走向世界：阿伊努族文化在日本 (A Path to World Culture: The Politics of Ainu Heritage in Japan). (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
Rethinking Ainu heritage: a case study of an Ainu settlement in Hokkaido, Japan
International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2005
With the colonisation of Hokkaido since the Meiji era, Western technologies were introduced to Japan, but the indigenous inhabitants'-the Ainu people's-ways of life were negatively affected because of the assimilation policy. Since the late 1950s, ethnic tourism in Ainu settlements has grown and Ainu hosts in traditional costumes were often seen in various tourist destinations in Hokkaido; Lake Akan was not exceptional. In this paper, the historic development of an Ainu settlement is explained, and the contested meanings of Ainu traditions and the social construction of Ainu culture in post-war Japanese society from the cultural-political perspectives is investigated. With the focus on the Ainu settlement at Lake Akan, the paper looks closely into the changing indigenous living environments and relevant activities held during the last several decades in order to discern how Ainu heritage has been preserved and promoted as well as the social transformation that Ainu people have undergone in the face of globalising Japanese society.
After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the Japanese government enacted several assimilation strategies to unify the nation through education reform, militarization, and modernization. As a result, Japan’s minority populations were forcibly integrated into the mainstream society and were ostensibly transformed into dutiful, loyal Japanese citizens. This assimilation saw the decline of cultural difference and the rise of discrimination for those who resisted. The Ainu, Japan’s indigenous people, witnessed wide spread decline in cultural rights and traditional life. In response, the Ainu began in the 1950s to reclaim traditional lands in Hokkaidô to create learning centers that simultaneously functioned as tourist sites for domestic and foreign travelers as well as teaching spaces for Ainu people to reconnect with their indigenous identity. Today these sites offer tourists “off center” alternatives to Japanese domestic attractions, and are intentionally set apart from mainstream Japan by the Ainu. These places create space for Ainu to construct a separate identity from their daily Japanese life. From an interview in 2010, one Ainu artist asserts that though he lives a “dualistic life”, both Japanese and Ainu, when he performs Ainu music, he “becomes” Ainu again. In this paper I explore the music being used to construct the Ainu identity in these tourists sites as both artistic expressions and intentional identity markers. In these performative spaces Ainu reclaim their indigenous heritage and demonstrate their Ainuness in modern Japan while mixing traditional and contemporary musical forms to construct modern Ainu identities.
THE REPRESENTATION OF AINU CULTURE IN THE JAPANESE MUSEUM SYSTEM
The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 2007
Ainu culture was once considered to be useless or represented as the relic of the past. In the 1990s, however, there were some events regarding Ainu cultural promotion and they increased opportunities for the wider society to become aware of the Ainu. Despite these events, there are conflicts over the way the Ainu are represented culturally. The lack of contemporary culture from permanent exhibitions is another problem. This article reviews Ainu cultural representation in the Japanese museum system and discusses what the conflicts are, why the lack of contemporary culture is a problem, and why this problem remains unsolved.
ICCPR 2022, 2022
Supporting cultural practitioners and activities were even seen as replacement for the failed commitment to true reconciliation. This situation makes it urgent to review Ainu policy from the specialised perspective of culture and the arts. While the debates on indigenous rights and social justice shall never be dismissed or discontinued, supporting the arts and culture should not be a counterforce to it. On the contrary, it is possible to place the indigenous cultural policy at the core of its activism of restoring the rights and dignity of indigenous peoples. It is therefore that this paper will reconsider Japan's indigenous policy in comparison to cultural policy and discuss how it could contribute to the restoration of indigenous rights and dignity. Indigenous Policy for Ainu: Background The Ainu are indigenous people of Japan, known to have been living in Hokkaido, Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and northern Honshu. In 2019, the Diet [Japan's national congress] has passed the legislation that stated that Ainu are indigenous people of Japan 2. Prior to this very recent legislation, Ainu people have been under a gaze of curious eyes for hundreds of years, both from the Wajin Japanese [the majority ethnic group in Japan] and to missionaries, anthropologists, and adventurers who have come to Japan from the West (e.g., Ölschleger 2014). The Ainu people, who were once trading partners with pre-modern Japan and other neighbouring countries, were positioned as peoples of an "internal colonial state" of the nation of Japan, during the modernization of the nation at the end of 19C. In this newly modernized Japan, the Ainu were subjected to a policy of assimilation while overwhelming numbers of Japanese Wajin migrated to "develop" Hokkaido. Ironically, this assimilation policy was the exact opposite of the dissimilation policies of the pre-modern era: Ainu who were once prohibited to speak, dress, and behave like Japanese Wajin are now forced to do so. The assimilation policy included education in Japanese, prohibition of traditional customs, and unilateral expropriation of their residential areas and resources. These policies were supported by the 1899 "Law for the Protection of the Former Dojin [pejorative term used for Ainu, literally meaning "soil people", or savages] of Hokkaido", which legally recognized the Ainu people as "former dojin" as after the law they were considered imperial subjects to be "protected". This 1899 law that was typically paternalistic and discriminative in name and nature lasted almost 100 years, until the late Dr. Kayano Shigeru became the first Ainu member of the Diet, who made his speech in Ainu in 1994 for the first (and sadly, so far, the last) time in the history of the Japanese government Takiguchi, W. (2011). Ainu bunka shinkoho seiritsu shishi [Private records of the process of establishing Ainu Cultural Promotion Act] (in Japanese). Self-Publishing. Tsunemoto, T. (2019). Ainu sesaku suishinho-Ainu to nihon ni tekigoushita senjuminzoku seisaku wo mezashite. [Ainu Policy Promotion Law-Toward an Indigenous Peoples Policy Adapted to the Ainu and Japan] (In Japanese). Hogaku Kyoshitsu, (468). Yuhikaku Publishing. pp63-69.
Ainu Ceremonial Music and Dance " Restored " and Recontextualized
At the Ainu Culture Festival I attended in 2010, an ensemble of twelve young adults called Team Nikaop performed what they describe as " restorations " (fukugen) of Ainu ceremonial music and dance incorporating historical videos and other documents. This article explores the way that images of Ainu ceremonial music and dance used in Japanese museums and tourist centres throughout the 20th century are recontextualized through subtle gestures in Team Nikaop's restorations onstage and behaviour offstage and in everyday life to balance old stereotypes with new meanings that contribute to the festival's goal of garnering respect for Ainu culture. Résumé : Lors du Festival culturel aïnou auquel j'ai assisté en 2010, un ensemble de douze jeunes adultes appelé Team Nikaop a présenté ce que l'équipe appelle des «restaurations » (fukugen) de musique et de danse cérémonielles aïnous qui incorporaient des vidéos historiques et d'autres documents. Cet article examine la façon dont les images de musique et de danse cérémonielles aïnous utilisées dans les musées et les centres touristiques japonais au cours du 20ème siècle sont recontextualisées par les gestes subtiles du Team Nikaop dans ses restaurations sur scène et son comportement hors scène et dans la vie quotidienne. En trouvant un équilibre entre les vieux stéréotypes et les significations nouvelles, le groupe contribue à l'objectif du festival de susciter le respect pour la culture aïnou.
Reconstituting Communities: Localized Folk Performing Arts and Matsuri Festivals in Post- 3.11 Japan
International Journal of Sustainable Future for Human Security, 2020
Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork primarily in Sendai, Japan, this paper focuses on matsuri festivals and folk performing arts, which have been documented as one of the earliest musical activities to reemerge in coastal areas of Tohoku, Japan following 3.11 because of their deep rooted history and regional distinctions. This paper presents the ways in which these cultural properties are being supported by government organizations such as the Agency for Cultural Affairs, as well as individual scholars and researchers of Tohoku's folk performing arts. While localized folk performing arts practices have helped to rebuild local identity and given dispersed communities a reason to regularly reconvene, some post-3.11 festivals such as the Tohoku Rokkonsai (Six-Soul Festival) have developed to also showcase Tohoku's folk performing arts as a means of demonstrating tenacity to a global audience and to try to boost post-disaster tourism and economic redevelopment. This paper considers how music making can contribute towards relief and recovery in the continuing crisis of disaster and advocates for further consideration of cultural heritage as integral to, rather than, separate from social and environmental contexts that foster human resiliency following catastrophic events.
Responding to decades of discrimination, the Indigenous Ainu of Japan seek new ways in which to claim Indigenous rights and to express their Ainu identity in modern Japan. For several decades the Ainu at Lake Akan (Akanko) have used ethnic tourism as a space to both express Indigenous identity and to educate others about Ainu customs and history. In addition to the use of traditional music and dance on the tourist stage, this paper looks at a recently developed full stage puppet-play unlike anything attempted before. Though tourism often evokes ideas of essentialism or stagnation through preservation, the Akanko Ainu use tourism as a space to create new expressions employing an Indigenous creativity that has produced innovative traditions for both insider and outsider audiences housed in a state-of-the-art theatre called “Ikor” (treasure in the Ainu language). These plays portray the epic narratives of the Ainu people. I see Ikor as a transformative space in which the Ainu are able to embody these epic narratives into a new context that is open to a wider audience. Though Indigenous people are often portrayed as stagnant and moribund, the Akanko Ainu represent a growing number of groups wanting to cast aside preexisting assumptions of “indigenous” by developing new generative expressions that can continue Indigenous heritage. While embracing their traditional life, the Akanko Ainu choose to explore new realms of creativity to express the desires and needs of an Indigenous society.