Emishi Fushu and Ifu

Emishi Fushu and Ifu

Nagaoka: Fushu and Ifu, characterization, differences

The fushu 俘囚 and ifu 夷浮 were Emishi allies of the Yamato. The fushu, according to Nagaoka, consisted of settlers who had moved into the Tohoku region before the advent of the Yamato state and who brought Yayoi cultural practices. They were the various groups of Japanese speaking people who had come into the region from the south, introduced agriculture and created regional Kofun states. Initially these people resisted the Yamato, and may have been rival contemporary states, but those who became allies were called fushu. According to this view they were also known as den-I, which translates to "field barbarians" as opposed to san-I "mountain barbarians." Den-I were those "barbarians" who relied on rice cultivation for their subsistence.

The fushu were used extensively in the Yamato campaigns against the Emishi. In fact, it could be argued that they were the primary reason why the Yamato eventually won. They used the method of "divide and conquer" to their maximum advantage, and the fushu and ifu were central to this policy. Once they were absorbed by the Yamato state the fushu were oppressed through a tax assessed on their crops, and corvee labor for government projects. The able bodied men were also drafted to serve in their armies. Some of them were also forced to move to the inner provinces and faced discrimination there. It was no wonder that throughout the two century campaign that the Yamato waged in the north many fushu rebelled or defected to the side of the I-teki (enemy "barbarians") to fight against the Japanese as in the case of Azamaro in the Thirty-Eight Year War (below).

Whether they were the decisive element in the Emishi army is not known but their technology was close to their conquerors. There was an extensive trade network between Yamato controlled areas and the Emishi such that the arms deployed by the latter were not much different or slightly modified versions of what were used by the Yamato armies. They fielded horse-riding archers who fundamentally altered their conqueror's military culture. Therefore, the Emishi were made up of these settlers and their descendants, and also included the Jomon people living in the Tohoku. What is unclear is whether the two groups were allied, or were simply grouped together because both lived in the area.

The distinction is made between the den-I Emishi and the san-I Emishi as the latter are called "mountain barbarians." The allied forces of these Emishi were known as ifu. That is, the Jomon people who submitted themselves to Yamato were known as ifu as opposed to fushu according to this interpretation. These are the Emishi mentioned in the T'ang histories, and are described by the Japanese envoy in the seventh century. A number of them are thought to have crossed the Tsugaru strait in the eighth century to settle in southern Hokkaido. This crossing to Hokkaido is thought to have been caused by the turmoil resulting from the wars of conquest. These were the ancestors of the Ainu.

Unfortunately, Nagaoka's pairings of fushu/den-I and ifu/san-I is speculative because this distinction is not found in contemporary literature so tying these into the den-I/san-I pairing cannot be substantiated. To complicate matters, some of the Jomon who were Emishi adopted agriculture in the form of millet and barley and other grains for subsistence and were actual Tohoku natives who had lived there for millennia. His view about the Emishi as having been composed of separate ethnic groups is still the view of a number of scholars. Most recently, American scholars such as William Farris subscribed to the view that they were like other contemporary Japanese in line with Nagaoka.

Physical Anthropology integrated

Incorporating Hanihara's study (The Emishi: What Anthropology tells us) the fushu were not the same ethnically as the Jomon, but they were not the same as the Yayoi Japanese either--they were between both population types. The modification of this theory would be the pairing of this population type as the den-I and the Jomon as the san-I. There is no more evidence for this pairing than for the first, however, in terms of the characterization of the groups involved more accurate.

If this latter pairing is integrated it changes the perspective regarding the nature of the people who were known as fushu, namely, that the ethnic differences between them and the Jomon would not have been as sharp, and may explain their ethnic proximity. That is, the Japanese living in the region were closer ethnically to the Jomon than they are today. However, it still does not account for the language difference between them.

What is known through various studies is that the Jomon component of the population was still strong in some areas of the Kanto as late as the end of the Kamakura period in the early fourteenth century. So much so, that C.Loring Brace, a well known American physical anthropologist, overstated the case with a very controversial theory that the samurai class was more related to the Ainu than to the Japanese. This was based on a sample of skeletons of samurai who were either killed or committed ritual suicide after the battle of Kamakura which ended the rule of the Hojo. This obviously demonstrates at least that Japan's population was not at all homogeneous during this time period, and many pockets (perhaps villages and local areas) still conserved older population traits.

An Emishi raiding party in the Ou Mountains. The Emishi here are shown in iron tanko (and leather reinforced iron tanko) style breastplates. Aside from the iron helmet and tanko they are lightly armored, but highly mobile force that used hit and run tactics to maximum advantage. They also are shown here with bearskin cloaks for protection against the elements and for bedding (author's conjecture for use of bear skin--animal skin use (deer) is known from the Nihon Shoki). They are shown with their traditional bow shown here as being longer than most bows used by horse riding archers from the steppes of Asia and later adopted by the samurai. They are shown wearing traditional footwear (zo-ri) worn by Japanese throughout their history, and easily made locally. This footwear is applied to the Emishi here as I cannot imagine them wearing riding boots during raids and general geurilla operations as opposed to full scale military engagements as seen on the website's front page particularly during spring or summer.

Fushu and Ifu as the same ethnic group

The central criticism of Nagaoka's view is that he does not account for language differences as well as why the Emishi faced discrimination after their conquest. If as some scholars both in Japan and state side are correct that by and large the Emishi were ethnically similar to other contemporary Japanese then how do we account for the discrimination they faced, particularly as many den-I had adopted much of Kofun culture? There is ample evidence that discrimination was practiced against the fushu in the Tohoku who settled near fort settlements, and those who had been forcibly relocated to other parts of Japan.

So despite the policy that Yamato actively sought in incorporating the "barbarian" as fushu they were still treated different from other Asian groups who came as refugees from Korea and China. It is quite simple: why were they called den-I in the first place, that is "field barbarian?" Whenever this appears it always refers to people who were not Japanese. The contemporary term I-teki in fact refers to barbarians who continued to cause problems in Akita which was one of the last areas of Emishi resistance (well into the ninth century) when they attacked Akita from Hokkaido. The attackers were definitely from areas inhabited by Ainu ancestors of the Satsumon.

Linguistically too, if there were a significant Yayoi base that made up the fushu they would have certainly spoken a language similar to or the same as other Japanese, and not at all similar to the indigenous Jomon people. However, this was not the case, as the Japanese used interpreters when speaking with the Emishi, and in fact contemporary sources speak of only lifestyle differences when making the distinction between ifu and fushu.

In Ninno Naoyoshi's study we see that an incident at the beginning of what has been called Aterui's War, or the Thirty-Eight Years War, shows that the distinction between the two terms was most likely about lifestyle not ethnic groups. The most serious fighting between the government forces and the Emishi started as a private dispute between two officers employed by the Japanese army in 774, in other words fushu. Both were not just officers but also chiefs of separate Emishi groups. One chief, Michishima Otate derisively referred to the other chief Azamaro as an ifu. This term was considered highly derogatory to an Emishi. Some recent findings (see page on Population of the Sendai Plain) suggest that one of these fushu may not have been an Emishi at all, but rather a local Japanese gozoku (literally, great family chief). This would change the nature of this argument completely and would be a case of discriminatory behavior towards Azamaro.

Finally, perhaps as equally important are the cultural differences (see page below, The Moving Frontier: from Emishi to Ezo). Culturally, the Emishi were heavily influenced by northeast Asia, and the peoples of the Amur River Valley, and what was then known as Bokkai (a Sinified ethnic Tungusic state) through whom they received many goods from norheast Asia. The Bokkai/Amur peoples had a distinct animistic culture which was in many ways more similar to other Siberian groups than to the state centered Civilizations of the south. However, it may have been a more complicated reality where some Emishi groups living near Japanese settlements were more influenced by kofun culture while others in the northern hinterlands were influenced by Bokkai.

Emishi differences outweigh their similarities to the Japanese from an ethnic, linguistic and cultural perspective. This means that the den-I were simply settled rice and grain cultivating Jomon peoples, and the san-I were Jomon who lived like their ancestors, hunting and gathering. The question becomes to what extent they had adopted agriculture from the Japanese states to the south. The den-I had essentially become rice cultivators like their Yayoi neighbors. The san-I had retained much of their original Jomon culture intact as they resisted the encroachment of the Japanese by moving further north.

Interpretating different perspectives

Nagaoka's study frames the problem: how do we explain the early development of rice cultivation and Kofun culture and its spread into the Tohoku several centuries before the incorporation of the area into the Yamato state? Who were the people who created the Kofun states in the Tohoku region? His solution was simple. The Japanese related Yayoi had moved into the region to create these states, and so lived side by side with the Jomon who were also contemporaries in the region, so when the Yamato state attacked, both the Yayoi settlers, den-I (field barbarians), and the Jomon san-I (mountain barbarians) fought back against them.

Naoyoshi's study though looks at the inconsistencies of seeing the den-I as mainly Yayoi settlers, added to the overall facts that don't seem to fit. Looking at the Emishi language difference as well as the discrimination they faced seem to be serious problems for Nagaoka's view--they were both seen as "barbarians." Naoyoshi's view is that there were Jomon Emishi who practiced agriculture den-I and became fushu.

Furthermore, the northern half of the Tohoku was re-incorporated into the Jomon orbit. That is, as I have indicated in other essays, in the northern half of the area a clear turn towards the Epi-Jomon culture reflects a population that became more Jomon in character.

Fushu in Later Tohoku History

Much of the conclusions about the Emishi and the fushu are based on later historical events in particular the eleventh century history of the Abe and Kiyowara clans who are arguably Japanese clans who moved into the Mutsu area (present day Iwate prefecture). The major problem with interpreting the Emishi using these clans is that the population in the entire Tohoku, except for the extreme northern tip, had changed considerably by the eleventh century. For example, large numbers of people were forcibly relocated from the Kanto into the area, and aboriginal Emishi were relocated to other parts of Japan. This took place after the final defeat of Aterui in A.D. 802. These massive re-settlements took place between 802 and 811. The numbers of Emishi sent out was limited but the number of Japanese re-settled numbered in the thousands. In the area of Kitakami river alone where the severest fighting took place four thousand people were brought into the area that became the six districts.

By the eleventh century, two centuries after this event, the population of areas that used to be Emishi had become heavily Japanese. Much of our interpretation does not take into consideration of how much time had elapsed between the end of Emishi independence and the rise of the Abe and Kiyowara clans in Mutsu and Dewa provinces.

The reason why this is so important to consider is that the Abe and Kiyowara were called fushu no to or "fushu head" (meaning leader). They may have been called this in the eleventh century, but they were not equivalent to the Emishi of the ninth century. They were originally Japanese clans who moved to the area perhaps a couple centuries before their rise to power, and by the eleventh century were considered to be from the area, and perhaps some of their members had marriage ties with aboriginal Emishi clans, and so may have been able to legitimately claim partial Emishi descent, but this is not definite, and even if true they were not that different historically from other settlers who had come in from the Kanto and lived side by side with the existing Emishi population.

Much of the Tohoku population was at this time a mixture of both aboriginal Emishi and Japanese, however, the latter increased in numbers as a result of a deliberate policy, and naturally as more immigrants moved in, and the Emishi were either integrated into the local Japanese population or moved further north to join the Satsumon. However, the culture of the earlier Emishi was no longer extant. The Tohoku area as a whole was entirely under Japanese influence, or at most a northern (local) variant of Japanese culture. Hokkaido had a distinct culture known now as Satsumon, but the Tohoku had by now long been in the Japanese orbit. Records of this time such as the Mutsu waki anachronistically portray the Abe as northern barbarians. They were no more "barbarian" than the Minamoto and not that different culturally.

This is evidence that the later claims of fushu status are not equivalent to earlier fushu existing during and soon after the conquest of the Tohoku region. Or the case may be that earlier Japanese settlers, descendants of kofun states, became fushu during the wars against the Emishi. Recent findings (see page on Population of the Sendai Plain) seem to buttress this view which would then give us a more straightforward explanation for clans like the Abe and Kiyowara.

There is a decided gray area represented by clans such as the Abe which would need further research. What was the extent of Japanese family and clan migration into the area both before and after the conquest of the ninth century? And to what extent were they influenced by the Emishi people? Did they intermarry with locals to become part of Emishi society, or did they simply spearhead the effort of bringing Japanese culture into the area, such as the kofun? These are a few of the many questions we do not know the answer to. What we know is that for these clans their claims were that they inherited the Emishi tradition of fushu.