Ainu

For over 140 years, the Ainu of Japan have faced colonization, assimilation, discrimination, and loss of ancestral homelands. Indigenous people around the world have seen the same fate and the issues are far from settled. The Ainu were shocked in 2008 when the Japanese government abruptly reversed a centuries-old policy and proclaimed the Ainu as the Indigenous people of Japan. Though seemingly positive, the motives remain suspect. Native to northern Japan, the Ainu refer to their ancestral lands as ainu mosir, “quiet place where humans dwell.” Much of Ainu song centers on ainu mosir with descriptions of animals, land, and spirits, but some view ainu mosir as a space in which all Indigenous people live in harmony with the land. Considering these songs as “texts” (Hanks 1989), I examine how a subtext of Indigenous rights could expand these localized songs to speak to a global scale. In this paper I explore the contexts, meaning, and usage of Ainu song to speak out for global Indigenous empowerment both in ainu mosir and beyond. The Ainu have participated in global Indigenous movements since the 1980s and often use music as a way to express respect and share experience. Though the Ainu songs speak of the local (ainu mosir), broader themes develop when presented in global (international) spaces (i.e. Indigenous summits, cultural exchange programs, etc.). Silent no more, the Ainu use the power of music to connect to others and to fight for Indigenous rights for all who dwell in quiet places.

This work assesses the representation of the Ainu people through the early travelogues made in Japan during the 1910s, focusing on those made by Benjamin Brodsky. Considering filmic representation of the Ainu people in relation to their social context, the analysis reveals how these images projected a deceptive ethnicity belonging to a time prior to the moment they were filmed. Filmmakers created an imagery of the “primitive Ainu” aimed at attracting a Western audience by showing an exoticism of a cultural and geographically distant people. These images projected ahistorical views of the Ainu, concealing their adaptation to modern life and assimilation to the Japanese culture and way of life. A critical approach to these captivating images reveals the premeditated construction of Ainu ethnicity and casts doubt on the validity of these moving images as a social witness.

Ensayo sobre el MUSEO DE CULTURA AINU DE NIBUTANI (平取町立二風谷アイヌ文化博物館) escrito para la asignatura de Museología Antropológica en el grado de Antropología Social y Cultural de la Universidad de Sevilla (US). Se centra más en la representación del pueblo ainu que en el propio museo y su paisaje cultural.

This paper covers the first Japanese governmental expedition to Hokkaido, Southern Kurils (Kunashir, Iturup and Urup) and southern Sakhalin in 1785-1786, which was caused by the rumors of Russians' expansion to the Kuril Islands and thier contacts with Matsumae domain officials. The purpose of this paper is to clear up the background and the course of the expedition as well as to analyze its scientific and political outcome.

Until around 400 years ago, the Ainu controlled Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main islands. Today the Ainu are a small minority group in Japan and are primarily a hunting and fishing people whose origins remain in dispute. Yet, for centuries, the Ainu culture developed alongside Japanese culture, but is distinctive from that of the Japanese. However, in recent centuries, particularly since the 1889 Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Law, they have been subject to Japanese government policies of modernization and integration. As with indigenous peoples of Canada and the United States, the Ainu have had the majority of their sacred lands taken from them by the Japanese government.

Representations of Indigenous people as rooted and sedentary reinforce ideas of their presence in cities as strange and out of place. This is problematic. In a world where an increasing number if not majority of Indigenous people live in urban or metropolitan areas, cities are now critical sites of Indigenous negotiation, appropriation, marginalization, and emplacement. This paper opens up the analysis of urban Indigenous life from the perspective of place and its role in the articulation of urban Indigenous identities. It takes as a case study the situation of indigenous Ainu in and around Tokyo. The interrogation of place highlights how Ainu are socially active in the city and critiques the regionalization of Ainu affairs to northern Japan.

espanolLos origenes del cine coinciden con un momento de creciente interes por la cultura ainu en Occidente. No es de extranar que el retrato del pueblo ainu formara parte de las pri - meras imagenes rodadas en Japon con el cinematografo. Este trabajo propone un anali - sis de la secuencias de los ainu incluidas en los travelogues , documentales de viajes, de Benjamin Brodsky: Beautiful Japan (1918) y A Trip through Japan with the YWCA (1919). Su mirada occidental proyecto la imagen de un «otro» distinto al japones, que contrastaba con el periodo de asimilacion que sufria el pueblo ainu en ese momento. Se trata de una construccion exotica que mostraba un primitivismo en claro retroceso. EnglishThe origins of cinema coincided with the growing interest in Ainu culture in the West. It is not surprising that the Ainu people appeared in the first images filmed by the cin - ematograph in Japan. This essay focus the analysis on the Ainu sequences included in Brodsky’s travelogues, tour doc...

This paper focuses on the innovative nature of Sakhalin Ainu with respectto nominalization. Based on a cross-dialectal comparison, I suggest that zero-nominalization [(NP…) V]NP reflects the oldest stage (I), while the strategy ofadding a nominalizing word [(NP…) VNMZ]NP, which proliferates in Hokkaido Ainu, may be regarded as the next stage (II). Finally, in Sakhalin Ainu, non-finite verbal forms containing possessive-style marking [(NP…) V-POSS]NP(III), which can also be used as non-embedded (finite) structures [(NP…) V-POSS]MC (IV) in a broad range of presuppositional contexts, may be regarded as the lastand most innovative stage.

The aim of this article is to present the most important events from the Polish- Japanese relations in the context of Bronisław Piłsudski (1866-1918) life and activities in the Far East and Japan. Piłsudski was the oustanding Polish ethnologist, who conducted very important research on the aboriginal population of Sakhalin and adjacent areas, particulary on the language and folklore of Ainu ethnic group, which inhabited Sakhalin and the Japanese island Hokkaido. For years I have been explore the history of Polish-Japanese relations and I have realized that Bronisław Piłsudski is very important for these relations, important for Poland and Japan, and also for the whole world and its cultural heritage. I describe also the historical background because it is necessary for beter understanding of these relations and the role Piłsudski played in them.

In this chapter, I explore the analytical potential of archipelagic studies for inspiring decolonial struggles in the Trans-Pacific region. Specifically, I examine the archipelagic formation of Japanese imperialism, along with the indigenous and diasporic subjectivities that are subsumed under the myth of ethnic homogeneity promoted by the Japanese nation-state. As I aim to show, subjugation of ethnic groups in Japan, including the Ainu, Ryūkyūans, and Zainichi Koreans, hinges on not only the homogeneity myth but also the dominant geographic imaginary of Japanese territories.

Shintō is the first and the basic religion of Japan. In most works on Shintō it is said that its central object is kami but almost nothing is said about etymology and meaning of this concept. In this paper I made an attempt to clarify this question. In Ainu religion there is concept kamuy that looks much alike kami. Ainu concept kamuy can be explained through the concept of ramat. Japanese concept kami also shapes a pair with concept of tamashii. I have come to the following conclusions: Japanese tamashii originated from Ainu ramat and Japanese kami originated from Ainu kamuy; ramat/tamashii means “vital energy exists”, it is something like energy/ether that fills the universe; kamuy means “item filled by [ramat]”; kamuy/kami are beings/items that have a lot of ramat and can share it; aim of any Shintō rite is to get more ramat/tamashii.

The dominant narrative mode in Ainu studies today stresses an activist agenda
that, although worthwhile, limits the potential for new research in the field. In this thesis, I analyze historical accounts of the development of Ainu bear carvings as a case study of the characteristics of the dominant activist mode and present an alternate narrative in order to demonstrate the need for a variety of approaches to Ainu research.

The activist narrative mode is structured to engender sympathy for Ainu people
and respect for their cultural heritage. Activist accounts of Ainu bear carvings often claim that the carvers were pressured by the Japanese tourist industry to violate religious taboos against producing realistic depictions of bears. In this way, the carvings serve as a symbol of oppression of Ainu people under Japanese imperialism. At the same time, activist scholars state that the Ainu bear carvings followed a linear progression from tourist souvenirs to respected works of “fine art.” Thus, the carvings also reinforce optimistic projections regarding the future status of Ainu culture and socioeconomic condition.

My alternate narrative focuses on the complexities and ambiguities in the field
and avoids judging events in moral or sympathetic terms. I explore a broad range of
contextual issues, tracing the regional production of wooden bears from the paleolithic
ancestors of Ainu people, examining the role of bears and woodcarving in Ainu culture,
analyzing Ainu interactions with Japan, Russia, and other neighboring empires, and
investigating the commodification of bear carvings as tourist souvenirs.

Activist narratives have contributed a wealth of valuable research to the field of
Ainu studies and remain a useful tool for promoting social and cultural equality for Ainu people. However, automatic conformity to the dominant activist mode perpetuates the obfuscation of certain details in Ainu history, including the diversity within Ainu and Japanese cultures and institutions, instances of political cooperation between Ainu and Japanese communities, and unanswered questions regarding the complex development of Ainu cultural practices and beliefs. Although any historical account (including this thesis) inherently simplifies its subjects, varying our narrative approach helps us to identify and fill some of the gaps.

The Ainu (Southern Hokkaido) relative clause construction is built on the model
of the nominal attributive construction, while the noun-complement construction is based on that of the nominal possessive construction in which the head
is marked with a possessive suffix. Also, relative and noun-complement clauses
behave differently with regard to island violation constraints: only the latter
allow such violations. However, there is a small number of noun-complement
clauses without possessive marking on the perception/relational head noun,
which makes them look like relative clauses; these are the so-called emergent
GNMCCs. I suggest that these head nouns appear in non-possessive form in order to dissociate themselves from the few homonymous possessive heads which
are grammaticalized as modal/evidential markers in the relevant constructions.

2010 “Beyond Feminism: Indigenous Ainu Women and Narratives of Empowerment in Japan.” Edited by Cheryl Suzack, Shari M. Huhndorf, Jeanne Perreault, and Jean Barman. In Indigenous Women and Feminism: Culture, Activism, Politics. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, pp. 152-180.

For over two hundred years, the Ainu of Japan have been colonized in their ancestral lands and faced deep discrimination in the purported mono-ethnic, homogenous Japanese society. Despite the Japanese government’s official recognition of the Ainu as the Indigenous people of Japan in 2008, the Ainu continue to fight for their rights and to maintain their identity. In this dissertation, I examine the various ways Ainu use expressive culture to highlight their cultural differences in order to reaffirm their identity against assimilationist policies. Taking advantage of the growing awareness of global Indigenous rights, the Ainu participate in the global discourse of Indigeneity by making connections with Indigenous peoples around the world. Through these efforts, the Ainu draw attention to their struggle and demonstrate that they are a living, breathing, and vital people, despite being forgotten and rendered invisible in the colonial history and memory of Japan.

This dissertation focuses on the “staging” of Ainu identity by Ainu people in various physical and metaphysical spaces in Japan and beyond. These grassroots efforts place the Ainu in charge of their own representation. By focusing on music and dance performances, and the overall representation of Ainu on various stages, I view these performances as dynamic, active, and productive “vitalizing traditions,” rather than the popular perception of tourist performances as only negative and inauthentic. These performances provide a glimpse into the ways in which the Ainu use expressive culture to perform, understand, and create new avenues to express and construct a sense of Ainuness through propelling activities rather than rebuilding ones.

The ethnographic settings presented in this dissertation collectively probe themes of traditionality, authenticity, performativity, Indigeneity, and agency. I argue that a rigid application of these terms tends to cast Indigenous expression, presentation, and performance as inauthentic or as constructed tradition and in the process ignore Indigenous peoples’ active and nuanced roles in asserting their ethnicity on their own terms. Re-framing descriptions of Indigenous peoples’ artistic output as intentional and dynamic not only gives voice to Indigenous people but levels the playing field by viewing Indigenous creativity as deserving of support rather than needing rescue and resuscitation.

What does being an archaeologist mean to Indigenous persons? How and why do some become archaeologists? What has led them down a path to what some in their communities have labeled a colonialist venture? What were are the challenges they have faced, and the motivations that have allowed them to succeed? How have they managed to balance traditional values and worldview with Western modes of inquiry? And how are their contributions broadening the scope of archaeology? Indigenous archaeologists have the often awkward role of trying to serves as spokespeople both for their home community and for the scientific community of archaeologists. This volume tells the stories—in their own words-- of 36 indigenous archaeologists from six continents, how they became archaeologists, and how their dual role affects their relationships with their community and their professional colleagues.

In 2015, the researcher Imaishi Migiwa discovered a group of Ainu religious
implements called inaw イナウ in Shinto shrines in two coastal villages in
Ishikawa Prefecture, some thousand kilometers from Hokkaido. Upon close
examination, these nine inaw were recognized to have been brought to Honshu by a similar process that brought twenty-four inaw to Engakuji 円覚寺, a Shingon Buddhist temple on the west coast of Aomori Prefecture. These inaw were collected from multiple locations across the islands of Sakhalin and Hokkaido over the period of 1868 to 1888 by Wajin 和人 (non-Ainu Japanese) merchants doing regular business with the Ainu. While this period is known for the seizure of Ainu lands by Japan and Russia and the imposition of Western-style colonialism, the inaw viewed as a group of artifacts paint a very different picture.

In 2009, the Japanese government applied to UNESCO to have the traditional dance of its indigenous people, the Ainu, be recognized as an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” (ICH). The application was approved and this honor has since been advertised at Ainu tourist villages throughout Hokkaido Prefecture in northern Japan, home to the majority of Ainu today.  On the surface, receiving the ICH label seems to have elevated Ainu’s status nationally and internationally.  However, I argue that this distinction is a double-edged sword that comes with a cost.  After being rendered invisible in Japan homogeneous society discourse for centuries, the Ainu, with its new found recognition, is now firmly entrenched as the nation’s minority and on the global stage.  The ICH only recognizes traditional dance in Hokkaido, consequently endorsing the art form of a selected Ainu group over the rest of the Ainu population outside this prefecture.  The recognition also inadvertently codified various dance, music, and customs that disregarded historical and regional variations of other Ainu groups in the region and outside Hokkaido.  In this paper, I detail the conditions that surround the changing status of the Ainu from being a marginalized minority, to Japan’s indigenous people, to a marginalized indigenous group viewed through the lens of ICH recognition. Even though the label of ICH may currently fuel Ainu cultural tourism, the implications of this new marginalization and standardization of Ainu traditional dance and music may have future cultural impact on the Ainu people as a whole.

In the islands of Ryūkyū there are some toponyms containing the component pira/hira that originated from the Ainu word pira "cliff" / "rock": Kabiraiishizaki in the island of Ishigaki, the island of Hirari near Ishigaki, Kotohira in the island of Yoron, Takahira in the island of Takeshima, and Takahira in the island of Yakushima. The component pira/hira can't originate from any other language except Ainu. Toponyms with the same component pira/hira exist in Hokkaidō. Toponyms with the pira/hira component evidently should be traced back to the Jōmon language. The fact that toponyms of Jōmon origin can be decoded through modern Ainu means that the language of Jōmon and modern Ainu are pretty close. The fact that in the islands of Ryūkyū there are toponyms with the same component as in the island of Hokkaidō means that in ancient times Ainu inhabited the whole Japanese archipelago from Ryūkyū to Hokkaidō.

A. Yu. Akulov
Kuril-Kamchatka Ainu dialect and perspectives of its revitalization

In 2000-ies in Russian media appears information about Ainu community in Kamchatka. Despite some members of the community were marked as Ainu in last census that took place in 2010, the community has not been officially recognized as indigenous. The root of problem is that members of community demonstrate lack of identity: they demonstrate little interest in their own native language, while it is ability to speak in corresponding language that is used as marker of identity by officials. That’s why revitalization of Kuril-Kamchatka Ainu dialect is matter of great importance.
Revitalization of Kuril-Kamchatka idiom is a rather complicated task since the idiom is one of the worst described Ainu idiom so the idiom should be reconstructed before the revitalization. Main sources on the dialect are recordings made by Krasheninnikov and Dybowski. These recordings represent mostly lexis, but also they contain some phrases, so it’s possible to reconstruct grammar of the idiom. Krasheninnikov’s and Dybowski’s recordings represent different stages of the same dialect, but not different dialects as it probably can be supposed. Kuril-Kamchatka idiom is close to Hokkaido dialect and especially to that of Kushiro so it is possible to make extrapolation of Kushiro forms in doubtful cases. Kuril-Kamchatka Ainu has some unique features: negation is expressed by preposition of eyn while other Ainu dialects use somo as negative preposition; also there seem to be two desiderative forms while other Ainu dialects have one desiderative form only. Successful revitalization of the dialect supposes development of urban sphere of use of the dialect since any language that pretends to be alive in contemporary condition should be able to express any issue of contemporary world.

Николай Невский: жизнь и наследие: сборник статей / сост. и отв. ред. Е. С. Бакшеев и В. В. Щепкин; Ин-т восточных рукописей РАН, Российский ин-т культурологии. — СПб. : Филологический факультет СПбГУ, 2013. — 292 с., ил.
ISBN 978-5-8465-1255-9
В сборник вошли статьи отечественных и зарубежных ученых, основанные на докладах, представленных в рамках «Невских чтений» — международного симпозиума в честь 120-летия со дня рождения выдающегося российского востоковеда Николая Александровича Невского (1892–1937). Проблематика статей определена разносторонним характером исследований, которым посвятил себя ученый: мифология, синто, айноведение, язык и культура Рюкю, тангутоведение и др.

The practices of Miko, Ainu and Ryūkyūan traditions of Japan have changed dramatically over time. While the Miko tradition is to some degree aligned with the mainstream dominant culture, the Ainu and Ryūkyūan cultures tend to be under-represented and viewed as ‘other’ within Japanese society. Institutionally, Japan recognizes the Ainu as Indigenous people through a resolution passed in 2007. Tokyo-based Kyodo News published an article claiming that there had been discussion in August of 2017 of passing a law with a similar acknowledgment, however, no such measure has officially been announced. The Ryūkyūan people in Okinawa are often viewed as a sub-group in Japan, and therefore they are rarely framed as an Indigenous minority. There have, however, been movements such as that of activist Shinako Oyakawa who has petitioned the UN forum for the recognition of the rights of Ryūkyūan people as indigenous (Magee, 2018).

The volume is aimed at preserving invaluable knowledge about Ainu, a language-isolate previously spoken in Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Kurils, which is now on the verge of extinction. Ainu was not a written language, but it possesses a huge documented stock of oral literature, yet is significantly under-described in terms of grammar. It is the only non-Japonic language of Japan and is typologically different not only from Japanese but also from other Northeast Asian languages.
Revolving around but not confined to its head-marking and polysynthetic character, Ainu manifests many typologically interesting phenomena, related in particular to the combinability of various voice markers and noun incorporation. Other interesting features of Ainu include vowel co-occurrence restrictions, a mixed system of expressing grammatical relations, which includes the elements of a rare tripartite alignment, nominal classification distinguishing common and locative nouns, elaborate possessive classes, verbal number, a rich four-term evidential system, and undergrammaticalized aspect, which are all explained in the volume.
This handbook, the result of unprecedented cooperation of the leading experts of Ainu, will definitely help to increase the clarity of our understanding of Ainu and in a long-term perspective may provide answers to problems of human prehistory as well as open the field of Ainu studies to the world and attract many new students.

This paper seeks to contribute to the academic debate on the contemporary identity of the Ainu. Ainu, the indigenous people of what today constitutes part of northern Japan, as well as the Russian Kurile Islands and parts of the island of Sakhalin, became the first subjects of modernizing Japan's expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century. In general, the Ainu's history, culture, and the struggle for recognition as indigenous people as well as against discrimination in Japan have been subjected to intense academic scrutiny in both English and Japanese. This article, however, aims to shed a different light on the construction of Ainu identity, by locating it within the broader contemporary discourse on Japan's national identity. It argues that the emergence of Ainu subjectivity in the public discourse in the 1970s can be partially attributed to the domestic struggle between the conservative and the progressive camps over the definition of Japan's identity....

This dissertation examines the ways in which Ainu indigenous identity is produced and
maintained in contemporary Japan and how this particular construction is implicated in
an ongoing symbolic and political territorial reorganization of parts of Northern Japan
and the disputed Northern Territories. Land claims based on indigenous identity derive
their political efficacy not solely from an association with a group's historically anterior
relation to the state, but also from a very specific late modern method of engagement with states through supranational institutions like the United Nations and indigenous rights NGOs. I trace the emergence of the bureaucratic methods of organization and expertise to the historical development of regional civil society organizations that proliferated in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s. This model of organizing tribal affairs eventually engenders a pan-tribal Ainu identity and the technical capacity to link up with indigenous groups at the regional and global levels. I find the increasing bureaucratization of Ainu activities through these organizations central to the inter-generational effort to realize long-term goals including official recognition of indigenous groups by national governments, the reassertion of tribal sovereignty over ancestral territories, and the elaboration of group rights which contravene the legal category of citizenship and cultural notions of national belonging. While my informants relied on tropes of cultural difference to assert an identity that is categorically distinct from contemporary Japanese ethnicity, in order to remain effective both within the byzantine prefectural and national bureaucracies in Japan and among the international forums where decisions regarding the drafting of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples were being made, Ainu representatives were also building a sense of communitas through metaphors of blood, culture and historical connection. The reterritorialization of specific areas in Hokkaido has been mediated through the Hokkaido Utari Kyokai’s complex involvement with the United Nations, an association that has exerted steady pressure on the Japanese government over the last three decades, and local activists who assert the importance of place to tribal identities and economic development. I characterize these dynamics as a partial post-nationalization of Japan, where the autochthonous local complicates the ideology of nation-space through its claims, no less ideological, to “pre-modern” modes of organization and occupation, and the distinctly late modern practice of ethnopolitical organizing through supranational institutions.