The Ainu people in Japan, a tested minority

“We Ainu know how to interpret our dreams. A crow in a dream guides us by its gaze or its croaking. » Artist, poet and activist for the rights of this ethnic minority in Japan, Shizue Ukaji perpetuates the Ainu traditions, which are intimately linked to nature.

In his small house in the village of Shiraoi, in the south-west of Hokkaido, the big island in the north of Japan, the energetic octogenarian protects himself from evil spirits with tufts of mistletoe, keeps in shape with infusions of bark grated from the cork tree of the Amur River and thus reads the messages of the dreaming crow, divine herald of the Ainu pantheon – dominated by the bear, “mountain god”the protective owl of the villages and the feeding salmon.

“Our culture is not just songs and dances. Most of the traditions handed down from generation to generation are in daily life, in the kitchen,” asserts Shizue Ukaji, very hostile to the recovery of their culture for tourist and commercial purposes. The immense success of the manga Golden Kamui (kamui means “deity” in Ainu), whose fourth season of the animated version will be available on October 4 in streaming is an example of this.

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Shizue Ukaji’s criticisms also and perhaps especially target the Upopoy museum – “a soulless place” according to her –, inaugurated in July 2020, a few hundred meters from her home. The goal this “ Ainu national museum ” is of “to revive and further develop the Ainu culture”, recalls its director, Shiro Sasaki, a former researcher at the renowned Ethnology Museum in Osaka.

“Their own language, religion and culture”

The gloomy building, blending into the greenery along Lake Poroto facing the massive silhouette of the Tarumae volcano, houses a unique room detailing Ainu crafts and spirituality, where one wanders in a circular fashion, but does not convince the members of the minority.

“It is far from reflecting the Ainu’s attachment to nature, which they preserved for future generations”, slice Ryoko Tahara, president of the association Menoko Mosmos (“wake up, Ainu women”). Above all, it avoids the wounds inflicted over time on this people who probably came from Siberia before the Jômon era (14,000-300 BC).

Animists, living from hunting and gathering, the Ainu are mentioned in Japanese chronicles from the 8th century.

The Ainu (from the word anyu : ” human “) have long radiated over a vast territory covering Sakhalin (now Russia), the Kuril Islands, Hokkaido and the northern third of the island of Honshu. Animists, living from hunting and gathering, they are mentioned in Japanese chronicles from the 8the century. Pushed back little by little towards the north, on the island of Hokkaido, they fell under Japanese rule in 1789.

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The Ainu people in Japan, a tested minority