Today we take a closer look at
Hokkaido's original people. I particularly recommend this post to
my friends, colleagues and former students in Guyana, whom I
encourage to consider the Ainu's story very carefully, and think
about what it offers for their own communities' journey.
We touched on them previously. They were the first. Their name for
themselves, 'Ainu', in their own language means 'human', and they
inhabited Hokkaido, northern Tōhoku, the Kuril Islands, and even
Sakhalin and the tip of Kamchatka, long before the first Japanese or
Russians set foot in the area.
They developed their own culture
and way of life. They hunted and fished, sported impressive beards
and tattoos, and so identified with the wilderness on which they
relied that it came to totally define them through their conceptions
of gods, their rituals, their music, their clothing, their language,
their architecture. They did not write, but their oral histories were
among the longest and richest epics in the world.
Today, there are hardly any left.
At least, any in the sense of persons of pure Ainu descent, living
according to Ainu traditional culture – as far as I could
establish. Japan's limited awareness of them itself attests to the
scale of their catastrophe. Most people, when asked, admit how hard
it is to gauge how much of Hokkaido's Ainu heritage remains in people
alive today; and while estimates of numbers of these Ainu go as high
in some cases as over 20,000, most it seems have been largely
integrated into Japanese lifestyles, Japanese practices, and Japanese
genetic heritage.
Finding out about them from afar
proved next to impossible, and was one of the many reasons I long
sought to travel to Hokkaido. On arriving, I was surprised just how
fast their persisting influence made itself known. A huge array of
Hokkaido's place names, including virtually all those I meant to
visit, originate from the Ainu language. Sapporo, as we've seen;
Furano, from fura-nui (“stinking flame”, a reference to
volcanic sulphur); Sounkyo, from sou-un-betsu, “river with
many waterfalls”; even Asahikawa, “morning sun river” in
Japanese, is thought to come from a mis-interpretation of chiu-pet,
“river of waves”. And so too shirau-o-i, the “place with
many horseflies”: Shiraoi.
As usual, click below to see the
full post.
Shiraoi is a quiet and forested
town on Hokkaido's south coast, an hour or two out of Sapporo by road
or rail. Once an Ainu settlement, the appearance of their kotan
(Ainu village) has been restored on the shore of Lake Poroto, as a
museum and exhibition of Ainu culture. Reputed as one of the leading
efforts of its kind, my search to learn more of the Ainu led through
its gates.
Poroto Kotan represents a renewed
effort, by Ainu descendants and supporters today, to revive the
culture and heritage demolished over a hundred years of systematic
assimilation, and to re-awaken awareness in Japan and beyond about
the homes and freedoms their ancestors once enjoyed in Hokkaido.
These efforts are growing, but build from a frightfully low base: one
barely present after over a century of the seizure of their land and
resources, of forced migrations, and of contempt and ethnic
discrimination from Japanese (and also from Russians, who typically
threw the Ainu out as they expanded into Ainu lands). They played a
part in the UN's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in
2007, and it was only in 2008 – yes, four years ago – that
the Diet (parliament) of Japan passed a resolution recognizing the
Ainu as an indigenous group with their own traditions and culture,
and calling for an end to discrimination.
Ainu spirituality seems a
good place to start in exploring Ainu ways, if only because it brings
together so much of how they define themselves and so informs their
practices. The cornerstone of traditional Ainu religion is kamui:
gods, or spirits. In their own realm, it is thought, kamui
took similar forms to us humans; but in our world they took physical
shapes, according to the roles they wished to play. And these could
be anything: animals, plants, places, geographic or natural phenomena
like the sun or the undertow, and even human-made objects such as
containers. The most important to humans had specific names and
associations, but they really could be everywhere and anywhere.
It was these kamui that
protected humans from disasters and provided the things they needed –
the bounty of the wilds, the tools, the climate conditions, and so on
– for a peaceful and prosperous life. In return the humans gave
thanks and made wishes through prayers and offerings, sometimes in
complex ceremonies.
This
was a mutual relationship. There were not so nice gods and spirits
too, such as those which brought accidents or diseases (especially
smallpox), and even the decent gods made mistakes, for which humans
could argue with them
or engage in dialogue. If the result was a relationship of mutual
assistance and respect, one might expect that this space for critical
scrutiny did a lot to bring that about, and should, in my view, be an
essential part of any human's relationship with any god, in any
religion.
The most prominent example is the
Ainu relationship with bears, a hugely important animal from
which they got meat and furs. The bear kamui was one of the
most revered of all, believed to come to Earth in the form of the
bear and visit the humans it favoured most; and in return, the humans
held the “soul-sending” ritual of iomante to send the
immortal spirit back off to the realm of the gods, along with
treasures and offerings for its continued life there.
Iomante, for those who
know of it, is controversial. In effect, it involves the sacrifice of
a live young bear through an ordeal which may deal it great pain.
This ritual is an important illustration of some of the real
difficulties and tough debates in Ainu issues today, and we will
return to it shortly.
Other animals, including owls,
dogs and Hokkaido's deer and foxes, represented similarly vital kamui
relationships, and so did hunting and gathering methods, cuisine,
architecture (such as windows for the gods to enter and exit, facing
upriver, and thus deciding the whole house's direction), and
clothing. Ainu weaving was advanced: clothes were made from
tree barks and plant fibres, traded cotton and silk from the
mainland, and animal hides for protection against the cold. These
textiles often bore elaborate embroidery patterns to ward off evil
spirits, especially when made for ceremonies, when they would be worn
with iconic headgear and a range of accessories.
Epic poetry sagas, along
with storytelling, dance and sacred music, also
make up a pivotal strand of Ainu tradition. These were as much an
informed and joyous exchange with the kamui in themselves as
they were expressions and preservations of culture.
They developed musical
instruments too, such as the tonkori strings and mukkuri
mouth-harp.
Thus it should be easy to grasp
the devastating impact of Japanese government bans on these customs –
including music, dance, and Ainu language – for a people who so
relied on oral methods to express themselves. Cultural genocide, as
may be the only term that can capture its scope, must weigh heavier
than it has on the late Tokugawa, Meiji, Taisho and Showa
socio-political legacies; and we must all hope, and work, to ensure
that the Heisei does not join this list. Conversely, it is no
surprise that music has become such a pillar of today's attempts at
Ainu cultural revival.
The Shiraoi museum offers a
profound insight into the ways of the Ainu, and must be commended.
One aspect however left me with grave concern. Given the emphasis on
bears and dogs as animals so respected and vital to Ainu life, it was
alarming to find them kept on the grounds in conditions like these:
This I believe is less a
reflection on anything Ainu, and more on the larger-scale problem
often seen in Japan of inadequate concern for animal welfare –
perhaps that much harder to bring attention to in a country where
humans often live crowded into spaces not much bigger than these, and
open critique of the status quo is discouraged.
Nonetheless, I would like to urge
Poroto Kotan to do something about this. Why could the dogs not
wander freely around the spacious village, and perhaps interact and
exchange affection with those who visit? And if bears are to be kept
there, might it be feasible to give them the run of the nice forest
beside the village, perhaps with a fence with a much wider perimeter,
the closer part of which could border on the kotan and let
people see or feed the bears through it?
Animal issues bring us back to
iomante, the “soul-sending” ceremony. Its cultural
meaning, again, is that the divine spirit taking its form as a bear
is sent back to the realm of the gods with offerings and respects.
Its practical meaning is that a bear cub late in hibernation is taken
from its den and its mother, raised in a pen in the village for a
year or two while fed and treated as a god, then tied to a post in
the village centre in the midst of a great ritual, and shot with
arrows until it dies. The arrows are ceremonial, delicately crafted,
said to carry energy as a gift for the bear spirit on its journey
back to heaven. But they also inflict agony on the bear – and as
Hokkaido brown bears are massive creatures, it likely takes a great
number of shots. And though the bear struggles in anguish, its noises
are interpreted as expressions of great joy at the prospect of
returning to the realm of the gods.
Which raises a nightmare dilemma.
Perhaps one can envisage the opposing sides of the debate, already
hurtling towards each other like trains with the brakes torn off. On
the one hand, the charge of monstrous animal cruelty. On the other,
the defence of a cultural keystone in the arch of Ainu heritage, so
much of which was brought crumbling to dust by a cultural imperialism
no less cruel. I have heard arguments made from both sides with
ferocious passion.
How do you address a debate where
both sides are so utterly right? Where both sides seek redress for
excruciating pain and injustice, be it arrows in the hide or the
wholesale demolition of a civilization? I can find within me no
simple answer: for here are two of humanity's most enormous debts,
for its record towards animals and its record towards indigenous
peoples, both of which are grim to the extreme.
Mercifully, an answer may not be
needed with urgency. Iomante, though as of 2007 no longer
prohibited, seems no longer practiced in this form: for multiple
reasons, including the end of the survival need for bear products,
and the growing pressure on bear populations from urbanization. I
have heard of iomante occurring for animals which already died
in accidents or captivity. But this does not remove the need for
reflective discussion, especially in the context of the courageous
and necessary movement to revive Ainu culture.
And for this, there must be
cooperation and a will to resolve all problems. Both sides of the
story must be listened to and understood, because both are absolutely
right, and neither can be ignored. I only advise this because in
other parts of the world, where arguments become so emotively charged
and rejecting of the need to understand, they often get exchanged in
bombs, and that is something I am sure none of us wish to ever see in
Hokkaido.
So what of the future? I did not
have the time to search for a proper sense of the scale of Ainu
revival efforts. It was excellent to see they exist with robustness,
and to be able to discuss the Ainu with openness and interest with
many of the Japanese I met. It was also encouraging, after all I'd
heard about them 'not existing anymore', that I did find
acknowledgement starting to grow, including in leading museums, that
Hokkaido and the Ainu were part of one another, and that what was
inflicted on them was wrong. If prejudice against the Ainu remains,
then as with all prejudice, it
is the whole of society's responsibility to throw it out and deny it
any place.
So it was that I could undertake
no attempt to look at Hokkaido without first devoting due attention
to those whose home it was since time immemorial, and who paid the
highest price for its transformation. History is the study of the
present, and whether to learn from our mistakes and improve, or
simply because it's the decent thing to do, we must never forget the
things our own societies did wrong.
Thus, whenever we marvel at the
great things Hokkaido offers today, and enjoy the wonders it
produces, we should take a moment to pay our respects to those who
were sacrificed to the brink of oblivion in the name of
'development'. More importantly, we should ask ourselves what we can
do that might make amends: that might, over decades, over centuries,
restore the Ainu heritage as a proud component of the panoramic human
blend Hokkaido has become. It is my hope that in writing this post,
in humbly attempting to widen the reach of the world's awareness, I
have made at least a small contribution.
Coming next: rural Hokkaido's
farms and fields, from which flow forth the fresh foodstuffs relished
across the rest of Japan – and in them, a case study of the joys
and the pains faced by those Japanese who followed their dreams
north.
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