SANKA WITH LOTUS LEAVES

Sanka with lotus leaves has been carved from mammoth tuisk, 4.7 cm tall, Urushi lacquer, Yashabushi dye, burning needle. 2014. Australia, private collection. The people of the mountains – unidentified inhabitants or nomads who lived by fishing and hunting. They're called Sanka and have never been identified as a different race. Until the family register system was set up after the Meiji Restoration [1868], the Sanka or Sanga were a free people who existed outside the government’s control. They were distributed throughout the whole country from the southern Kyushu region to the northern Tohoku. It is believed that they were pushed north by the peoples who arrived relatively later in history. Refusing to be assimilated, they escaped to the mountains. It is also believed that “they could be part of the Jomon people, J apanese ancestors with a Polynesian linkage.” In other words, their existence can only be explained if we consider them as the part of aboriginal races that resisted assimilation. Sanka had contacts with the new populations so they weren't completely apart from civilization.