ainu culture in transition futures

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Futures 35 (2003) 951959

www.elsevier.com/locate/futures

Ainu culture in transition

S.C.H. Cheung

Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories,

Hong Kong, Peoples Republic of China

Abstract

While indigenous rights are being widely discussed and cultures of indigenous peoples arebecoming more known to the world, the current status of the indigenous Ainu people andtheir culture in contemporary Japanese society has not been fully explored. According to a1999 Hokkaido local government survey, there are approximately 23,767 Ainu people livingin Hokkaido and about 5000 in the Kanto area. However, very few of these individuals speakany Ainu language or practice the traditional way of life. This paper discusses the history and

culture of the Ainu, and examines the social transformations that have taken place within thissociety since the enactment of the Ainu New Law in 1997, and the intervention of someinnovative institutions aimed at supporting and revitalizing Ainu culture. It also presentsmaterial from ethnographic fieldwork interviews that reveal how some Ainu consider theircultural traditions and identity in Japan.

2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Ainu culture in transition

In 1941 Kindaiti Kyosuke, a renowned Japanese folklorist wrote the followingabout the Ainu:

The Ainu are a specific race that lives only in some parts of the Japanese territoryand is not found in any other part of the world. Its whole population is approxi-mately 16,000 and it is generally divided into three kinds. Most of these peopleare the Ezo Ainu who live in the Hokkaido or Ezo Island and constitute 90 percent of the total number. Next come the Saghalien Ainu who inhabit the southernhalf of Karahuto or Saghalien. They constitute only a little less than 10 percent

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E-mail address: [email protected] (S.C.H. Cheung).

0016-3287/03/$ - see front matter 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/S0016-3287(03)00051-X


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952 S.C.H. Cheung / Futures 35 (2003) 951959

of the total number. The rest are the Kurile Ainu who once lived in Tisima or

the Kurile Islands. In the 17th year of Meizi (1884) they are transferred at the

Governments order to Sikotan, an island off the coast of the Hokkaido. Since

then they have also been called Sikotan Ainu. (pp.910)

[3]. Although already 60 years have passed, our understanding of Ainu culture is

still minimal. The effects on the Ainu of the rapid changes taking place in Japanese

society have not been well researched to date.

2. The Ainu

Ainu, which originally means human in their language, is also the word currentlyused by Japanese to signify the indigenous people who settled in the land from

northern Honshu to southern Kamchatka, including the southern Sakhalin Island,

Kurile Islands and the lower reaches of the Amur River. The de finition of Ainu hasalways been contested, and even the number of Ainu people in existence has been

unknown until recently: 23,767 in the Hokkaido prefecture, and 5000 in the Kanto

area. There are no official figures for Ainu living in Tokyo. However, it is likelythat these population figures are low since there are many Ainu who choose to con-ceal their identity, reflecting the fact that some Ainu descendants try to conceal theirethnic backgrounds in order to avoid discrimination and social stigma.

According to the 1999 population survey, the percentage of Ainu students whoattended high school was 95.2%, that rose up from 69.3% in 1979, and the percentage

that went on to college was 16.1%, from 8.8% in 1979. These figures are lower thanthe 1999 national average figures of 97.0 and 34.5%, respectively [2]. Despite someimprovement during the last three decades, further reduction of the education gap

will be necessary for the improvement of the Ainus social status.The status of the Ainu has varied throughout Japanese history. During the Toku-

gawa period (16031868), there were approximately 20,00030,000 Ainu inhabitantsunder the suzerainty of the Matsumae domain, located in the southern part of the

present Hokkaido. With the formation of the Japanese state under the Tokugawa

shogunate, the Ainu identity, as distinguished from Japanese, was used to enhancethe prestige of those rulers of the Matsumae domain through their control over the

primitive Ainu people. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the northern island,Ezo-chi, was renamed Hokkaido, and became the largest piece of land used by the

modern Meiji nation-state for experimentation with imported western technologies.At that time, western technologies included the production of dairy products, salmon

aquaculture, and canned product processing. These imported modern technologies

enabled the supply of food to mainland Japan, justifying the colonization of Hok-

kaido during the early Meiji period (18681912).With the 1899 Law for the Protection of Native Hokkaido Aborigines, a policy

of assimilation was forced upon the Ainu. As a consequence, their social structureand living environment went through a number of drastic changes as restrictions

were put on their customs, language, and means of livelihood. The 1899 law con-


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tained new land policies that violated the Ainus territorial integrity. It banned tra-ditional subsistence strategies such as deer hunting and salmon fishing, and alsoforced the Ainu to cultivate rice for the Japanese mainland. The law also prohibited

the practice of ancient Ainu customs and Ainu languages; with no writing systemof their own, these prohibitions furthered the cultural destruction of Ainu society.

There has also been a high rate of marriage between Ainu and Japanese that has

contributed further to the erosion of the Ainu language and culture. It is not surpris-

ing, then, that traditional Ainu society had been largely destroyed by the beginning

of the 20th century. In the last 100 years, Ainu traditional lifestyles have largelydisappeared, and their rights have been overlooked within Japanese society. The

traditional Ainu settlementkotancan no longer be seen, and the traditional grass-thatch Ainu hutschiseare almost non-existent, the exceptions being tourist areaswhere music and dance performances or handicraft souvenirs are offered.

Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, interest in ethnic tourism and in the Ainu people

began to grow. This raised questions about the substance and meaning of Ainu cul-

tural identity in relationship to the culture and identity of the more numerous

Japanese. The image of Ainu with their traditional costumes and exotic facial features

became increasingly prevalent through the development of tourism. Group photo-

graphs taken with Ainu chiefs in traditional costumes reflected the fascination withdifference within the Japanese population. Many touristic souvenirs comprised Ainu

bear woodcrafts and couple dolls. Thus, the increase in post-war tourism, and itsfocus on the Ainu as commodity and symbols of indigenous Japan, contributed in

a positive way to some modest revitalization within the Ainu community, but alsoraised question about their position in the social and political hierarchy of Japan.

3. Ainu as the observed other

Looking at the anthropological approaches to studying Ainu culture over severaldecades maps the changing history of AinuJapanese relations. This also enables usto explore the meaning of Japaneseness over time, and then examine how politicalforces have influenced this issue. One can see how the Ainu have occupied not only

the position of the other in Japanese society, but have also collectively become anagent (as a counter-self) in the construction of mainstream Japanese identity (in termsof difference). To understand the Ainu, then, is to understand the self-construction

Japaneseness.

Studies of Ainu culture and tradition were prevalent until the 1960s in Japan buthave become less popular since then. I believe the decline in Japanese interest in

the study of the Ainu is due in part to economic prosperity allowing field researchin other areas of the world. Another reason is the increasing commercialization of

Ainu culture through tourism. This has made pure Ainu culture and traditions moredifficult to discern, and there has been little interest in the study of the transformation

and impoverishment of culture through touristic secularization (although this is boththeoretically and ethnographically interesting). Also, largely ignored is the underly-

ing conflict between Ainu and Japanese in the context of tourism, and the discourse


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on the authentic traditions of a strongly assimilated ethnic minority such as theAinu [1]. An example of the latter issue is the debate over the meaning of the tra-

ditional festival of Marimo Sai (Marimo is a spherical alga found in Lake Akan,

and sai means festival in Japanese). This example highlights the discrepancy between

the definitions of traditional culture given by the mass public, and those by Ainupeople.

In the early 1920s, marimo was recognized as important natural heritage by the

Japanese government; however, this spherical alga was continually being taken from

Lake Akan, and even sold as souvenirs outside the area. In the 1940s, the marimo

was declared endangerednot only through theftbut also because of naturallyoccurring environmental changes to the Lake itself. In order to help prevent the

marimo from vanishing, local Ainu people established the Marimo Sai which was

celebrated as ritual of return as well as acknowledging the importance of harmonybetween humans and nature. (In traditional Ainu cosmology, there were twoworldsthe human world and the supernatural world. They existed mutually, andliving beings could transport from one to another easily. In particular, from the

Ainus point of view, an animal was a spiritual visitor, symbolizing the gain ofnatural resources, and serving as a messenger who bridged human society and the

supernatural world; therefore, their visit in the form of animals to the Ainus worldactually denoted the gift giving between man and the supernatural in the Ainu cos-

mos. Similar explanation was used in the marimo sai as a form of return; with the

emphasis upon the marimos return to nature, marimo sai was well accepted as the

representation of Ainu cosmology.) The festival has been held continuously for over50 years.

The conflict surrounding the festival is regarding the authenticity of the meaningof the festival. The local Ainu assert that the festival reflects their own cosmologicalworldview that emphasizes the importance of reciprocity, symbolizing the harmony

between human beings and nature. Outsiders argue that the Ainu simply invented

the symbolism behind the festival for their own ends [4].

Since the 1970s, grassroots indigenous movements organized by Ainu people were

growing in strength. They were demanding a national, rather than a regional policy

that addressed their indigenous status and gave them special rights. The movement

was not always peaceful, for example, there were protests against the Japanese

Society of Ethnology in the late 1960s, a sculpture was bombed in Asahikawa in

1972, and a law suit for portrait rights in 1985 all revealed the hostility of the strug-

gle [6].

Doubtlessly, what has changed most since the 1970s is the awareness among the

Ainu that they need to preserve their cultural traditions for their descendants. How-

ever, as stated above, there remain so few Ainu who are able to speak Ainu as their

mother tongue, and most are no longer practicing their traditional ways. Thus, the

question to ask is whether or not it is desirable, or even possible, to revitalize this

assimilating culture, and reconstruct from its remaining vestiges, a living Ainu cul-ture?


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4. Building the indigenous future: Ainu Shinpo 1997

As indigenous rights are becoming more widely discussed and cultures of indigen-

ous peoples are becoming recognized throughout the world, the Ainu indigenousmovement has also been raised to the international level, urging constitutional

reforms to expand their leverage, recognition and rights at home. In 1993, the year

before the International Year of the Worlds Indigenous People, Nomura Giiti, thePresident of the Ainu Association of Hokkaido, was invited to participate in an

international meeting organized by the United Nations. In his speech, Nomura sharedAinu concerns with other indigenous groups, including the experience of the Ainu

under the Japanese governments policy of assimilation after the late 19th century.He called for the United Nations to set international standards against discrimination

and support the Ainu people in negotiating with the Japanese government [5]. The

Ainu Shinpo (meaning new law) was drafted and proposed in 1984, and finallypassed on 8 May 1997. It states that:

The law aims to realize the society in which the ethnic pride of the Ainu people

is respected and to contribute to the development of diverse cultures in our coun-

try, by the implementation of the measures for the promotion of Ainu culture,

referring to the situation of Ainu traditions and culture from which the Ainu people

find their ethnic pride

Ainu Culture in this law means the Ainu language; music, dance, crafts andother cultural properties that have been inherited by the Ainu people; as well asother cultural properties developed from these [2].

Thus, the Japanese government had finally given limited formal recognition to theAinu as the indigenous minority within Japanese territory, at least in Hokkaido. The

general reaction from the Ainu at the time of the endorsement of the new law wasthat it was late in coming and did not include enough concrete change. Yet withthis initial step, both Ainu and Japanese people assumed and expected more cultural

preservation of language and traditions, as well as legal protection for traditional

land use, anti-discrimination policies, and a general improvement in Ainu socialstatus. After the Ainu Shinpo was enacted in 1997, there were some positive changes

seen by Ainu people in Hokkaido. They saw an increase in financial support forvarious kinds of cultural activities; and conference, exhibition, and cultural

exchanges with other indigenous groups in other countries increased. This providedthe Ainu with opportunities to enhance their indigenous status in Japan, and tobuild contacts and share information with indigenous people around the world.

At the institutional level, the Foundation for Research and Promotion of Ainu

Culture (FRPAC, http://www.frpac.or.jp) was established in 1997, almost at the same

time as the enactment of the Ainu Shinpo. The FRPAC started with an endowment

of JPY100 million (of which JPY 90 million is from the Hokkaido government andJPY 10 million is from 62 municipalities in Hokkaido that include Ainu residents)

allocated to support diverse activities. With their two offices in Hokkaido and Tokyo,
http://www.frpac.or.jp/http://www.frpac.or.jp/http://www.frpac.or.jp/http://www.frpac.or.jp/


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FRPAC operates under the four basic policies in promoting Ainu cultural traditions

in Japan and the rest of the world as shown in Table 1.

During the past few years, FRPACs work has included providing different kinds

of publications such as textbooks for primary and junior high schools, a handbookon place names (terminology) in Ainu language with relevant elaboration. Also, exhi-

bition catalogues, monographs on Ainu history and culture (in different languages)

for Japanese and foreigners, as well as other related materials, have been published

with the support of FRPAC. A number of comprehensive exhibitions were co-spon-

sored by overseas institutes for the enhancement of public interest in Ainu culturein Japan. For example:

The exhibition of German collections from museums in Berlin, Koln, and Leipzig

held in Shiraoi Ainu Museum in 1999.

AinuNorthern People and their World: Baba and Kodama Collections held inHiroshima and Nagoya in 2000.

The exhibition of Gordon Neil Munros collection will be held in Edinburgh,Scotland from August 2001 and in Sapporo in 2002.

In addition to the beneficial legal and institutional changes that benefit the Ainu, itis equally if not more important to find out on the individual and societal level howthe relations between Ainu and Japanese were affected. In the following Section 5,

Table 1FRPACs four basic policies and relevant major activities in promoting Ainu culture

Policies Major activities

1. Promotion of comprehensive and practical research Provide research subsidies and publication

on the Ainu subsidies for outstanding projects

2. Promotion of the Ainu language Training language instructors

Language classes

Radio courses, and

Speech contests

3. Promotion of Ainu culture Training storytellers to pass down oral Ainu

literature

A manual for Ainu lifestyles and culture

Dispatching advisors on Ainu cultural

activities

Contest and exhibition for Ainu traditional

craftwork

Ainu cultural festival, cultural award, and

International exchange

4. Dissemination of knowledge on Ainu traditions Distributing textbook for elementary and

junior high school students

Home page

Seminars, lecturesEstablishing Ainu Culture Society and Ainu

Culture Center


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I would like to draw the attention on AinuJapanese relations through a brief reviewof ethnographic fieldwork interviews that I conducted among some Ainu residentsduring my visit to Hokkaido in the summer of 2001.

5. Interviews

The purpose of the interviews was to understand the relationship that individuals

had with their own history, culture, and traditional ways: how did they value it?Was it even relevant to their everyday lives; was it a positive or negative influence ontheir lives? Were they benefiting from the new status as a unique and salient culture?

I will present parts of three interviews: K an employee of an Ainu museum; Sa souvenir shop owner who started learning Ainu language in her early 30s and

taught on a radio program; and finally, B a president of a local Ainu associationin a well-known tourist destination, and a promoter of Ainu culture in the interest

of community development.

K was born in Piraoi in the 1950s. She works in a local Ainu museum founded

in the mid-1980s. Ainus have lived in Piraoi since the 15th century. During the

Tokugawa period, Japanese were sent from the Sendai domain, to live in Piraoi.

Interaction between the two groups increased from that time.

Both Ks grandfather and grandmother are descendants of intermarriage betweenAinu and Japanese, or kongetsu (mixed blood). Ks grandfather died when she was

eight years old. She remembers that the funeral combined a small part of Ainu ritualfor the fire god, but otherwise consisted mainly of Buddhist rituals. There was nospecific moment that K became aware of herself as Ainu. But she remembers a fightwith another child when some classmates referred to her as Ainu. Apart from that,K was not aware of her Ainu side until the second year of junior high school.

K lived by herself in Tokyo until the first year of high school. An agent scoutingfor an Ainu girl hired her as a singer. (In the 1970s, the image of Ainu was usedfor some pop music.) K recorded two single albums with songs which included Ainu

words, but she was still not yet interested in learning more about Ainu culture. After

finishing high school, K worked for a paper company for three years, and then at a

gasoline stand for another five years. Next, she worked in the ticket office of theAinu museum, and later joined the museums Ainu dance performance. She appearedboth in the Tsukuba Exposition and in Okinawa.

The turning point in Ks life came in her late 20s when she began work as ajunior researcher at the museum. She became intensely interested in the study ofAinu culture. She became involved in documenting a representative ritual called

Iyomante and wrote her first research paper about how food was prepared for theritual. She enjoyed investigating the meanings of Ainu culture and participating in

cultural exchange activities with Finland and England.

The second interviewee S, owns a souvenir store that sells Ainu related artifacts.

Born in Piraoi in 1940, S is of Ainu and Japanese parentage. Between the Taishoand early Showa period, there were about 70 Ainu households with 350400 individ-uals living in a traditional Ainu settlement (or kotan). Ss Ainu father worked as a


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photographer for several years, but in order to pay for his education, he hunted wild

animals including weasels, sables, foxes, and badgers for their fur. Many years later,

in Piraoi, Ss father played the role of an Ainu chief at the tourist site for 16 years.

After Ss father died in 1988, she began learning the Ainu language and latertaught Ainu on a radio program (now Ainu is taught in at least 10 regions). It is

widely believed that broadcast programs can reach people who might not have the

facilities to learn the language any other way.

The third interviewee B, is the president of the Akan Branch of the Ainu Associ-ation of Hokkaido. He was brought up in an environment which displays Ainu cultureto tourists. In Akan, there are at least four institutes involved in either preserving

or promoting Ainu culture. Moreover, cultural exchange in the forms of traditional

dances and folk music performances between Akan Ainu and other countries is very

popular. Starting from the 1980s, members of the Akan Yukar Theater, a group of

performing artists in Akan area, have been traveling to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Aus-

tralia, North America (Alaska, Canada), and Europe (France, Italy), to participate in

major international cultural events.

One of the biggest projects after the enactment of the Ainu New Law is the iworor cultural park establishment. In Ainu language, iwor refers to a deep (remote)

mountain, and also signifies the hunting ground of one village or joint hunting terri-tory shared by several villages. It means, therefore, ones living area and providesa boundary, symbolizing the sense of belonging. The idea of cultural park came from

the eco-museum model in France. With the emphasis upon a traditional living

environment, applicants were invited to submit project proposals to institutes suchas the Alaska Native Heritage Center and Maori museums in New Zealand, and local

cultural theme parks all over Japan; proposal should include facilities such as

museums, research and learning center, traditional dwellings, village houses, and

other facilities. Of the six proposals submitted, one targeted the Akan area. Some

controversy surrounded the Akan iwor project since it appeared to represent the

totality of Ainu culture. There have been several organizational disputes amongregional groups during the last few years, due to the fact that Ainu culture is not

one culture, but expresses regional cultural distinctions.

6. Discussion of interviews

Although the persons interviewed were raised with some Ainu background, their

understanding of, and affinity for, Ainu culture differed in certain aspects. Therewere similarities in the following areas: none expressed a desire for their children

to learn more about their cultural heritage; none exhibited any obsession about Ainu

traditional culture or felt there was a need to educate the coming generation about

Ainu culture. They did not seem particularly interested in investigating their own

Ainu ancestry, even though some were involved in the preservation of Ainu culture.

Curiously, they were reluctant to explain the motivations behind their involvement.On the issue of Ainu heritage, there were differences: K showed more interest

in Ainu material culture, which she valued for its role in concretizing Ainu history


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and lifestyles for outsiders. S was interested in the Ainu language as a reflectionof peoples mind and thoughts. And B believed that the Ainu should adapt tomodern ways since it is not easy or feasible to live in the old ways. However, to

see traditional Ainu music and folk dance gives some pride in Ainu heritage.As the interviews progressed, the informants became more relaxed and began to

talk more freely and show more emotion about their heritage. As in the case of other

ethnic minority groups around the world, the Ainu in Japan require an environment

in society in which they can express how they think and ask for what they expect;

this environment did not develop until the 1970s. Since that time, much effort hasgone in to the preservation and promotion of Ainu culture that was looking more

robust by the end of the 1990s. Exhibitions in Ainu museums, broadcast programs

for Ainu language and cultural exchanges in the form of performing arts, have all

successfully made Ainu culture more visible and have given people the impetus to

think about what it means to be Ainu.

7. In the future

Since the changes that occurred after the 1970s, Ainu culture is now facing another

critical period. The survival of Ainu culture, whatever form it will take, depends on

how the indigenous rights of Ainu are interpreted at both individual and national

levels; on how seriously the Japanese government implements the laws protecting

indigenous and minority rights and cultural heritage; and on whether Ainu as other

remain important to the Japanese in the articulation of their identity. The Ainu Shinpoand institutions such as the Foundation for Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture,

already represent a step in a new direction in AinuJapanese relations. The culturalpark establishment as well as the reterritorialization of the iwor of the Ainu (in

Hokkaido at least), represents another concrete and progressive measure allowing

the Ainu private control of their natural resources, reaffirmation of their identity,and legitimization of their lifestyle and customs. Despite continuing challenges, we

are sure to see new cultural forms generated from the interaction between Ainu self-

determination and the larger Japanese society.

References

[1] S.C.H. Cheung, Japanese anthropology and depictions of the Ainu, in: J. Bosco, J.S. Eades, S. Yama-

shita (Eds.), The Making of Anthropology in East and Southeast Asia, Berghahn Books, Oxford,

in press.

[2] Foundation for Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture (FRPAC), To Understand the Ainu, Foun-

dation for Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture, Sapporo, 2000.

[3] K. Kindaiti, Ainu Life and Legends, Japan, Board of Tourist Industry, Japanese Government Railways,

Japan, 1941.

[4] Lake Akan Ainu Association (LAAA), Retrospect of Marimo Festival in 50th year Anniversary, Lake

Akan Ainu Association, Akan, 2000.

[5] G. Nomura, Live as an Aynu, Saifukan, Tokyo, 1996 (in Japanese).

[6] A. Shimizu, Cooperation, not domination: a rejoinder to Niessen on the Ainu exhibition at Minpaku,

Museum Anthropology 20 (3) (1996) 120131.

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