The Necessities of Life: Japanese Colonial Policy as a Social Determinant of Ainu Health, 1876–1887

In this paper, I reassess the Meiji period (1868-1912) Japanese public health and Indigenous management policies, focussing on the Karafuto Ainu in Tsuishikari, Hokkaido. Utilising Indigenised public health frameworks, I argue that colonial policies, including forced migration, sedentarisation and paternalistic management, were significant aetiological causes of disease in Ainu communities. This approach allows us to challenge received historiographical understandings of Ainu health, which often characterise the Ainu as having been disproportionately impacted by epidemic disease because they collectively possessed 'no immunity' to numerous contagions and/or an understanding of 'hygiene'. The latter especially reflects the views of colonial hygiene inspectors who visited Tsuishikari. Pathologising Ainu culture and domestic life, Japanese officials aimed to 'cure' the Ainu of their many afflictions through zero-sum assimilation measures. However, by disavowing the material impact of colonisation on Ainu health and wellbeing, this served only to further entrench those policies which rendered Tsuishikari residents vulnerable to the spread of epidemic disease.