Pipe Holder

Until the early twentieth century Ainu men smoked tobacco from long-stemmed pipes that they carried daily, along with a long pipe holder that was tucked into one’s sash and a tobacco box that would hang by a chord from the pipe holder. The small bowl of the pipe fit into the hole at the end of the pipe holder. It is likely that the Ainu people developed a taste for tobacco through the influence of Chinese merchants, their primary trading partners for centuries.