The unique way of life, worldview and folklore of the indigenous population of Sakhalin - the Nivkhs, Uilta and Ainu ¹-attracted the attention of Russian travelers and writers: among them Vladimir Korolenko, Anton Chekhov, Vlas Doroshevich, and later representatives of Soviet literature - Lev Alpatov, Viktor Vazhdaev, Nikolai Kostyrev and many others.

Interest in the indigenous population of the Far East is also noted in Japanese literature. The territorial proximity of Japan to Sakhalin, the controversy over the ethnogenesis of the small Sakhalin peoples (attribution of the Nivkh and Ainu to the Mongoloids or the kinship of the Nivkh and Uilta languages with Tungus-speaking groups, etc.), the peculiarities of their cultural traditions and folk crafts only contributed to the growth of the number of Japanese writers ' appeals to these ethnic groups.

"FANTASTIC DREAMS" BY TAKUBOKU ISHIKAWA

One of the first references to the indigenous peoples of Sakhalin in Japanese fiction belongs to Takuboku Ishikawa (1885-1912).

The poet, who repeatedly wrote in his poems about the worship of Russia, for a long time only hoped to be on Sakhalin. This secret dream he laid out in the thin notebooks of his "Diary written in Latin" (April-June 1909, publ. 1948). The "Diary", which was not intended for publication by the author, captures the" unrealizable, fantastic dreams "of the poet -" Tsunami and Hakodate... a trip <...> to Sakhalin, in the northern regions of Sakhalin in Russia... meetings with state criminals..."².

For the first time, the toponym "Sakhalin" appears in a story about a friend of the poet, Kyousuke Kindaichi (1882-1971), a specialist in the aborigines of Sakhalin, the author of the books "Study of the Ainu" (1925), "Ainu: Life and Legends" (1941), and others. "In the bathroom," Takuboku Ishikawa recalled, " I ran into Kindaichi. He just got a call... They said that his trip to Sakhalin was resolved. And Kindaichi was surprised, and I couldn't help but be surprised. They said that he would probably go in the middle of spring. As a freelance employee of the Sakhalin prefectural Administration, study the language of local residents, Gilyaks and Orochi... Kindaichi does not want to go to Sakhalin, because he can live in Tokyo, because he is alone and has a variety of desires. Oh, how I wish I were in Kindaichi's shoes! Ah! " ³.

A friend's stories about the Sakhalin Ainu could not leave Takuboku Ishikawa indifferent, who was drawn to everything new and impressive. In the "Sakhalin" fragments of the "Diary", the poet's desire to escape from the atmosphere of ordinary everyday life is traced. "I listened," he wrote, " as Kindaichi read to me... your own two or three novels. Then I listened to his stories about Sakhalin. About the Ainu, about eagles that rustle their wings in the morning sky, about ships, about huge virgin forests... I asked:

- How much does a trip to Sakhalin cost?

- Only twenty yen (a considerable amount for a poet-approx. author). <...>

My friend looked at me with pitying eyes. " ⁴

The poet's attention to Sakhalin is explained by the general mood prevailing in Japan at that time. With the southern part of the island, which was ceded to Japan after the defeat of Russia in the war of 1904-1905, many ordinary Japanese associated the search for profitable work and opportunities for self-realization. All this found serious state support: the Japanese government allocated significant funds for the development of southern Sakhalin.

Inspired by Kindaichi's stories about Sakhalin and its indigenous peoples, Takuboku Ishikawa longed to be on the island, to see with his own eyes something that would give a different twist to his work. But his hopes did not come true...

"SAKHALIN" BOOKS BY KOTARO SAMUKAWA

Kotaro Samukawa (1908 - 1977, real name - Norimitsu Sugawara) mentions the aborigines of Sakhalin in his prose. The future writer was born in Hokkaido, and in 1921, together with his family, he ended up on Sakhalin. His father Shigezo Sugawara (1876 - 1967) became the headmaster of one of the schools on Karafuto (as the southern part of the island was called at that time). However, Samukawa lived in the new place for only a year and a half.

He did not return to Sakhalin again until 1932. His father at that time was an employee of the museum in Toyohara (now Yuzhno - Sakhalinsk). 24-year-old Samukawa began to help his father: he made sketches of plants, prepared scientific articles for publication. Together with his father, he designed more than 30 thousand illustrations for books about the plants of Sakhalin, and later edited the four-volume work of his father - "Flora of Sakhalin" (1937-1940).

While doing editorial work, Samukawa also makes his first steps in fiction-he publishes the novel "Poachers" (1939), in which he tells about a brave hunter named Bars. In the debut book, the main character is engaged in hunting on Sakhalin, then in Primorye, then in the cold waters of the Anadyr Bay, then in Yakutia. The world of people encountered by the Leopard is diverse: these are Russians, Oroks, Eskimos, Tungus, Chinese, and Americans. But if for the Oroks or Tunguses hunting is a natural trade, a source of food, then the Americans for the writer are poachers who have defied the unwritten laws of the wild.

Samukawa brings the reader to the fact that representatives of a particular locality are carriers of special mores, habits, and appearance. For example, the author speaks very briefly about the silent wife of the Leopard, who before her marriage lived in a remote village, lost somewhere in the Tokati plain. At the same time, he writes about the unusual light skin color of a woman for the Japanese, focuses on the contrast in the characters of the spouses. The mention of such differences and the emphasis on details suggest that the ancestors of the Leopard's wife may have been Ainu. After all, it is the Ainu (in comparison with the Japanese) who have depigmentation of the skin, its lightening, and it is on the Tokachi plain that the Ainu settlements in Hokkaido are located.

Opposites are also seen in Bars ' view of the Americans, who, in the opinion of the hero, "who made friends with Russians and Orochons in the remote places of Primorye and Sakhalin" ⁵, are more cultured.

In Poachers, the images of Sakhalin aborigines are isolated and indirectly correlate with the concept of the work. In other books of Samukawa, this theme is continued: in "Myth" (1940), the world of the Oroks is recreated in detail, and in "Notes on Sagaren" (1941), the everyday life of the Sakhalin Ainu is occasionally drawn.

So, in the "Myth" the story is told from the words of an elder of the Serodzei family. The hero of the book carefully records the history of an ancient tribe, whose ancestors were natives of Siberia. Serodzei's tribesmen crossed the frozen Tatar Strait (in the text - Mamiya Strait ⁶) and moved to the north of Sakhalin. The head of the Shuni clan led his clan to new lands, created a settlement (later called Otasu by the Japanese; it is located near the modern city of Poronaysk). The "Myth" describes in detail the family and everyday relations of the Oroks, their means of life associated with the rich world of the surrounding nature.

Samukawa's prose presents the real life of small communities of island aborigines in the first quarter of the XX century, tells about their ethnic uniqueness, about the social and everyday life that is consonant with nature, and about the mythological nature of consciousness.

HIDEO OGUMA AND HIS AINU POEM

Writer, poet and artist Hideo Oguma (1901 - 1940) was born in Hokkaido. In 1914, the Oguma family, hoping to improve their financial affairs, moved to Karafuto, in the city of Tomarioro (now Tomari on Sakhalin). Having no education, Oguma tried many professions: he worked as a blacksmith, shoed horses, went fishing in the sea, collected sea cabbage, chopped firewood. In 1921, he was drafted into the army. A year later, he joined the publishing house of a Hokkaido newspaper, where he began writing essays, poems, and short stories. After getting married, Oguma returns to Karafuto. The first success comes to the poet in the 1920s. He joins the "Society of Proletarian Poets", reads books by Russian revolutionaries in translations, writes satirical works and critical articles about the current state of literature. The artistic legacy of Oguma, who sought to abandon the classical forms of Japanese poetry, is small - three small books.

Like many of his contemporaries-

Besides, Oguma was a fan of Russian culture: he loved Pushkin and Gogol, Mayakovsky and Yesenin, and wrote his own poems about Russia and its famous heroes. The generalized image of the Russian people in the poet is most successfully presented in the poem " O Volga-river!":

  
  
   
O Volga, you are a symbol of courage, 
 You flow through a great country, 
 What dictates the laws of history. 
 What do I want to call you 
 By the River of Justice, Volga!

⁷

The theme of the unity of the people and nature, when the elements reflect the world of human existence, continues in "Flying Sleigh" (1935) - Oguma's most voluminous work. In this poem, the mighty spirit of the Sakhalin Ainu is celebrated, resisting the indomitable forces of the northern winter:

  
  
  8

^{Winter rushed to the attack - As if a backhand Palm Hit on the cheek... For a while, both nature and people froze in confusion... The brown skin of the earth Was Covered with the purest snow in the evening}

. 
 
 

The ethnographic material is presented by Oguma in the context of a poetic description of the everyday life of a "small" people. The Ainu struggle with the natural elements that gave birth to them and feed them. The indomitability and fury of the winter winds is in tune with the spiritual and physical resilience of the Ainu, whose life in the harsh winter conditions is perceived as the highest value.

Laconically and expressively, against the backdrop of the sparse Sakhalin nature, Oguma draws people preparing for the "invasion of wind and snow". When describing the natural color of the Sakhalin winter, Oguma also raises issues of social justice:

  
  
  9

^{Northerners, with their sensitivity to change, Thoroughness, and speed, were preparing for winter. Everyone prepared in their own way: Having money - in their own way, Not having money-in their}

 own way. 
 
 

The poet gives the climatic realities of Sakhalin as an artistic generalization, not tied to any specific geographical location. The Ainu are considered by the Oguma as a special community of people who are close to nature, but also always find themselves in a state of competition with the world around them. Sung in the poem, the irresistible desire for life becomes a distinctive feature of the entire Ainu people.

"SAKHALIN" HEROES OF KENZABURO OE

Kenzaburo Oe (born in 1935), like Takuboku Ishikawa, has never been to Sakhalin. But his interest in the indigenous peoples of the Far East shows itself in several works of this writer.

The prose of Oe, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1994, is autobiographical, filled with complex associations and philosophical overtones. Such works include the short story "The World of Dogs" (1964), in which the ethnographic material introduced into the storyline is connected with the disclosure of the life aspirations of the main character - a young man called the narrator's "younger brother" in the book.

The news of the discovery of the "younger brother", lost during the evacuation, finds the writer in the vicinity of Abashiri in Hokkaido while meeting Sakhalin immigrants-Nivkhs and Oroks. The need to meet with the "brother" in Tokyo forces the hero to abandon the planned meeting with the old shaman. The complex character of "brother", his idea of the world correlates with all that the narrator knows about the Sakhalin aborigines. Reflections on the life of the indigenous peoples of Southern Sakhalin, who by the will of fate found themselves in Hokkaido, become a means of understanding and value orientations of all the characters in the story. That is why the references to nivkhs and oroks in the "Dog World" are not episodic, but are as voluminous as possible and naturally interwoven into the artistic narrative.

At the beginning of the story, Oe raises a difficult question-what is the reason for the misfortunes of his contemporaries, who belong to small ethnic communities. The main character recalls his visit to Abasiri: "I had a plan to meet with an old orok shaman who put out his own eye to put an end to the misadventures of his people. But this did not help the Orok to regain prosperity. After leaving Southern Sakhalin under the shaman's leadership, they began to wander around Hokkaido, doing the hardest and dirtiest work, and eventually reached the vicinity of Abashiri in northern Hokkaido. A local newspaper reporter who served as my guide suggested that the reason for their misadventures was that they were afraid of living far from the sea that washed South Sakhalin. " ¹⁰ But if for the writer the shaman's act becomes a sign of high responsibility for his people, then the "younger brother", on the contrary, sees in this violence of the Oroks over their chosen leader. "The fact that an old man knocked out his eye on Southern Sakhalin," the hero says at dinner, " may have some shamanic meaning, but I'm still sure that he did not do this of his own free will, his tribesmen forced him, that's for sure. And then the old man - he's a shaman, after all-did not complain, and did not take offense."¹¹

In the writer's opinion, the suffering of the Sakhalin migrants is caused by the fact that the aborigines are guided by instinct in everything. After centuries of hunting and fishing, they continue to search for "deer forests and ket rivers"in Hokkaido¹². But these searches, coupled with hard physical work, do not bring the desired result. Therefore, the future of these peoples seems illusory.

The question of whether there are prospects for small-numbered peoples to preserve their ethnic integrity has been raised by the writer before. In the novel "Late Youth" (1962), the theme of the "deceived generation" becomes the main one, in the context of which a private reflection on the fate of the peoples of the Far East is also heard. "Ainu, Gilyak, Oirot-national minorities, but they are also Japanese < ... > True, the Ainu, who protect their purity, turned almost into a museum exhibit, but the Gilyak and Oirot, they assimilated with the Japanese. Which process is healthier? You can't answer that easily. I do not know whether the Takazes are of the same nationality as the Gilyaks, for example. But if they mingle with the rest of the Japanese and lead the life of day laborers in Sugioka, this is not so bad for them, I think"¹³-this position is taken by one of the characters of the book, reflecting the worldview of the people of his time.

The topic of Sakhalin aborigines is not limited to the names of the authors mentioned above. References to the indigenous peoples of Sakhalin can be found in the prose of Taijun Takeda, and in the novels of Haruki Murakami (including the phenomenal "1Q84"). The reasons that motivate Japanese writers today to turn to various ethnographic information are diverse. Most often, images of indigenous peoples still perform the function of exotic, little-explored and at the same time attractive for artistic development of the material. In the creative aspirations of various writers, one can also see attempts to identify themselves and their people with their closest neighbors in the region. The search for one's place in the world, identification with other peoples in the artistic context is not accidental. It is possible that the isolation of Japan from the outside world that existed before the Meiji Revolution (1868), a certain genetic "purity" of the Japanese nation, and a number of other factors both directly and indirectly influenced the choice of a certain thematic paradigm related to Sakhalin by Japanese writers.

ABORIGINES OF SAKHALIN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE XXI CENTURY

According to the All-Russian Census of 2002, the indigenous population of the Sakhalin region is represented only by Nivkhs (0.45% -2450 people out of the total population of more than half a million people - 546.500 people) and Uilta (0.06% - 341 people), the number of Ainu is negligible ¹⁴. The historian M. S. Vysokoe writes that "the destruction of the habitat and traditional way of life, < ... > the mass transition to the Russian language as the main means of interethnic and intraethnic communication led to the rapid loss of the Nivkhs and Uilts of the ethnic identity that distinguishes one people from another" ¹⁵.

In subsequent historical and literary periods and up to the present time, the problem of indigenous peoples of Sakhalin in literature has faded into the background - and not only in the works of Japanese writers, but also Russian ones. The range of preferences of the mass audience of the late XX - early XXI centuries does not include the history and fate of small ethnic groups. For the most part, readers are focused on finding their own reflection in the literature, most often identified with the so-called "titular" nationality.

Due to its specific nature, fiction does not provide a complete and objective description of the ethnic communities of Sakhalin. A literary text reflects one of the forms of writers ' perception of the surrounding reality. However, this form, together with scientific knowledge (ethnography, cultural studies, and other special disciplines), allows us to see different spectra of the worldview of small-numbered peoples in the interpretation from the outside, "from the outside". But the waning interest of writers in images of indigenous peoples throughout the twentieth century captures the public mood and, as a result, the thematic choice and artistic preferences of readers.

¹ In Japanese literature of the XX century. The indigenous peoples of Sakhalin are called differently (this is clearly seen in the translations into Russian). When referring to the Ainu, a number of works use both the Ainu word "Ainu" (which appeared in the speech of representatives of this ethnic group when contrasting themselves with the Japanese), and its more common version - Ainu. The same applies to the word "nivkh" and its exoethnonym-gilyak. "Uylta", "orochon"," orok"," oroch "and others are often used synonymously, while this indigenous people of Sakhalin prefer to call themselves" uylta "(ulta) or"orochen(ka)".

^{Ishikawa Takuboku} 2. A diary written in Latin (translated from English by E. M. Diakonova) / / East-West. Researches. Translations. Publications. Issue 4. Moscow, 1989, p. 157.

³ Ibid., pp. 155-156.

⁴ Ibid., p. 156.

^{Samukawa Kotparo} 5. Poachers-See: Grigoriev M. Faces of Japan. Translations and Essays (Appendix to the Buddhist Almanac), Moscow, 1997, p. 206.

⁶ The name of the strait was given after the Japanese explorer Rinzo Mamin (1775-1844), who studied cartography and since 1808 surveyed the lines of the western and eastern coasts of Sakhalin.

^{Oguma Hideo} 7. O Volga River! - See: Oguma Hideo, Kondo Yoshimi. From Modern Japanese Poetry, Moscow, 1971, p. 71.

^{Oguma Hideo} 8. Flying sleigh / / Oguma Hideo, Kondo Yoshimi. From Modern Japanese Poetry, Moscow, 1971, p. 77.

⁹ Ibid., p. 79.

^{Oe Kenzaburo} 10. Dog world / / Oe Kenzaburo. Football in 1860. Roman I narazy [Novel and Short Stories], translated from English and introduced by V. S. Grivnina. Moscow, 1983, pp. 357-358.

¹¹ Ibid., p. 363.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Oe Kenzaburo. Late Youth (translated from English by V. Grivnin). Moscow, 1973, p. 88.

^{Vysokov M.} S. Influence of colonization on the life of the indigenous population of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands / / History of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands from ancient times to the beginning of the XXI century. Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, 2008, p. 555.

¹⁵ Ibid., pp. 559-560.

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