of Abashiri; their traditional arts lived on in Hokkaido. The Jakka Duxuni become the focal point of the Uilta Association (ウィルタ協会), an organization which would continue to promote Uilta rights for decades.

Karafuto Remembered

In 1975, Geldanu, once again in Tokyo with Tanaka on a cultural invitation, spotted a young woman wearing a Korean jeogori garment. He was struck by the image of a fellow minority in Japan going about her daily life wearing her traditional clothing. For someone who had so long hidden every trace of his ethnic identity so as to blend in with the Japanese majority, this sight stayed with him.

Geldanu perceived the wearing of traditional dress as associated with being made into a spectacle – being put on display for the enjoyment of the non-indigenous majority. Yet the sight of this Korean woman brought back other memories – of a Korean friend in Sakhalin.

Geldanu remembered a girl around his age, whose family – like so many Koreans – had been forcibly relocated to the island by the imperial Japanese government. She’d meet Geldanu at the ferry wharf, from where he captained the Otasu ferry, and convince him to give her a free ride – not to anywhere, but simply to enjoy the wind in her hair and the breeze off the river.

She’d be wearing standard civilian clothing then, but when he’d visit her at her family’s Korean restaurant, she’d have on a jeogori herself. At the time, Geldanu, obsessed with becoming Japanese, had wondered if she didn’t feel embarrassed wearing those clothes. Now, however, he realized that this was their way of maintaining their culture in a far-off land, in the midst of a majority that had forced them there. From this point onwards, Geldanu decided he would wear Uilta clothing when attending the cultural meetings in Kitami.

The Fate of a People

Daxinnieni Geldanu passed away in 1984. Based on the date his family assumed he’d been born (but of which they were never quite sure), he had only been in his late 50s. Yet he’d lived a life of note, full of trials, tribulations, and even triumphs. His sister Aiko took over his mantle as director of the Jakka Duxuni and leader of the Uilta Association. She became the focal point of Uilta culture in Japan, fielding the Uilta response to the discovery of stolen Uilta remains at Hokkaido University and watching over the continued reproductions of Uilta culture. She was still teaching Uilta embroidery lessons at the Abashiri Community Center when she passed away in 2007.

In the years since her brother’s death, the people’s history movement has waned, and the 2nd and 3rd generations of those descended from Uilta and Nivkh from Sakhalin drifted away from activism or preferred to live their lives as Japanese. Three years after Aiko herself passed away, the Jakka Duxuni was closed; its materials and archives are now housed at Abashiri’s Hokkaidō Museum of Northern Peoples (北海道立北方民族博物館). When approached for this article regarding the current status of the Abashiri Uilta community, a representative of said museum stated that “there is currently no one in Japan who identifies themselves as Uilta.” From a community that once represented perhaps over a third of all Uilta in the world, none now (self-declaredly) remain.

Yet the Japanese disciples of Kitagawa Aiko still teach Uilta embroidery in Abashiri, allowing the Uilta’s traditionally iconography to carry on. Their group is known as the Furreip Association (フレップ会). Perhaps more dubiously, the Orochon Fire Festival is also held most years – though the people it supposedly honors no longer seem to exist, at least in Japan.

Epilogue – Those Who Remain

Of course, the Uilta have not disappeared from the Earth. Their homeland, Sakhalin, has been ruled in its entirety by the USSR and its successor state, the Russian Federation, for 76 years. It has been in this environment that the Uilta have had to find a way to maintain their identities. It hasn’t always been easy.

The state-run reindeer business in Sakhalin during the 1950s-1980s was fairly substantial. In this way, many Uilta continued to work within the same traditional enterprises they’d been involved in for centuries. The end of the Soviet period, however, coincided with a faltering of the reindeer herds. In a market economy, their style of herding was simply no longer profitable.

1991 also saw the emergence of new programs meant to enfranchise indigenous minorities by providing them with business opportunities. These came in the form of “national clan enterprises.” Uilta businesses that now exist on these lines engage in traditional targets of Uilta extraction, such as fishing, reindeer herding, hunting of land animals and birds, and the collection of wild berries. Researcher Lyudmila Missonova described the purposes of these ethnically-based enterprises as the “…preservation of traditional skills, training of children in Uilta decorative arts and dancing, assistance to aged people, and participation in the organization of national holidays.” However, she added that “…they do so with varying degrees of success.”

As such, the Uilta attempt to leverage their identity further – they say they wish to herd as is part of their rightful lifestyle as Uilta, and ask the Russian state to provide tax incentives in order to allow all this to be possible. They have also managed to receive some money from large extractive businesses in Sakhalin, such as Sakhalin Energy Company. Still, many of the national enterprises remain riven with controversy.

These enterprises are often multi-ethnic in nature, run by people who, for example, have a Korean father and a Uilta mother, with workers who are Evenk, Nivkh, Nanai, or Russian. As just one example, take the clan enterprise “Tii”: founded in 1996, the clan was directed by someone with a Korean father and Uilta mother, but who had been raised in a Nivkh family; the word “Tii,” in fact, means “plain” in Nivkh. Initially, the clan had two Nivkh families, two Uilta families, one family of Sakhalinski Koreans (who were never allowed to return to Korea after the fall of Karafuto), and one Russian family.

So, while these “national” enterprises serve to allow the continued traditional work activities of the “numerically small peoples of the north,” they also, in effect, demonstrate what has always been true about the Uilta – that people of numerous clan and ethnic backgrounds interact and intersect within them. Very little could serve as a better representation of what indigenous identity has been, and continues to be, within Sakhalin.

In the 1980s, with the loosening of the hard Soviet-Japan border that divided Sakhalin from Hokkaido, the then-extant Abashiri Uilta community was finally able to reengage with direct contact with their homeland. Aged Uilta once again made the ferry journey, just twenty-six miles north, to visit their home villages and reunite with old family and friends. The connection between Sakhalin and Hokkaido, thousands of years old but dormant for decades, came once again to life. The Uilta community in Hokkaido may have gone silent, but the message they leave remains clear; that we must remember the ties that bind us to our shared past, and to invisible injustices that remain unspoken but not forgotten. Above all, we must listen – so that voices like those of Daxinnieni Geldanu never again be silenced.

Part of this article series is based on the author’s master’s thesis, “Remembrance of Lost Empire: Inter-Cultural Belonging and Created Identity on Sakhalin Island.” The author would also like to thank the Abashiri ALT community and the Hokkaidō Museum of Northern Peoples for assistance in tracking down the answers to some final lingering questions.

Sources

田中 了, ダーヒンニェニ ゲンダーヌ. (1978.) ゲンダーヌ―ある北方少数民族のドラマ. 徳間書店.

Oda, Hiroshi. (2015). Unearthing the history of minshū in Hokkaido: The case study of the Okhotsk people’s history workshop. Local History and War Memories in Hokkaido

Stephan, J. (1971). Sakhalin – A History. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 

Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. (2020.) On the Frontiers of History: Rethinking East Asian Borders. Australian National University Press.

Missonova, L. (2009). The Main Spheres of Activities of Sakhalin Uilta: Survival Experience in the Present-Day Context. Sibirica, 8(2). Berghahn Journals.

Morris-Suzuki, T. (1999). Lines in the Snow: Imagining the Russo-Japanese Frontier. Pacific Affairs, 72(1).

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