.L- 
:;;ir Wfrfi, 'f+.S-Wm* 
lisw^vf jR^Vc jvryf^'.y1 - w-V1- 'tifftj !~ ■:t , 4$r;V,' -1' 
" '■ A'*-'''- --' • 
:•; :Jv‘ -^n afet 
< , V 
' 
4£ti* 
o ’’•t ->. 
« 
)IW . vm I-">T-'V-.i. 
[•») 
• ;•■•'* '■* . 1 '••'<• ' ywr» 
‘ .'•*»•• '•*' W/. 
; 
■tt.Y $*•**{ 
' 
*•?':«••• ,'*W;.>'■('■’/ -!'< ;■■■ -; 5 •>»•».*’,*;,f«•> -ivy.;- 
■ 
JmI* 
. 
,Vv ■r ”. ■'■• ,' ■_ ; i •!.. .«,-;■ ,^-y .ivy yVy 
. 
"'V 
•'•'1 '■' -<?••, *.V|V 
•ift'K • . Vji’iyyy .vyi . ■ ' 
•V 
,,;y. •. • *., F:). v :.y,j^ - 
i,:,;v,y? : 
. 
$$$ ’ 
>$V*»K1 _81 •>'• '!&£¥■ f,!*v 
MS 
■ V :•''«•'•> • :.\y.v.\ 
X};4y0 
'• 1 . •■ .'• '■ ' *, ■• . •• . • .' h •( 
- «'•*•/*'VW' 
• • V ■• •' ,'**■• -V-- V,> 
•>Sr•» '• • \>*•'•.':• .*.*>'<i-*»,lOf-• A• -*'•• *V>te 
*' ' f“ >•:» v /.', *»v.,.:«•».«■;, 
',A.; ; / 
'■• • ' •*.».x >' -V/i ;«, • r >., 
i ' <w) •■■' 
:;,■■■'■:■.[ 
,. \- .. •■•• »■• 
:■• '* i.v ( 
.... C W'm.-V.Vy. 
• -. . rv:«v--? •: \t 
■ r, 
v' ••’*• ’'••> ■ •' 
i&Wii <t s -• :.•, i.tWft ' • • 
• '•’./*'-.. • '• y>', ) '■. 
1 V y .w ..yjti:. >. ■ ■ ■ 
...iy.it1.- • 
as 
> ■.. ' ,i') '• .li* *. (.> • '. v:.v-» *'«/.; 
M 
.., litywWitfj, 
v-.'SV 
■■ .-'-.y 'i . 
iVaw,' "< '■• — <%taip!jrt! 
1W mm 
w ■ 
fchfcf^r. *'*•+*', 
fjay 
••-•-■’' 1 • 
.’•ft-l'-''-: <•'•> ■ v, *.ar. . - • v;;. . - :. >. • 
*.wfvi-W^^V'■••■''• :v ' ‘ Vv ,'Y.-< V 
wit* ^»,.^.f>Ir"'-‘..Vl^KWr* U «**•'< Mg*W ‘if •; M-fT-V 4 <£>*«*•>•' . • ' • i l 
mm >■•*’■ ;••'•--?<**•••' ■ ;>•%....•• v .■ ••.•<• • ■•; - -■•••• 
M?y.'JV*• ^.'vv;• i‘r*Y*V*WvMj} '•»'v.v >Vm'Av-v t.,. 
mn 
‘■PHnSi 
;/.,s.. ,;.:.i«,;j,-.v.'' v.: A ■ • - ,. - 
■ 
...„, WAPW^'t-j- 
-V. 'dS •, V'i;{ > vi.'.: v; 
wsc'/fliV• w^v-r% ’•.»•• ■■•■•;. 
- ''■ ■ ~ >} ,• : .* • '■ ■ ■ \ •. .. 
V .-, -■ * ....vV 
i-o/.V-i-Av' A ®s#8 
•‘ .>w-v* ;•..." 
’’ v: ’■’':' ■ 
l;-.\ ;V-.I- „ 
■r.j'.• ..*• '■>■{ 1 * V V '.- »•' ■ V. 
>■!'iffi/rfWWV'h'i','}■■•''•■ >:'•■•' * H^Kv* -4'. ■■"•''■ }/•'":-A 11 
'H *.-• 1 '• },.*.■! I\ -V'.S.O ‘ > 
I.v . :' ', i - • 
..■■<■.•■.w.i- :!;■«; ■■A- -v.i*; 
A,)!;. :V. ...... -.1-.! 
I: dim 
;!V!-^rt.iA;; v:- •>>-•““ ;• 
'••;vyi»*Vf:.v-'v■►,>‘,;-1 >■ yv-r .■.,i\ •• 7'-v:lv vv-?. ’ -v<, 1 .♦• - 
;^y.,vj- W J:jr,r ;:‘-r- • 
- f -•■ : .'/• i tv ■:■>. 
5®^'fy&btjvk'*#*;.*'4W't*-1 -;yV a . ,’•• 
1,.UM j/ ,,/ / j • \! *• > 1 • - 
■’-1 - • ft -Ay’:W-v.,J* ~i:::- • »• 
H^r,’*Vrr,‘>V-• V;Vvi•• ?•/. • • 
v j1/,*V'-v^. . > \ ‘. ^ -in .■■■. 1  ... 
•Wv«. t 
**. •'»\rt immjw -w ,i-•».*- ■ . xb ■■
i •»' ,4Mk> V- ,•>... \. , •• ••«>/ 
...... 
•■V ' V v-’ifcVlOfV '-ytiy-H-iJ-'••*,-•■ ■•'/•« ■ ••> 
„<> >r> 7-;VA%*' jrfoV-V.'V.A? <U • • Vy.t •* > 
«•»«»> r^;-r -•• -rrAimr 
> Mt-w/iAojjv. 
•p;.,■*^v>. • • . ••• 4..V »i s\ • .-i 
;• •• .*i(i . » •v.'y.r**'. • ••*'».• • • •. '•• ■' • 
V.- " tv,'^ •••. ,- H v- .-r 
j *>»•- •«.'• v A, .V f; . !• • • U Vi.-: • 
r^-.-x ...Vw,,. ;v-, . 
. . • ' •> , r ,... •• • . .'u- 
• •!-..**ft•':• • v • '•. ••» • • •• ■';• » - - 
■ 
-•-...a •> .:• -1 w- ... ... 
■■ !■ :■■,'.•• ■•■'.. "lA .« ■ I. i -v: >!; .. 1 
,.M,'4jk..c«.v •■*: . 1 •'.,. ■/.;•• . .. ,(• ■ ... ... .. 
‘v": ,vf.‘ v.k- V 'M' *■.*;)' V • - - >> • >,-. v*-.'^ ......-v .■ . • ■ • > .^. •>>,!# 
i, j. - -a ■ f f '**' -!■*■:>'■: Ai.v.-:-'.' ■ 



v? Vi ^* i 
W. Fitzhugh rwd Chisato O. Dubreuil 
Arctic Studies Center 
National Museum of Natural History 
Smithsonian Institution 
in association with 
University of Washington Press 
This publication has been prepared with the generous financial 
assistance of Nippon Foundation, Japan-United States Friendship 
Commission, and Japan Foundation. 
/W 
FfMTH 
Copyright ©1999 Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution 
All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by 
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or 
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. 
Ainu. Spirit of a Northern People 
was produced by Perpetua Press, Los Angeles 
Letitia O'Connor and Sherri Schottlaender, editors 
Dana Levy, designer 
Manufactured in China by Toppan Printing Company 
Ainu Spirit of a Northern People is published in association with an exhibition of the same title organized by 
the Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and circulated 
by the Office of Special Exhibits of that institution between 1 April 1999 and 1 April 2001 
Bibliography, Index 
I. Fitzhugh, William W., 1943— II Dubreuil, Chisato O., 1957— III. National Museum of Natural 
History (LI S.) 
Library of Congress catalogue no. 99-64360 
ISBN 0-96734290-2 (paperback) 
ISBN 0-295-97912-7 (cloth) 
The paper in this book meets the guildelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Pro¬ 
duction Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources 
Editors' Notes 
(1) Spelling Readers may note inconsistency in the presentation of some Ainu terms, personal names, 
and geographic place-names. This is because Amu language has three geographic dialects—from Hok¬ 
kaido, the Kuriles, and Sakhalin—and many subdialects with marked variation in terminology and pro¬ 
nunciation Because Ainu was a spoken and not a written language, early field workers, lacking dictio¬ 
naries, transcribed Ainu terms and names as best they could. We have systematized many spellings, but 
in some cases terms remain as originally recorded 
(2) Collection Repositories: In the interest of efficiency, the owners of materials illustrated in this book 
are given in abbreviated form in the captions. A key for their translation may be found in the credits on 
page 405. 
(3) Authors: Contact information for Ainu and Japanese authors should be obtained from Chisato 
Dubreuil; for others, from William Fitzhugh. 
(4) Illustrations: Requests for reproduction rights and materials for Ainu-e illustrations should be made 
directly to the institutions who own them Reproduction rights for other objects illustrated in this vol¬ 
ume should be obtained from owning institutions, but rental of images other than Ainu-e may be ar¬ 
ranged with the Arctic Studies Center. 
Front Cover Illustrations A series of ikupasuy, prayer sticks, used by Ainu men to transmit 
prayers to their gods during ritual ceremonies, from the Brooklyn Museum of Art (see fig. 
42.10). Photograph by Susan Einstein, For other cover images (left to right) see figs. 47.15a 
(Bikky Sunazawa mask), 46.2 (Ainu elder with ikupasuy and tuki), 45.12 (Ainu robe) ,41.1 
(Ainu-e illustration of crane dance), p. 29 (Ainu-e chieftain), 55.2 (contemporary ritual). 
Back Cover Illustration: Kamuy. Spirit of the Ainu (1998), made for the exhibition by Ainu 
textile artist, Noriko Kawamura. Photograph by Don Hurlbert. 
(3-
1 F
T
 
Contents Preface 
Introduction 
PART I 
Theories of 
Ainu Origins 
PART II 
Historic 
Period 
PART III 
Ainu "Discovery": 
Collectors, Museums, 
and the Public 
J 
0 
e 
PART IV 
Ainu Mosir: 
Land, Spirits, 
and Culture 
Jiro Sasamura, Ainu Association of Hokkaido /7 
Shigeru Kayano, Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum /7 
Ainu Ethnicity: A History /9 
William W. Fitzhugh, Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution 
1. Ainu Origin Theories /29 
S. A. Arutiunov, Institute of Ethnology, Moscow 
2. Ainu Homelands: Natural History from Ice Age to Modern Times /32 
Yugo Ono, Hokkaido University 
3. Prehistoric Hokkaido and Ainu Origins /39 
Kiyoshi Yamaura, Rikkyo University, and Hiroshi Ushiro, Historical Museum of Hokkaido 
4 Ainu Ties with Ancient Cultures of Northeast Asia /47 
Toshihiko Kikuchi, Hokkaido University 
5. Ancient People of the North Pacific Rim: Ainu Biological Relationships with Their Neighbors /52 
Hajime Ishida, University of the Ryukyus 
6 Ainu Language: Features and Relationships /57 
Suzuko Tamura, Waseda University 
7. Ainu History: An Overview /67 
Richard Siddle, University of Sheffield 
8 Early Ainu Contacts with the Japanese /74 
Isao Kikuchi, Miyagi Gakuin Women's College 
9 Ainu-e: A Historical Review /79 
Toshikazu Sasaki, Tokyo National Museum 
10. Trading Brokers and Partners with China, Russia, and Japan /86 
Shiro Sasaki, National Museum of Ethnology 
1 1. Tourism, Assimilation, and Ainu Survival Today/92 
Kazuyoshi Ohtsuka, National Museum of Ethnology 
12. The Ainu and the Early Modern Japanese State, I 600-1 868 /96 
David L. Howell, Princeton University 
1 3. Foreign Contagions, Ainu Medical Culture and Conquest /102 
Brett L. Walker, Yale University 
14. From Assimilation to Indigenous Rights: Ainu Resistance Since 1869 /108 
Richard Siddle, University of Sheffield 
15. Ainu and Northwest Coast Peoples: A Comparison /I 16 
Motomichi Kono, independent researcher, and William W, Fitzhugh, Smithsonian Institution 
16. The European Image of the Ainu as Reflected in Museum Collections /125 
Josef Kreiner, University of Bonn 
17. The St. Petersburg Ainu Collections /132 
Shinko Ogihara, Chiba University 
18. Ainu Collections in North America: Documentation Projects and the Frederick Starr Collections /1 36 
Yoshinobu Kotani, Nagoya University 
19. Romyn Hitchcock and the Smithsonian Ainu Collection /148 
Chang-su Houchins, Smithsonian Institution 
20. Batchelor, Starr, and Culin: The Brooklyn Museum of Art Collection /155 
Amy Poster, The Brooklyn Museum of Art 
21. An Enthusiastic Quest: Hiram Hiller and Jenichiro Oyabe in Hokkaido, 1901 /162 
Adria H. Katz, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology 
22. From Snowshoe to "Corn Mortars": Early Ainu Collections at the American Museum of Natural History /168 
Laurel Kendall, American Museum of Natural Histoiy 
23. Japanese Ainu Collections/176 
Nobukatsu Aoyagi, Asahikawa City Museum, and Koji Deriha, Historical Aluseum of Hokkaido 
24. The Ainu Museum Foundation/183 
Shigeki Akino, The Ainu Museum at Shiraoi 
25. The Ainu in Ethnographic Films /1 87 
Kazuo Okada, Tokyo Cinema Shinsha 
26. Kamuy. Gods You Can Argue With /193 
Hisakazu Fujimura, Hokkai Gakuin College 
27. The Ainu Ecosystem /198 
Hitoshi Watanabe, University of Tokyo 
28 Foods of Choice /202 
Toshihiro Kohara, Hokkaido Ainu Culture Research Center 
( ,.n. • , 
PART V 
Even Without a 
Word for Art... 
PART VI 
Ainu Present 
and Future 
29. Technology, Settlement and Hunting Rituals /208 
Hans Dieter Olschleger, University of Bonn 
30. The Ainu on Whales and Whaling /222 
Masami Iwasaki-Coodman, Hokkai Gakuin College and Masahiro Nomoto, The Ainu Museum at Sbii 
3 1 Home and Settlement: Cbise and Kotan /227 
Masahiro Nomoto, The Ainu Museum at Shiraoi 
32. Village Work: Seasons and Gender Roles /234 
Mitsunori Keira and Tomoko Keira, Yay Yukar Park 
33. Ainu Sociality/240 
Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, University of Wisconsin-Madison 
34. Ainu Children's Play /246 
Miyuki Muraki, The Ainu Museum at Shiraoi 
35. Spirit-Sending Ceremonies /248 
Shigeki Akino, The Ainu Museum at Shiraoi 
36. The Archaeology of lyomante /256 
Hiroshi Utagawa, University of Tokyo 
37. Ainu Shamanism /261 
Kan Wada, Otaru University of Commerce, edited by Igor Krupnik, Smithsonian Institution 
38. Life and Death /268 
Hisakazu Fujimura, Hokkai Gakuin College 
39. Mythology and Animal Tales /274 
Shinko Ogihara, Chiba University 
40. Yukar: Epics of Heroes /278 
Mie Oginaka, independent researcher 
41 To Live is to Sing /282 
Kazuyuki Tanimoto, Hokkaido Ainu Culture Research Center 
42. Ainu Art: The Beginnings of Tradition /287 
Chisato O. Dubreuil, Smithsonian Institution 
43. Saranip and Tenki. Ainu Basketry and North Pacific Affinities /301 
Nelson Graburn, University of California, and Molly Lee, University of Alaska-Fairbanks 
44. A Personal Rebirth through Traditional Ainu Basketry/309 
Nobuko Tsuda, Ainu Association of Hokkaido 
45. Clothing and Ornamentation /31 3 
Mari Kodama, The Ainu Museum at Shiraoi and Hakodate City Museum 
46. Ikupasuy: It's Not a Mustache Lifter! /327 
Fosco Maraini, ethnologist, edited by David Dubreuil, Smithsonian Institution 
47. Ainu Journey: From Tourist Art to Fine Arts /335 
Chisato O. Dubreuil, Smithsonian Institution 
48. Shishirimuka: A Saru River Tale / 355 
Koichi Kaizawa, Farmer and Ainu Cultural Leader 
49. Ainu in the International Arena /359 
Kelly L. Dietz, Cornell University 
50. The Ainu Shinpo: A New Beginning /366 
Teruki Fsunemoto, Hokkaido University 
51 Beyond the Ainu Shinpo: An Ainu View /369 
Jiro Sasamura, Ainu Association of Hokkaido 
52. Ainu Language: Present and Future /371 
Hiroshi Nakagawa, Chiba University 
53. Itaomachip. Reviving a Boat-Building and TradingTradition /374 
Kazuyoshi Ohtsuka, National Museum of Ethnology 
54 The Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum /377 
Hideki Yoneda, Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum 
55. The Heart Fuchi Conveyed /379 
Tomoko Keira, Yay Yukar Park 
Checklist of Artifacts Illustrated in This Volume /382 
List of Illustrations /389 
Bibliography /393 
Credits /405 
Acknowledgments /407 
Index/410 
Preface 
ON BEHALF OF THE Ainu, the indigenous 
people of Japan, I would like to ex¬ 
press gratitude to the people who 
have visited and will visit the exhibition. 
We, the Ainu, have lived in the northern 
part of the Japanese islands—from northern 
Tohoku on Honshu and Hokkaido to Sakhalin and 
the Kurile Islands—since ancient times. We spoke 
the Ainu language, which is completely different 
from the Japanese language, and have cultivated 
our own distinctive culture. In early times our an¬ 
cestors nurtured our culture through a strong re¬ 
spect for, and interaction with, the environment, 
and through trading with the Chinese, Koreans, 
and Russians, the northern indigenous peoples of 
Asia and Alaska, and of course with the Yamato 
race (ancestors of the majority of Japanese today). 
Although we had many disputes with the 
Japanese goverment in the past, it is time to look 
forward. Today we mainly live in Hokkaido, 
Japan's northernmost island. While surveys con¬ 
ducted by the Hokkaido government put the 
Ainu population at 24,000, there are several tens 
of thousands of Ainu who don't claim to be Ainu 
because of the fear of discrimination, or who 
were not included in the government survey be¬ 
cause they live in other parts of Japan. 
Many Ainu have been economically 
disadvantaged due to our ethnic and social 
background. Today, however, many Ainu have 
begun to feel pride and confidence in their cul¬ 
tural identity. Like the Indians of North 
America, we are trying to preserve and gain re¬ 
spect for our traditional culture and to achieve 
social and economic independence. 
The purpose of this exhibition is to 
present excellent Ainu ethnographic collections 
from the various museums of North America. 
The exhibition will also present the revived 
oceangoing itaomachip, the canoe Ainu used for 
trading, and the Ainu house, chise, which was 
the scene of many spiritual rituals, including 
the most important Ainu ceremony, the sacred 
iyomante (bear-sending ceremony). Although 
many aspects of Ainu traditional life, ceremony, 
and spiritual culture are described, the reader 
should understand that this is not dead cul¬ 
ture,- contemporary Ainu art is therefore fea¬ 
tured to demonstrate the creative strength of 
the Ainu spirit as an indicator of a "living" cul¬ 
ture. We hope museum visitors and readers of 
this volume from all over the world will enjoy 
and understand the Ainu voices of the past, 
present, and future. 
JlRO S AS AM LIRA 
Executive Director, Ainu Association of Hokkaido 
I WAS BORN in a country of the Ainu—Nibutani 
Village, which is the basin of the 
Shishirimuka. I had parents whose names 
were: Arekainu (father) and Hatsume (mother). As 
it happens, the exhibition will be held in the far 
away country. 1 am very honored and thankful 
that I will be able to send my words to the exhi¬ 
bition. 1 also wish and pray that your exhibition 
will be successful, without any accidents, and 
will bring you to a successful conclusion. 
yaykurekarapa 
kani anakne ainu mosir itak=an yakka Sisirmuka 
petruoroke pipaus kotan 
koapamaka p ku = ne ruwe ne. ona ku = nu wa 
Arekainu unu ku=nu wa Hatsume sekor 
rekorpa utar ne a ruwe ne. kunine ne wa tuyma mosir 
ta an marapto 
kurkasike un koytakeciw ku=ki easkay hi ramossi 
wano ku=yairayke kor 
Shigeru Kayano 
Director, Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum 
7 
m 
^rar ,•**•> iCUEa 1
 
1
 
Ainu 
Ethnicity: 
A History 
William W. Fitzhugh 
1.1 Man and Woman of Shari 
The Smithsonian's Romyn Hitchcock 
was one of the first Westerners to con¬ 
duct ethnographic research among the 
Ainu, whom he visited in 1888. In addi¬ 
tion to acquiring contemporary artifacts, 
linguistic data, folklore, and historical 
information, he conducted archaeologi¬ 
cal excavations and made a photo¬ 
graphic record of Ainu people in the 
Kuriles and Hokkaido. He photographed 
this elderly couple outside their home in 
Shari, Hokkaido. (NAA 28-380) 
1.2 Blessing Ritual 
In the past Ainu traveled throughout 
their corner of the world as traders, 
and in the modern era Ainu people 
have joined other indigenous peoples 
far from their homelands in northern 
Japan to educate the world commu¬ 
nity about their ancient traditions. 
Here, Masahiro Nomoto, David 
Dubreuil, and Chisato Dubreuil con¬ 
duct a ceremony to the god of the 
tree through Fuchi, the fire goddess. 
They blessed with inaw and sake a 
yellow cedar log Nomoto used to build 
a boat for this exhibition. 
< ISHU RETSUZO (PORTRAITS OF EZO 
Chieftains) 
Hakyo Kakizaki, a member of the 
Matsumae clan that ruled Hokkaido 
as a fiefdom of the Tokugawa regime, 
began painting portraits of Ainu chief¬ 
tains in 1783. The first to be com¬ 
pleted was a portrait of Tobu (fig. 9.6). 
Kakizaki’s portraits are among the fin¬ 
est works in the Ainu-e genre, techni¬ 
cally and artistically. The Ainu they de¬ 
pict are dressed in silk robes imported 
from the Asian continent and have a 
near-regal demeanor and attitude of 
authority. Some scholars (Takakura 
1960:10) have questioned the authen¬ 
ticity of these images as accurate de¬ 
pictions of eighteenth-century Ainu 
leaders, noting that the twelve chiefs 
who are depicted had been loyal sup¬ 
porters of the Matsumae during the 
Ainu revolt of 1789; they surmise that 
the paintings and the garments the 
chieftains wear were a reward for their 
loyalty. (Y. and M. Kitao Collection) 
THE NATIVE PEOPLE OF NORTHERN JAPAN 
(who also formerly inhabited the 
Kurile Islands, southern Sakhalin, 
and part of northern Honshu) call 
themselves "Ainu," meaning "people" or "hu¬ 
mans" in their language. Today Hokkaido re¬ 
mains the only homeland of the Ainu people, 
most of whom live in small villages scattered 
in different areas of this island. The size of the 
current Ainu population lies somewhere be¬ 
tween 25,000 and 50,000, with the lower figure 
representing the census count of those who 
identify themselves as Ainu. The discrepancy 
reflects the feeling of many Ainu that they must 
conceal their ethnic identity to escape discrimi¬ 
nation and social stigma. Although this gulf of 
discrimination is slowly closing, Ainu children 
continue to be harassed by their Japanese class¬ 
mates, and discrimination exists in many other 
areas of social and professional life,- for these rea¬ 
sons, throughout this century many Ainu parents 
have not revealed their ethnic identity even to 
their children. 
Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People is an effort to 
broaden understanding about Ainu history, cul¬ 
ture, and contemporary life in North America 
and among English-language readers. Most 
people in North America and Europe today are 
ignorant of Ainu history or culture. Few of the 
public visitors to the Smithsonian we surveyed 
about the Ainu knew anything about this culture 
and its people. Those who volunteered informa¬ 
tion mostly misidentified Ainu as American Indi¬ 
ans or Eskimos or thought they were extinct. 
Most who recognize the word "Ainu" knew it 
only as a four-letter answer to the popular cross¬ 
word puzzle clue, "a northern native people of 
Japan." The causes of ignorance are many,- they 
include a lack of English-language literature, the 
absence of museum presentations and exhibi¬ 
tions, a paucity of Ainu scholars outside Japan, 
and infrequent European and American visita- 
1.2 
i.i 
tion to Hokkaido. This exhibition and book 
seek to redress the lack of information by pre¬ 
senting a traveling exhibition together with an 
illustrated compendium on Ainu history, culture, 
arts, and modern affairs. We have been motivated 
especially by the fact that, due to Ainu efforts 
and political and social changes in Japan, Ainu 
culture is beginning to experience transforma¬ 
tion and renewal,- as it emerges from this pain¬ 
ful period, it heeds to be recognized for its his¬ 
torical tenacity, for the beauty of its art and 
literature, and for the important message that 
its religion and philosophy, which call for spiri¬ 
tual balance between humans and nature, bring 
to the wider world at a critical moment in human 
history (fig 1.2). 
In 1868, a year after the United States pur¬ 
chased Alaska from Russia, a political upheaval 
in Japan brought to power a progressive govern¬ 
ment known as the Meiji Restoration. Modern¬ 
ization was a major goal of the new administra¬ 
tion, and one of its first acts was to give Ezo, 
Japan's large, undeveloped northern island a new 
name, Hokkaido. Access to Ezo had previously 
been controlled by the Japanese Matsumae clan, 
under charter from the Tokugawa Shogunate. 
With the Meiji Restoration, control reverted to 
Tokyo,- foreigners were permitted entry,- and 
Japanese citizens were encouraged to emigrate 
to exploit Hokkaido's natural resources. The re¬ 
sulting northern land rush flooded the island 
with newcomers and brought a new way of life 
to a huge territory that until then—except for 
the Matsumae enclave and a few Japanese fish¬ 
ing stations—had been the sole province of the 
native Ainu people (fig. LI). The Meiji govern¬ 
ment and most Japanese immigrants saw Ainu 
adherence to their traditional life as an obstacle 
to progress, and policies were instituted to force 
I/AINU ETHNICITY 9 
1.3 Traditional and Modern 
Ainu Territories 
Like many other indigenous 
peoples around the world, the 
Ainu lost lands, resources, and 
independence to larger nations 
that absorbed them. This map 
shows changes to Ainu territo¬ 
ries between 1400 and 1945: 
parts of northern Honshu were 
lost to Japanese expansion, 
while the Kurile Islands and south¬ 
ern Sakhalin were lost to Russia. 
Hokkaido, with a population of 
between 25,000 and 50,000 
Ainu, is the only remaining home¬ 
land for Ainu people today. 
rapid Japanese colonization and "civilize" the 
Ainu. Within a few years most Ainu lands, re¬ 
sources, and native rights had been taken away, 
and in 1899 these actions were codified in a "pro¬ 
tection act" whose actual intent was to terminate 
Ainu culture and force assimilation into Japanese 
society (Siddle 1996). 
Meiji policies brought a harsh new reality 
to Ainu life, which had already suffered three 
hundred years of military defeat, territorial loss, 
political and economic subjugation, and social 
discrimination at the hands of Russians and 
Japanese. Nevertheless, despite these losses, 
Ainu people and culture survived the twentieth 
century and in 1997 were rewarded by the pas¬ 
sage of a new piece of legislation, the Ainu 
Shinpo, which for the first time provided posi¬ 
tive support for Ainu culture and language. 
Geography 
In the nineteenth century, before Ainu territo¬ 
ries began to be absorbed by Russia and Japan, 
Ainu mosir (the world of humans) comprised a 
huge territory stretching from central Sakhalin 
Island and the southern tip of the Kamchatka 
Peninsula to the northern Tohoku region in 
northern Honshu, and the Ainu population must 
have been considerable (fig. 1.3). Although 
scholars have described the Ainu as having a 
single language and culture, the Ainu before 
1850 occupied such different ecological habitats 
and had such varied adaptations and linguistic 
dialects (Hattori 1964,- Nakano and Kobayashi 
1967, Kodama 1972,- Ohnuki-Tierney 1976a) 
that they were essentially three distinct territo¬ 
rial subcultures or cultures. Among the Ainu 
living in Hokkaido today, this variation has 
INTRODUCTION / W. FITZHUCH 
1.4 Villagers of Shikotan, 
Kurile Islands 
Kurile Islanders were successful mari¬ 
time hunters and traders who ranged 
between Hokkaido and Kamchatka. Af¬ 
ter the Treaty of St. Petersburg settled 
claims between Japan and Russia by 
giving the Kuriles to Japan and Sakha¬ 
lin to Russia, the northern Kurile Ainu 
were resettled in the southern Kuriles, 
and Sakhalin Ainu were removed to 
Hokkaido. The final blow came in 1945 
when the Soviet Union took the Kuriles 
and expelled its remaining Ainu popula¬ 
tion as well as the returned refugees 
who had moved back to Sakhalin from 
Hokkaido. (NAA 72-9183) 
contributed to marked contrasts in speech, 
vocabulary, oral history, artifact styles, and 
ceremonial life (as well as politics), for in addi¬ 
tion to regional divisions among Hokkaido 
Ainu one also finds the descendants of Kurile 
and Sakhalin Ainu. Despite these differences, 
all Ainu living in Hokkaido are participating 
in a lively cultural renaissance. 
Formerly Ainu occupied all of the islands 
in the Kurile chain, where they lived as mari¬ 
time hunters and fishermen in sod-covered 
pithouses until 1875 when the northern Kurile 
(Chishima) islanders were resettled in Shikotan 
(Hitchcock 1891a, Landor 1 893,• Takakura 
1955,- Siddle 1996 and this volume) after the 
Kuriles were obtained by Japan from Russia in 
exchange for Sakhalin (fig. 1.4). Although the 
Kurile Ainu had a small, dispersed population, 
they occupied a vast region and shifted season¬ 
ally between winter villages on the larger islands 
and summer hunting and fishing camps on the 
smaller islands. Because the central and northern 
Kuriles lacked wood, Kurile Ainu traded sea- 
1.4 
mammal hides and thong, falcon feathers, and 
other maritime products with Hokkaido and Sa¬ 
khalin Ainu and Japanese traders in exchange 
for forest and industrial products from Japan and 
Manchuria. Like the Aleuts, who inhabited the 
Alaskan Island chain that now carries their name 
and who suffered drastic population losses at the 
hands of Russian traders in such maritime prod¬ 
ucts as sea otter pelts, Kurile Ainu also lost popu¬ 
lation and territory to Russian and Japanese in¬ 
truders intent on the lucrative sea otter trade. 
When Russia took the southern Kuriles in 1945, 
the remaining Kurile Ainu were resettled in 
Eastern Hokkaido and the unique aspects of 
their social and cultural identity were gradually 
subsumed within the Ainu traditions of north¬ 
eastern Hokkaido. 
The Sakhalin Ainu (fig. 1.5) also once 
had an extensive territorial base. Early in the 
historical era they occupied much of the island 
of Sakhalin, but by the nineteenth century 
Ainu villages were found primarily in southern 
Sakhalin (Ohnuki-Tierney 1974, 1976a). The 
1.5 Ainu of Sakhalin 
Living near the border between Japan, 
Russia, and Manchuria (China), Sakha¬ 
lin Ainu have had a tumultuous history. 
They shared Sakhalin with Nivkhi and 
Orok, traded with mainland Oroch and 
Ui’ta, and used their intermediate posi¬ 
tion between the continent and the 
Japanese islands to their advantage. 
Their culture and physical type reflects 
Siberian influence and Okhotsk heri¬ 
tage. (NAA 98-10370) 
Sakhalin Ainu were considerably influenced by 
the Manchurian-dominated cultures of the lower 
Amur River and by the Russians (fig. 1.6). Their 
houses were log constructions,- they had greater 
access to manufactured materials from the conti¬ 
nent than did Hokkaido and Kurile Ainu,- and 
their subsistence and spiritual beliefs, reflecting 
boreal forest conditions and traditions, were 
more like those of Siberian peoples than of 
Hokkaido Ainu. In 1945 the Sakhalin Ainu were 
forced from southern Sakhalin by the Russians 
and were resettled in Hokkaido. 
The Hokkaido Ainu, whose population of 
about 15,000 represented less than 7 percent of 
the total number of people, 226,200, living in 
Hokkaido in 1888 (Hitchcock 1891b), were the 
largest of the Ainu subgroups. Great diversity 
marked the Ainu populations within this region, 
in part because each group responded to ex¬ 
tremely different environmental conditions, and 
in part due to varying influences of Japan in 
southern Hokkaido and continental influences in 
northern Hokkaido. Environmental gradients 
Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska 
(Fitzhugh and Crowell 1988,- see also Fitzhugh 
and Chaussonnet 1994,- Chaussonnet 1995) ex¬ 
plored similarities and differences in the history, 
culture, and art of native groups living around the 
northern rim of the Pacific and adjacent Bering 
and Chukchi Seas (fig. 1.7). Of these northern 
cultures, one—the Ainu—was excluded for po¬ 
litical reasons: Crossroads was organized under a 
bilateral arrangement with the Soviet Union, 
which did not want its political history involving 
the seizure of the Kuriles and southern Sakhalin 
and the expulsion of Ainu peoples aired broadly 
to the public. Crossroads proceeded, but the ab¬ 
sence of the Ainu left a conspicuous gap in our 
roster of North Pacific peoples. 
Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People corrects this 
omission. Our work has grown out of an eight- 
year collaboration that began in 1990 with discus¬ 
sions between curators in American museums 
and a team of Japanese scholars, organized by 
Yoshinobu Kotani, who were inventorying 
American Ainu objects and archival documents. 
1.6 Sea-Lion Hunters of 
Moneron Island, Sakhalin 
In addition to hunting and fishing in 
the interior of the islands they inhab¬ 
ited, Ainu hunted sea mammals until 
such productive enterprises were pro¬ 
hibited by the Japanese in order to 
reserve these resources for them¬ 
selves. Oral history suggests that 
early Ainu hunted whales, seals, and 
sea lions with floats and toggling har¬ 
poons similar to those of Eskimo 
technology. Sea-mammai products 
like thong (hide rope), oil, and dried 
meat were valuable trade commodi¬ 
ties. Stomachs (seen drying here) 
were often used as containers to 
store renderered fat. (NAA 98-10364) 
here were extreme: arctic sea ice and northern sea 
mammals are present in winter on Hokkaido's Sea 
of Okhotsk coast, whereas temperate ocean con¬ 
ditions and swordfish are found on its Pacific and 
southern coasts (Nakano and Kobayashi 1967,- 
Ohnuki-Tierney 1976a,- Ono, this volume). Their 
homelands in Hokkaido offered inhabitants a di¬ 
verse coastal ecology of long sandy beaches, 
salmon rivers, and lowland and highland forests 
with temperate and boreal tree species and many 
different types of flora and fauna. By comparison 
with the Kuriles and Sakhalin, Hokkaido was a 
continent unto itself. Its proximity to Honshu, 
Sakhalin, and the Maritime Territory of the Amur 
offered even more resources, although acquiring 
them required delicate negotiations with power¬ 
ful neighbors. 
A Celebration of Ainu Culture 
In 1988 the National Museum of Natural History 
opened a special exhibition featuring the tradi¬ 
tional cultures of the North Pacific region from 
Vancouver Island to the Amur River and Sakhalin. 
During this multiyear survey, which eventually 
identified more than 3,200 Ainu specimens in 
North America (Kotani, this volume), curators of 
several museums holding the largest collections, 
including the American Museum of Natural His¬ 
tory, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the University 
of Pennsylvania Museum, and the Smithsonian's 
National Museum of Natural History, decided to 
cooperate on an exhibition that would highlight 
these "rediscovered" Ainu collections. 
The idea of a special Ainu exhibition in 
North America was an exciting prospect for 
many reasons. First, there was the beauty of 
Ainu material culture, whose distinctive and 
unique styles incorporated elements of Japanese 
and Asian Amur River traditions. Our interest 
was also sparked by the fact that the North 
American collections had never been viewed or 
studied as a corpus from which to draw broader 
understandings about Ainu history, culture, and 
art. For reasons peculiar to Ainu studies in 
North America, none of these collections, ex¬ 
cept for the Smithsonian's, had been published 
l i I / AINU ETHNICITY 
i.7 Native Peoples of the 
Greater North Pacific 
Despite differences in cul¬ 
ture and history, peoples 
and cultures of the 
greater North Pacific re¬ 
gion have more in com¬ 
mon with each other than 
with the cultures and 
peoples of adjoining re¬ 
gions to the south. 
1.8 Ainu Documentation Team 
Japanese and Ainu scholars inventoried 
Ainu collections in North America dur¬ 
ing the early 1990s, discovering more 
than 3,200 specimens. An earlier sur¬ 
vey in Europe revealed 5,700 objects. 
With recent inventories in Russia, the 
total tally outside Japan is more than 
13,000, which is about one-third the 
number of Ainu specimens held by 
Japanese museums. Here the team 
inspects Romyn Hitchcock’s Ainu col¬ 
lection of 1888 at the Smithsonian's 
National Museum of Natural History. 
scientifically and none had been used for a major 
exhibition. Only a few of the two dozen collec¬ 
tions unearthed by the Japanese Ainu Collection 
Documentation Project had ever been taken out 
of their storage cabinets, and none, as of 1990, 
had received conservation treatment. 
There were other important reasons for 
doing an Ainu show. Although European and 
North American inventory projects had pro¬ 
duced new scholarly information (see edited 
volumes, Kreiner 1993, 1996) and, in Europe 
and Japan, three exhibitions (Kreiner and 
Olschleger 1987,- Ohtsuka 1993; Munro 1994), 
North Americans knew almost nothing about 
the Ainu. Gathering a team of Japanese and 
American scholars and museum curators, we 
quickly began to see the exhibition as more than 
a display of old Ainu collections and archival 
materials,- rather, we thought it important to 
present the unexhibited traditional collections 
in the broader context of Ainu history, archaeol¬ 
ogy, traditional ethnology, modern life, and arts 
with an emphasis on Ainu culture as a living tra¬ 
dition. The American team was especially inter¬ 
ested in having Ainu people participate in the 
curatorial work. Fortunately, Chisato Dubreuil, a 
woman of Ainu ancestry who had recently com¬ 
pleted a master's degree in native art history at 
the University of Washington in Seattle, joined 
the project. Chisato had a deep interest in Ainu 
culture and knew many Ainu cultural leaders and 
artists in Japan. In addition to her background 
and Ainu community contacts, she brought ex¬ 
pertise in modern Ainu art. With her assistance 
we were able to reconnect the museum objects 
with modern Ainu art and the living tradition of 
Ainu people today. 
In the fall of 1995 Chisato joined our 
project as coordinator (later to become co-cura- 
tor) together with her husband, David Dubreuil, 
an American Indian (Mohawk/FJuron) who be¬ 
came our project manager, fund-raiser, and advi¬ 
sor, and we began communicating with Ainu or¬ 
ganizations and communities in Hokkaido and 
discussing the project directly with Ainu artists 
and cultural leaders. As our work progressed, the 
advice of Ainu civic, cultural, and artistic leaders 
added an important new dimension to the views 
of Japanese, American, and European scholars 
on the project team, and many of them contrib¬ 
uted important chapters to this book. 
Presentation 
Over the course of two years during which the 
curatorial team inspected collections in Washing¬ 
ton, Philadelphia, New York, and Brooklyn, and 
held seminars and workshops with Ainu experts 
(fig. 1.8), the concept of ethnicity emerged as the 
intellectual core of the project. In the early stages 
of our work, as we pored over the beautiful but 
dusty remnants of Ainu tradition in museums, 
"ethnicity" seemed a fairly academic issue, but 
once Chisato and David Dubreuil and the Ainu 
community became involved in the process, the 
living tradition of Ainu art and culture enlivened 
our study and gave a broader purpose to what 
had previously been an esoteric enterprise. Sud¬ 
denly the meaning of the objects and archival 
materials was transformed from "specimen" into 
"treasure," from nameless photographic images 
into someone's grandmother or grandfather, and 
12 INTRODUCTION / W. F1TZHUGH 
1.10 
1.9, 1.10 AiNU Design 
Ainu express their unique cultural lin¬ 
eage in their distinctive implements, 
clothing, and art. The language of 
Ainu design is understood as “Ainu" 
because its motifs follow an Ainu de¬ 
sign grammar. Similarities in the de¬ 
sign system are seen in this carved 
wooden platter, collected by General 
Horace Capron in 1875 whife on a 
U.S. development mission in Hok¬ 
kaido, and a detail from a retarpe 
(nettle-fiber) robe. (NMNH 19415; 
BMA 12.690) 
the show took on a living dimension. The "un¬ 
known" North American collections began to re¬ 
connect with their Hokkaido past. We became 
something more than curators inquiring into a re¬ 
mote culture and began to understand how these 
materials could contribute to the Ainu cultural 
renewal underway in Japan. 
In time, the concept of ethnicity as it relates 
to "Ainu-ness" at different periods in history and 
from different thematic perspectives became the 
organizing principle behind Ainu: Spirit of a North¬ 
ern People. Unlike other past exhibitions that have 
emphasized spiritualism or diversity, the central 
theme in Ainu is the development and expression 
of a culture's identity over centuries of time. The 
book presentation combines scholarly essays and 
Ainu community views illustrated by museum col¬ 
lections and informed by archival materials, in¬ 
cluding ethnographic photographs and historical 
illustrations of the Ainu painted by Japanese art¬ 
ists (Aimi-e). The material is organized along two 
different dimensions: informational (or thematic) 
perspectives and chronological horizons. On 
one hand the question "What is Ainu?" explores 
Ainu ethnicity through the perspectives of an¬ 
thropology, geography, history, spiritualism, art, 
and community life. The question "How has be¬ 
ing Ainu changed?" explores Ainu ethnicity as it 
has evolved through a sequence of chronological 
or historical "horizons" recognizable in archaeol¬ 
ogy, history, traditional ethnology, and contem¬ 
porary life. It is difficult enough to organize a 
book in two dimensions, but we also ask the 
reader to consider the data provided here in a 
third dimension—space—because historically 
the Ainu have had diverse origins and great re¬ 
gional variation. 
Fifty-five articles organized in six sections 
present an overview of the evolving Ainu tradi¬ 
tion, raising questions and summarizing the 
current state of knowledge about each topic. 
Part I (chapters 1-6) includes essays on anthro¬ 
pological theories about Ainu origins, historical 
geography and environment, biological theo¬ 
ries and relationships, and linguistics. Part II 
(chapters 7-15) discusses the history of Ainu 
culture and its relationship with the Tokugawa 
Shogunate and the Ainu's northern trading 
partners as seen in historical records and Ainu-e 
illustrations painted over a several-hundred- 
year period (fig.1.1 1). Part III (chapters 16—25) 
provides a view of Ainu as they were perceived 
by museum collectors and anthropologists, 
who preserved Ainu material culture and pho¬ 
tographic images in museum collections in 
Europe, Russia, North America, and Japan (fig. 
1.12). Part IV (chapters 26-41) is an ethno¬ 
graphic outline summarizing the Ainu belief 
system, including the ritual sending ceremonies 
and shamanism, as well as aspects of its 
lifeways—the technologies of hunting, fishing, 
and procuring food—and its forms of perfor¬ 
mance art (yukar [epic stories], song, and 
dance). Part V (chapters 42—47) is devoted to 
Ainu arts of the nineteenth and twentieth cen¬ 
turies—notably textiles, basketry, woodcarv¬ 
ing, and modern art. Part VI (chapters 48-55) 
takes up issues of contemporary social, politi¬ 
cal, and cultural change,- chronicles changing 
relations between the Ainu and the modern 
Japanese state,- and includes personal state¬ 
ments by Ainu cultural leaders. 
The "Ainu Enigma” 
Other than a lack of specific knowledge of the 
Ainu, our informal survey of visitor attitudes 
revealed something else about this cross-sec¬ 
tion of our museum public: those visitors who 
knew something about the Ainu spoke about 
bear festivals and racial origins. Museum cura¬ 
tors a century ago had been lured to Hokkaido 
I / AINU ETHNICITY 13 
L12 Prayer Stick 
Ainu men used a prayer stick (ikupasuy) 
in rituals for the gods. Early observers 
often referred to these sacred objects 
as "mustache lifters" because the Ainu 
also used them to hold up their long 
mustaches when drinking sake during 
these rituals. This ikupasuy decorated 
with five flying birds was collected by 
Benjamin Smith Lyman, an American 
geologist dispatched to Hokkaido 
from the University of Massa¬ 
chusetts between 1871 and 
1881 to help develop 
Hokkaido's mineral re¬ 
sources. (NMNH 22261) 
1.11 Bringing the Bear 
to Iyomante 
Ainu-e, literally "Ainu illus¬ 
trations,” are a major 
source of information 
about early Ainu life and 
customs. Some, dating 
as early as the thirteenth 
century, depict people 
who can be recognized 
ethnically as Ainu. Most 
Ainu-e were painted in the 
eighteenth and nine¬ 
teenth centuries, such as 
this illustration from 
Scenes from Ezo Island 
by Teiryo Kodama show¬ 
ing Ainu exercising the 
bear before the iyomante 
ceremony. While its style 
is lively and the image 
depicts Ainu clothing 
relatively accurately, 
negative Japanese atti¬ 
tudes toward the Ainu 
are clearly conveyed by 
the use of such stylistic 
features as bulging 
eyes, hirsute bodies, 
and somewhat simian 
features. (HML) 
by similar fascinations. The "Ainu enigma" had 
been a popular scholarly puzzle that tantalized 
nineteenth-century explorers, museum collec¬ 
tors, and anthropologists researching the origin 
and spread of human "races." 
Europeans have had a long history of in¬ 
terest in the Ainu, beginning with Dutch and 
Jesuit contacts in the Dejima (Nagasaki) trade 
entrepot in the seventeenth century and con¬ 
tinuing with the early nineteenth-century work 
of Europe's premier (and first) Japanologist, 
Philipp von Siebold, whose multivolume opus, 
Nippon, brought knowledge of Japan to the 
Western world for the first time (Kreiner 1993 
and this volume). After Commodore Matthew 
Perry, with his I 854 visit, forced the Japanese to 
lift their exclusionary ban on foreign travel 
within their archipelago, Europeans and Ameri¬ 
cans began to visit Hokkaido, both as tourists 
and for official reasons. They discovered the na¬ 
tive Ainu culture in drastic decline and were 
convinced that the Ainu would not survive more 
about the Ainu's striking dress, elaborate ceremo¬ 
nial life, and unusual physical appearance sparked 
the interest of American scholars and museum 
directors. The long flowing beards, hirsute bod¬ 
ies, large stature, deep-set eyes, facial features 
(which most foreigners thought resembled 
Caucasoids more than Mongoloids), and striking 
lip tattoos worn by women made Ainu appear 
very different from other Asian populations. Al¬ 
though it is unclear where the idea originated, by 
1868 Albert Bickmore, President of the American 
Museum of Natural History, was in the habit of 
commenting on the bearded "Aryan appearance" 
of the Ainu, and in the decades before 1900 this 
idea had become a major focus of public interest 
in the Ainu (Bickmore 1868,- Baelz 1900,- 
Arutiunov, Ishida, this volume). Earlier the ro¬ 
mantic European notion of the Ainu as the repre¬ 
sentative of the "noble savage," more so even 
than the American Indian, had captured public 
imagination. For the next four decades, most of 
the large natural history museums in eastern 
than a few decades. This view was also held by 
the Japanese, whose official policies were di¬ 
rected to hasten assimilation (Hitchcock 1891b: 
433). The views of these visitors reflected their 
awareness, and sometimes their experience, of In¬ 
dian cultures of the American West, which were 
also thought to be on the verge of extinction. 
Among the early visitors to the Ainu was the in¬ 
trepid Englishwoman Isabella Bird, who wrote a 
book about her 1878 experiences (Bird 1881,- 
Dubreuil, this volume). Others came during the 
1870s as representatives of the United States gov¬ 
ernment, which had pledged technical assistance 
to the new Meiji government for the develop¬ 
ment of Hokkaido's natural resources (Kotani, 
this volume). 
Reports by these travelers and officials 
North America sent collectors to Hokkaido to 
gather Ainu objects, study its culture and popula¬ 
tion, and make photographic records of this "pe¬ 
culiar" people (figs. 1.13,1.14). 
To Western eyes the exotic nature of the 
Ainu was reinforced by their many curious cus¬ 
toms and beliefs. Their practice of capturing, 
raising, and killing bears for ceremonial pur¬ 
poses before sending their spirits home to the 
god world with gifts and prayers seemed brutal 
to those who did not understand its religious 
meaning,- their most sacred artifacts, ikupasuy 
(fig. 1.12), were insensitively labeled "mustache- 
lifters",- their technology was described as 
among the most "primitive" in the world 
(Hitchcock 1891b: 432),- and to top it off, early 
anthropologists tended to see the Ainu as an ob- 
14 INTRODUCTION / W. FITZHUCH 
1.13 
collected for the Smithsonian in 1888, spoke for 
many holding these views: 
Formerly, it is said, the Ainos [sic] were 
subject to a powerful and wealthy chief, 
who lived at Piratori and received tribute 
from all the Ainos in the land. This is 
related by the Ainos themselves. . . They 
number among their household treasures 
old Japanese swords and curios, which 
have been handed down from past 
generations. They now use Japanese 
knives instead of stone implements and 
metal arrow-heads in place of flint. But it 
is scarcely a century since they emerged 
from the stone age, and otherwise they 
have not passed beyond it. 
We have here a remarkable instance of 
the close association of two distinct races, 
one superior and powerful, the other de¬ 
graded and weak, working together day 
by day, living in contiguous villages, in¬ 
termarrying more or less, and yet, after a 
century of such intimacy, as distinct in 
their character, habits of life, superstitions 
and beliefs as though they had never 
come together. The Aino has not so much 
as learned to make a reputable bow and 
arrow, although in the past he has had to 
meet the Japanese, who are famous ar¬ 
chers, in many battles. It is a most remark¬ 
able example of the persistence of distinct 
types together, when the conditions are 
apparently favorable for the absorption of 
1.13 Ainu and the “Caucasoid 
Hypothesis” 
This Ainu elder, dressed in a ceremo¬ 
nial robe with a woven sword carrier 
over his shoulder and wearing a head¬ 
dress decorated with wood shavings 
(inaw-kike), epitomizes the image of 
the “Caucasoid” race that was pro¬ 
moted when Europeans first gained 
access to the Ainu. Although scholars 
no longer claim Aryan ancestry for 
the Ainu, their biological history is 
still elusive and differs from that of 
recent Mongoloids like Japanese, Ko¬ 
reans, and Chinese. Most specialists 
now believe the Ainu are a remnant of 
an ancient Paleo-Asian population 
that occupied parts of the Japanese 
archipelago before the ethnic popula¬ 
tion now dominant in Japan arrived. 
1.14 A Queer People 
On 15 March 1890, with this quizzical 
title the Washington Evening Star an¬ 
nounced the opening of a Smithsonian 
Ainu exhibit based on Hitchcock’s 
1888 collections. In those days, racial 
and cultural differences fascinated the 
American public and were trumped up 
in the media, which sensationalized 
anthropological “discoveries.” 
ject of geographic curiosity—"an island of 
Caucasoids in a sea of Mongoloids" (Fdarrison 
1954: 278) — rather than as a culture worthy of 
respect on its own terms. All of these views, in¬ 
cluding those of well-informed local observers 
like John Batchelor, who lived almost sixty years 
with the Ainu (Batchelor 1892), are now recog¬ 
nized as being based on superficial or flawed an¬ 
thropological reasoning. 
Few of these collectors were trained in eth¬ 
nology or anthropology, which were embryonic 
sciences until the late 1890s, and they brought a 
variety of interests and biases to their work. The 
idea of systematic museum collecting had barely 
begun, and the interrelation between cultural 
subsystems (e.g., archaeology, ethnology, linguis¬ 
tics, physical anthropology, and folklore) was not 
understood. The museum strategy that dominated 
these efforts was twofold: to gather and record 
data from vanishing "exotic" peoples and to 
present it in displays and exhibitions to a public 
that had become voracious in its appetite for non- 
Western curiosities. The museum and exposition 
displays that followed carried a clear message: as a 
culture (and in part, as people) the Ainu, like the 
American Indian and native peoples in many other 
areas of the world colonized by Europeans, would 
soon become extinct. Romyn Fditchcock, who 
A QUEER PEOPLE, 
They Live in the Kuriles and North¬ 
ern Japan. 
BY SOMETH' HITCHCOCK. 
r“S.> E who In distant lands 
leaves the beaten paths 
and seeks for adven¬ 
ture or discovery, may 
often And either nearer 
than he thinks. The 
far East ia not all un¬ 
known, yet it teems 
with unstudied prob¬ 
lems of the deepest 
interest to those who 
will bat think of them 
and pass bat a few 
steps beyond the nar¬ 
row bounds of tbe 
foreign settlements. 
Tbe small group of 
Islands known as Japan is inhabited by a people 
ef unknown origin. Wo are content to speak 
of them as Japanese, and for oar present pur¬ 
pose it is not required to know more concern¬ 
ing them. Bat scattered along the coasts from 
tbe north as far as to the extreme southern 
end of Kinsfain, there are found traces of a 
different people, who must have occupied the 
country in prehistoric times. 
Be cent explorations have led to tbe conclu- 
iion that these aborigines are representatives 
of a race known as Ainos, who are dow con¬ 
fined to tbe island of Yezo, in the north of 
Japan. 
1-14 
l/AIN LI ETHNICITY 15 
1.16 
1.15 Twined Basket 
Ainu used the bark of the Japanese elm 
to make a strong fiber (ohyo) that was 
woven into baskets or, with the aid of a 
backstrap loom, a durable cloth (attush) 
that was the basis for Hokkaido Ainu 
clothing. Both types of Ainu baskets— 
woven baskets (saranip) and coiled bas¬ 
kets (tenki, present only in the Kuriles)— 
are similar to Alaskan Eskimo and Aleut 
basketry forms. (AMNH 70.2.932) 
1.16 “All the World’s a Stage” 
Anthropologist Frederick Starr brought a 
group of Hokkaido Ainu to the Louisiana 
Purchase Centennial Exposition in St. 
Louis in 1904. Both Starr and photogra¬ 
pher Jesse Tarbox Beals documented 
the experiences of the Ainu in St. Louis. 
As “live” exhibits, Ainu demonstrated 
arts and technology while living in an 
Ainu house on the fairgrounds. Here 
Shutratek weaves a grass mat while her 
shy daughter hides from the visitors. 
(NAA 98-10289) 
one by the other. The Ainos, being unable 
to affiliate more closely with the Japanese, 
remain distinct and apart, and are therefore 
doomed to extinction from the face of the 
earth (Hitchcock 1891b: 432-33). 
Hitchcock had heard of a more glorious 
Ainu past from Ainu oral history but understood 
their decline only as a social evolutionary failure 
in the face of more advanced civilizations. The 
case of the Ainu was also instructive to Americans 
who saw the Ainu in much the same light as they 
saw the American Indians, whose societies also 
seemed to be vanishing as the nineteenth-century 
American frontier advanced. The decline of the 
Ainu may even have been seen by some as justifi¬ 
cation for the righteousness of Western colonial 
policies supported by notions of social superior¬ 
ity and technological progress. 
A considerable number of these early trav¬ 
elers, scientists, and museum collectors pub¬ 
lished scientific reports (Bickmore 1868,- Morse 
I 879,- Bird 1881,- Hitchcock 1891a, b,- see also 
works by Batchelor, Chamberlain, Munro, and 
others in bibliography). These publications and 
results of anthropological collecting that ap¬ 
peared in museum exhibits, expositions, and me¬ 
dia accounts reinforced the popular idea that the 
Ainu would soon cease to exist. Despite the 
trappings of contemporaiy social bias, popular 
accounts by travelers read as stark pronounce¬ 
ments on the desperate, impoverished situation 
of the people they met and villages they visited, 
of discrimination practiced by Japanese officials, 
and of the need for medical attention and 
schooling. By this time many Ainu had already 
been displaced from coastal villages and prime 
agricultural lands and forests that were coming 
under cultivation by Japanese farmers and 
American-trained foresters. 
Where scholars first ventured, the media 
soon followed, sensationalizing Ainu presenta¬ 
tions at expositions and museum exhibitions. 
The first such presentation took place in Europe 
(Vienna 1873), and others soon followed in 
North America, at the Smithsonian in the 1890s 
and elsewhere, reaching a climax in North 
America in the living Ainu village (fig. 1.16) pre¬ 
sented at the 1904 Louisiana Exposition in St. 
Louis (Starr 1904; VanStone 1993,- Breitbart 
1997). One of the more egregious titles of this 
era appeared on a book written by A. Henry 
Savage Landor (1 893), Alone with the Hairy Ainu. 
Or 3,800 Miles on a Pack Saddle in Yezo and a Cruise to 
the Kurile Islands. Once beyond its provocative 
and objectionable tone, however, the book con¬ 
tains useful early descriptions of the Ainu and 
their lands. 
While North American museums could 
not resist the allure of the "mysterious Ainu," 
most institutions found themselves conflicted 
by their obligations to publish and curate Ainu 
collections they had acquired. Because Ainu 
culture was considered a native society and not 
an Asian "high civilization," Ainu collections 
held by fine art museums tended to be ne¬ 
glected until recently. Further, Japan was far 
from North America, and the staffs of North 
American natural history and anthropology 
museums gave priority to their growing collec¬ 
tions of North American Indian materials. Be¬ 
cause the primary motivation for building Ainu 
collections was tied more closely to public curi¬ 
osity, institution building, and world fair exposi¬ 
tions than to scholarly research, most of the 
Ainu collections gathered between 1885 and 
1920 soon went off display and were relegated 
to deep storage. In those natural history muse¬ 
ums where Ainu exhibits remained, they were 
sensationalized with descriptions of the "enig¬ 
matic" or "disappearing" Ainu, and in most 
North American museums Ainu collections did 
indeed "disappear" into the curatorial void for 
most of the twentieth century. 
16 INTRODUCTION / W. FITZHUGH 
0 5 cm 
1.18 ---J 
1.18 Early Ainu Art 
Some of the earliest artifacts with 
ethnic Ainu designs come from the 
Bibi-8 site near the modern-day 
Chitose Airport. Among the well-pre¬ 
served wooden finds were a paddle 
bearing images of killer whales and 
engraved spiral designs (known to 
Ainu as morew) similar to patterns 
embroidered on Ainu garments, (after 
Ohtsuka 1993) 
1.17 Population History Model 
Marked physical differences between 
the Ainu and Ryukyu people (who live 
at the southern end of the Japanese 
archipelago) and the Japanese and 
other Asian peoples have raised puz¬ 
zling questions about their biological 
histories. Kazuro Hanihara believes 
Jomon to be the ancestral culture of 
Ainu, Ryukyu, and Japanese peoples, 
but sees Honshu Jomon as influ¬ 
enced by Yayoi migrants with a more 
Mongoloid physical type who arrived 
more recently in Japan, (after 
Hanihara 1991) 
Theories of Ainu Origin 
The dominant informational perspective on 
Ainu culture that emerged from these early de¬ 
cades of museum collecting is that of anthropol¬ 
ogy, which, during the past century, explored 
the "Ainu enigma" from the vantage points of 
physical anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, 
and ethnology (H. Watanabe 1972). Despite a 
century of study, however, surprisingly little 
progress has been made in achieving definitive 
conclusions about Ainu origins—the very ques¬ 
tion that stimulated scholarly interest in the 
Ainu in the first place, even before it became 
possible for foreigners to conduct field studies in 
Hokkaido. Other scholars update the inquiry 
into these issues in Part 1, but a cursory review in 
this introduction may help the reader find topics 
of particular interest. 
First there is the issue of "racial" or what is 
now generally known as "biological" origins 
(fig. 1 17). Who are the Ainu, and how and 
where did their physical type develop? Are 
they derived from Mongoloid, Australoid, or 
Caucasoid populations, and what is the signifi¬ 
cance of their physical differences from other 
East Asian populations like the Japanese, Kore¬ 
ans, Chinese, or northeast Siberians who, while 
each population is physically distinct, resemble 
each other more than any of them resembles 
the Ainu? Although Europoid or Aryan origins 
were stressed early on, modern biological stud¬ 
ies have converged toward the consensus that 
the Ainu represent descendants of relatively 
undifferentiated East Asian tipper Paleolithic 
populations whose gene pool remained geo¬ 
graphically isolated for thousands of years dur¬ 
ing which the development of more special¬ 
ized Mongoloid features took place in 
mainland East Asia (Kozintsev 1993,- Arutiunov, 
Ishida, this volume). It is therefore likely that 
older Ainu populations were once more distinct 
from Japanese and Amur River populations 
with whom they have been mixing increasingly 
during recent millennia and centuries. The 
question still remains whether Ainu ancestry 
might include eastern Siberian or East Asian 
populations or their ancestors, who moved into 
the Americas at the end of the Ice Age. Ar¬ 
chaeological evidence from Alaska and the rest 
of the Americas suggests that the earliest 
peoples to enter the Americas were not members 
of a single homogeneous group but carried dif¬ 
ferent cultural traditions originating from north¬ 
ern, central, and southern maritime sectors of 
northeast Asia (Mochanov 1980,- Hoffecker, 
Power, and Goebel 1993). 
Equally perplexing issues have arisen with 
regard to Ainu linguistic affiliations. These theo¬ 
ries are as diverse and wide-ranging as those 
proposed for biological ties and include Indo- 
European, Austronesian, Altaic, Chinese, and 
even North American Indian and Eskimo rela¬ 
tionships (Tamura, this volume). The difficulty 
in determining linguistic origins has much to 
do with problems in reconstructing and tracing 
linguistic change over thousands of years, dur¬ 
ing which linguistic borrowing can obscure 
even dominant strains of heritage and ancestry. 
Contact and interchange with Japanese over 
two thousand or more years makes this particu¬ 
lar relationship hard to decipher. Scholars no 
longer seriously consider Indo-European ties, 
but Altaic and Austronesian links, as well as ties 
to North Pacific and American Indian languages, 
are still being discussed. The word "unknown" 
still remains the most cogent summary that 
most Ainu linguists can agree on. 
One line of inquiry that was initially pur¬ 
sued as a means of determining Ainu cultural ori¬ 
gins has effectively been removed from the 
table. In the early years of anthropology it was 
believed that ethnology—the study of living 
cultures and its material, behavioral, and social 
forms—could offer insights into the deep his¬ 
tory of cultures. This approach was taken at the 
turn of the century by the Russian ethnologist 
Leo Shternberg and others who believed that 
similarities between Ainu material culture and 
customs and those of southeast Asian and 
Austronesian peoples pointed toward a southern 
origin of Ainu culture (reviewed in Arutiunov, 
this volume). However, anthropologists today 
generally consider ethnological parallels, trait-list 
comparisons, folklore, and other types of etho- 
logical data as incapable of providing reliable 
evidence for reconstaicting cultural history, 
believing these data to be too malleable and 
susceptible to borrowing or reinvention, be¬ 
sides being impossible to verify. Ultimately, the 
problem for ethnological reconstruction is the 
lack of chronological depth, because ethnologi¬ 
cal evidence exists only within the range of 
written or oral history. 
It is for this reason that archaeological re- 
Paleolithic 
1.17 
I / AINU ETHNICITY 17 
1.19 Ainu Chieftain 
This Ainu-e (-e means picture in Japa¬ 
nese) is one of a series of Ainu chief¬ 
tains painted in the late 1700s by the 
Japanese artist Hakyo Kakizaki. Kakizaki 
had access to Ainu chiefs who came to 
the Matsumae seat for trade and official 
visits. His illustrations have great artistic 
and ethnographic merit and also reveal 
Japanese curiosity, repulsion, and fear of 
the Ainu. This chieftain, Nishikomake, 
has dressed to impress his Japanese 
overlords by wearing a valuable Santan 
silk robe over his Ainu retarpe (elm-bark) 
garment. (Y. and M. Kitao Collection) 
search has come to the fore as the primary his¬ 
torical method for researching cultural origins 
(Utagawa 1989,- T. Kikuchi 1988,- Yamaura and 
Ushiro, and S. Sasaki, this volume). In this field, 
some of the earliest scientific shell-mound exca¬ 
vations conducted in the 1870s by Heinrich von 
Siebold in Omori, Edward Morse in Tokyo Bay, 
and Romyn Hitchcock (1891a) in the Kuriles 
and Hokkaido provided a foundation for mod¬ 
ern archaeological studies by Japanese archae¬ 
ologists by suggesting for the first time ties be¬ 
tween living Ainu people and the prehistoric 
Jomon culture of Japan. Today there is nearly 
complete agreement that Ainu origins lie with 
the Jomon culture, which occupied much of the 
Japanese archipelago throughout the Holocene 
and persisted in an evolved form in Hokkaido 
until circa A.D. 500. On Honshu, Jomon culture 
was replaced by the forerunners of the modern 
Japanese state about 2,000 years ago, while in 
Hokkaido it was replaced by Okhotsk and 
Satsumon cultures, which, however, retained el¬ 
ements of the Jomon tradition. Most archaeolo¬ 
gists see Satsumon as the most likely immediate 
ancestor of modern Ainu culture in northern 
Honshu and southern Hokkaido, while 
Satsumon-influenced Okhotsk culture, a north¬ 
ern culture, is believed to be the source of Sa¬ 
khalin and Kurile Ainu culture (fig. 1.17). 
Despite progress in understanding the 
broader cultural outline described above, much 
work is needed to fill the conspicuous gap from 
about A.D. 1000 to 1400 that exists between ar¬ 
chaeological evidence and historic Ainu 
peoples. This is the crucial period in the emer¬ 
gence of Ainu culture, and its study has proved 
difficult because of the near "invisibility" of ar¬ 
chaeological evidence dating to this period. Fol¬ 
lowing the previous period in which Satsumon 
and Okhotsk cultures are recognizable 
archaeologically by their distinctive pithouses 
and settlement types, ceramic traditions, midden 
deposits, and art forms, the subsequent shift to 
surface dwellings, short-term occupations, lack 
of middens, replacement of ceramics and stone 
tools by metal vessels and iron implements ob¬ 
tained by trade, use of wood rather than more 
durable ceramics or bone, and abandonment of 
most types of figurative art resulted in a major 
reduction in archaeological traces. So far, only a 
few sites, such as the Chitose Airport site near 
Sapporo, contain artifacts with Ainu-like designs 
(fig. 1.1 8) documenting the transition between 
earlier archaeological horizons and "Ainu" as 
known ethnologically (Ohtsuka 1993: 19—20). 
Today the "Ainu enigma" continues to elicit 
speculation and controversy, not least among 
Ainu who are actively participating in the search 
and do not hesitate to express their own ideas 
about their origins as a non-Japanese ethnic 
people. It is fair to say that proprietorship of "the 
Ainu problem" no longer lies exclusively with non- 
Ainu historians, archaeologists, and anthropolo¬ 
gists,- Ainu are also joining the scholarly ranks 
and are participating in public debates over such 
issues as the appropriateness of studying Ainu 
human-skeletal remains and the ownership of ar¬ 
chaeological finds. The social and political issues 
connected with "when Ainu became Ainu" and 
"who the Ainu are" are rapidly becoming as com¬ 
plex politically as the studies are scientifically. 
Ainu Ethnicity as 
Historical Process 
Hitchcock's interest in Ainu history was not 
shared by many other museum collectors or 
early anthropologists. The latter, who in any 
case could not read Japanese, were more con¬ 
cerned with comparing Ainu culture and physi¬ 
cal type with other known groups than with 
poring over archival records for information 
about the Ainu, who first appear in Japanese his- 
INTRODUCTION / W. F1TZHUGH 
1.20 
1.20 Making It Ainu 
Creating objects with a distinctive 
Ainu character from iocal and foreign 
materials is typical of Ainu cultural 
production. This smoking kit collected 
by E. Odium in Shana, the Kuriles, is 
a modernized version of the traditional 
form (see fig. 1.21) but includes such 
traditional elements as the large blue 
glass bead and a bearskin pouch. 
(ROM 888.6.13) 
1.21 Traditional Tobacco Box 
This old tobacco box made in tradi¬ 
tional Ainu fashion displays the fine 
carving done by men to adorn their 
most treasured possessions; it was 
collected in Okotsonai by Frederick 
Starr in 1904. Tobacco boxes were 
often inlaid with antler, especially in 
Sakhalin, but in this piece the inlay is 
ivory, a northern trade item. Men 
wore their smoking gear at their 
belts. An old Ainu story tells of a man 
defending himself from a bear attack 
using only his sturdy pipe holder and 
tobacco box. (BMA 12.661) 
torical accounts in the seventh century. Never¬ 
theless, the oral history Ainu people presented 
to Hitchcock about their once-powerful status 
as a regional power linking northern Japan with 
the Asian coast is now more accessible and is the 
subject of numerous presentations in Part II 
This history presents a surprising new view 
(considering previous stereotypes of the Ainu as 
a forest-dwelling people) of the Ainu as a mari¬ 
time-based trading power whose political and 
social organization bore little resemblance to the 
Ainu lifestyle encountered by late-nineteenth- 
century visitors and scholars (Harrison 1954, 
Howell 1994, 1995, and this volume). An in¬ 
kling of this past is suggested in the Ainu-e por¬ 
traits of Ainu chieftains painted by Hakyo 
Kakizaki between 1783 and 1800 (fig. 1.19), 
which show Ainu leaders as powerful figures who, 
almost until the end of the eighteenth century, 
waged war, governed their people, managed lu¬ 
crative trading empires between the Asian main¬ 
land and Japan, and conducted their business as 
local sovereigns. The details of this Japanese-Ainu 
contact history were first made available to En¬ 
glish readers in Shinichiro Takakura's important 
work, The Ainu of Northern Japan: A Study in Concjuest 
and Acculturation (I960). 
Essays in Part II of this volume document 
the history of Ainu relations with the Japanese at 
different points in time,- they also illustrate the 
importance of northern cultural and economic 
ties to the Ainu, the gradual eclipse of Ainu ca¬ 
pabilities in the face of growing Russian and 
Japanese competition, and adverse effects on 
the Ainu from changes in market forces, weap¬ 
onry, and shipping technology that forced them 
to take a subservient position when their south¬ 
ern neighbors grew more powerful and advanced 
into northern Honshu and eventually into Hok¬ 
kaido. In the meantime, spurred by the threat of 
Russian imperial advances, the Tokugawa 
Shogunate began to take a more active role in 
promoting its national interests by placing its 
undefended northern territories under political 
control. Ainu resisted and attempted to maintain 
their independence using military means,- but in 
each case—for instance, Shakushain's War of 
1669, and lastly, the battle of Kunashiri-Menashi 
in 1789—the Ainu lost more and more until they 
were forced to submit in every respect to the 
central government's interests operating through 
the Matsumae seat at Hakodate in southwestern 
Hokkaido. By the eighteenth century the Ainu 
had lost direct control over almost all of their 
former territories and resources, with the excep¬ 
tion of fur and other products of the forest. By 
this process the Ainu lost a major portion of 
their subsistence-resource base, their external 
economic opportunities, and, with the spread of 
introduced diseases (Walker, this volume), much 
of their demographic base. Other essays in this 
volume (Siddle and Part VI) carry this changing 
historical image of the Ainu forward into the late 
twentieth century, with a storyline that follows 
the same basic trend toward denouement. 
Making It Ainu 
The Ainu did not lose control of their culture 
or their symbols and trappings of Ainu 
ethnicity. Despite losses to Russia and Japan, 
the Ainu were not powerless in the face of their 
declining economic and political fortunes. 
Rather, history reveals that they utilized a vari¬ 
ety of techniques and resources to maintain in¬ 
dependence, deal effectively with neighbors, 
and reaffirm cultural identity: while they suf- 
I / AINU ETHNICITY 19 
1.22 Woman with Weaving Instrument 
Frederick Starr collected a volume of 
Ainu-e during one of his trips to Japan, 
and after his death his widow donated it 
to the Smithsonian. In this image from 
Curious Sights of Ezo Island, painted by 
Shimanojo Murakami in 1799, a tat¬ 
tooed Ainu woman wearing beaded 
necklaces and holding a weaving shuttle 
is shown. (NMNH 392,023-25) 
fered increasingly negative rates in their trade 
exchanges with Japanese and mainland Santan 
traders, Ainu continued to manage independent 
trade into the late eighteenth century (S. Sasaki, 
this volume). The Kakizaki paintings clearly 
document the results of accumulated power and 
wealth, but Ainu-e show that underneath the 
prestigious Santan silk overgowns they wore for 
formal occasions were traditional bark-cloth 
(attusb) leggings decorated in Ainu patterns (fig. 
1.19),- they also carried Ainu knives, pipe holders, 
tobacco cases, bows, and other implements 
decorated with Ainu designs. 
The political decline of the Ainu can be 
attributed to strategic, structural, and organiza¬ 
tional circumstances. Given the geography of 
Ainu territories, dependence on natural renew¬ 
able maritime and forest resources, limitations 
enforced by the lack of industrial technologies, 
a low and dispersed population base, and other 
factors, it was inevitable that the Ainu would 
eventually be forced to relinquish regional 
power and accept a new political and economic 
reality. Hokkaido, the Kuriles, and Sakhalin 
were rich in natural products, but once the Ainu 
had become engaged in trade with the expand¬ 
ing regional powers in Manchuria, Japan, Korea, 
and Russia, their dependence on industrial prod¬ 
ucts ensnared them in the economic mesh of ex¬ 
panding nations and they could no longer main¬ 
tain a favorable trade balance. Iron products, 
rice for food and sake, cotton fabric for cloth¬ 
ing, lacquerware, Japanese knives, axes, hoes, 
swords, and a host of other goods had become 
indispensable to Ainu identity and survival. The 
Ainu gradually became inextricably linked to 
the Japanese economic system, and to a lesser 
extent, in northern regions, were dependent on 
Manchuria and Russia for silk, glass, brass, and 
other products Nevertheless, even as opportu¬ 
nities for renegotiating these relationships with 
other societies diminished, the goods and mate¬ 
rials received were put to use in creating private 
and public manifestations of Ainu culture. 
One aspect of external relationships has 
recently been illuminated by a new type of ar¬ 
chaeological evidence: charred seeds and husks. 
Ethnography and historical data describe the 
Ainu diet for several centuries as based on hunt¬ 
ing, fishing, and foraging (Kohara, this volume). 
Intensive agriculture was not practiced, al¬ 
though small homestead gardens produced po¬ 
tatoes, millet, and various legumes. Rice was not 
grown locally even though it was an important 
supplement and was used later in ritual contexts 
as sake and rice cakes. It has been supposed that 
the modern Ainu diet faithfully represented the 
economic activities of early Ainu, or pre-Ainu 
peoples like the Satsumon, who probably were 
also Ainu. However, new data from tenth-cen¬ 
tury Satsumon sites (Crawford and Yoshizaki 
1987,- Crawford and Takamiya 1990,- Crawford 
1992) reveal a much wider assemblage of culti- 
gens of local, Japanese, and continental origin, 
including various strains of rice. These finds 
have been interpreted as indicating that 
Satsumon people were more agriculturally ori¬ 
ented than the historic Ainu and may have had a 
larger and more stable population base, more 
extensive political organization, and greater 
military capabilities. If so, the Ainu economy 
and settlement patterns may have developed 
their more nomadic characteristics since 
Satsumon times to obtain fur and other forest 
products to exchange for Japanese trade goods, 
foods, and tobacco (figs. 120, 1.21). Changes in 
domestic architecture favoring surface building 
over pithouse winter dwellings would also fit 
the pattern of the shift from Satsumon to Ainu 
culture in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. 
These and other changes are consistent with the 
increased economic specialization that came as 
Ainu dependence upon the Japanese market 
economy intensified 
The Ainu practice of incorporating for¬ 
eign elements—be they foods, materials, 
styles, symbols, or words and concepts—into 
the social and spiritual heart of its culture and 
"making them Ainu" by redefining them in an 
Ainu way is both a striking and a curious feature 
of Ainu culture. Even an informal inventory of 
Ainu material culture reveals a welter of goods 
and concepts obtained through trade, political 
and social contacts, or replication of foreign 
goods. Many such objects, materials, and ideas 
are seen in Ainu-e paintings (fig. 1.19). Japanese 
swords were an important part of a man's formal 
attire and had important ritual functions in exor¬ 
cism and curing ceremonies. In its Ainu adapta¬ 
tion, the sword had to be worn across the back 
rather than at one's side (Japanese fashion) and 
20 INTRODUCTION / ¥ FITZHUGH 
1.24 Maxim with Bead and Bear 
As with their smoking gear, men deco¬ 
rated their knives and sheaths with 
highly individualistic carvings that ad¬ 
vertised both the value they placed 
on these possessions as well as their 
artistic skill. Despite their great diver¬ 
sity, such designs fall within an Ainu 
design universe that includes such 
foreign elements as the use of glass 
beads and netsuke-like ornaments, in 
this case, a bear, a rarity in nonritual 
Ainu art. (MPM N17058) 
was tethered with a specially woven halter and 
strap (fig. 12.1). Lacquer cups and saucers (tuki) 
of Japanese manufacture became a principal ob¬ 
ject in the offering of sake (also imported) with 
Ainu prayers to the gods, together with the 
completely original and distinctive Ainu ikupasuy 
(prayer stick,- Maraini, this volume), while large 
lacquer containers were regarded as family trea¬ 
sures that were displayed in the sacred corner of 
the house and were believed to host gods of 
their own. Inaw, the shaved sticks that symbolize 
birds and help deliver human prayers to the 
gods, resemble the sacred shavings of Japanese 
Shinto ritual and Siberian concepts of birds as 
spirit-helpers,- even words central to Ainu reli¬ 
gion like kamuy (deity), nomi (prayer), onkami 
(worship) are thought to have Japanese origin 
(Kindaichi 1944, 1993: 238-39,-Obayashi 1997: 
9,- Tamura, this volume). Among many other 
items central to Ainu identity were glass beads 
(obtained first from the Manchurian and Russian 
trade, then from Japan, and finally secretly 
manufactured in Hakodate for the Ainu trade),- 
bronze and copper medallions, beads, wire, and 
small ornaments,- silk robes from Manchuria and 
cotton garments from Japan,- and many other 
materials and objects. Using a variety of design 
styles (Dubreuil, Kodama, this volume) the Ainu 
combined and refashioned these foreign materi¬ 
als or gave them new social or ritual purposes, 
making them distinctively Ainu. This ability to 
create Ainu-ness out of foreign materials is a re¬ 
markable feature of Ainu culture. While one's 
attire may have been nearly exclusively of foreign 
origin, it still maintained an unmistakably Ainu 
ethnic character. In this way style and ceremony 
have been central to the changing, evolving defi¬ 
nition of Ainu-ness. Even as their territories di¬ 
minished and population declined, their material 
world expanded and incorporated increasing 
amounts of foreign imports, redefined as Ainu. 
Ainu Ethnicity in Spirit and Art 
Despite—or perhaps because of—economic 
and political setbacks, the Ainu maintained 
strength in the parts of their lives that contin¬ 
ued to identify them as Ainu: their formal 
clothing,- their woven baskets and sword straps,- 
their yukar, storytelling, and music,- their prayers 
to the gods, offered with tuki (sake cup and sau¬ 
cer), ikupasuy (prayer stick), and maw (shaved 
sticks that serve as messengers to the gods),- and 
their social and ceremonial events, of which the 
iyomante and other spirit-sending ceremonies 
(described here by Watanabe, Akino, and 
Lltagawa) are the core element of traditional 
Ainu social identity. Watanabe believed that 
sending back the spirit of a captive bear to the 
god's world, with all the elaborate ritual that it 
entails, was the essential core of Ainu identity,- 
Utagawa believes the iyomante is the institution 
that helped Ainu culture survive centuries of 
economic and political oppression. 
In traditional Ainu belief every living 
thing, every being whether animate or inani¬ 
mate, is a god and a visitor to earth from the 
god world (Fujimura, this volume). These gods 
spend time on earth and make their bodies— 
their material forms—available to people for 
food, timber to build houses, grass to make 
mats, and elm bark for weaving attush clothing. 
People are meant to use these godly gifts but 
must do so with respect, and after using them, 
must return the spirit to the god world with a 
ritual spirit-sending ceremony. The most elabo¬ 
rate sending ceremonies are reserved for the 
chief Ainu deities—bears, owls, and foxes— 
but even spirits of small animals like songbirds 
or seemingly inconsequential objects like a bro¬ 
ken kettle or knife may have its spirit sent off to 
the god world with a special prayer, an inaw, 
and ritual observances. Ainu believed that 
were these rituals to be denied, the earth would 
soon become barren and lifeless, for the gods 
would no longer be willing to visit to offer their 
material bodies, and life would not regenerate. 
In this way Ainu pay respect to all worldly be¬ 
ings and treat them as living entities, as partners 
in human existence. Modern Ainu reaffirm 
these beliefs in traditional ceremonies as well as 
in private prayers during their daily lives. This 
Ainu philosophy of reverence and partnership 
with nature is worth reflecting upon today as 
we contemplate the hubris of mankind's de¬ 
structive relationship with planet Earth. 
The Ainu spirit is also evident in the exu¬ 
berance of its artistic expression, not only in the 
design of clothing and the creativity of its liter- 
21 
1,26 Eskimo Spirit Carving 
Faces of spirits and spirit-helpers are 
common motifs in ancient and ethno¬ 
graphic art of the Bering Sea Eskimos. 
This beastly semihuman image from a 
harpoon counterweight excavated at 
the 1,500-year-old Ekven site on the 
Russian side of Bering Strait is thought 
to represent the spirit-controller of ani¬ 
mals. Nearly identical images appear on 
nineteenth-century Bering Sea Eskimo 
harpoons, suggesting an unbroken 
2,000-year tradition of art and belief. 
(MAE 6479-9-208) 
1.23 Nanai Motif 
Ainu traded with the Nanai of the lower 
Amur River area and knew their cos¬ 
tume designs. Nanai fishskin robes 
carry embroidery showing beastlike 
images that resemble ancient Chinese 
t'ao-t'ieh designs. Cryptic ‘‘faces,’’ 
some resembling owls—the Ainu god of 
the village—occasionally appear in Ainu 
art, but Ainu, like their Amur neighbors, 
say these images are only decorative 
and do not represent animals, gods, or 
other beings. (MAE 313-18/7) 
1.25 Morew Pattern 
This detail from an attush (elm-bark) 
apron displays the spiral designs known 
to Ainu as morew and the embroidered 
“thorns’’ that protect the spiral's corners. 
Both motifs are thought to have powers 
that protect one’s back. They are found 
near openings and edges of garments 
and such vulnerable areas as turns in 
the design where evil gods can gain en¬ 
try. Ainu yukar (oral tales) refer to these 
designs as “flaming borders” and assert 
that they give ancient heroes power and 
protection from their enemies. 
1.26 
ary tradition but in the everyday production of 
Ainu woodcarvers and artisans. Traditionally, 
religious beliefs prohibited carving or using im¬ 
ages of animals or humans, for Ainu believed 
that this would bring danger or bad luck. Ainu 
carvers and seamstresses today deny (Dubreuil, 
this volume)—as Nanai and Nivkhi seamstresses 
of the lower Amur denied in 1900 (Laufer 
1902)—that their carvings and clothing decora¬ 
tions contain images of animals or beasts (figs. 
1.23, 1.25); except in the special case of human 
dolls (nipopo) traditionally used in Sakhalin for 
healing and shamanism and carvings of animals 
(especially bears and fish) on ikupasuy used by men 
for sending ceremonies, the Ainu did not use hu¬ 
man or animal representations in their art. Debate 
even exists among the Ainu about statements by 
some Ainu seamstresses that the spikes appended 
to "turns" in Ainu morew (spiral) patterns (fig. 
1.25) represent "thorns" that protect the wearer's 
back and other vulnerable spots of one's clothing 
(neck, shoulders, and garment margins) from 
evil spirits. Suffice it to say that Ainu garment 
artists have employed a complex set of spiri¬ 
tual concepts behind their 
creations, even though 
many of these concepts are 
not verbalized or accessible 
to outsiders. 
Perhaps the most ex¬ 
plicit acknowledgment of 
spiritual involvement in 
women's art is found in the 
sacred woven belts and straps 
(fig. 31.10) that women wore 
as personal amulets to safe¬ 
guard virtue and fertility,- 
similar beliefs may have been 
incorporated in the wearing 
of beaded necklaces and 
metal medallions, for such 
belief was common among Siberian tribes from 
whom many of these adornments were ob¬ 
tained. Similar protective powers were inherent 
in the woven strap and harnesses (emusbat) used 
to hold a man's sword (fig. 7.2). In the days 
when Ainu traders braved dangers abroad and 
fought enemies at their doorstep, a man's sword 
was a treasured weapon,- later, after the sword 
became more important as a ceremonial object 
than as a weapon, its harness still retained great 
spiritual power and was used for exorcism and 
for healing. Even if we never know their precise 
meanings, the patterns and imagery Ainu artists 
use give spiritual meaning, life, and power to 
many forms of their material culture. 
Ainu men had an equally complex and 
spiritually rich domain that centered around their 
role as woodcarvers. Men produced all manner of 
objects from wood, using axes, knives, and chis¬ 
els. In addition to serving functional purposes, 
knives, tobacco boxes, food-serving implements, 
trays, containers, and weaving implements were 
also decorated with complex carved patterns 
ranging from geometric to floral and abstract de- 
22 INTRODUCTION / W. FITZHUCH 
1.27 Sealskin Boots 
Like other North Pacific peoples, the 
Ainu of Sakhalin Island utilized sea 
mammals for food, oil, and many 
types of clothing. Sealskin boots were 
more durable and waterproof than 
any other type of footgear until the 
invention of rubber and were usually 
worn with grass insulation. This pair, 
collected from Sakhalin before 1893, 
seems never to have been used. 
(FMC 32104) 
1.28 Kurile Needlecases 
This group of tubular needlecases 
ornamented with whale-tail forms was 
collected from the Kurile island of 
Shikotan in 1875 or 1893 by 
Alexander Agassiz. Kurile Ainu arti¬ 
facts are quite rare. The form and 
designs on these needlecases, like 
Kurile basketry traditions, are similar 
to Alaskan Eskimo styles, suggesting 
northern contacts. (PMC 51631) 
signs. While all of these items became objects of 
great interest to museum collectors, decorated 
bowls and trays became important in the growing 
Ainu tourist-art trade. Some of the objects ob¬ 
tained by the first Americans and Europeans who 
traveled in Hokkaido after 1868 show little or no 
use or patina, suggesting that market art was al¬ 
ready an established feature of Ainu economic life 
(see Dubreuil, this volume). This skill, seen both 
in carving and artistic expression, is best demon¬ 
strated in the carving of ikupasuy, the sacred 
prayer sticks employed by men for sending their 
prayers to the gods (Maraini, this volume). Here, 
and only here, men indulged their creativity in a 
wide range of subject matter, including the only 
culturally sanctioned representations of animals 
and objects otherwise forbidden in the Ainu 
artistic repertoire. 
Ainu as a Northern People 
Ainu artistry in woodcarving and garment de¬ 
sign continues to attract the attention of anthro¬ 
pologists and art historians and has been one of 
the features of Ainu culture, like bear ceremoni¬ 
1.27 
1.28 
alism (Hallowell 1926), that suggested north¬ 
ern cultural continuities into Siberia and around 
the North Pacific rim. While some design sys¬ 
tems and motifs originated from contact with 
Japanese, Korean, or other East Asian groups, 
the fundamental design of most Ainu art is 
most closely related to northern styles. The use 
of spiral or meander (morew) patterns and of the 
"Escher-like" positive-negative image-shifting 
approaches is basic to Ainu traditional textile 
art; it is also a dominant pattern in the tradi¬ 
tional clothing styles of the Nanai, Nivkhi, and 
Oroch peoples of the lower Amur River region 
(fig. 1.23). The stylistic Ainu-Amur connections 
are quite direct and are observable geographi¬ 
cally as style gradients. Similar systems (includ¬ 
ing transformation and cryptic animal-based 
art) underlie the ethnographic art of Northwest 
Coast cultures and prehistoric Eskimo art (fig. 
1.26) of the Bering Sea (Fitzhugh 1988, 1993). 
Similar masked images are also sometimes 
found in Ainu art, where owls (the protecting 
deity of the Ainu village) seem to peer out from 
carved platters and textile designs. Future ar¬ 
chaeological work will eventually determine if 
such designs are related to the widespread 
North Pacific art tradition (which seems to be 
manifest also in Chou and Shang art) that is 
based on spiritual transformation, hunting 
magic, and ceremonialism. A more specific ar¬ 
gument for Ainu connections to the north may 
be seen in comparisons of Ainu and southwest 
Alaskan Eskimo coiled and twined basketry, 
which are nearly identical (Graburn and Lee, 
this volume), as well as needlecases and a few 
other objects (fig. 1.28). Some of these similari¬ 
ties may have been inherited by Ainu artists 
through traditions of the Okhotsk culture, 
while others, like coiled basketry, may result 
from more recent historical contacts, for in¬ 
stance, between the Ainu and Aleut hunters 
brought from Alaska by Russian fur traders 
(Shubin 1994). 
These are some examples of the material 
manifestations of northern cultural influence or 
I / AINU ETHNICITY 23 
1.30 Sea Otter 
Takeki Fujito, one of the finest modern 
Ainu artists, calls himself kumahori 
(“bear carver”) and prides himself on 
his naturalistic renditions of bears and 
other animals. Although as hunters the 
Ainu were astute as observers of na¬ 
ture, they did not make representations 
of animals, except in certain ritual con¬ 
texts, until the twentieth century, when 
the production of tourist art became 
necessary for economic survival. 
(Takeki Fujito Collection) 
heritage in Ainu culture. Similar features of cer¬ 
emonial traditions include the first salmon cer¬ 
emony that is common to both Ainu and most 
Northwest Coast Indian cultures (Kono, this 
volume), and a host of spiritual and social cus¬ 
toms that Ainu share with other native peoples 
of the lower Amur River and eastern Siberia, in¬ 
cluding shamanism, the feeding of spirits and 
spirit figures, dog sacrifice, use of nipopo (human 
figurines) and other amulets, and other tradi¬ 
tions. Many of these beliefs are expressed more 
prominently among the Sakhalin Ainu than 
among the Hokkaido Ainu due to the Sakhalin 
Ainu's closer relations with Asian mainland cul¬ 
tures and the Hokkaido Ainu's proximity to 
Honshu. More far-reaching ethnological com¬ 
parisons between Ainu and Athabascan cultures 
have also been made. 
Because the Ainu have been excluded 
from their former northern territories for 
much of the past two hundred years, this 
northern strain in Ainu culture has weakened 
and is less obvious today than it was in earlier 
times. The Ainu living in Hokkaido also have 
not been immune to erosion of their former 
maritime subsistence and traditions. Losses re¬ 
sulting from competition with the Japanese for 
coastal resources and living space have been 
continual since the fifteenth century, such that 
by the mid-twentieth century few Hokkaido 
Ainu had direct experience with their former 
life as seal, sea lion, whale, and swordfish hunt¬ 
ers. Today this aspect of their life is known 
only through Japanese historical sources, 
Amu-e, Ainu memory culture, and their oral 
history genre known as yukar (Iwasaki- 
Goodman and Nomoto, Oginaka, this volume). 
These northern and maritime traditions are 
mostly absent from the object record in North 
American museums, which primarily represent 
Hokkaido Ainu who lived in forest and river set¬ 
tings,- this perspective differs radically from the 
usual Western image of the Ainu as described in 
ethnographic accounts since the 1860s (Batchelor 
1892,- H. Watanabe 1973,- Hilger 1971). 
Transitions: Forests, Bears, 
and Modern Art 
The final section of this book (Part V and VI) 
brings into focus the more recent history of 
Ainu in Hokkaido in articles by historians, art¬ 
ists, leaders, and elders discussing modern 
events, political resistance, cultural preservation 
and rejuvenation, and cultural visions. This cen¬ 
tury was no easier on the Ainu than others had 
been, for it coincided with their total subservi¬ 
ence to Japanese administration, beginning with 
the passage of the Former Hokkaido Aborigines 
Protection Act of 1899. This act was meant to 
promote rapid Ainu assimilation into Japanese 
society (Siddle, this volume) and imposed harsh 
and restrictive conditions on Ainu existence and 
cultural expression. Ainu were forced to attend 
segregated schools, were refused access to game 
and fish, and could not participate as regular 
members of Japanese society. 
The results were variable. Although the 
Ainu population did not become extinct as 
Hitchcock and others had predicted, neither did 
it grow dramatically,- by today's official count 
the Ainu population has grown by only 10,000 
since 1 886. During these years many of those 
born to Ainu abandoned their impoverished vil¬ 
lages and moved to the rapidly growing cities 
where they attended high schools and universi¬ 
ties, took jobs, and melted into the larger Japa¬ 
nese population. Women married Japanese 
men and disguised their Ainu backgrounds in 
the hope that their children would escape the 
stigma of discrimination against Ainu that was 
prevalent among Japanese in Hokkaido and 
elsewhere in Japan. 
Those who remained Ainu expressed their 
ethnicity in different ways. Some maintained Ainu 
traditions as subsistence or small-scale farmers, 
hunters, trappers, and fishermen who continued to 
practice the Ainu religion and customs,- they held 
periodic bear ceremonies, buried their dead in the 
Ainu way, and engaged in traditional carving and 
weaving for home consumption. But as Hokkaido 
began to fill with Japanese immigrants and cities 
began to grow in the late 1800s, economics forced 
the Ainu to develop new sources of income. Some 
Ainu earned money from harvesting timber 
(Kayano 1994), while others, began to replicate 
decorative wood platters or other material-culture 
24 INTRODUCTION / W. FITZHUCH 
1.29 Ki-men (Woodem Masks) 
Abandoning such traditional Ainu sub¬ 
jects as bears and introducing new 
forms—like masks in the series Ki- 
men, which were not part of Ainu tra¬ 
dition—Bikky Sunazawa explored Ainu 
themes and designs in media ranging 
from jewelry to monumental wood 
sculpture. He was among the first of 
the Ainu artists whose work tran¬ 
scended tourist art, forcing the estab¬ 
lishment to recognize Ainu fine art. 
He also used his art to fight for Ainu 
political rights. (HOVO) 
items for collectors and the growing numbers of 
tourists attracted to Japan's new "wild north," 
whose attractions included the Ainu themselves 
(Dubreuil, this volume). As tourist centers in 
Asahikawa, Akan, Shiraoi, and elsewhere began to 
develop, a new industry and a new trade took form 
providing seasonal income for Ainu who carved, 
sewed garments, and performed Ainu rituals and 
dances for the public, first in their villages for those 
visitors interested in truly rustic adventures and 
later in prepared sites that advertised Ainu attrac¬ 
tions and catered especially to tourists (Nomoto, 
Ohtsuka, Dubreuil, this volume). By the end of the 
twentieth century acting as a "museum" Ainu had 
become an established profession and the sales of 
Ainu crafts had become an important economic 
activity for some families. 
Essays in Part VI document changing con¬ 
ditions in the twentieth century as Ainu re¬ 
sponded to these new opportunities. On the one 
hand, tourism itself demanded a new definition 
of Ainu culture as a conscious form of living his¬ 
tory and culture, but on the other, it was artifi¬ 
cial and reenacted for the public, with Ainu-ness 
marketed as a commodity, a fact that disturbed 
many Ainu who preferred to maintain their cul¬ 
ture in a more private manner. 
Art in particular allowed twentieth-century 
Ainu to express their beliefs and ethnicity while 
producing income. Art also created internal co¬ 
hesion for Ainu people, just as it had in earlier 
periods. As Ainu carvers began to transfer their 
skills from persona! objects to mass-produced 
tourist art—especially their signature bear 
carvings—they laid aside long-held prohibitions 
against the representation of animals and people 
for secular purposes. New economic and artis¬ 
tic opportunities were created that eventually 
led to the transformation of Ainu art from its 
traditional personal and religious base to func¬ 
tion as commercial and fine art. This remark¬ 
able story is chronicled here by Chisato 
Dubreuil in biographical profiles of Ainu artists 
(notably, of Bikky Sunazawa) who pioneered 
the breakout of Ainu art from its traditional en¬ 
cumbrances and from its commercial shackles 
as tourist art into the international fine-art 
realm (fig. 1.29,- Dubreuil 1995). 
Essays in this section also document the 
continuing struggles that Ainu have faced during 
the past century to maintain their access to tradi¬ 
tional subsistence resources, lands, and religious 
rights. Losses in these areas continued long after 
the passage of the 1899 Protection Act, which in 
reality denied Ainu the ability to control their 
destiny, placing it instead securely in the hands 
of Japanese officials. Even as access to lands and 
resources diminished throughout the century, an 
equally strong force of cultural revitalization ma¬ 
terialized as Ainu like Shigeru Kayano, among 
many others, fought to document, preserve, and 
teach Ainu language, culture, carving traditions, 
dance, yukar, and many other forms of culture to 
Ainu, Japanese, and any others who were inter¬ 
ested (Kayano 1978, 1985, 1987). At times 
theirs truly were voices crying out in the wilder¬ 
ness as political and economic forces aligned 
against any and all forms of Ainu expression. 
The fight against the Nibutani Dam (Kaizawa, 
this volume) was in this sense as crucial an ele¬ 
ment in cultural survival as efforts to preserve 
Ainu language. These efforts and the interna¬ 
tionalization of the Ainu cause (Dietz, this vol¬ 
ume) reveal new aspects of the importance of 
ethnic identity to cultural survival. 
This political struggle has recently met 
with some success, as judged by the court's 
decision in the Nibutani Dam-construction 
case which affirmed the Ainu as the indigenous 
people of Hokkaido,- by the passage of the 
new law, Ainu Shinpo of 1997,- and the sup¬ 
port achieved by the Ainu in gaining rec¬ 
ognition for their native rights in the United 
Nations (Tsunemoto, this volume). None of 
these achievements would have been possible 
without public recognition of Ainu commitment 
to their culture and heritage as demonstrated 
by political engagement, maintenance of tradi¬ 
tional rituals and beliefs, a strong work ethic, 
and a level of excellence in art and literature. 
In the difficult years of the twentieth cen¬ 
tury strong pressure was brought upon the Ainu 
to discontinue their periodic celebration of the 
iyomante, or bear-sending ceremony, which was 
considered cruel and barbaric to many who did 
not understand its central place in the Ainu 
worldview. Like Eskimo whaling in northern 
I / AINU ETHNICITY 25 
Alaska or the Northwest Coast Indian potlatch 
(in which valuable property was given away by 
individuals to members of the opposite clan with 
expectation of future reciprocity) which was 
banned by the Canadian government in the early 
twentieth century as being "wasteful" and un-Cana- 
dian, the Ainu iyomante was also discouraged by the 
Japanese and survived into mid-century only as a 
secretly held family-based ceremony. But as with 
other cultural touchstones, Ainu elders reinstigated 
the iyomante, and it has once again become an im¬ 
portant focus for the preservation of Ainu tradition. 
The ceremony pays respect to elder tradition-bear¬ 
ers and provides an opportunity for people to ex¬ 
press their culture through music, dance, and oral 
presentations. The resurgence of the iyomante 
(fig. 1.31) has not only helped revitalize Ainu 
culture it has also brought new understanding to 
Japanese society and the world about Ainu atti¬ 
tudes toward nature 
and the reverence for 
life (Fujimura, Utagawa, 
this volume,- Aiga 
1985). The iyomante ex¬ 
presses the belief that 
life and nature can be 
renewed continuously 
as long as there is hu¬ 
man commitment to 
reciprocity with na¬ 
ture: what is taken 
must also be given back 
in equal measure, and 
with reverence. 
1.31 Ainu Cultural Rebirth 
After centuries of political and cultural 
represssion, Ainu efforts to preserve 
their culture and language have stimu¬ 
lated a cultural rebirth. Ceremonies 
that were discouraged or banned during 
the past one hundred years are now 
being performed and passed on to 
younger generations. (AMS) 
A New Beginning 
On July I, 1997, the Japanese government for 
the first time gave official recognition to Ainu 
culture and language through the passage of the 
Ainu Cultural Promotion Law, popularly called 
Ainu Shinpo or "The New Ainu Law." This stat¬ 
ute establishes a new relationship between the 
Ainu people and Japan and replaces the Hokkaido 
Former Aborigines Protection Act, a 1899 Meiji- 
government decree that actually promoted eco¬ 
nomic and political decline and encouraged Ainu 
assimilation into Japanese society. The Ainu 
Shinpo (Dietz, Tsunemoto, this volume) reverses 
the former policies of the previous Japanese gov¬ 
ernments that controlled Hokkaido and provides 
a modicum of funding and official support for the 
preservation and promotion of Ainu language and 
culture. It also, for the first time, recognizes the 
"indigenous nature" of the Ainu people, but stops 
short of an explicit statement that the Ainu are 
"an indigenous people." Whatever the outcome 
of the new legislation on the ultimate outcome 
of Ainu culture, its passage reverses centuries of 
official and unofficial cultural oppression that, 
together with economic competition and loss of 
lands and resources, nearly led to the extinction 
of Ainu culture. By the end of the twentieth 
century, the Hokkaido Ainu population (about 
25,000) is probably only a fraction of what it was 
in the fifteenth century when the Ezo (Ainu) of 
Ezogashima (Hokkaido) were a regional economic 
and political power presiding over Hokkaido, the 
Kurile Islands, and southern Sakhalin. 
In the end, Ainu ethnicity is what the 
people themselves make of it, but it is not just 
an internal process, for Ainu ethnicity has also 
been shaped by the forces that surround it. Ainu 
culture is remarkable as an example of a tradi¬ 
tion that has existed as a recognizable ethnic 
construct for at least eight hundred years. Dur¬ 
ing this period it coalesced and emerged as a 
dominant regional trading power whose advan¬ 
tage was its control of communication and 
trade along the margins of the expanding na¬ 
tion-states of Manchuria, Russia, and Japan. 
During the past four hundred years the Ainu 
have seen their star eclipsed, and many of their 
homelands have been lost to foreign encroach¬ 
ment. Just as nautical prowess and trading 
abilities proved crucial in the establishment of 
an Ainu world in the medieval period, Ainu of 
the past two centuries have survived confron¬ 
tations with competing societies by finding 
strength in other areas. Though they lost ter¬ 
ritories and suffered economic and social 
hardship, they did not lose their culture — 
their Ainu society, customs, beliefs, and mate¬ 
rial forms. Because their struggles have been 
rewarded by survival, they remain a viable 
people with much to teach the world 
* * * * 
IT IS A GREAT CHALLENGE and a primary goal of 
anthropology and art history to document 
cultural change through time and space and to 
seek to identify the cultural forms, sources of 
innovation, trends, and traditions that affect the 
history of cultures. By bringing together a large 
body of data on the Ainu, this project has pro¬ 
vided a rare opportunity to explore how these 
processes have influenced the development of a 
particular cultural-historical tradition. While 
this format does not allow an intensive analysis 
of the diverse sets of data presented here, by 
bringing together a large corpus of information 
it may assist future integrative studies of Ainu 
history, culture, and art. We also hope to have 
advanced international recognition of the Ainu 
as well as a better understanding of one culture's 
quest for survival. And we hope to have shown 
that the Ainu—and their ancestors and their 
descendants—have a permanent place among 
the peoples of the North Pacific rim. 
26 INTRODUCTION / W FITZHUGH 
Historical Sources and Ainu-e 
The view of the Ainu as an impoverished 
but mysterious people living as "children 
of nature" persisted throughout the early 
part of the twentieth century and left the 
impression that the Ainu were a cultural 
remnant that one might meet only 
occasionally in the pages of National 
Geographic (Hilger 1967). For most of the 
public, knowledge of the Ainu and their 
putative Caucasoid links survived only as 
a brand of anthropological esoterica 
encountered in crossword puzzles as "a 
northern [or mysterious,- or hairy,- or 
extinct] people of Japan." This view was 
promoted by early travelers, museum 
collectors, missionaries, and doctors, 
primarily in Hokkaido (Bickmore 1868,- 
Batchelor 1887 etsecj.; Chamberlain 1887 
etsecf.; Landor 1893,- see Kreiner 1993, 
1996, and this volume). Kurile Ainu and 
their origins were studied initially by 
Hitchcock (1891a) and Torii (1919). 
Anthropological studies of the Ainu began 
in Sakhalin with Bronislaw Pilsudski 
(1906) and were pursued more recently by 
Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, who has written 
on the resettled Sakhalin Ainu in 
Hokkaido (Ohnuki-Tierney 1969 etsecf.'). 
The most recent anthropological treat¬ 
ment of the Hokkaido Ainu in English is 
Hitoshi Watanabe's Ainu Ecosystem (1973),- a 
more popular anthropological account is 
Sister M. Inez Hilger's Together with the Ainu 
(1971). All of these works treat the Ainu as 
forest-dwelling hunters, fishermen, 
collectors, and gardeners, and they tend to 
emphasize anthropological views of a 
traditional culture rather than the every¬ 
day struggle the Ainu faced as they sought 
to maintain their language, religion, 
traditions, economy, and land. One work 
that breaks this pattern is Songs of Gods, 
Songs of Humans (Philippi 1979), which 
presents translations of the Ainu epic 
poetry known as yukar; this work has a 
long introduction describing Ainu culture 
written by the editor, Donald L. Philippi, 
and a preface by poet Gary Snyder. Ainu 
history has recently been fully explored by 
Richard Siddle (1996 and this volume), 
and its trade and economic relationships 
by Howell (1994 etsecf. and this volume). 
In contrast to Western research, 
which has primarily emphasized anthro¬ 
pological approaches, Japanese scholar¬ 
ship is far more complex thematically 
and reveals a different intellectual 
tradition, especially regarding the Ainu 
language and oral traditions (see H. 
Watanabe 1973: 165—70 for a biblio¬ 
graphic review of Ainu studies),- unfortu¬ 
nately, iittle of this information is 
available in English. Among the high¬ 
lights are works by the following authors: 
Mashiho Chiri, the great Ainu linguist 
and lexicographer,- Shiro Hattori, also a 
linguist and lexicographer,- Kyosuke 
Kindaichi, who transcribed Ainu tales 
and yukar; Sakuzaemon Kodama, who 
wrote widely on Ainu history and 
culture,- Mari Kodama, who has recently 
illuminated Ainu textile art,- and 
Takamitsu Natori, Ryuzo Torii, Shigeru 
Kayano, Yoshikazu Ohtsuka, Toshikazu 
Sasaki, and many others. Only a few of 
these scholars have published in English, 
but we are pleased to include some of 
them as contributors to this volume. 
For Europeans, the key to Ainu literature 
is to be found in the voluminous works 
of Josef Kreiner who has published 
widely on Ainu culture and history 
(Kreiner 1993, 1996,- Kreiner and 
Olschleger 1987). 
Among Japanese sources, the most 
important work for English readers 
interested in Ainu origins and history is 
Shini'chiro Takakura's Ainu of Northern 
Japan (1960). This work presents the 
history of Ainu-Japanese relations in a 
process-oriented exposition, beginning 
with the earliest written Japanese records 
on the Ainu (from the seventh century) 
and continuing to modern times. This 
history documents the devastating effects 
that Japanese contact and competition 
have had upon the Ainu over more than 
one thousand years, the impact of defeat 
in wars and rebellions, and the various 
terms that imposed new restrictions on 
Ainu movement, settlement, economy, 
and education. Exploitative treatment of 
the Ainu persisted well into the present 
century, as seen in the biography of 
Shigeru Kayano, Our Land Was a Forest 
(Kayano 1994). 
Shini'chiro Takakura also wrote fine 
works on other aspects of Ainu studies, 
including A Collection of Ainu-e, which 
presents a pioneering analysis of the 
illustrations of the Ainu known as Ainu-e. 
These genre illustrations of Ainu subjects 
have been drawn and painted by Japanese 
artists over a period of six hundred years 
(Takakura 1973,- T. Sasaki 1993a, b and 
this volume). Ainu-e are an important 
source of knowledge, for they include 
detailed and often highly accurate 
illustrations of Ainu life, customs, and 
material culture, including clothing and 
implements,- they are especially important 
ethnologically because of the detailed 
descriptions—marginalia added by the 
artists and learned associates—that 
accompany the drawings. While Ainu-e 
constitute a visual cultural and historical 
"handbook" of Ainu culture, they are not 
immune to bias, especially in their 
distortions of Ainu physical appearance, 
which is frequently shown to be bearded, 
tattooed, and barbaric. These images 
must be interpreted in relation to 
Japanese-Ainu history at the time they 
were created. The fact that they have 
been compiled as Japanese-Ainu relations 
evolved through various political stages 
make them both an exciting and 
problematic source. The history of Ainu-e 
and the challenges they raise for Ainu 
historiography are explored in this 
volume by Toshikazu Sasaki. 
The history of early Ainu research 
and collecting has been compiled in two 
volumes edited by Josef Kreiner. Papers 
in the 1993 volume present data on the 
European image of the Ainu (Kreiner), 
language studies (Voss, Dettmer, and 
Refsing), ethnographic studies (Kato, 
Majewicz, and Olschleger), Ainu 
collections in European museums 
(Wilkinson, Teague, Thiele, Warthol, 
and Spevakovski), Ainu-e pictures (Sasaki, 
Prunner), with appendices on Ainu 
collections in Japanese, European, and 
American museums. The 1996 volume 
includes essays on the important 
museum, archival, and library collec¬ 
tions of Philipp Franz and Heinrich von 
Siebold (Kreiner, Forrer, and others). 
Finally, Irimoto (1992b) has compiled a 
voluminous bibliography of Ainu 
literature in all languages. 
I /AINU ETHNICITY 27 
' 
1/ Ainu 
Origin 
Theories 
S. A. Arutiunov 
1.1 Abashiri Ainu 
Romyn Hitchcock took this 1888 
photograph of an Ainu group in 
Abashiri, a town on the Sea of 
Okhotsk in northeastern Hokkaido. 
Unlike photos made by many scientists 
visiting later who had their subjects 
dress in ceremonial robes, Hitchcock 
usually showed people in relaxed 
groups wearing everyday clothes. 
(NAA 98-10383) 
< Ikorikayani, Son of Ikotoi 
1843 copy by Teiki Kojima after Hakyo 
Kakizaki’s work, Portraits of Ezo Chief¬ 
tains. (Y. and M. Kitao Collection) 
EPORTS ABOUT AiNU—OR EZO 
(Yezo)—people abound in Japan¬ 
ese chronicles and semi-mytholo¬ 
gical literature of medieval times. 
The question of their origins is never raised in 
these sources, but they do contain priceless 
data about the Ainu before their contact with 
Western researchers. Especially valuable are 
sources of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries by Tokunai Mogami (1790,- fig. 16.9), 
Rinzo Mamiya (1855), and Takeshiro Matsuura 
(1851). The earliest reports by Western Euro¬ 
pean and Russian scholars and voyagers to the 
area also contain some very detailed and in¬ 
teresting descriptions,- these individuals include 
Philipp Franz von Siebold (1832,- fig. 16.3), 
Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff (1812), Adam 
Johann von Krusenstern (1810-12,- fig. 16.1), 
Georg Wilhelm Steller (1774), and Stepan P. 
Krasheninnikov (1776). 
Intensive scholarly research on the 
to various institutions and places throughout 
Japan for purposes of educating its people 
and modernizing its practices, laid the foun¬ 
dation of modern scientific studies concern¬ 
ing the origins of the Japanese and various 
local populations in Japan. Among the many 
people to be mentioned with gratitude and 
due respect are Neil G. Munro (1908), Ed¬ 
ward Morse (1 879), John Batchelor (1901), 
and Erwin E. Baelz (1900), all of whom 
greatly contributed to the pioneer studies in 
Japanese prehistory and Ainu cultural and 
physical anthropology. 
Baelz was the first to compare the 
physical and cultural similarities between 
Ainu and Ryukyu islanders and to propose 
a hypothesis that identifies them as vestiges 
of the original population of Japan prior 
to the penetration of ancestors of the mod¬ 
ern ethnic Japanese to this archipelago. 
Although the ethnic history of Japan seems 
origins of various people and tribes of the 
earth developed only in the second half of the 
nineteenth century and was connected with 
evolutionist trends in history and anthropol¬ 
ogy, fostered by similar trends in biology. 
This interest coincided with both the opening 
of Japan, following the visit of the American 
Naval Commodore Matthew C. Perry and his 
fleet to Tokyo in 1853, and with the begin¬ 
ning of western anthropology. A deep and 
penetrating curiosity about Japan's history and 
traditional cultures resulted, affecting the 
then-fledgling fields of archaeology and 
physical anthropology. These early anthro¬ 
pologists, as well as missionaries and practical 
advisors invited by the Japanese government 
to be more complex, Baelz's basic theory of 
a dual population structure for Japan is cor¬ 
roborated by recent research (Hanihara 
1991,- Kozintsev 1993). On the other hand, 
Baelz was among the first to interpret the 
racial peculiarities of the Ainu population as 
evidence of a certain group of "Caucasian- 
like" (i.e., Europoid) population that alleg¬ 
edly preceded the spread of Mongoloid 
(Asianoid) racial types in East Asia (fig. 1.1). 
This thesis of "Caucasianness" of the 
Ainu was rather uncritically accepted and 
taken for granted by many European and 
Japanese scholars. It was, however, rejected 
by scholars of physical anthropology in 
Russia who instead preferred to believe in 
1/ ORIGIN THEORIES 29 
the Australoid affiliation of the Ainu physical 
type and in their southern origins, supposedly 
from somewhere in southern China, Indo¬ 
china, and Austronesia. The ideas of a south¬ 
ern origin of the Ainu race were first postu¬ 
lated by L. Vivien de Saint-Martin (1872) and 
soon gamed wide acceptance among Russian 
anthropologists who studied mainly skeletal 
collections in museums (Anuchin 1876,- 
Tarenetzky 1890). Later on, one of the lead¬ 
ing authorities in early Soviet anthropology, 
Leo Shternberg, who as a revolutionary exile 
had worked among Nivkhi (formerly known 
as Gilyak) and Ainu groups of Sakhalin in the 
early 1900s, added much new data on reli¬ 
gion, material culture, and Amu art, which in 
his opinion corroborated the theory of their 
southern origins (Shternberg 1933). 
More or less simultaneously with 
Shternberg, important contributions to Ainu 
studies were made by a number of Polish schol¬ 
1.2 Ainu Men of Sakhalin 
Physical and economic differences are 
evident between the Abashiri group and 
these wealthy Sakhalin Ainu traders 
photographed by Bronislaw Pilsudski 
between 1902 and 1905. Sakhalin 
formal garments differ from Hokkaido 
styles, and the men, who still wear 
beards, have Mongoloid features. 
(NAA 98-10361) 
ars like Izydor Kopernicki (1 882), I Radlinski 
(1892), B. Dybowski (1902), and Bronislaw 
Pilsudski (1912,- fig. 1.2). Among Russian 
scholars, perhaps only M. M. Dobrotvorskii, 
who worked among the Ainu of Sakhalin and 
published many valuable materials on their eth¬ 
nography and language, did not share ideas ei¬ 
ther of Europoidness or Australoidness of the 
Ainu,- he held that their physical features are not 
strikingly different from their neighbors and con¬ 
cluded that the Ainu could be included in the 
Mongoloid race, a viewpoint that has largely 
been corroborated (Dobrotvorskii 1873, 1875). 
All Soviet physical anthropologists of 
the first half of the twentieth century who 
had a chance to study living Ainu or cranio- 
Iogical collections (Trofimova 1932,- Debets 
1935, 195 1, Cheboksarov 1947, 1951,-and 
Levin 1958) rejected the thesis of their 
Europoidness and basically followed the view 
taken by A. 1. Tarenetzky and Shternberg. 
The idea of the Europoidness (Caucasoidness) 
of the Ainu continued to prevail in Western 
scholarship for some time and was strongly 
influenced and supported by George Montan- 
don (1927, 1937), for whom, as he stated, this 
Europoidness was "de clarte'de soleil," that is, as 
clear as the light of day. The reasons for such 
a declarative statement were, however, rather 
insufficient. Montandon based his opinion 
mostly on such features as the form and de¬ 
velopment of hair, the form of nose and eyes, 
eye color, etc. Dental features, genetic mark¬ 
ers, blood-group factors, nonmetric cranial 
characteristics—all of which place the Ainu 
definitely outside the limits of the Europoid 
physical type — were not yet sufficiently 
known in Montandon's time. 
In the twentieth century the greatest 
contribution to Ainu studies was made by 
Japanese scholars who emphasized collecting 
extant ethnographic and linguistic data, which 
were in danger of disappearing—a danger 
that has become a tragic reality. Luckily, 
Japanese scholars succeeded in gathering an 
enormous amount of data, which documented 
the Ainu cultural and linguistic legacy down 
to minute details. As the most important 
contributors one must mention Shin'ichiro 
Takakura (1940, 1947, 1949, 1960), Sadaka 
Nishizuru (1942), Kyosuke Kindaichi (1943, 
1961), Yuko Yamamoto (1943, 1944), Genzo 
Sarashina (1955, 1968), Hiromichi Kono 
(1958), Motosuke Ishikawa (1962), Hitoshi 
Watanabe (1973), and many others. There 
have also been native Ainu contributors, such 
as the outstanding linguist Mashiho Chiri 
(1942, 1953-62, 1957), and the most impor¬ 
tant modern Ainu author who has written 
about the history and culture of his native 
people, Shigeru Kayano (1994). 
The aspect of Ainu origins most vividly 
discussed by Japanese anthropologists was the 
Jomon-Ainu relationship. The question was 
whether the Neolithic people of the Jornon 
culture, known through archaeological re¬ 
search, should be considered direct ancestors 
of modern Ainu while being only marginally 
important to the formation of the modern 
30 ANCIENT ROOTS/S. A. ARUTIUNOV 
ethnic Japanese physical type (Wajin) or 
whether the Jomon people are to be placed 
among the most important ancestors of mod¬ 
ern Japanese but not the Ainu. 
The development of dental studies shed 
new light on these discussions. In particular, 
Christy Turner II has demonstrated that the 
teeth of Jomon people, as well as those of the 
Ainu, belong to an archaic type labeled by 
Turner as Sundadontic, whereas the teeth of 
modern Japanese (and many other modern 
populations of Eastern Asia) belong to a type 
of a more recent formation labeled Sinodontic 
(Turner 1976,- Kozintsev 1993,- Ishida, this 
volume) Introduction of dental material into the 
scope of the discussion was especially impor¬ 
tant because, as many physical anthropologists 
(Cheboksarov 1951) have noted, there is no 
single craniological trait (with the possible 
exception of eye orbital height) that would 
allow one to distinguish precisely between 
Ainu skulls and eastern and southeastern Mon¬ 
goloid skulls, in spite of the obvious difference 
in appearance that can be observed among the 
living populations. Therefore, all previous 
arguments and comparisons, which were based 
exclusively on cranial features without examin¬ 
ing the dentition, remained indecisive. 
There is still not total agreement among 
anthropologists concerning the problem 
of Ainu origins, but a more or less prevailing 
point of view was formulated recently by 
Alexander Kozintsev (1993). According to 
Yamaguchi's and Hanihara's views and in 
accordance with Baelz's previous findings, 
Ainu and Ryukyuans represent more-or-less 
direct descendants of the Jomon populations, 
although during the last two or three millen¬ 
nia both have experienced continental Mon¬ 
goloid admixtures, more clearly visible 
among Ryukyuans than among Ainu. Any 
Caucasoid resemblances of Ainu or 
Ryukyuans are to be considered accidental 
or, rather, ascending to a proto-Australoid 
heritage common to all humankind. The 
modern Japanese are, to the contrary, basi¬ 
cally descendants of various continental 
Mongoloid migrants, although they also 
possess about 10 to 20 percent of genes 
inherited from the Jomon people. 
The Jomon people were Australoid 
not in the sense that they had migrated to 
Japan from somewhere in Indochina or 
Indonesia, let alone Australia, but in the 
sense that they, like some "Australoid" tribes 
of India, were extant representatives of 
those archaic, undifferentiated proto- 
Australoid types from which all more-spe¬ 
cialized racial types, including Africanoids 
and Europoids, gradually developed on 
different continents. In other words, the 
Jomon people were related to and re¬ 
sembled those remote ancestors of the Asian 
Mongoloids who had not yet developed 
specific Mongoloid features. This point of 
view basically agrees with Tatyana 
Trofimova (1932). According to Kozintsev 
(1993), Ainu are extant Upper Paleolithic 
Australoid ancestors of recent Mongoloids. 
Essentially similar views have been ex¬ 
pressed by several Japanese authors, such as 
Bin Yamaguchi (1967) and Keiichi Omoto 
and Shogo Misawa (1976). 
Based on the current theory of Ainu 
origins, it is no longer necessary to search 
for a proto-Ainu homeland in the remote 
south, either in Indochina or even further 
south. The continental ancestors of the 
Jomon people might have lived anywhere 
in southern or eastern China and/or the 
Amur River area as well The later genetic 
and cultural influences from the Russian 
Far East Maritime/Amur/Manchuria region 
to northern Jomon peoples and the Ainu 
occurred for the most part shortly before 
or soon after the time of Christ. These influ¬ 
ences have been documented beyond any 
doubt (Kiyono 1955,- Oba 1955, 1956,- 
Chubarova 1957,- Levin 1958,- Kozyreva 
1967,- and Befu and Chard 1964). 
1/ ORIGIN THEORIES 31 
Ainu 
Homelands: 
Natural History 
from Ice Age to 
Modern Times 
Yugo Ono 
Although there are different 
opinions on the origin of the 
Ainu, archaeological research 
confirms that they represent the 
end of a long chain of aboriginal settlement 
that began more than 20,000 years ago during 
the last and coldest phase of the Ice Age. 
Knowledge of a Paleolithic occupation of the 
Japanese archipelago has come to the atten¬ 
tion of Japanese archaeologists only during 
the past few decades, when research acceler¬ 
ated rapidly because of an increase in salvage 
excavations resulting from development 
projects. The discovery that Japan had a 
lengthy Paleolithic settlement has also stimu¬ 
lated new interest in the early environments 
of these Late Ice Age hunters. As a result we 
have learned much about the evolution of 
landforms, changing climate and its influ¬ 
ence on vegetation, effects of lowered and 
rising sea levels on adjacent seas and on the 
Japanese islands, and animal extinctions and 
introductions—to say nothing of the many 
ecological changes that occurred during 
the Holocene, the post-glacial period from 
10,000 years ago to the present, when 
human activities increasingly affected envi- 
2.1 Ice-Age East Asia 
and Today 
Permafrost was more ex¬ 
tensive than continental 
glaciation in eastern Asia 
because lack of moisture 
sources kept snow and ice 
from forming ice sheets 
that insulated the earth. 
This map illustrates the 
extent of permafrost in the 
Late Glacial Maximum (ca. 
18,000 years ago) and 
today. Late Glacial and 
modern shorelines are 
also shown. 
1-5 Present permafrost distribution 
1. continuous 
2. southern limit of discontinu¬ 
ous permafrost 
3. southern limit of sporadic 
permafrost 
4. southern limit of 50cm- 
deep seasonal frost 
5. southern limit of seasonal 
frost 
6-8 Permafrost distribution in the 
Late Glacial Maximum 
6. southern limit of continuous 
permafrost 
7. southern limit of discontinu¬ 
ous permafrost 
8. extent of alpine permafrost 
9. Present soil wed6e 
ronmental change. 
°E 
glacial maximum 
shoreline 
present 
shoreline 
120°E 140°E 
100°S 
32 
Tens of thousands of years 
2.2 Sea-Level History 
This graph shows fluctuations in sea level for the past 
140,000 years. Sea level rose rapidly as the global cli¬ 
mate warmed, and then fell for 100,000 years, only to 
rise again during the last ten millennia. Hatching de¬ 
notes period of Hokkaido-Sakhalin land bridge. 
This essay provides a brief description 
of the early landscapes and environments of 
Japan, focusing on its natural history as the 
context for the earliest human settlement in 
this region. We examine the natural history 
of Hokkaido, the northeastern island of the 
Japanese archipelago, where Ainu people live 
today, as well as the northern part of Honshu, 
where they may have lived in the past, to 
reveal why human-environmental interactions 
are crucial to understanding Japan's paleoenvi- 
ronments and the changing role of humans as 
"ecological actors" through time. 
Ice Ages and Paleolithic Japan 
Archaeological remains of settlements that are 
more than 20,000 years old have been found 
in Hokkaido, providing evidence of a popula¬ 
tion that survived the coldest phase of the 
late glacial period. These people made various 
kinds of hunting and processing tools from 
obsidian, which was easily accessible from the 
volcanic regions of eastern Hokkaido. Their 
culture is known as Shiritaki, named for the 
modern village where the best-quality obsid¬ 
ian is found. 
By the end of the glacial period, about 
10,000 years ago, Shiritaki Paleolithic was 
replaced by a Mesolithic culture with similari¬ 
ties to cultures of the Lake Baikal region in 
southern Siberia. Their small "microlithic" 
tool industry was based on a new method of 
producing blades from small cores, and from 
these bladelets a wide variety of tools were 
made, including many believed to have been 
used for arming arrows for hunting large ani¬ 
mals like deer and mammoth. 
These Paleolithic and Mesolithic 
peoples seem to have had no direct connec¬ 
tion with the Ainu, unlike the pottery-making 
Neolithic Jomon culture. The Jomon culture 
is known either as Epi-jomon (reflecting its 
modified form) or Zoku-Jomon in Hokkaido 
ANCIENT ROOTS / Y. ONO 
("Zoku" means northern), where it persisted 
until about 2,000 years ago. It was replaced 
in southern Hokkaido by Satsumon culture 
and in the north by the Okhotsk culture. 
Jomon culture spread widely throughout the 
Japanese islands in the warmer period that 
followed the melting of glacial ice. Although 
the origin of Jomon culture has never been 
clear, it probably originated from regional 
variants of the earlier Paleolithic and Meso¬ 
lithic cultures, because regional varieties 
of Jomon are known throughout Japan. 
In Honshu and the southern islands, Yayoi 
culture replaced Jomon about 2,000 years ago 
and led to the formation of the Japanese state 
during the first millennium A.D. Yayoi did not 
penetrate Hokkaido mainly because its severe 
climate did not permit rice cultivation, the 
2.3 Bathymetry of Soya Strait 
Shallow waters in Soya Strait ensured a land connection between 
Sakhalin and Hokkaido for much of the last Ice Age. 
economic base of this culture. Ainu culture 
seems to have originated from the earlier 
Jomon and Epi-Jomon cultures whose peoples 
had developed special adaptations to the 
natural resources of the Hokkaido environ¬ 
ment and persisted in this essentially nonagri- 
cultural tradition, with only limited growth of 
garden farming, until the nineteenth century. 
45°N 
The Northern Ice-Age Land Bridge 
The Hokkaido Ice Age was characterized by 
major changes in coastline and natural envi¬ 
ronments. Figure 2.1 illustrates the coastline 
of the entire Japanese islands and eastern 
Asia at the Late Glacial Maximum about 
40 1 8,000 years ago,- at that time, most of 
northern North America was covered by a 
continental-scale glacier called the 
Laurentide Ice Sheet whose surface and ice 
volume were approximately the same as the 
present Antarctic Ice Sheet. Northern Europe, 
35o England, and Ireland were also covered by a 
similar ice sheet, and the total volume of ice on 
earth was three times larger than at present. 
Because the water on earth circulates in a 
closed system in which there is no new source 
inside or outside the earth and no water leaves 
the system, the volume of seawater decreases 
30° enormously when a large ice sheet builds up on 
land. Most of the water that evaporates from 
the sea falls on land as snow, where it contrib¬ 
utes to glaciers and ice sheets. Because glaciers 
and ice sheets flow extremely slowly compared 
2.4 Late Glacial Fauna 
Ice-Age Japan had many cold-adapted mammals. Throughout 
much of this time Japan was a peninsula of Asia, and the Sea of 
Japan was connected to the Pacific Ocean at Korea Strait. (Ono 
and Igarashi 1992) 
with rivers, water on the land cannot reach the 
sea for long periods of time, and the volume of 
seawater thus decreases, causing a remarkable 
change in sea levels throughout the world (fig. 
2.2). The sea level was decreased by at least 
2/AINU HOMELANDS 33 
2.5 Present Vegetation Zones 
of North and East Asia 
(after Ono and Igarashi 1992) 
2.6 Phytogeography of Japan at Late 
Glacial Maximum (18,000 Years Ago) 
(after Ono and Igarashi 1992) 
340 feet (100 meters) during the Late Glacial 
Maximum, effecting great changes to the 
coastline of the Japanese archipelago (fig. 2.1). 
The most significant change occurred in 
Hokkaido, which was completely connected 
to the Asian continent by a land bridge or a 
relatively narrow strip of land that emerged 
from the sea during this period of lowered 
sea level (Ono 1991). During the same period 
that Hokkaido was connected to the Asian 
continent via the island of Sakhalin by two 
land bridges—at the Soya Strait and the 
Marniya Strait—the Bering Land Bridge, one 
of the largest land bridges of the Ice Age, 
connected Asia and North America at the 
northwestern edge of present-day Alaska. 
A bathymetric map of the Soya Strait 
(fig. 2.3) illustrates that the land bridge here 
appears when the sea level is 150 feet (forty- 
five meters) lower than its present level. The 
Marniya Strait, separating Sakhalin from the 
Asian continent, is very shallow—less than 
thirty-two feet (ten meters) deep—thus the 
Sakhalin land bridge emerges with a relatively 
small reduction of current sea levels. On the 
other hand, the Tsugaru Strait between 
Honshu and Hokkaido is very deep, exceed¬ 
ing 435 feet (1 30 meters), so a land bridge 
would not be created there even when Ice 
Age sea levels reached their lowest point. 
This geographical situation gave Hokkaido 
a different geographical orientation during 
the Ice Age: it was a peninsula of the Asian 
continent for a much longer time than it was 
an island, as today. 
These conditions have contributed to 
similarities between the fauna and flora of 
Hokkaido and the Asian continent on the one 
hand and on the other, to differences between 
biota in Honshu and Hokkaido. Biogeograph- 
ically, the Tsugaru Strait corresponds to a 
remarkable boundary, the Blakiston Line, 
which separates northern fauna from southern 
fauna (fig. 2.4). Many species of fauna that 
once lived or are still living in Hokkaido 
cannot be found in Honshu, whereas fossils 
of mammoth and northern types of deer are 
found only in Hokkaido. 
The corresponding boundary for flora 
lies in the middle of Sakhalin, where a north¬ 
ern conifer forest (taiga) that exists throughout 
Siberia is replaced by a mixed forest that char- 
34 ANCIENT ROOTS / Y. ONO 
acterizes the flora of Hokkaido (fig. 2.5). This 
vegetation boundary, called the Schmidt Line, 
migrated southward during the Late Glacial 
Maximum to the middle or southern part of 
Hokkaido, and Siberian larch (Larix tpndini) 
mixed with the more southern Alpine pine 
(Pinas pumila) to produce a taiga forest (fig. 2.6). 
The Ice Age-Hoiocene Change 
When the late glacial period of the Ice Age 
ended about 10,000 years ago, the natural 
environment of Hokkaido changed quickly. 
The Ice Age taiga forest and forest tundra 
disappeared and were replaced by a mixed 
forest in the island's lowlands. A pollen dia¬ 
gram that indicates the percentage of differ¬ 
ent tree species living in lowland northern 
Hokkaido (fig. 2.7) shows these dramatic 
environmental changes. The diagram clearly 
records the replacement of the northern taiga 
forest by the mixed forest between the Ice 
Age and the Holocene, that is, between 8,000 
and 10,000 years ago. The Siberian larch 
forest completely disappeared from Hokkaido 
about 8,000 years ago, and the tundra vegeta¬ 
•o aT AT So S* So 
^ ^ „o° .<A 
_ # <c <A ■$ cf # ^ ^ # cf & <C® ^ Age BP. 
0 80% 
B siit ES peat H clay I—I sand volcanic ash 
2.7 Vegetation History 
This diagram shows changes in the 
vegetation of the Furano basin in 
central Hokkaido for the last 32,000 
years. The end of the Ice Age and 
beginning of the warmer Holocene 
is indicated by the decline in tundra 
species and rise of forest shrubs and 
trees, (after Ono and Igarashi 1992) 
tion survived only on higher mountains such as 
Mount Taisetsu in central Hokkaido. In south¬ 
ern Hokkaido, a cool-temperate deciduous 
forest dominated by beech (Facjus) spread north 
from its Ice Age refugium in Honshu. 
Although the climatic change from the 
cold Ice Age to the warm Holocene began 
more than 10,000 years ago, the arrival of the 
first beech forest in Hokkaido was retarded: 
sea levels had risen, and the Tsugaru Strait 
between Honshu and Hokkaido became wider. 
Because beech seeds are not tolerant of sea¬ 
water, seeds transported into Hokkaido may 
have depended on birds and humans. Findings 
of beech seeds in the food remains at Jomon 
sites seem to support this possibility. Although 
no boats have yet been found in Jomon sites 
in Hokkaido, humans were certainly moving 
between Honshu and Hokkaido by 8,000 
years ago, and beech seeds would have been 
traveling in their stomachs and in the guts 
of birds. 
The Early and Middle Jomon periods 
(ca. 5,000-6,000 years ago) correspond to 
the so-called Holocene "climatic optimum." 
The climate by this time had become the 
warmest of the postglacial era, and sea levels 
rose to their maximum. Recent finds from 
large archaeological sites on both sides of 
the Tsugaru Strait—Sannai-Maruyama in 
Aomori Prefecture on the Honshu side and 
Nakano-B and Ofuna-C sites near Hakodate 
in southern Hokkaido—suggest a much 
more active cultural interaction between the 
two locations during this warm climatic 
period. Although a direct link between these 
Jomon people and the Ainu has never been 
proven, the natural environments in which 
their cultures developed show many similari¬ 
ties. This, along with genetic and other 
similarities proven by physical anthropologi¬ 
cal studies, seems to indicate the intimate 
relationship between the Ainu and the first 
jomon peoples who lived in Hokkaido. 
The Natural History of the 
Hokkaido Jomon and Ainu Peoples 
Even though Ainu appeared later than the 
Jomon and differ from them in many respects, 
the habitats in which they thrived show 
remarkable similarities. These are due to the 
fact that their natural environments during 
the Holocene were basically the same, al¬ 
though obviously some physical and cli¬ 
matic changes occurred over time. 
Two very basic elements were most 
important for the lifestyles of the Jomon and 
Ainu people in Hokkaido: the broadleaf 
forest (including a cool-temperate beech 
forest in southern Hokkaido and a mixed 
deciduous forest in other parts) and rivers. 
The broadleaf forest provided not only beech 
seeds but also oak acorns, both crucial foods 
for Jomon and Ainu people. Recent excava¬ 
tions at Sannai-Maruyama and Ofuna-C 
suggest that early-to-middle-period Jomon 
people had already planted chestnut trees 
(Castanea) near their villages in order to 
2/ AINU HOMELANDS 35 
2.8 Hunter’s Bearskin Pouch 
The bear, which the Ainu revered as god 
of the mountains (kimun-kamuy), pro¬ 
vided the Ainu with food and necessary 
materials for life. To thank it for providing 
these resources, people honored the 
bear with ritual and ceremony. This bear¬ 
skin pouch holds a hunter’s flint, steel, 
and tinder, as well as tobacco, used for 
kamuy-nomt—prayers to the gods. It 
was collected in Okotsonai, Hokkaido, 
by Hiram Hiller in 1901. (UPM A454) 
2.9 Salmon and Ainu Today 
Salmon was a principal food resource 
for many Ainu, and its skin was used 
for waterproof boots and other articles. 
Beginning in the late nineteenth cen¬ 
tury, the Ainu were prohibited from 
catching salmon; that right was given 
to Japanese commercial fishermen. 
Even today Ainu must obtain special 
permission to catch fish needed for 
their annual first-salmon ceremony. 
Traditional fishing rights are one of 
many political issues dividing the Ainu 
and the Japanese government. 
harvest their nuts. Acorns were also an im¬ 
portant source of food for various forms of 
wildlife, especially the brown bear, one of the 
most important animal resources for the Ainu. 
According to the animistic beliefs of the 
Ainu, the brown bear spirit is the most impor¬ 
tant god in their cosmology, and many ritual 
ceremonies have been developed related to 
hunting this animal (fig. 2.8). Broadleaf 
forests also supply many kinds of vegetable 
foods used by the Ainu from spring through 
fall, such as the roots of wild lilies, rhubarb, 
berries, and mushrooms. The Ainu make use 
of nearly all kinds of trees as materials for 
housing, boats, and clothing, and many kinds 
of medicines were prepared from the trees, 
herbs, and animals of the broadleaf-forest 
zone. This forest was, in essence, the central 
life-support system for the Ainu. 
The Ainu have traditionally been people 
of the rivers: their settlements are always 
placed along waterways, and river products 
once provided much food and many other 
materials central to Ainu life. Probably the 
most important of river resources were salmon, 
which returned in the fall: salmon provided 
not only food but also materials for boots and 
clothing (fig. 2.9). These fish were (and are 
still) considered to be the most precious gift of 
the gods, and even today the Ainu celebrate 
their appearance and capture them with 
elaborate ritual in their "First Salmon" cer¬ 
emonies (Roche and Fdutchinson 1998), 
although now they must procure a special 
license in advance to do so. The intimate link 
between the Ainu and rivers is shown clearly 
by the abundance of place-names that they 
have given to river locations: even small 
tributaries are named, and every bank and 
cliff that has any relevance to their lives is 
recognized with an Ainu word. Although 
mountains are important to the Ainu—they 
penetrate deeply into this realm for trapping 
and hunting deer, bear, and other animals— 
they never gave names to the mountains 
themselves but rather named them after the 
rivers that originated there. 
Fdokkaido has harsh winters even though 
it is located farther south (42 to 45 degrees north 
latitude) than Alaska or Canada. It receives 
heavy snows because of a winter monsoon wind 
that blows from Siberia and draws humidity as 
it passes over the Sea of Japan and the Sea of 
Okhotsk, which lies along the northern coast 
of FJokkaido and freezes in winter. 
Basic winter nourishment for the Ainu 
was provided by salmon, which return to the 
rivers in the fall, and the brown bear, which 
hibernates, making it easy to capture. Migrat¬ 
ing herds of deer also provided winter food 
(fig. 2.10). Hunting and fishing, together 
with the collection of a wide range of vegeta¬ 
tive foods from the broadleaf forest, enabled 
the Ainu to utilize Hokkaido's natural envi¬ 
ronment and maintain their unique culture 
and lifestyle. In modern times, the brown bear 
population has continued to decline as a re¬ 
sult of the loss and fragmentation of forests 
due to logging and agriculture. 
The Destruction of Hokkaido's 
Natural Resources 
Two maps (figs. 2.1 la, b) clearly illustrate 
changes to Hokkaido that have occurred 
since the arrival of outsiders from Honshu 
after the Meiji Restoration. Although the 
colonization of Ezo (Hokkaido's former 
name) was attempted by the shogunate in the 
Edo period (1615-1868), systematic develop¬ 
ment began only after the Meiji Restoration,- 
these works have included agricultural devel- 
36 ANCIENT ROOTS / Y. ONO 
2.10 Chief Noshikosa of Shamokotan 
Together with salmon and other fish, 
deer was an important subsistence 
resource for Ainu people nearly 
everywhere in Hokkaido. In Sakhalin, 
reindeer was the principal quarry. 
Deer-hunting was a common theme for 
Ainu-e painters; this painting of an 
Ainu chieftain with his quarry by Teiki 
Kojima is a 1843 copy after Hakyo 
Kakizaki's series Portraits of Ezo 
Chieftains. (Y. and M. Kitao Collection) 
opment, intensive lumbering, and fishing 
offshore along the Hokkaido coast. Within 
a century, most of the broadleaf-forest cover 
has disappeared from the island. Wetlands 
along the rivers have been filled or dried to 
expand the agricultural landbase. Rivers have 
been straightened and their banks cemented 
to protect new rice fields along the lowlands 
from erosion and flooding. These river works, 
which include the construction of dams 
and embankments, completely changed the 
ecology of the rivers on which the Ainu have 
built their economy, life, and culture. 
Salmon still ascend the rivers, but many 
cannot reach their spawning grounds because 
of dams. The salmon catch is conducted by 
Japanese officials, and the Ainu were ex¬ 
cluded from salmon fishing—even though 
the official government policy held that Ainu 
were "Japanese"—until the passage of the 
new law, or Ainu Shinpo, in 1997 (Roche 
and Hutchinson 1998,- Kaizawa, Sasamura, 
this volume). A highly symbolic infringe¬ 
ment on the Ainu ecosystem involved the 
construction of a major dam on the Saru 
River at Niputani in the early 1990s. Two 
Ainu leaders—Shigeru Kayano, who later 
became a member of the National Diet, and 
Tadashi Kaizawa—filed a lawsuit opposing 
the construction of this dam in their home 
village, for the dam not only prevents 
salmon from swimming upstream but has 
2/ AINU HOMELANDS 37 
2.12 
2.12 Kingfisher Owl, 
Guardian of the Village 
The kingfisher owi is important to the 
Ainu, and like bears, salmon, and many 
other animals, it is featured in ritual 
and ceremony. Modern development 
practices threaten its habitat, and Ainu 
have asked for regulations to protect this 
and other species endangered by 
Hokkaido's rapid and ecologically harm¬ 
ful development program. 
2.11 a, b Land-use Change 
from WIeui Period to Present 
One hundred years of industrial-scale devel¬ 
opment, especially in forestry and agricul¬ 
ture, have brought major changes to 
Hokkaido’s natural forest ecosystem. De¬ 
struction of the broadleaf forest, construc¬ 
tion of dams, and channelization of rivers 
threatens the livelihood of not only the Ainu 
but of the huge Japanese population that 
now resides in Hokkaido. 
also destroyed the site of salmon ceremo¬ 
nies. The case was under consideration in 
the courts for a long time, and eventually the 
Ainu won, but by then it was too late be¬ 
cause the dam had already been constructed. 
Another instance of the continued 
environmental destruction of the Ainu 
homeland involves the kingfisher owl (Bubo 
blakistoni; fig. 2.12). This existence of this 
owl, the largest in Japan, has become en¬ 
dangered by channeling projects and agri¬ 
cultural development along the rivers (Ono 
1997). Because the owl's habitat is restricted 
to riparian forests, where they primarily eat 
fish from rivers, the cutting of trees and 
catching of large numbers of salmon (to ob¬ 
tain fish for artificial breeding purposes) have 
threatened their survival. The owl's circum¬ 
stances offer an ironic parallel to the plight of 
the Ainu themselves, who effectively lost 
their way of life when their right to catch 
salmon was prohibited by the Japanese gov¬ 
ernment. The rapidly disappearing kingfisher 
owl is an Ainu god: it guards the village (kotan), 
and its decline may be read as a parable of 
recent Ainu history. 
2.11a 2.11b 
38 ANCIENT ROOTS / Y. ONO 
Prehistoric 
Hokkaido 
and Ainu 
Origins 
Kiyoshi Yamaura and 
Hiroshi Ushiro 
3.1 Duck-Effigy Flute (replica) 
This ceramic figurine was found at 
Bibi-4 site, Chitose, Hokkaido, and 
dates from the Final Jomon period 
(1,000 b.c.). Most Japanese archae¬ 
ologists interpret this ceramic effigy 
as a duck in flight, but it is clearly not 
exactly a duck but rather some kind 
of transformational spirit (duck/sea 
otter?) whose form is not fixed in na¬ 
ture. Nor is its function understood: 
holes in its bottom, chest, and lower 
body make it useless as a normal 
vessel, but it could have been used 
as a kind of flute. It is covered with 
Jomon designs and has red ocher 
pigment around the eyes, mouth, and 
vessel openings. (HMH: Japanese 
National Important Cultural Property) 
WHERE DID THE AlNU PEOPLE 
come from and how was 
their culture established? 
Scholars in linguistics, eth¬ 
nology, history, biological anthropology, and 
archaeology have tried to answer these ques¬ 
tions for many years and have made major 
advances. Because the Ainu did not have writ¬ 
ten language, archaeological studies play a 
crucial role in explaining their origins. This 
essay explores Ainu origins and antecedents 
largely based on evidence from Hokkaido, 
which is the homeland of the largest Ainu 
population and seems to have been central to 
its evolution in prehistory (H. Okada 1998; 
Utagawa 1980a, b; Yamaura 1998). 
Archaeological surveys in Hokkaido 
have been conducted for nearly one hundred 
years. In the beginning, it was a small-scale 
effort, but after the 1970s larger surveys and 
excavations were required to mitigate infra¬ 
structure developments, including road con¬ 
struction, house-building, dams, coastal engi¬ 
neering, and airport growth. The number 
(seventy-nine) and total area (about thirty- 
one square miles, or 50,000 square meters) of 
these excavations in 1997 alone make public 
archaeology in Hokkaido one of the most 
extensive such programs in the world. 
In order to clarify the origin of the Ainu 
and their prehistoric culture it is also neces¬ 
sary to study areas surrounding Hokkaido. 
The history of archaeological study in Sakha¬ 
lin, the lower Amur River region, northeast¬ 
ern China, eastern Siberia, the Kurile Islands, 
Kamchatka, and the northern coast of the Sea 
of Okhotsk also dates back almost one hun¬ 
dred years, as in Hokkaido. But because only 
a few researchers are working in these areas 
today and their excavations are for the most 
part small-scale efforts, archaeological infor¬ 
mation is still quite limited. 
Examining the prehistoric cultures of 
Hokkaido beginning with the oldest stage, 
with a focus on the emerging phases of each 
era and culture, provides a clearer under¬ 
standing of both the independent origins 
and development of prehistory in Hokkaido 
(Amino 1990,- Nihon Kokogaku Kyokai 
1994) and its close relationship with sur¬ 
rounding regions (figs. 3.1, 3.2). 
Paleolithic Cultures 
The Paleolithic or "Old Stone Culture" dates 
to the Ice Age, which ended about 14,000 
years ago. Global temperatures cooled, the 
sea level dropped more than 300 feet (100 
meters) below todays oceans,- and Hokkaido 
was connected to the Eurasian continent by a 
land bridge across Sakhalin It is also possible 
that the Korean peninsula and the present- 
day islands of Kyushu and Honshu were con¬ 
nected to the Asian mainland (fig. 2.1). 
Hokkaido was covered by tundra, and mam¬ 
moths, moose, elk, and probably reindeer 
migrated to Japan over the Sakhalin land mass. 
It is assumed that humans moved to 
Hokkaido as hunters who followed the 
movements of these animals into this newly 
accessible territory, but to date there has 
been no clear consensus about when such a 
movement occurred. The oldest archaeo¬ 
logical sites in Japan date to about 50,000 
years ago and have been found near Sendai 
in northern Honshu and in Tokyo. Al¬ 
though sites of this age have not yet been 
3/ PREHISTORIC HOKKAIDO 39 
3.4 Ceramic Vessel 
The Japanese ceramic tradition is 
among the earliest in the world, having 
begun as early as 10,000 to 12,000 
years ago. This conical vessel with its 
scalloped, shell-impressed rim is one 
of two Incipient Jomon (6,000 b.c.) pot¬ 
tery types that are found in different 
regions of Hokkaido, which suggests 
that cultural differences already existed 
among the island's Jomon population. 
It was found at Narukawa, Narukawa- 
cho. Hokkaido. (HMH) 
discovered in Hokkaido, they probably will be 
found in the future, because Hokkaido may 
have been the only land passage between the 
Asian mainland and Honshu at that time. 
At present the earliest Paleolithic sites 
in Hokkaido (fig. 3.3) belong to the Hok¬ 
kaido Microlithic ("small tool") culture and 
date to about 20,000 years ago. Several hun¬ 
dred such sites are known, and many are also 
present in other islands of Japan. Microlithic 
technology spread into Japan from Siberia 
and northern China. It appears that the old¬ 
est Microlithic culture sites are in the region 
between Lake Baikal in Siberia and northeast¬ 
ern China (H. Kimura 1997). After originat¬ 
ing in these areas, Microlithic culture spread 
south into Hokkaido from Sakhalin and into 
Honshu and Kyushu from the Korean penin¬ 
sula. The fact that Microlithic culture existed 
across vast areas of Northeast Asia, including 
Siberia and Japan, shows that these early 
people had excellent hunting skills and were 
adapted to a variety of northern forest, tun¬ 
dra, and coastal conditions during the coldest 
phase of the Ice Age. 1 hese skills allowed 
them to cross the Bering land bridge and 
colonize Alaska quickly when conditions 
began to improve 15,000 years ago. 
Jomon Culture 
Archaeologists throughout the world see the 
emergence of pottery as an important mile¬ 
stone in cultural development. Whether a 
culture had ceramics was a major criterion that 
scholars used in the nineteenth century to 
separate the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages. On 
the islands of Japan, ceramics appeared during 
the transition from the Pleistocene to the 
Holocene epoch, 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, 
and is the hallmark of Jomon culture fig. 3.3), 
whose sites are found throughout Hokkaido 
and Honshu (Chiyo 1984a, b). Jomon's exist¬ 
ence in Japan for almost 10,000 years makes it 
one of the longest-running single cultural 
traditions in the world, whose hunting-and- 
gathering economy was so well adapted to 
the environmental conditions that few eco¬ 
nomic disruptions seem to have occurred. 
3.2 Archaeological Cultures of Hokkaido 
AMD SURROUNDING REGIONS 
3.3 Geological Stratigraphy and Culture 
Periods of the Misawa River Region in 
Chitose and Tomakomai Regions (HACRIC) 
Present «= 
A.D.1200 
A.D. 700 
A.D. 600 
A.D.250 
250 B.C. 
5,000 B.C. 
10,000 B.C. 
30,000 B.C. 
Honshu 
Historic 
Period 
YAMATO 
Japanese state 
formation 
KOFUN 
state formation 
YAYOI 
agriculture 
Hokkaido-Sakhalin 
HISTORIC 
AINU 
EPI-JOMON 
hunting 
gathering 
fishing 
Final 
Late 
Middle 
Early 
Initial 
Incipient 
F 
JOMON m 
E 
hunting i 
gathering 
fishing Incipient 
PALEOLITHIC 
hunting-gathering-fishing 
40 ANCIENT ROOTS/K YAMAURA AND H USHIRO 
3.5 Killer Whale (replica) 
The Ainu know the killer whale (orca) 
as the god of the sea (repun-kamuy). 
In the past orcas were both feared 
and revered as the most powerful 
predators in the ocean. Although they 
endangered fishermen, they also 
drove whales ashore into human 
hands. This sculpture was probably 
used for rituals involving this animal; it 
dates from the Middle Jomon period 
(3,000-2,000 b.c.) and was found at 
the Kikyo-2 site, Hakodate, Hokkaido. 
Effigies of bears, deer, and turtles 
also date to this period. (HACRIC) 
Jomon development is most easily traced 
through stylistic changes in its ceramic tradi¬ 
tion, which produced, at various stages, highly 
flamboyant and distinctive pottery types. 
How did the Jomon culture develop in 
Hokkaido? The origin of pottery in Japan has 
been argued for some time, and the debate— 
whether it began in Japan itself or in China or 
Siberia—has not been settled The Jomon 
culture is divided into six periods according to 
changes in ceramics: Incipient, Initial, Early, 
Middle, Late, and Final. It is unclear whether 
immigrants brought Jomon culture from 
Honshu or whether people who had lived in 
Hokkaido since the Pleistocene epoch ac¬ 
quired Jomon characteristics indirectly by 
trade and social contacts with Honshu peoples. 
In what way did the lifestyle of the 
Jomon people differ from that of the Pale¬ 
olithic people? Obviously, their lives were 
deeply affected by environmental changes 
occurring at the end of the Ice Age, most 
importantly from climate warming. In Hok¬ 
kaido this resulted in a change from taiga 
(forest-tundra) to coniferous forest and later 
to a mixed coniferous/broadleaf forest. In 
addition, rising sea levels caused the warm 
Tsushima current to flow into the Sea of 
Japan from the south, and the warmer sea- 
surface temperature brought heavier winter 
snowfalls and conditions that were generally 
warmer and more moist. 
In this environment the Jomon people 
continued gathering wild foods, hunted large 
game, and caught salmon, ocean fish, and sea 
mammals as in the Paleolithic (fig. 3.5), but 
their way of living changed significantly. 
Their more settled village life made it pos¬ 
sible to utilize pottery, and pithouses quickly 
replaced the briefly occupied hunting camps 
of Paleolithic times. Through time, these 
pithouse villages grew larger and cemeteries 
appeared (Watanabe 1990a). By Late Jomon, 
circular cemeteries 100 to 300 feet (30 to 40 
meters) in diameter surrounded by ten-foot- 
high earthen embankments were being used. 
Evidence of social stratification also appears, 
indicated by groups of individuals buried 
with elaborate grave goods found around the 
edge and outside the embankment, whereas 
those in the central locations had more 
simple interments. 
Although Jomon people utilized a 
hunter-gatherer economy like that of their 
Paleolithic predecessors, their subsistence 
activities diversified and became more re¬ 
gionally focused. Brown bears and deer took 
the place of Ice Age animals that had be¬ 
come extinct,- hunting of fur seals, sea lions, 
and common seals with toggling harpoons 
began in coastal areas,- and fishing with poles 
and nets and gathering of shellfish began. 
Gathering nuts, such as acorns and beechnuts, 
was another new activity that came with the 
appearance of mixed coniferous-broadleaf 
forests in Hokkaido. In short, the Jomon 
people devised a way of life in which they 
effectively utilized all available resources in 
the environment surrounding their villages. 
Just as there were regional differences 
among various Jomon groups in Honshu, 
Jomon culture sites in Hokkaido also did not 
have a single unified expression. Ceramics 
from the northern and southern parts of the 
Ishikari lowland were very different during 
the Early and Middle phases, whereas ceram¬ 
ics in southern Hokkaido were similar to 
those found in the Tohoku district of north¬ 
ern Honshu but differed from those from 
northern and eastern Hokkaido. During these 
periods, southwest Hokkaido is assumed to 
have had strong cultural ties with the Tohoku 
district through trade and marriage. 
Although many sites exhibit ties to 
Honshu, evidence of northern contacts and 
material exchange with cultures of the lower 
Amur River region via Sakhalin is seen at 
various stages. The strongest links appear to 
be during the Early Jomon period, when Sites 
41 3 / PREHISTORIC HOKKAIDO 
3.6 Ceramic Mask (replica) 
This Final Jomon (ca. 400 b.c.) ceramic 
mask was found in 1986 in almost per¬ 
fect condition near a Jomon cemetery 
in the Mamachi site, Chitose, Hokkaido. 
Photogrammetry reveals careful render¬ 
ing of the face, whose open mouth sug¬ 
gests a death figure or a shaman in 
trance. Edge perforations show that it 
was attached to something else, per¬ 
haps to a grave post. Death masks are 
found in Shang and Chou burials in 
China, and in Ipiutak Eskimo burials in 
Alaska; Koryak and other ethnographic 
groups of northeastern Asia used 
leather masks to cover the faces of the 
dead. (HMH; Japanese National Impor¬ 
tant Cultural Property) 
Owl Eyes 
This ceramic fragment (Final Jomon, 
1,000 b.c.) is one of the few archaeo¬ 
logical pieces that show the kingfisher 
owl, whose face is molded into the ves¬ 
sel rim. Although the owl’s role in 
Jomon culture is not known, the Ainu 
revere it as kotan-kor-kamuy (guardian 
of the village) and honor it in ceremony 
and ritual. This was found at the Bibi-4 
site, Chitose, Hokkaido. (HPGBE) 
3.9 Stone Rod (replica) 
This stone rod (Final Jomon, ca. 1,000- 
400 b.c.) was pecked from hard igneous 
rock; it comes from the Kashiwagi-B 
site, Eniwa, Hokkaido. Two rings are cut 
into one end and three in the other, and 
both ends are colored with red ocher. Its 
function is unknown, but lack of wear 
suggests that it had a ritual function. 
Ornamented clubs were used by Eski¬ 
mos for killing seals, and Ainu and 
Northwest Coast Indians had special 
decorated clubs for killing salmon for 
their first-salmon ceremonies. (HMH) 
in northern and eastern Hokkaido contain 
ceramics, lithics, bone, ivory, and antler 
artifacts (figs. 3.6-3.10) that are so similar to 
Amur region cultures that an actual migration 
of people is the most plausible explanation. 
ZoK.ii-Jomon Culture 
Around 300 B.C., agricultural people with iron 
tools began to move into southern Honshu 
and Kyushu from the continent. As this new 
culture, known as Yayoi, expanded, its agri¬ 
cultural techniques were adopted by the Jomon 
people, and this agricultural society gradually 
expanded into northern Honshu By 100 B.C., 
Yayoi culture appeared in Aomori prefecture, 
across the strait from Hokkaido. Yayoi led 
directly to the initial stages of Japan's first state- 
level society, which emerged in the Yamato 
region in southwestern Honshu (today's Nara 
prefecture) at the end of the third century as 
social stratification and regional integration 
progressed. This culture is called Kofun 
(Tumulus) after its practice of burying promi¬ 
nent individuals in large mounds. These 
changes were not immediately felt in Hokkaido, 
where a northern variation and an evolved 
stage of the earlier Jomon tradition developed,- 
it is known either by the compound Zoku- 
Jomon, which recognizes its regional charac¬ 
ter because "Zoku" means northern in Japa¬ 
nese, or by the term Epi-Jomon, which 
points to its later, modified nature. 
Several hypotheses have been presented 
3.9 
to explain why Yayoi culture was not intro¬ 
duced to Hokkaido. One posits that its eco¬ 
nomic foundation, rice farming, could not be 
practiced there because of the harsh northern 
environment, whereas another claims there 
was no need for rice farming because the 
hunting-and-gathering society established in 
Hokkaido was already economically self- 
sufficient. Both theories are probably correct. 
Epi-Jomon culture did not simply re¬ 
place the Jomon hunter-gatherer society, 
for some characteristics particular to early 
Epi-Jomon tradition have been observed 
in southwestern Hokkaido where they are 
recognized as Esan culture. Esan ceramics 
show similarities to the Yayoi earthenware 
found in northern Tohoku, and its people 
used iron knives brought from that area. They 
also carved spoons with images of bears and 
sea animals reminiscent of the carvings seen 
on Ainu ritual prayer sticks (ikupasuy), and 
some ceramics have bearlike images, suggest¬ 
ing a special religious and ceremonial interest 
in this species. 
Fishing techniques also advanced, and 
new types of toggling harpoons (figs. 3.12- 
3.14) made from iron were developed for 
sea-mammal hunting. These changes can be 
explained by trading relationships with the 
42 ANCIENT ROOTS / K. YAMAURA AND H. USHIRO 
3.11 Bear-Effigy Vessel (replica) 
Effigies of animals have been found in 
many Okhotsk sites, whose pithouses 
sometimes have ritual altars. This bear 
head (ca. a.d. 800) was carved on a 
large wooden bowl that was carbon¬ 
ized in a house fire; it was recovered 
from the Matsunorikawa Kitagishi 
site, Rausu, Hokkaido. The presence 
of a design resembling the Ainu itokpa 
(ancestral mark) of repun-kor-kamuy, 
the killer whale and god of the sea, 
suggests the vessel had a ceremonial 
function. Similar effigy vessels (with¬ 
out itokpa) were used by Northwest 
Coast Indians. (RTBE) 
new Yayoi agricultural society of northern 
Tohoku that provided these Hokkaido people 
not only with iron tools but with rice and 
other southern products that were exchanged 
for sea-mammal products and other valuable 
northern materials. 
Epi-Jomon influence from Hokkaido 
extended south into the Tohoku district of 
northern Honshu, and by A.D. 400-500, dur¬ 
ing its late phase, its influence is seen even in 
the Sendai region near the northern boundary 
of Kofun (Tumulus) culture. This has been 
interpreted as evidence of Epi-Jomon interest 
in obtaining goods from the Kofun culture, 
which was advancing northward. Epi-Jomon 
people also obtained goods from the Kinki 
(Kyoto-Osaka) area, including swords, armor, 
harnesses, precious-metal products, and glass. 
Okhotsk Culture 
In A.D. 400-500 an important new devel¬ 
opment occurred with the appearance of 
Okhotsk culture in southern Sakhalin 
(Yamaura 1998). Okhotsk people engaged 
in sea-mammal hunting, shallow- and deep¬ 
water fishing, as well as hunting of land ani¬ 
mals,- they also raised pigs—a rather unusual 
practice for a maritime-hunting society. The 
techniques used to hunt sea animals originated 
with the Epi-Jomon culture of Hokkaido, 
whereas pig farming was introduced from the 
lower Amur River region and China. Okhotsk 
ceramics show a complex mix of Hokkaido, 
Sakhalin, and Amur River styles. 
These people spread from southern 
Sakhalin to the Okhotsk coast of eastern 
Hokkaido and further east and north into 
the Kuriles during A.D. 600-700. A major 
stimulus for this expansion seems related to 
political disorder in the lower Amur River 
region, resulting from the imposition of a 
tributary system by the Manchurian Sui 
and Tang dynasties and their allies in the 
lower Amur. Okhotsk culture had difficulty 
advancing along the Sea of Japan side of 
< 3.8 Ceramic Figurine (replica) 
Jomon ceramic figurines reveal ethno¬ 
graphic information through hairstyles, 
clothing, and garment designs. This 
figurine (Final Jomon, ca. 700-400 b.c.) 
from the Motowanishi site, Muroran, 
Hokkaido, establishes that Jomon 
clothing utilized spiral-band ornamen¬ 
tation at the base and shoulders of 
their garments similar to the morew 
patterns produced by Ainu seam¬ 
stresses. Such figurines were probably 
used for protection against illness, 
infertility, and the dangers of child¬ 
birth. (HMH) 
3.10 Pedestal Vessel 
This elaborate Epi-Jomon (ca. 300 b.c.) 
ceramic vessel from the Minamikawa 
site, Setana-cho, Hokkaido, has the 
shape and design of Final Jomon ritual 
vessels. The open-work pedestal may 
have facilitated its use for ceremonial 
cooking. (HMH) 
43 
3/ PREHISTORIC HOKKAIDO 
3.12, 3.13, 3.14 Fishhook and 
Harpoons (replicas) 
Maritime hunting and fishing required 
specialized equipment. This hook and 
the engraved toggling harpoon with an 
agate blade were found at the Epi- 
Jomon (ca. a.d. 1) Esan site in 
Hokkaido. The latter was used for hunt¬ 
ing sea mammals and swordfish. The 
barbed harpoon with the serrated base 
is made of deer bone and dates to the 
Okhotsk period, ca. a.d. 500, from 
Kafukai-A, Repun, Hokkaido. Because a 
small fish is engraved on its base, it 
was probably used to harpoon salmon 
or trout. Eskimos used such decora¬ 
tions as a mark of respect that en¬ 
hanced a weapon’s power. (HMH) 
Hokkaido and into the Hokkaido interior 
because these areas were already occupied by 
Epi-Jomon and Satsumon people. Nonethe¬ 
less, they did enter Japan's northern territories 
and in most places found sea-mammal hunting 
more productive than raising pigs, with the 
result that sea-mammal hunting intensified 
(figs. 3.13, 3.14, 3.18, 3.19). Advancing mari¬ 
time capabilities also resulted in expanded 
trade contacts in which sea-mammal products 
were exchanged for Japanese swords and 
knives through Satsumon intermediaries and 
for bronze ornaments and glass beads from 
northeastern China through contacts in the 
lower Amur. 
Okhotsk people, who may have been 
the first permanent residents of the Kurile 
Islands, spread throughout the chain, where 
their pithouse villages are found in protected 
bays and coves, and even reached the north¬ 
ernmost islands and perhaps even southern 
Kamchatka. In addition to fish and sea-mam¬ 
mal bones, their sites sometimes contain 
reindeer bones and antler, indicating contact 
or trade with the predecessors of the native 
Itel'men peoples of southern Kamchatka, for 
reindeer are not known to have occupied the 
Kurile Islands. 
Okhotsk pithouses were either pentago¬ 
nal or hexagonal in shape and had a diameter 
of about 30 to 35 feet (10 meters). Upon ex¬ 
cavation, a deposit of bear and sea-mammal 
cranial bones is often found inside the back 
wall opposite the entrance. These bones are 
3.17 Wide-Mouth 
Vessel 
This pot (ca. a.d. 800) 
was reassembled from 
broken fragments found 
at Futatsuiwa site, 
Abashiri, Hokkaido. It is 
typical of vessels found at 
Hokkaido Okhotsk sites with 
a flat bottom, plain body, and 
wavy lines around the rim. 
Okhotsk was a maritime culture 
that appeared in Hokkaido from 
the north, displacing the previous 
Epi-Jomon culture. (HMH) 
interpreted as evidence that the residents 
conducted "sending ceremonies" as did many 
northern cultures in which the spirits of killed 
animals were returned to their home worlds 
with special rituals (figs. 3.15a, b, 3.16). De¬ 
tailed examination of the bear skulls (tooth 
wear, muscle attachments) shows that these 
animals were probably raised in captivity, as 
was the case in the Ainu bear-sending cer¬ 
emony and similar ceremonies conducted by 
Amur-area cultures. Several hundred years 
later, around A.D. 1000, the Okhotsk culture 
appears to have been absorbed or replaced by 
Satsumon culture, which moved into their 
coastal territories in Hokkaido. 
Satsumon Culture 
The Satsumon culture first developed in Hok¬ 
kaido around A.D. 700-800 (Yokoyama 1990). 
The ceramics of this period reflect contempo¬ 
rary Honshu production methods, and other 
aspects of Honshu influence can be seen. 
Hokkaido Satsumon people lived in square¬ 
shaped pithouses with fireplaces, used 
spindles and spindle whorls, and built round 
cemeteries like those known in the northern 
part of Tohoku,- there is little doubt that 
southwestern Hokkaido, including the 
Ishikari lowland in southern Hokkaido, was 
strongly influenced from the south at this 
44 ANCIENT ROOTS/ K. YAM AURA AND H. USHIRO 
3.15a 3.15b 
3.15a, b, 3.16 
Effigy Spoons (replicas) 
Two of these spoons, from the Epi- 
Jomon Esan site, are of bone and 
have a killer whale and a bear on their 
handles; they date from ca. a.d. 1. The 
spoon below, decorated with a bear 
with outstretched paws, is from Usu- 
10 in southern Hokkaido and is made 
of antler. All were probably used in 
animal-related rituals; the bear spoon 
suggests use in an iyomante (bear¬ 
sending) ceremony. Siberian peoples 
used similar effigy spoons to feed 
spirits until modern times. (HMH) 
time, probably by actual migrations from 
Tohoku that were themselves induced by 
expansion policies of the Yamato Imperial 
Court. Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan) (720) 
indicate that fortified stockades were built in 
A.D. 647 and 648 on the Sea of Japan side of 
northwestern Honshu and that three naval 
expeditions were sent along the Sea of Japan 
coast to Hokkaido, beginning in A.D. 658. 
Meanwhile, on the Pacific coast, relics 
thought to belong to an administrative office 
of the Yamato nation—a stockade or castle 
dating to about A.D. 700—were discovered in 
the Sendai plains. These stockades were built 
by the immigrants themselves who were 
brought in to secure food and to fight as sol¬ 
diers. This expansion of territory and the 
accompanying immigration policy encour¬ 
aged northward movement of local residents 
from northern Tohoku and were major factors 
contributing to the establishment of Hok¬ 
kaido Satsumon culture. 
Hokkaido Satsumon culture, which was 
influenced by its sister culture in Honshu, also 
brought agricultural practices, including culti¬ 
vation of barnyard millet and wheat, to Hok¬ 
kaido for the first time. With this develop¬ 
ment, trade with Honshu became even more 
important in order to acquire iron tools, fab¬ 
rics, rice, and sake in exchange for local prod¬ 
ucts, including the meat and hides of bear, 
deer, seal, and fur seal, as well as kelp, salmon, 
and other materials. 
Such active trade naturally promoted 
social stratification,- the emergence of tumulus 
graves venerating the memory and power of 
local and regional chiefs is evidence of this 
phenomenon. Their prominence must have 
been enhanced by the growth of trade net¬ 
works in which Satsumon peoples exchanged 
manufactured goods from Honshu for 
Okhotsk-culture raw rtiaterial products from 
Hokkaido and the Sea of Okhotsk, and for 
Chinese manufactured goods via lower Amur 
middlemen. Eventually this relationship re¬ 
sulted in the absorption or replacement of 
Okhotsk peoples by their Satsumon trading 
relatives to the south. 
Post-Satsumon Culture 
By A.D. 900-1000, a major change took place 
in northern Tohoku. As agriculture grew 
more efficient, people released from direct 
food-production activities gradually shifted 
into the growing crafts-production market, 
and men began making wooden implements, 
lacquerware, iron goods, and pottery to sell. 
About the same time, the power of the samu¬ 
rai class that had originated in southern 
Honshu reached the north of Tohoku and 
their control over local residents was tight¬ 
ened,- production of export goods to Hok¬ 
kaido became more organized, and the life of 
Satsumon people changed accordingly. 
Then, suddenly, about A.D. 1200, production 
of ceramics ceased, and housing styles 
changed from pithouses to surface dwellings 
resembling those of the Ainu culture as 
known from ethnographic studies. Although 
an incipient form of iyomante was present in 
the Okhotsk culture, traces of this ceremony 
for sending back spirits of bears, which has 
become central to the ethnic identity of the 
Ainu, have not been found in Satsumon sites. 
This important link between Satsumon and 
Ainu remains to be made. 
Japanese migration to Hokkaido accel¬ 
erated about A.D. 1 300 (Kikuchi 1984,- 
Kikuchi and Fukuda 1989,- Kitagamae 1991). 
Documents show that Hokkaido was a de¬ 
portation site for criminals, who were sent 
there by the Kamakura Shogunate, and it is 
known from the Okawa ruins of Yoichi city 
that fishermen and merchants began residing 
there, although perhaps only seasonally, 
around A.D. 1200-1300. During the 1400s, 
Tosaminato in Honshu's Aomori prefecture 
became a port of trade with Hokkaido. His¬ 
torical literature as well as archaeological 
evidence indicate that in the 1500s samurai 
interested in the commercial potential of the 
area built large establishments stretching 
from Tsugaru Strait to the Sea of Japan coast 
in southwestern Hokkaido, and military con¬ 
frontation between the Japanese who had 
moved into Hokkaido and the Ainu people 
accelerated, leading in A.D. 1457 to the Battle 
3/ PREHISTORIC HOKKAIDO 45 
3.19 Engraved Needlecase (replica) 
Prehistoric evidence of large whales 
being hunted is often difficult to find, 
but this Okhotsk-period birdbone 
needlecase (ca. a.d. 650) leaves little 
to the imagination. A boat with six pad- 
dlers and a standing harpooner is being 
towed by a large animal—almost cer¬ 
tainly a whale—with lines attached to 
two harpoons protruding from its side. 
This artifact was found at the Bentento 
site, Nemuro, Hokkaido. (HMH) 
of Koshamain, the first significant revolt of 
Hokkaido Ainu against the Japanese (Kudo 
1989; K. Tsuboi 1986,- Y. Suzuki 1996). 
During this period of increasing contact 
between Hokkaido and Honshu, Ainu con¬ 
tacts with the Asian continent to the north 
also intensified. According to Chinese 
records, the Ainu fought several times in the 
I 300s with the forces of the Yuan dynasty on 
the lower Amur and Sakhalin. The battles 
apparently began when the Yuan military 
responded to the request for military assis¬ 
tance by the Nivkhi (former Cilyak) tribe 
living in Amur River delta, where Ainu traded 
Honshu goods for local commodities and 
Chinese trade goods including silk. A recipro¬ 
cal trade from the Amur into Sakhalin and 
Hokkaido was also conducted by the Santan 
peoples of the lower Amur. This exchange of 
goods through Hokkaido had a substantial 
impact on Ainu society that is reflected in 
hundreds of fortified stockades (chasbi) the 
3.18 Sea-Otter Figurine (replica) 
Sea otters were present in the Kuriles 
until they were hunted to extinction by 
the Russians in the mid-1800s. Recov¬ 
ered from Tokoro Fort, Hokkaido, this 
sea otter (ca. a.d. 700) which was 
carved in the Okhotsk period from a 
large canine tooth and bone remains of 
a brown bear, indicates that these ani¬ 
mals were found in northern Hokkaido 
waters more than a millennium ago. 
Aleut hunters tied similar carvings of 
sea otters inside their kayaks to help 
protect them from misfortune. (HMH) 
Ainu built around this time to provide emer¬ 
gency refuge from raids and attacks from 
Japanese and northerners. Apparently trade 
disputes and heightened tension had become 
the social norm of the times. 
Conclusion 
Archaeological and historical data present a 
fairly clear picture of developments in Hok¬ 
kaido over the 2,000 years since the begin¬ 
ning of the Epi-Jomon period. By contrast, 
little is known about the preceding 20,000 
years of Paleolithic and Microlithic occupa¬ 
tions or about the origins of the 8,000-year- 
long Jomon period. Nevertheless, we do 
know that the Jomon period was character¬ 
ized by neither cultural stagnation nor bio¬ 
logical isolation. Jomon sites in Hokkaido 
contain ample evidence of artifact types, raw 
46 
materials, and cultural complexes—including 
movements of people—that show influence 
from or have been imported from Honshu or 
the Russian Maritime Provinces. 
Biological mixing between Honshu 
Yayoi and early Epi-Jomon peoples is also 
indicated, and during the formation of the 
Satsumon culture, contact with the people 
called Ernishi, who were an Ainu or Ainu- 
related group in northern Tohoku known in 
early Japanese written records, must have 
occurred. Contacts with the Satsumon and 
Okhotsk cultures also introduced population 
diversity in the region. It is by this process 
that the Ainu physical type, as it is known 
archaeologically and historically, emerged. 
The ethnic image of the Ainu as pre¬ 
sented in the Ainu-e depictions and ethnogra¬ 
phy—of a hairy, independent, hunting and 
gathering people who practiced animal spirit¬ 
sending rituals and had a distinctive style of 
clothing and artifact ornamentation—seems 
to have emerged circa A.D. 1200-1 300. Al¬ 
though there is as yet no direct evidence from 
this period for existence of the Ainu iyomante 
ceremony, the fact that sending rituals were 
practiced with bears and other animals by the 
Jomon and Epi-Jomon people suggests that 
evidence linking early cultures with the his¬ 
toric Ainu will eventually be revealed. 
Nevertheless, it is certain that Ainu cul¬ 
ture was influenced heavily during its forma¬ 
tion process by northern tribes through con¬ 
tacts with the people in Sakhalin and the lower 
Amur River region. Meanwhile, development 
of the Japanese culture on Honshu affected 
the formation of the Ainu culture as well; in 
particular, the ripple effects from political and 
economic development in Japanese Honshu 
were strong forces of change. With this under¬ 
standing of their development, the Ainu 
people are in the process of reaffirming their 
identity as known from circa A.D. 1200-1 300 
based on a heritage of more than 10,000 years 
in Hokkaido and neighboring regions. 
ANCIENT ROOTS / K. YAMAURA AND H. LISHIRO 
4/Ainu Ties 
with Ancient 
Cultures of 
Northeast 
Asia 
Toshihiko Kikuchi 
The Ainu and their ancestors 
who lived in northern Japan, 
Hokkaido, the Kuriles, and the 
southern Sea of Okhotsk area 
have occupied a region that has been a geo¬ 
graphic and ecological border zone for thou¬ 
sands of years. Anyone who has experienced 
a near-subtropical Tokyo summer and a 
Siberian Sakhalin winter (fig. 4.1) can appre¬ 
ciate the extreme climatic and environmental 
diversity that characterizes this maritime East 
Asian zone and can more easily envision the 
power that geography has played on the 
history of the Japanese archipelago In effect, 
the Ainu homelands straddle three worlds: 
temperate East Asia, the eastern Siberia taiga, 
and the maritime western Pacific and its pro¬ 
ductive peripheral seas, the Seas of Japan and 
Okhotsk. In many respects, however, the 
Ainu homelands are unique unto themselves, 
and their environmental and cultural histories 
ronments, and other North Pacific cultures 
have had a strong influence on the founda¬ 
tions of Ainu culture. 
The northern orientation of the Ainu is 
most fundamentally expressed in its geo¬ 
graphical relationships. The islands of Hok¬ 
kaido and Sakhalin, separated by Soya 
Strait, are only twenty-six miles (forty-two 
kilometers) apart. Sakhalin in turn is sepa¬ 
rated from the Asian mainland at Tatar near 
the mouth of the Amur River by only 12.5 
miles (twenty kilometers). Moreover, Tatar 
Strait is extremely shallow and is covered 
by floating ice during much of the winter, 
which makes it easy to cross. Migrations and 
dispersals of animals and plants are known to 
have reached Hokkaido across these land 
bridges, and in historic times various ethnic 
groups in Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Amur 
region maintained contacts across these 
narrow bodies of water. Archaeological 
4.1 Winter in a Sakhalin Village 
(Pilsudski, USNM 047414) 
reflect this transitional status. Ancient history, 
revealed through archaeological remains, 
clearly shows the influence of southern cul¬ 
tures on Hokkaido, whereas the northern 
Ainu territories in Sakhalin and the Kuriles 
have a prehistory closely linked to the Amur 
River region, Siberia, and Kamchatka (S. Kato 
1985,- Kikuchi 1984,- Kikuchi and Fukuda 
1989,- Kikuchi 1995). In this essay we con¬ 
sider the relationship of the Ainu and their 
ancestors to these northern regions. Indeed, 
the Ainu themselves feel a strong pull in this 
direction and see their culture as closely 
related to the cultures of North Pacific 
peoples, even the North American Eskimos 
and Northwest Coast tribes. As we will see, 
the northern resources (especially salmon, sea 
mammals, and bears), the North Pacific envi- 
evidence demonstrates that this connection 
was also active in ancient times and that 
Asian mainland and Sakhalin cultures had 
important impacts on the formation of an¬ 
cient cultures in Hokkaido, including the 
Ainu. Influences have been noted from as far 
west as the Trans-Baikal region,- from the 
south, cultures of the Sungari River were 
introduced. And archaeological work is now 
beginning to reveal the impact of cultures of 
Siberia and the Eskimo region. These influ¬ 
ences contributed to the formation of vari¬ 
ous cultures in Hokkaido that developed 
features distinct from the ancient cultures of 
Honshu. Finds indicating the ancient linkage 
between Hokkaido and northeast Asia have 
been discovered especially from the Pale¬ 
olithic era and in Okhotsk-culture sites. 
47 4/ANCIENT NORTHEAST ASIA 
4.2 Microlithic Industries 
of Siberia and East Asia 
The Paleolithic Period 
Paleolithic-era remains from Hokkaido, 
dating from 20,000 to 12,000 years ago, are 
divided into three chronological and cultural 
stages (H. Kimura 1997). Sites of the first 
stage, which are assumed to be about 20,000 
years old, include Shukubai Sankakuyama 
of Chitose city, Shimaki in Kamishihoro 
township, and Seo in Sarabetsu village. At 
Sankakuyama and Shimaki, knife-shaped 
tools similar to ones found in Honshu sites 
of the same period have been discovered. 
In Shimaki and Seo, microblade cores and 
boat-shaped stone implements characteristic 
of far-off sites on the Yenesei, Angara, and 
Lena rivers in northern Siberia have been 
found. These discoveries suggest that by 
20,000 years ago Hokkaido shared cultural 
links with both Honshu and northeast Asia. 
During the second phase of the Pale¬ 
olithic era, which began about 17,000 years 
ago, the sites of Horokazawa 1 at Shirataki 
and Shirataki 13 were occupied. Large blades, 
boat-shaped stone implements, and Horuka- 
type burins (chisel-like tools for carving bone 
and antler) have been found at these sites; 
similar stone tools have been discovered in 
Ustinovka in the Maritime Provinces of the 
Russian Far East (Primor'ye) and at Sokol' in 
Sakhalin (fig. 4.2). These finds suggest that 
during this period Hokkaido was part of the 
same culture zone as those regions. 
The third stage dates from about 15,000 
to 12,000 years ago, with Shirataki 32 and 33 
of Shirataki village being important sites. The 
microblades, wedge-shaped microcores, and 
Angara burins found here are similar to those 
found in Diuktai-culture sites (Mochanov 
1980), which date from 16,000 to 12,000 years 
ago in the Russian Aldan River region and are 
widely distributed in northeast Asia, ranging 
from the Yenesei, Angara, and Lena river basins 
to Baikal, eastern Mongolia, Kamchatka, and 
Sakhalin (fig. 4.3). During this period people 
from interior northeast Asia migrated into new 
lands, including Hokkaido, in response to the 
warming climate and subsequent changes in 
animal distribution and the rise of the sea level. 
The Mesolithic Period 
Toward the end of the Ice Age, people learned 
to develop new technologies that provided 
them with light and more efficient weapons. 
These changes usher in the Mesolithic period, 
which in Hokkaido dates from 12,000 to 8,000 
years ago Its characteristic stone tools have 
tanged points and probably were used for arm¬ 
ing arrows. Similar points have also been found 
in Tatekawa of Rankoshi, Tachikarushunai of 
Engara, and elsewhere. Such lithics character¬ 
ize the Osipovka culture of the Russian Mari- 
times, dated from 10,000 to 8,000 years ago, 
and have also been found in Sakhalin, suggest¬ 
ing a continuation of the types of cultural links 
found from Hokkaido throughout much of 
northeastern Asia during the Mesolithic era. 
The Neolithic Period: 
Jomon Culture 
Throughout Japan, including Hokkaido, the 
culture of the Neolithic period (Chiyo 1984a, 
b) is called Jomon (fig. 3.2). Blade arrowheads 
have been found in 7,000-year-old Early 
Jomon sites. Similar arrowheads have been 
discovered in Neolithic sites in many areas of 
northeast Asia, and blade arrowheads are 
characteristic of the Novopetrovka culture 
(7,500 to 6,000 years ago) in the middle 
Amur River basin. This widespread dispersion 
of similar artifacts suggests that people who 
48 ANCIENT ROOTS / T KIKUCHI 
4.3 Upper-Paleolithic Artifacts 
from Sakhalin 
This assemblage of tools excavated 
in 1973 by Valerii Shubin from Takoie 
II in southern Sakhalin has been 
dated to 16,000-14,000 b.c. Its coni¬ 
cal and wedge-shaped cores and 
unifacial points are the kind of as¬ 
semblage that could have been a pro¬ 
totype for American Paleo-lndian cul¬ 
tures of 10,000-8,000 B.c. The 
brown obsidian characteristic of 
Shirataki in eastern Hokkaido indi¬ 
cates early contacts between peoples 
in Sakhalin and Hokkaido. (SKRM) 
4.4 Late-Neolithic Artifacts 
from Sakhalin 
This collection from Nevelsk II. Imchin 
II, and Sadovnik II illustrates Neolithic- 
period artifacts from Sakhalin Island. 
Peaked-rim ceramics resemble early 
Jomon styles and points show careful 
bifacial technology. Although many 
different types of harpoons have been 
recovered from these sites, none 
resemble those found in other North 
Pacific types. (SKRM) 
utilized blade arrowheads spread across 
northeast Asia into Hokkaido. Late Middle 
Jomon culture (4,500 to 4,000 years ago) in 
Hokkaido is characterized by Hokuto-type 
pottery. Similar pottery has been found at 
the Imchin Site II in northern Sakhalin, 
which suggests that cultural exchanges took 
place between Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the 
lower Amur in this period as well (fig. 4.6). 
Small fragments of iron tools have 
been discovered in the ruins of tombs from 
the Final Jomon period (200-100 B.C.) at the 
Kaizukacho 1-Chome site of Kushiro City 
in Hokkaido. By the last stage of the Jomon 
culture, 3,000 to 2,000 years ago, the Amur 
River basin and the Maritime Provinces of 
the Russian Far East had already entered the 
Early Iron Age, and various types of iron 
tools and weapons were being used. Many 
items crafted from iron have been found in 
sites of the Uril culture (eleventh-seventh 
centuries B.C.) and the Pol'tse culture (seventh 
century B.C.—fourth centuries A.D.) in the 
lower and middle Amur River basin and 
in Yankovskii (ninth-fifth centuries B.C.) 
and the Krounovka cultures (fifth-seventh 
centuries B.C.) in the southern Maritime 
Provinces of the Russian Far East It is 
thought that the iron tools found in the 
tombs of Kaizukacho in Kushiro City were 
brought by the people of the Pol'tse culture. 
Epi-Jomon Culture 
In Hokkaido, Jomon culture continued to 
follow its own trajectory for nearly a millen¬ 
nium after it was replaced in Honshu by the 
Yayoi culture, which advanced north gradu¬ 
ally as its rice-agriculture lifestyle usurped 
the previous Jomon hunting-and-gathering 
economy. This Jomon "extension" culture in 
Hokkaido is called Epi-Jomon, although 
Japanese archaeologists have sometimes 
used the term Zoku, which means northern, 
to characterize it. Epi-Jomon culture dates to 
the first to seventh centuries A.D., corre¬ 
sponding to the Middle Yayoi period of 
Honshu. Iron knives have been found in 
tombs of the Rausuchou Llebetsugawa ruin, 
which date from the early Epi-Jomon period 
(first to second centuries A.D.), and small 
traces of silver were found on fragments of 
an ornamented knife case. A number of 
silver ornaments have also been found 
dating to this period in tombs of nomads in 
the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, 
Shanxi Province, and in Heilongjiang 
4/ANCIENT NORTHEAST ASIA 49 
4.5 Lacquered Comb (replica) 
Early use of lacquer Is shown in this 
ornamented Late Jomon comb (ca. 
2,000-1,000 b.c.) from the Bibi-4 site, 
Chitose, Hokkaido. It must have been 
used both for combing and decorating 
hair. Lacquer technology, based on 
building up repeated applications of 
pigmented sap from certain trees, be¬ 
came a long-standing artistic tradition 
in East Asia. (HMH) 
4.6, 4.7 Evocative Women 
Small ceramic figurines served as 
house deities or charms to protect 
women from disease and the dangers 
of childbirth and were used for thou¬ 
sands of years in northeast Asia. The 
figure (4.6) with the swept-back fore¬ 
head and Asian features was called 
“Nefertiti of the Amur" by its excavator, 
A. P. Okladnikov, and dates to ca. 
4,000 b.c. Her Final Jomon companion 
(fig. 4.7) of a later millennium (1,000- 
300 b.c.), from Ohnakayama Site 
(Nanae, Hokkaido), wears a necklace, 
reveals something of her hairdo, and 
also seems to have Asian features. 
(HMH; MIHPP Kn-63-48090, replica) 
4.9 Needlecase with Geometric 
Engraving (replica) 
Found at Kafukai-a site, Rebun, Hok¬ 
kaido, this Okhotsk birdbone needle 
case (ca. a.d. 500) has a carefully ex¬ 
ecuted geometric design whose motifs 
evolve from panel to panel. It not only 
resembles the needlecases of the 
Kurile Ainu but also those made by 
Aleut and Central Yup'ik Eskimos of 
the Bering Sea coast. (HMH) 
Province in China, so it seems likely that silver 
reached Hokkaido by trade with the Amur 
River region. 
Okhotsk Culture 
The formation of Satsumon culture was influ¬ 
enced by the Kofun-period culture of Honshu, 
which coincided with the final period of the 
Hokkaido Epi-Jomon culture,- many scholars 
believe that the Satsumon culture (seventh- 
thirteenth centuries) is the ancient culture of 
the Ainu. From the latter half of the Epi-Jomon 
period and during the Satsumon-culture period 
(fourth-thirteenth centuries) people of the 
Okhotsk culture lived on the east coast of 
Hokkaido on the Sea of Okhotsk (figs. 4.8, 
4.9). According to studies of human bones 
excavated from burials, Okhotsk people were 
of a different biological group than the Ainu. 
Sites of the Okhotsk culture have pro¬ 
duced various types of iron-, silver-, and 
bronzeware (fig. 4.8), which have been found 
in sites of the Mohe culture (fourth-ninth 
centuries) in the lower and middle Amur re¬ 
gion, in the succeeding Jurchen culture, and 
in the Tongren culture (fifth-tenth centuries) 
in the lower and middle Sungari River basin. 
In short, metal products of the Okhotsk culture 
came from the Amur and Sungari River regions. 
There are various theories about the 
origin of the Okhotsk culture. This author be¬ 
lieves that Okhotsk derives from an ancient 
culture of the lower Amur River, when one of this 
region's ethnographic peoples, the Nivkhi (previ¬ 
ously known as Gilyak), formed a distinct culture 
in the third century in Sakhalin. The range of the 
Okhotsk culture extended to Hokkaido when 
probable ancestors of the Nivkhi people mi¬ 
grated into that region about 1,000 years ago. 
According to the ethnographic literature 
of Japan and Russia written after the seven¬ 
teenth century, Ainu people lived in Sakhalin 
and the Kuriles, in addition to Hokkaido, 
although the date of their arrival has rarely 
been discussed. Based on studies by this au¬ 
thor, Ainu people advanced into Sakhalin in 
the middle of the thirteenth century and to 
the Kuriles from the fourteenth to fifteenth 
centuries,- as a result of this movement, the 
Ainu in the historic period inhabited southern 
Sakhalin, Hokkaido, and the Kuriles. 
Ainu Origins: A Northern View 
Scholars have presented various theories 
about the origin and lineage of Ainu people 
(Arutiunov, Ishida, this volume). To under¬ 
stand their origin it is necessary to know that 
the ancient culture of northeast Asia extended 
to Hokkaido from the Paleolithic to the 
Okhotsk period. The repeated influence of 
50 ANCIENT ROOTS /T KIKUCHI 
4.8 Bronze Belt Ornaments (replica) 
This set of bronze belt ornaments (ca. 
a.d. 700) was found at an Okhotsk 
site at Menashitomari in northern 
Hokkaido. Belts with similar decora¬ 
tions were used for curing rituals by 
Siberian shamans from the mainland, 
where bronze technology was consid¬ 
ered powerful. These ornaments 
probably found their way to Hokkaido 
for a similar purpose. (HMH) 
4.11 Mixed-Race Family of Sakhalin 
Bronislaw Pilsudski's notes indicate 
that this Sakhalin family had Ainu, 
Russian, and Ul'chi roots. By the time 
Pilsudski arrived in 1903, a penal 
colony had been established on Sa¬ 
khalin and with it had come an influx 
of Russian “outlaws" and political 
exiles sent to populate this newly ac¬ 
quired territory. Sakhalin’s geographic 
position in the most populated seg¬ 
ment of the vast North Pacific Rim 
kept it at the center of human move¬ 
ments and change. (NAA 98-10365) 
'if i 
northeast Asian cultures on Hokkaido brought 
stone tools, metal products, and other materi¬ 
als (including Santan silk robes in the early 
modern period) to Hokkaido (Harrison 1954,- 
Tezuka 1998). Those items probably were 
introduced both by actual movement of peoples 
(migrations, casual contact, slaving, and genetic 
contacts) as well as by trade. The Ainu physical 
type was gradually formed through interracial 
marriages with the residents of Hokkaido and 
the northern (Okhotsk) peoples who were 
moving into the region. Hokkaido was also 
constantly influenced by the cultures of 
Honshu throughout the periods of its Paleo¬ 
lithic, Jomon, Epi-Jomon, and Satsumon 
cultures,- nonetheless, it 
would appear that the 
ancient cultures of north¬ 
east Asia had a major 
impact on Hokkaido 
people and cultures, and 
the Ainu ethnic group 
must have formed in part 
f through contacts with 
.VAT those northern immi¬ 
grants. 
Recent political 
events have had their 
own influence in this 
regard. After many hundreds—if not thou¬ 
sands—of years of interaction, Ainu people 
have been barred from contact with their 
northern neighbors since 1945 when the 
Russian government expelled most of the 
Ainu residing on Sakhalin to Hokkaido and 
evacuated Ainu from the southern Kuriles. 
Since then, Hokkaido has become the only 
remaining Ainu "homeland" and the keeper 
of Ainu traditions from Sakhalin, Hokkaido, 
and the Kuriles (fig. 4.11). Travel and com¬ 
munication with other Sakhalin and Amur- 
area groups ceased, and many Ainu ethno¬ 
logical treasures that had been collected in 
the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries re¬ 
mained inaccessible in the Sakhalin Regional 
Museum in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Japanese 
contacts with Sakhalin are beginning to be 
restored, and many Sakhalin Ainu now living 
in Hokkaido would like someday to return 
to visit their old homelands and see the 
artifact collections and records that docu¬ 
ment their past. Archaeological exchanges 
are also now taking place, and excavations 
conducted by Japanese and Russian archae¬ 
ologists have the potential to resolve the 
many questions still remaining about Ainu 
origins and their ancient northern connec¬ 
tions. 
4.10 Sakhalin Okhotsk Assemblage 
Okhotsk, a northern culture with a 
strong sea mammal-hunting 
economy, employed a technology 
that was both efficient and beauti¬ 
fully manufactured. This group of 
implements from the Solov’evka and 
Promyslovoe II sites in southern Sa¬ 
khalin reveals exquisite workmanship 
in the antler and bone harpoons. The 
tiny seal in the middle of the picture 
is evidence of forms and modeling 
that seem organic and alive. (SKRM 
5081-82, 5395, 3756) 
4/ANCIENT NORTHEAST ASIA 51 
Ancient 
People of 
the North 
Pacific Rim: 
Ainu Biological 
Relationships with 
Their Neighbors 
Hajime Ishida 
5.1 Ainu Woman on the Amur 
To make full descriptions of cultures 
and their history, early anthropologists 
gathered biological as well as cultural, 
linguistic, and archaeological data on 
cultures they studied. Photographic 
records, considered crucial for docu¬ 
menting “racial types,’’ included both 
full-face and profile views; body mea¬ 
surements and head and bust casts 
were sometimes taken as well. (NAA 
98-10380) 
52 
IT IS NO EXAGGERATION TO SAY THAT THE 
search for human history on the islands 
of Japan—in other words, Japanese 
anthropology—began with studies of 
the Ainu and questions about their origins. 
During the Meiji era (around the end of the 
nineteenth century), scholars debated 
whether people of the Japanese Stone Age, 
i.e., the Jomon people, were Ainu. Shogoro 
Tsuboi (1 887) asserted that the "Koropok- 
guru," as the indigenous population of Hok¬ 
kaido was referred to in an old Ainu legend, 
were the indigenous population of all the 
Japanese islands. He believed they were Japa¬ 
nese, not Ainu, because Ainu, unlike Japanese, 
made neither ceramics nor stone tools and did 
not live in pithouses. 
On the other hand, Yoshikiyo Koganei, 
(1 893) an anatomist, made an anthropological 
study of Ainu skeletons and compared them 
with Stone Age skeletons that had been col¬ 
lected from a shell mound. Although no com¬ 
plete cranium sample was available, Koganei 
found common characteristics between the 
Stone Age people and the Ainu, principally a 
llatness of the shafts of the long bones in both 
groups. Based on this, he insisted that Japanese 
Stone Age people were Ainu, thus refuting the 
koropok-gum theory, which soon faded away with 
the death of Tsuboi and the discovery ol Ainu 
pithouses during a Kurile Island survey by 
Ryuzo Torii in early 1899. The purpose of these 
studies was not to learn the origin of the Ainu, 
ANCIENT ROOTS / H. ISHIDA 
but rather to ascertain the lineage of the main¬ 
land Japanese (fig. 5.1). The Ainu who lived in 
Hokkaido were used simply as a reference point 
toward this end. 
In the Taisho era (1912-1926) the theory 
that the Jomon people were the ancestors of 
the Ainu began to be questioned. This was the 
result of knowledge gained from human bones 
of the Jomon period collected by Kenji 
Kiyono (1949) and Kotondo Hasebe (1949), 
as well as comparative studies using statistical 
tools, which were relatively objective and 
detailed for the standard of the time. In addi¬ 
tion, the flatness of the long bone shafts was 
shown to be a common feature among hunt¬ 
ing-gathering populations worldwide, thus 
weakening the Jomon/Ainu connection. 
The Ainu "Race" Theory 
In seeking to establish the origins of the Ainu, 
scholars all over the world have commented 
on or written about their "racial" characteris¬ 
tics. It is important to define what is meant by 
the word "race” before examining the history 
of the search for the biological origin of the 
Ainu. In the past, race was seen as a biological 
category of humankind, and various classifica¬ 
tions were made. Humans were commonly 
divided into three or four categories: 
"Caucasoids" who are seen mainly in Europe,- 
"Negroids" who live south of the Sahara 
Desert in Africa,- "Mongoloids," found prima¬ 
rily in Asia,- and "Australoids," common to 
New Guinea and Australia. However, the stan¬ 
dard for this categorization was extremely 
vague, and its regional borders were unclear. 
Now it has become clear that all of human¬ 
kind belongs to one species whose biodiversity 
reflects regional characteristics, and the tradi¬ 
tional concept of "race" has been superseded 
by a more complex view of population biol¬ 
ogy and biogeography. In studies on the ori¬ 
gin of the Ainu that began in the nineteenth 
century, however, the word "race" was fre¬ 
quently used, so in my discussion of these 
studies this term will therefore appear in quo¬ 
tation marks. 
As to which "race" the Ainu belong, 
scholars had vastly different opinions. The 
"Caucasoid" and "Mongoloid" theories were 
the most common, but Russian and Polish 
anthropologists like Shternberg and Pilsudski, 
who were more versed in ethnology than 
in physical anthropology, tended to advocate 
the "Australoid" theory. The anatomist 
Yoshikiyo Koganei (1893) believed that the 
Ainu did not belong to any of these "races" 
and used a different term altogether: 
Rasseninsel, meaning an islandlike or isolated 
race. Kiyono criticized all these theories by 
introducing a new method of inquiry that may 
betray the influence of the American anthro¬ 
pologist Franz Boas and his approach to the 
study of North Pacific Rim peoples at the turn 
of the century: 
We need to divide Hokkaido into several 
areas and examine the physical constitution 
of the Ainu by area. Obviously Karafuto 
[Sakhalin] and Chishima [Kuriles] will be 
treated in the same manner. After the 
differences by area are noted, as well as the 
relationship between the shape and 
condition of ancient human bones and their 
relevant period becomes clear, surveys of 
neighboring ethnic groups would be 
desirable. Only after these steps, will the 
search for Ainu origin be complete. 
Further, he concluded, "Many years of effort 
by scholars would be required." Fdis words 
remain true today, and our task continues. 
The theory that the Ainu are "Cauca¬ 
soid" or are descendants of "Caucasoids" was 
most popular from the beginning to the 
middle of the twentieth century. For example, 
E. von Eickstedt (1934), a German anthro¬ 
pologist who believed that the Ainu were a 
surviving group of ancient "Caucasoids," 
stated, "The Ainu provide important evi¬ 
dence that Caucasoids were widely spread in 
northern Eurasia and are survivors of those 
who used to live in the east of this region." 
W. W. Fdowells, an American physical anthro¬ 
pologist at Harvard University, also con¬ 
sidered the Ainu to be holdovers from the 
ancient Caucasoids, claiming in Mankind in the 
Making (1959) that the existence of the Ainu 
showed that "Caucasoids" once extended fully 
to the Far East. Henri V. Vallois in his Les races 
humaines (1967) took the same view. These 
theories were based almost exclusively on the 
physical appearance of the Ainu, especially 
their hairiness and the "deep" features of the 
face, including large and long noses, deep-set 
eyes, and a prominent brow. 
Subsequent Ainu Study 
Most Japanese scholars were more interested 
in the origins of the Japanese than in the 
physical anthropology of the Ainu. For this 
reason, after the Second World War, Kotondo 
Hasebe's (1949) and Hisashi Suzuki's (1969) 
theory that the Jomon people became the 
Japanese found broad support. According to 
this view the Jomon people, whose culture 
existed throughout the Japanese islands from 
1,000 to 8,000 years ago, became today's 
Japanese through changes in living environ¬ 
ment and physical transformation under the 
influence of the Yayoi culture (200 B.C. to 
A.D. 200). Neither Hasebe nor Suzuki, how¬ 
ever, expressed views on the Ainu. The 
theory that "Ainu equals Caucasoid" sug¬ 
gested by many—including the two authori¬ 
ties, Sakuzaemon Kodama, an anatomist, 
and Tanimoto Furuhata, a forensic scien¬ 
tist—was accepted as the norm (S. Kodama 
1970c,■ Furuhata 1962). Nevertheless, many 
scholars believed that the Jomon and the 
Ainu were totally different groups, and this 
presented a problem in examining the popu¬ 
lation history on the Japanese islands as a 
whole. It should be noted that at that time 
the term "Japanese" referred to ethnic Japa¬ 
nese, not to all the people who lived on the 
islands of Japan,- throughout these early 
discussions the difference between the Ainu 
and the Japanese was always emphasized. 
In the 1960s, two physical anthropolo¬ 
gists, Kazuro Hanihara and Bin Yamaguchi, 
made an important discovery in Hokkaido, 
where they had been examining bones from 
Jomon sites. Yamagachi came to the conclu¬ 
sion that the Jomon skeletons from southern 
Hokkaido were similar to those from main¬ 
land Jomon sites but that the bones from the 
eastern part of Hokkaido clearly showed 
Ainu characteristics. This was surprising to 
many scholars who held the belief that 
Jomon and Ainu people were totally differ¬ 
ent. Based on these findings, Yamaguchi 
wrote, "The Ainu were living in Hokkaido 
since very old days, and they might have had 
a strong relationship with the Jomon people 
of the mainland" (Yamaguchi 1962). 
Hanihara commented, "The important point 
is that the Ainu issue has always been closely 
connected to the origin of the Japanese." 
Almost at the same time, Kunihiko Kimura 
(1962) revealed similarities between the Ainu 
and other neighboring groups of East Asia, 
based on fingerprint-pattern research. 
Kazuro Hanihara (1970, 1979), a dental 
expert, studied physical characteristics of 
teeth of "Mongoloid" peoples and identified 
the "Mongoloid dental complex" with the aid 
of data collected in Japan and the United 
States. He determined that Ainu teeth were 
part of this Mongoloid group, thus becoming 
the first to question the "Ainu/Caucasoid" 
5 / BIOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS 53 
UPPER JAW 
SUNDADONT 
5.2 SlNODONT AND SuNDADONT TOOTH TYPES 
Christy Turner’s dental research 
shows that Asian Mongoloid teeth 
occur in two types: Sinodont North 
Asians or Sundadont Southeast Asians. 
Sinodonts have incisors with scooped- 
out or "shovelled” faces, single-rooted 
upper first molars, and triple-rooted 
lower first molars. Most Ainu teeth are 
Sundadont, which suggests that Ainu 
originated from a southeast Asian 
population that moved north into Japan 
before North Asian Sinodont peoples 
appeared there. Today’s Japanese, like 
Chinese, Koreans, and Amur populations, 
have Sinodont teeth, (after Fagan 1990). 
theory. Later, a 1979 
study based on tooth- 
crown measurements 
showed that the Ainu, 
the ethnic Japanese, 
the Aleut, and the Pima 
Indians all could be 
categorized as one 
"Mongoloid" group. 
As studies of 
human bones from the 
Jomon period continue, 
many similarities with 
the Ainu have been 
reported. However, 
since the Second World 
War relatively few 
ancient skeletal collec¬ 
tions have been discov¬ 
ered in Hokkaido, the 
location most closely connected with the Ainu. 
The situation is even more difficult in Sakha¬ 
lin, which was occupied by the Soviet Union. 
As mentioned previously, Bin Yamaguchi 
(1981) pointed out that human bones of the 
Early Jomon period found in northeast 
Hokkaido revealed Ainu characteristics, and 
bones of the Epi-Jomon period (a late Jomon 
culture in northern Honshu and Hokkaido) 
show these features even more clearly. In fact, 
such close similarities in the physical features 
of the cranium—such as the high nose, a low 
facial center, and the shape of the postcranial 
skeleton—between the Ainu and Jomon is not 
seen in other comparable groups from East Asia. 
Based largely on their historical dis¬ 
tribution, the Ainu have often been grouped 
into three regional types: Hokkaido Ainu, 
Sakhalin Ainu, and Kurile Ainu, and their 
diagnostic physical differences have been 
confirmed, to varying degrees, by specialists 
from Kyoto and Hokkaido Universities. Kenji 
Kiyono of Kyoto University discussed the 
Sakhalin Ainu in his 1949 book, stating that 
the Sakhalin Ainu were "purer" because they 
lived farther away from the main Japanese 
island of Honshu and because Sakhalin Ainu 
have the smallest variation between individu¬ 
als in cranial measurements. Meanwhile, 
Sakuzaemon Kodama of Hokkaido Univer¬ 
sity, drawing his conclusions from their large, 
flat faces, assumed that elements of Nivkhi 
and Orok populations were mixed in with the 
Sakhalin Ainu (S. Kodama 1970c). This view 
of mixed blood with northern populations 
was supported by statistical studies on the 
54 ANCIENT ROOTS / H. ISHIDA 
shape of the cranial and postcranial skeleton 
conducted by Bin Yamaguchi and others, 
who have reported (Yamaguchi 1973,- 
Yamaguchi, Ishida, and Matsumura 1993) 
that the Kurile cranium shape is similar to 
that of the Hokkaido Ainu and that their 
relation to northern peoples is limited,- how¬ 
ever, their findings of similar tooth shape 
between northern Ainu and Aleut did point 
to northern admixture in this regard. 
If there had been no influence of for¬ 
eign cultures in Hokkaido from Jomon to 
Early Modern periods, the formation process 
of the Ainu would move from the Jomon 
period directly to the Ainu cultural formation 
phase,- however, no history of a human popu¬ 
lation could be so straightforward due to the 
very nature of human activities. Although a 
few human bones have been found that indi¬ 
cate a mixture of some northern "Mongoloid" 
elements in the Early Jomon period, the issue 
cannot be resolved because of the limited 
number of skeletal samples. Facial bones of 
the southern Honshu Yayoi period (250 B.C.- 
A.D. 250) that were assumed to belong to the 
Epi-Jomon Esan Culture of southern Hok¬ 
kaido in the first millennium A.D. do show 
some changes: 'This group maintained char¬ 
acteristic qualities of the Jomon people while 
going through significant diversification. As a 
whole they approximated Ainu forms of the 
modern period in southern Hokkaido," ac¬ 
cording to Bin Yamaguchi (1981). As is typical 
of other regions in the world, scholars con¬ 
tinue to debate whether this diversification 
was brought about by genetic influence or by 
changes in living environment. 
Around the fifth century A.D., the 
sudden appearance of the Okhotsk culture 
along the Sea of Okhotsk coasts of Sakhalin, 
the Kuriles, and northern Hokkaido indicates 
a major migration of new peoples from the 
north, bearing a culture that differed greatly 
from the Yayoi-influenced Epi-Jomon and 
Satsumon groups of Hokkaido. Okhotsk 
people possessed features of northern 
populations—wide, high, flat faces and 
stocky bodies. These people probably 
originated from near the estuary of the Amur 
River, but their relationship to the current 
Nivkhi peoples of this region is unclear. The 
influence of the Okhotsk people on Ainu 
physical character during the period of 
Okhotsk culture decline (after A.D. 1 300) 
cannot be ignored. Rather, the possibility of 
an Ainu advance into Sakhalin at this time, 
5.3 Jomon Teeth 
Jomon people were hunters, fishers, 
and gatherers rather than agricultur¬ 
alists. These incisors from an adult 
male show ablation wear (a common 
feature of Southeast Asian teeth), 
chipping, lack of caries or abcesses, 
and some evidence of peridontal dis¬ 
ease. The accompanying molars 
show the customary Southeast Asian 
four-cusped M2, no enamel exten¬ 
sions on Ml or M2, and both molars 
have two roots. (Turner 1979) 
laying the biological and cultural foun¬ 
dations of the Sakhalin Ainu, is one of many 
disputed questions arising from controversies 
relating to the origin of regional cultural and 
biological differences seen among the Ainu. 
As mentioned previously, Kazuro 
Hanihara (1970) has asserted that the Ainu 
belong to the "Mongoloid" cluster based on 
his studies of Ainu teeth. Christy C. Turner II 
has also studied "Mongoloid" teeth morphol¬ 
ogy and found that there were two types of 
"Mongoloid" peoples: Sinodont ("Chinese 
toothed") and Sundadont ("Southeast Asian 
toothed") (figs. 5.2, 5.3). In the 1980s the 
theory that the origin of the Jomon and Ainu 
was in Southeast Asia emerged from the fol¬ 
lowing logic: the Sundadont characteristic is 
common to human populations in Southeast 
Asia, and because the Ainu as well as the 
Jomon people are categorized as Sundadont, 
it was assumed that the Sundadont cluster 
from Southeast Asia had moved north into the 
Japanese islands. This theory was an impor¬ 
tant factor supporting Hanihara's (1991) pro¬ 
posed "dual structure model" for the popula¬ 
tion history of the Japanese. Hanihara sup¬ 
ported both the multiorigin theory and the 
phylogenetic affiliation between the Ainu and 
Ryukyu people. This supposition is also simi¬ 
lar to one advocated in the nineteenth century 
by the German scholar Erwin Baelz (1883), 
who postulated that the people of the Jomon 
period were originally from Southeast Asia 
and that during the Yayoi period other East 
Asian peoples arrived and spread over the 
Japanese islands. The populations in Japan 
that today retain traits from the Jomon era are 
the Ainu and Ryukyu people. 
C. L. Brace and K. D. Hunt (1990) intro¬ 
duced a concept called the "Jomon-Pacific 
cluster," which stressed the similarity of the 
Ainu and Jomon to groups of Pacific Islanders 
based on cranial measurements,- further, he 
suggested a relationship with Native Ameri¬ 
cans. In his view, the Jomon are the common 
ancestors of groups in the Pacific and of Ameri¬ 
can Indians, a concept that differs from Turner's 
findings. The common assumption, however, is 
that Ainu ancestors were Jomon and that they 
were part of the East Asian group. 
Genetics and Morphology 
Buntaro Adachi (1937) studied types of ear- 
wax and found that Japanese earwax is dry, 
while Ainu wax, like that of "Caucasoids," is 
wet. (Although such findings may seem odd, 
certainly characteristics of populations have 
clear and direct genetic control and can be 
used to trace population histories. Today 
such studies are seen as complexes, not as 
discrete traits.) In 1966 the Japanese Com¬ 
mittee for the International Biological Pro¬ 
gram conducted a biological study of the 
Japanese and Ainu under a research grant 
from the Ministry of Education. This was the 
first project in which Ainu physical charac¬ 
teristics and physiology as well as genetic 
factors obtained from blood samples were 
examined. Keiichi Omoto and Shogo 
Misawa (1976), who conducted research on 
protein polymorphism in blood, reported 
that genetic markers of the "Caucasoid" type 
were not observed among the Ainu,- rather, 
many Ainu genetic traits were common to 
the East Asian group of peoples. Even after 
taking into account the high degree of mixed 
blood between the Ainu and the Japanese in 
1966, the results were the same. As a result 
of a group genetic study by Keiichi Omoto 
(1972), it was determined that the Ainu were 
part of the "Mongoloid” group. Although 
significant differences between the Ainu and 
Japanese are recognized, genetic research 
placed the Ainu closer to East Asians, which 
includes Japanese and Koreans, than to other 
recognized groupings of world populations. 
Today there can be no doubt that the 
Ainu and Asian populations are related, 
based on morphologic and genetic studies, 
despite questions raised by cranial and teeth 
measurements that strongly suggest a con¬ 
nection between the Ainu and Southeast 
Asian groups. On the other hand, Ainu rela¬ 
tionships to the north Asians are quite 
strong. For example, in the area of genetics, 
the distribution of immunoglobin haplotypes 
has been studied by Hideo Matsumoto 
(1987), and his "Lake Baikal Theory of Japa¬ 
nese Origin" suggests that the Ainu share 
elements with northern peoples. Other fac¬ 
tors suggesting connections with northern 
populations have been found in genetic stud¬ 
ies, notably nine base-pair deletions in 
noncoding region V of mitochondrial DNA, 
and in morphological work, seen in a large, 
high occipital lambda measurement and a 
distinctive cheekbone suture known as the 
transverse zygomatic suture vestige. Of 
course, one character alone is certainly not 
sufficient to identify phylogeny in any case. 
Recently, Omoto and Saito (1997) con¬ 
ducted a phylogenetic study based on a large 
5/ BIOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS 55 
A Neighbor-Joining Network of 15 Populations 
(a part of the network of 25 populations; Da distances were used) 
0.01, \ Ancestral Ainu 
Korean. \ 
Japanese-Vt 
_ ' (subtracting 40% gene 
flow from Japanese) 
r~ Mongolian 
Tibetan/ \ /Southern Chinese 
/ KC'^Thai 
-Negritos (Aeta) 
Polynesian-^ / 
' lndcr^\ 
RhpmOnesian ^Negritos (Mamanwa) 
Micronesian' 
'Australian 
Papuan/ 
5.4 Ainu Genetic Distances 
This nearest-neighbor diagram shows 
the gene-frequency relationship of 
a reconstructed Ainu population to 
other groups in Southeast Asia and 
Oceania. Little relationship between 
Ainu and southeast Asian populations 
is indicated, (after Omoto 1995) 
5.5 Ainu Cranial Distances 
Supporting evidence for northern 
origins is seen in studies of cranial 
morphology, which show Ainu to be 
more closely related to Neolithic and 
modern populations of Central Asia, 
Lake Baikal, and the Amur Basin 
than to southeast Asians. 
dataset of genetic polymorphism among all 
people on all the Japanese islands, i.e., the 
Ainu, Hondo-Japanese (those on the Honsho 
mainland), and people on Ryukyu, as well as 
Koreans, using the most recent statistical 
techniques. The results showed that the Ainu 
and Ryukyu people constitute one cluster and 
the Hondo-Japanese and Koreans another, 
supporting theories of Ainu/Ryukyu affiliation 
and indicating that new people probably 
moved into the Japanese islands in the Yayoi 
period Based on phylogenic studies of all 
other world population groups, the research 
concluded that the Ainu, Hondo-Japanese, and 
Koreans belong to the cluster of groups of east 
and northeast Asians,- affinity between the Ainu 
and Southeast Asia groups was not observed 
(fig. 5.4). This result directly demonstrates the 
origin of the Ainu in eastern or northeastern 
Asia, although the issue of admixture was not 
resolved or seriously considered. 
In terms of morphological studies, Yukio 
Dodo and 1 (1990) and Nancy S. Ossenberg 
(1986) reconstructed phylogenetic relation¬ 
ships among human populations by examining 
detailed morphogenic cranial changes. They 
confirmed the assumption made from previous 
morphologic research that the Jomon and 
Ainu shared similarities and that the two 
groups were separate from the Japanese of 
post-Yayoi periods, and they did not find 
similarities between the Jomon/Ainu and 
Southeast Asia group. This author recently 
looked into the relationship between the Ainu 
and neighboring groups by studying cranial 
morphologic changes. Results showed that 
the Ainu are closer to Neolithic people 
around the Central Asian region of Lake 
Baikal and peoples of the Amur River basin 
and that similarity with Southeast Asians 
was limited (fig. 5.5). 
As the result of biological study on the 
Ainu people over the past one hundred years, 
the so-called "Ainu/Caucasoid" theory has 
largely been disproved, whereas the supposi¬ 
tion that the Ainu were descended from the 
Jomon of the Japanese islands has been sup¬ 
ported, both by morphological and genetic 
studies. For example, Satoshi Horai extracted 
mitochondrial DNA from ancient human 
bones and demonstrated that the base order 
of four samples of Jomon DNA and two of 
Ainu DNA were the same. He also found a 
DNA resemblance between Jomon and 
Southeast Asian peoples. However, more 
detailed research will be necessary to answer 
remaining questions about Ainu origins and 
relationships, and for this the discovery of 
more human fossils, as well as further genetic 
research, will be required. 
56 ANCIENT ROOTS / H. ISHIDA 
Ainu 
Language: 
Features and 
Relationships 
Suzuko Tamura 
The origins of Ainu language and its relationship to other 
linguistic groups, like Ainu cultural and biological ancestry, 
have long been both a scholarly mystery and a source of 
speculation. Unlike knowledge gained from historical and 
archaeological studies, in which incremental gains are made 
through the acquisition of new data, linguistic information 
available to scholars will not increase through time because 
the Ainu language today is spoken only by a handful of 
traditional speakers who inherited it from their parents and 
villagers. It seems likely that the stewardship of Ainu lan¬ 
guage will soon pass into the hands of speakers who learned it 
from linguists and other indirect sources, thus breaking forever 
the chain of inherited knowledge that forms the backbone of 
"living languages." If this does come to pass, the documenta¬ 
tion that currently exists, including the recorded information 
obtained from the few remaining speakers, will form the cor¬ 
pus of future knowledge. This essay presents a status report 
on Ainu language and outlines its chief lexical and gram¬ 
matical features, its current status and prospects, and the long 
history of investigations that have been conducted to deter¬ 
mine its origins, affinities, and legacies. [W.F.] 
6.1 Map of Hokkaido Ainu Dialects 
The word "Ainu" means "human" in 
the Ainu language. Because Ainu 
was always a spoken rather than a 
written language, an alphabet was 
never developed, and the language has there¬ 
fore been expressed by the alphabets used by 
transcribers who recorded it. Currently, both 
Katakana (one of three types of Japanese 
characters) and Roman letters are used. In 
this essay, Roman letters are employed and 
accent symbols are omitted to facilitate non¬ 
expert appreciation. 
An Ainu-Language Primer 
Phonology 
Ainu has five vowels {a, e, i, o, u) and only 
twelve consonants: c, h, k, m, n, p, r, s, t, w, andy, 
and ('). Ainu has no distinction between 
voiceless (k, p, t, etc.) and voiced (b, d, g, etc.): 
for example, the word that means "mother" is 
expressed as hapo but can be pronounced ei¬ 
ther “hapo" or "habo." The sound of the letter c 
is an affricate similar to the sound of ch in 
English There is only one fricative sound, s, 
which is never voiced. The sound of the letter 
r is similar to a Japanese r, namely, somewhere 
between English d, l, and r. In many Sakhalin 
dialects, p, k, r, and I cannot be placed at the 
end of a syllable, and h is used instead. This 
results from regional phonetic changes, as is 
demonstrated in the following: 
Hokkaido kap set tek utar sik 
Sakhalin kah seh teb utah/utara sis 
Definition skin bed hand people eye 
Ainu syllabic structure is simple: in some 
syllables one consonant is attached to one 
vowel either at the front or end or both sides 
of a syllable,- in other cases, no consonant is 
attached. There are no consonant clusters as, 
for example, the str in the word "strike." 
Word Order 
The Ainu language has a so-called "SOV" 
pattern (subject, object, verb). The subject 
comes before the predicate and the object/ 
complement is placed before a related verb 
phrase. The verb comes at the end of the 
sentence, for example, hapo kekachi nukar (lit¬ 
erally: mother boy see/saw, or Mother saw 
the boy). The adjective comes before the 
word modified,- for example, poro chise means 
"big house," whereas chise poro means "the 
6/ AINU LANGUAGE 57 
house is big." In addition, there are no ar¬ 
ticles, and a postpositional adverb or a 
postpositional particle is used instead of a 
preposition, as in apa kari ahun (he entered 
through the door, with kari meaning through), 
or tan kotan ta an (it is in this village, with ta 
meaning in or at). 
Verb Tense 
The verb does not change according to the 
tense. For instance, the sentence bapo kekachi 
nukar can mean "Mother will see the boy [to¬ 
morrow]" or "Mother is [now] seeing the boy/ 
Mother sees the boy” or "Mother saw the boy 
[yesterday]." The meaning is derived from the 
context and situation. 
Vocabulary 
Ainu has few words that express abstract con¬ 
cepts or properties frequently associated with 
complex societies. However, terms closely 
related to daily living activities (hunting, fish¬ 
ing, and gathering) and important items such 
as animals and plants are abundant. For ex¬ 
ample, salmon, a major component of the Ainu 
diet, was simply called cbep (fish) or kamuy-cbep 
(god/fish),- male salmon was called cba and 
female salmon os. Salmon caught in the autumn 
was called sipe. The ragged tail of old spawning 
salmon was called oysiru (when parsed, literally 
o [its tail], y- [things], siru [scrub]). 
Ordinary nouns often became taboo de¬ 
pending on the season or place, so other expres¬ 
sions had to be used. For example, according to 
Mashiho Chiri (1957), while trout was often 
called icban-iw (dig spawning hole/person who 
digs a hole), it was called sak-ipe (summer/fish) 
during the salmon season. This switch occurred 
because salmon, which also digs a spawning pit, 
was more important than trout, and people did 
not wish to offend it and thus cause a poor 
catch. In order to avert an evil spirit, words 
that the spirit hated were used. Taboo words 
were especially common while the Ainu were 
in the animal domains in the mountains and at 
sea, and code words were used frequently in 
these situations. Special words were also used 
when praying to the gods, and some particular 
expressions were used depending on the age 
group of the speaker. 
Numerals 
The manner in which the Ainu language ex¬ 
presses numbers is also distinctive. The fol¬ 
lowing shows forms of counting in the Hok- 
kaido dialect. 
1 sinep 6 iwan I 1 sinep ikasma wanpe 
2 tup 7 arwan 12 tup ikasma wanpe 
3 rep 8 tupes 20 hot 30 wanpe etubot 
4 inep 9 sinepes 40 tubot 50 wanpe erebot 
5 asik 10 wanpe 60 rebot 70 wanpe einebot 
The consonant ending of numbers one to 
four {p) means "thing," and the letters pre¬ 
ceding it are adjectival forms expressing "of 
one," "of two," "of three," and "of four." 
The origin of the word for five is probably 
the Ainu word for "hand" (aske in the 
modern language). The words for six to nine 
mean "with four, ten" and "with three, ten." 
In other words, six equals "minus four plus 
ten," and seven equals "minus three plus 
ten," and so on. From eleven on, the phrases 
mean "excess one, ten," "excess two, ten," 
etc., up to nineteen. The word for twenty is a 
different word, and forty, sixty, and eighty, 
etc. are expressed in the vigesimal (twenty- 
based) system, as in 2 x 20, 3 x 20, 4 x 20, 
etc. rather than in the decimal (ten-based) 
system used nearly universally today. The 
number thirty-seven is expressed in Ainu as: 
arwan pe ikasma wan pe e- tu- hot 
seven thing excess ten thing with two twenty 
In short, thirty-seven is (7- 10) + (2 x 20). 
By using this system it was possible to count 
to two hundred, but because there was little 
reason to ever count to such a large number, 
Ainu elders in the 1950s did not understand 
what "two hundred" meant,- it was not custom¬ 
ary to count large numbers, including people's 
age. However, in Sakhalin Ainu language 
there was a term indicating the unit of one 
hundred. The expressions of figures also var¬ 
ies depending on the region,- for instance, the 
Sakhalin Amu employed the decimal system, 
not the vigesimal system. 
Current Language Situation 
In recent historical times—about two hun¬ 
dred years ago—Ainu speakers occupied the 
region from Hokkaido north to Sakhalin's 51° 
latitude and throughout the Kurile chain as 
far as southern Kamchatka. Other records 
from that time note that people in the lower 
Amur River region claimed to be descendants 
of the Ainu, but whether they were indig¬ 
enous to that area or moved there for some 
reason is not known. 
Evidence of earlier Ainu occupations has 
also been adduced by the study of place-names. 
The earliest records of Ainu words are found in 
58 ANCIENT ROOTS / S. TAMURA 
eighth-century documents, in addition, Ainu 
vocabulary still exists among hunters in northern 
Honshu. Place-names also reveal Ainu roots in 
Honshu, especially north of Sendai. There are 
place-names that suggest Ainu once lived in 
Niigata and perhaps further south, but these 
latter claims need further study. To the north, a 
nineteenth-century Russian encyclopedia men¬ 
tions that the Ainu language was used in the 
Russian Primor'ye and in the lower Amur River 
region, but these cases are not well documented. 
At the beginning of the twentieth cen¬ 
tury, Ainu was spoken in three major dialects: 
Kurile, Sakhalin, and Hokkaido. When the 
Soviet Union took over Sakhalin and the 
Kurile Islands in 1945, most of the Ainu 
people moved to Hokkaido,- today there are 
no Ainu speakers left on these islands. In the 
1950s two dialects remained in the residual 
Hokkaido Ainu homeland, Hokkaido and 
Sakhalin. The Hokkaido dialect was further 
divided into northern and southern regions, or 
into three sections: north, east/middle, and 
south (fig. 6.1). Within each of these areas 
there were further regional differences. At that 
time, some of these dialects had more than ten 
fluent speakers, but currently there are only a 
few speakers of the east/middle and south 
Hokkaido dialects,- of those, only one fluent 
speaker is left in each district. However, with 
some training, some older people who used the 
language when they were young might again 
become fluent. The estimated number of these 
"candidates"—the most optimistic potential for 
survival of indigenous Ainu language—is 
twenty to thirty people. 
The Ainu people have shown a great 
interest in reviving their language and culture, 
and Ainu language classes given by the Hok¬ 
kaido Ainu Association (see Nakagawa, this 
volume) are currently held in fourteen loca¬ 
tions. Although traditional culture can be 
learned in classes, these venues have not yet 
been adequate for an effective language pro¬ 
gram. It is hoped that the Ainu Shinpo passed 
by the Japanese Diet in 1997 will improve the 
social and financial environment for Ainu- 
language preservation and use. 
History of Ainu-Language Studies 
Apart from several Ainu proper nouns in 
eighth-century historical accounts and Ainu 
words in various texts later on, the first small 
Ainu glossaries did not appear until the seven¬ 
teenth century and were written by foreigners 
and Japanese. Larger glossaries and dictionar¬ 
ies appeared in the eighteenth century, writ¬ 
ten by a Russian, a Frenchman, and a Japa¬ 
nese. The first vocal recording was made by 
Bronislaw Pilsudski, a Pole, in the early twen¬ 
tieth century, using wax cylinders. Also note¬ 
worthy is Ainsko-Russkii Slovar (1875), an 
Ainu-Russian dictionary prepared by a Rus¬ 
sian, M. M. Dobrotvorskii. The first Ainu 
grammar, "Grammar of the Ainu Language," 
was written by the English missionary John 
Batchelor (1 887),- Batchelor also published an 
Ainu-English-Japanese Dictionary and Grammar, 
whose first edition appeared in 1889. His 
fourth edition (1938) is still being used de¬ 
spite the enormous number of errors that 
have had a negative impact on later scholarly 
studies (see below). 
More reliable linguistic study began in 
Hokkaido with A Study ofYukar.- The Ainu Epics 
(1931) by Kyosuke Kindaichi. Mashiho 
Chiri, a student of Kindaichi, developed 
further his teacher's grammar theory and 
extended it to the Sakhalin Ainu language,- 
he focused on words and their origin and 
compiled the well-received Classified Dictio¬ 
nary of the Ainu, which appeared in three vol¬ 
umes (Man, Plants, and Animals) (Chiri 
1953-62). The work done by Kindaichi and 
Chiri established the foundation for all later 
serious research on the Ainu language. 
Itsuhiko Kubodera, another student of 
Kindaichi, also did detailed research on Ainu 
yukar, or oral epic poems. In the latter half of 
the twentieth century, building upon the 
study conducted by Chiri and Shiro Hattori 
on the basic vocabulary of Ainu dialects, in¬ 
tensive research on dialect vocabularies was 
conducted by Hattori and his colleagues and 
students. The first achievement of their efforts 
was the publication of the Ainu Dialect Dictio¬ 
nary (Hattori 1964). 
In more recent times a growing number 
of people have contributed to Ainu-language 
studies. These include some of Hattori's stu¬ 
dents, who were motivated by the imminent 
threat of Ainu language becoming extinct, and 
their students at Hokkaido Llniversity, including 
Ainu and foreign students who are conducting 
studies of dialects and written records of folk 
literature, music, ethnology, history, and ar¬ 
chaeology,- some are assisting in the revival of 
the language. The publication of books con¬ 
taining grammar descriptions, dictionaries, 
video materials, and vocal records with ex¬ 
planatory texts increased sharply in the 
1980s and has accelerated in the 1990s. 
6/ AINU LANGUAGE 59 
6.2 Preparing Inaw 
Cultural leader Shigeru Kayano carves 
inaw for an Ainu display at Kokuritsu 
Minzoku Hakubutsukan (National Mu¬ 
seum of Ethnology) in Osaka. 
Among these are three practical Ainu dictio¬ 
naries (Nakagawa 1995, Kayano 1996, and 
Tarnura 1996),- Ainu Gmmatik (two volumes, 
1989-97) by Hans A. Dettmer, which intro¬ 
duces the entire corpus of Ainu grammar to 
date in German; and two works on European 
Ainu studies edited by Kirsten Refsing, The 
Ainu Library L Early European Writings on the Ainu 
Language (ten volumes, 1996) and The Ainu 
Library II: Origins oj the Ainu Language: The Indo- 
European Controversy (five volumes, 1998). 
In addition to studies by professional 
academic linguists, one cannot fail to mention 
the lifelong efforts of Shigeru Kayano, who is 
Ainu,- Kayano (fig. 6.2) also collected (and 
sometimes built) artifacts and tools used by 
the Ainu, and he also published Ainu Folk 
Crafts (1978). Kayano is a unique traditional 
speaker who has also written a dictionary and 
made numerous oral recordings. 
Japanese-Language Influences 
Because the Ainu people have long been famil¬ 
iar with the Japanese language, it is only natu¬ 
ral that the two languages have influenced 
each other (fig. 6.3). Many Ainu words are 
clearly borrowed from Japanese. Examples 
include (Ainu/Japanese): tampaku/tabako (ciga¬ 
rettes), tenonkoy/tenugui (hand towel), umma/uma 
(horse), puta/buta (pig), peko/beko (Japanese 
Tohoku dialect, cow), and tuki/tuki (Old Japa¬ 
nese for wine cup); Japanese words became 
known to the Ainu people when the products 
themselves were introduced by trade. The 
Japanese influence is not limited to nouns and 
covers other elements of grammar, from verb 
to adverb. Cases of Ainu-language influence on 
Japanese are fewer, and the majority of them 
also deal with trade materials: for instance 
(Japanese/Ainu), rahko/rakko (sea otter), tonakai/ 
tunakkay (reindeer), shishamo/susam (a kind of 
fish), and ruibe/ruype (frozen salmon: ru [thaw], 
ipe [food—in this case, fish]). 
As previously mentioned, Ainu means 
"human" in Ainu. The word menoko (Ainu 
women) was borrowed from the Tohoku dia¬ 
lect of Japanese, and it was reimported to the 
Japanese language. According to Kyosuke 
Kindaichi, the words Ernishi (an old word for 
Ainu people), and Ezo (meaning "different 
northern people" and the term by which Ainu 
were known in Hokkaido before 1868), 
which often appear in Japanese history, derive 
from the old Ainu words emciw or enciw (mean¬ 
ing human),- enciw is still used by the Sakhalin 
Ainu. Shichiro Murayama (1992a), an advo¬ 
cate of the Austronesian theory of Ainu-lan¬ 
guage origin (see below and Arutiunov, this 
volume), states that the origin of enciu (enciw) 
is 'mpoltiw (person respected) of PAN (the 
reconstructed language, Proto-Austronesian) 
and that Ebisu, a synonym of Emishi, comes 
from this word. The Ainu language, espe¬ 
cially the Sakhalin dialect, has also borrowed 
words from Orok, Nivkhi, and Russian, 
while the Kurile dialect contains more terms 
borrowed from Russian. 
Place-Names 
Many place-names of Ainu-language origin, al¬ 
though transformed by Japanese pronunciation, 
still remain in Hokkaido and northern Tohoku,- 
Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands also have many 
names whose origin is Ainu (fig. 6.4). Travelers to 
Hokkaido will often hear place-names ending 
with -betsu or -nai; the meaning of the Japanese 
suffix -betsu is the same as the Ainu term pet (river). 
The alternate term for river, -nai in Japanese, is - 
nay in Ainu, but its meaning changes to stream in 
the southern dialect. Because rivers and streams 
were important Ainu travel routes and resource- 
procurement areas, these words appear frequently 
in place-names. Many other place-names also 
originate from geographical features. 
Kyosuke Kindaichi (1932) assumed that 
the southern limit of former Ainu occupation 
is Shirakawa-no-Seki in southern Fukushima 
because names ending in -betsu and -nai de¬ 
crease south of this point. Unfortunately, 
many people who study place-names do not 
know the Ainu language well and simply 
compare words that seem similar to Ainu and 
make their own interpretations. Linguists, 
however, have found the task to be more dif¬ 
ficult, and definitive explanations of place- 
names are few. Even Hosei Nagata's well- 
known Interpretation of Hokkaido Ezo Place- 
Names (1891) contains numerous mistakes 
according to Mashiho Chiri, who is highly 
respected for his work on place-names. 
Hidezo Yamada also did excellent work on 
the subject and identified the Ainu origin of 
many place-names (four volumes, 1983). 
Yamada did not depend simply on word com¬ 
position and knowledge of Ainu vocabulary,- 
he visited locations carrying Ainu place- 
names and confirmed the geographical fea¬ 
tures described in the names. By repeating 
such visits many times, he gained a rapport 
with the local people who used these names, 
and he became familiar with the geography 
that had particular names. In this way, the 
60 ANCIENT ROOTS / S. TAMURA 
origin of many names in Hokkaido and north¬ 
ern Tohoku were explained. Although there 
are quite a few place-names whose origins 
have not been identified, the table below 
provides examples of well-known Ainu place- 
names in Hokkaido. 
Place-names ending in -sonai or -sbonai are 
also found in both Tohoku and Hokkaido. 
When simply looking at the word, it appears to 
be an Ainu place-name, and John Batchelor, 
working in the nineteenth century, attributed all 
such names to the Ainu. However, the town of 
Shonai in Yamagata prefecture has a Japanese 
name which means "inside of (Oizumi) village." 
Looking at the word without visiting the loca¬ 
tion itself is not sufficient to determine 
whether the name is Ainu. Because the syllable 
structure of both Ainu and Japanese is simple, 
the probability of finding similar word forms in 
place-names and general terms is high, but 
similarities alone do not signify shared origins. 
Ift m§>m tpm A A inn ’ y tg it a* 
'V >- & 
kk 
7 ^ 
6.3 Entertaining Japanese Officials 
Protocol called for feasts and other 
hospitality when Japanese and Ainu 
paid visits to each other’s villages. 
This copy of an Ainu-e from Shimanojo 
Murakami's Curious Sights of Ezo Is¬ 
land illustrates two Japanese officials 
being entertained in the Ainu style. 
(NMNH 392,023-25). 
Hidezo Yarnada went to one of the villages 
called Sonai, which is located in Akita prefec¬ 
ture, with an old map and observed the topog¬ 
raphy. He found that the region had many 
Ainu-sounding names and discovered a village 
where some Ainu words were still in use in 
their dialect. When he also found a stream and 
a waterfall, he determined that the characteris¬ 
tics of the area matched perfectly its Ainu 
name, sonai, meaning "fall-stream." 
Generally, the place-names cluster geo¬ 
graphically,- the areas north of Sendai and 
Yamagata have many Ainu place-names. 
However, one name in Niigata, which is south 
of this cluster, has been confirmed to have 
Ainu origins,- some places south of Niigata 
and in northern Kanto may have had Ainu 
names, but this has not been confirmed. 
Ainu-Lancuage Origins 
and Affinity 
The fact that the physical characteristics of 
the Ainu people differ from those of neigh¬ 
boring populations made a strong impression 
on foreign visitors encountering them for the 
first time and triggered speculation about 
their origin. Noting their resemblance to 
Russians, many people thought the Ainu 
were Caucasians: some believed this and 
thought that there were Ainu with blue eyes, 
which is false. Some say that the people liv¬ 
ing in Okinawa (the southernmost Japanese 
island) resemble the Ainu. Some Ainu and 
Okinawans themselves say this, and in fact, 
results of dental structure and genetics, in¬ 
cluding blood-group and DNA tests, do 
show a close relationship. Some speculate that 
both groups were linked through Jomon ties 
to the original native inhabitants of Japan 
before the spread of the Japanese people, 
which was enabled by rice agriculture. How¬ 
ever, recent scholarship shows that the deter¬ 
mination of ancestral links is far more compli¬ 
cated than previously believed. Anthropolo¬ 
gists long ago showed that the language, cul¬ 
ture, and biology of any particular people may 
have separate and quite different histories. 
Like other areas, Ainu language has also 
been studied for clues about its history and 
relationships. Reverend John Batchelor, an 
Englishman who lived in Hokkaido from 1877 
to 1940, published Ainu grammar books and 
dictionaries during his tenure there as a mis¬ 
sionary. He believed that Ainu was related to 
the Aryan (Indo-European) languages 
(Batchelor 1905, 1926, 1938,- see also Refsing 
1998). Although Batchelor believed that the 
chief evidence for an Aryan origin of the Ainu 
language would be found in the grammar 
rather than in vocabulary, no evidence of this 
has since been found. It must be remembered 
that he did not know the Ainu language well,- 
that his grammar and dictionary contain many 
mistakes in word forms,- and that he had 
"stretched" Ainu to fit it into a western-lan¬ 
guage grammatical framework. Batchelor's 
views continued to be argued by later European 
scholars advocating Ainu-Aryan affinity, who 
referred to Batchelor's dictionary and picked 
out Ainu words similar to Aiyan ones. Pierre 
Naert made many such matches in arguing for 
an Indo-European theory (1958), as did Ivar 
Lindquist (1960). The controversy, which can 
be reviewed in works collected and reprinted by 
Refsing (1998), continued until 1965. 
6/ AINU LANGUAGE 61 
6.4 Ainu Place-names 
The extent to which Ainu people 
formerly occupied Honshu and Sa¬ 
khalin is not fully known, but Ainu 
and Ainu-derived place-names exist 
as far south as Sendai and Niigata 
as far north as central Honshu, 
and in central Sakhalin, which sug¬ 
gests that Ainu once held large ar¬ 
eas of these islands. 
In the nineteenth century Yonekichi 
Miyake, a historian, discussed the relationship 
between the Japanese and Ainu languages after 
studying their pronunciation, grammar, and 
vocabulary from written records (1884). In the 
end he concluded that "the two languages can¬ 
not be identified as the same kind of language," 
because similarities in grammar were limited to 
"factors generally found in undeveloped lan¬ 
guages." Basil Hall Chamberlain was the first 
scholar to introduce European philology to 
Japan, and he began the first extensive com¬ 
parison of the Ainu and Japanese languages. 
Although there are problems with his work 
because it also used Batchelor's data, the lin¬ 
guistic analysis was his own He disagreed with 
Batchelor's Aryan theory and concluded there 
was no evidence to place Ainu in the same 
language group as Japanese or Altaic languages,- 
rather, he suspected that Ainu was in fact an 
isolated language and noted that the issue 
needed further study. Chamberlain assumed 
that similarities in Ainu and Japanese sentence 
structure and phonology were probably the 
result of mutual association of speakers over 
thousands of years. 
In the early twentieth century Kurakichi 
Shiratori, a historian, compared Ainu, Japanese, 
and Korean numerals in relation to other lan¬ 
guages. He wrote: "Korean ... is not at all simi¬ 
lar to Japanese .... Ainu . . . which has been 
thought to have no resemblance with any lan¬ 
guage in the world has numerals that are closest 
to the northern Ural-Altaic group such as Finno- 
Ugric and Samoyed" (Shiratori 1909). 
Later, Kyosuke Kindaichi, who champi¬ 
oned Ainu epic poetry (yukar) as great works 
of literature, studied the Ainu language for 
the first time from a linguistic point of view. 
He supported Chamberlain and determined 
that Ainu had no affinity with Japanese, based 
on his analysis of word structure and the nu¬ 
meral system (Kindaichi 1927, 1935). He 
emphasized important differences between 
Ainu, Japanese, and the languages of the sur¬ 
rounding peoples, based on the language 
found in the yukar, which was known to pre¬ 
serve ancient Ainu language structure. His 
conclusion was that "Ainu is a completely dif¬ 
ferent language from Japanese, Korean, and 
Altaic languages and is an isolated language of 
the world At the same time, he pointed in a 
new direction, noting similarities in the usage 
of numerals between Ainu and the Eskimo, 
Native American, and Basque languages. 
After Kindaichi's definitive conclusion 
about the separateness of Ainu and Japanese, 
Ainu was rarely mentioned in studies of Japa- 
nese-language origin. Mashiho Chiri, who 
produced the remarkable Classified Dictionary of 
the Ainu, seldom touched on the issue of Ainu 
origins and affinity, except in a seven-line 
statement in an encyclopedia entry (1964): 
"No language with relationships to Ainu has 
yet been found. While some languages share a 
few important characteristics, such as phono¬ 
logical organization and grammar, basic lin¬ 
guistic elements do not connect them at all. 
Today's study has not reached the stage of 
discussing its genealogy. One can only state 
that its affinity is unknown " 
In 1955, however, Shiro Hattori re- 
Japanese name Old Ainu names Translation 
Sapporo sat-poro- (pet) dry-big-(river) [pet is assumed] 
Wakkanai yam-wakka-nay cold-water-river [yam is dropped] 
Kamuikotan kamuy-kotan god-village [terrible place with rapid 
stream and cliffs,- exists in many places] 
Shiretoko sir-etoko earth-edge of [cape,- exists in many areas] 
Erimo enrum cape 
Biratori pira-utur cliff-between 
Osachinai o-sat-nay end of river-dry-stream 
Toya to-ya Iake/pond-of shore [exists in many areas] 
Noboribetsu nupur-pet strong color-river [river is whitened with 
hot spring water] 
Horobetsu poro-pet large-river 
Honbetsu pon-pet small-river [exists in many areas] 
Soobetu so-pet fall-river [exists in many areas] 
Islands ofe the tip of Kamchatka: 
Shimushu si-mosir major-island 
Poromoshiri poro-mosir big-island 
Paramushiri para-mosir wide-island [the same island as above, different name] 
62 ANCIENT ROOTS / S. TAMURA 
searched the basic vocabulary of various Ainu 
dialects and expressed the probability that 
Ainu and Japanese had the same origin based 
on vocabulary comparisons with Japanese, 
Korean, and the Altaic languages. Quite a few 
words of the basic Ainu vocabulary seemed to 
share similar roots with Japanese words. Hattori 
criticized Kindaichi's conclusion, saying, 
Such resemblance in basic vocabulary 
should not be ignored by citing accidental 
resemblance or mutual borrowing.... The 
grammatical structure of Ainu is not different 
to the extent that one can determine no 
affiliation with Japanese. Such conclusion is 
unproductive even if it is a working supposi¬ 
tion. It is unfavorable also in the sense that it 
discourages Japanese from studying Ainu 
(Hattori 1957). 
James Patrie of Canada presented "evi¬ 
dence" showing many "sound correspondences" 
between Ainu and Japanese as well as "morpho¬ 
logical and lexical evidence" (1982), and he also 
discussed his theory of Ainu-Altaic language 
affiliation. Patrie's efforts in gathering many 
pairs suggesting correspondences were followed 
by other similar efforts, including, for instance, 
Shichiro Murayama (1992b). 
As Shiro Hattori had found, quite a few 
words in Ainu, Japanese, Korean, and the Altaic 
languages have similar roots,- however, similarity 
in word form does not necessarily signify affin¬ 
ity. By using a "glottochronological" method 
based on the assumption of shared origin, the 
split between Ainu and Japanese has been calcu¬ 
lated to have occurred 6,000 to 10,000 years 
ago (Hatton 1959). What would happen to a 
language after 10,000 years? Some calculations 
suggest that only 1 percent of the basic vocabu¬ 
lary would still be in use. If this is taie, it is 
rather questionable that so many similar words 
could remain If the phonological correspon¬ 
dence in nonsimilar word forms is found it 
would be more reliable as evidence, but such 
examples have not been identified. 
Besides the linguists mentioned so far, 
there are many who have pointed out the 
similarities between Ainu and Japanese or 
Korean/Altaic languages, including Chili 
(1962), Haruto Oni (1957), and Alexander 
Slawik (1982). Masachie Nakamoto devel¬ 
oped a more specific reconstruction: 
The ethnic group with the Ainu language 
must have advanced to the East China Sea 
coastal area a long time ago and made 
contacts with those populations living on 
the coastal line. The Ainu words which 
show connection to the language of the 
Korean Peninsula and Ryukyu Islands 
seemed to have been introduced around 
that time. . . . The language which had 
weak contact with the East China Sea 
region survived to date as a language with 
a different lineage. This is the Ainu 
language (1985). 
Another major supposition presented 
by researchers is the Austronesian theory of 
affinity with languages of southeast Asia, 
Indonesia, and Australasia (figs. 6.5, 6.6). 
This view was first advanced strongly by 
Leo Shternberg, a Russian ethnologist who 
had been associated with Franz Boas's Jesup 
North Pacific Expeditions of 1897-1902 
and worked extensively among the Sakhalin 
Ainu in the early 1900s. He believed that 
Ainu could not have originated from Siberia 
or other northern places or from Korea or 
China, because it had no linguistic or cul¬ 
tural relations in these directions. He con¬ 
cluded (1929) that the Ainu had an 
Austronesian lineage based on the accumu¬ 
lated strength of multiple lines of biologi¬ 
cal, ethnological, and linguistic data. Argu¬ 
ments similar to Shternberg's were made 
later by Gjerdman (1959) and Shichiro 
Murayama (1992a), who compared Ainu 
words with Austronesian-language terms. 
Gjerdman, who was critical of the Indo-Euro¬ 
pean language theory, also proposed that Ainu 
might have come from the south, citing simi¬ 
larities with Malay-Polynesian (today's 
Austronesian). He was not strongly convinced, 
however, and called for further analysis. 
Murayama's research presented more than 
thirty Ainu words that were similar to Proto 
Austronesian (PAN). In these comparisons the 
Ainu words is given first, the PAN second: ape 
((ire)/apuy (fire),- cbikir (leg and foot)/tic)uel (leg),- 
pirka/pirika/pilib (to select, being selected). 
How do we resolve these analytical 
problems? Because the Ainu language has few 
consonants and its syllable structure is 
simple, there are many homonyms. For ex¬ 
ample, Ainu pa can mean "year" (and from 
this, "seasons"),- "air” ("steam," etc. — from 
this, "epidemics," etc.),- "head/upper side," 
"mouth," "down river",- "to find",- and "to go." 
It is also easy to find similarities in other 
languages that could suggest sound corre¬ 
spondence,- in short, the probability of coin¬ 
cidence is high. Moreover, because Ainu and 
Japanese share the characteristic of many 
words beginning with k and f, similar word 
forms are easily found in both languages. In 
6/AINU LANGUAGE 63 
6.5, 6.6 Carrying Children 
Ainu women used special headstraps to 
carry their babies, who were supported 
on a wooden seat, as this nineteenth- 
century photograph documents. This 
carrying method, which is also found 
among Southeast Asian peoples, was 
cited by early anthropologists as evi¬ 
dence that the Ainu had southern ori¬ 
gins. The headbands of these straps 
carry intricate designs and are among 
the most complex objects woven by Ainu 
women. This strap was collected from 
the Kurile Islands by Romyn Hitchcock in 
1888. (NMNH 150768; AMS). 
general, even in core vocabulary, the borrow¬ 
ing and replacement of words take place. 
Thus, when the presumption of a genealogical 
relationship is based on similarities of vo¬ 
cabulary, if the rules of the sound corre¬ 
spondence are not clear it is necessary to 
prove that such similarities do not occur 
due to coincidence or borrowing. It is not 
easy to determine the true nature of such 
similarities in the case of a language without 
historical records. 
Some methods to deal with this issue 
were developed by mathematicians, who used 
statistical techniques to describe the fre¬ 
quency of matches and similarities in a core 
vocabulary. From among these techniques 
Biten Yasumoto employed the "shift test 
method" developed by R L. Oswalt (1964) to 
test the probability of coincidental matches 
among Ainu, Japanese, and fifty other lan¬ 
guages, and he compared them with the num¬ 
ber of actual matches. The resulting statistics 
showed the matches among Japanese, Ainu, 
and Korean to be highly significant 
(Yasumoto 1972, 1985). 
Although statistical studies indicate that 
a close relationship in core vocabulary exists 
among Japanese, Korean, and Ainu, how 
should this be interpreted? Yasumoto inter¬ 
preted it as genealogical descent from an an¬ 
cestral language he named "early Far East 
language," which he thought might have 
come from the Asian continent. Of the early 
Far East languages postulated by Yasumoto, it 
has been theorized that the one based in 
northern Kyushu was influenced by southern 
languages and then spread to the Japanese 
islands to become the ancestral Japanese lan¬ 
guage (Yasumoto 1985). 
The other possible explanation is that 
these matches result from influence, i.e., bor¬ 
rowing. Although statistical analysis shows 
that the number of similarities is too high for 
all the matches to be coincidental, it cannot 
be concluded that similarities indicate com¬ 
mon origins, for matches may also result from 
influence due to geographical proximity or 
social relations. Because there is no reason to 
think that the extensive borrowing of Japanese 
and Amu words in the modern era is unique, 
Ainu, Japanese, and Korean must also have 
affected each other in the past. In the case of 
a language without historical records, an ef¬ 
fective way to decipher the earlier forms of 
words is by examining place-names,- for this 
reason the place-name work being conducted 
by FTdezo Yamada and others may lead to 
important new findings. 
Conclusion 
Kyosuke Kindaichi's conclusion that Ainu and 
Japanese had separate roots greatly influenced 
64 
6.6 
ANCIENT ROOTS/ S TAMURA 
later linguistic thought. As Chamberlain 
showed, however, Ainu language structure is not 
vastly different from that of Japanese,- in fact, 
when compared with the Indo-European and 
other language groups, Ainu word structure is 
quite similar to Japanese. Much has been made 
of the difference between the Ainu numeric 
system and the Japanese system, but this may 
not be significant because such usage can 
change with time, as it has in the Ainu dialects 
in Hokkaido and Sakhalin. Such differences also 
exist between Indo-European languages. 
The point has been made that the Ainu 
verb incorporates the person indicator respond¬ 
ing to the subject and object (Kindaichi called 
this the "incorporating character"),- this differs 
from Japanese but is a common trait in the lan¬ 
guages of the Eskimo (Yup'ik, Inupiat, Inuktitut) 
and other northern and American indigenous 
peoples. Does this mean that these are vastly 
different languages from Japanese? No—in fact, 
they share close structural similarities with Japa¬ 
nese, and a large number of these similarities also 
occur in Altaic languages as well as in Ainu. More¬ 
over, polysynthetic characteristics, namely, the 
feature that one verb is fonned by combining 
many morphemes, is seen not only in Ainu and 
Eskimo and other northern and American indig¬ 
enous languages but also in Japanese to some 
extent. Japanese in a sense can be said to be simi¬ 
lar to Ainu and Eskimo in terms of its structural 
characteristics, but a conclusion about a genea¬ 
logical relationship should not be drawn from the 
comparison of structural characteristics alone. 
Japanese and Ainu (and also Eskimo) are 
languages with a simple phonological system 
and word forms,- the probability for coincidental 
similarities is high, because the borrowing of 
basic vocabulary words could not have been 
avoided. Not only is it difficult to ascertain if 
correspondences result from genealogy or bor¬ 
rowing, but there are cases in which words with 
a common origin cannot be considered "com¬ 
mon remaining words," for they have assumed 
totally different forms in each language as a 
result of phonetic changes. Many people catego¬ 
rize words that have even small similarity in 
forms in Ainu and Japanese (or other languages) 
as "holdovers from common basic words," but 
one must move beyond the preconception that 
such words have a common origin: attempting 
to establish proto-language from sound corre¬ 
spondences does not make sense. 
As previously stated, numerous theories 
abound about the origin of the Ainu language. 
Linguists have cited similarities and affinity 
relationships among Japanese, Korean, and 
Altaic languages, and between Ainu and 
Austronesian languages. Structural similarities 
have also been pointed out with Siberian, 
Eskimo, and Native American languages, and 
Mashiho Chiri once thought that Ainu came 
from the north via Kamchatka. Nevertheless, 
scholarship proving or disproving historical 
relationships between any of these groups has 
been inconclusive. It has been more than one 
hundred years since Chamberlain wrote that 
"a thorough study of other languages" and 
"discoveries of new facts” should illuminate 
the mystery,- remarkably, the situation today 
remains the same. As Chiri stated long ago, 
the genealogy of the Ainu language is, for the 
time being, unclear. Unfortunately, with the 
imminent disappearance of the few remaining 
indigenous Ainu speakers, the answers to 
these questions may never be known. 
6/ AINU LANGUAGE 65 
«&pp 
vV‘i'.%.;;;.:-'v<' 
faiMrti £ 
iwSi 
®*1 hHH 
Ainu 
History: 
An Overview 
Richard Siddle 
Ainu history itself has a history, 
and it is not straightforward. Since 
the 1970s the politicization of the 
"Ainu problem” has turned the 
past into a locus of struggle between the state 
and Ainu activists,- until that time, Ainu 
history was regarded by the Japanese aca¬ 
demic establishment as merely the history of 
native policy (Takakura 1972) or a largely 
irrelevant prelude to the Japanese develop¬ 
ment of Hokkaido. Nationalism and cold war 
politics effectively isolated Japan from the 
continent and encouraged scholars to focus 
inward on the Japanese archipelago as a natural, 
rather than political, unit. Despite the fact that 
Hokkaido is, in terms of its geography, flora, 
and fauna, as much part of the Sea of Okhotsk 
rim area as the Japanese archipelago, Ainu 
history was subsumed within Japanese national 
history as a minor local theme. 
Ainu activists and their supporters have 
constrains the emergence of an autonomous 
Ainu history. 
Leaving aside its politicization, Amu 
history presents other problems, not least the 
fact that documentary sources for the 
premodern period are almost exclusively 
Japanese because the Ainu had no written 
language of their own. Historians are there¬ 
fore reduced to viewing Ainu history through 
the distorted lens of Japanese sources while 
attempting to flesh out a wider picture through 
the use of archaeological and, in some cases, 
ethnographical evidence. The images of Ainu 
life and customs that were produced by 
Japanese travelers and are known as Ainu-e are 
valuable sources (fig. 7.1), although such 
works also reflect occasionally mistaken and 
prejudicial views of Ainu society. 
Certain debates have continued to 
attract the interest of historians. For example, 
what are the origins of the Ainu? What is the 
7.1 Uimam Ceremony 
This Ainu-e illustrates the uimam, the 
formal trade and administrative meet¬ 
ing held annually between the Ainu 
and their Japanese overlords at the 
Matsumae headquarters in Hakodate. 
As Japanese control replaced the 
free-market trade of the earlier era, 
the uimam was staged to display Ainu 
subservience. This illustration is from 
Scenes of Ezo painted by Teiryo 
Kodama in the mid-eighteenth cen¬ 
tury. (HMH) 
< Ikotoi, Chieftain of Atsukeshi 
1843 copy by Teiki Kojima after Hakyo 
Kakizaki’s work, Portraits of Ezo 
Chieftains. (Y. and M. Kitao Collection) 
challenged this view since the early 1970s 
with their own version of rapacious colonial¬ 
ism and racist aggression by the Japanese state 
in the Ainu homeland (Yuki 1980). Others 
have attempted to break out of the mold of 
Japanese history by redefining the coloniza¬ 
tion of Hokkaido and the dispossession of the 
Ainu as part of a wider late-nineteenth-century 
pattern of imperialism, recognizing groups of 
indigenous peoples that stretch from North 
America to Australasia (Siddle 1996). On the 
other hand, some conservative scholars have 
reacted to assertions of Ainu nationhood by 
reviving old arguments of the Ainu as original 
or proto-Japanese (Umehara and Hanihara 
1982). In many ways, the tension between 
these two overarching meta-narratives still 
relationship between the Ainu and the 
peoples, known as Emishi, who lived in the 
north of Honshu until the twelfth century? 
When did the ethnic formation of the Ainu 
people occur? How have acculturation and 
assimilation progressed, and been reversed? 
Origins 
The fact that populations on both sides of 
the Tsugaru Strait were exposed to consider¬ 
able cultural change and probable migration 
in the prehistoric period makes it difficult to 
pinpoint the origins of the "Ainu people." 
Archaeological evidence from Hokkaido points 
to longstanding cultural continuities with the 
peoples of maritime Siberia and the Amur 
River basin, as well as links with Honshu and 
7/AINU HISTORY OVERVIEW 67 
7.2 Ainu Sword and Hanger 
Lacking the ability and materials to 
manufacture steel, Ainu obtained swords 
from the Japanese. Rather than carrying 
them at their belts Japanese-style, they 
carried them across their backs or over 
their shoulders with specially woven 
straps (emushat) made by Ainu women. 
In time swords became valued more for 
social and ceremonial functions than as 
weaponry. (BMA 12.692) 
the south (Utagawa 1980b), but by the late 
thirteenth century the culture complex we 
know as Ainu had replaced that of the bearers 
of the Satsumon and Okhotsk cultures. 
There has been a persistent theory, 
encountered even now in Western-language 
scholarship, that the Ainu are the remains of 
an aboriginal Japanese population who were 
pushed northward by an expansive Japanese 
state until finding a final refuge in Hokkaido. 
The Ainu are thus equated with the Emishi 
(literally, "barbarians" who were not under 
Japanese political authority) who appear in 
Japanese records of the north between the 
seventh and twelfth centuries. Despite the 
efforts of scholars to prove racial connections 
on scanty skeletal evidence, little is known of 
population movements during this period It 
is clear, however, that there were cultural 
discontinuities between Hokkaido and 
Honshu, rice cultivation and horses, for 
instance, were not found in Hokkaido. Other 
scholars have argued on the basis of place- 
names for the use of the Ainu language 
throughout northern Japan, but historical 
records only tell us that the language of the 
Emishi was different without recording it. 
That the diverse populations grouped under 
the term "Emishi" spoke only one language, 
which they shared with the inhabitants of 
Hokkaido, also seems unlikely. Rather than 
being displaced aboriginal Japanese, it is more 
probable that the Ainu were the inheritors of 
the distinct Satsumon culture of Hokkaido 
and the northern tip of Honshu. 
Trade and Warfare 
For the Japanese (usually known as Wajin), 
who regarded the inhabitants of the northern 
regions through the prism of Chinese notions 
of civilization and barbarism, the inhabitants of 
Ezogashima (Hokkaido) were little more than 
a variety of demon. These barbarians, however, 
controlled natural resources that the Japanese 
desired, and a flourishing trade developed in 
furs and sea products. Exiled criminals and 
Japanese fleeing from warfare crossed over the 
Tsugaru Strait, and by the fifteenth century 
Japanese trading settlements were dotted 
around the southern tip of the Oshima Penin¬ 
sula in southern Hokkaido. Both Ainu and 
Wajin in this region had come to rely on each 
other: the Wajin needed the Ainu to harvest 
and exchange the natural products of the 
region, while the Ainu relied on Japanese trade 
goods—iron, rice, and other items—which 
were incorporated into Ainu society as 
symbols of wealth and power (fig. 7.2). 
In 1456 friction between the Ainu 
(known as Ezo) and the newcomers flared 
into warfare after a Wajin blacksmith killed an 
Ainu in a quarrel over a blunt knife. The 
following year, Ainu, led by Koshamain, 
destroyed all but two of the settlements and 
almost drove the Wajin out of Ezogashima 
altogether, initiating a century of intermittent 
warfare. A feature of Ainu-Wajin conflicts was 
the use by the Japanese side of feigned peace 
negotiations, feasting, and offers of compen¬ 
sation,- after the Ainu had been lulled into a 
false sense of security, they would be am¬ 
bushed and killed. In 1514 the Kakizaki 
family had emerged as the leader of the 
Japanese in southern Hokkaido, and they 
played the leading role in such incidents, 
which occurred in 1515, 1529, 
and 1536. In 1551 Suehiro 
Kakizaki, convinced that 
68 HISTORIC PERIOD /R SIDDLE 
7.3 Shakushain 
In 1669 Shakushain, leader of the 
Shibechari (modern Shizunai) Ainu, 
organized attacks against trading 
posts and vessels, and hundreds of 
Wajin (Japanese) were killed. Several 
hundred Hidaka Ainu then marched 
west to confront the Matsumae near 
their domain in Hakodate but they 
were defeated, and Shakushain and 
his chief supporters were assassinated. 
continued warfare was not beneficial for trade, 
sought an accommodation with the local Ainu. 
The resulting agreement split the profits of 
trade between Ainu and Wajin leaders, but it 
gave Kakizaki monopolistic control and 
established Japanese territorial control over a 
small area of southern Hokkaido. 
In 1591 the first encounter between a 
European and an Ainu took place. On a visit 
to the palace of Hideyoshi, the Jesuit Ignacio 
Morera recorded a meeting with an Ainu 
accompanying a Kakizaki delegation from the 
north. The man told Morera that he came 
from from a place called "Ainomoxoriz," a 
reference to what contemporary Ainu call 
Ainu mosir. This is the first time that the word 
Ainu appears in any historical record. 
The part of the island situated near this 
place is called Yezo by the Japanese and 
Ainomoxori by the indigenes. According 
to what we learned from an inhabitant of 
that area they used to travel to other 
islands in the west and also to another land 
called Rebunkur [Sakhalin] that extends to 
the north of Yezo (S. Kodama 1970c: 15). 
Ainu mosir was obviously not a territorial 
nation-state in the modern sense of a nation as 
an "imagined community" (Anderson 1991); 
although the Japanese had a state and the Ainu 
did not, a sense of nation was equally lacking 
among both Ainu and Japanese during the 
premodern period. The Ainu mosir of 1591 was 
not the expression of an ethnic homeland but 
more likely "the place where the Ainu people 
live." Nevertheless, it is clear from other 
records that Ainu distinguished between their 
lands and Wajin territory. 
In 1599 the Kakizaki family took the 
name of Matsumae, and in 1604 their small 
domain was incorporated into the Tokugawa 
state as a minor fief. The black seal edict of 
Ieyasu Tokugawa that legitimized the 
Matsumae domain, following an earlier edict 
of Hideyoshi in 1593, limited Matsumae 
political authority to the domain. The rest of 
the island and surrounding areas remained a 
foreign land, known as Ezochi (Ainu-land). 
The same edict granted a trade monopoly to 
the Matsumae. Although the Matsumae 
domain possessed rich fishing grounds, there 
was little agricultural potential, so trade 
remained vital for the economy. Rice (more 
than 55,000 bales annually) and other 
foodstuffs were imported from the Tokugawa 
state to Matsumae, which shipped back the 
products of Ezochi in return. 
To impose control on trade, the 
Matsumae set up a series of trading posts in 
Ainu territory and the Amu were discouraged 
from freely trading where and when they 
wished. Products from the trading posts were 
exchanged with Honshu traders who were 
limited to certain ports where they were 
subject to control and taxation. After 1644 
Ainu boats were no longer to be seen in 
Tohoku ports, an indication of the success 
of Matsumae attempts to monopolize trade. 
The domain was becoming increasingly 
dependent on traders from Honshu, espe¬ 
cially those of Omi (modern Shiga Pre¬ 
fecture). Omi trading houses such as 
Ryohamagumi and Yawatagumi began setting 
up branch offices in Matsumae from the 
1630s. Motivated by risk and profit, the 
traders increasingly began to exploit the 
Ainu. The size of the etotawara, the special 
small rice bales used in the Ezo trade for 
convenience of transportation, was reduced 
while rates of exchange were maintained, in 
effect raising prices for one of the staple 
Wajin goods on which Ainu living around 
the trading posts had become dependent. 
Ainu settlements in areas where trade was 
conducted had become much larger group¬ 
ings than in the traditional kotun, and they 
were controlled by powerful leaders who 
gained their wealth and status from the trade. 
As tensions mounted, disputes between 
groups sometimes escalated into armed 
conflicts. Japanese historical sources indicate 
that the feud between two powerful Ainu 
groups, the Menashkur and the Shumkur, 
which took place between 1648 and 1668 in 
what is now the Hidaka region, was a major 
source of political instability. Although the 
trading and gold-panning interests of the 
Matsumae were threatened, they could do 
little more than offer to mediate. 
Although Ainu political organization 
was based on the local or regional group, 
there probably also existed a more general 
sense of commonality among those who 
spoke the Ainu language or shared the same 
cultural traditions. Identity for the Ainu 
appears to have been framed primarily in 
terms of their customs (or religion, because 
the two were virtually synonymous). Many 
observers recorded the resistance and distress 
shown by the Ainu after many of their 
customs, including tattooing, the wearing of 
beards, and the bear ceremony, were banned 
by the authorities in an attempt to promote 
7 / AINU HISTORY OVERVIEW 69 
7.4 Invasion of Ezo by Russians 
Russian explorers and sea-otter 
hunters began encroaching on Ainu 
territories in Sakhalin and the Kuriles 
in the early eighteenth century. 
Shumushu in the northern Kuriles was 
colonized by Russians in the 1730s, 
and by 1749 most Ainu and Kamchadal 
natives had been baptized as Orthodox 
Christians. As Russians penetrated 
farther south, the taxes they imposed 
on fur angered the southern Kurile 
Ainu, who rose up and massacred a 
Russian party on Urup Island in 1771, 
freeing this area from Russian control 
for a brief period. This woodblock print, 
which shows Ainu and Russian forces 
preparing for battle, is from a series 
called "Publication on the Ainu People 
of Japan”; its place of publication, 
date, or the reason for its creation are 
not known. (PEM E75190/23.350) 
assimilation after 1799,- most feared the 
resulting wrath of the gods that would come 
if they abandoned their religion. Even though 
Ainu identity may have actually been rein¬ 
forced by Japanese practices of prohibiting 
Ainu from adopting Japanese language or 
customs, such historical events as Shakushain's 
War nevertheless illustrate that this outside 
force did not compel the Ainu to unite on the 
basis of a common identity. 
This conflict broke out in 1669. Led by 
Shakushain, leader of the Ainu of Shibechari 
(modern Shizunai), many Ainu attacked 
trading posts and vessels over much of Ezochi, 
killing hundreds of Wajin. The Ainu army, a 
few hundred strong, then marched west to 
confront the Matsumae near their domain, 
but here they were defeated (fig. 7.3). The 
Matsumae initiated a pacification campaign to 
regain control of their domain, and during 
feigned peace negotiations later in the year 
Shakushain was assassinated. One result of this 
political turmoil was that Matsumae exerted 
control over previously autonomous regional 
groups in western and central Hokkaido, 
including the Ainu of Ishikari, who were led by 
Haukase and had refused to participate in the 
fighting. Ainu communities in the outlying 
areas to the north and east, however, still 
remained independent or maintained a tribute 
relationship with Matsumae. With the rise in 
Matsumae dominance, the trading posts and 
trade vessels gradually began to penetrate into 
their territories as well, reaching Karafuto 
(Sakhalin) in 1679 and the island of Kunashiri 
in 1754. In 1774 Kunashiri became the 
trading territory of the merchant Kyubei 
Hidaya, although the establishment of 
permanent commercial operations in this area 
was impossible until 1782 due to the intransi¬ 
gence and power of the local Ainu leaders. 
From the early eighteenth century the 
trading territories, now numbering around 
seventy and known as basho, began to come 
under the direct control of mainland traders. 
Domain expenses were increasing and the 
Matsumae were deeply in debt to the 
mainland merchants. The Matsumae hoped 
that letting merchant contractors operate the 
basho after paying a fee would increase trade 
volume and profits and therefore tax receipts. 
This arrangement gradually developed over 
the course of the eighteenth century and has 
come to be known as the basho ukeoi (subcon¬ 
tracted trading post) system. To pay these 
taxes and fees (along with forced loans to the 
Matsumae, of which there was little chance of 
repayment), the traders had to move away 
from barter trade to a more rationalized 
system. This was aided by the development of 
mainland agriculture, which led to a subse¬ 
quent increase in demand for fish fertilizer 
and an interest in the fisheries of Ezochi. 
According to a contemporary source, by 1740 
more than half of the rice paddies in western 
Japan were using fish-meal fertilizer from 
Ezochi, and goods from the region entered 
international trade routes through Nagasaki 
(M. Kaiho 1979). These developments, 
introduced gradually until the nineteenth 
century, were made possible by the systematic 
exploitation of fishing grounds using mer¬ 
chant capital, technology, and management, 
as well as Ainu labor. Contractors introduced 
advanced fishing methods and equipment, 
built processing facilities and barracks for the 
Ainu laborers, and shipped the products 
directly to markets in Kansai (Howell 1995). 
Risks were high, and high fees and forced 
loans to the Matsumae put pressure on the 
contractors to make the highest profits 
possible. One result of this system was cruel 
treatment of the Ainu. 
Emphasis had shifted from obtaining the 
products of Ainu labor through trade to the 
direct exploitation of that labor itself. Ainu 
around the basho, who were dependent on 
Wajin goods and whose leaders derived 
authority from their relationship with the 
basho, were coerced into working for rations 
and goods. Conditions varied, but in the worst 
70 HISTORIC PERIOD / R SIDDLE 
bcisbo the situation was often harsh. In 1789, 
after some years of suffering an exceptionally 
cruel regime, Ainu attacked and killed seventy- 
one Wajin on Kunashiri and in the Nemuro 
area. This final act of armed resistance was 
eventually suppressed by the Matsumae with 
the help of local Ainu leaders under their 
political control. After an investigation, thirty- 
seven Ainu were executed at Nokkamappu. 
The appearance of Russians in the 
north around this time meant that Ezochi 
and the Ainu became a matter of utmost 
concern in Tokugawa political circles (fig. 
7.4). In 1792 Adam Laxman, an official from 
the court of Catherine II, landed at Nemuro 
requesting the opening of trade relations 
with Japan. Although he was rebuffed, the 
Russian threat to Tokugawa's tenuous control 
over the northern territories bolstered argu¬ 
ments for the annexation of Ezochi. In 1798 
7.5 7.6 
7.5 Ainu Northern Regions Before 
1868 (after Siddle 1996) 
7.6 Hokkaido and Surroundings, 
1869-1945 (after Siddle 1996) 
the Bakufu (a military caste that enforced the 
shogunate's rule) sent a large expedition to 
Ezochi, including Sakhalin and the Kuriles,- 
in 1799 over Matsumae objections, the 
Tokugawa government annexed part of the 
region, simultaneously introducing a policy 
that aimed to "civilize" the Ainu by convert¬ 
ing them (often forcibly) to Japanese customs 
and lifestyle. By 1807 all Ezochi had been 
placed under direct Bakufu control through 
offices established in Matsumae and 
Hakodate (fig. 7.5). This was the first time 
centralized Japanese political authority was 
extended to the whole region, but it was too 
vast and rugged to administer in the same 
way as other Tokugawa lands. The Bakufu 
stationed garrisons around the coast and 
intervened in the Ainu trade to alleviate the 
worst injustices, but most Wajin still lived in 
the Matsumae domain or at the various 
fishing stations around Hokkaido. 
When the Russian threat receded the 
Bakufu abandoned Ezochi and handed it 
back to the Matsumae in 1821, and the 
border area reverted to its previous ambigu¬ 
ous status. The Matsumae and the mer¬ 
chants, on the other hand, were keen to 
reassert their economic control in Ezochi as 
well as their authority over Ainu labor in the 
fishing stations. The assimilation policy was 
scrapped, and forced labor and resettlement 
became a feature of Ainu life. Ainu labor was 
used for road-building, transportation, and 
servicing the fisheries, in addition to direct 
economic production. Ainu were brought 
down from the mountains to work on the 
coast or were transferred between basbo run 
by the same trader, and the sexual exploita¬ 
tion of Ainu women by Wajin migrant 
workers became commonplace. The recruit¬ 
ment of labor was accomplished by the use 
of physical coercion if necessary, leaving the 
elderly and infirm behind. These practices 
were all recorded in detail in the journals of a 
sympathetic Japanese explorer, Takeshiro 
Matsuura (1818-88), who conducted six 
official surveying missions in Ezochi and 
Karafuto (southern Sakhalin). 
Diseases introduced by the migrant 
workers also contributed to the destruction of 
Ainu society (see Walker, this volume). As the 
Ainu ceased to be the main economic 
producers in Ezochi, the movement of 
immigrants increased, encouraged by the 
easing of travel restrictions and tolls. As these 
immigrants began to yield political power in 
Ezochi by the 1850s, the hands-off policy that 
the Tokugawa government had previously 
maintained toward the Matsumae domain 
began to break down, and in 1 855 the Bakufu 
reasserted control over the area after the 
Treaty of Shimoda established the Russo- 
Japanese border between Etorofu and Uruppu. 
Colonization and Dispossession 
With the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and the 
establishment of the Colonization Commis¬ 
sion (Kaitakusbi) in 1869, Ezochi was renamed 
Hokkaido and transformed into an internal 
colony of the new Japanese state (figs. 7.6, 
7.7), a strategic "empty land" to be settled by 
Japanese immigration and developed along 
7/AINU HISTORY OVERVIEW 74 
capitalist lines,- both of these policies required 
the dispossession of the Ainu as a prerequi¬ 
site. First Ainu land was appropriated as terra 
nullius under the Land Regulation Ordinance 
(Jisho kisoku) of 1872,- the salmon and deer 
upon which the Ainu depended were soon 
depleted by uncontrolled exploitation,- and 
the land was surveyed and partitioned for 
settlement. Mass immigration, a market 
economy, and administration by local officials 
who answered to a distant power created a 
new colonial society in F4okkaido. The 
authorities began in the 1880s to round up 
and relocate Ainu communities onto reserva¬ 
tions, of sorts, to clear them out of rich lands 
designated for agricultural settlement and to 
make them easier to control. Ainu communi¬ 
ties from Sakhalin and the Kuriles were also 
relocated, the former after the Russians took 
7 7 Modern Hokkaido control in 1875 and the latter in 1884. Life on 
(after Siddle 1996) these reservations was grim, and in some 
cases the communities were moved yet again. 
By the end of the century, the 17,000 Ainu 
accounted for around 2 percent of the 
population of Fdokkaido (Emori 1987: 126). 
Modernization was accompanied by 
new concepts of “race" and "nation" that 
became the basis for relations between Wajin 
and Ainu. The barbarian was transformed into 
a member of a primitive race, a wandering 
savage incapable of using the land or pro¬ 
gressing to higher levels of civilization and 
thus doomed to die out in the survival of the 
fittest. As officials commented in 1 883, the 
Ainu had no history: 
From olden times [the Ainu] . . . have no 
knowledge of time. If they see snow they 
know that winter has come,- if they see 
flowers they realize that spring has 
arrived,- herrings mean it must be summer,- 
when the salmon come they think it is 
autumn. They have no fixed place, when 
they go out they wander aimlessly . . . 
they have no writing, no methods of 
teaching, no inherited sensibility. 
(Takakura 1972: 524) 
A humanitarian movement to halt the 
physical extermination of the "dying race" 
resulted in the enactment in 1899 of the 
F4okkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act 
(Hokkaido kyudojin hogo bo). Linder this act the 
Ainu were granted small plots of land in an 
attempt to turn them into farmers,- assimila¬ 
tion was also encouraged through a special 
system of native education. By the beginning 
of the twentieth century, the activities of 
scholars, educators, colonial officials, and 
journalists ensured that the image of an 
inferior "dying race" informed both govern¬ 
ment policy and public opinion. 
Traditional ways of life survived into the 
Meiji period until the resources of land, fish, 
and game upon which this lifestyle depended 
were appropriated or destroyed by the 
development of FJokkaido,- by the early 
twentieth century most Ainu were sunk in 
chronic destitution and only barely managing 
to survive. Poverty and isolation, coupled 
with the lack of education, money, or any 
other resources, hampered the Ainu from 
mounting any concerted response to the 
social stresses created by rapid change in the 
new colonial situation. Isolated acts of 
individual violence were the most conspicu¬ 
ous attempts to come to terms with their 
situation, but a few Ainu succeeded in 
overcoming many of the constraints imposed 
by the colonial order to obtain an education 
or even achieve economic prosperity. 
Ainu Resistance 
In the 1920s and 1930s younger Ainu like 
Fdokuto iboshi, Yukie Chiri, and Torazo Ega 
became the forerunners of a movement to 
better the condition of those they perceived 
as iltari, "their people." Lacking resources and 
dependent largely on Wajin allies in positions 
of authority or Christians associated with the 
British missionary John Batchelor, they sought 
72 HISTORIC PERIOD / R SIDDLE 
assimilation within the dominant society. 
Their movement therefore concentrated on self- 
help, the eradication of alcoholism, the revision 
of the 1899 Hokkaido Former Aborigines 
Protection Act, and the refutation of the image 
of a "dying race." In 1930 the first organization 
for all Hokkaido Ainu, the Ainu Kyokai (Ainu 
Association) was formed. Although headed by a 
Wajin bureaucrat and operated as a government 
program, the Ainu Kyokai provided an impor¬ 
tant forum for like-minded young Ainu from 
previously isolated communities to come 
together. Despite their ultimate objective of 
assimilation, these men and women remained 
proud of their heritage and helped create a new, 
though fragile, sense of Ainu unity. 
The failure of their efforts to assimilate 
became clear in the decades after the collapse 
of the Empire in 1945. Local prejudice 
continued to deny those identified as Ainu 
the opportunity to participate equally in 
Japan's economic and political renewal. Many 
Ainu were reduced to working in tourism, 
one of the few avenues available for them to 
earn a cash income. Tourism aroused complex 
emotions among Ainu,- many saw it as degrad¬ 
ing or as encouraging the continuation of 
prejudice against them The production of 
tourist art had, in fact, been going on for a 
long time,- even during the days of the basho 
some Ainu had carved articles for sale, and 
the carving of bears had been encouraged 
as a self-help exercise in communities like 
Chikabumi in the prewar period. 
Although the Ainu Kyokai continued, 
the momentum and vitality of the prewar 
movement were never regained. However, in 
the 1970s, radical social and political currents 
in Japan contributed to the emergence of a 
new Ainu politic. Influenced by domestic 
and international movements for civil and 
human rights and the struggles of indigenous 
peoples elsewhere, young radicals challenged 
the comfortable institutional position of the 
Utari Kyokai, the successor of the Ainu 
Kyokai, as a distributor of government 
largesse, and they also launched an attack 
on the assimilation policies of the govern¬ 
ment itself. In common with other indig¬ 
enous populations around the world, cultural 
symbols were activated to encourage a sense 
of identity around which to mobilize politi¬ 
cally. A flag, a history, and a homeland 
(Ainu mosir) legitimized the existence of 
the Ainu people and underscored their claims 
for increased access to wealth and power. 
By 1984 Ainu demands for recognition by 
and participation in Japanese society were 
codified in a proposal to replace the Protec¬ 
tion Act, and the movement was greatly 
stimulated in 1986 by anger over the declara¬ 
tion of then Prime Minister Nakasone that 
Japan had no "racial minorities." In 1987 
Ainu demands were aired at the Llnited 
Nations, and the Protection Act was finally 
repealed in 1997 and replaced with a cultural 
promotion law (Ainu Shinpo). With the 
demise of the Protection Act and the associ¬ 
ated notion of a "dying race,” a chapter in 
Ainu history was finally closed. Although 
many Ainu remain unsatisfied that this law 
would produce real progress because it did 
not address political, resource, or territorial 
rights and did not explicitly grant the Ainu 
indigenous status, it has nevertheless opened 
a new relationship between the Ainu and the 
Japanese government. It thus appears that a 
new era of Ainu history has begun. 
7/AINU HISTORY OVERVIEW 73 
8/Early Ainu 
Contacts 
with the 
Japanese 
Isao Kjkuchi 
Early historical records of the 
Yamato nation, a state of Japan that 
ruled a large area from Kinai (near 
today's Kyoto) from A.D. 552 to 
710, identify the people living in the north¬ 
ernmost part of the Japanese archipelago as 
Ezo. Written in Kanji (ideographic characters 
adapted from the Chinese system), this term 
differentiated these people from Emishi (a 
word describing natives of northern Honshu 
that was sometimes used to refer to Hokkaido 
natives) and Honcho-jin (Japanese). Ezo had 
political meaning throughout the medieval 
and early modern periods, beginning with 
these seventh-century references in 
chronicles of the Yamoto nation and ending 
when the Tokugawa Shogunate identified the 
people of Ezo as aborigines in 1 856 and the 
Meiji government changed the name of their 
lands from Ezogashima to Hokkaido in 1869. 
Abolishing the official use of Ezo signified 
considered: first, the history of the term "Ezo", 
and second, the formation of Ainu identity. 
During the Edo period (which began in 1615), 
the terms "Ezo" and "Ainu" were becoming 
synonymous, but the fact that the ancestors of 
the Ainu were collectively called Ezo does not 
necessarily mean that they were a group with 
an ethnic identity at that time. The name 
"Aino/Ainu" appears in historical literature in 
the last half of the eighteenth century as a self- 
ascribed ethnic name. It thus appears that by 
the eighteenth century the native people of 
today's Hokkaido preferred Ainu and were 
offended by being referred to as Ezo. 
In ancient Japan, the character for Ezo 
was often pronounced with its alternative 
reading of Emishi. Emishi was also a man's 
name, one used especially to designate a brave 
man, but when Emishi was pronounced with a 
provincial accent, it became Ebisu, which 
meant a violent group of people. There is no 
8.1 Historic Map of Northern 
Tqhoku and Hokkaido 
This map, produced by the Edo 
Shogunate government, shows its 
regional administration centers for 
Ezo, ca. 1600. 
assimilation: Ezo people were supposed to 
become Japanese. With this action Japanese 
governments attempted to shore up their 
northern border, projecting a more unified 
presence to the Russians, who had begun to 
expand south into Sakhalin at the end of the 
eighteenth century (!. Kikuchi 1994,- see also 
M. Kaiho 1987, T. Takahashi 1963). 
Can one assume that the people called 
Ezo in ancient times are today's Ainu popula¬ 
tion? There are two complicated issues to be 
doubt that this linguistic ambivalence had an 
effect on attitudes toward the people who 
inhabited the Tohoku area of northern Honshu 
and were not integrated into the political 
world of the Japanese (Yamato), who had by 
then established a centralized state. The 
Yamato people were an immigrant group who 
came from the Korean Peninsula after the early 
Yayoi period (250 B.C.-A.D. 250), while the 
Emishi were longtime residents who dated 
back to the Jomon period (see Yamaura and 
74 HISTORIC PERIOD/ I. KIKUCHI 
8.2 A Fishery Scene 
from Ezo Country 
As the Japanese state expanded north¬ 
ward. a maritime trade developed with 
the Ainu for fish products and such 
Asian goods as cloth, metal, and glass. 
While Japanese were eager to obtain 
seal and sea-lion products, eagle 
feathers needed for arrow-fletching, 
and other northern materials, ocean¬ 
going Ainu traders from Ezo (as Hok¬ 
kaido was known until 1868) sup¬ 
plied the Japanese with materials 
obtained from the Kurile and Sakhalin 
Ainu and from the native people of the 
Asian mainland. This undated illustra¬ 
tion by Teishin Kodama shows Japa¬ 
nese and Ainu vessels exchanging 
fish at sea. (HMH) 
Ushiro, this volume). In the eyes of the Yamato 
people, the Emishi must have appeared foreign, 
for they had a vastly different language, 
culture, and religion. 
The existence of similar material cultures 
shared by peoples from the Ishikari River 
valley in Hokkaido south to the Tohoku 
district has been established by archaeological 
data. The fact that many Ainu-language place- 
names are still used in those parts of Emishi 
that were once identified with the Tohoku— 
the north and northeast in particular—bolsters 
the theory that the Emishi, like the Ezo, were 
Ainu. Although the word "Emishi" may also 
have been a self-ascribed name, it is not yet 
certain exactly what they called themselves. 
From their own point of view, the word may 
just have been a name used to distinguish 
themselves from the Yamato. 
The Emishi were a group with a differ¬ 
ent ethnicity and culture who lived east and 
national culture, the Emishi remained outside 
this national framework. By definition, if the 
Emishi were to be assimilated as Japanese, 
they could no longer be Emishi. Including 
non-Emishi people, for instance, Ezo/Ainu, 
under the political classification of Emishi 
would not inconvenience the Japanese. 
That the people who lived in the 
northernmost part of their archipelago were 
described as Emishi reveals Japanese attitudes 
toward foreigners and the state of its policy in 
relation to East Asia. For example, in the 
middle of the seventh century a Japanese 
mission to the rulers of the Chinese Tang 
dynasty presented Michinoku Emishi (people 
from northern Tohoku) to the Chinese as 
Japanese subjects. This reveals Japan's desire 
to emulate Imperial China by modeling itself 
after the Sui and Tang nations. Although the 
Emishi who resisted Japanese expansion were 
to be suppressed, they were nonetheless useful 
north of the Yamato people. The rulers of the 
centralized state now called Japan regarded 
the Emishi as outsiders who did not acknowl¬ 
edge the emperor's rule and accordingly, for 
political reasons, were defined as uncivilized 
people. Those who lived within the frame¬ 
work of the Japanese nation were thought of 
as citizens of the country, regardless of race 
and ethnic origins. But although these 
Japanese developed a unified identity that 
eventually coalesced into a single ethnic 
as political pawns to enhance the authority of 
the Japanese ruler. The concept of Ezo as a 
subject state ruled by Japan greatly affected 
the Japanese people's political and cultural 
awareness of the Ezo for generations. 
In the middle of the twelfth century, 
the way to read the character for Ezo clearly 
changed from Emishi/Ebisu to Ezo, which 
became the term used to refer to the resi¬ 
dents of the Tsugaru region of Tohoku and 
Hokkaido. What caused this change? The 
8/EARLY CONTACTS WITH JAPAN 75 
ancient Japanese nation was aggressive in its 
campaign to subjugate the Emishi from the 
end of the eighth century to the beginning of 
the ninth century, evidenced by the punitive 
expedition against the Ainu led by 
Tamuramaro Sakanoue in A.D. 801. After this 
period, the belligerent strategy was switched 
to one of appeasement, a policy whose effect 
was to play one group against another. 
During this period, some Emishi in the 
Tohoku region took steps to become Japa¬ 
nese. They were called Fushu or Ifu, and were 
in essence people who became naturalized 
Japanese,- some powerful Fushu clans married 
aristocrats from the capital, Kyoto, who were 
stationed in Tohoku, and these clans became 
powerful in the region as a conduit between 
the central government and northern societ¬ 
ies. The Abe clan, who dominated the 
Kitakami River basin (Okuroku-gun) in the 
middle of the eleventh century, and the 
then called Ezo, developed the Satsumon 
culture, which was known for its ceramic ware 
and based on salmon- and trout-fishing with 
some hunting and gathering—practices that 
fit the ecosystem specific to Hokkaido. As 
any common identity as Emishi faded away, 
the Ezo in Hokkaido and the nation of Japan 
were connected largely by local power 
brokers at the border of their two cultures 
(figs. 8.2, 8.3). 
By the end of the twelfth century, the 
dominant Fujiwara clan, which had acted as 
managers or rulers of the Ezo, was defeated 
by Yoritomo Minamoto, a member of a 
samurai clan who founded the Kamakura 
Shogunate. Thereafter, the Tohoku region 
was governed by a vassal of the Kamakura, 
and all elements of the Emishi culture and 
local tradition disappeared, only the northern 
part of Tohoku (current Aomori Prefecture) 
maintained close relations with the Ezo. A 
8.3 The Japanese Ezo Fishery 
With Ainu uprisings suppressed by 
samurai and the Matsumae in charge 
of Ezo trade, Japanese fish-processing 
plants were established in southeast¬ 
ern Ezo to exploit salmon rivers and 
inshore fisheries. Dried fish, roe, oil, 
fish starch, and preparation of the fish 
fertilizer needed for Honshu’s rice 
paddies produced good profits for the 
Japanese owners, but not for the Ainu, 
who lost their livelihood, were forced 
into indentured service, and saw their 
villages overrun by alien populations. 
This photograph of a Japanese fish¬ 
processing plant was taken at Akkeshi, 
Hokkaido, in 1871 by G. Noguchi, a 
photographer associated with Charles 
Appleton Longfellow during his sojourn 
in Japan in 1871-73. (NPS/LNHS) 
Fujiwara clan, who inherited the Abe clan's 
power, are examples of such powerful 
families. Of them Hidehira Fujiwara was 
appointed Chinjufu Shogunate/Lord of 
Mutsu, a national post, and he exercised great 
power as a ruler of the Tohoku area. The 
source of his wealth was trading to the 
Japanese in such goods as eagle feathers, seal 
skins, horses, and placer gold, which he 
obtained from the northern residents. 
Between the ninth and twelfth centuries, 
the ancient Emishi culture split and took two 
largely different paths: the Tohoku people 
became Fushu and were integrated into 
Japanese society, while those in Hokkaido, by 
local administrator from the Ando clan of 
Tosaminato in the Tsugaru area, appointed by 
the Hojo clan, controlled all trade with the 
Hokkaido Ezo as well as regional affairs. 
Although the Fujiwara clan's power was seized 
by the Kamakura Shogunate and the Hojo 
clan, the Ando clan became a direct successor 
of the Fujiwara and Abe clans in terms of 
control of northern trade and in fact regarded 
itself as a descendant of the Abe clan. Their 
prosperity during the Kamakura (1 185-1336) 
and Muromachi (1 336-1573) periods is 
indicated by the wealth of foreign goods found 
at the Ando residence site, which was recently 
excavated in Tosaminato,- these imported items 
76 HISTORIC PERIOD/I KIKUCHI 
8.5 Lacquered Cups 
and Saucer Stands 
Japanese-made cups and saucer 
stands, called tuki by the Ainu, had 
a central role in Ainu ceremonies in 
which millet beer or sake was shared 
by men and gods. Tuki became an 
important Ainu-Japanese trade com¬ 
modity and were one of many foreign 
items incorporated into Ainu culture 
and belief. They continue to be used 
in ceremonies today. (BMS C18752, 
C18755, C18756, C18757) 
8.4 Trade Goods 
and Ceremonial Life 
Lacquerware—ranging from large storage 
vessels to drinking cups—was one of 
many types of trade goods obtained by 
Ainu from the Japanese. This detail from 
a mid-nineteenth-century painting of an 
iyomante (bear-sending) ceremony by 
Byozan Hirasawa (full view, fig. 9.8) 
shows many of the large containers that 
the Ainu considered "treasures.” (HML) 
8.6 Mutual Influence 
Trade had impact on the Japanese as well 
as on the Ainu. Along with marine and 
other natural products, Japanese received 
attush garments woven from elm bark by 
Ainu women. This drawing by Shimanojo 
Murakami, from Curious Sights of Ezo 
Island (1799), shows Japanese women 
wearing tough and durable attush for 
agricultural work. (HML) 
included white and celadon porcelain and 
Chinese coins. During the development of 
trade on the Sea of Japan, Tosaminato— 
where Hokkaido's kelp, dried salmon, and sea 
otter skin were received—played an impor¬ 
tant role in managing trade with Korea, 
China, and Hokkaido (which was called 
Ezogashima at the time). The economically 
strong Ando clan called itself "Hinomoto 
Shogun" during the Muromachi period, hinting 
at its desire to be an independent power in 
eastern Japan. 
What did the Ezo people on Ezoga¬ 
shima with whom the Ando clan traded look 
like? According to texts on the picture scroll 
Suwa Daimyojin ekotoba compiled in I 356 by 
Enchu of Suwa Shrine at Shinano, three types 
of Ezo were living on Ezogashima: Hinomoto, 
Karako, and Watarito. Hinomoto were 
residents of the Pacific coast of Hokkaido 
and had connections with eastern Hokkaido 
and the Kuriles. Karako were thought to live 
on the coast of the Sea of Japan and be 
related to peoples of Sakhalin and northeast 
Asia. The bodies of Hinomoto and Karako 
people were described as ogrelike. They ate 
animals and fish, were unaware of farming, 
and could not communicate in the Japanese 
language. In the minds of medieval people, 
who believed in the virtue of the center, the 
farther away from the capital, the less clean 
things became, and the ogre represented this 
impurity, which would bring misfortune to 
humans. Thus, it was natural that the Ezo, 
who lived on the border or even outside of 
Japan, were considered to be inhuman ogres. 
8/EARLY CONTACTS WITH JAPAN 77 
8.7 Cloth Mittens 
Cotton cloth was one of the most 
popular Japanese items imported to 
Ezo. These mittens, collected by 
Romyn Hitchcock in 1888 in Piratori, 
were probably made from a used 
Japanese kimono. The cloth has one 
of the many blue resist-dyed patterns 
that were popular in the mid¬ 
nineteenth century. (NMNH 150688) 
The Watarito lived on the Oshima 
Peninsula in southern Hokkaido, and are 
described in texts as traders who crossed the 
Tsugaru Strait to conduct business in Tosaminato. 
Judging from descriptions of maw (sacred shaved 
sticks) and poisoned arrows, the Watarito were 
undoubtedly the early modern-era Ainu. 
Those who moved to the area after the fall of 
the Fujiwara clan or were deported by the 
Kamakura Shogunate to Ezogashima were also 
called Watarito, and traders from Honshu must 
have been part of the group. While southern 
Hokkaido was occupied by people of various 
backgrounds, the Ando clan of Tosaminato 
controlled the entire area. 
Oshima Peninsula created tension with 
the Ezo and led to the Koshamain uprising in 
1457. The year before the revolt, the Ando clan 
moved its headquarters to the Oga Peninsula of 
Dewa. After the battle with the Koshamain 
forces, the Kakizaki clan obtained ruling status: 
although they were vassals of the Ando clan, 
they promoted themselves to the top of the 
Tatenushi class and seized trading rights with 
the Ezo. With the emergence of a centralized 
government led by the Toyotomi and Tokugawa 
Shogunates, however, the Kakizaki clan was 
forced to integrate into the system as their 
subjects. The Kakizaki clan, which changed its 
name to the Matsumae clan, was granted trade 
rights with Ezo by the Tokugawa Shogunate 
and was named its daimyo (feudal lord) in the 
far north (figs. 8.3-8.7). Ezogashima, an area 
where people with vastly different backgrounds 
had once lived together in a trade entrepot, 
finally was occupied by only the Matsumae clan 
and the Ainu people. This can be seen as a 
forced repudiation of the successful coexistence 
of multiple groups among the Watarito Ezo in 
the medieval period. 
78 HISTORIC PERIOD/I KIKUCHI 
Ainu-e: 
A Historical 
Review 
Toshikazu Sasaki 
Although the Ainu did not 
practice painting, mostly due to 
their religion, several sets of 
paintings nevertheless exist that 
illustrate the Ainu lifestyle from the eigh¬ 
teenth to the mid-nineteenth century,- the 
subjects are generally limited to Ainu culture, 
manners, and customs. These works, usually 
called Ainu-e, were painted by shamo (a word 
derived from Ainu sisam meaning "neighbor",- 
it was originally used by the Ainu as a 
derogatory term for the Japanese, but after 
the eighteenth century it lost its negative 
meaning) who had frequent contacts with the 
Ainu. One of the earliest Ainu-e appeared in 
1720 (Kyoho 5) with the publication of Ezo- 
sbi, an illustrated gazetteer of Ezo compiled 
by the celebrated Japanese historian and man 
of letters Hakuseki Arai (1656-1725). Ezo-sbi 
contains a wealth of Ainu ethnographic 
material obtained through records compiled 
Tfg-M/ 
9.1 Pictorial Biography of 
Prince Shotoku 
The earliest depictions of the Ainu are 
found in the first renditions of the 
Pictorial Biography of Prince Shotoku, 
illustrated accounts of a seventh- 
century hero, which appeared as early 
as 1069 in a version of this series 
painted by Hata no Chitei. This illustra¬ 
tion from a screen painting of this 
subject shows attention to cultural 
themes like clothing, hairstyles, and 
physical features. (TNM) 
by the Japanese Matsumae clan, which ruled 
Hokkaido at that time from their seat in 
today's Hakodate region. 
The term Ainu-e has been used broadly 
to define any painting that depicts the Ezo 
(Ainu) without concern for dates, subjects, or 
artists. Since the medieval period of Japanese 
history, the term "Ezo" equates fully with 
"Ainu," but in more ancient uses Ezo did not 
necessarily refer to the Ainu but was used to 
describe many non-Japanese minority groups 
of the surrounding area, including the Lll'ta, 
Orok, and Nivkhi. Many of the earliest 
artworks within the Ainu-e genre, broadly 
defined, do not always provide information 
that can be reconciled with traditions and 
culture of the Ainu as documented more 
recently. Some paintings of the Ainu reveal 
that the artists had no firsthand knowledge of 
the Ainu,- these materials reflect the sbcnno view 
of a different race, and their images of the 
Ainu suggest that these people were not 
widely known to the artists who created them. 
Japanese pictorial art historically 
concerns itself with various styles of paint¬ 
ings depicting all aspects of Japanese life. 
Because Ainu-e on their most basic level are 
artworks depicting Ainu life, it might seem 
logical to categorize them as genre paintings: 
however, they are not truly genre pictures 
because they were not created by the Ainu 
themselves as depictions of their own 
lifeways. Because they were created by non- 
Ainu, certain elements of falsehood and 
prejudice are reflected in some Ainu-e. Some 
scholars of Ainu culture suggest that the 
Ainu-e genre can be divided into two 
distinct groups based on the motives of the 
artists. The first group consists of works 
that sought to record ethnographic details 
about an unfamiliar people for those who 
could not observe them firsthand. These 
artists based their paintings on direct 
experience of Ainu life, documentary 
sources, and real Ainu people, situations, 
and artifacts. The second group approached 
the Ainu primarily from an artistic point of 
view, discovering in them a fascinating and 
exotic subject that offered artistic challenges 
and opportunities. This dichotomy is 
problematic, because artistically superior 
Ainu-e can provide valuable ethnographic 
material, and carefully researched works 
can certainly be artistically rendered. This 
essay is primarily concerned with those 
works of high artistic merit. 
Ezo Illustrated Before Ezo-shi 
Among the most interesting paintings of this 
genre produced before the Ezo-sbi are those 
dedicated to the legend of Shotoku Taishi 
(574-622), a heroic figure whose seventh- 
century exploits attracted artists for nearly a 
millennium Many illustrated versions of the 
Sbotoku taishi denryaku, or collected tales of 
Prince Shotoku, comprise the series Pictorial 
Biography of Prince Sbotoku, starting with a 
version painted by Hata no Chitei in 1069 
(Enkyu 1), which is now in the collection of 
the Tokyo National Museum. Collectively 
these are presented in a biographical style 
that differentiates them from many other 
9/AINU-E HISTORICAL REVIEW 79 
works that sought simply to glorify the Prince 
Shotoku legend (fig. 9.1). Shotoku's legend¬ 
ary role in suppressing a revolt directed by 
Ayakasu, a leader of the Ezo, was a popular 
subject in the Pictorial Biography of Prince 
Shotoku. In one version, "The Subjugation of 
Ezo by Prince Shotoku" is portrayed as an 
achievement of the ten-year-old Prince, 
embellishing upon the "Events During the 
Tenth Year of Emperor Bidatsu's Reign (572- 
585)" in Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan), 
tales of ancient Japan from its origins to 696, 
which was compiled in 720. In this painting 
Ayakasu is seen swearing his loyalty to the 
emperor before Mt. Miwa in Nara. Although 
the depictions of the Ezo and their leader for 
the most part conform to contemporary 
stereotypical images of these people, a close 
analysis reveals certain accurately depicted 
aspects of Ezo manners and customs. 
Hata no Chitei painted the oldest 
9.2 Seisuiji en'gi 
(History of Seisui Temple) 
This early illustration depicts the story 
of Tamuramaro Sakanoue (758-811) 
and the origins of Seisui Temple. The 
painting shows Japanese forces bat¬ 
tling a rebellious northern people who 
are portrayed here without any recog¬ 
nizable Ainu characteristics. Rather 
than being based on ethnographic 
reality, these images conform to ideas 
about demons and goblins popular in 
the sixteenth century. (TNM) 
known depictions of Ezo people including the 
screen in the Tokyo National Museum, 
referenced above. Illustrated therein are three 
half-naked, beardless men with their long hair 
tied in hack,- one man wears a skirt made of 
bird feathers. The next depiction of Ezo 
people, also held by the Tokyo National 
Museum, is a piece in the Prince Shotoku 
series dated to 1305 (Kagen 3). Several works 
dating from around I 323, considered to he 
the 700th anniversary of Prince Shotoku's 
death, still exist, including one at the temple 
at Shitenno dated 1 323, (Genko 3), another 
of the same date held by the Jogu Temple in 
lharaki, and one dated I 324 (Genko 4) in a 
private collection in Kyoto. The depictions of 
Ezo in these four pieces done at the end of 
80 HISTORIC PERIOD / T. SASAKI 
the Kamakura era (1 1 85-1 336) to celebrate 
the anniversary of Prince Shotoku's death are 
different from the work of 1069 by Hata no 
Chitei. It is hard to say whether the Ezo 
illustrated in Hata no Chitei s piece are Ainu 
or people of other tribes, although they do 
possess some elements of Ainu ethnicity. By 
contrast, the Ezo illustrations from the 
Kamakura period, especially the piece done in 
1 324, are distinctly Ainu. Although the 
portrayals of the Ezo in these three picture 
scrolls have a distinctly Chinese character, it 
is possible to find Ainu elements in the 
details. The Prince Shotoku series continued 
to be painted through the Edo period (1615- 
1 868), but the pieces that offer the clearest 
contemporary view of the Ezo materials were 
painted during the Muromachi period (1336— 
1573). The British Museum has excellent 
examples of this series from this period, and 
although they are fragmentary, their depic¬ 
tions of the Ezo are highly informative. 
Ryuzo Torii was the first scholar to 
examine depictions of the Ezo in the Pictorial 
Biography of Prince Shotoku in relation to Ainu 
manners and customs (Torii 1926). He asserted 
that the version in the Jogu Temple in Ibaraki 
showed the most ancient manners and customs 
of the Ainu and that this painting was the most 
trustworthy substitute for the lost originals of 
the Suwa Daimyojin ekotoba (see below). Bol¬ 
stered by Kyosuke Kindaichi's support (1926) 
for his views on the authenticity of the Jogu 
Temple painting, Torii (1926) maintained that 
this rendition is the oldest Ainu-e. Sakuzaemon 
Kodarna (1971) disagreed that the painting 
depicts Ainu manners and customs but 
expressed no doubt that it is the oldest Ezo 
painting. It has been my contention (Sasaki 
1972) that the Pictorial Biography of Prince Shotoku 
be viewed as the oldest Ainu-e, which renders 
these materials invaluable as a starting point for 
studying Ainu culture. 
The number of early Ainu-e outside the 
Pictorial Biography of Prince Shotoku series is quite 
limited, which only adds to the interest in 
these depictions of the Ezo. In chronological 
order, the most important scrolls for their 
descriptions and images of northern ethnic 
groups are Suwa Daimyojin ekotoba (Pictures 
and commentaries in the Suwa Daimyojin 
shrine), Seisuiji en’gi (History of Seisui 
Temple), and Wakan sansai zue (An illustrated 
encyclopedia). 
The Suwa Daimyojin ekotoba, which 
describes the illustrious family whose power is 
represented by the Suwa Shrine in Shinano 
(now Nagano Prefecture), was completed by 
Tadataka Suwa in 1356 (Embun 1) and 
incorporates text written by eight people, 
including Son'en Hoshinno. In its original 
format as an illustrated handscroll this work 
featured paintings done by four people, 
including Takamori Fujiwara, but these have 
been lost and only the text survives today. 
Although the loss of the paintings removes 
the Suwa Daimyojin ekotoba from direct consid¬ 
eration as Ainus, the text provides good 
information on the Ainu of the Middle Ages 
and has been studied from the literary point 
of view,- landmark studies of this work have 
been done by Kindaichi (1925) and Kodama 
(1971). 
9.3 Illustrated Gazetteer of Ezo 
Among the first accurate ethnographic 
renditions of Ainu clothing and mate¬ 
rial culture appeared in drawings 
appended by an unknown artist to a 
version of the Ezo-shi fuzu (Illustrated 
gazetteer of Ezo). This image depicts 
an Ainu man wearing an attush robe 
with border designs. (TNM) 
The Suwa Daimyojin ekotoba exists in many 
manuscript forms. After collating nine different 
copies of this manuscript to reach an adequate 
interpretation of this work, I concluded that 
each has transcription errors 
due to misinterpretation or 
misreading of ancient 
characters,- these errors, as 
well as the loss of the 
original paintings, make it 
difficult to interpret these 
documents. The Suwa 
Daimyojin ekotoba remains 
valuable as historical 
material, however, because 
it describes the existence of 
three regions of Ezo— 
Hinomoto, Karako, and 
Watarito—in the Middle 
Ages. Descriptions in other 
passages are reminiscent of 
more recent Ainu religious 
ceremonies and of one of 
the most important ritual 
artifacts, inaw. 
Other good materials 
on the Ezo were created 
during the half century 
between 1305 and 1356, 
more than at any other 
time during this early 
period, culminating with the release of the 
Suwa Daimyojin ekotoba. One factor in this 
productivity was increased Japanese knowledge 
about the Ainu as a result of the mid-fifteenth- 
century Tsugaru Ando Rebellion, which took 
place in present-day Aomori Prefecture and 
involved warfare between the Matsumae and 
Esashi daimyo families and in which the Suwa 
family played an important role in suppress¬ 
ing. Information about the northern territories 
was collected by the ruling Japanese families 
who responded to the revolt of the Ando, and 
their familiarity with that part of the archi¬ 
pelago revealed information about the Ainu. 
There is good historical documentation 
that another rebellion in a remote northern 
region was suppressed by Tamuramaro 
Sakanoue in about 801. Seisuiji en'gi includes 
this legend in its recounting of the beginnings 
of Seisui Temple in Kyoto, where Sakanoue 
was buried. It was recorded in 1517 (Eisho 
14) that this document was given to the 
painter, Mitsunobu Tosa (1434-1525). The 
work is now kept at the Tokyo National 
Museum. The Ezo depicted in this artwork 
have very strange appearances,- neither 
specific characteristics of the Ainu nor 
elements common for the Ezo discussed 
above are apparent. In these pictures the Ezo, 
depicted as fiendish enemies of Buddhism, are 
being trod upon by a military figure rendered 
as a godlike superior (fig. 9.2). Painters from 
the Tosa school, lacking any knowledge about 
the Ezo, used these fiendish figures to 
represent them. Even these paintings can, 
however, provide valuable information about 
Japanese impressions of Ezo in the sixteenth 
century, and a closer look provides insight 
into legends about Ezo revolts and their 
suppression. 
In modern Japan, knowledge about the 
Ainu began to increase with the publication 
in 1712 of the Wakan sansai zue, a pictorial 
encyclopedia in 105 volumes by Ryoan 
Terashima. Although I assert that the Ezo-shi 
stands as the beginning of the Ainu-e tradi¬ 
tion (see below), the illustrations that were 
published and circulated in Wakan sansai zue 
were pioneering Ainu-e, and its content 
(especially the accuracy of information about 
Ainu language) is superior to that of the Ezo- 
shi. Scholars still question where Ryoan 
Terashima obtained his information about 
Ainu language and wonder why that same 
accuracy was not reflected in his paintings, 
which in comparison to the written content 
of this work appear less convincing as factual 
representations of Ainu. For instance, 
although there is a depiction of a man with 
long hair and a beard, he does not physically 
or by dress look like an Ainu. This man 
wears patterned silk clothing obtained from 
the Santan traders in the Amur area over 
garments with tapered Ainu-style sleeves and 
9/AINU-E HISTORICAL REVIEW 
9.4 Hunting 
Shunri Chishima (also known as Shunri 
Matsumae) painted Ainu-e in a romantic late- 
eighteenth-century style, but his production 
was limited and his work is poorly known. 
This scene of an Ainu family hunting shows 
attention to detail but is more evocative than 
ethnographic. (HMM) 
9.5 Problems with Ainu-e 
This is a detail from a copy by Bunrei 
Hayasaka of a scene from Curious 
Sights of Ezo Island by Shimanojo 
Murakami. At that period it was cus¬ 
tomary for Japanese art students to 
copy original works by the masters, but 
most copies were not exact reproduc¬ 
tion. In this scene the student added a 
Japanese screen behind the Japanese 
guests, changing the ambience of the 
original, which is shown in figure 6.3. 
These content modifications are 
troublesome as they often alter the 
mood, information, or message of the 
original. Although the viewer must exer¬ 
cise caution in interpreting Ainu-e, they 
remain invaluable records of traditional 
Ainu life. Without such recordings of the 
lives of indigenous people as these by 
Japanese artists—or those created by 
American artist Paul Kane or the 
Irishman George Catlin of North Ameri¬ 
can Indians—much information about 
these wonderful cultures would be lost 
forever. (BMS Archives) 
leggings made of Ainu bark cloth (attush), but 
the depiction is unconvincing as a direct 
observational record of an Ainu wearing 
Santan trade goods. It seems likely that Ryoan 
Terashima obtained written sources only, with 
the images coming from his imagination 
(Sasaki 1992). 
Ezo-shi and the Era of True Ainu-e 
Ainu culture developed rapidly between the 
eighteenth and earply nineteenth centuries. 
While the Ainu suffered at the hands of the 
Japanese during this period, they continued to 
produce many fine material objects and oral 
literature. Religious practices were developed, 
and such rituals as the bear-sending ceremony 
(iyomante) had become established by this time. 
Most artwork produced after the Ezo-sbi is 
corroborated by written documents describing 
Ainu culture at that time. However, not all 
Ainu-e illustrate Ainu culture faithfully,- there 
may be more fallacious works than faithful 
ones, and so it is necessary to examine each 
carefully to derive an accurate rendition of 
Ainu culture during this period. 
There is no need to introduce the Ezo-shi 
of Hakuseki Arai to scholars. This book, 
which appeared in 1720 (Kyoho 5), is the 
origin of modern Japanese studies of the Ainu 
and had a great influence on its later develop¬ 
ment. Surprisingly, although many copies of 
the Ezo-shi exist, a complete revised edition has 
never been published, despite its importance as 
basic reference material. Although the Ezo-shi 
indisputably marks the beginning of the 
greatest epoch in the evolution of Ainu-e, it is 
problematic to call the Ezo-shi itself an Ainu-e 
because its pictures were based on actual 
sketches of Ainu subjects,- these were ap¬ 
pended to it by an anonymous artist in Ezo-shi 
fuzu (Illustrated 
gazetteer of Ezo). No 
one is certain whether 
illustrations were 
appended to the original 
edition of Ezo-shi, but 
even without illustra¬ 
tions it contains a wealth 
of information. There 
may have been sketches 
of a few easily trans¬ 
ported objects such as 
swords or clothing in an 
early version of the Ezo- 
shi, but no images of 
Ainu are shown: it would 
have been extremely unlikely that Ainu would 
have been physically present in Edo, the capitol 
city, where Hakuseki Arai worked. As Ezo-shi 
copies continued to be made, more sketches 
may have been added, but this is merely 
conjecture because no artist has been identified 
as the illustrator of the Ezo-shi (fig. 9.3). 
The Ezo-shi sketches of Ainu men and 
women, clothes, utensils, and implements 
present an excellent version of eariy-eigh- 
teenth-century pictorial ethnography. Clothes 
and materials are very well illustrated, which 
suggests that actual ethnographic materials 
were used as models. In the accuracy achieved 
in the illustrations, the Ezo-shi is far superior to 
the Wakan sansai zue. Even though Arai had 
never visited Ezo, he made good use of the 
materials available in the Edo Shogunate 
library, and his book is full of valuable informa¬ 
tion. Although some depictions of people are 
problematic—physical attributes are distorted 
or are otherwise non-Ainu-like—the section 
titled "Elegant Ezo" appears to be a highly 
accurate rendition of an Ainu man wearing 
Santan clothes and Japanese swords. These 
images are a convincing portrayal of contem¬ 
porary Ainu formal dress, which utilized many 
imported goods as luxury and prestige items,- 
this can be verified in other sources. One 
measure of the influence of this work is seen in 
the technique of rendering facial characteris¬ 
tics, including hairstyle, beard, and eyebrows 
produced by straight lines, which set a stylistic 
precedent followed in most Ainu-e after 1720. 
Ainu-e After Ezo-shi 
Several decades after the Ezo-shi first ap¬ 
peared, Teiryo Kodama created a series of 
artworks that are considered to be the first 
authentic paintings (as opposed to the 
82 HISTORIC PERIOD / T SASAKI 
9.6 Tobu 
Tobu, chief of the Monbetsu Ainu, was 
one of the first subjects painted by 
Hakyo Kakizaki in his Portraits of Ezo 
Chieftains, 1783. This particular image 
is known to have been painted by 
Kakizaki, who was one of the most 
prolific and talented Ainu-e painters 
and a member of the Japanese family 
(later named “Matsumae”) who 
governed Hokkaido from the seven¬ 
teenth century. His series depicted 
leaders of Ainu groups who traded 
with the Matsumae, and so provides 
insight into the society of high-status 
Ainu ca. 1800. Kakizaki painted from 
living models and was attentive to 
features important to the Ainu like 
curly hair (a sign of beauty), and 
venerated artifacts, like the warrior’s 
helmet crest seen here. (TNM) 
previous scroll illustrations) to depict the 
Ainu. Although the dates of his birth and 
death are unknown, Teiiyo Kodama was a 
painter active betv/een 1751 and 1764 in the 
Matsumae domain within the Ainu Hokkaido 
homelands,- his painting techniques reflect 
those used by the fifteenth-century school of 
Masanobu Kano. The masterpiece Matsumae- 
Esashi Folding Screen is his best-known work, but 
he also left numerous scroll paintings, all 
entitled Ezo Customs and Manners despite their 
having different content. In recent years 
Satomi Igarashi has studied Teiryo Kodama's 
artworks and reported on his accomplish¬ 
ments (Igarashi 1991). 
In the following generations certain 
Ainu-e deserve to be valued as paintings as 
well as research information. Among the 
artists who are known for the quality of their 
painting in addition to the accuracy of the 
content regarding Ainu culture are Shunri 
Matsumae (also known as Shunri Chishima, 
dates unknown) (fig. 9.4), Hakyo Kakizaki 
(1764-1826), Gentan Tani (1778-1840), 
Shimanojo Murakami (1760-1808), Teisuke 
Murakami 1780-1846), Bunrei Hayasaka 
(dates unknown) (fig. 9.5), and Byozan 
Hirasawa (1822-76). The University of 
Oregon Museum in Eugene has a fine original 
hanging scroll entitled Ainu jimbutsu-zu (date 
unknown), as well as Ezo People by Shunri 
Matsumae,- a good-quality manuscript of the 
Record of Ezo Trip by Gentan Tani is held by the 
University of Pennsylvania Museum. 
In 1783 (Temmei 3), Hakyo Kakizaki 
painted one of the earliest of the few Ainu 
portraits that exist, and it is often considered 
to be the finest Ainu-e. His subject was 
known only as "Tobu" and was identified as a 
leader of "Ezo chi monbetsu,” a reference to a 
location that is difficult to identify today. 
The painting of Tobu (fig. 9.6) is from Ishu 
retsuzo (Portraits of Ezo [Ainu] Chieftains),- 
painted in extremely vivid colors, it is 
verified as Kakizaki's genuine work and is 
now in the collection of the Musee des 
Beaux-Arts in Besangon, France. Although it 
was made as a decorative painting and 
contains some technical exaggerations, it 
reveals Kakizaki's schooling in the Chinese 
Nan-pin style, which emphasizes realism and 
the use of Western perspective, as does the 
similar Maruyama style in Japan. The 
painting of Tobu is somewhat crude but has a 
lifelike quality because it was sketched from 
a living model,- Kakizaki used only a few 
models for the people he illustrated in his 
Ainu-e, and they are recognizable. In his hand 
Tobu holds a decorative crest for a warrior's 
helmet, a highly valued artifact that the Ainu 
handed down from generation to generation. 
This is a very accurate rendition of an Ainu 
man, showing curly hair, which the Ainu 
hold as a mark of personal beauty, and 
detailed patterns on the attush clothing. This 
illustration can be taken as a credible 
depiction of actual Ainu people in the 
Temmei period (1781-89). 
Similar artworks appeared in the Bunka 
and Bunsei periods (1804-30). Compared 
with Kakizaki's painting some are poor-quality 
reproductions, and, even worse, some are the 
artists' own creations and lack ethnographic 
truth: for example, the Kita Ezo zusetsu (Illustra¬ 
tions of northern Ezo) by Rinzo Mamiya in 
1855 (Ansei 2), which was originally edited by 
Teisuke Murakami using materials reprinted 
from Rinzo Marakami's Douchu Yoroku of 1811. 
9 /AINU-E HISTORICAL REVIEW 83 
Hokui bunhai, a record of the Karafuto (Sakhalin) 
frontier exploration, is an excellent body of 
work containing ethnography of the Karafuto 
Ainu in narrative and illustrations. But when this 
work was published under the title Kita Ezo 
zusetsu, the illustrations were done by 
Gyokuransai Hashimoto and Tansai Ju, who 
reinterpreted the subject in the ukiyo-e style, 
known as "pictures of the floating world" and 
identified with woodblock prints featuring 
geisha, beautiful courtesans, Kabuki actors, and 
other worldly or popular imaginary figures or 
scenes. In this rendering the Ainu materials are 
unfit for scholarly use, proof that painters who 
were not aware of Ainu reality cannot be trusted 
as reliable ethnographic sources. 
One should not consider Ainu-e to be 
simply paintings that depict queer manners 
and customs of a little-known people of a 
northern island: it is necessary to understand 
the works' content in order to appreciate 
9.7 CATCHiNG AN EAGLE 
Shimanojo Murakami (1760-1808), a 
shogunate official living in Ezo, had 
great access to Ainu people over an 
extended period. His Curious Sights of 
Ezo Island, completed in 1799, offers 
the most extensive description of Ainu 
culture and society presented in the 
Ainu-e format, and many copies are 
found in collections outside of Japan. 
This image, which presents cultural 
practices and Ainu objects in an envi¬ 
ronmental setting, is typical of 
Murakami’s style. (HML) 
them properly. In reality, Ainu-e are useful as 
materials to clarify the understanding of 
people who share a history on the Japanese 
archipelago, as well as revealing the culture of 
the Ainu. From this point of view, the series of 
illustrations by Shimanojo Murakami are the 
most reliable source. 
Shimanojo Murakami (1760-1808), 
who is also called Hata no Awakimaro, had 
direct contact with the Ainu people and 
experienced their culture as a shogunate 
official living in Ezo. Ezo-shima kikan (Curious 
Sights of Ezo Island), completed in 1799 
(Kansei 12), contains his recollections and 
observations. This book has great value today 
as the most complete description of the Ainu, 
HISTORIC PERIOD /T. SASAKI 
and it expresses the most accurate understand¬ 
ing of Ainu culture among Ainu-e materials of 
this period (fig. 9.7). For this reason, many 
copies of this manuscript have been circulated, 
and many are now found in the United States 
and Europe,- images derived from this work are 
the main source of Ainu-e found in the United 
States. Among the materials in Europe, the 
small booklets kept by the Folk Museum of 
Keel University, Germany, are excellent. In 
the United States, there are copies of Curious 
Sights of Ezo Island by Bunrei Hayasaka at the 
University of Oregon,- a higher-quality 
specimen at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (fig. 
9.5),- and three scrolls with many fine illustra¬ 
tions under this title by Shimanojo Murakami, 
which were acquired in 1952 from the estate 
of Frederick Starr, at the Smithsonian's 
National Museum of Natural History. 
Ezo-shima kikan was not the end of 
Shimanojo's plans. He had intended to work 
on a more ambitious Ainu book but passed 
away in 1 808 before it was completed. His 
adopted son, Teisuke Murakami, and Rinzo 
Mamiya took over and completed Illustrations of 
Ezo Life in 1855, which took as its thesis that 
both Ainu and Japanese culture had the same 
origin,- it is a laborious work that delves deeply 
into Ainu culture. The content of its illustra¬ 
tions are of high value. The Berlin Folk 
Museum has one page of this work, which was 
collected by Heinrich von Siebold. Both 
Rinzo Mamiya and Shimanojo Murakami lived 
in the Ezo region and had close contact with 
the Ainu, and they responsibly reported the 
situation in the Ezo region to Edo,- they also 
had excellent artistic skills with which to 
depict Ainu life. Their works are very reliable, 
but when others copied them mistakes and 
erroneous interpretations of the originals 
occurred. Therefore, one must always exercise 
caution in evaluating Ainu-e, because even 
works by careful artists may be distorted when 
they are copied or reproduced. 
Byozan Hirasawa (1822-76) was the 
most recent of the Ainu-e artists, and it is not 
an exaggeration to call him the finest Ainu-e 
painter (fig. 9.8). His numerous works of 
diverse Ainu subjects have high value for 
research. There are more of his works overseas 
than in japan, and others are still being 
discovered. His pupils, Hako Kimura and 
Sekkei Sawada, whose works are numbered 
among extant "Byozan-style" works, used his 
rough copies as models and painted with a feel 
similar to that of Byozan. The British Museum 
Modern Meaning 
of Ainu-e 
Ainu-e have value as 
materials for reconstruct¬ 
ing the history and 
content of early Ainu 
culture. If the contents 
depicted show manners 
and customs that have 
been handed down 
successively to later 
generations, in different 
periods, its authenticity 
as ethnographic docu¬ 
mentation is enhanced. 
For example, the Ainu 
used to hunt seals, and 
information about this activity was passed 
down in Ainu villages in the Volcano Bay area 
of southern Hokkaido, but today even elders 
do not remember the details. The picture 
scrolls of Shimanojo Murakami and artworks of 
Masumi Sugae (1754-1829) contain illustra¬ 
tions of seal hunts that are depicted so 
precisely that they help restore knowledge 
about this forgotten aspect of Ainu culture. 
Masumi Sugae was a travel writer from Mikawa 
(now Aichi Prefecture) who in 1783 traveled 
9.8 Iyomante 
Byozan Hirasawa (1822-76) was 
one of the most recent and best of 
Ainu-e artists, partly because of 
the diversity of his work, which 
covered many aspects of traditional 
Ainu life, and partly because of his 
prolific output. His Painting of a 
Bear-sending Ceremony is a good 
example of his work, much of which 
is in museums outside of Japan. 
(HML) 
has a scroll and a 
rough sketch of Byozan's 
works, and the Scotland 
National Museum owns 
several excellent large- 
scale works, including 
Painting of Omusha and 
Painting ofllimamu. In the 
United States, the 
Peabody Essex Museum 
of Salem, Massachusetts, 
owns important pieces 
like Painting of Ezo Playing 
the Tonkori and Painting of 
a Bear-sending Ceremony. 
The University of 
Oregon Museum also 
owns his painting 
entitled Ainu Hunters on a 
Hunting Trip to the 
Mountains in Autumn. 
through the northeastern region of mainland 
Japan and Ezo and created a valuable illustrated 
ethnography. He returned to Ezo again in 1788 
and lived there for the next four years, writing 
about the Ainu lifeways and making paintings 
of the Ainu. 
Ainu-e depict aspects of old Ainu culture 
through the eyes of Japanese artists, thus 
making it possible to reconstruct otherwise 
unrecorded features of Ainu culture and, by 
comparing period illustrations with photo¬ 
graphs and contemporary practices, to 
evaluate how it has been transformed 
through time. The artworks of Teiryo 
Kodania, Shimanojo Murakami, and Byozan 
Hirasawa play important roles in this 
examination because these Japanese artists 
had contact with Ainu people while they 
either worked in Ezo or lived there over long 
periods of time. Their firsthand experiences 
allowed them to understand at least some 
aspects of Ainu culture, and even though 
their depictions are sometimes exaggerated, 
their works cannot be considered fabrica¬ 
tions. This is also true of the woodblock 
prints of Matsuura Takeshiro (1818-88), 
which were published in 1869. Takeshiro was 
a scholar hired by the Japanese government,- 
he traveled all over Hokkaido and produced 
a number of well-written documentary works 
about the contemporary social problems and 
living conditions of the Ainu in addition to 
wonderful drawings and woodblock prints. 
This accuracy is important and makes 
Takeshiro's work valuable: many Ainu-e reveal 
a general lack of understanding about or 
even prejudice against Ainu people, and so 
Ainu-e must be carefully evaluated for 
accuracy. In addition, recent legal issues 
concerning portrait rights in Japan have 
made it more difficult to publish contempo¬ 
rary photographs of Ainu people, and so 
although Ainu-e are more readily available 
than photographs, care must be taken to 
select Ainu-e that illustrate faithfully the 
culture they represent so that misunderstand¬ 
ing and prejudice are not spread 
Translated by Ritsuko Howson with assistance from 
Chang-su Houchins,- edited by William Fitzhugh. 
9 / AINU-E HISTORICAL REVIEW 85 
10 Trading 
Brokers and 
Partners with 
China, Russia, 
and Japan 
Shiro Sasaki 
10.1 Ainu Maritime Traders 
By the fifteenth century Ainu mariners 
had become influential traders linking 
Japan, Korea, China, Russia, and 
Kamchatka. Chinese silk, bronze, and 
glass beads moved south into Hok¬ 
kaido and Japan, and Japanese iron, 
rice, and sake flowed north into Hok¬ 
kaido, the Kuriles, and Kamchatka. 
Meanwhile, the latter supplied reindeer, 
eagle feathers, and marine-mammal 
products to the Japanese, and sea- 
otter pelts to the Russians. 
10.2 Amur Santan Trade 
After 1689 Chinese trade goods— 
especially Nishiki silk brocade, glass 
beads, and metal ornaments—reached 
the Ainu by routes operated by Santan 
(Ul’chi) and Nivkhi peoples of the lower 
Amur River. Nivkhi traders supplied the 
western coast of the Sea of Okhotsk 
and northern Sakhalin. Santan 
dominated the Sakhalin trade and 
supplied the Ainu, who also conducted 
direct trade with the Amur. 
10.3 Cultural Impact of Trade 
This mid-eighteenth-century painting by 
Teiryo Kodama shows the impact of 
Japanese and Santan trade on Ainu 
clothing and the material culture of Ezo. 
The man wears a foreign-style hat and a 
silk robe obtained from Santan traders, 
but his sword, which is Japanese, is 
carried Ainu-fashion across the back. 
The woman wears an Ainu robe, but her 
hoop earrings with silk tassels, her 
necklace and medallion, and her basket 
were obtained through trade. (AMS, 
Kodama Collection) 
The Ainu people, particularly those 
who lived in Sakhalin, have a 
history of close contact and 
exchange with the people in the 
lower Amur River basin and the Primorskii 
region on the Asian coast (figs. 10.1, 10.2). 
Although the beginning of such contact is 
uncertain, it goes back to prehistoric times: 
archaeological evidence indicates that the 
inhabitants of Hokkaido and Sakhalin had 
contacts with the inhabitants of the continent 
at least since the late Paleolithic era. Archae¬ 
ology can provide material evidence of these 
contacts, but it leaves unanswered such 
questions as what the exchange brought 
besides goods and how it proceeded. 
When Mongol forces established control 
of the Amur River and began military expedi¬ 
tions to Sakhalin, exchange between the 
ancestors of the Ainu and residents of the 
continent increased dramatically. According to 
the official historical records of the Yuan 
dynasty (1271-1368), the Mongol expeditions 
to Sakhalin were initiated to resolve a conflict 
between the Kugi and the Gilemi who 
inhabited the area from the Amur River delta 
to Sakhalin. The success of the Mongolian 
expedition forced the Kugi into a tributary 
relationship with the Yuan dynasty, which had 
considerable impact on the economic and 
social structure of Sakhalin and the Amur River 
basin. Instead of wiping out the population or 
forcing them out of the territory, the Yuan 
dynasty demanded tribute in fur. Because 
tribute from one side was always accompanied 
by rewards from the other, a traffic in goods 
became established under the supervision of 
the Yuan dynasty, which appointed a local 
tribal chief to administer the region. By these 
actions the local hierarchy and tribal relation¬ 
ships were significantly altered, and trade 
became increasingly formal and regulated. 
The Amur River basin, which was ruled 
by the Yuan dynasty until the middle of the 
fourteenth century and then by the Ming 
dynasty (1368-1644) into the fifteenth 
century, becomes less prominent in historical 
literature after 1435. However, trading 
activities probably continued, and the main 
product, fur, continued to be supplied by the 
people in the Amur and Sakhalin. Later, 
beginning in 1616, the Qing dynasty revital¬ 
ized this trade to an unprecedented degree, 
extending its power downstream on the Amur 
River each time they won a minor regional 
dispute with Russia, the first being in 1652. In 
1689 the dynasty officially took control of 
the Amur River basin with the Nerchinsk 
10.2 
Treaty. The following year they sent forces to 
the estuary and demanded that the residents, 
including the Sakhalin Ainu, pay tribute. The 
dynasty continued its island campaign by 
sending mandarins and soldiers, and they 
eventually succeeded in seizing all but the 
southern tip of Sakhalin. 
The Qing dynasty ruled these regions 
by imposing upon them a fur tribute system, 
just as had the Yuan and Ming dynasties. 
Residents who were required to pay tributes 
had to register according to their hala (the 
clan of the father's side) and gashan (village), 
and a designated chief of each unit was put in 
charge of district security as well as the 
annual collection and delivery of fur. By 1750, 
86 HISTORIC PERIOD/ S SASAKI 
Dynasties of China and Manchuria 
Mainland China Manchuria 
Northern Song 960-1127 Liao 916-1125 
Southern Song 1 127-1279 Jin 1115-1234 
Yuan 1280-1368 Mongol (Yuan) 1234-1368 
Ming 1368-1644 
Qing 1644-1912 Qing 1616-1912 
fifty-six hala and 2,398 households were 
registered as fur tribute payers,- those who paid 
with fur were rewarded mainly with Nishiki silk 
brocade, and every year the dynasty supplied 
the chief of each clan and village with official 
silk clothes (mangpao, duanpao), which were the 
gowns of the mandarin (fig. 10.3). Those who 
offered especially large fur tributes were 
granted the right to create a familial relation¬ 
ship with officials of the Manchu eight-banner 
organization (at the time equivalent to Chinese 
aristocrats) by marrying an official's adopted 
daughter. Further, the tribute payers were 
allowed to engage in trade with officials and 
merchants at the tribute location. By these 
policies, the Qing dynasty brought political 
stability to the region and established the basis 
for commerce and economic development. 
The Qing dynasty initially established 
an office in Ningguta, which is situated 
midway along the Mudan River, to handle fur 
from the lower Amur and Sakhalin. The payer 
of the tribute was obliged to bring the fur to 
regional offices, except for remote areas like 
the lower part of the Amur and Sakhalin, 
where officials were dispatched every year to 
collect tribute and present rewards. During 
the regime of the emperor Qianlong (1736- 
95), such a post existed at Kiji Lake, which 
was a major crossroads for the trade from 
Amur to Sakhalin, and after 1798 at Delen, 
upstream of Kiji Lake. Delen is known from 
Rinzo Mamiya's Amur exploration in 1809 
and 1810. The local office was used for the 
ritual of the fur tribute, as a trading place, and 
a market, which attracted many people from 
various regions of Amur and Sakhalin, 
operated every summer. Rinzo Mamiya 
reported that when he was there, 500 to 600 
people were present at the market and trade 
was very active. 
Initially the Sakhalin Ainu were active 
participants in the growing trade activity, 
which was supported by the Qing dynasty's 
rule over Amur and Sakhalin. In 1732 six hala, 
eighteen gashan, and 148 households were 
registered as giving fur tribute in Sakhalin,- of 
the hala, three were ancestors of the Sakhalin 
10/TRAD INC BROKERS AND PARTNERS 
10.3 
Ainu. Because Ainu society did not have 
higher-level political organizations, like the 
hala, Ainu chiefs from the villages at Taraika 
and Kotankeshi on the east coast and Nayoro 
on the west coast were appointed to manage 
the trade. Chiefs often accompanied their 
villagers when they traveled to the local office 
of the Qing government to make payments in 
fur as well as to trade with Manchurian officials 
and others from neighboring areas. By the 
1780s the Tokugawa Shogunate, threatened by 
Russia's growing power in the region, began to 
assert its political and economic influence in 
managing Ezo. The influence of Japan on the 
lives of the Ainu in southern Sakhalin increased 
sharply around this time, and by the beginning 
of the nineteenth century, the Japanese eco¬ 
nomic zone on Sakhalin extended as far north 
as Taraika, midway up the east coast. With this 
political change most Ainu ceased to offer 
tribute to the Qing dynasty,- only the Nayoro 
Ainu, whose position on the west coast put 
them in close proximity to China, continued 
paying tribute, although sporadically. 
The Matsumae clan, although it was in 
charge of Sakhalin, did little to protect and 
govern the Ainu there. Instead, the clan 
demanded that the Ainu surrender the 
Chinese-made silk (the so-called Ezonishiki) 
they had obtained through trade, which was 
then resold for a high price in Honshu, where 
it was identified as the Matsumae's special 
product. To procure the silk, the Ainu fell into 
debt, owing much fur to the Santan, a group 
indigenous to Kiji Lake where the local office 
of the Qing dynasty was located, who came 
from the continent to Sakhalin to trade. 
Today the descendants of the Santan are said 
to be members of the Lll'chi people. The 
Santan, who paid a tribute in fur to Manchu¬ 
rian officials every year, used silk to exchange 
for fur because they had learned that silk, 
traded through the Sakhalin Ainu, was priced 
high in Japan. 
During the last half of the eighteenth 
century increasing demand for the Ezonishiki 
silk in Japan gave the Santan dominance in 
political and economic affairs over the Ainu, 
who had previously been trading entrepre¬ 
neurs between China and Japan. At that time, 
the Qing dynasty had a strong hand in 
governing the Amur and Sakhalin region and 
reacted quickly to any infringement of their 
tribute and trade benefits. By contrast, the 
Japanese government did not yet have such 
power, and the Ainu operated in a somewhat 
parallel manner to the Santan, as trading 
middlemen in the southern Sakhalin and 
Hokkaido sector. While the Santan enjoyed 
strong backing from the Qing dynasty, rival 
Ainu traders could not yet get Japanese 
financial or military support even after they 
gained independence from Qing dynasty rule. 
Tokunai Mogami of the Tokugawa Sho¬ 
gunate, who was assigned to survey the 
Sakhalin trade, understood this point and 
recommended direct rule of Sakhalin and Ezo 
by the government to stabilize the area. 
In time, the Tokugawa regime became 
aware that they could not depend on the 
Matsumae clan to effectively govern Ezo, and 
so in 1807 they took control of western Ezo 
and Sakhalin as they had eastern Ezo and the 
Kurile Islands in 1799. Further, the Tokugawa 
government realized that the mounting debts 
owed by the Ainu to the Santan might 
discourage indemnities or seizure of lands and 
resources. They were also concerned that 
they might lose Ainu assistance and loyalty 
because of their impoverished condition and 
decided to pay Ainu debts to the Santan. 
Government funds were used to procure otter 
pelts from the Sakhalin and the Hokkaido 
Ainu, and the debts were paid off in a series of 
meetings between 1809 and 1812. The person 
who represented the government in this effort 
was Denjuro Matsuda, a former member of 
Rinzo Mamiya's Sakhalin exploration team. 
Matsuda not only solved the Ainu debt 
problem but also regulated the commercial 
activities of the Santan in Sakhalin. He 
permitted only those people licensed by the 
shogunate to trade with the Santan and 
prohibited ordinary Ainu from trading. The 
trading place was also subject to regulation, 
and the only site allowed was Shiranushi, on 
the southern edge of the island. To supervise 
the commercial activities the Tokugawa 
Shogunate built a lookout station at Tonnai, 
situated about halfway between Shiranushi 
and Nayoro, where the arrival of Santan boats 
could be monitored. When an arrival of a 
boat was reported, officials were dispatched 
to inspect it, put seals on all the merchandise, 
and then let the ship go on to Shiranushi 
where all Santan goods were placed in storage. 
The leaders of Shiranushi and Nayoro were 
called, and the seals were cut in front of the 
government officials,- only then could trade 
with the merchants begin. Although Denjuro 
Matsuda used Sakhalin sable as the rate of 
exchange, actual trade was conducted using 
88 HISTORIC PERIOD/ S. SASAKI 
10.4 Wealthy Sakhalin Ainu 
Contacts between the Asian mainland 
and Hokkaido, Japan, and the Kuriles 
were controlled primarily by Sakhalin 
Ainu. This wealthy man, photographed 
by Bronislaw Pilsudski about 1905, 
wears a different style of clothing than 
that identified with the Hokkaido Ainu. 
Sakhalin Ainu spoke a separate dialect, 
and their culture was quite different 
from Ainu culture in Hokkaido and the 
Kuriles. (NAA 47368) 
sable, fox, otter, and badger, as well as such 
iron products as pots and tools. 
During the first half of the nineteenth 
century, the Tokugawa Shogunate's influence 
had not reached north of Nayoro on the west 
coast (on the east coast, the area to Taraika 
Bay was already under their control), so the 
Santan could conduct their business freely in 
these areas. Later, however, when they traded 
on Sakhalin, they chose to go to Shiranushi 
and thus were willing to put themselves under 
the government's control,- obviously, doing 
business directly with shogunate officials was 
attractive, the main benefit being that the 
Japanese paid high prices for fur. The trading 
rules that Denjuro Matsuda set were main¬ 
tained even after 1822, when Sakhalin was 
returned to the Matsumae clan, and after 
I 853, when it again came under the 
government's direct rule. The Santan contin¬ 
ued to go to Shiranushi for trade until 1868, 
when the new Meiji government of Japan 
ceased official trade with them. Throughout 
this period the number of the Santan boats 
arriving at Shiranushi ranged from one to 
more than ten annually and averaged five to 
six boats per year. 
Although the Ainu were relieved of their 
debt to the Santan thanks to Denjuro 
Matsuda's scheme, they also lost their leading 
role in trading activities in Sakhalin, for 
Matsuda's rules also prohibited the use of 
advanced loans and restricted Santan business 
to Shiranushi. Although the shogunate and 
the Matsumae clan confined trade to the 
limited region facing the Soya Straits, because 
they preferred conducting business directly 
with the Japanese, Santan merchants' exclu¬ 
sive trade with the Ainu disintegrated. The 
dependency of the Ainu on Japan in terms of 
trade and cultural exchanges and the regula¬ 
tion of Ainu fishing under Matsumae rule also 
diminished the Ainu potential and enthusiam 
for continental trade by the middle of the 
nineteenth century. 
At the end of the nineteenth century, 
the Santan who had seized political and 
economic leadership in Sakhalin lost that 
power after ceding to the Chinese and 
Russian merchants. However, trading 
relationships between the Sakhalin Ainu and 
the Santan continued: it was told in Ainu 
legends and in Lll'chi stories. Some of the 
Ul'chi are told they are of Ainu origin, 
specifically, the Kuisali and Duwan clans, 
whose ancestors immigrated from Sakhalin. 
Other groups on the continent also have 
Ainu blood, resulting from men who went to 
Sakhalin and returned home with an Ainu 
wife. After 1945 the relationship between 
the continental populations and the Sakhalin 
Ainu was cut completely when the Sakhalin 
Ainu were forced to relocate to Hokkaido 
when the Japanese lost control of this area to 
the Russians at the end of World War II. 
In conclusion, historical sources reveal 
a long history of Ainu involvement with 
continental trade, as middlemen between the 
earlier Chinese trade operated through 
Santan voyagers and later with Russians as 
the latter began to take over an increasing 
share of political and economic control in 
the late nineteenth century (fig. 10.4). Ainu, 
who had been masters of their coastal 
environment and had developed successful 
maritime adaptations, seized upon the new 
10/ TRADING BROKERS AND PARTNERS 89 

10.6 Young Girl 
Wearing Necklace 
Most early visitors 
photographed Ainu men 
and women in formal 
poses wearing ceremonial 
costumes. In this photo¬ 
graph by G. Noguchi, who 
was a member of Charles 
Appleton Longfellow’s 
entourage of 1871, a 
young girl who has the first 
phase of a lip tattoo shows 
off her necklace and 
medallion. (NPS/LNHS) 
10.7 Necklace with 
Figure Medallion 
Strips of red silk tied to 
earrings and necklaces 
added accent, beauty, 
and spiritual value to 
ornaments such as this 
necklace, which has an 
old brass medallion. 
Although the earliest 
beads and medals came 
from Chinese sources, 
they were also later 
supplied by Japanese 
traders and by the 
Matsumae, who mis¬ 
represented beads they 
had produced and sold 
them to the Ainu as 
imported goods. (NMNH 
150706) 
10.5 Necklace 
with Flowered Medallion 
Beaded necklaces with medallions 
were worn by women for ceremonial 
occasions. Flowered rosettes, originally 
a Taoist motif, were made of brass. 
The earliest beads and medallions to 
reach the Ainu were of Russian and 
Chinese manufacture. Blue, white, 
black, and banded beads were the 
most popular. Women treasured their 
necklaces and handed them down for 
generations. (BMS C18766) 
opportunties to facilitate trade between China 
and the developing Japanese nation (figs. 
10.5-10.7). During the medieval and early 
modern periods, Ainu culture flourished in its 
new capacity as an economic broker,- but by 
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries 
the Ainu lost their competitive edge to the 
expanding maritime skills and financial 
capabilities of Japanese and Chinese-supported 
Santan traders, who provided silk, iron, and 
other commodities to a increasingly fashion¬ 
conscious and consumer-oriented Japanese 
society. Eventually, the Ainu were completely 
dispossessed of their involvement in the 
maritime trade, partly as a result of the loss of 
maritime subsistence resources (salmon and 
coastal fisheries) to Japanese fish barons 
sponsored by the Matsumae enclave and 
partly as a result of the related loss of coastal 
territories. Decimated by introduced diseases, 
without a viable economy, and increasingly 
persecuted by Japanese overlords, the Ainu 
were forced to retreat from their former 
coastal demographic strongholds into the 
interior of Hokkaido, where they took up a 
different economy. Some Ainu remained 
living permanently on the coast to pursue 
their former maritime traditions and the 
economic contacts that had, for several 
centuries, given them a prominent role as 
independent maritime traders of the Seas of 
Okhotsk and Japan. 
10/ TRADING BROKERS AND PARTNERS 91 
Tourism, 
Assimilation, 
and Ainu 
Survival Today 
people were assigned to the Ainu without 
acknowledging their existence as a native 
people,- and an aggressive assimilation policy 
was established that imposed Japanese culture 
and educational systems on the Ainu. By 
designating Hokkaido for the first time as a 
land "without owner," Japan sanctioned a 
massive resettlement of Japanese to take 
possession of lands previously occupied only 
by Ainu. Armed with advanced technologies 
and capital, these new settlers brought an 
exploitative and industrial ethic into a land 
that for generations had been managed 
according to the traditional worldview of the 
Ainu people. Within thirty years, the forced 
assimilation and policies fostering Ainu 
naturalization into the imperial Japanese nation 
had destroyed the symbiotic ecological 
balance that had existed between the Ainu and 
their traditional natural resources and lands. 
As Hokkaido became more integrated 
into the everyday life of the Japanese as a 
source of important industrial and food 
resources, it assumed a new role in the minds 
of Japan's southern citizens as the nation's 
wild and exotic northern province. At first 
this image was based on the perception of 
"wilderness" and "nature," but soon the Ainu 
began to play an indispensable role in the 
"scenery" of Hokkaido (fig. 111). Large 
numbers of illustrations and postcards illustrat¬ 
ing Ainu manners and customs were sold, and 
woodblock prints and photographs began to 
appear as the first stage in the commercialized 
promotion of Ainu culture. Typically, when 
members of the imperial family and other high 
officials visited Hokkaido on inspection trips, 
their schedules included visits to Ainu areas, 
and these regions gradually began to be seen as 
tourist attractions. 
After the Russo-Japanese war in 
1904-05 —when Japan solidified its 
national boundaries to include Hok¬ 
kaido—the Hokkaido tourist industry 
began to develop rapidly. Railroad compa¬ 
nies from Osaka and Nagoya sent groups of 
tourists to Hokkaido to view the "primitive" 
manners and customs of various Ainu groups in 
their natural "wild and untamed" setting, which 
were as exotic and fascinating to southern 
Japanese as western North America and its 
native peoples were to Easterners and Europeans 
in the late nineteenth century. Some of the 
earliest albums of souvenir photographs of the 
Ainu date to this period. 
K.AZUYOSHI OHTSUKA 
Although the Ainu people and 
their lands were severely ex¬ 
ploited during the shogunate 
period (before 1868), much of 
Ainu culture, including language, handicrafts, 
and religious and ceremonial beliefs, survived 
intact into modern times because the sho¬ 
gunate and its local Ezo (Hokkaido) gover¬ 
nors, the Matsumae clan, did not allow 
Japanese immigration into what the Ainu 
knew as Ainu mosir (the land of humans). This 
regulation was not meant to protect the Ainu,- 
rather, it was enforced to prevent other 
Japanese from competing with the profitable 
Matsumae monopoly of Ezo products. In 
addition to enriching the Matsumae clan, this 
policy also produced large profits for the 
merchants who operated the Kitamae 
shipping trade bringing such Ezo products as 
salmon, dried herring, fish fertilizer, abalone, 
sea-mammal products, timber, and other 
materials into Japan. 
When the modern 
nation of Japan was 
established during the 
Meiji Restoration, 
various actions were 
taken that dealt an 
even harsher blow to 
the Ainu: by official 
decree, the name of the 
land was changed from 
its traditional Ainu 
term "Ezo" to "Hok¬ 
kaido",- civil duties like 
those given to Japanese 
11.1, 11.2 Bear Carving 
The most stereotypical image of early 
Ainu tourist art is the carved wooden 
bear. There are different theories as to 
whether bear carving was introduced to 
the Ainu by Japanese tourists returning 
with examples from Switzerland or 
whether it was developed by the Ainu 
themselves. Once the concept caught 
on, tourist sales became a steady 
income for the best Ainu carvers. This 
specimen, produced in the 1920s, 
shows a relatively early style; the form 
was later refined. This photograph of a 
carver’s workshop was shot by Sister 
Inez Hilger. (NAA T-8; K. Ohtsuka) 
92 HISTORIC PERIOD/ K OHTSUKA 
11.3 a, b, c Towel-Hanger 
This towel rack and its carrying case 
are some of the earliest Ainu items 
known to be made for sale to 
Japanese. While most Japanese 
towel racks are made to hang on a 
wall, this one stands on a base of 
walnut arches carved with intricate 
Ainu designs. The chain links are 
also of Ainu manufacture. The 
Japanese cedar storage box is 
fastened with bamboo nails and was 
probably made by a Japanese car¬ 
penter in Honshu. The buyer has 
written an inscription on the front, 
which reads “Towel-hanger made in 
Ezo," and on the back is written 
“Bunsei 12 [1829] purchased on a 
winter day.” (K. Ohtsuka Collection) 
Souvenirs and Ainu Tourism 
To most people the concept of Ainu tourism 
is linked closely to the wooden carvings of 
bears and other items (figs. 11.2-1 1.4) that 
travelers purchase when visiting Hokkaido and the 
Ainu. These carved and painted figurines that 
capture the movements and habits of bears have 
become a trademark of the Ainu, illustrating their 
economic and cultural relationship with Japan in 
the modern context. 
Surprisingly, the making of carved wooden 
bears as tourist souvenirs actually originated 
outside the Ainu sphere in Europe. In 1922 
Yoshichika Tokugawa, who was a descendent of 
the Tokugawa family in Obihiro and ran a large 
farm in Yakumo on the Oshima Peninsula, 
traveled to Europe and discovered Swiss farmers 
making bear carvings for sale to tourists as a 
means of supplementing the meager earnings 
from their crops. He brought some samples 
home to Japan and encouraged Ainu farmers to 
begin carving bears during the winter. The idea 
took root, with the bear seen as an appropriate 
way to represent Hokkaido's abundant nature, 
and the production of bears as tourist 
souvenirs became part of the Ainu 
seasonal calendar. 
The exhibition of 
Ainu manners and 
customs in expositions 
designed to promote 
industry, which were 
held beginning in the Meiji 
period in such cities as Tokyo 
and Osaka, made the public 
more aware of the relationship 
between Ainu and bears. At the 
same time, news of bear attacks 
began to appear more frequently in the 
newspapers as industrial deforestation 
displaced bears from their former forest 
habitat,- in one tragic incident an entire 
family of farmers was killed, adding terror 
and mystique to the primeval image of the 
untamed northern territory. The establish¬ 
ment of nationwide transportation systems 
including roads, rail lines, and ferries 
between Honshu and Hokkaido made it 
possible for southerners to visit Hokkaido 
in large numbers for recreation as well as 
for business, thus producing a boom in the 
Hokkaido tourist industry. People who 
went to Hokkaido often returned with bear 
carvings as souvenirs to illustrate tales of 
their travels. 
These tourists rarely realized the 
religious significance of bears to the Ainu or 
how serious an issue it was for the Ainu to 
carve wooden bears for profit. Bears are 
called kimun-kamuy (god of the mountain) by 
the Ainu and were among their most sacred 
animals, and the carving of images of bears 
and other animals considered to be spirits was 
previously restricted to religious implements, 
especially to a man's prayer stick (ikupasuy). 
The creation of animal images in paintings 
or carvings, especially the image of bears, was 
never taken lightly, and it certainly was not 
done for commercial purposes. Hokkaido 
Ainu did not even have a word for "bear" but 
rather referred to this species as "god" or 
"figure of a human being." In addition to bears, 
the tourist industry soon began to produce 
dolls wearing traditional Ainu clothing, these 
were initially made by Japanese, but the 
practice was later taken up by Ainu craftsmen. 
II / TOURISM AND ASSIMILATION 93 
11.4 Japanese Clogs 
As with the towel-hanger (fig. 11.3), an 
Ainu woodcarver was commissioned to 
decorate these Japanese clogs (geta) 
and their straps with Ainu designs. 
(Shin Mouri Collection) 
11.5 “Museum Ainu” 
Ainu began modeling costumes, creat¬ 
ing artifacts, and performing dances 
for Japanese tourists who flocked to 
Hokkaido to visit Japan's “Wild North" 
after railroad construction began in 
1880. Today, Ainu centers and muse¬ 
ums like the Ainu Museum at Shiraoi 
continue to present Ainu culture to the 
public and have initiated programs to 
preserve Ainu culture. 
The steady commercialization of the 
Ainu that began with bear carvings later 
produced permanent tourist areas called "Ainu 
kotan." At such centers as Shiraoi and Akan, 
traditional Ainu songs and dances are performed 
daily. By touring exhibitions of traditional Ainu 
clothing and viewing demonstrations of Ainu 
beliefs customs, tourists developed a version of 
the daily life of traditional Ainu which then 
entered public consciousness, even though few, 
if any, Ainu have actually lived their lives in this 
manner in recent times. Despite government 
policies that encouraged touristic enterprise 
among the Ainu and helped preserve some 
aspects of traditional Ainu culture within a 
commercial milieu, other aspects of Ainu life, 
including the use of tattoos, earrings, and the 
Ainu language itself, were suppressed or 
officially banned 
94 HISTORIC PERIOD / K. OHTSUKA 
An Ainu Boom 
In 1950 the Marimo festival, named after an 
unusual aquatic "duckweed" that grows as a 
free-floating ball in Akan Lake, Hokkaido, 
was held for the first time at Akan and has 
been held there every year since. The 
festival has become a tourist event adver¬ 
tised with the composite Japanese and Ainu 
title "koi [love] Marimo." Another event that 
helped promote "the exotic Ainu" as a 
tourist attraction was the literary work 
Whistle of Kotan written by Nobuo Ishimori 
in 1957 and later made into a popular film. 
Japanese society, which was then in the 
midst of a postwar revival, discovered 
something fresh and new in this story of an 
Ainu brother and sister, and its popularity 
was a boon to Hokkaido tourism 
In the 1960s the Ainu tourist industry 
collaborated with Japanese travel agencies to 
develop a new tour route that featured Ainu 
destinations. Travel by Japanese to Hokkaido 
entered a boom phase, and for the first time 
many young people backpacked and trekked 
around Hokkaido during the summer. 
Noboribetsu Hot Spring opened an area 
featuring the Ainu called "Bear Meadow" in 
about 1959, and the Ainu became substan¬ 
tially involved in tourism. Shiraoi, which had 
long been known as an Ainu settlement, 
became a tourist destination, and in 1965 an 
Ainu heritage village, Shiraoi Poroto Kotan, 
consisting of traditional houses and souvenir 
stands, was established. In 1966, Village of 
Yukar opened with reconstructions of a 
traditional Ainu house and recitations from 
the mythic oral tradition (yukar). In this way, 
songs about the Ainu, including the popular 
songs "Iyomante no yuro" (The Night of the 
Bear Festival) by Hisao Ito and "Pirika menoko" 
(Beautiful Girl), became known across 
generational boundaries. 
As commercialization of the Ainu image 
progressed, the Ainu kotan became an indis¬ 
pensable part of the Hokkaido tourism 
enterprise: performances staged to replicate 
expressions of traditional culture in the Ainu 
kotan became important attractions to promote 
the sale of goods. Wood carvings of bears and 
other animals, goods made from traditional 
Ainu elm-bark fabric (attush), and other articles 
seen in staged Ainu performances were sold to 
the tourists. Although the sale of souvenirs 
contributed to the economy of those Ainu 
people associated with the tourism industry, 
souvenirs, reconstructed kotan, and perfor¬ 
mances of Ainu dance, song, and ceremonies 
strengthened the view held by many Japanese 
and foreign visitors to Hokkaido that even 
modern Ainu people continued to live in a 
traditional—i.e., "primitive"—fashion. 
Tourism and Ethnic Identity 
11.6 “Ainus Ride 
Usually Without Saddle” 
Not only natural resources were 
harnessed when Japan began to 
develop Hokkaido—the Ainu, once 
considered fearsome and enigmatic, 
had become a “domesticated’’ tourist 
attraction; a similar conception arose 
about Indians in America’s “Wild 
West.” The question raised by this 
postcard image is whether the Ainu 
was playing a joke on a naive 
Japanese photographer (because no 
such riding style was practiced) or 
whether the photographer staged the 
scene. Sets of photographs featuring 
Ainu, bears, and landscapes were 
marketed as tourist souvenirs from 
Japan’s “Wild North.” (NAA 98-10404) 
Today, with worldwide interest in the survival 
of aboriginal cultures, the transmission of 
traditional Ainu culture through tourism and 
heritage museums has become an effective 
means for arousing interest in ethnic identity. 
The tourist center has become more than a 
place to demonstrate traditional culture: for 
the Ainu it provides a context in which to 
reassert one's cultural and ethnic identity and 
to pass on this knowledge to other Ainu and 
to visitors (fig. 1 1.5). 
Recently the public has begun to gain a 
broader appreciation of traditional culture 
through education and political actions by 
native peoples elsewhere in the world. This 
exposure has allowed visitors to better under¬ 
stand—and express complaints and concerns 
about—the more commercial and fabricated 
aspects of the Ainu tourism industry. As the 
dichotomy grows between the economic 
motives driving Ainu 
tourism and the need 
to reevaluate the role 
of Ainu culture within 
Japanese society, 
concerns about the 
image of the Ainu that 
is presented to the 
public are likely to 
increase. 
In the 1980s the 
Ainu were influenced 
by the growing 
international campaign 
for native rights,- they 
began to question their 
lives as a "folk" people 
and to criticize the idea 
that their culture 
should be used as an 
educational or 
promotional instru¬ 
ment of the tourism 
business. At the same 
time, Japanese policy 
toward Ainu culture 
was changing,- for 
example, the Agency 
for Cultural Affairs (Bunkacho) designated Ainu 
traditional dances, including those performed 
in tourist areas, as "important intangible cultural 
property." This action helped the Ainu 
recognize the value of the traditional culture 
that had been passed down from their ances¬ 
tors for generations, and this pride in Ainu 
heritage helped stimulate the cultural revival 
now underway. The new policies also helped 
reorient museum presentations, such as those in 
Shiraoi and Akan, toward a more modern and 
accurate perspective that found broader 
support among Ainu people. 
The established view about the Ainu 
naturalization policy enacted by the Japanese 
government is that it caused their traditional 
culture to disappear,- the purpose of this 
policy, as decreed in the Hokkaido Former 
Aborigines Protection Act of 1899, was to 
replace traditional Ainu culture with Japanese 
culture. Although these policies certainly 
had a devastating impact, I maintain that the 
rise of tourism and the commercialization of 
various aspects of Ainu life have ultimately 
helped protect them from an even worse 
erosion of their identity. 
As noted, many aspects of Ainu culture, 
including ceremonies, songs and dances, and 
handicraft techniques that have been passed 
down among the Ainu, were continued and 
passed on as part of the activities of museums 
and tourist areas. A few elders insisted that 
even those rituals staged as demonstrations 
at tourist areas were legitimate traditional 
ceremonies. Their support has allowed Ainu 
culture to continue even though it was rarely 
maintained by individual families. 
Japanese people sometimes disparag¬ 
ingly call the Ainu who work in tourist areas 
"tour Ainu," and many Ainu agree that work in 
tourist areas is not ideal employment. One 
must consider, however, that the energy they 
bring to this activity has helped them preserve 
their heritage and even acquire a new sense of 
Ainu identity within a human-rights frame¬ 
work. When I see them working with such 
devotion and ethnic pride, I am impressed by 
the strength of an ethnic tradition that has 
resisted destruction even under the harshest 
forces of assimilation and repression. It is not 
inaccurate to say that much of the extant Ainu 
culture consists of those traditions that have 
been maintained and passed down over the 
past hundred years within the context of 
touristic enterprise, most recently within Ainu 
museums and tourist centers. 
II /TOURISM AND ASSIMILATION 95 
The Ainu 
and the Early 
Modern 
Japanese State, 
1600-1868 
David L. Howell 
No Japanese Columbus ever 
"discovered" Hokkaido, nor did 
Ainu culture ever exist free of 
influence from the south. The 
peoples of Hokkaido and Honshu traded, 
fought, and occasionally lived together for 
centuries before the Tokugawa shoguns 
established indirect control over the Ainu 
homeland at the beginning of the seventeenth 
century. The onset of the early modern era 
marked the beginning of a new relationship 
between the Ainu and the Japanese state—new 
not for the fact of contact but for its scale and 
political and diplomatic significance. 
The "Japanese state" in this essay actually 
refers to two distinct entities whose attitudes 
toward the Ainu often diverged. The Tokugawa 
Shogunate exercised central political authority 
but administered only about a quarter of Japan's 
territory directly,- some 270 autonomous daimyo 
domains, including Matsumae in southern 
12.1 
Hokkaido, controlled the rest of the country. 
Unique among early modern domains, 
Matsumae held no land in fief from the 
Tokugawa Shogunate but rather gained its 
legitimacy by acting as intermediary in trade 
and other contact with the Ainu. This role 
derived from the shogunate's seclusion 
policies, which severely restricted the ability 
of Japanese to travel beyond the core polity. 
In general, Matsumae functioned as the 
Japanese state vis-a-vis the Ainu, although for 
a time in the nineteenth century (1799-1821 
and 1855-68) the shogunate assumed direct 
control over parts of Hokkaido in response to 
a perceived threat from Russia. 
The Tokugawa regime was the first in 
Japanese history to demarcate clear bound¬ 
aries for itself. These boundaries were not the 
lines on a map that separate modern nation¬ 
states,- rather, the core polity was surrounded 
by buffers of ambivalent sovereignty, nomi¬ 
nally autonomous but in fact subordinate to 
the state. Japan's northern border was the 
Oshima Peninsula in southern Hokkaido, 
which separated Japan proper from the realm 
of the Ainu. The territory on the Ainu side 
was called Ezochi, "land of the eastern 
barbarians." Its borders (aside from the one 
with Japan) were not well defined until the 
mid-nineteenth century, although in practice 
Ezochi was usually identified with Hokkaido, 
the Kuriles, and southern Sakhalin—all areas 
inhabited by Ainu but not by significant 
numbers of other indigenous peoples. 
The border separating Ezochi from the 
core polity ostensibly served to exclude the 
Ainu from the Japanese state, but in fact it 
drew them decisively into the early modern 
Japanese world order. The act of drawing a 
political boundary upon Hokkaido of necessity 
left some people on the "Japanese" side of the 
border and others on the "Ainu” side. Had the 
boundary been perceived as a natural one—if a 
strong sense of the Japanese and Ainu as 
essentially different people already existed—the 
demarcation of a political boundary might 
have signified nothing more than a confirma¬ 
tion of the status quo, but such was not the 
case. The Japanese at the time were conscious 
of differences between themselves and the 
Ainu, but when they sought to make sense of 
Ainu identity they did not think in terms of 
seemingly immutable characteristics like race 
or even culture. Instead, they employed a 
much more fluid conception of difference, 
Juzoku (T. Kikuchi 1988,- Howell 1994). 
96 HISTORIC PERIOD / D HOWELL 
12.1 Ainu Man 
with Bow and Sword 
Most Ainu-e were painted in the 
eighteenth and early nineteenth 
centuries when the image of the 
fierce, independent Ainu was still 
fresh in the minds of the Japanese. 
This illustration from Curious Sights 
of Ezo Island (1799) by Shimanojo 
Murakami was painted only a decade 
after the last Ainu armed rebellion on 
Kunashiri in 1789. (NMNH 392,023) 
12.2 Sword and Hanger 
Ainu men treasured swords (emush) 
above all other possessions but used 
them only for ceremonial and ritual 
purposes. Most swords had compli¬ 
cated histories. The blades were 
imported from Japan and were then 
often engraved with special personal 
symbols (shiroshi), such as this killer- 
whale symbol, by Japanese 
metalsmiths in Hokkaido. Hafts and 
scabbards were made and decorated 
by the owner or Japanese artisans, 
and the Ainu man’s wife or a close 
female relative would weave the 
hanger strap (emushat). (BMS 
C18783A/B) 
The termfuzoku is often translated as 
"customs," but here it refers specifically to 
elements of outward appearance, such as 
hairstyle, clothing, and personal ornamenta¬ 
tion. Fuzoku were interpreted in relation to 
Japanese ideas of civilization (kn) and barbar¬ 
ism (i), which were connected in turn to 
notions of social order within the core polity 
(fig. 12.1). One's fuzoku marked one as either 
"civilized" or "barbarian" and hence either a 
member of the core polity or alien to it: to be 
civilized was to be "Japanese" in the sense of 
being the shogun's subject. More fluid than 
ethnicity yet less simple than a reflection of 
subjecthood,/nzokn incorporated elements of 
both ethnic and national identity without 
being completely equivalent to either. Because 
fuzoku were explicitly superficial markers of 
dress and deportment, the boundary they 
marked between "barbarism" and "civilization" 
could be displaced relatively easily and hence 
manipulated and reinterpreted for political 
purposes In fact, this occurred in the 1850s 
and 1 860s, when many Ainu were summarily 
"assimilated" into Japanese society. 
The shogunate's recognition of 
Matsumae as its proxy in southern Hokkaido 
transformed a relatively equal balance of 
economic and military power into one 
heavily favoring the Japanese. After the 
demarcation of the boundary between the 
Japanese and Ainu realms in Hokkaido, the 
Matsumae authorities forced the Ainu to 
exchange their salmon, bear pelts, and other 
goods for Japanese commodities at trading 
posts established along the Hokkaido coast 
that were accessible only to boats belonging 
to the lord, his leading retainers, and their 
merchant agents. By monopolizing Ainu 
contacts with Japan, the domain sought not 
only to maximize its economic advantage but 
also to secure its own legitimacy within the 
early modern state as the sole custodian of 
relations with the Ainu (Walker 1996). 
This restriction of trade naturally caused 
great dissatisfaction among the Ainu,- indeed, 
trade conflicts had long characterized relations 
between the two peoples. Beginning with 
Koshamain's Rebellion of 1456-58, significant 
hostilities occurred in 1512-15, 1528-31, and 
frequently throughout the period from the 
mid-1620s to the mid-1650s. At the same time, 
competing regional groups of Ainu fought 
frequently among themselves between the late 
1640s and mid-1660s. This intermittent 
conflict culminated in Shakushain's War of 
1669, a largely unsuccessful attempt to assert 
economic independence from Japan. 
Shakushain, a chieftain from the 
Hidaka region, led a loose alliance of Ainu in 
a series of battles against Matsumae during 
the latter half of 1669. The purpose of the 
conflict was not to sever relations with 
Japan—imported commodities were far too 
important to the Ainu economy for that— 
but rather to break Matsumae's monopoly on 
trade,- the domain had closed off access to 
northern Honshu, raised rice prices, and 
otherwise pressed its advantage against the 
Ainu. The war effort was hampered by 
Shakushain's inability to unify the Ainu 
under his leadership, but it was probably 
doomed from the beginning, inasmuch as the 
shogunate, with its massive military resources, 
stood ready to intervene on Matsumae's 
behalf. In any case, the defeat resulted in a 
new relationship between the Ainu and the 
state, in which both political organization 
and economic activity were subordinated to 
Japanese power. 
12 /AINU AND EARLY JAPANESE STATE 97 
Relations between Matsumae and the 
Ainu after Shakushain's War were organized 
around rituals that originated in Ainu culture 
but were reinvented to fit the political needs of 
the domain. One of the most important rituals 
was the uimam, in which Ainu leaders presented 
gifts to the lord of Matsumae at his castle and 
received Japanese commodities in exchange. 
The Japanese assumed that the word uimam was 
a corruption of the Japanese omemie (audience). 
They saw the relationship as a tributary one in 
which the Ainu presented themselves before 
the lord in a display of submission and 
received gifts as signs of the lord's munificence. 
In contrast, in Ainu the word refers simply to 
trade, without any of the subservient overtones 
of the Japanese omemie. The contradiction 
between the Japanese and Ainu interpretations 
of the uimam and similar rituals was never 
resolved,- instead, constructive mutual misun¬ 
derstanding guided relations (fig 12.3). The 
12.3 Defeat and Oppression 
After Ainu autonomy in Ezo was 
suppressed by Japanese military 
power, interactions between the 
Ainu and Japanese were struc¬ 
tured by regular meetings. The 
Japanese called these uimam 
(audiences), while the Ainu 
interpreted this term to mean 
"trade" as it had in previous 
centuries. However, this detail 
from Curious Sights of Ezo 
Island by Shimanojo Murakami 
leaves no doubt about political 
reality. (HML) 
Matsumae authorities were able to confirm the 
legitimacy of their role as intermediary 
between the Ainu and the Japanese state by 
playing the role of benevolent overlords, while 
the Ainu could play down the hard realities of 
Japanese political dominance and instead 
emphasize the economic benefits of trade 
(Howell 1994). 
Trade—or at least the acquisition of 
Japanese commodities—was critical to the 
maintenance of Ainu society. Imported 
ironware and cloth were indispensable 
elements of everyday life,- swords and 
lacquerware (figs. 12.4-12.6) were prized as 
treasure (ikor); and sake was used in many 
religious practices. For centuries the Ainu had 
maintained a dual economy marked by the 
98 HISTORIC PERIOD / D HOWELL 
physical separation of subsistence activities 
and trade. Inland kotaii (communities of no 
more than a handful of households each) 
served as the focus of basic subsistence 
activities such as salmon fishing, deer and 
bear hunting, and the gathering of edible 
plants. This is the Ainu economy familiar to 
readers of the classic ethnographic literature, 
which generally recreates the world of the 
kotan as it existed in the late nineteenth 
century. In a similar way, trade was centered 
at points of contact with neighboring 
peoples: in addition to their trade with the 
Japanese, the Hokkaido Ainu obtained goods 
from Manchuria and China via the Sakhalin 
Ainu and sea-mammal pelts from the Kurile 
Ainu. While they retained some of these trade 
goods for themselves, most were exchanged 
for Japanese commodities (H. Watanabe 
1972,- Iwasaki 1998). 
Under the post-Shakushain order, the 
balance between the two parts of the Ainu 
economy shifted considerably as trade took on 
a new and very different character. Change 
began in the early eighteenth century as 
Japanese entrepreneurs established commercial 
fisheries at the domain's coastal trading posts 
(Howell 1995). The fisheries relied upon Ainu 
labor to process kelp, salmon, and most 
importantly herring, which produced a 
commercial fertilizer for use on farms in 
western Honshu. By century's end the fisheries 
and the tax revenues they generated had 
become the backbone of the Matsumae 
economy and their operators among the most 
powerful figures in the domain. Although Ainu 
in northern and eastern Hokkaido remained at 
the center of interregional trade networks, for 
most others wage labor at the fisheries 
replaced the exchange of commodities as the 
principal form of economic engagement with 
Japan. Rather than cash wages, Ainu workers— 
the men operating boats and nets and the 
women processing herring-meal fertilizer— 
received payment in kind, mostly rice, 
tobacco, cloth, and sake. 
The fishing industry expanded rapidly 
after the 1 830s, attracting tens of thousands 
of Japanese immigrants to Hokkaido. By the 
time the Tokugawa regime collapsed, there 
were perhaps 60,000 Japanese permanently 
resident in Hokkaido, mostly in Matsumae's 
home territory but increasingly in Ezochi as 
well, several thousand more came from 
Honshu each spring to work for two or three 
months in the herring fishery. (In contrast, 
12.4 Lacquerware Container 
Early in their contact with the 
Japanese the Ainu adopted the 
Japanese custom of storing their 
possessions in large lacquerware 
containers, which were acquired 
by trading fish, fur, and other 
products. These containers were 
so important that Ainu considered 
them to be treasures, and they 
displayed them prominently at 
feasts and ceremonies. (BMS 
C18759) 
the Ainu population at the time was about 
20,000.) The steady influx of Japanese into 
Hokkaido rendered the political border 
between the Japanese and Ainu realms nearly 
meaningless, particularly after 1855 when 
travel restrictions between the two parts of 
Hokkaido were eliminated. To an extent the 
Ainu were able to maintain their dual economy 
even in the face of this development because 
the Japanese newcomers settled exclusively on 
the coast, leaving inland districts to the Ainu 
and their traditional subsistence patterns. This 
changed, however, once the Meiji regime took 
power in 1868 and encouraged hundreds of 
thousands of Japanese to colonize the interior. 
During the fishing season Ainu workers 
lived in camps set up near the fisheries. These 
communities, with populations ranging from 
several dozen to several hundred inhabitants, 
were much larger than the inland kotan, and their 
authority structure was modeled after that of 
Japanese agricultural villages. Over time the 
camps evolved into permanent settlements,- 
indeed, many of the best-known modern Ainu 
communities, such as Shiraoi, were originally 
founded alongside Japanese fisheries. These 
coastal communities became the focal point of 
all relations with the Japanese. Ainu headmen 
performed the umusa, or "greeting," ritual (a 
local counterpoint to the uimam) with the 
fishery operators and traveled to the castle 
town annually for uimam with the Matsumae 
lord. Thus, although inland kotan remained 
intact (if sparsely populated much of the year), 
they became thoroughly invisible to the 
Japanese authorities. This worked to the Ainu's 
advantage insofar as it allowed them to 
maintain a realm autonomous of Japanese 
interference, but at the same time it meant 
that the fisheries were the sole legitimate 
12 / AINU AND EARLY JAPANESE STATE 99 
12.5 “Treasure” 
This handsome container is one of the 
finest from Ainu collections in North 
American museums. Most museum 
collectors working before 1920 did not 
collect lacquerware because they con¬ 
sidered them Japanese rather than 
Ainu, but collections made after 1920 
often contain such pieces. By this time 
the Ainu had already sold most of their 
traditional artifacts that were perceived 
as "Ainu" and were forced to sell their 
last "treasures.” (BMS C18799) 
point of contact with the Japanese state and 
economy. Dominated as they were by Japanese 
entrepreneurs, the fisheries were hardly ideal 
institutions upon which to build a stable 
economic relationship. Without alternative 
sources of necessary commodities, however, 
the Ainu had no choice but to accommodate 
themselves to labor at the fisheries. 
Although fishery labor gave the Ainu 
access to a far greater volume of Japanese 
commodities than in the past, gaining this 
access exacted a heavy toll on their society. 
Living in relatively large groups and in close 
proximity to Japanese fisheries meant that 
epidemic diseases like smallpox and measles 
could wipe out entire populations in a very 
short time. Ainu women were vulnerable to 
the sexual predations of Japanese supervisors, 
and all Ainu were subjected to physical abuse 
and other mistreatment. Moreover, remaining 
too HISTORIC PERIOD/ D. HOWELL 
on the coast for months at a time necessarily 
disrupted traditional subsistence patterns at 
the inland kotan—so much so that Matsumae 
officials became seriously concerned that 
Ainu would starve when rice shipments to 
Hokkaido were curtailed during a period of 
crop failures in the 1830s (Howell 1995: 45). 
This is not to say that Ainu culture became 
less vital as a result of its growing engagement 
with the Japanese commercial economy,- on 
the contrary, there is ample evidence that the 
culture underwent remarkable development 
during the period of greatest Japanese 
pressure. A case in point is the evolution of 
the iyomante (bear-sending ceremony), 
considered by some anthropologists to be the 
defining ritual practice of the Ainu people. In 
its best-known form, a bear cub was captured 
and raised in a kotan for a year or more before 
being returned to the land of the gods laden 
with gifts,- Ainu from nearby kotan and 
neighboring river systems gathered for the 
festivities, which lasted for several days. 
Archaeological and documentary evidence 
suggests that this variety of iyomante did not 
emerge until around the end of the eighteenth 
century—about the time that commercial 
fishing began drawing significant numbers of 
Ainu into wage labor. The iyomante may have 
evolved as an expression of cultural solidarity in 
response to the loss of political organization 
that followed Shakushain's defeat and the threat 
to regional ties that accompanied the rise of the 
fishery (H. Watanabe 1972,- LItagawa 1989,- 
Sasaki 1990,- Irimoto 1992a). 
The integration of Hokkaido into the 
Japanese economy was paralleled in the 
nineteenth century by a move toward political 
integration. Russian ships began appearing 
regularly in the waters off Hokkaido during 
the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and 
the shogunate became sufficiently concerned 
about Russian ambitions in northeast Asia to 
assume direct control over much of Hokkaido 
in 1799. The threat quickly subsided, thanks to 
Napoleon and other troubles in Europe, and 
the shogunate discontinued its direct adminis¬ 
tration policy in 1821. However, it took over 
again in 1 855, shortly after abandoning its 
"seclusion" policies in the face of Western 
pressure. Hakodate, a port in southern 
Hokkaido, was opened to foreign ships, and a 
treaty was concluded with Russia that set a 
border between the two nations in the Kurile 
Islands but left Sakhalin held jointly. (A second 
treaty, in 1875, gave Russia all of Sakhalin in 
12.6. “A Couple of the Chief” 
This Japanese postcard shows an Ainu 
man and his wife posed in ceremonial 
garments with mats, hanging inaw, and 
lacquerware “treasures.” Such indoor 
photographs were rarely taken by 
museum collectors, who usually lacked 
flash equipment and fast film. This 
image was probably shot ca. 1900 by 
a Japanese photographer who was 
better prepared and could afford to 
stage scenes and pay the subjects. 
(NAA 27707.02) 
exchange for Japanese sovereignty over the 
entire Kurile chain.) 
The treaty with Russia notwithstanding, 
the shogunate felt compelled to assert Japanese 
sovereignty over Hokkaido in a way that the 
Western powers would understand—that is, 
by eliminating the distinction between Japan 
proper and Ezochi and instead incorporating 
all of Hokkaido into the core polity. Insofar 
as the core polity represented the realm of 
Japanese "civilization," making Ezochi "Japanese" 
required civilizing it first. This was accomplished 
through the nominal assimilation of the Ainu, 
a feat accomplished by adjusting their "barbar- 
ian"fuzoku to conform to Japanese notions of 
"civilized" appearance. Beginning in 1855, 
shogun officials traveled along the coast of 
Ezochi offering material rewards to Ainu men 
who would consent to "assimilate" by shaving 
their beards and pates, wearing their hair in 
topknots, and taking Japanese-style names. A 
similar program had been implemented briefly 
in areas of possible Russian contact (such as 
Etorofu in the southern Kuriles) during the 
first period of direct administration. Although 
the officials sometimes succeeded in getting 
half or more of the members of a community 
to cooperate, most quickly reverted to their 
accustomed ways after the officials had 
departed, and many others fled inland rather 
than risk the forced assimilation that occurred 
in some areas. Needless to say, the policy did 
not succeed in getting significant numbers of 
Ainu to assimilate into Japanese society—but 
complete assimilation was never the goal 
(Howell 1994). 
The collapse of the Tokugawa regime 
in 1868 transformed both the Ainu place in 
the Hokkaido economy and their relation¬ 
ship to the Japanese state. Ainu continued to 
work in the fisheries, but with the arrival of 
thousands of new Japanese fishermen every 
year their labor was no longer necessary to 
the industry's survival. Inland kotan eventually 
came under assault from Japanese immigrants 
who occupied Ainu lands as part of the state's 
agricultural and industrial development 
policies. At the same time, the new regime 
cut off all ritual relations with the Ainu, 
including the uimam, and instead declared 
them to be "former aborigines" (kyudojin) and 
as such the object of policies designed to 
deny the validity of their non-Japanese 
identities and hasten their eventual integra¬ 
tion into Japanese society as loyal imperial 
subjects. As a result, the Ainu lost the 
measure of autonomy they had enjoyed 
during the early modern period and came 
instead to occupy a new position as an ethnic 
minority (Howell 1997). 
12 /AINU AND EARLY JAPANESE STATE 101 
Foreign 
Contagions, 
Ainu Medical 
Culture, and 
Conquest 
Brett L. Walker 
13.1 Exorcising Illness 
The exorcism of evil gods thought 
to cause sickness is the subject of 
this Ainu-e from Curious Sights of 
Ezo Island (1799) by Shimanojo 
Murakami. The ritual includes 
singing, dancing, and vertical 
slashing of swords meant to ‘‘cut 
evil spirits from above.” (HML) 
Much of the modern research 
on the Ainu explores the 
political and commercial 
implications of early contact 
between Japanese and Ainu in northern Japan. 
But one important aspect of this early contact 
has remained basically ignored in historical 
literature: the ecological and cultural impact 
of foreign contagions in Ainu lands. Environ¬ 
mental historian Alfred Crosby has observed 
(1986: 2 14) that "disease can tag along with 
commerce just as effectively as with any other 
kind of human intercourse," and as Japanese 
penetrated Ainu lands to acquire animal skins 
and fish products for trade, they introduced 
such contagions as smallpox, measles, and 
syphilis, which decimated Ainu populations in 
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 
These foreign contagions did more than 
simply affect Ainu demographics,- they also 
killed Ainu elders and ritual leaders who were 
the repositories of cultural traditions, folklore, 
and hunting techniques and thus weakened 
the ability of the Ainu to withstand Japanese 
economic and military pressure (Walker 
1997). Similar to what Richard White (1983: 
208) has observed of some Native American 
nations, with the onslaught of such foreign 
contagions as smallpox, "people were dying, 
but so too were the basic elements of their 
cultural order." The same might be said of the 
Ainu during this early period of political and 
commercial contact with the Japanese. 
Foreign contagions influenced Ainu 
society and culture both ecologically and 
culturally. Foreign contagions hastened social 
dislocation within Ainu communities and 
transformed traditional Ainu medical culture. 
The Ainu believed contagions to be kamuy, or 
to possess godlike qualities (albeit an evil god, 
nitsue kamuy), and this belief shaped the rituals 
and medicines Ainu healers used to combat 
afflictions (fig. 13.1). Indeed, the effect of 
foreign contagions and the transformation of 
Ainu medical culture was an important 
outcome of early contacts between Japanese 
and the Ainu and had a major role in shaping 
the history of this region of northern Japan. 
Foreign Contagions and Ecological 
Contact 
Medical historians have traced a basic 
chronology and a somewhat blurry geo¬ 
graphic pattern of disease dissemination in 
F4okkaido (Matsuki 1973: 124-31,- T. 
Takahashi 1988: 78-98,- Walker 1997: 
chap. 5). This pattern reveals that foreign 
contagions first appeared—possibly as early 
as the fifteenth century—in Japanese 
population centers called Wajinchi (literally, 
"Japanese land") or Ningenchi ("land of 
human beings [i.e. Ainu]") located on the 
southern tip of the Oshima Peninsula. By 
the mid-seventeenth century, epidemics like 
smallpox occurred more frequently and slid 
into a deadly twenty-year cycle. Moreover, 
between 1624 and 1862, about nineteen 
recorded epidemics broke out in F~lokkaido, 
leaving scores of both Japanese and Ainu 
dead. A series of memorandums concerning a 
smallpox epidemic that hit the Shizunai/ 
Mitsuishi region in 1845 reveals that death 
rates could easily exceed 60 percent in an 
Ainu community even when steps were taken 
by physicians to stem the tide of the 
epidemic (Walker 1997: 284, Appendix C). 
Denjuro Matsuda, a Japanese official, 
offered a glimpse of the social dislocation 
sparked by such epidemics as smallpox as 
well as the relationship between trade and 
the dissemination of foreign contagions in 
Ainu lands. In the case of an 1800 epidemic 
in eastern FJokkaido, he noted that smallpox 
had been introduced to the village of Usu by 
a low-ranking Japanese warrior and an Ainu 
trader from Oshamanbe who were trading 
fur seals there. One common Ainu response 
to smallpox (and to death from other 
diseases) was to burn the house where a 
102 historic period/ b walker 
13.2 Spiny-Blowfish Amulet 
The spiny blowfish (ikaripopo) carries 
a fatal poison, but this does not deter 
Japanese from eating blowfish 
prepared by trusted master chefs. 
This deadly fish was known also to 
the Ainu, who used its desiccated 
body as an amulet against disease. 
Other animals and herbs were also 
used as amulets against sickness or 
such natural disasters as earth¬ 
quakes and tidal waves. (AMS, 
Kodama Collection 61049) 
victim had died, but the Ainu in Usu allowed 
ten days—about the incubation period for 
smallpox—to elapse before burning the 
house where the two men had died, and the 
disease spread quickly throughout the village. 
Matsuda wrote that once the disease began to 
spread "without exception [the inhabitants of 
Usu] took cover in the surrounding moun¬ 
tains, dispersing in various directions" to 
escape the deadly scourge, but many simply 
"died in their tracks." In the neighboring 
village of Horobetsu, he observed Ainu 
frantically smearing kettle soot on their faces 
and running frantically into the mountains. 
Matsuda estimated that of the 250 Ainu living 
in Usu, about forty (or 16 percent) died in the 
epidemic (Sakakura 1943: 4: 98-99). This 
pattern of hiding in the mountains would 
become a standard response to foreign 
contagions in Hokkaido. 
Smallpox was not the only contagion 
brought to Ainu lands by Japanese traders. 
The normalization of contact between 
Japanese and Ainu in the seventeenth century 
also facilitated the emergence of other 
infections as well. Commercial growth in 
ports located in southern Hokkaido—such as 
Esashi, Matsumae, and Hakodate—led to a 
rise in prostitution and a subsequent increase 
in such sexually transmitted diseases as 
syphilis. Recently, archaeologists have 
pointed out that syphilis might have been 
introduced to Hokkaido even earlier: some 
skeletal remains excavated from 
Katsuyamadate near Kaminokuni reveal 
lesions on skulls suggesting that syphilis 
might have been introduced into the Ainu 
population as early as the mid-sixteenth 
century (Tanda 1996: 50). 
Syphilis spread easily in Hokkaido due 
to both prostitution and rabid sexual exploita¬ 
tion. Kenji Kimura, a Japanese observer, wrote 
in 1793 that Ainu prostitutes in the Ishikari 
region sold themselves to Japanese traders, 
while in Hakodate Japanese prostitutes sold 
themselves to Ainu men (K. Kimura 1983: 
83,- Kaiho 1992: 210). Like epidemic 
diseases, sexual exploitation appears to have 
transcended ethnic and cultural boundaries 
along these northern contact points. Rape 
was also fairly common and frequently 
contributed to the spread of foreign dis¬ 
eases. Takeshiro Matsuura, another Japanese 
official, noted in 1858 how a Japanese 
fishery supervisor infected a twenty-nine- 
year-old Ainu woman with syphilis after 
forcing her husband to work at a distant 
herring fishery. He then refused to grant her 
medical attention or even basic sustenance 
(Matsuura 1977b: 3: 19). Matsuura noted 
elsewhere that of forty-one Japanese fishery 
supervisors in Kushiro, thirty-six had taken 
Ainu women as "concubines" after sending 
their husbands to work at the neighboring 
Akkeshi fishery (ibid. 158). Alfred Crosby has 
observed (1986) that syphilis is "important 
in the history of a people in jeopardy, 
because it cripples their ability to reproduce," 
and no doubt it thrived in the exploitative 
environment of Hokkaido. Foreign conta¬ 
gions such as smallpox and syphilis were 
among the first exchanges between the Ainu 
and the Japanese. 
Foreign Contagions and 
Cultural Contact 
The Ainu response to such contagions as 
smallpox and syphilis can be traced to how 
they contextualized diseases within their 
cultural order. The Ainu believed diseases 
were kamuy, or cognate godlike essences, that 
communed between Ainu mosir, the temporal 
world, and kamuy mosir, the metaphysical world 
inhabited by gods and ancestors. The natural 
world, as the Ainu construed it, was teeming 
with kamuy, which assumed many forms. Such 
rituals as the iyomante or the "sending away" of 
a bear cub's or owl's spirit were not viewed as 
acts of cruelty,- rather, they were portals 
through which Ainu could directly participate 
in a metaphysical plane by liberating the 
kamuy essence that was trapped in the tempo¬ 
ral guise of all living things. And contagions 
were no different. John Batchelor, an English 
missionary who lived among the Ainu in the 
Saru River area for half a century, from 1877 
to 1940, compared contemporaneous western 
and Ainu notions of disease and found striking 
13/FOREIGN CONTAGION i 03 
13.3 Influenza Amulet 
Because Ainu believed that illnesses 
were caused by specific evil gods, 
protection also had to be specific. 
Bronislaw Pilsudski photographed this 
Ainu amulet against influenza in 
Sakhalin, ca. 1903-05. The amulet 
consisted of a carved tree stump 
combining aspects of inaw, the shaved 
sticks used to carry messages to the 
gods, with ikupasuy, men's sacred 
prayer sticks. The tufted upper part 
identified the god of influenza; the 
horizontal cuts at either end of the 
vertical slash identified the Ainu 
sender. (NAA 47446) 
differences between them. Unlike nineteenth- 
century Western medical culture, which 
portrayed disease as an "adventitious, blind, 
irrational force," Ainu understood diseases to 
possess a "personal and spiritual existence." 
Similar to other kamuy, he wrote, diseases could 
"think, will, and act" (Batchelor 1901: 108). 
Of the kamuy that dominated the 
metaphysical and temporal landscapes of Ainu 
cosmology, payoka kamuy (literally, "punishing 
god") was among the most feared (Sekiba 
1 896: 29). The Ainu were defenseless against 
the payoka kamuy who swooped into their lives 
bringing the ultimate punishment—ravaging 
disease. That some Ainu folklore (uepekere) 
identifies human abuse of certain small birds as 
the source of smallpox outbreaks indicates how 
seriously such transgressions against nature 
were viewed (Batchelor 1924: 29). To deal with 
payoka kamuy, shamans, called uepotarakur, who 
were diviners and physicians, administered 
medicines, carved special inaw (sacred shaved 
sticks), and oversaw the process of exorcising 
dangerous kamuy from the bodies of victims. 
The shaman-curers believed that the effective¬ 
ness of medicines depended on their ability to 
repulse contagions from the body, and these 
various remedies included both plant and 
animal by-products (Sekiba 1896: 5). 
In 1688, for example, Japanese aboard 
the Kaiju-maru, a ship dispatched by the lord 
of Mito domain, observed Ainu who were 
infected with disease eating bear gallbladders. 
In 1715 Norihiro Matsumae, the lord of 
Matsumae domain, noted that Ainu used fur- 
seal gallbladders and even whale feces to 
combat certain afflictions (Matsumae 1982: 
1 35-36,-Tsuda 1988: 26). In his 1858 report, 
Takeshiro Matsuura, who had observed a 
pattern of sexual predation among Japanese 
workers in Hokkaido, also listed Ainu 
medications to treat colds, eye infections, 
"dizziness from childbirth," mouth sores, 
spasms, chest pains, abscesses or boils, and 
even nosebleeds (figs. 13.2, 13.3, 13.4). He 
noted that the Ainu also commonly used 
eburiko, a lichen that grows on pine trees (Ainu 
siw karus or kuykarus, Fomes officinalis) and ikema, 
a milkweed (Ainu ikema,- Cynancbum caudatum) 
to combat certain contagions, including such 
epidemic diseases as smallpox. John Batchelor 
and his research collaborator Kingo Miyabe 
wrote that Ainu believed ikema to be among 
the most effective remedies against smallpox. 
Ikema was so potent that if it was chewed up 
and the juice was blown from the mouth over 
the victims or even blown throughout the 
infected area, it could drive away payoka 
kamuy (Batchelor and Miyabe 1893: 208). 
Although it is not known where the knowl¬ 
edge of these medicinal plants originated, 
some medical historians argue that eburiko, 
which was widely used by Chinese, was likely 
introduced to the Ainu through early contact 
with the East Asian continent (Yamagishi 
1996: 82-85). As other essays in this volume 
suggest, the Ainu communicated with people 
throughout Northeast Asia and the North 
Pacific via cultural and commercial networks. 
Along with administering medicines, 
shamans played the dominant role in exorcis¬ 
ing contagions from the bodies of the 
afflicted. Norihiro Matsumae noted in a 
1715 letter to the central government that to 
combat dangerous diseases, Ainu "priests" 
conjure up "miracles" through elaborate 
"exorcisms" (Matsumae 1982: 135-36). 
Later, in the early twentieth century, Neil 
Munro, a Scottish physician who lived for 
many years among the Nibutani Ainu and 
who researched Ainu exorcisms, offered more 
detailed observations. He wrote that Ainu 
used such terms as kasikik, "striking down from 
above," to describe the process of exorcising 
payoka kamuy from the body. In preparation 
for exorcisms, Ainu shamans crafted sinna inaw 
(abnormal ritual pieces) and constructed 
"houses of evil" from sticks, which they used 
to hold the payoka kamuy after it was expelled 
from the victim. Shamans also built traps 
from hollow plants like kuttar (Polygonum 
sachalinensis) for the purpose of capturing evil 
spirits, in other cases, they beat infected 
people with switches of bush clover (sinkep) 
and sometimes made cuts in the body to "let 
104 HISTORIC PERIOD / B. WALKER 
13.5 Prayer Stick 
A man’s prayer stick (ikupasuy), 
used in rituals to send messages to 
the gods, was carved with precise 
markings and forms. Images in the 
central panel were left to the carver’s 
discretion, but the transverse cuts at 
the ends were special clan or family 
markings that allowed the gods to 
recognize the sender of the message. 
(BMA 12.229) 
the bad blood out" (Munro 1962: 99-102). 
John Batchelor, a contemporary of Munro's, 
described an exorcism he had observed first 
hand: the shaman "was in a trance and much 
excited. His eyes were wide open, but they 
appeared to be glazed over with a sort of film, 
and he seemed to be looking far away into the 
world of spirits, without seeing anything 
material" (Batchelor 1927: 277). 
Shamans needed to gaze "far away into 
the world of spirits" to deal with smallpox 
because the cosmological and ancestral 
implications of this form of death were so 
high. Munro wrote that the Ainu understood 
people who died from smallpox were destined 
13.4 Smallpox Amulet to wander the earth in the form of ghosts, 
Pilsudski took this photograph of two (tukap), touching off other epidemics rather 
Sakhalin Ainu standing beside an ,i , • • . i ui j r, u . » 6 than resting in the land of the ancestors 
amulet against smallpox in about 
1905. The specific form of the inaw (Munro 1962: 99-102). This concept has 
at the top identified the god who was been incorporated in folk legend that is 
being petitioned, in this case, the expressed in a story from the Nibutani region 
god who brought smallpox, carvings recounted by the Ainu cultural and political 
like those on an ikupasuy identified 
the petitioner. (NAA 47425) leader, Shigeru Kayano: 
Long ago an outbreak of smallpox in 
Nibutani killed so many Ainu that the 
village of Kankan was virtually annihilated. 
Among the survivors was an elderly man 
named Iruekashi who, with little regard 
for payoka kamuy, wandered through the 
devastated village, surveying the wide¬ 
spread death and social dislocation 
touched off by the epidemic. He came 
across some children who had also 
survived the epidemic, and he cautioned 
them that "people who die of this disease 
called smallpox are not like the people 
who die from other ailments. People who 
die from smallpox do not go to the place 
of our ancestors." He said that they roam 
the earth in the form of ghosts, spreading 
disease to other unsuspecting villages 
(Kayano 1987: 53). 
Once somebody had succumbed to 
payoka kamuy—as they almost always did with 
death rates over 60 percent—family members 
took care to dispose of the body and burn the 
house where the victim had died, while still 
showing some reverence toward the dead 
(figs. 13.6, 13.7). In 1737, for example, 
Genjiro Sakakura, a surveyor from a Japanese 
gold-mining firm, wrote that when threatened 
by epidemics, Ainu abandoned the infected 
and ran into the mountains. They did not 
return, he added, until the victim had died,- 
family members then covered the body in 
attush, a fabric made from elm bark, and 
carried it into the mountains. Upon return¬ 
ing to the village they burned the house to 
the ground and built another in its place 
(Sakakura 1943: 4: 410). Because the Ainu 
understood smallpox to be a wrathful kamuy, 
it is hardly surprising that they chose to 
evade contagions by hiding in the mountains 
and then burning the home. 
Payoka kamuy transcended the boundary 
between temporal and metaphysical worlds, 
and exorcising them required a combination 
of linking to the spiritual world, experiment¬ 
ing with a variety of medicines, or finally 
simply hiding in the mountains. Even while 
in the mountains, however, Ainu were 
constantly threatened by starvation and 
death from exposure. As they viewed it, they 
were not hiding from diseases, but from 
spirits who terrorized the realms of their 
consciousness with no regard for human life 
or their ancestors. Payoka kamuy left even the 
13 /FOREIGN CONTAGION 10 5 
13.6 Caring for a Corpse 
In Sakhalin, caring for the dead was a 
task usually assigned to a low-ranking 
woman; it generally required at least a 
year of attention and monitoring. In this 
illustration from Rinzo Mamiya’s Illus¬ 
trations of Northern Ezo (1855) a 
woman approaches a burial scaffold 
containing a corpse wrapped in a birch- 
bark shroud. (HML) 
13.7 Burning the House 
of the Deceased 
Burial customs varied regionally 
among the Ainu. In some areas the 
deceased's house was burned and 
the dwelling site was abandoned. 
This illustration from Shimanojo 
Murakami's Curious Sights of Ezo 
Island (1799) shows mourners griev¬ 
ing beside the deceased’s posses¬ 
sions. (HML) 
most powerful elders feverish and in pain and 
littered the faces of the young with festering 
pustules. There seemed to be no defenses 
from such diseases at their disposal; the Ainu 
increasingly began to realize that they were 
powerless against this invisible spiritual and 
physical scourge. 
The dramatic social and cultural effects 
of breeching the epidemiologic boundaries in 
northern Japan is reflected in population data: 
between 1807, when a government census 
estimated the population of Hokkaido Ainu at 
26,256, and 1854, the population declined 43 
percent, nearly 1 percent per year, to 15,171 
(Shirayama 1971: 35-36). These numbers are 
even more striking at a regional level 
Akkeshi, once a thriving Ainu community in 
eastern Hokkaido, experienced a 75 percent 
decline between 1809 and 1856, from 874 to 
217 inhabitants (Matsuura 1977b: 3: 424). 
Akkeshi had been recognized as a powerful 
community because it had challenged the 
Japanese in 1789—with the help of neighbor¬ 
ing groups seventy-one Japanese were killed 
in two quick assaults—but it evoked an 
entirely different image by the end of the 
106 HISTORIC PERIOD / B WALKER 
13.8 Ritual Sword 
In some areas Ainu men owned small 
ritual swords (pon emush) that they 
kept under their pillows to ward off 
illness; such swords were also 
charms, believed to ensure that 
one’s wife gave birth to a son. Some 
of these swords were simply pieces 
of carved wood encased in a birch- 
bark sheath. (MPM N17053) 
nineteenth century. A. Henry Savage Landor, 
a self-proclaimed English adventurer, wrote of 
the Akkeshi Ainu that "few of them are left 
now, and those few are indeed poor speci¬ 
mens of their race. They have nearly all 
become bald, and they seem to suffer very 
severely from Rheumatism" (1893). 
This epidemiological history reveals that 
Ainu society underwent widespread upheaval 
and dislocation as a result of foreign conta¬ 
gions, compelling scholars to reexamine the 
early contact between Ainu and Japanese to 
understand how native Ainu lands were 
conquered by the Japanese. Nineteenth- 
century descriptions of the Ainu, many by 
foreign observers, stress their "amiable," 
"submissive," and even "loathsome" physical 
traits (Capron 1875: 266,- Landor 1893: 42), 
but their history suggests that, to the extent 
such characterizations were valid at all, these 
attributes may have developed partly under 
the influence of rampant diseases. The Ainu 
vigorously contested Japanese expansion in 
southern Hokkaido on nine different occa¬ 
sions between 1456 and 1536, before such 
diseases as smallpox could get a foothold 
(Takakura 1942: 26); however, foreign 
contagions dismantled any hope of Ainu 
resistance in the face of Japanese conquerors, 
despite new efforts by Ainu medical experts to 
treat these deadly infections. Ainu culture 
proved dynamic, reinventing itself to meet 
the needs of a changing disease ecology in 
the north, but it was not enough to stem the 
painful effects of disease on Ainu society. 
Gradually, over the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries Ainu began to lose faith 
in the medical practices devised over 
centuries to deal with "native" infections. 
These practices were found to be insufficient 
to combat the new contagions that were 
introduced through increased contact with 
Japanese and other populations with whom 
the Ainu were in contact for trade on the 
Asian continent. At risk was more than their 
health alone: faith in their traditional 
cosmology, in the ability of their shamans to 
protect them from disease or to exorcise evil 
spirits, and in the ability of their elders and 
their ceremonies to find accommodation 
with the gods were all factors that contrib¬ 
uted to the accumulated cultural erosion 
from loss of maritime trade, of lands and 
subsistence resources, and of a stable 
population. So weakened, having lost their 
independence and capability of self-determi¬ 
nation, the Ainu were increasingly unable to 
resist the growing Japanese power over their 
lives and lands. Although much work remains 
to be done to clarify Ainu medical practice, 
historical demography, and epidemiology as it 
relates not only to Japan but to contacts with 
the continent, it is now apparent that disease 
and foreign contagions played an important 
role in the Ainu decline and the Japanese 
domination of their native lands. 
13 / FOREIGN CONTAGION 107 
14/From 
Assimilation to 
Indigenous 
Rights: 
Ainu Resistance 
Since 1869 
Richard Siddle 
In 1899 the Japanese government 
enacted the Hokkaido Former Aborigi¬ 
nes Protection Act. Informed by social 
Darwinist perceptions of a "dying race'' 
of "former natives," this legislation aimed to 
manage and control the hapless Ainu who had 
been swept aside in the "struggle for survival." 
It was no coincidence that such discourse and 
legislation resembled "native policy" in North 
America and Australasia,- Japanese colonial 
officials had investigated such measures, and 
popular social Darwinism was a permanent 
feature of the Japanese intellectual landscape 
(Siddle 1996). Colonial policy had destroyed 
the Ainu way of life as immigrants moved into 
Ainu lands and traditional settlements were 
broken up and relocated and as deer and 
salmon were hunted almost to extinction. The 
consequent destitution, apathy, and despair of 
Ainu communities only served to reinforce 
official and popular perceptions of a "dying 
race." The Ainu did not appear to have the 
energy to resist their extinction. 
14.1 Protest March 
During the twentieth century the social 
and economic conditions of the Ainu 
have worsened, but beginning in the 
1960s a new activist generation took 
to the streets to gain rights that had 
been denied in the endless struggles 
to revoke the 1899 Hokkaido Former 
Aborigines Protection Act. Protest 
marches like this one, which took 
place in Sapporo in November 1989, 
attracted wide public attention. Ainu 
costumes were worn to assert identity: 
previously Ainu had sought to blend 
into Japanese society rather than 
accentuate their differences. 
The Movement Against 
the Protection Act 
Most Ainu settlements were small and 
scattered, and protest against early Ainu 
policy under such conditions was not easy, 
even when whole communities were affected. 
When the authorities were determined they 
acted firmly. In 1884 the ninety-four Ainu 
residents of Shumushu island in the Kuriles 
were forcibly relocated to the distant island of 
Shikotan. After being ordered to slaughter all 
their dogs, they were herded on board the 
vessel sent to transport them, and from the 
deck they watched their village go up in 
flames. On unfamiliar Shikotan these northern 
108 HISTORIC PERIOD/ R. SIDDLE 
hunters were forced to become farmers, and 
half of the evacuees died within five years. 
The survivors found what solace they could 
by stubbornly clinging to their Orthodox 
Christianity (itself a legacy of Russian 
colonialism dating from the 1730s) despite 
attempts to convert them to Buddhism. 
The largest relocation involved 841 
Ainu from Karafuto (Sakhalin) who were 
transported to Hokkaido after their homeland 
became Russian territory as a result of the 
1 875 Treaty of St. Petersburg. Contemporary 
accounts record Ainu anger at being forced to 
settle in swampy ground at Tsuishikari near 
Sapporo and take up farming, but despite their 
numbers they were unable to resist the move. 
Disease soon took its toll, especially the 
smallpox and cholera epidemics of 1886 and 
1887, which claimed more than three hundred 
lives. The attempt to turn the Ainu into model 
citizens in Tsuishikari eventually failed, 
however, in the face of passive Ainu refusal to 
cooperate. Many men left to work as fishermen 
or returned to Russian Sakhalin, with or 
without passports. When 336 Ainu returned to 
Karafuto after victory in the Russo-Japanese 
war in 1905, only twenty-seven remained in 
Hokkaido (M. Kono 1996). 
There was considerable passive resis¬ 
tance to farming and acculturation. Unfamil¬ 
iarity with farming techniques was not the 
only reason why many Ainu failed to work 
their granted lands. Practices such as manur¬ 
ing, for instance, offended religious taboos on 
cleanliness, and most Ainu men preferred to 
continue in their traditional seasonal patterns 
as hunters or work on the colonial survey 
teams in the interior. Although the mode of 
life that underlay the traditional animistic 
spirituality had been destroyed, the Ainu 
were reluctant to abandon their beliefs. Even 
when certain ceremonial practices were 
discontinued they lived on in children's games 
(M. Ogawa 1993). In a survey as late as 1931, 
the Hokkaido government reported that 
nearly half of all Ainu households—1,648 out 
of 3,417—still adhered to "natural religion" 
(Hokkaido-cho 1934: 343). 
Organized Ainu political resistance did 
not emerge in the early colonial period. 
Individuals reacted to the stress of their 
collapsing world in different ways: many 
sought refuge in alcohol, some were provoked 
into outbursts of violence. A few men, like 
Monsuke Ota (Montereku), adapted to the 
colonists and their ways and became land- 
owners, and some even became wealthy. Only 
one educated young Ainu, Taro Kannari, was 
influenced by the currents of liberal political 
opposition in 1880s Japan, and he attempted 
to campaign for improved education and 
welfare for the Ainu people. His efforts were 
rewarded with opposition from tradition- 
oriented Ainu elders, and he sank into 
alcoholism and despair, dying in 1897 at the 
age of thirty. The only real exception to this 
trend was the successful political struggle in 
1900 of the Ainu community of Chikabumi, 
near Asahikawa, to protect their reservation 
from powerful business interests. 
It was not until the 1920s that a small 
group of educated young Ainu, united by 
Christian faith and a commitment to work for 
their people, began to form a small movement 
under the wing of longtime British missionary 
John Batchelor and his Japanese Christian allies. 
Not surprisingly, their agenda was not radical 
activism but the incorporation of the Ainu into 
Japanese society through self-improvement. In 
particular, the shoddy native education system 
established by the Protection Act of 1899 (and 
subsequent regulations) was seen as a means to 
perpetuate Ainu subordination. Under these 
influences Ainu activism in the 1920s and 1930s 
focused on the abolition of native education, the 
eradication of alcoholism, the improvement of 
general social and economic conditions, and the 
removal of the legal inequality enshrined in the 
Protection Act. 
This movement for educational reform 
and the talented young men and women it 
fostered found intellectual and emotional 
expression through poetiy and essays pub¬ 
lished in the magazine of Batchelor's Ainu 
Mission. Milestones in Ainu literature include 
Ainu monocjatari (Ainu tales) by Tokusaburo 
Takekuma, 1918,- Ainu shinyoshu (Collected 
songs of the Ainu gods) by Yukie Chiri, an 
Ainu girl from Chikabumi who had tragically 
died of illness at the age of nineteen before 
her work was published in 1923,- and Kotan 
(Village) by Hokuto Iboshi, 1927. Iboshi had 
devoted himself to his people but died, worn 
out and wracked by tuberculosis, in 1928 at 
the age of twenty-seven, but his youthful 
anger against his people's subordination lives 
on in hundreds of short poems. In some he 
attacks colonization and its consequences, 
while others display the pride he felt in his 
Ainu identity. In one telling poem he hints at 
the impermeability of racial barriers that 
doomed attempts at assimilation: 
Adjusting my necktie, I glance at my face 
The mirror tells me 
You are Ainu, after all 
(Iboshi 1930: 53) 
At a time when few Ainu looked much 
beyond their immediate communities, Iboshi 
clearly regarded the Ainu as a unified group 
linked by common ancestral and cultural 
bonds and sharing common political 
aspirations: a nation. Moreover, he saw the 
Ainu as an indigenous people dispossessed 
by a colonial state and drew parallels with 
the extinction of the Tasmanian aborigines. 
An important further step was taken on 
July 1, 1930, with the formation of the 
Hokkaido Ainu Kyokai (Hokkaido Ainu 
Association) by 1 30 Ainu delegates orga¬ 
nized by the Kyokumeisha, a Tokachi Ainu 
self-help organization, to discuss revision of 
the Protection Act. John Batchelor was 
involved, and Masaaki Kita, a Japanese and 
Hokkaido Government Welfare Section 
bureaucrat, became the first chairman. Kita 
was a champion of Ainu assimilation through 
intermarriage and the fusion of blood (yucjo), 
and he was able to keep the agenda largely 
confined to issues of social welfare. Neverthe¬ 
less, over the next few years, more Ainu from 
other areas began to participate in the move¬ 
ment and contribute articles to the journal of 
the Association, Ezo no Hikiiri (The light of Ezo). 
Under the wing of the Hokkaido 
government, the Ainu Kyokai was led by 
successful Ainu, some of them wealthy, who 
sincerely believed that their example of 
assimilation and loyalty was the best way 
forward for all Ainu. Even such a small and 
powerless movement had not escaped the 
eye of the repressive security apparatus of 
the imperial Japanese state and some Ainu 
were under police surveillance. Despite the 
fact that their views on the means of Ainu 
progress—assimilation—coincided with 
those of Hokkaido government bureaucrats, 
Ainu leaders were motivated by a genuine 
determination not to be beaten by Wajin. 
Even while urging an end to their heritage 
they maintained their pride in it, and they 
felt considerable anger toward the institu¬ 
tions and attitudes of majority society. As 
one Ainu author concluded: 
The yellow race, the white race, the 
black race and the Ainu are all equal 
before God. We have no need to despise 
ourselves. . . . Rather, we must come to 
have pride in ourselves as Ainu (Hiramura 
1930: 158). 
1 4 / AINU RESISTANCE SINCE 1869 109 
So assimilation remained the objective 
of the Ainu Kyokai, its activities were actually 
fostering a growing awareness of Ainu 
identity and common purpose. The Ainu 
Seinen Taikai (Convention of Ainu Youth), for 
instance, held in Sapporo on August 2, 1931, 
and organized by John Batchelor provided an 
opportunity for seventy young Ainu to come 
together, exchange views, and commit 
themselves to improving the position of their 
people. Other Ainu intellectuals also founded 
small groups within the overall parameters of 
the self-help movement. 
In March 1937 the Protection Act was 
finally revised: native schools were abolished, 
restrictions on property ownership were eased, 
and welfare measures were extended. But soon 
the outbreak of World War II ensured that no 
further gains would be made. Many Ainu were 
forced to display their loyalty by joining the 
armed forces, and thirty-nine Ainu soldiers were 
killed in the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. 
14.2 Chikabumi Ainu Protestors 
Ichitaro Sunazawa and his wife 
Peramonkoro were leaders in the pro¬ 
test movements of the Chikabumi Ainu 
from the 1930s to the 1960s. The 
Sunazawas are seen here (center and 
right) with their young son, Bikky, and 
Michi Arai, Genjiro Arai, and Kamegoro 
Ogawa in Tokyo in June 1932. They 
staged a protest arguing in favor of 
abolishing the 1899 Protection Act and 
seeking the return of land taken from 
the Chikabumi Ainu. Bikky carried on 
his parents' passion for Ainu rights and 
became an influential political leader 
and artist. 
Chikabumi 
The Ainu community of Chikabumi near 
Asahikawa holds a special place in the history 
of Ainu resistance. The Ainu leaders of the 
Ishikari region have maintained a fiercely 
independent attitude that can be traced back 
through resistance in the 1860s to relocation 
to coastal fishing stations to the refusal to 
participate in Shakushain's War of 1669. The 
twentieth century dawned in Chikabumi with 
a land dispute that politicized the community 
and provided it with an agenda often at odds 
with other organized Ainu movements. 
The Ishikari Ainu had been moved to a 
reservation at Chikabumi in 1890, but with 
heavy Wajin (Japanese) immigration and the 
arrival of the Imperial Army's 7th Division 
their lands were wanted by the Okuragumi, a 
large firm contracting with the military, and 
110 
the Hokkaido government ordered the Ainu 
to leave in February 1900. Instead of docile 
compliance, however, local Ainu leaders 
joined forces with local Wajin and opposition 
politicians and took their campaign to Tokyo. 
After the Tokyo press exposed the shady 
dealings of the Okuragumi, the government 
canceled the order to avoid a scandal,- despite 
their victory, however, the Ainu were not 
granted the land and the Hokkaido govern¬ 
ment finally leased it to Asahikawa in 1906, 
ensuring that discontent among the 
Chikabumi Ainu would continue to simmer. 
In the 1930s Ainu anger erupted once more 
with the expiration of the lease and the 
attempt by Japanese tenants of Ainu plots to 
gain the land for themselves. 
Renewed activism in Chikabumi took a 
somewhat different form than that of the Ainu 
Kyokai and its agenda for revision of the 
Protection Act. After the brief appearance in 
1926 of the Kaiheisha, an overtly socialist- 
inspired organization led by Ichitaro Sunazawa, 
the Chikabumi Ainu activists formed another 
group in 1932 called the Kyudojin Hogoho 
Teppai Domei (Alliance for the Abolition of the 
Protection Act). While most Ainu lived in dire 
poverty, by this time Chikabumi had also 
produced strong-minded and talented individu¬ 
als like Genjiro Arai, a judicial clerk, and Kaneto 
Kawamura, who had overcome many obstacles 
to become a successful railway surveyor. In June 
1932 Arai led a group of Chikabumi Ainu to 
Tokyo to campaign directly at the center of 
power. The delegation included Ichitaro 
Sunazawa and his wife Peramonkoro and their 
young son Bikky, who was later to become a 
reknowned artist and activist (figs. 14.2, 14.3). 
Although Arai and his group were harassed by 
the Special Higher Police, Tokyo media 
coverage and the support of some Parliamentar¬ 
ians encouraged the central government to 
consider the matter. Arai visited Tokyo again in 
November. In March 1934 the Act for the 
Disposal of the Former Native Reservation in 
Asahikawa City was enacted, but this legislation 
was even less generous than the Protection Act 
had been. Arai and his small group continued to 
meet in Chikabumi but were suspected of being 
aka ("Reds"), and they were kept under surveil¬ 
lance by the community agricultural instaictor, 
an ex-policeman who acted as an informer (Arai 
1984). As Bikky Sunazawa later recalled (1988), 
even to sing the "Internationale" after a few 
drinks was risky, and his mother sometimes had 
to smother her husband Ichitaro with bedding 
HISTORIC PERIOD/ R. SIDDLE 
14.3 Portrait of Ichitaro Sunazawa 
Ichitaro Sunazawa (1893-1953) was 
one of the most important Ainu 
activists from the 1920s until his 
death. He became increasingly vocal 
in his anti-war sentiments after one 
of his sons was drafted to serve in 
World War II. A traditionalist caught 
in the political and cultural upheavals 
of the period, he greatly influenced 
his sons Bikky and Kazuo to become 
artists and political activists. This 
carving by his youngest son Kazuo 
captures some of the wisdom of this 
Ainu statesman. 
to prevent his being overheard. Arai, a 
skilled hunter, was later conscripted and sent to 
China, where he survived dangerous missions as 
a scout, a duty imposed as punishment for 
letting a Chinese POW escape execution 
(Hokkaido Shinbum, 14 January 1989). The 
Chikabumi Ainu had been defeated once again 
by the power of the state, but their independent 
attitude and opposition to the Protection Act 
would emerge once more as a major force in the 
new Ainu movements of the 1970s. 
Karafuto 
There was one other group of Ainu even more 
disadvantaged than most in that they were 
not Japanese citizens: the Ainu of Karafuto 
(southern Sakhalin), who were not descended 
from those relocated to Hokkaido after the 
1875 treaty. Despite their segregation into 
"native villages," a handful of educated 
Karafuto Ainu made efforts to improve educa¬ 
tion and living standards, and there was also a 
movement for granting citizenship to all Ainu 
and transfering state-controlled fishing 
grounds to Ainu ownership. Saburo 
Kawamura, a young Ainu from Tarandomari, 
was inspired by the actions of the Chikabumi 
Ainu to petition the Karafuto colonial govern¬ 
ment and also travel to Tokyo to petition the 
central authorities on these issues. 
Citizenship was finally granted to the 
Karafuto Ainu on January 1, 1933,• it did not 
mean equality, however, and the Karafuto 
government continued to manage native fishing 
grounds. The other indigenous peoples of 
Sakhalin, confined to a settlement near Shikuka 
since 1926, were not considered for citizenship, 
which had tragic consequences for some Ul'ta 
men who later served in the Japanese Special 
Forces on the border with Russian Sakhalin. 
Treated as spies by the Russians in 1945, they 
were given long sentences in Siberian labor 
camps. Some survivors eventually found their 
way to Japan, where the government refused to 
pay them any pension or recognize their 
wartime service. As for the Karafuto Ainu 
themselves, their newly obtained citizenship 
ensured that only twelve years later they would, 
as Japanese, have to leave their homeland on 
Sakhalin forever (fig. 14.4). 
Occupation and Land Reform 
The defeat of Imperial Japan in 1945 and the 
new atmosphere of democratization under the 
Occupation seemed to herald a new dawn for 
Ainu activism. Encouraged by the tolerance of 
the authorities, some Ainu ran in elections 
for Parliament, the Hokkaido Assembly, or 
the governorship of Hokkaido. Makoto 
Takahashi of Kushiro set up a small newslet¬ 
ter, the Ainu Shinbum, that occasionally 
angered the Ainu elites by reporting on Ainu 
issues from a radical political perspective. In 
February 1946 Ainu met in Shizunai to 
reform the Ainu Kyokai. 
It soon became clear that little had 
changed for the Ainu in the new Japan. Despite 
lobbying by the Ainu Kyokai and a direct 
petition to General Douglas MacArthur, the 
Ainu lost heavily in the Occupation's land 
reform. Classed as absentee landlords, 1,271 
Ainu lost their holdings. Japanese scholars of 
the Ainu resumed their business from within 
the structures of institutional power, despite the 
presence at Hokkaido University of the Ainu 
scholar, Mashiho Chiri, who produced 
ethnographic studies and a noted dictionary on 
his way to becoming a full professor. 
Sakuzaemon Kodama of the Faculty of 
Medicine, for instance, resumed his quest for 
Ainu bones after the war. In one incident in the 
1950s a university team enlisted the help of 
local authorities and police to excavate an Ainu 
cemetery against the opposition of the Ainu 
villagers (Siddle 1993). Chiri, a man as 
argumentative and difficult as he was brilliant, 
was unable to get along with such men, and 
eventually quarrelled with most of the famous 
"Ainu scholars." 
Ainu continued to be identified on the 
basis of blood. In the words of one Ainu, 
"however much you mix blood, if you have 
just a fraction of Ainu blood you are Ainu” 
(Gonai and Wakabayashi 1972: 201). Such 
categorization was, of course, not neutral but 
was accompanied by the negative stereo¬ 
types of popular social Darwinism (Siddle 
1996). Given the difficulty of escaping such 
categorization, Ainu were forced to hide their 
ancestry or flee their local communities for the 
day-labor markets of Japans rapidly growing 
cities. Others found work in tourism. Although 
some, like Shigeru Kayano, saw tourism as an 
opportunity to educate ignorant Wajin, most 
found it a degrading experience (Kayano 
1994,- Sugawara 1968). Meanwhile, the Ainu 
Kyokai attracted little support from poor 
Ainu who were suspicious of the motives of 
the conservative leaders and were attempting 
to divest themselves of any Ainu identity. 
Renamed the Utari Kyokai in 1961, the 
Association was, however, instrumental in 
111 I 4 / A I N U RES I STAN CE S I N CE 1869 
persuading the Hokkaido government to 
improve housing and other facilities in poor 
Ainu communities in the 1960s. 
From Welfare Politics 
to Indigenous Rights 
The agenda of such Ainu groups as the Kyokai, 
which only served to reinforce majority 
perceptions of a subordinated and marginalized 
people attempting to hasten their own extinc¬ 
tion, began to change in the final years of the 
1960s as new groups of young Ainu activists 
emerged who were sharply critical of the Ainu 
establishment and its links with the authorities 
(fig. 14.1). Many of these young men and 
women had moved to the cities and took their 
inspiration and tactics not from their rural 
elders but from such radical elements in 
Japanese society as the Burakumin, an outcast 
"untouchable" class that allied with revolution- 
poor" (Cornell 1964). The new pride and 
emphasis on Ainu identity served to create a 
sense of community that could overcome the 
often wide divisions of class, gender, or 
generation in Ainu villages. As an assertion of 
difference it challenged the assimilation 
policies that aimed at the eventual extinction 
of the "Ainu problem" through complete 
absorption of all Ainu into majority society. 
Through identification with indigenous 
movements in other states, the new Ainu 
movement attempted to redefine the relation¬ 
ship of the Ainu to the state in terms of a 
culturally and historically unique group with 
distinct rights. The Ainu, as an indigenous 
people, were not just another disadvantaged 
social group in need of state welfare but a 
"nation" desirous of decolonization. 
New political trends first began to 
appear around 1968, with the celebration of 
the centennial of the "history" of Hokkaido. 
T 
ir^--n* 
JliaiHBVI 
ill mm 
*1 fr' S al nvnfcvK 
3 it * 
14.4 Sakhalin Ainu 
in Isuishikari, Hokkaido 
Sakhalin Ainu, even more than the 
Kurile Ainu, suffered from territorial 
disputes between Russia and Japan. 
Nearly 1,000 Sakhalin Ainu were forc¬ 
ibly resettled at Tsuishikari, swampy 
land near Sapporo, when Russia took 
possession of Sakhalin in 1875. Survi¬ 
vors returned to Sakhalin after the 
1905 Russo-Japanese war, only to be 
expelled and resettled again in Hok¬ 
kaido in 1945. This photograph, taken 
by Benjamin Smith Lyman, shows 
Sakhalin refugees at a Tsuishikari net- 
making factory in 1876. (UML) 
ary students and anti-Vietnam war activists. 
The new Ainu activists were leftist, and their 
early writings and policies were permeated 
with references to class struggle and revolu¬ 
tion. These ideas were soon joined by a far 
more radical development in the history of 
Ainu resistance—a new emphasis on Ainu 
identity. In a reversal of the flight of Ainu 
youth from Ainu identity, these young men 
and women rejected assimilation and actively 
undertook a search for their roots. 
The "Amu problem" was redefined It 
was no longer a case of cultural extinction or 
administering social welfare to the "frontier 
Considerable sums were spent on public 
celebrations, yet the Ainu were ignored. In 
official and popular imagination the story of 
Hokkaido was a heroic struggle against Nature 
as pioneers brought the beneficial effects of 
"progress" to a "natural" extension of Japanese 
territory. Protesting this denial of their 
existence, one young Ainu from Kushiro 
called for Wajin not to forget that the ground 
under the new commemorative tower was 
"soaked with Ainu blood" (HokMido Shinbum, 
I 3 May 1968, evening edition). 
Debate was also stimulated among Ainu 
by a government proposal in June 1968 to 
HISTORIC PERIOD / R SIDDLE 
revise the Protection Act and a unanimous 
vote by the mayors of Hokkaido for its 
abolition in June 1970. The Lltari Kyokai 
overwhelmingly favored the continued 
existence of the Protection Act on the 
grounds that it could be used as a convenient 
umbrella to enact special welfare policies, as it 
had in the early 1960s. This stance annoyed 
many Ainu, especially in Chikabumi, who saw 
the Protection Act as the institutional 
expression of discrimination and inferiority. 
The Asahikawa Ainu were further irritated in 
August 1970 when the city celebrated eighty 
years since foundation with a statue depicting 
four young Wajin colonizers surrounding an 
elderly Ainu. Bikky Sunazawa handed out 
leaflets during the inauguration ceremonies to 
protest this symbolization of Ainu subordina¬ 
tion (Sala 1975). Sunazawa was himself on his 
way to becoming a sculptor and artist of some 
repute. Although he rejected being labeled an 
"Ainu artist," his pride in his heritage was not 
only a crucial element in his art but also 
underlay his activism (fig. 14.5). 
Such developments stimulated the 
formation of activist organizations, and many 
small groups emerged, often with overlap¬ 
ping membership. Urban Ainu also moved to 
find a place within the Utari Kyokai, from 
which they had been largely excluded. The 
voice of this movement was a bimonthly 
newspaper, Anutari Ainu (We human beings), 
which began publishing in 1973. The first 
issue reported in detail on the struggle of 
Ainu fisherman in the village of Usu against 
construction of a thermal power station. 
During its three-year existence, Anutari Ainu 
14.5 Ainu Organizational 
Meeting, 1973 
Escalation of rhetoric and campaigns 
of political violence in support of 
Ainu liberation led to a meeting in 
Sapporo on January 21, 1973, which 
was attended by 150 Ainu. Although 
the meeting was opposed by conser¬ 
vative Ainu leaders and those en¬ 
gaged in tourism, it helped solidify 
the Ainu movement and set a new 
course for political action. 
provided news and analysis of the Ainu 
struggle and contributed to the search for 
Ainu roots by seeking out elders and 
publishing lengthy interviews with them. 
There was often little unity among and 
between various groups, however, and these 
divisions were reflected in a variety of 
political ideologies. 
In late 1972 tensions were heightened 
dramatically by a violent terrorist campaign 
carried out in the name of Ainu liberation. 
On January 21, 1973, 150 Ainu gathered in 
Sapporo for the Zenkoku Ainu no Kataru Kai 
(National Ainu Discussion Meeting) orga¬ 
nized by Bikky Sunazawa and younger Ainu 
but open to all. Conservative leaders and 
those engaged in tourism were suspicious of 
the motives of the younger activists, who 
insisted, for their part, that it was a "people's 
meeting" to discuss issues faced by all Ainu 
(Sala 1975). National attention remained 
focused on the "Ainu problem" as terrorist 
outrages continued, culminating in the 
bombing of the Hokkaido Government 
Building on March 2, 1976, in which two 
people were killed and more than ninety 
injured. Despite intensive surveillance and 
harassment, the police were unable to prove 
Ainu involvement, and the bombings proved 
instead to be the work of a small cell of 
radical Wajin terrorists who were later 
sentenced to death (Chikap 1989). Although 
Ainu leaders condemned the terrorists, these 
incidents contributed to the increasing 
politicization of Ainu communities as the 
issues that underlay continued Ainu 
marginalization became difficult to ignore. 
Some Ainu groups, such as Shoji Yuki's 
Ainu Kaiho Domei (Ainu Liberation League), 
adopted forceful tactics of confrontation and 
denunciation, particularly against the activi¬ 
ties of academics, forcing public apologies on 
several occasions (Siddle 1993). Protests 
were also made against tourist organizations 
and media companies that conveyed dis¬ 
criminatory stereotypes of the Ainu. Some 
television broadcasts were canceled, apologies 
were screened, and offending publications 
were recalled. Courtrooms also became the 
scene of confrontation between Ainu activists 
and the state. Some criminal cases involving 
Ainu defendants, for instance, were politi¬ 
cized and turned into showcases revealing 
the discrimination faced by the Ainu, thus 
generating publicity for the cause. 
Within a few short years, Ainu politics 
14/AINU RESISTANCE SINCE 1869 
14.8 Ainu Flag 
As a young artist and political activist 
Bikky Sunazawa designed the Ainu 
flag, which first appeared in the 1973 
May Day parade in Sapporo. The em¬ 
blem consists of a red arrowhead (ay) 
whose color signifies aconite hunting 
poison, while the white pattern signi¬ 
fies the snows of the Hokkaido winter. 
had undergone a dramatic transformation. 
The Utari Kyokai could not remain unaf¬ 
fected as the authority and assimilationist 
orientation of the more elderly and conserva¬ 
tive leaders were directly threatened. The 
Association had to accommodate some of the 
demands of the younger activists and moved 
to distance itself from the state by transfer¬ 
ring in May 1974 to an "independent" office, 
but its close ties with the Hokkaido govern¬ 
ment continued through annual subsidies and 
staff interchanges. On the other hand, the 
Utari Kyokai was well placed to act as the 
established institutional channel for Ainu 
negotiation with the state when the "Ainu 
problem"—and the interest in it by opposi¬ 
tion political parties—became too much for 
the authorities to ignore. 
The state's response was to attempt to 
bring the "Ainu problem" back within the 
confines of welfare policy. In August 1973 the 
authorities drew up the Hokkaido Utari 
Welfare Countermeasures, a package of 
welfare measures and infrastructural projects 
similar to the policies that had been proposed 
to assimilate the outcast Burakumin minority 
within the larger Japanese society. The policy 
was administered largely through the Utari 
Kyokai, and the membership and influence of 
the Association began to revive. For the state, 
this welfare policy did not damage their 
official stance that there are no minority 
populations in Japan—a view publicly aired 
by the government in its first report to the 
United Nations after ratification of the 
International Covenant on Civil and Political 
Rights in 1979. 
The genie of Ainu nationhood, how¬ 
ever, could not now be stuffed back into the 
bottle. Although some conservative elders 
still favored assimilation, for most activists the 
political struggle was now informed by a 
sense of identity and pride in being Ainu. The 
cultural manifestations of Ainu-ness— 
embroidered traditional costumes, prayers in 
the Ainu language, oral literature, dance— 
became increasingly in evidence at Ainu 
events, and festivals and ceremonies, such as 
those enacted each year before the new statue 
of Shakushain in Shizunai, became occasions 
to celebrate this heritage and link the present 
struggle to the feats of past heroes. Although 
much of the expertise in traditional culture 
came from elders in rural or tourist communi¬ 
ties, the initiative for these events often came 
from the politically active, younger, urban 
Ainu Such occasions, reflected leading 
activist Tokuhei Narita, "lit the lamp of the 
solidarity that the Utari have long lost” 
(Narita 1972: 38-39). New symbols rein¬ 
forced the sense of the Ainu as a nation: an 
Ainu flag, designed by Bikky Sunazawa, first 
appeared at the 1973 May Day parade in 
Sapporo (fig. 14.6), and there was a strong 
identification with Aim mosir, the homeland. 
Ainu nationhood was greatly stimulated 
by contacts with indigenous peoples in other 
countries. Yoshimi Hiramura, the young 
founder of the Ainu newspaper Anutari Ainu, 
consciously identified with Native Americans 
after a trip to the United States in 1972, and 
the first issue of the paper devoted a page to 
the confrontation at Wounded Knee between 
activists of the American Indian Movement and 
U4 HISTORIC PERIOD/ R S1DDLE 
federal authorities. Ainu began to travel and 
actively seek out other native peoples, from 
China to Alaska. In May 198 1 Tokuhei Narita 
became the first Ainu to attend the World 
Conference of Indigenous Peoples when he 
traveled to the third meeting in Canberra, 
Australia. Not only were political strategies 
borrowed as a result of such interaction but 
also the symbols of a common underlying 
aborigi-nality: "We all have things in common, 
on the level of feelings too," commented 
Narita on his return (Egami 1982: 304). 
By the early 1980s, such awareness of 
nationhood resulted in a stronger, though still 
troubled, sense of unity among Ainu groups. 
This was reflected in a new item on the 
political agenda around which Ainu of most 
persuasions were able to rally. In May 1984 
the Utari Kyokai, recognizing that welfare 
benefits were no longer sufficient currency for 
the Ainu-Japanese relationship, adopted a 
proposal for a New Law for the Ainu People 
to replace the 1899 Protection Act. Neverthe¬ 
less, the actual draft of the New Law retained 
a distinct welfare orientation, reflecting the 
assimilationist feelings still held by many 
ordinary Utari Kyokai members who sought 
improved access to education and wealth in 
majority society. Although it made strong 
demands for respect and support for Ainu culture 
and human rights, this proposal for a New 
Law lacked a clear formulation of indigenous 
rights. There was no mention, for instance, of 
the right to self-determination or land rights. 
This weakness has become increasingly obvious 
in recent years as Ainu activists have come to 
participate fully in the international gather¬ 
ings of indigenous peoples, where land rights 
have had prominent focus. 
The late 1980s and 1990s saw a further 
strengthening of Ainu identity and 
ethnopolitics. Notable victories included the 
court action brought against noted scholars 
by Mieko Chikap in 1986 over violation of 
portrait rights involving the publication of 
personal images. Action was also taken 
against Hokkaido LIniversity over the Ainu 
remains held there, and in 1984 the university 
agreed to return some remains and hold an 
annual Ainu memorial service for the rest. 
This was not the first time that the desecra¬ 
tion of ancestral gravesites aroused fierce 
resistance. In 1867 Ainu protests, supported 
by the Japanese authorities, forced the return 
of remains looted by British officials of the 
Hakodate Consulate (Siddle 1993). Another 
incident of protest resulted from the excava¬ 
tion of Kurile Ainu graves on Shumushu 
Island by anatomist Sakuzaemon Kodama in 
July 1937. On reading of this in a newspaper, 
the leader of the surviving Kurile Ainu on 
Shikotan demanded that Kodama return the 
bones because they were the remains of their 
ancestors, but he was eventually persuaded 
to donate them to Kodama's laboratory after 
a memorial service was held in the Sapporo 
Orthodox church. Memorial services were 
held annually for three years and Kodama 
erected a memorial stone at the cemetery on 
Shikotan (S. Kodama 1971). 
Since 1987 Ainu representatives have 
been attending the United Nations Working 
Group on Indigenous Populations, and Ainu 
participated in many activities at home and 
abroad during the United Nations Interna¬ 
tional Year of the World's Indigenous People 
in 1993. In 1994 Shigeru Kayano became the 
first Ainu politician at the national level, 
entering Japan's parliament after the death of 
an incumbent member. Kayano was also 
involved in the bitter opposition to the 
construction of a dam in his home village of 
Nibutani. Although the dispute polarized the 
community, the Sapporo District Court ruled 
in March 1997 that the government was at 
fault for not taking Ainu concerns over 
ancestral sites into consideration (Sonohara 
1997). The ruling was also a landmark 
decision in that the Ainu were recognized for 
the first time by the judiciary as senju minzoku, 
an "indigenous people." On July 1, 1997, the 
Protection Act was finally repealed and 
replaced with the Ainu Shinpo, a cultural 
promotion law. Not all Ainu are satisfied, 
however, because there is no mention in this 
legislation of indigenous rights, political 
representation, or other legal guarantees. 
The Ainu struggle for full recognition 
as an indigenous people seems set to 
continue, and days when Ainu leaders argued 
for assimilation are long gone. Perhaps 
Tokuhei Narita best sums up contemporary 
Ainu resistance: "[We] are now editing our 
history, claiming our rights, understanding 
our identity, beginning to walk for ourselves" 
(Narita 1984: 138). 
14 /AINU RESISTANCE SINCE 1869 115 
Ainu and 
Northwest 
Coast Peoples: 
A Comparison 
Motomichi Kono 
and William W. Fitzhugh 
15.1 Ainu Totem Pole 
Ainu tourist centers began displaying 
carved poles resembling “cigar-store” 
Indians and small versions of North¬ 
west Coast Indian totem poles soon 
after the end of World War II. These 
poles were carved with Ainu motifs and 
often had an owl, the Ainu god of the 
village, on top. Later these owls began 
to be carved with outstretched wings— 
as on this pole photographed in 
Otoineppu in 1998—making them 
resemble Northwest Coast Indian 
‘'thunderbirds." Ainu artists have 
adapted the totem-pole concept into a 
unique form of modern Ainu art. 
PERCEIVED SIMILARITIES AND A BROAD 
sense of understanding between the 
native peoples who occupy the 
southern coasts of the North Pacific 
in Asia and North America—which derive 
from recent cultural exchanges between Ainu 
artists and cultural leaders and their counter¬ 
parts among Northwest Coast Indian groups 
—have aroused interest in the question of 
whether these groups had cultural contacts or 
other relationships in the past. Curiosity 
about Asian-American links arose as soon as 
Europeans began exploring these regions in 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
(Golder 1914). Early explorers like Stepan 
Krasheninnikov, who investigated the 
Kamchatka peninsula in 1735-41, and 
naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller, who 
described the Pacific coast of Alaska and the 
Aleutians in 1741, were surprised to discover 
cultural parallels—notable in customs, 
language, and folklore—between Asian and 
American peoples living thousands of miles 
apart on either side of Bering Strait. Anthro¬ 
pological studies did not begin until 1897 
when Franz Boas launched the Jesup North 
Pacific Expedition (1897-1902) to investigate 
and compare the cultures and history across 
this vast region (Boas 1903, 1905). The 
results of these expeditions and subsequent 
twentieth-century research on Asian-American 
relationships were reviewed in various 
programs related to the Crossroads of Continents 
exhibition (see introduction, this volume) and 
at a centennial conference on the Jesup project, 
Constructing Cultures Then and Now, held in 1997 
at the American Museum of Natural Fdistory 
(Kendall forthcoming). 
Although the Ainu were initially 
included in Boas's research agenda, his plans 
failed to materialize. The absence of an Ainu 
study in the multivolume series on the Jesup 
Expedition that Boas compiled gave the 
impression that the Ainu were not among the 
family of North Pacific cultures. Research 
since then demonstrates quite the opposite: 
similarities in subsistence practices, clothing, 
technology, shamanism, ceremonial life, art, 
and folklore suggest that the Ainu (and 
probably the prehistoric Jomon and Okhotsk 
cultures as well) share a common history with 
cold water-adapted cultures of the North 
Pacific rim. These ties were strongest with 
peoples of Sakhalin and the lower Amur with 
whom the Ainu had extensive contacts during 
the past several thousand years (Yamaura and 
Ushiro, S. Sasaki, T. Kikuchi, this volume), 
but to a lesser degree there are parallels with 
more distant peoples of the Bering Sea and 
the Northwest Coast as far south as the 
Columbia River. Some parallel traditions, like 
basketry (Graburn and Lee, this volume), may 
have evolved as recently as the European 
exploration period, while other features (first- 
salmon and bear ceremonialism, sea mammal¬ 
hunting technology, and spiritually based art) 
may have spread with the first Asians who 
moved into the New World at the end of the 
Paleolithic period 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. 
Historical Contacts: Drift Vessels 
This paper compares Ainu and southern 
Northwest Coast cultures in terms of geogra¬ 
phy, general cultural categories, and recent 
history. History and archaeology both indi¬ 
cate that contacts between Japan and the 
Northwest Coast have occurred. Evidence of 
prehistoric contact with Japan in the form of 
glass fishnet floats and iron tools of Japanese 
origin has been found at the fifteenth-century 
Ozette archaeological site located on the 
Olympic Peninsula near the mouth of Puget 
Sound (Daugherty and Friedman 1983). It is 
believed that these materials came from 
fishing vessels that were periodically disabled 
by storms off the eastern coast of Japan and 
drifted with their crews across the North 
Pacific following prevailing currents and wind 
i 16 HISTORIC PERIOD / M. KONO AND W. FITZHUGH 
until they reached the shores of northwestern 
North America. Historical records of vessel 
losses in eastern Japan and eighteenth- and 
nineteenth-century reports of drift vessels and 
wreckage finds on the Northwest Coast 
(Brooks 1876; Quimby 1985) suggest that 
hundreds of such voyages must have occurred 
between A.D. 1400 and 1800 before Japanese 
ship technology improved, making such 
accidents less common. Although no vessels 
are known to have reached America with live 
crews, such a possibility exists, which would 
have allowed for direct transfer of both 
Japanese and Ainu material culture as well as 
socio-cultural concepts to northwestern North 
America native peoples long before the arrival 
of Europeans. Such a mechanism would not 
require contacts or diffusion through geo¬ 
graphically intermediate groups around the 
North Pacific rim. 
The appearance of Asian drift vessels has 
been most frequently reported in western 
Vancouver Island and the coast between Puget 
Sound and the Columbia River delta. The 
recent reevaluation of the importance of 
maritime transport and trade in Ainu culture 
and the routine Ainu nagivation that existed 
between Hokkaido and Kamchatka makes it 
seem possible that not only Japanese, but Ainu 
as well may have been unwitting participants in 
this intercontinental exchange. Although 
previous literature has emphasized the source 
of drift vessels as Japanese, it seems likely that 
Ainu vessels and crews also occasionally took 
part in accidental drift voyages, and because 
the distance would have been shorter for them, 
the chance of survival of Ainu crews would 
have been greater than for Japanese. 
Despite such intriguing evidence for 
Asian-Northwest Coast contacts, our primary 
intent here is to establish a framework for 
understanding relationships between Ainu and 
Northwest Coast peoples. Whether future 
historical, anthropological, and archaeological 
studies corroborate the evidence of earlier 
contacts or not, Ainu today have developed a 
modern kinship with Northwest Coast peoples 
and seem to acknowledge a mutual cultural 
attraction or magnetism (Chisato Dubreuil, 
personal communication). 
The recent history of Ainu contacts with 
North Americans began after the Meiji 
Restoration in 1868 when Japan invited U S. 
government officials, technicians, scientists, 
and university professors to help modernize 
the country and develop Hokkaido's natural 
15/AINU AND THE NORTHWEST COAST 
resources. Although the first known contact 
between Ainu and native peoples of the 
Americas began when an Ainu group was 
invited to perform at the Louisiana Purchase 
Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904 
(Starr 1904, VanStone 1993,- Kotani, this 
volume), it was not until the 1970s that direct 
and continuing exchanges between Ainu and 
native peoples of the Northwest Coast were 
initiated. Since then, Ainu and Northwest 
Coast artists including Bikky Sunazawa (see 
Dubreuil, this volume), craftspeople, dancers, 
and cultural leaders have participated in many 
cultural exchange programs. These interac¬ 
tions have resulted in educational and research 
opportunities in science, arts, humanities, law, 
museology, and library and native studies. 
They have increased cultural awareness of the 
other group among both populations, and 
native participants discovered common bonds 
in their shared experiences of cultural, 
political, and economic repression. Finally, 
these contacts produced a cross-fertilization of 
contemporary native art, dance, and music 
traditions. One of the more surprising 
testimonials to cross-cultural communication 
(from the perspective of a North American 
visitor) is the twentieth-century adoption of a 
foreign art form, the Northwest Coast-style 
totem pole, which are found at many Ainu 
museums and tourist centers in Hokkaido 
(see Dubreuil, this volume). 
Geography and Natural Resources 
Although the Ainu and Northwest Coast 
peoples were located at the opposite ends 
of the North Pacific geographic con¬ 
tinuum, these cultures adapted to similar 
climatic and coastal regimes and used 
similar biotic resources. Greater environ¬ 
mental and cultural homogeneity exists 
within the greater North Pacific region 
from Hokkaido to the Columbia River than 
within the Asian or American coastal 
regions themselves (Boas 1905,- Kroeber 
1939,- Suttles 1990a). Although each 
culture anchors the ends of their respective 
distributions, their latitudes do not exactly 
correspond: the greatest extent of Ainu 
territory in the early nineteenth century 
fell between latitude 41° to 55° north, from 
southern Hokkaido to the northern 
Kuriles, whereas the Northwest Coast 
region extends from 45° to 60° north, from 
the Columbia River to Cook Inlet, Alaska. 
This is one reason for the many geographi- 
117 
cal differences within each region, as well as 
the many differences among them. Except 
for the extremely oceanic environment of the 
Kurile Islands, other Ainu areas in Hokkaido 
and Sakhalin have relatively harsh winters 
with deep falls of snow due to the influence 
of cold Siberian air masses and predomi¬ 
nantly open seas,- much of the coast of 
Sakhalin is frozen in winter, and pack ice 
reaches northern Hokkaido (Nakano and 
Kobayashi 1 967,-Ohnuki-Tierney 1976a,• 
Ono and Igarashi 1992,- see also Ono, 
Watanabe, Olschleger, this volume). In 
southern Hokkaido and northern Honshu 
ocean and terrestrial conditions are much 
more temperate. By contrast, the Northwest 
Coast receives little snow at sea level,- its 
coastal waters are completely ice-free,- and 
its vegetation patterns (temperate to 
subarctic rain forests at sea level) are 
dominated by altitude more than by latitude 
(Suttles 1990b). Summer climates in both 
regions are more similar,- the northeastern 
coast of Hokkaido lacks the oaks and 
beech that are present in the broadleaf 
forests of southern Hokkaido, again because 
of altitude and the influence of cold 
maritime waters. Both peoples occupy 
islands and cold-water coasts that require 
extensive inshore and open-ocean travel and 
utilization of maritime, riverine, and 
terrestrial resources. 
The natural resources of both areas also 
display both similarities and differences. Both 
have the same or similar species of land game, 
including moose, bear, deer, wolves, foxes, and 
a variety of smaller fur-bearers. There are also 
differences, however: elk, mountain goat, and 
mountain sheep, present on the Northwest 
Coast, are absent in the Ainu area, whereas the 
latter has several mammals absent from the 
Northwest Coast, including reindeer (present 
only in Sakhalin) and the raccoon dog. Many 
marine mammals, including seals, sea lions, 
porpoises, orcas, and whales, are found in both 
areas, as are many species of ocean fish, of 
which halibut and salmon were most important 
for both groups,- trout and swordfish were 
important resources in Hokkaido, but these 
were less important or absent (in the case of 
swordfish) on the Northwest Coast (Nakano 
and Kobayashi 1967,- Suttles 1990a, b). Salmon 
was the most important food for most groups 
in both areas because of its relatively predict¬ 
able arrival, its abundance, and its capacity to 
be preserved for later consumption. 
Bear and First-Salmon Ritual 
It is not surprising that in adapting to similar 
environments and resources each group 
developed similar solutions that inform their 
cultural complexes, such as their extensive 
wood-working, grass and fiber use, and 
fishing technologies. Some cultural elements, 
like the toggling harpoons used by the Ainu 
and Eskimo peoples, while stylistically 
different, must have a common ancestry in 
North Pacific marine mammal-hunting 
technology. Similarities between Ainu and 
Amur River garment patterns and decorative 
arts are more difficult to assess but might be 
explained by mutual influence between 
peoples who have had contact for centuries or 
may simply be derived from a deep pool of 
ancient beliefs and religious concepts shared 
by early northeast Asian cultures. Similarities 
between these East Asian design styles and 
those found in prehistoric Bering Sea Eskimo 
and Aleut ivory carvings and body art seen on 
ivory figurines and human mummies (Fitzhugh 
1988) and with Northwest Coast (especially 
Tlingit) art suggest that the Ainu also have an 
as-yet unspecified share in these deeply 
rooted North Pacific artistic traditions and 
beliefs. Other similarities—for instance, those 
seen in tubular needlecases with whale-tail 
ornaments among the Kurile Ainu—suggest 
derivation from Okhotsk culture or contacts 
with Eskimo groups in the Bering Sea. 
Religion and ceremonial life are often 
thought to be more significant indicators of 
cultural relationship than material culture 
because they are less likely to result from 
environmental influence, casual trade, or 
independent invention. In this regard, the Ainu 
bear and first-salmon ceremonies may provide 
stronger evidence of shared heritage between 
Ainu and other circumpolar peoples (Hallowell 
1926). Like the Ainu, most circumpolar 
cultures honor the bear as the chief deity of 
the gods of land and pay it respect by offering 
elaborate rituals in its honor when it is killed. 
The Ainu iyomante practice involves capturing 
and rearing a cub for a year or more before 
killing it and sending its spirit with human gifts 
of inaw and sake off to the god world in an 
elaborate ceremony,- this process not only 
demonstrates human respect for knmity (gods), 
but the offerings petition the gods to return to 
visit humans on earth again in the future 
(Watanabe 1972: 71-73,-Akino, Utagawa, this 
volume). There is little doubt about Ainu 
connections with Aruur-area Siberian bear 
118 HISTORIC PERIOD/ M. KONO AND W. FITZHUGH 
rituals (Black 1973,- Ikeya 1997), and some 
believe its appearance in Ainu culture origi¬ 
nated from the intrusion of Siberian-oriented 
Okhotsk culture into Hokkaido (Utagawa 
1989). Northwest Coast bear ceremonies take 
different forms but have a similar purpose and 
have strong ritual linkages to shamanism and 
salmon ceremonialism (Boas 1894: 92-101),- 
rock art at Kitselas Canyon on the Skeena 
River in British Columbia that illustrates 
shaman spirits communicating with bear spirits 
at a major salmon-fishing location appears to 
illuminate this mythology and the importance 
of ritual concerning the replenishment of this 
crucial human resource (MacDonald 1983: 
1 18; Crowell 1988: 140). 
A comparison of first-salmon ceremonies 
conducted by Ainu and peoples of the North¬ 
west Coast reveals more specilic parallels than 
do bear rituals. Like Northwest Coast peoples, 
Ainu believe the salmon is a messenger of the 
15.2 Named Ainu Groups 
in Hokkaido 
This map shows the location of 
named Hokkaido Ainu groups 
from information recorded on 
Ainu grave markers. 
gods. The first salmon to appear in the streams 
each year is caught and killed with a special, 
ritually decorated club (Watanabe 1972: 73- 
77,- Roche and Hutchinson 1998: 127-29,- 
Ono, Olschleger, this volume). In both 
regions, the first and sometimes the last salmon 
(and occasionally other important fish) are 
given ritual sending ceremonies to return them 
to the god world bearing evidence of human 
respect and gratitude for the yearly renewal of 
this resource. The fish is shared with the 
community and is ritually dressed (in inaw-kike 
among the Ainu,- in cedar bark on the North¬ 
west Coast), and at the conclusion of the 
ceremony both groups return the remains (the 
mandible, in the case of the Ainu) to the river. 
Although other details of these rituals (such as 
the manner of cutting and dressing, use of 
inaw sticks, and absence of bear and shamanis- 
tic elements in the Ainu salmon ritual) differ, 
these ceremonies seem to be variations on a 
common theme. Unfortunately, prehistoric 
evidence of salmon ritual, which is common 
in British Columbia, is rarely found in 
northeastern Asia, although it has been 
suggested at the lowest levels (Level VI1, 
14,000 B.C.) at the LIshki site in Kamchatka 
(Dikov 1968). 
Similarities in ritual associated with 
whaling as well as in technology and hunting 
practices among Indians of the Vancouver 
Island and Olympic Peninsula region, 
Alaskan Aleut and Eskimo groups, and 
Northeastern Siberians also exist (Lantis 
1938,- Rousselot, Fitzhugh, and Crowell 
1988). Ainu whaling, which ceased to be 
practiced before the era of ethnographic 
reporting, was inherited from earlier Jomon 
and Okhotsk predecessors and involved the 
taking of both large and small whales 
(Iwasaki-Goodman and Nomoto, this 
volume). Lack of information precludes 
direct comparisons with other whaling 
traditions, but Ainu oral history suggests that 
it followed the general North Pacific pattern. 
To date none of these important ritual 
systems (bear, salmon, whale) have been 
explored in depth, so it would be premature 
at present to do more than point out 
congruences and possible historical affinities. 
Comparative History: 
Diversity and Assimilation 
Cultural geography is one area where Ainu 
and Northwest Coast peoples display great 
differences, for although each occupies 
relatively similar maritime coastal regions, 
the Ainu today display more linguistic and 
cultural cohesion, even considering strong 
regional subdivisions (see below and 
Ohnuki-Tterney references), than do 
Northwest Coast groups over a region of 
comparable geographic size. The Ainu of 
Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuriles spoke 
dialects of a single language family and 
shared many aspects of a common culture, 
by contrast, the Northwest Coast culture 
region has seven different language families 
and an equal or greater number of divergent 
119 15 /AINU AND THE NORTHWEST COAST 
cultural complexes (Krauss 1988,- Suttles 
1990a). The reasons for these differences 
between the Ainu and peoples of the North¬ 
west Coast can probably be attributed to 
geography, culture history, and politics. 
The Ainu appear to have been at least 
partially unified by descent from a northern 
Jomon cultural tradition that was somewhat 
isolated from other centers of cultural develop¬ 
ment in southern Japan, Korea, and the lower 
Amur. More recently, southern Hokkaido was 
occupied by Satsumon culture, whereas 
northern Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuriles 
were transformed by a Siberian-derived 
Okhotsk culture (a.D. 500-1000), which 
intruded during the late Jomon from the north, 
endowing a northern cultural stamp to these 
northern Ainu regions. With the decline of the 
Okhotsk culture, a resurgent Satsumon culture, 
fueled by contacts with the rapidly expanding, 
agriculturally based Japanese state, intruded 
from the south, forming the basis for historic 
Ainu culture. Satsumon expansion probably 
provided a unifying force for the development 
of historic-period Ainu culture after A.D. 1400. 
Additional cohesion came from the central 
position taken by the Ainu in the northern 
maritime trade that developed between Japan 
and Asia. Thus, Japanese encroachment during 
the past thousand years into Ainu territories in 
northern Japan—and more recently into 
Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuriles—as well 
as nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian 
incursions into the Kuriles and Sakhalin and 
recent Japanese policies of assimilation forced 
a reduction in regional cultural diversity and 
contributed to a more cohesive Ainu identity 
today than existed in the past. 
Th is diverse cultural and geographic 
environment was the theater for the forma¬ 
tion of various ancient Ainu ethnic groups 
which, despite the presence of a basic Ainu 
core, displayed many subregional and local 
differences. Until one hundred years ago 
traces of several ethnic groups remained on 
the islands of Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the 
Kuriles. On Hokkaido there were the Shumu- 
un-kuru, Sar-un-kuru, Menashikuru, Peni-un- 
kuru, and various groups in the Tokachi and 
Kitami areas to the south (fig. 15.2). These 
were not self-described names but were the 
names they were given by others, primarily the 
Japanese. The Menashikuru lived in the 
southernmost Kuriles,- the rest of the Kuriles 
north to Kamchatka was occupied by the 
Kurile (Chishima) Ainu. The east and west 
coasts of Sakhalin had two groups who called 
themselves Enchiw,- outsiders called them the 
Karafuto (Sakhalin) Ainu, and some of these 
people also lived in northern Hokkaido. 
These differences suggest that there never 
was a single homogeneous Ainu culture or 
language and that the Ainu region was 
occupied by a variety of local and regional 
groups that had their own distinctive features,- 
it is therefore hardly appropriate to subsume 
them all under the term "the Ainu people." 
Restricting our comparison more 
specifically to Vancouver Island as a subre¬ 
gion of the Northwest Coast, several groups 
or bands may be identified, all of which 
continue to be known today by their self- 
described native names: the Kwakwaka wakw 
in the northern part of the island (known as 
Kwakuitl in southern regions),- Nuu-chah- 
nuth, Dididaht, and Pacheenaht (Vancouver 
"Nootka") on the west coast,- Halkomelem 
(Coast Salish) on the southeast end of the 
island,- and many other groups in southwest¬ 
ern Vancouver Island (Suttles 1990a). 
Self-described names for Ainu groups on 
Hokkaido and in the Kurile Islands disappeared 
when names used by Wajin (the ruling Japa¬ 
nese) and Russians were given priority. Only the 
Enchiw of Sakhalin kept their own name, until 
the 1930s when they came to be known as the 
Karafuto Ainu after they were incorporated into 
modern Japanese society. Wajin called the Ainu 
of Sakhalin, Kuriles, and Hokkaido collectively 
"Ezo," and by so doing they ignored the reality 
of the constituent social groups. Later, the 
collective term "Ainu," which referred to the 
three regional groups in Ainu language, replaced 
"Ezo" when the Ainu were officially adopted 
into the Japanese state,- nevertheless, in official 
circles, following a decree of 1899, Ainu were 
called simply "former aborigines." Only in the 
Ainu Shinpo, a 1997 law, was the term "Ainu" 
reinstated and given full governmental approval. 
In Canada, on the other hand, even 
though the English collective term "First 
Nations" has come to be widely used in recent 
years (in the United States the corresponding 
term "Native American" is employed), native 
groups are generally known by their self- 
described names. Another difference between 
the Ainu and the First Nations of Canada is 
the frequent loss among the Ainu, due to 
relocation, schooling, and administrative 
procedures, of their social lineage, which in 
Canada and the LInited States has been 
retained despite changes in group affiliation 
no HISTORIC PERIOD/ M. KONO AND W. FITZHUCH 
by individual bands and reservations. In most 
cases it is impossible for ethnic Ainu to live 
today in their traditional social groupings, as 
many Canadian and American native groups 
do. Thus, to a degree, native people in North 
America still maintain a separate ethnic and 
social identity (with regard to the state national¬ 
ity) that has been lost to most Japanese Ainu. 
The reasons for these differences may be 
found in different political histories. Historically 
the Enchiw of Sakhalin were influenced by the 
invasion of the Yuan military force, albeit briefly, 
in the latter part of the 1200s, whereas Russian 
contact with Ainu in central Hokkaido did not 
begin until the mid-1700s. Meanwhile the Ainu 
in southern Hokkaido had been strongly 
influenced by the Wajin (proto-Japanese) in 
Honshu because trading bases were established in 
northern Honshu in the mid-1400s. The finds of 
southern agricultural cultigens in Satsumon sites 
in Hokkaido dating to the ninth century A.D. 
15.3 Skidegate Village 
Although the Ainu were evicted from 
most of their coastal settlements by 
Japanese, they have not entirely lost 
coastal interests, and environmental 
similarities have prompted the Ainu to 
seek contacts with native peoples of 
northwestern North America. Many 
Ainu also see parallels in Native 
American and Ainu political history. 
This Haida village in the Queen Char¬ 
lotte Islands was photographed in 
1900 by John Swanton during the 
Jesup North Pacific Expedition. 
(AMNH 330387) 
(Crawford and Yoshizaki 1987,- Fitzhugh, this 
volume) and the appearance of Japanese iron, 
lacquerware, and other southern trade goods in 
early archaeological sites in Hokkaido indicate 
more than 1,000 years of contact, influence, and 
acculturation between Ainu and Wajin peoples. 
By contrast, contact between the first European 
explorers like Vitus Bering (1741), La Perouse 
(1786), and James Cook (1778) in the northern 
Northwest Coast, and by Esteban Jose Martinez 
(1789) and other Spanish explorers in the 
Vancouver Island region was extremely late. 
American traders reached the Columbia River 
only in 1811, but in Vancouver Island the first 
contacts with the Hudson's Bay Company did 
not take place until 1828,- the first HBC post on 
Vancouver Island was established by James 
Douglas in 1849, and the colony joined the 
Canadian Federation as the Province of British 
Columbia only in 1871. Similar late chronolo¬ 
gies of early European-native contacts are 
found in other regions of the Northwest Coast 
and Alaska. 
The history of the Ainu and the First 
Nations of Vancouver Island reveals that the 
incorporation of native societies into modern 
states occurred at about the same time,- the 
dates of subsequent settlement by large 
numbers of non-native immigrants and their 
gradual dominance over native residents is also 
comparable. In other respects, however, the 
history of the Ainu and the Wajin is quite 
different from that of native peoples and 
Europeans on the Northwest Coast Unlike the 
latter, contact between the Ainu and the Wajin 
extends back at least 2,000 years and intensi¬ 
fied in northern regions after A.D. 800. By the 
sixteenth century the Ainu were involved in 
major trading activities with Japan and the 
Asian continent (Harrison 1954,- Howell 1994, 
1995, and this volume,- S. Sasaki, this volume), 
and by the mid-1600s these groups were 
involved in significant intermarriage and racial 
mixing. Wajin, Ainu, Sakhalin, and Amur River 
peoples also shared many common cultural 
elements—use of similar tools forms and 
technologies, materials, and even similar 
religious and ritual expressions (Obayashi 
1997)—whereas Northwest Coast and 
Europeans did not,- in these respects and many 
others, the political history of Ainu and 
Northwest Coast peoples and the states that 
subsumed them are entirely different and have 
produced different outcomes for their respec¬ 
tive indigenous peoples. 
Ainu culture, especially in Hokkaido, 
began to become noticeably "Japanized" 
beginning in the thirteenth century, which is 
when Ainu culture first became ethnically 
identifiable. About this time, pithouses were 
replaced by above-ground houses more similar 
to Japanese housing styles of this period, iron 
tools and pots began to be introduced by trade, 
mainly with the Japanese. More extensive 
Japanese influence was felt in the mid¬ 
sixteenth century when trade with the Wajin 
was formalized by the establishment of a 
network of trading posts in northern Honshu 
(Takakura I960,- I. Kikuchi, this volume). As a 
consequence, Ainu began to have ready access 
to rice and other southern food products,- 
121 15 / AINU AND THE NORTHWEST COAST 
15.4 Chosama, Chief of Uraashibetsu 
Hakyo Kakizaki painted in a contempo¬ 
rary Japanese style, and his portraits 
captured those characteristics of the 
Ainu that were of particular interest to 
a Japanese audience. This image is a 
copy by Teiki Kojima of a Kakizaki 
original. (Y. and M. Kitao Collection) 
cotton fabrics, earthenware and porcelain, 
lacquerware, glass and metal beads, mirrors, and 
metal ornaments also became available. As a 
result, local forging of iron ceased and many 
other manufacturing procedures that had been 
present were no longer practiced in Hokkaido,- 
the Ainu instead began to rely on imported 
materials produced by the Wajin. These 
changes were so profound that one could 
almost describe Hokkaido Ainu culture of the 
thirteenth to fourteenth centuries as "half- 
Wajin," at least in terms of material culture. 
Nevertheless, some aspects of Ainu culture 
remained in place, like the tradition of orna¬ 
mental wood carving found on men's tobacco 
boxes and knives and the "whorl and thorn” 
designs—whose ancestry can be traced back 
archaeologically more than 1,000 years in 
Hokkaido—that ornamented ceremonial 
clothing, which were produced by applique 
made with imported Japanese trade cotton and 
Asian silk thread rather than native materials. 
In this way, Ainu and Japanese culture 
mutually influenced each other over a long 
period of time. Corresponding Ainu influence 
on Japanese culture, restricted largely to 
northern Honshu, is seen primarily in place- 
names, language, and oral history (I. Kikuchi, 
Tamura, this volume). Evidence for the direction 
of borrowing, for instance, the use of wood 
shavings for ritual purposes or certain orna¬ 
mental design motifs, is unclear. This history is 
vastly different from that of native peoples and 
Europeans in northwestern North America, 
Europeans arrived there only 250 years ago, and 
since then cultural influence has been largely 
unidirectional, from European to native. 
There are also many differences 
between Ainu and Northwest Coast societies, 
especially in traditional and contemporary 
arts. Large sculptures like house posts and 
totem poles ornamented with inherited family 
animal crests were not made by the Ainu, and 
the artistically elaborate mask traditions of 
Northwest Coast and Eskimo societies were 
not traditionally known among the Ainu, who 
never wore masks or produced animal 
carvings of any kind until contemporary 
times. Similarly, the potlatch—a grand-scale 
social ceremony held by most Northwest 
Coast cultures which, like totem poles, has 
become a signature social emblem of these 
groups—had no parallel in Ainu culture 
(although the iyomante had a similar central 
role in ceremonial life). A host of other 
dissimilar material culture characteristics 
could be listed: Northwest Coast hierarchical 
social structure and warfare, representation of 
spirits and ancestors, woven blankets, horn 
spoons, fish-hook types, and Ainu use of 
prayer sticks (ikupasuy). Nonetheless, 
parallels for many traits characteristic of 
North Pacific cultures can be found in the 
Ainu region. These links, noted previously, 
exist not only between Ainu and Northwest 
Coast Indians but also between Ainu and 
Eskimo, Aleut, and Alutiiq peoples who are 
geographically closer to the Ainu. 
Such historical comparisons must be 
treated with caution, considering the distance 
and different cultural contexts. Geographic 
and ecological similarities make it likely that 
cultural patterns linked to subsistence and 
adaptation to natural resources could have 
122 HISTORIC PERIOD / M. KONO AND W FITZHUGH 
arisen due to convergence and independent 
invention. When one considers, however, the 
obvious relationship between the art of the 
Ainu and the Amur peoples and the more 
distant and generalized similarities between 
Ainu culture and prehistoric art of the Bering 
Sea and Northwest Coast (Fitzhugh 1988,- 
1993), basketry and harpoon technology, and 
similar spiritual beliefs and ritual forms 
(including bear and first-salmon ceremonies), 
there is need to wonder if deeper historic 
structure and meaning are involved. New 
research is likely to show whether similarities 
in basketry techniques and sewing kits arose 
from recent European-assisted contacts in the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Given 
that the strongest northern relationships are 
found in the pre-Ainu Okhotsk culture and 
that northern maritime traditions are also 
found in the Jomon period, further research is 
likely to strengthen the evidence for these 
affinities in Ainu culture. It is also clear that 
development of these ideas needs to be 
undertaken incrementally through study of 
the intervening coastal cultures and peoples 
of northeastern Asia and the Bering Sea 
rather than by direct comparisons with the 
Northwest Coast. 
Of more immediate impact today is the 
new relationship that has emerged in recent 
decades as Ainu and Northwest Coast people 
began to explore each other's cultures and 
modern histories. These contacts are enabling 
cultural leaders, students, and other members 
of these groups to discover common interests 
in culture, dance, art, language, and music and 
to share their different experiences of political 
and social history. Both sides have benefited 
from these contacts, and it seems likely that 
the Ainu-Northwest Coast connection will 
continue to create a lively new trans-Pacific 
axis of native communication. 
15/AINU AND THE NORTHWEST COAST 123 

16/The European 
Image of the 
Ainu as Reflected 
in Museum 
Collections 
Josef Kreiner 
< Mautaroke, Grand Chieftain of 
Uraashibetsu 
1843 copy by Teiki Kojima after Hakyo 
Kakizaki's work, Portraits of Ezo Chief¬ 
tains. (Y. and M. Kitao Collection) 
16.1,16.2 Early European Views 
Early European exploration voyages to 
the North Pacific produced some of the 
first images of the Ainu to be seen by 
Europeans. Adam Johann von 
Krusenstern's visit to Sakhalin in 1805 
and William Robert Broughton's in 
1796 to Volcano Bay and the Kuriles 
produced illustrations (below and 
above, respectively) imbued with the 
contemporary European concept of the 
noble sauvage. These images, which 
frequently contain spurious ethno¬ 
graphic detail—for instance, the cloth¬ 
ing and recurved bow—offer interesting 
comparisons with Ainu-e painted by 
Japanese artists of this same period, 
(courtesy of J. Kreiner) 
Europeans had learned about the Ainu 
at a very early stage of Portuguese- 
Japanese contacts. Yajiro, or Paul of 
the Faith, the translator for Francisco 
Javier (1506-52)—later and better known 
as St. Francis Xavier—had reported the news 
of a white people with long beards and 
bobbed hair, large in build, who were fearless 
fighters like the Germans. About fifty years 
after this first account, Father Louis Frois 
(1532-92) wrote a letter from Kyoto, dated 
March 1, 1565, that provided many more 
details (Bickmore 1 868: 366). Fdis is one of 
the earliest European descriptions of such 
characteristic elements of Ainu culture as 
prayer sticks (which he misinterprets, 
beginning a long tradition, as moustache 
lifters), forehead-supported burden straps, and 
the swords and breastplates made of metal. 
His mention of the hairiness of this people 
may have stimulated European imagination 
because of the widespread medieval European 
belief in "wild men," half-human and half¬ 
fairies, who lived in the woods and were 
represented in performances and works of art. 
Frois's reference to the Ainu was included 
in several editions of letters from Jesuit 
missionaries and was widely used by contem¬ 
porary European scholars like Bernhardus 
Varenius in his Descriptio Recjni Iaponiae (1649). 
There were also firsthand descriptions like that 
of Ignacio Morera da Virigue, who met with an 
Ainu at Hideyoshi's court in Osaka in 1591, the 
missionaries Girolamo de Angelis and Diego 
Carvalho, who stayed in Hokkaido in 1618, 
1620, and 1621,- and the Dutch captain 
Maarten Gerritz de Vries, who explored the 
16.1 
16.2 
East Asian coasts in 1643. But even while 
these reports contained great detail, the Ainu 
did not stir the European imagination as did 
the Japanese during the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries. The latter were the 
model par excellence of an enlightened, innova¬ 
tive people, who were peaceful but fearless in 
the martial arts. 
Suddenly, at the height of the Enlight¬ 
enment, this positive picture of Japan 
changed to an entirely negative one: Japan 
was included among the backward, non- 
inventive, despotic "Asiatic" cultures, of no 
interest whatsoever to European thinking. At 
the same time, Japan's role as a model for 
Europe was replaced by two other native 
cultures of the Japanese island chain, namely 
the Ryukyuan and the Ainu. The latter were 
"rediscovered" at the turn of the nineteenth 
century by the great explorers of the North 
Pacific, Jean Francois de Galaup, Comte de 
la Perouse (1787, in Sakhalin), Adam Johann 
von Krusenstern (1805, in Sakhalin,- fig. 
16.1) , and William Robert Broughton (1796- 
97, in Volcano Bay and the Kuriles,- fig. 
16.2) . All three, influenced by the idea of the 
noble sauvage as redefined by Rousseau and 
disappointed by the current social unrest in 
Europe, were looking for other social models 
and gathered collections from the societies 
they encountered. 
The new image of the Ainu conveyed to 
Europe by these men was that of a people 
living in eternal peace and harmony ("no loud 
talking, no immoderate laughter, and still less 
any disputing," observed Krusenstern), who 
were very honest and hospitable, gifted and 
16 /EUROPEAN IMAGE OFTHE AINU 125 
16.3 Philipp Franz von Siebold 
Through his association with the Dutch 
East Indian Company in Dejima, near 
Nagasaki, Philipp Franz von Siebold, a 
medical doctor and naturalist, was one 
of the first Europeans to live in Japan 
for an extended period (1823-39). His 
voluminous collections and publications 
founded the European field of Japanology 
and introduced Ainu culture to the out¬ 
side world, (etching by Edoardo 
Chiossone; courtesy of J. Kreiner) 
16.4 Heinrich von Siebold 
Philipp’s son Heinrich (1852-1908) 
followed his father’s footsteps into 
Japanology and Ainu studies and lived 
in Japan as a diplomat at the Austro- 
Hungarian legation from 1869 to 1896. 
His excavations at the Omori shell- 
mound in 1877 led him to propose that 
the Ainu, not the Japanese, had been 
the original inhabitants of Japan. 
(photo courtesy of Sekiguchi Tadashi, 
Tokyo, and J. Kreiner) 
talented, cultured, and of so captivating a 
character that they were considered the best 
of all people with whom Europeans were 
hitherto acquainted. This image of the Ainu 
was widely distributed all over Europe by the 
newly published encyclopedias and various 
eagerly read descriptions of the world,- 
accompanying engravings by European artists 
who had never seen the Ainu depicted them 
as Greeks with short clothing and reflex bows 
on Aegean beaches. Some fifty years later, the 
British admiral Paul B. Whittingham remarked 
upon meeting a Sakhalin Ainu that he "was a 
far nobler creature than the Red Indian, who I 
always fancied was the pride of wild men." 
Philipp Franz von Siebold (fig. 16.3), the 
German-born scholar of things Japanese and 
physician to the Dutch outpost at Dejima in 
Nagasaki from 1823 to 1829, added another 
important facet to this image: he asserted that 
the Ainu are a people with a history going 
received not only maps of the northern islands 
(as a foreigner, his possession of them later 
brought about his arrest by the Japanese and 
the international "Siebold incident") but also 
manuscripts such as Rinzo Mamiya's Totatsu kiko 
(Travels to Eastern Tartary, which Siebold 
translated in Nippon) and Ainu-language 
material from his friend Tokunai Mogami. 
Mogami escorted Siebold on his return journey 
to Odawara, providing him with information 
about the Ainu language all the while. The 
Ainu collection amassed by Siebold during this 
trip (133 items now in Leiden, Munich, Berlin, 
and Mannheim,- Kreiner 1996) was largely 
acquired from Mogami and other Japanese 
friends and students. 
Siebold's second son, fdeinrich (fig. 
16.4), stationed in Japan from 1869 to 1896 
as a diplomat with the Austro-Hungarian 
legation, tried to complete his father's studies. 
He discovered and excavated a shell mound 
16.3 16.4 16.5 
16.5 Erwin Baelz 
Scholars like Albert L. Bickmore and 
Bernhard J. Davis began discussing 
Aryan theories of Ainu origin in the 
1860s, but the fullest explication of this 
idea came in 1900 from Erwin Baelz, 
professor of medicine at the Imperial 
University of Tokyo, who believed the 
Ainu were the last remnant of a 
Caucasoid race that once occupied all 
of northern Asia, (courtesy of J. Kreiner) 
back thousands of years on the Eurasian 
continent and that their culture represented a 
very old stage of human civilization In the 
course of his studies of the history, culture, 
society, physical environment, and economy of 
Japan and its neighboring countries, he 
collected a vast amount of material that he 
later used to compile his famous multivolume 
series, Nippon (fig. 16.6), which for twenty 
years (1832-52) he self-published after he 
settled in Leiden. Siebold's interest in the Ainu 
began in early 1826 when he took part at the 
audience of the Dutch chief-merchant in Edo,- 
there he met some famous members of the 
expeditions to Japan's northern frontiers, sent 
out by the shogunate around the turn of the 
nineteenth century. From these explorers he 
in Omori in 1877, simultaneous with his more- 
famous competitor, Edward S. Morse,- however, 
contrary to Morse's theory, he believed the 
prehistoric remains to be Ainu settlements. He 
postulated that the Ainu were the original 
inhabitants of Japan, thereby starting a heated 
discussion not resolved even today. In 1878 
both Morse and Siebold continued their 
research, and both did fieldwork among the 
Ainu of Hidaka in Hokkaido. Heinrich 
Siebold's new collection, some 177 catalogue 
entries, was donated in 1888 (together with a 
large Japanese collection) to the Austrian 
Emperor. It includes a hoxchiri—a beaded 
amulet worn on the forehead by boys in 
Sakhalin (see fig. 31.3)—an object so rare that 
only one other such piece is known to exist,- it 
126 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / J. KREINER 
is in the collection of the Rautenstrauch-Joest 
Museum in Cologne. 
Heinrich von Siebold—as well as nearly 
all of his contemporaries—insisted that the 
Ainu were an openhearted, communicative, 
generous, honest, and happy people in 
contrast to their Japanese rulers, who were 
harshly criticized for their suppression of the 
Ainu. The German ethnographer Wilhelm 
joest, who was in Hokkaido from 1880 to 
1881, went so far as to compare an Ainu to 
Saint Peter or Sarastro in Mozart's Magic Flute, 
and he condemned the "tyrannical" Japanese 
for teaching the Ainu to lie and deceive. 
It is not clear who first theorized about a 
possible Caucasian, European, or proto- 
European origin of the Ainu, but one of the 
earliest proponents was Bernhard J. Davis in 
1870. He examined Ainu skeletons and 
expressed the view that Ainu skulls do not 
differ much from those of Europeans,- he also 
16.6 Bear Ceremony 
This lithograph was published in von 
Siebold’s multivolume 1832 series, 
Nippon, and introduced Ainu ceremo¬ 
nial life to Europe. The painting was 
probably done by Shunri Chishima 
between 1790 and 1820. The bear 
ceremony with its exotic form of 
dress, use of swords, inaw, ikupasuy, 
and other unusual materials, and its 
dance, praying, and sake drinking— 
all performed before the venerated 
remains of a dead and “dressed-up” 
bear—fascinated Europeans. 
(Dubreuil Collection) 
found that the weights of Ainu brains he 
studied were far greater than those of all other 
Asian races. Two years before Davis's work, 
Albert L. Bickmore noted that the Ainu "call 
to mind the bearded peasants in Russia of . . . 
the Aryan family . . . they must be regarded as 
a branch of our Aryan family" (Bickmore 
1868: 360). Other researchers reached similar 
conclusions when they compared certain 
traits of Ainu culture with European ones: 
after visits to the Ainu of Tsuishikari and the 
Saru valley in 1881, David Brauns (1883) 
noted that Ainu songs reminded him of 
Norwegian folksongs. Joest (1882) was 
impressed by the fact that the Ainu used 
knives in the same way as Europeans—that is, 
they cut with strokes away from the body— 
and that Ainu men (unlike Japanese) folded 
their clothes left over right like Europeans. 
The hypothesis of a Caucasian origin 
for the Ainu fascinated physical anthropolo¬ 
gists. Naval officers, diplomats, and travelers 
from various European countries disturbed 
Ainu graves to procure skulls for measure¬ 
ments, thereby creating diplomatic incidents,- 
nevertheless, in 1880 the famous German 
anatomist Rudolf Virchow issued an appeal 
to his compatriots in Japan not to lag behind 
in the procurement of such important 
scholarly materials. 
The ultimate statement of this school of 
thinking was left to the venerated Erwin 
Baelz (fig. 16.5), professor of medicine at 
Imperial University in Tokyo, who wrote in 
1900 that the Ainu are the last remnant of a 
Caucasian race that had once occupied the 
whole of northern Asia. At last Europe, at the 
height of its domination of the world, had 
found a people of common origin living in 
eternal peace with themselves and nature, 
thereby serving as an important model for 
Europeans. Ainu culture was thought to 
resemble distant common ancestors of 
Europeans. This, of course, meant a very 
intimate, emotional view of the Ainu on the 
one hand and a harsher critique of what was 
seen as suppression of "our white relatives" 
by the "yellow peril" of Japanese imperialism 
on the other. The latter point was only 
slightly mitigated by the notion that the 
Ainu were also the first inhabitants of the 
Japanese islands and were thereby involved 
with the development of Japanese language, 
culture, and the Japanese people themselves. 
Baelz's student, Yoshikiyo Koganei—Ogai 
Mori's son-in-law and founder of Japanese 
physical anthropology—formulated the idea 
that "the Japanese empire once was the 
empire of the Ainu" (Koganei 1893). 
For the historical evolutionist school 
within ethnology, especially the so-called 
Vienna school, this assumption that the Ainu 
culture represented an extremely old stage of 
human development meant that studying the 
present-day Ainu religion, for instance, would 
enable one to interpret paleolithic findings in 
Middle European caves, as was done by 
Wilhelm Koppers (1938) and George 
Montandon (1937). This initiated a new wave 
of collecting Ainu material (figs. 16.7, 16.8). 
Fifty-eight museums in seventeen 
European countries—excluding Russia— 
hold about 6,773 items of Ainu culture. Of 
these, 5,706 items (84 percent) have been 
16/EUROPEAN IMAGE OFTHE AINU 1 27 
Table 1. European Ainu collections by country 
Number of Size of Ainu collections 
museums 
by country Recorded 
count 
Percentage of total 
European collection 
Verified 
count 
Germany 24 3,486 5 1.46% 2,952 
United Kingdom 8 864 12.75% 619 
Italy 1 498 7.35% 498 
Sweden 2 426 6.28% 426 
Hungary 2 327 4.82% 169 
Austria 3 243 3.58% 211 
Switzerland 4 241 3.55% 208 
Denmark 3 240 3.54% 238 
France 2 195 2.87% 155 
Netherlands 2 170 2.50% 160 
Norway 1 36 0.53% 32 
Vatican 1 29 0.42% 26 
Belgium 1 7 7 
Romania 1 6 0 
Spain 
Czech Republic 
1 
I 
3 
1 
3 
1 
verified by a survey conducted between 1983 
and 1986 by a group of scholars at the 
Institute of Japanese Studies (University of 
Bonn) supported by grants from the German 
Science Foundation and Toyota Foundation in 
Tokyo. There are another 4,766 items in the 
museums of St. Petersburg (see Ogihara, this 
volume) plus some 800 more in the Russian 
Far East, in Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, and 
Yazhno Sakhalinsk (Kreiner 1993). 
Compared with the vast number of 
objects held in Japanese collections— 
estimated at 30,000 items—this number 
seems small, even though it is double the 
number of some 3,000 objects in U S. and 
Canadian collections. A more thorough 
analysis of European collections, however, 
reveals some special characteristics of these 
holdings that make them extremely valuable 
in reconstructing the wider panoply of Ainu 
culture. First, the majority of the European 
collections were assembled at a very early 
stage of contact between Ainu, Japanese, and 
Western cultures. The oldest collections, 
assembled during the first half of the eigh¬ 
teenth centuiy and once part of Czar Peter 
the Great's Kunstkammer, are now at the 
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology 
and Ethnology (MAE), St. Petersburg. The 
Rijksmuseum foor Volkenkunde at Leiden, the 
Netherlands, also holds Ainu collections from 
the nineteenth century, which were made by 
Jan Cock Blomhoff, who directed the trading 
facility in Dejima (Nagasaki) from 1817 to 
1823 (thirty-seven entries), and by Phillip 
Franz von Siebold, who served as the physi¬ 
cian in Dejima from 1823 to 1829 (eighty- 
one entries). Both collectors received items 
for their collections from Japanese friends like 
Tokunai Mogami (fig. 16.9) and from various 
members of the expeditions sent out by the 
Tokugawa Shogunate to explore the northern 
frontier at the turn of the nineteenth century. 
Most European Ainu collections were 
assembled during the second half of the 
nineteenth centuiy, some—like that of the 
Prussian diplomat Max von Brandt (fifty-two 
entries at the Museum fur Volkerkunde, 
Berlin, and others at Liibeck and the Museum 
of Mankind, London)—were formed even 
before the Meiji Restoration. In contrast, 
most Japanese Ainu collections were not 
assembled until the 1930s. 
Another major difference is that many 
of the Japanese holdings—because the 
collections were assembled relatively late— 
were bought through dealers and from curio 
shops, whereas their European counterparts 
were to a greater degree gathered by scholars 
of ethnology and anthropology (4 1.6 percent 
versus 12.2 percent of material purchased 
from dealers). Among the more well-known 
scholars who gathered Ainu items are: Erwin 
Baelz, German professor of medicine at 
Imperial University of Tokyo (eighty-four 
entries at Linden Museum, Stuttgart,- ten 
entries in Berlin), and his colleague Hans 
Gierke (sixty-five entries in Berlin),- the 
128 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / J. KREINER 
16.7 Ainu Exhibitions Begin 
Curiosity about the Ainu in Japan and 
Europe grew into a program of col¬ 
lecting that resulted in exhibitions at 
the Satsuma-yashiki in Tokyo in De¬ 
cember 1872 and at the Vienna 
World's Fair in 1873. This photo¬ 
graph shows a Hokkaido display in 
Tokyo from a photograph in The Far 
East, An Illustrated Fortnightly News¬ 
paper, 4 January 1873. (courtesy of 
Prof. P. Pantzer, Bonn, and J. Kreiner) 
16.7 
from all over the world. In 1889 his widow 
opened Umlauff's Weltmuseum, which later 
provided Fritz Lang and other filmmakers 
with exotic outfittings. 
In 1906-07 Umlauff bought a collec¬ 
tion in two parts comprising nearly seven 
hundred Ainu items (two-thirds from 
Sakhalin),- individual pieces were well 
documented in the firm's stock book. The 
Ainu name for each object is noted, resulting 
in the curious entry fushiko-ampe (item of no 
value) for a broken stick! One theory to 
explain these Ainu-language notations is that 
the Norwegian captain Adrian Jacobsen— 
who worked for Umlauff's brother-in-law 
Hagenbeck and once toured the East Asian 
island chain from Sakhalin to Indonesia 
(acquiring an Ainu collection of 172 entries 
for Berlin in 1884-85)—had researched 
Umlauff's collection at the Ainu villages he 
visited. One of the first museums to buy 
16.8 
ethnographer Wilhelm Joest of Cologne, who 
did research work in FJokkaido in 1880-81 
(155 entries divided in Berlin, Dresden, 
Copenhagen, Cologne, Leiden, and Munich),- 
and the famous linguist Basil Hall Chamber- 
lain (123 entries given to the Pitt-Rivers 
Museum at Oxford in 1892). Last but not 
least, the Hungarian Benedict Balogh von 
Barathos, searching for the roots of his 
people, toured northeastern Siberia, Bering 
Strait, and Alaska, and was in Sakhalin and 
Hokkaido in 1913-14. Unfortunately he was 
there at the outbreak of World War I, and his 
collection of 82 1 entries was confiscated by 
the Japanese government. When it was 
returned in the early 1920s, Hungary sold a 
large part of it (223 entries) to the Museum of 
Ethnology at Hamburg, including such 
unique items as a coat of mail, only three 
examples of which exist (in the collections of 
the Tokyo National Museum, Tohoku Univer- 
16.8 Ainu Dwelling Display 
During the latter part of the nine¬ 
teenth century museums developed 
new methods for cultural presenta¬ 
tion, and the unorganized display of 
“curiosities" gave way to life-groups 
with cultural and psychological con¬ 
text. This life-group from a postcard 
(ca. 1925) was constructed in the 
Roemer Museum, Hildesheim, Ger¬ 
many; displaying a moment in the 
domestic life of a Sakhalin Ainu hus¬ 
band and wife was intended to make 
Ainu culture seem less exotic and 
more understandable to European 
viewers, (courtesy of J. Kreiner) 
sity in Sendai, and in Hamburg). Because most 
such items were gathered by researchers 
themselves, at the very least the villages where 
the items were bought or exchanged are 
known, this is also true for pieces collected by 
travelers (22.7 percent of the total) like the 
well-known Isabella Bird, who toured Hok¬ 
kaido on horseback in 1878 and collected five 
pieces now in the Royal Scottish Museum. 
One of the biggest collections of Ainu 
artifacts was formerly owned by Llmlauff's 
"world-museum” in Hamburg. Johann Friedrich 
Gustav Umlauff had been a ship's carpenter, 
and when he married the sister of Carl 
Hagenbeck (later famous as an animal hunter, 
zoo director, and circus manager), he settled 
down and opened a curio shop in Hamburg in 
1868, which grew into a well-known trading 
firm specializing in ethnographica collected 
from Umlauff's stock was the Rautenstrauch- 
Joest-Museum in Cologne (210 Ainu 
catalogue entries in 1907), and they were 
thus able to acquire the most valuable items 
(Kreiner and Olschleger 1987). Other 
museums all over the continent followed, 
including institutions in Stockholm, Leipzig, 
Hildesheim (lost in World War II), 
Copenhagen, St. Gallen, Frankfurt am Main, 
Freiburg, London, Bucharest, Dresden,- the 
last collection, acquired by Hamburg, was 
bombed in 1944. 
Diplomats, naval officers, and missionar¬ 
ies account for only a few collections (about 4 
percent). Missionary collections of Ainu items 
can be found at the Museo Missionario 
Etnologico at the Vatican (assembled by R 
Kinold, eighteen entries in 1928), and also at 
the Horniman Museum, London (from the 
16/EUROPEAN IMAGE OFTHE AINU 129 
16.9 Tokunai Mogami 
Philipp Franz and Heinrich von Siebold 
both obtained Ainu collections from 
Japanese friends, including Tokunai 
Mogami who was a member of various 
northern expeditions sent out by the 
Tokugawa Shogunate to explore the 
northern frontiers, ca. 1800. (courtesy 
of J. Kreiner) 
Church Missionary Society, fourteen entries in 
1952) and the Pitt-Rivers in Oxford (gathered 
by P. Rousseau, in Muroran, eighty-four entries 
in 1900). 
While there are thousands of items from 
the Hokkaido Ainu in Japanese collections, 
there are astonishingly few from Sakhalin 
(mostly in Hakodate, Asahikawa, and the 
National Museum of Ethnology) and even 
fewer from the Kuriles (primarily in Hakodate 
and at the Tokyo National Museum). European 
holdings, on the other hand, are divided in 
equal parts between Hokkaido and Sakhalin,- 
Russian collections naturally center on the 
latter and include a great number of items from 
the Kurile Islands. Kurile artifacts are nearly 
nonexistent in Western European collections, 
although there are some small plaited baskets 
in Siebold's collection at Leiden, and also in 
Berlin and the Musee de l'Homme, Paris. 
Another interesting characteristic of 
European Ainu holdings is that they primarily 
center on weapons, hunting and fishing gear, 
baskets for food-gathering, and objects of 
religion and cult—like prayer sticks (ikupasuy) of 
which about four hundred are found in the 
marvelous collection of the doyen of European 
Ainu studies, Fosco Maraini, at the Museo 
Nationale di Antropologia e Etnologia in 
Florence (Maraini 1942,- and this volume). 
Japanese collections have a greater emphasis on 
clothing and usually include at least a few items 
connected with agricultural activities, which are 
entirely missing from European museums. 
Finally, a map (fig. 16.10) showing the 
distribution of Ainu collections in Europe 
(again excluding Russia) reveals an interesting 
pattern: 5 1.5 percent (i.e., 3,486 entries) of 
the holdings in Western Europe are to be 
found in German museums. Collections in 
Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, and the 
Netherlands, bring the total amount to 4,467 
entries (66 percent). This pattern-—a number 
of well-documented collections brought 
together by researchers at a comparatively 
early time, the focus on objects that show the 
Ainu as hunters and gatherers, the promi¬ 
nence of material from Sakhalin, and collec¬ 
tions concentrated in the German-speaking 
areas of Middle Europe—seems to need 
further explanation. 
The great attention the Ainu attracted in 
Europe resulted in the political use” (and 
misuse) of Ainu ethnographic materials. In 
1872 the Japanese government had commis¬ 
sioned the Austrian photographer Raimund 
von Stillfried to procure Ainu photos for the 
Viennese World Exhibition of 1873. In 1910 a 
joint Japanese-British exhibition, which 
celebrated the successful entente between the 
two great empires, was held in Shepherd’s 
Bush/Hyde Park in London. From May 14 to 
October 29 more than six million visitors saw 
what the Times (4 April 1910) described as "no 
exaggeration to say that nothing like the 
Japanese collections . . . will ever have been 
seen before . . . [in] any country." Not to be 
outdone by the British Empire, Japan was eager 
to present its "aborigines" and brought to 
London not only a group of Taiwanese but also 
five men, four women, and a child from the 
Ainu village of Nibutani to be shown side-by- 
side with the cannons of Port Arthur. Perhaps 
it was reasoned that by presenting the Ainu— 
then assumed to be a Caucasian people at the 
roots of Japanese culture—the victory of an 
Asian nation over a European empire (Russia) 
might be more palatable to Europeans. 
The Ainu were a major attraction and 
were reported upon in every English newspa¬ 
per. One Japanese writer, Toshihiko 
Nishimura from the Asabi newspaper, ex¬ 
pressed his annoyance at the display of the 
Ainu in his O-bei yuranki (Notes from a 
sojourn through Europe and America, Osaka 
1910): "I am convinced that Westerners will 
surely not like the Japanese because placing 
them [the Ainu] in small huts where Western- 
130 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS/J. KREINER 
16.10 Ainu 
Objects in 
European Museum 
Collections 
(after Kreiner 1993) 
ers look at them like creatures in a zoo reveals 
our lack of humanity!" 
The unfortunate Ainu presented in 
London left 234 objects behind when they 
returned to Japan,- some of the items had been 
brought from the Saru valley, but others were 
handcrafted in London while they were "on 
show." This collection of items is currently 
dispersed between five museums in the U.K.: 
Museum of Mankind (seventy-six pieces), 
Liverpool (sixty-six pieces), Pitt-Rivers (forty- 
nine pieces), Horniman (thirty-five pieces), 
and Cambridge University (eight pieces). 
In the 1930s the Third Reich tried to 
justify their alliance with Japan by arguing 
that the Japanese should be treated as equals 
with the German "Aryans" because of their 
descendence from Nordic Aryans, that is, the 
Ainu (Friese 1984: 270ff.). This argument was 
rejected because the ancient Ainu had 
nothing in common with later Europeans, but 
this discussion caused a boom in literature— 
both scholarly and popular—on the Ainu 
between 1930 and 1940. Included among 
these articles and novels was a work of fiction 
published in Leipzig in 1921 under the 
pseudonym Otfried von Hanstein. Widely 
read before the war, the novel presents the 
Ainu as tme and trustworthy friends of a 
German adventurer hunting Russian spies in 
Hokkaido, endangered by typhoons, tsunamis, 
volcanos, bears, and the Japanese police. Much 
of this kind of thinking about the Ainu 
continues today: schoolbooks reiterate the 
hypothesis, long abandoned by the sciences, 
that the Ainu are a white European or Cauca¬ 
sian people of extremely ancient origins, and 
the stereotype of the "wild men" can still be 
found in crossword puzzles across Europe. 
When in 1980 the University of Bonn 
invited specialists from libraries, archives, 
and museums from several Middle European 
countries to discuss the meaning of their 
collections for Japanese studies (Kreiner 
1981), it quickly became evident that for a 
variety of reasons museums especially were 
unable to give a detailed description of their 
holdings. A vast amount of art and crafts as 
well as ethnographical material had been 
acquired at the turn of the last century when 
Japan resumed contact with the rest of the 
world at the end of the Tokugawa 
Shogunate, but there was neither enough 
staff nor was its training advanced enough to 
arrange and classify it. After World War I, 
accession stopped nearly completely, and the 
staffs of museums were also depleted. During 
World War II many important collections 
were destroyed, such as the important Ainu 
collection of Bronislaw Pilsudski in Warsaw 
(although his contributions to St. Petersburg 
did survive), or were dispersed. By the time 
of the conference, the participating institu¬ 
tions were ready to start work on a compre¬ 
hensive catalogue that would document 
various aspects of their Japanese collections. 
Different focuses for a pilot project 
were discussed, but a consensus was soon 
reached to start with a study of Ainu 
collections. From the outset one question the 
project attempted to address was why our 
colleagues placed such great significance on 
this part of their treasures. We soon discov¬ 
ered that not only had the material remnants 
of the Ainu in our museums played an 
immense role in the history of sciences— 
anthropology, ethnology, and Japanese 
studies—as well as in the European history 
of thought, but even more so the study of 
the Ainu people had played an important 
role in Europeans' own self-assessment—and 
this to a much greater degree than the study 
of other peoples and cultures (Kreiner 1993). 
16/EUROPEAN IMAGE OFTHE AINU i3i 
The St. 
Petersburg 
Ainu 
Collections 
Shinko Ogihara 
For many years anthropologists 
and museum specialists have known 
about the existence of a number of 
Ainu collections in the museums of 
Europe, and recently the presence of Ainu 
materials in North American museums has 
also been recognized (see Kotani, this 
volume). Until now, however, scholars and 
Ainu people themselves, who have begun 
taking an active interest in their cultural 
heritage, have been unaware of a third major 
source of historical materials that has existed 
for almost one hundred years in the museums 
of western Russia. The late recognition of 
these Ainu collections is consistent with the 
history of Soviet relations with foreign 
researchers, who were generally denied the 
chance to conduct ethnographic surveys 
among the native peoples in Soviet territories. 
It is regrettable that after World War II 
the political situation between Japan and 
Russia caused several generations of Japanese 
researchers who might have pursued Ainu and 
Siberian studies to choose other areas of 
scholarship. Nevertheless, a number of 
Japanese specialists continued Siberian studies 
by following the contributions of Soviet 
Siberianists even though they themselves 
were unable to conduct field research in the 
former Japanese territories of Sakhalin and 
the Kuriles or in other areas of the Russian Far 
East and Chukotka. Using the extensive 
documentation available in expedition 
literature and ethnographic collections made 
when these areas were accessible to both 
Japanese and Russian researchers (Taksami 
1969), Japanese scholars continued to 
conduct important research on Sakhalin and 
the Kurile Islands and their peoples, including 
the Ainu. The collections, records, and 
publications of these expeditions are among 
the most comprehensive studies in existence 
on the Ainu people, even including studies of 
the Ainu of Hokkaido, who have been 
accessible to western scientists and museum 
collectors for 150 years. 
Sergei Arutiunov (this volume) has 
discussed published studies by many early 
Russian scientists, revealing which aspects of 
Ainu culture interested scholars during the 
past century. Here we examine the St. 
Petersburg Ainu collections themselves to 
discover what they reveal about the Ainu who 
lived in the northern regions of their territory, 
Table l. Ainu collections at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, St. Petersburg 
Accession 
number 
Accession 
year 
Collection 
date Collector Place of collection 
820 pre-1747 Kunstkammer Kurile Islands 
4685 1894-95 1806-07 G. 1 Davydov Sakhalin Island 
810 1826 18th c. Admiralty Kurile Islands 
809 1840* 1844 1 G. Voznesenskii Kurile Islands 
178 1888 1853-57 L. I. Shrenk Amur 
733 1854-55 R. K. Maak Sakhalin Island 
209 1891 P. I. Suprunenko Sakhalin Island 
345 1897 1879-80 A. V. Grigor'ev Ezo Island (Hokkaido) 
811 1879 1879 A. V. Grigor'ev Ezo Island (Hokkaido) 
138 1882 1880-82 P. S. Poljakov Sakhalin Island 
1052 1880 1880 P. S. Poljakov South Sakhalin 
202 1890 P. 1. Suprunenko Sakhalin Island 
615 1868 Russian Geographical Society Sakhalin Island 
629 1891 Russian Geographical Society Northeast Asia 
482 1899 K. N. Pos'et Sakhalin, Aleutian Islands 
656 1902 L. Shternberg Sakhalin Island, Primore 
837 1904 1902-04 B. Pilsudski Sakhalin Island 
700 1903 1902-03 B. Pilsudski Sakhalin Island 
3125 1903-05 1903-05 B. Pilsudski Sakhalin Island 
839 1904 1903 B. Pilsudski,- Shiroszewski Ezo Island (Hokkaido) 
829 1906(2) 1902-05 B. Pilsudski Sakhalin Island 
1039 1906 1902-05 B. Pilsudski South Sakhalin 
2803 1914 1902-05 B. Pilsudski Sakhalin Island 
4974 1947 1947 M. G. Levin, I. P. Lavrov Sakhalin Island 
4375 ** 
* date uncertain 
** no data listed in MAE register 
132 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS /S. OGIHARA 
1 .r 
' w, : tfT \,,AT ' . A ■ - 
A- 
ITT 7 ■ V ji 
A'! 7. , ;};i . 1 i 
fehoT w 
17.1 Kurile Robe 
This robe of woven elm bark (attush) 
from the Kuriles was accessioned 
by the Museum of Anthropology and 
Ethnology in 1826. Its original date 
of collection is not known, but it is 
from one of the earliest Ainu collec¬ 
tions, thought to have been formed 
as early as 1700. Place of collection 
is unknown, but because elm does 
not grow in the northern Kuriles, it 
probably came from the southern 
Kuriles where attush could be ob¬ 
tained from Hokkaido. (MAE 810-4) 
the Kurile Islands and southern Sakhalin. This 
collection inventory was conducted in 1995 
and 1996 by Japanese and Russian scientists 
organized by the author and Chuner 
Mikhailovich Taksami, Director of the 
Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography 
(MAE) in St. Petersburg, with support from 
the Japanese Government Cultural Agency 
(Monbusho). Our team consisted of ethnolo¬ 
gists and curators from the Siberian Division 
of the MAE and Japanese specialists from 
various museums in Hokkaido and Tokyo. 
The MAE was established by Peter the 
Great at the beginning of the eighteenth 
century as a Kunstkammer (art cabinet), a name 
that is still used to refer to the oldest part of 
the museum. Peter had a great interest in 
natural science and took a strong interest in 
the development of the museum's early 
collections, which include such wonders as 
the syphilitic bones of his seven-foot-tall 
personal valet, a two-headed calf, and other 
"natural" curiosities including minerals and 
ethnological collections from Russian 
America. Over the centuries the MAE has 
accumulated enormous collections of ethno¬ 
graphic, archaeological, and physical 
anthropological specimens from all over the 
world, among them Ainu materials that have 
never before been accessible to Japanese 
Ainu scholars. 
The Ainu collections of the MAE, 
which are now stored in the attic of the 
Russian Academy of Sciences building next 
door to the museum, were found to be in 
such excellent condition that it was hard to 
believe that so many years had passed since 
they were collected. According to MAE 
records, the museum possesses twenty-five 
separate Ainu collections that include 879 
listings and 1,890 individual pieces (Table 1). 
Of these, our research group succeeded in 
documenting 1,400 specimens from all 
twenty-five collections. (Discrepancies in 
these numbers can be attributed to materials 
transferred in exchanges with other ethno¬ 
logical museums, and some materials proved 
to be inaccessible. We also decided not to 
include archaeological materials [accession 
no. 4974] in our survey.) Our method was to 
photograph and sketch everything and 
gather original catalogue data as well as 
record our own observations about the 
material. Our preliminary results suggest that 
the MAE collections contain a vast treasure 
trove of Ainu research material previously 
unknown to western and Asian scholars. 
An Ainu Inheritance from the 
Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries 
According to the MAE register, the oldest 
Ainu collection (accession no. 810) was 
brought from the Kurile Islands by the 
Admiralty Department in 1826 (fig. 17.1). 
Because the accession date indicates the year 
when these objects were transferred to MAE, 
the date on which they were collected must 
be earlier. The earliest MAE Ainu collection 
is thought to date from around 1700 but is 
recorded in the register as being from 
Kunstkammer (accession no. 820) without a 
year recorded,- this collection may have been 
saved from a fire in 1747 that burned down 
the Kunstkammer after it had been in 
existence for twenty years. The most recent 
addition to the Ainu collection was obtained 
by an Amur-Sakhalin expedition in 1947. 
Thus, the accession numbers and dates 
indicate that Ainu materials have been 
gathered by the MAE over nearly two-and-a- 
half centuries. A list of collections arranged 
by the year in which they seem to have been 
17/ST. PETERSBURG COLLECTIONS 133 
17.2 Kurile Boat Model 
In 1839 Ilya Vosnesenski visited and 
gathered collections from Alaska and 
the Northwest Coast, and in 1844 he 
visited northern Chishima (northern 
Kuriles), where he obtained twenty-two 
objects, including bows, arrows, quivers, 
three boat models, two baskets, a 
grass bag, and a Japanese lacquered 
cup. One of the boat models, seen 
here, has a mast and six pairs of oars 
and is a seagoing vessel similar to 
North Chishima boats documented in 
written sources. (MAE 809-10) 
obtained in the field shows a burst of activity 
in the decades around the turn of the twenti¬ 
eth century (Table 1). The lengthy gaps 
between 1855 and 1880 mark a dearth of 
ethnological collecting between the early 
exploration era and the beginnings of 
scientific anthropology,- by contrast, the long 
gap between 1905 and 1947 can be attributed 
to political events that were not conducive to 
ethnological study in Sakhalin, including the 
disastrous outcome (for Russia) of the Russo- 
Japanese war in 1905, the Bolshevik Revolu¬ 
tion and ensuing military confrontations in 
the Amur region, and World War II. Unlike 
most of the Ainu materials held in Japanese 
museums, which generally lack documenta¬ 
tion on the date and place of collection, that 
information is available on the MAE collec¬ 
tions, which renders them particularly 
significant for reconstructing the cultural 
history of the Ainu. 
is testament to the unique people that was 
exterminated by this policy. The register 
indicates that three collections came from 
the Kurile Islands, but further place-names 
are lacking. In Japanese, the Kurile Islands 
are called Chishima, meaning the "thousand 
islands" because so many small land masses 
comprise the chain that stretches from 
Hokkaido to Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. 
Geographically, they are usually distin¬ 
guished as South, Middle, or North 
Chishima, a partition that implies different 
ecological environments, different local 
cultures, and different historical back¬ 
grounds. For this reason it is important to 
identify the islands from which particular 
materials originated so that they can be 
attributed to a specific local Ainu group, but 
that information is unfortunately lacking 
from the MAE records. 
Accession no. 820 contains thirteen 
-. 
. 
aSiay-.-.. 
17.2 
17.3 Coiled-Grass Basket 
Vosnesenski also obtained several 
decorated coiled-grass baskets (tenki) 
with lids in 1844. These baskets are 
almost identical to baskets made by 
Koryaks and southwest Alaskan Yup'ik 
Eskimos in the late nineteenth century 
and may indicate contact or exchange 
between these regions. (MAE 810-13) 
17.3 
Kurile Islands Collections 
MAE Ainu collections originate from all three 
areas where Ainu used to live: the Kurile 
Islands, Sakhalin Island, and Hokkaido 
(known in early historical accounts as Ezo). 
Because Kurile Ainu materials are scarce in 
any museum collections, the MAE collections 
(no. 809, 8 10, and 820) are extremely rare 
and important. The three early collections 
from the Kurile Islands were accessioned by 
the museum between 1747 and 1840, early 
dates that render them especially valuable. 
Beginning in 1 875 and again in 1884 the 
Kurile Ainu were forced by the Japanese 
government to emigrate south, to Shikotan 
Island, a displacement that led to the disap¬ 
pearance of an entire ethnic group and its 
culture, but the presence of these collections 
items: sword sheaths, a dagger sheath, knife 
sheaths, garments, bags, a mg, and a box. The 
two garments are made of Japanese indigo- 
dyed cotton, and one has embroidered 
ornamentation: according to ethnographic data 
about the Kurile Ainu, this type of garment was 
worn on South Chishima, where other material 
of apparent Japanese origin is also found. 
Similarly, a garment in accession no. 810—a 
typical Ainu kimono (fig. 17.1) of woven elm 
(bast fiber)—implies a South Chishima origin, 
because elm does not grow in the Kuriles and 
so the fiber or garment must have been 
obtained by trade from Hokkaido. The other 
objects include a smoking pipe, a wooden pipe, 
and a leather quiver. Unfortunately, the place 
of origin of these materials is more difficult to 
identify accurately. 
t34 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS /S. OCIHARA 
Accession no. 809 contains bows, 
arrows, quivers, three boat models (including 
two ocean-going varieties,- fig. 17.2), two 
baskets, a grass bag, and a fine Japanese 
lacquer cup with gold-foil ornamentation. 
One of the boat models has a mast, sail 
ropes, and six pairs of oars, while the other is 
a five-oar boat. These boats are of particular 
interest because they are similar to the boats 
known to have been used in North Chishima 
(northern Kuriles), which suggests that they 
derive from this location. This conclusion is 
supported by the presence of coiled-grass 
baskets,- this basket-making technique was 
common to such North Pacific peoples as 
the Koryaks, Aleuts, and Yup'ik Eskimos of 
the Bering Sea. In addition to Russian 
colonists, the North Chishima islands are 
known to have been populated by Aleuts, 
Kamchadals, and others with whom the 
Ainu had trade relations. Another decisive 
17.4 Sakhalin Hospitality 
Polish scholar Bronislaw Pilsudski stud¬ 
ied the Sakhalin Ainu 1902-05 and 
made extensive collections for the MAE. 
After returning home he became finan¬ 
cially destitute and sold sets of photo¬ 
graphs to various Western museums. 
This shot documents a sake-drinking 
ceremony in which the host is passing a 
cup (tuki) with a prayer stick (ikupasuy) 
across its top to a European, possibly 
Pilsudski or his colleague, W. 
Shiroszewski. (NAA 93-12687) 
piece of evidence indicating a North 
Chishima origin of these materials (fig. 17.3) 
is the documented route of the MAE Russian 
collector, I. G. Voznesenskii, who had 
traveled by boat along the Middle and 
North Chishima coast in 1844 (Alekseev 
1977: 69-70) and visited other North Pacific 
locations in the Aleutians and Russian 
America beginning in 1839. 
Collections from 
Sakhalin and Hokkaido 
Materials from the Sakhalin Ainu dominate 
the MAE Ainu collections. Six of the sixteen 
collections with Sakhalin artifacts were 
gathered by Bronislaw Pilsudski, including 
accessions no. 700, 829, 1039, 2803, and 
3125 from Sakhalin and no. 839, which was 
obtained from Hokkaido in 1903 when 
Pilsudski worked with W. Shiroszewski. 
Because of Pilsudski's profound perceptions 
about the Ainu and other native groups, the 
collections that he gathered reflect the entire 
life and culture of the Sakhalin Ainu (fig. 
17.4). They not only cover every aspect of 
daily life but also contain material from 
different villages throughout the island. In 
general, these collections are ethnographi- 
cally outstanding for this thoroughness and 
because his knowledge of Ainu culture is 
everywhere evident in the collection docu¬ 
mentation. Moreover, Pilsudski made an 
effort to obtain the Ainu-language names of 
each object in addition to his ethnological 
descriptions of the artifacts,- many of these are 
found in the register of the MAE, quite often 
written on the objects themselves. These 
linguistic data are precious for the study of 
Sakhalin Ainu language, which has been 
extinct for many years, for they are the only 
means for determining how one Ainu dialect 
relates to an other. Bronislaw Pilsudski's 
detailed contributions to Sakhalin Ainu 
ethnography allow scholars to reconstruct 
this culture in almost all of its basic elements, 
and his collections, preserved in the MAE, 
will be of great value to future scholars and 
Ainu people. 
The MAE also has an important 
collection of Hokkaido Ainu material (no. 
839) whose dates and places of collection 
are known. Recently, our research group 
continued its work in the Ainu collections of 
the Russian Ethnographic Museum, also in 
St. Petersburg. This museum has a large 
number of Ainu collections gathered in 1912 
from several places in Hokkaido, and 
research now underway will greatly enrich 
the knowledge gained from the MAE 
collections about the Hokkaido Ainu at the 
beginning of the twentieth century. 
17/ST. PETERSBURG COLLECTIONS 135 
Ainu 
Collections in 
North 
America: 
Documentation 
Projects and the 
Frederick Starr 
Collections 
Yoshinobu Kotani 
OVER THE PAST FIFTEEN YEARS 
museum and archival surveys 
have resulted in a comprehen¬ 
sive inventory of Ainu cultural 
materials including objects, photograph 
collections, and archival resources in Euro¬ 
pean and North American museums. The first 
of these surveys was organized by Josef 
Kreiner of the University of Bonn, Germany. 
Kreiner's survey, conducted with the assis¬ 
tance of European colleagues and Toshikazu 
Sasaki of Tokyo National Museum, revealed 
about 5,700 Ainu objects—a surprisingly 
large number—in western European museums 
(Kreiner 1993). Concurrently, from 1983 to 
1985, a joint Polish-Japanese project had 
begun investigating Bronislaw Pilsudski's early 
twentieth-century sound recordings on the 
Ainu and other unpublished materials from 
the Sakhalin region (Kato and Kotani 1987). 
My own efforts to inventory American 
collections was modeled on the work of Josef 
Kreiner (see Kreiner, this volume). These 
surveys, conducted between 1990 and 1996, 
identified approximately 3,200 Ainu ethno¬ 
graphic specimens and associated archival 
holdings in natural history and art museums in 
the United States and Canada (Kotani 1993a, 
b, 1997). This project brought long-forgotten 
North American collections to the attention 
of scholars and Ainu people,- it also provided 
the stimulus for the current exhibition. 
In 1990, based on contacts with more 
than one hundred museums, our North 
American Ainu Documentation Project team 
visited more than two dozen museums and 
several private collectors in North America to 
gather firsthand data on each Ainu specimen. 
Because most of these museums concentrate 
on North American cultures, we discovered 
that their Ainu collections were poorly 
known and that American anthropologists 
today know little about the Ainu. Our focus 
was not only on ethnographic specimens: 
archival materials like accession papers, slides, 
photographs, old correspondence, and field 
notes were also inspected to help reconstruct 
the circumstances under which the object 
collections were made. During the course of 
the project, several museums with large 
collections were visited several times. 
In March 1992 we paid a second visit to 
the National Museum of Natural History, 
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 
where I shared with William W. Fitzhugh the 
purpose of the survey project and my long- 
cherished idea for an Ainu exhibition based 
on materials drawn from a wide variety of 
Ainu collections. Several times during the 
next few years I invited Fitzhugh to Japan to 
explore for himself the possibility of such an 
exhibition, and we visited various museums 
together and met with a number of scholars. 
Simultaneously, the documentation team 
traveled to Washington, Philadelphia, New 
York, and Chicago to complete the inventory 
and held seminars and discussions about the 
exhibition plans. 
The final stage in the epic series of 
inventory projects began in 1995, when 
Shinko Ogihara of Chiba University em¬ 
barked on the task of inventorying the 
Russian collections with her Russian col¬ 
league, Dr. Chuner Taksami (see Ogihara, this 
volume). Cumulatively, efforts of all the 
documentation teams have brought us quite 
Table 1: Major Collectors before 1913 
Year Collector Provenance (in Hokkaido) Present Depository 
1877-78 Morse, E. S. Central Peabody Essex Museum 
Peabody Museum, Harvard University 
1888 Hitchcock, R. Eastern and Central, S. Kuriles National Museum of Natural History 
1888 Odium, E. Eastern Royal Ontario Museum 
1890s Curtis, W. W. Central Historical Museum of Hokkaido 
1890s Pettee, J. H. Central Hood Museum, Dartmouth College 
1900 Dean, B. Saru R. Valley, Volcano Bay 
and Iburi Coast 
American Museum of Natural History 
1901 Hiller, H. M. Volcano Bay and Iburi Coast University Museum, 
University of Pennsylvania 
1904 Starr, F. Saru R. Valley and Shiraoi Brooklyn Museum of Art 
1904 Simms, S. C. Hakodate Field Museum of Natural History 
1910 Starr, F. Obihiro and Memuro Brooklyn Museum of Art 
1912 Starr, F. Piratori Brooklyn Museum of Art 
1912 Culin, S. Saru R Valley Brooklyn Museum of Art 
1912 Batchelor, J. Saru R. Valley Brooklyn Museum of Art 
1912 Starr, F. 
J. Oyabe 
Volcano Bay Logan Museum of Anthropology, 
Beloit College 
136 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / Y. KOTANI 
close to having a master inventory of Ainu 
material culture for the entire world. 
The North American 
Ainu Collections 
Table 1 lists some of the major North American 
collections of Ainu artifacts gathered before 
1912 and their current repositories. Table 2 
summarizes the distribution of Ainu specimens 
in North American museums. These tables 
reveal a distinct regionality in the distribution of 
Ainu collections in North America: namely, 
older Ainu collections tend to be concentrated 
in the East and Midwest, while those in western 
institutions, including Hawaii, are relatively 
recent and rather few in number. Furthermore, 
older collections (those secured before 1912) 
are fairly well documented in terms of location, 
names of collectors, date of collection, and 
object-level information, while the recent 
collections often lack basic scientific data. 
These regional characteristics can be attrib¬ 
uted, in part, to various factors in the history of 
museums and the development of North 
American anthropology. 
Table 2: Major Ainu Collections in North America Number of Specimens 
Canada 
Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, Quebec 5 
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario 88 
Eastern United States 
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA 140 
Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 150 
Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 20 
Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT 74 
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY ca. 950 
American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY ca. 430 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY 4 
National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY 9 
Buffalo Museum of Science, Buffalo, NY 77 
Robert J. Smith Collection, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 50 
Llniversity Museum, Llniversity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA ca. 315 
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC ca. 190 
The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C. 3 
Midwestern United States 
Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ml 7 
Milwaukee Public Museum, Milwaukee, WI 220 
Logan Museum of Anthropology, Beloit College, Beloit, WI 68 
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 1L ca. 215 
University of Chicago Library, Chicago, 1L (archival materials) 
Western United States 
Burke Memorial Washington State Museum & Henry Art Gallery, 18 
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA 12 
Llniversity of Oregon, Eugene, OR 39 
Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Llniversity of Califiornia, Berkeley, CA 43 
Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 19 
Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, Los Angeles, CA 47 
Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, HI 40 
This distribution pattern reveals that 
the natural history museums in the eastern 
United States and Canada, where the seats of 
industry and government were originally 
located, are the repositories of most Ainu 
materials. Natural histoiy museums in the 
West, which were founded after 1910, 
arrived too late to collect Ainu specimens in 
Ainu villages,- by this time most specimens of 
historic value had been sold or collected, and 
the Ainu were producing artifacts for the 
tourist trade. Eastern institutions with Ainu 
collections include: the National Museum of 
Natural History, Smithsonian Institution 
(founded 1846),- the American Museum of 
Natural History, New York (founded 1869); 
the Columbian Museum (now Field Museum) 
of Natural History, Chicago (founded 1 893),- 
the Peabody Museum of Natural History, 
Yale University, New Haven (founded 1869),- 
and the Llniversity of Pennsylvania Museum 
of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadel¬ 
phia (founded 1887). In addition, the 
Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (now 
the Brooklyn Museum of Art), New York, 
was actively collecting Ainu materials by the 
first decade of this century (Danilov 1990). 
Financed by the growing wealth of 
industrialized eastern North America, these 
museums sponsored large scientific expedi¬ 
tions to various areas of the world to collect 
natural history specimens, including Ainu 
materials (see Fitzhugh, this volume). One 
good example of such a trip can be seen in 
the Ainu collection gathered by Hiram M. 
Hiller, who was sent to Borneo to acquire 
natural history collections,- he also traveled 
to Japan where he gathered Ainu specimens, 
which were later transferred to the Univer¬ 
sity of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology 
and Anthropology. 
Anthropology and 
THE AlNU-CAUCASOID HYPOTHESIS 
During the mid-nineteenth century, the 
notion of ancient Ainu-Caucasoid connec¬ 
tions began to take root in Europe, particu¬ 
larly among German-speaking people. 
According to this hypothesis, the Ainu were a 
remnant of ancient Germanic peoples who 
once occupied continental Europe. This idea 
was attractive to Europeans because it posited 
the continuing existence of an early European 
hunting-and-gathering people and because of 
the romantic notion of a "Caucasoid' ethnic 
group surrounded by a sea of Mongoloids. 
18 / NORTH AMERICAN COLLECTIONS 4 37 
18.1 Smoking Kit 
Together with their knives (makiri), 
Ainu men carried smoking kits 
(tanpakuop) consisting of a tobacco 
box, a pipe, and a pipe holder. The 
hexagonal or octangular shape of the 
tobacco boxes is similar to that of 
Japanese medicine cases (inro). Pipes, 
made of hardwood with stems as long 
as 15 inches (40 cm), were carried in 
pipe holders that resemble ikupasuy. 
Each had a hole in one end through 
which the pipe stem was passed, allow¬ 
ing the bowl to be socketted securely. 
Pipes were carved with curvilinear or 
geometric designs but never with ani¬ 
mals, boats, or landscapes such as are 
found on ikupasuy. Ainu custom called 
for "pipe exchanges” when two men 
met for the first time; each shared a 
smoke from the other’s pipe. This pipe 
set was acquired in 1876 from geolo¬ 
gist Benjamin Smith Lyman, an early 
U.S. advisor sent to assist with 
Japan’s economic development. 
(NMNH E22259) 
Although some racial and linguistic 
theories were advanced (see Arutiunov and 
Ishida, this volume), this hypothesis was 
never rigorously tested and has largely been 
ignored by twentieth-century anthropolo¬ 
gists. However, an undercurrent of belief in 
an Ainu-Caucasoid link remains, not only in 
Europe but also in North America where a 
large number of scientists with German 
backgrounds and professional training in 
Germany have been active. 
The late nineteenth century, the 
period in which museums had an intense 
interest in collecting Ainu material culture, 
was also the period in which anthropology 
and ethnology became professionalized in the 
United States. As was the case with natural 
history museums, the East Coast again played 
a crucial role as a developing center of 
university and museum anthropology. Franz 
Boas (1 858-1942), who is often cited as the 
father of American anthropology, was initially 
trained in geography in Germany and 
emigrated to the United States in the 1870s,- 
he started his long and influential teaching 
career in anthropology at Columbia Univer¬ 
sity in the late 1890s. Boas was a close 
associate of Frederick Starr and Stewart Culin, 
who became famous for their collecting work 
among the Ainu (see Poster, this volume),- the 
three worked closely to restructure the 
American Anthropological Association during 
the late 1890s (Hyatt 1990). Simultaneously, 
Boas initiated the Jesup North Pacific 
Expedition (1 897-1902), the largest anthro¬ 
pological field investigation ever undertaken 
to study and collect from the peoples of the 
North Pacific Rim. One of the Jesup studies, 
conducted by Berthold Laufer in 1898, was 
devoted to the Sakhalin Ainu and brought 
about forty Sakhalin Ainu specimens to the 
American Museum of Natural History 
(Kendall 1988 and this volume). 
U.S.-Japanese Relations 
It is no coincidence that most of the large 
Ainu collections in America were assembled 
during the period of peaceful relations that 
existed between the United States and Japan 
throughout the Meiji Era (1868-1912). 
Immediately after the reopening of Japan at 
the onset of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the 
Japanese government invited American 
scientists and engineers to Hokkaido to 
conduct surveys and help with plans for 
agricultural and natural resource development,- 
one of these visitors was General Horace 
Capron. Capron served as Secretary of 
Agriculture under President Ulysses S. Grant 
from 1869 to 1877, and for a period of that 
tenure—between 1871 and 1875—was a 
senior adviser to the Hokkaido Development 
Agency. Another visitor was William Smith 
Clark, an agricultural specialist and educator 
who was invited to Sapporo in 1876-77 to 
help found the Imperial College of Agriculture, 
the forerunner of today's Hokkaido University. 
Benjamin Smith Lyman, a geologist, lived in 
Hokkaido from 1872 to 1881, where he 
explored the region's potential mining re¬ 
sources and helped train Japanese geologists. 
Other professionals were invited to teach basic 
courses in science and English at Tokyo 
Imperial University and other institutions,- 
among these were Edward S. Morse, Romyn 
Hitchcock, E. Odium, and Bashford Dean, 
who, in addition to other activities, traveled in 
Hokkaido and collected Ainu artifacts. 
138 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / Y. KOTANI 
18.2 Beaded Necklace 
This necklace (tamasay) was col¬ 
lected by Alexander Agassiz from 
Storop Island in the Kuriles. Its small 
black and large blue beads create an 
attractive size and color contrast; the 
small dull beads are made of lead. 
Ainu artifacts from the Kuriles are 
quite rare because of the removal of 
Ainu after 1875 from most of the 
northern Kurile Islands due to con¬ 
flicts with Russian sea-otter hunters. 
(PMC 51625) 
Edward Sylvester Morse, a marine 
biologist, came to Tokyo in 1 877 and became 
the first to conduct scientific archaeological 
excavations at the Omori shell mound in 
Tokyo Bay. Later, he traveled widely in Japan 
and took Ainu and Japanese ethnographic 
collections hack to the Peabody Museum 
(now Peabody Essex Museum) in Salem, 
Massachusetts. Unfortunately, there are no 
records documenting where and how Morse 
assembled his Ainu collection. 
In 1888 both Romyn Hitchcock 
(Hitchcock 1891a, b) and E. Odium traveled in 
the southern Kurile Islands as well as in central 
and eastern Hokkaido, securing more than two 
hundred Ainu specimens (figs. 18.1, 18.2). 
Most of these objects are at the National 
Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC.,- 
about fifty specimens are held by the Royal 
Ontario Museum in Toronto. Because 
Hitchcock and Odium traveled together, their 
collections can be considered as a single one for 
purposes of analysis. 
Bashford Dean, a professor of marine 
biology at Columbia University who also 
became a distinguished collector of armor, 
came to Tokyo Imperial University to collect 
marine samples at the Misaki Marine Labora¬ 
tory south of Yokohama. In the summer of 
1900 he went to Hokkaido to visit Ainu 
villages on the north shore of Volcano Bay, on 
the Iburi Coast, and in the Saru River valley. 
Here he secured about 250 Ainu artifacts, 
which he transferred, through Franz Boas, to 
the American Museum of Natural History. 
Deans "Catalogue of Aino [sic] Collection" 
(Dean 1901), classifies his Ainu specimens in 
eleven categories: costume,- jewelry and pipe- 
cases,- arms,- hunting and fishing implements,- 
medicine,- kitchen objects—platters, bowls, 
spoons, mortars and pestles, and baskets,- 
weaving apparatus and mats,- religious and 
ceremonial objects,- house and boat models,- 
anatomical materials,- and photographs. He 
made a brief description for each item and 
gave the name of the village where he secured 
it. This list is one of the best records of any 
Ainu collection in North America, and in my 
opinion, it clearly reflects the high standards 
adhered to by collectors who had received 
professional training in the natural sciences. 
The Meiji government also sent Japa¬ 
nese students to the Llnited States and Europe 
to study science and technology. Some of the 
students returning from the United States 
acted as translators and intermediaries 
between the Ainu and field collectors sent by 
American museums. Inazo Nitobe, who had 
once studied at Johns Hopkins University in 
Baltimore and at the University of Bonn, 
Germany, was professor at the Hokkaido 
Agriculture College, Sapporo,- during the late 
1890s, he was apparently asked by Arthur 
Curtiss James, a patron of the American 
Museum of Natural History, to make 
collections of Ainu specimens for the 
museum. Nitobe sent about forty specimens, 
representing both Hokkaido and Sakhalin 
Ainu, in response to this request Games, 
unpublished letter, AMNH). Jenichiro 
Oyabe, was a Japanese citizen who pursued 
an unusual course in the United States and in 
his native country: he graduated from 
General Armstrong's Indian School in 
Virginia, then did undergraduate work at 
Howard University in Washington, D C., 
and later seems to have spent a year or so at 
Yale University. After returning to Japan, he 
started an Ainu school at Abuta, Hokkaido, 
where he gave basic instruction to Ainu 
youth. In 1900 he and his associate, Ryujiro 
Shirai, guided Hiram M. Hiller to Ainu 
villages on the Iburi Coast and in the Saru 
River valley and helped Hiller collect some 
240 Ainu items for the University of Penn¬ 
sylvania Museum (see Katz, this volume). 
This period of cooperation lasted 
nearly forty years before the decade of 1910 
to 1920 brought a drastic deterioration in 
United States-Japan relations, primarily 
because of changes in LI S. immigration 
policy,- the outbreak of World War 1 and the 
beginning of the Russian Revolution also 
made it impossible for any European or 
American museums to consider sending 
expeditions to Siberia or Hokkaido. By the 
1920s the era in which American museums 
sponsored expeditions to Japan had ended. 
Missionaries in Hokkaido 
In addition to governmental cooperation, the 
presence of Christian missionaries in 
Hokkaido was an important element 
encouraging American scientists to visit and 
assemble museum collections there. One of 
these missionaries, Rev. John Batchelor, who 
served as a member of the Church Missionary 
Society, deserves special attention. Batchelor 
lived in Hokkaido for some sixty years, from 
1877 until 1940. Today he is regarded as a 
pioneer student of Ainu culture and language, 
which he documented in many publications 
18/NORTH AMERICAN COLLECTIONS 139 
18.3 Starr’s Ainu Group in Tokyo 
Preparing for the St. Louis Exposition of 
1904, anthropologist Frederick Starr 
traveled to Hokkaido and recruited a 
party of Ainu. Here the group is seen 
before their departure from Tokyo: elder 
Ainu men were bearded and the women 
had lip tattoos; by this time, conforming 
to Japanese custom, younger men no 
longer wore beards. (Ainu women contin¬ 
ued to tattoo their lips until the 1930s.) 
The strong “Caucasoid” look of the men 
probably influenced Starr's selection of 
them. (UOL 33-80-5) 
including several important Ainu dictionaries. 
He also donated about thirty Ainu specimens to 
the British Museum in London (Kreiner 1987). 
Batchelor helped several American 
scientists who sought to collect Ainu materi¬ 
als directly from village people, rather than, 
as was sometimes done, from antique and 
curio shops that occasionally acquired Ainu 
materials. Batchelor guided Frederick Starr 
to Ainu villages in the Saru River valley (figs. 
18.3-18.7), where he succeeded in recruiting 
nine Ainu volunteers to travel with him to 
the Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposi¬ 
tion held in 1904 in St. Louis (Starr 1904,- 
VanStone 1993). Bashford Dean and Stewart 
Culin also seem to have sought Batchelor's 
advice before embarking on their collecting 
expedition to Volcano Bay, the Iburi Coast, 
and the Saru River. 
Several other missionaries collected 
Ainu specimens: James H. Pettee, who resided 
Ainu Collections and Social Change 
Museum collections are a valuable and 
frequently overlooked resource for the study 
of social and cultural change, and the Ainu 
collections in North America are especially 
valuable in this regard. Older collections tend 
to include a wider range of specimens, such as 
tools for subsistence activities, pot-hangers, 
animal skulls decorated with inaw-kike, and so 
forth More recent collections from West 
Coast museums, the majority of them secured 
after World War I, invariably contain larger 
percentages of religious or ceremonial 
utensils, such as lacquerware bowls, stands, 
platters, and large containers. A similar trend 
was reported by Josef Kreiner among the 
European materials (Kreiner 1987). 
It has long been known that tradi¬ 
tional subsistence activities among the Ainu 
declined or were abandoned wholesale in 
response to 'lapanization'' policies insti¬ 
flail 
gill 
ls.3 18.4 
18.4 The Ainu Group in St. Louis 
Field Museum photographer Charles 
Carpenter and Jesse Tarbox Beals, who 
was the official photographer of the 
Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposi¬ 
tion, each took a number of photographs 
of the Ainu group during their stay in 
St. Louis. The photographers had rather 
different styles. Beals’s shots are 
close-up and personal, showing Ainu 
in relaxed poses engaged in various 
work activities. This image, which is 
more formal and distant, is probably 
by Carpenter. It seems that the young 
men, who no longer wore beards at 
home, have been growing them, perhaps 
to conform to visitor’s preconceptions 
about the Ainu. (NAA 98-10290) 
in Sapporo during the 1890s, brought back 
twenty Ainu specimens to the Hood Mu¬ 
seum, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. 
William W. Curtis, who was based in Sapporo 
at about the same time, collected more than 
fifty Ainu specimens and brought them back 
to the Llnited States. These items were long 
held under the care of Dr Robert J. Smith of 
Cornell University and were recently donated 
to the Hokkaido Historical Museum in 
Sapporo. Because the primary goal of our 
project was to create an inventory of material 
culture, we have left untouched archival 
materials, including those of John Batchelor, 
which are held in the Church Missionary 
Society Collection at the Llniversity of 
Birmingham Library, Llnited Kingdom, and 
those of William W. Curtis, which are at the 
Oberlin College Library in Oberlin, Ohio. 
tuted soon after the beginning of the Meiji 
Restoration. During the 1880s and 1890s, 
the numbers of Japanese immigrants who 
emigrated from southern islands to Hok¬ 
kaido, where they settled as farmers and 
fishermen, dramatically increased,- this 
influx put tremendous pressure on tradi¬ 
tional Ainu culture and lifeways. The 
modernization that accompanied these 
changes made many traditional technolo¬ 
gies— for instance, marine and freshwater 
fishing equipment—obsolete, and so these 
items were sold to collectors in the 1 880s 
and 1 890s. lapanization also resulted in the 
replacement of Ainu houses with Japanese- 
style houses and the appearance of wood 
stoves. Consequently, women were willing 
to sell old open-hearth equipment, such as 
pot-hangers These radical lifestyle changes 
\i o MUSE LI M COLLECTIONS / Y. KOTANI 
18.5 Comparing Notes 
The 1904 St. Louis Exposition 
must have been a remarkable 
experience for native participants; 
it brought peoples from far corners 
of the world into contact with 
each other and with Americans. 
In this unusually candid snapshot 
by Jesse Tarbox Beals, Sangtukno, 
an Ainu woman, shares a moment 
with Lorenza, a Patagonian, and 
her dog. (NAA 98-10286) 
also affected religious and ritual behavior, 
although some ceremonies, such as bear- 
and fox-sending ceremonies, continued to 
be performed. 
During World War I and thereafter, Ainu 
village lifeways underwent tremendous change. 
By this time, even the long-enduring lacquer- 
ware and religious objects, which the Ainu had 
treasured and with which they rarely parted, 
lost their cultural power and many were sold. 
Around 1930 Japanese museums started 
collecting Ainu specimens that were being 
abandoned or discarded in response to 
Japanization. More recent Ainu collections in 
the United States, particularly those in the 
Midwest and the West (as well as those in 
Japan), show the same shifts in collection 
inventories, presumably reflecting the historical 
process described above (Deriha 1997). This 
shift is documented directly in the field notes of 
Frederick Starr, to which we now turn. 
Lafayette in geology in 1885 (Cole 1934, 
Evans 1991). He began teaching at Coe 
College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1884, and in 
1 888 he returned to his birthplace to became 
professor and curator at the Chautauqua 
Institute. The following year he was ap¬ 
pointed curator of ethnology at the Ameri¬ 
can Museum of Natural History, New York,- 
when the University of Chicago was 
established, he was appointed assistant 
professor in the Department of Sociology and 
Anthropology in 1892 and continued to hold 
this post until his retirement in 1923. 
Although his earliest professional interests 
were in geology and biology, Starr had turned 
to anthropology by the time he arrived at the 
American Museum in 1889, and soon after 
joining the University of Chicago he began 
fieldwork among native peoples in Mexico in 
1894,- he continued to travel to Mexico 
almost every year until 1903. 
18.5 
18.6 A Live-in Exposition 
While at the fair the Ainu lived on 
the grounds and demonstrated 
traditional customs, arts, and 
technology, as seen in this photo¬ 
graph titled “Ainu Men Carving 
and Making Baskets” by Jesse 
Tarbox Beals. “Living” exhibits had 
been presented in Europe since 
the 1880s. The concept was car¬ 
ried to America for the 1893 
World Columbian Exposition and 
the Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival 
on the Mall. (NAA 98-10292) 
Frederick Starr and the Ainu 
Frederick W. Starr (1858-1933) is known in 
Japan as O-juda no Hakase, or "Dr. Votive 
Seals," because he was a master collector of 
votive seals, which are usually dedicated to 
Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines,- Starr 
seems to have become fascinated with them 
while living in Japan in 1909 and 1910. His 
contributions to Ainu studies and Ainu 
museum collections are little known in either 
Japan or North America, but the Ainu 
Collection Documentation Project (1990-96) 
has revealed clearly that he was one of the 
most important collectors of Ainu specimens 
in North America. 
Frederick Starr was born in Auburn, 
New York, in 1858. His schooling included 
graduation from Lafayette College, in Easton, 
Pennsylvania, in 1882, and a Ph.D. from 
Late in 1903, Starr was approached by 
William J. McGee (1853-1912), who had 
been put in charge of the anthropology 
exhibit plans for the proposed Louisiana 
Purchase Centennial Exposition (the so- 
called St. Louis Exposition) to be held in 
1904 in St. Louis, Missouri (VanStone 1993). 
Following the advice of Franz Boas and 
anthropologists from the Smithsonian's 
Bureau of American Ethnology, the commit¬ 
tee developed a plan that involved "living" 
exhibits of native peoples. Twelve groups 
were invited to participate, including the 
Ainu: Starr's task was to find an Ainu group 
who could demonstrate how to make tools 
for daily use and build an Ainu house to live 
in on the exhibition grounds. 
Before leaving for Japan, Starr corre¬ 
sponded with those who had previously 
18/NORTH AMERICAN COLLECTIONS 141 
18.7 Goodwill Ambassadors 
Perhaps more than their parents, Ainu 
youngsters Kiko (“Gold”) and Kehttle 
(“Chrysanthemum”) were on display in 
St. Louis. While their parents were re¬ 
quired to work at their demonstrations, 
the children effectively used their 
charms to bridge the cultural gap be¬ 
tween the Ainu and Americans, as this 
photograph by Jesse Tarbox Beals re¬ 
veals. (NAA 98-10280) 
collected Ainu materials, including Edward S. 
Morse, Romyn Hitchcock, and E. Odium. He 
sought—in vain—their suggestions on villages 
where collecting might be possible. McGee and 
Boas were also consulted as well as Japanese 
embassy and consular officials, and the Japan 
Ministry of Commerce was petitioned for 
assistance with travel and for shipping dis¬ 
mantled Ainu houses and collections. 
At that time, there were several anthro¬ 
pologists and linguists in Japan who were 
interested in Ainu studies. Starr became 
acquainted with the publications of Basil Hall 
Chamberlain (1850-1935,- see Chamberlain 
1887a, b), professor at the Faculty of Letters, 
and Shogoro Tsuboi (1 863-191 3), professor 
of Anthropology at the Faculty of Sciences, 
both at the Tokyo Imperial University. He 
also consulted the publications on Ainu 
culture and folklore written by Rev. John 
Batchelor (see Batchelor 1889, 1901). 
With his personal assistant, Manuel 
Gonzales, Starr left Chicago in late January 
1904, landing at Yokohama early in February. 
After making arrangements with government 
officials and visiting the anthropology 
department at Tokyo Imperial LIniversity, 
Starr traveled to Hokkaido by train and, with 
the guidance of Batchelor, visited such Saru 
River Ainu villages as Penakori, Porosaru, 
Osatonai, and Okotsonai, all of which were 
upstream from the modern Ainu village of 
Nibutani and no longer exist. 
With Batchelor's assistance, Starr 
succeeded in recruiting nine Ainu for the St. 
Louis Exposition (Starr 1904,- VanStone 
1993). During the recruitment effort he 
acquired about 240 Ainu specimens from 
villages including Piratori, Nibutani, 
Porosaru, and Okotsonai,- he also acquired 
two houses in Shiraoi, which was close to the 
railroad between Sapporo and Muroran. 
In late March 1904, Starr and the group 
of nine Ainu and a translator left Yokohama 
for St. Louis (fig. 18.3). Upon their arrival at 
the exposition grounds, a single Ainu house 
was assembled using materials from two 
houses that had been shipped from Japan. 
Nine Ainu people lived in the house and 
performed—as did other native groups from 
other regions of the world—demonstrating 
tool-making and daily activities (figs. 18.4- 
1 8.7) for visitors to the fair (Breitbart 1997). 
At the end of the exposition Starr was 
awarded a gold medal for a superb exhibition. 
After carrying out fieldwork in West 
Africa and the Philippines from 1905 to 1908, 
Starr returned to Japan for the academic year 
1909-10,- he continued to pursue his various 
interests, including collecting votive seals and 
taking photographs and films. In January 
1910 he traveled to eastern Hokkaido to 
photograph fox- and bear-sending ceremonies 
in the village of Nemuro, west of Obihiro, 
and in March he arrived in Piratori on the 
Saru River to revisit the Ainu who had come 
to St. Louis. He was surprised at the advance 
of Japanization after only a six-year absence. 
On these two visits, Starr collected eighty 
additional Ainu pieces. 
In the fall of 1911, after concluding 
fieldwork in Mexico, Starr undertook a tour to 
the Korean peninsula,- on his way back to 
Chicago, he stopped in Tokyo early in 
December. In Tokyo Jenichiro Oyabe (1867- 
1941), formerly an educator of Ainu youth and 
Hiram M. Hiller's guide, offered to sell Starr 
his entire Ainu collection of about 230 pieces, 
most probably from the Volcano Bay area,- he 
also offered Ainu-e (illustrations of Ainu life and 
customs), books about the Ainu, and lantern 
slides. After some negotiation, Starr purchased 
the entire artifact collection and some of the 
books, but he did not want the slides. (These 
were passed on to Oyabe's descendants and 
were recently donated by his grandchildren to 
the Historical Museum of Hokkaido, Sapporo 
[Deriha 1995]). From then until he retired 
from the LIniversity of Chicago in 1923, Starr 
continued his travels to Mexico, West Africa, 
China, Japan, and Korea, but he apparently 
never visited the Ainu again. 
14 2 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / Y. KOTANI 
18.8 Starr’s Legacy 
Many of the artifacts produced by the 
Ainu in St. Louis were acquired by the 
Field Museum of Natural History and 
other institutions participating in the 
exposition. These beautiful ikupasuy 
(prayer sticks) with fishscale, weaving, 
wave, and abstract eye designs were 
collected by Starr, who visited the 
Ainu in 1904 and 1910. Much of his 
private collection was later purchased 
by the Brooklyn Museum of Art. (BMA 
12.315, 12.331, 12.323, 12.250) 
Our inventory records show that Starr 
visited Hokkaido three times: from February 
to March 1904,- in January of 1910,- and in 
March of 1910. During these visits he 
obtained many Ainu artifacts, which are now 
housed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 
New York and the Logan Museum of Anthro¬ 
pology, Beloit College, in Beloit, Wisconsin. 
In addition to Starr's artifact collections, we 
have located other materials on Ainu culture 
assembled by him at the LIniversity of 
Chicago Library and at the LIniversity of 
Oregon Library and Art Museum We found 
that these collections and archival materials 
are largely unknown and untouched: North 
American anthropologists apparently have 
never tried to reconstruct exactly what Starr 
did among (and for) the Ainu (Evans 1991). 
Frederick Starr's Ainu collections 
(Kotani 1994) can be classified into the 
following categories: ethnographic collec¬ 
tions, archival documents, Ainu-e illustrations, 
and photographic materials. Starr's ethno¬ 
graphic collections are in two locations: about 
320 specimens are held by the Brooklyn 
Museum of Art (figs. 18.8, 18.9), and about 
seventy are at the Logan Museum of Anthro¬ 
pology at Beloit College. 
Of the 320 pieces at Brooklyn, 240 
were secured in February and March 1904, 
when John Batchelor took Starr to the Saru 
River villages of Piratori, Nibutani, Penakori, 
Porosaru, Osatonai, and Okotsonai. Upon 
their arrival in a village, Batchelor would 
announce Starr's interest in purchasing 
objects,- soon individuals would appear 
carrying objects they wished to sell. Starr 
was interested in buying a wide range of 
daily utensils and was careful not to purchase 
duplicates. Then, in December 1911 he 
purchased Jenichiro Oyabe's collection. 
In 1912 Frederick Starr entered into 
discussions about the purchase of his Ainu 
collection with Stewart Culin at the Brook¬ 
lyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Starr asked 
Culin to purchase the entire collection, but 
Culin did not have sufficient funds (which 
were being provided by a patron named 
Herman Stutzer), so Starr decided to sell the 
material he had collected in 1904 to the 
institution and keep the Oyabe collection 
until a later date. In 1913 and 1914 Starr 
made arrangements with Charles E. Brown of 
the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in 
Madison for sale of the remaining Ainu 
material, which it kept until I960,- at that 
time the remaining sixty-seven artifacts were 
transferred to the Logan Museum at Beloit 
College. What became of the rest of the 
Oyabe collection is unknown. 
Starr's archival materials include field 
notes for the years 1904 (three books), 
1909-10 (nine books), and 191 I (one book), 
as well as correspondence, newspaper 
clippings, and other manuscripts, all of 
which are stored at the Regenstein Library at 
the LIniversity of Chicago. 
Starr's notes give precise information on 
the names of Ainu artifacts collected, village 
names, and even the prices he paid to village 
people,- he also listed books he bought, 
ethnographic specimens purchased, photo¬ 
graphs and films taken, and other informa¬ 
tion. These data permit a fairly complete 
picture of his field experience to emerge 
(although the artifact tallies do not always 
match today's museum inventories). He notes, 
for instance, that most of the Ainu houses in 
these villages, particularly in Piratori, were of 
Ainu type and had their interiors arranged in 
Ainu fashion, he also mentions that there 
18/NORTH AMERICAN COLLECTIONS 143 
18.9 Ainu Robe 
As Japanese cotton became 
more affordable, garments 
known as chikarkarpe, mean¬ 
ing “our embroidered thing," 
were developed by substitut¬ 
ing cotton for attush (elm-bark 
cloth); Ainu often used old 
Japanese kimonos or yukata 
for the base fabric. The use of 
dark strips around the neck, 
front opening, sleeves, and 
hem of a garment was re¬ 
tained, but embroidery be¬ 
came more complex. The aes¬ 
thetics of combining the base 
garment pattern with the em¬ 
broidery created an unending 
challenge for the innovative 
Ainu textile artist. This robe 
was collected by Frederick 
Starr in Porosaru in 1904. 
(BMA 12.582) 
144 
18/NORTH AMERICAN COLLECTIONS 145 
were very few Japanese-style houses in 1904. 
Six years later, in March 1910, he expresses 
surprise at finding that almost all the Ainu- 
style houses were gone and that Japanese-type 
houses dominated the village. The fact that 
Starr purchased many of his early collections 
from Penakori, Porusaru, Osatonai, and 
Okotsonai, which were later abandoned, 
provides information about social and cultural 
change at the end of the Meiji period. 
The most interesting unpublished 
manuscript is Starr's "Ainu Notes," a 120-page 
excerpt from his 1904 and 1909-10 field notes, 
supplemented by materials published by John 
Batchelor and others. Topic headings include: 
Nemuro (town), Tokachi Ainu (dialect), Ainu 
Pictures (Ainu-e), Salutation, Fetish, Outhouses, 
Saru River Towns (itinerary), Mats, Cutting, 
Movement of Ainu, and so forth,- the notes 
appear to have been selected in 1911 or 1912 
for an intended monograph. Among his papers 
is another manuscript of twenty-one pages on 
the Kurile Ainu of North and South Chishima, 
probably written at Starr's request by Ryuzo 
Torii, a colleague of Shogoro Tsuboi at Tokyo 
Imperial University. 
The Museum of Art at the University of 
Oregon has ten pieces of Ainu-e thought to 
have been collected by Frederick Starr, 
although there is no mention of them in his 
field notes. These Ainu-e are good pictorial 
sources of information about how the 
Japanese understood the Ainu (Sasaki 1993b 
and this volume). Compared to the European 
collections, the number of Ainu-e in North 
America is rather small. 
As part of his field documentation, Starr 
took photographs and lantern slides during 
his work in FJokkaido: to date about one 
hundred slides and pictures have been found 
at the University of Chicago, as well as at the 
University of Oregon Library in the Gertrude 
Bass Warner Collection,- the latter includes 
slides taken by Starr or his assistant in 1904 in 
Tokyo, Yokohama, and FJokkaido, several of 
which were used as illustrations in his St. 
Louis Exposition book (Starr 1904,- VanStone 
1993). A second group of slides dates from 
1912 when Starr visited Nemuro and Piratori, 
and these include documentation of fox¬ 
sending and bear-sending ceremonies in 
Nemuro. A third group includes postcards and 
slides purchased commercially in 1904 and 
1909-10 in Muroran, Sapporo, Tokyo, and 
Yokohama. The last group included things or 
Japanese people closely related to Ainu studies, 
such as Takeshiro Matsuura, a famous geogra¬ 
pher and explorer of Hokkaido and the Ainu 
during the late Tokugawa period, photo¬ 
graphs of him, his books, and even his 
tombstone are represented. 
A final category of Starr archival 
resources relates to books and films, many of 
which are mentioned in his field notes but 
have never been located. Starr wrote in his 
diaries that while staying and traveling in 
Japan, he purchased old Japanese books 
describing the Ainu and their way of life,- 
some of these are now considered to be 
classics in Ainu studies. He also described 
taking black-and-white motion pictures, 
specifically of Ainu ceremonies and village 
scenes at the villages of Nemuro and Piratori 
during the winter of 1910, which would make 
them the earliest film records ever made of 
the Ainu (if they are found). 
Inventory Projects 
During the past fifteen years systematic efforts 
to inventory Ainu collections and archival 
materials in Europe and North America have 
resulted in identifying a world corpus of more 
than 12,000 Ainu artifacts and additional 
archival and photographic materials that 
document changing Ainu culture from about 
1850. The collections formed at the earliest date 
are found in the museums of Europe, closely 
followed by those of eastern, and later western, 
North America. These collections, inspired by 
the "discovery" of a remote and seemingly non- 
Mongolian population in northern Japan and 
Sakhalin, were facilitated by the opening of 
Japan with the beginning of the Meiji era in 
1868. Western museum collectors and anthro¬ 
pologists mshed into Hokkaido and Sakhalin to 
assemble collections, and during the next thirty 
years they brought Ainu artifacts and Ainu 
people to millions of museum-goers and world's 
fair visitors in Europe and North America. Ainu 
artifacts were as striking to the Western public 
as were Ainu people themselves, and many 
museums sought to build collections of the 
material culture of this intriguing, newly 
discovered people. However, as the mania 
passed, political changes occurred and world 
wars raged,- as Ainu people were increasingly 
pressed into the mainstream of Japanese society 
by a Japanese policy of assimilation, scholarly 
interest waned, and many Ainu collections in 
Europe and North America fell victim to public 
disinterest and curatorial neglect. Not until the 
1980s did these collections again attract 
146 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / Y. KOTANI 
interest, partly because of the revival of Ainu 
culture itself, which lead to a revival of scholarly 
interest in Ainu material culture, language, and 
traditions. 
A partial inventory of North American 
materials that has now been assembled 
provides a rough approximation of about 3,200 
objects and archival materials in museums that, 
until recently, had little if any interest in them. 
Frederick Starr's collections are emblematic of 
the best of these collections, having been 
assembled with a systematic anthropological 
approach during the first decade of the 
twentieth century. This material—as well as 
the other major collections in North 
America—provides a resource that becomes 
more valuable year by year because of its 
scope, its early dates, and its documentation. 
In contrast to the early Ainu collections 
mentioned above, those obtained after World 
War I are few,- exceptions are those of Ryuzo 
Torii (1910-1920s, National Museum of 
Ethnology, Osaka,- Sasaki 1993a), Neil Munro 
(1930s, British Museum), Fosco Maraini (1940s, 
Museo Nationale di Antropologia e Etnologia, 
Florence,- Maraini 1942), and Kirsten Refsing 
(1970s, Aarhus, Denmark,- Refsing 1974). 
Generally speaking, Ainu collections in Japan 
were not assembled until after 1930, when 
Keizo Shibusawa, Sakuzaemon Kodama, Masao 
Oka, and others realized their importance. 
Systematic collecting by Japanese museums 
came even later, around 1950, by which time 
traditional Ainu culture and society had changed 
and collecting directly from the Ainu people 
was nearly impossible. 
Starr's career may be representative of 
the attitude of other western anthropologists 
and museum curators as they drifted away 
from Ainu studies after 1915. Like Oyabe, 
who told Starr that he had already fulfilled 
his share of work for the Ainu and their 
welfare, Starr seems to have become disen¬ 
chanted by the changes in Ainu culture 
resulting from the growing Japanese influ¬ 
ence over their lives, and he eventually 
moved on to other work, even selling his 
Ainu collection to different institutions. 
Perhaps more importantly, the Ainu were 
becoming less enigmatic to westerners as 
they became "more Japanese" and interest in 
them as "exotic" people waned. 
Today's anthropologists and art 
historians find new interest in Ainu collec¬ 
tions. Through careful inventories, scholars 
have begun to reconstruct the Ainu material 
and documentary record from museums and 
archives. This work is also proving to be of 
use to the Ainu people themselves and to a 
public that has never ceased being curious 
about the Ainu people, their past, and their 
future. A global cultural-resource inventory 
of Ainu materials will do much to encourage 
Ainu studies of the future. 
The author thanks the sponsors of these Ainu 
documentation projects, which were supported by 
Grants-in-Aid for Overseas Scientific Research 
[Grant Nos. 0204 4038 and 06041047]from the 
Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, and Sports of 
Japan, and Japanese, American, and European 
colleagues who participated in this work. 
18/NORTH AMERICAN COLLECTIONS 14 7 
Romyn 
Hitchcock and 
the 
Smithsonian 
Ainu 
Collection 
Chang-su Houchins 
19.1a, b Ainu Man and Woman of Urap 
Romyn Hitchcock visited the Kuriles 
and Hokkaido while conducting ethno¬ 
graphic research for the Smithsonian 
in 1888 and wrote extensive reports 
on his observations. He saw his role 
as recording and collecting from a "dy¬ 
ing” culture that had lost out in compe¬ 
tition with the Japanese. He found the 
Ainu to be a hospitable people and 
praised their religion and rituals. (NAA 
98-10384, 98-10373) 
A FATEFUL 1886 VISIT TO JAPAN BY 
Romyn Hitchcock (1851-1923) 
led to his becoming, by sheer 
chance, an instant ethnologist 
and an early explorer of Hokkaido in 1888. 
On behalf of the Smithsonian Institution, 
he assembled its most comprehensive Ainu 
ethnographic collection, which remains the 
nucleus of the Smithsonian Ainu holdings. 
The Hitchcock Collection comprises 
177 ethnographic specimens (mostly from the 
Hokkaido Ainu but also including seventeen 
Sakhalin Ainu specimens obtained through an 
exchange with Sapporo Agricultural College) 
and photographic records of places and 
people representing Ainu life, in addition to 
copious field notes. The notes, entitled 
"Betsukai to Shari," "Yambetsu to Kushiro 
Iwosan," and "Kushiro to Horoidzumi" are 
included in the Hitchcock Papers (manuscript 
no. 2174) now held at Cornell University 
Libraries, Ithaca, New York, in the Depart¬ 
ment of Manuscripts and University Archives. 
Like many early museum collectors and 
curators, Hitchcock's background did not lead 
him to museum work naturally. Museums in the 
late nineteenth century were still youthful 
institutions, and scientific curiosity and 
apprenticeship played a stronger role than 
formal education in contributions to the 
formative field of museum science. Hitchcock 
studied chemistry at Cornell Llniversity, where 
in his freshman year he won first prize for the 
most rapid progress in chemical work. In 1872, 
upon receiving a Bachelor of Science degree 
from Columbia University's School of Engi¬ 
neering and Applied Science in New York 
City, he was appointed Assistant Professor of 
Chemistry at Lehigh Llniversity in Bethlehem, 
Pennsylvania. Later he taught chemistry and 
toxicology in the Chicago Homeopathic 
Medical College (National Cyclopaedia 1926). 
Hitchcock's connection with the 
Smithsonian began in 1883 when he became 
Acting Curator in the Division of Textiles of 
the Department of Arts and Industries. Soon 
after his arrival in Washington, he became 
involved in preparation of textile exhibits for 
the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial 
Exposition in New Orleans in 1884-85, and 
later he joined the curatorial staff of the 
Division of Textiles at the Smithsonian's new 
United States National Museum, which had 
just been organized in 1881. 
In March of 1886, the Honorable 
Minister Kuki Ryuichi (1852-193 1) of the 
Japanese Legation in Washington, D C., 
wrote to Spencer Fullerton Baird, Secretary of 
the Smithsonian, asking him to recommend 
someone who might be interested in becom¬ 
ing an English instructor at Dai-san Koto 
Chu-gakko, a new public high school in 
Osaka established to train national leaders 
(the school was later moved to Kyoto in 1 889 
and in 1949 merged with Kyoto University) 
(Sanko Dosokei 1980: 221). Hitchcock 
realized that a residence in Japan might 
provide an interesting opportunity to make 
ethnographic observations and collections 
about Japan and its native Ainu people, and 
i 48 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS/C. HOUCHINS 
19.3 Ikupasuy 
Unlike many later collectors, Hitchcock 
did not obtain many prayer sticks 
(ikupasuy); his collection contains only 
six. It was not for lack of trying, how¬ 
ever: “They were highly valued by their 
possessors who probably would not 
have parted with them but in consider¬ 
ation of a reward of sake in addition 
to the price demanded" (Hitchcock 
1891a: 458). For his efforts, the Ainu 
began calling him “Mr. Mustache 
Stick.” This piece was collected in 
Etorofu, Kuriles, in 1888. Compared 
to others of its type it has a rather 
simple central design (noshki) consist¬ 
ing of a double scroll motif; the marks 
(itokpa) at either end identify the 
owner. (NMNH 150698) 
19.2 Two Ainu Men 
Hitchcock’s photographs are unusual 
in providing an unreconstructed view 
of the Ainu, shot as he found them, 
without stage sets and ceremonial 
costumes. This shot taken in north¬ 
east Hokkaido shows two generations 
of Ainu men in everyday attush cloth¬ 
ing. The younger man has a boister¬ 
ously infectious smile as unruly as his 
curly hair. Such spirit is rarely seen in 
field photographs of the Ainu. Less 
appealing is the pose of the older 
man, who seems to have been asked 
to hold his robe open to reveal his 
hairy leg. The practice of documenting 
Ainu physical form, which seems irrel¬ 
evant and distasteful today, was a 
standard scientific practice one hun¬ 
dred years ago. (NAA 28377) 
he applied immediately (Hitchcock letter of 
8 March 1886 to Spencer Fullerton Baird, 
Smithsonian Archives RU 30). In April, he 
received approval from Baird for a two-year 
furlough and departed for Japan, arriving in 
Yokohama in early September. Barely six 
months after Hitchcock and his wife settled 
in Osaka, he wrote about the lonely and 
disenchanted life they led there in a letter to 
Baird's assistant, George Brown Goode (4 
March 1887 to G. Brown Goode: Smith¬ 
sonian Archives RU 201). Observing that he 
found Japan's new westernization process 
disturbing to observe, he commented, "I wish 
to go to Yezo ... to get a photographic 
record and items of daily use. I believe the 
Ainu [to be] scarcely touched by our 
civilization and fast dying out." Hitchcock 
continued to press for support for his field 
study and eventually received tepid approval 
from Goode on June 5, 1888, together with a 
cable for $250,- by July 24 he arrived in 
Hakodate, Hokkaido, and was about to 
realize his goal. 
In the course of approximately one 
month—from August 10 when he left 
Nemuro until September 1 when he arrived in 
Hiroo—Hitchcock traveled eight hundred 
miles along the eastern seacoast of Hokkaido 
on horseback and on foot. As he was leaving 
Betsukai by a sandy road along the seashore, 
at the beginning of his journey alone in the 
wilderness, he wrote: "I had already read and 
seen enough of Hokkaido to fully understand 
that Yezo is not Japan. It is apart by itself. A 
rough, uncultivated island . . ." (Hitchcock 
1891a: 432). By this time Hitchcock had 
become familiar with the English-language 
reports on the Ainu written by J. W. 
Blakestone, Edward Sylvester Morse, B. H. 
Chamberlain, John Milne, T. M. Dixon, 
Henry S. Monroe, John Batchelor, and others. 
The traveler had already purchased a 
saddle in Osaka and a horse in Nemuro. His 
outfit "consisted of camera, tripod, extra 
plates, sleeping clothes, a sheet sewed up like 
a bag to keep off fleas, a mosquito net, a red 
blanket, changes of clothing, water-proof 
sheet, rubber overcoat, toilet articles, a flask 
of brandy, and a few articles of food to be 
used at a distance from hotels" (ibid.). 
Hitchcock added to his outfit a bag for 
stationery, a revolver, compass, thermometer, 
barometer, and a bottle for water to attach to 
his saddle (Hitchcock Papers no. 2174). 
Hitchcock, in his first visit to an Ainu 
house at Shibetsu, describes an old gray- 
bearded man whom he thought "looked like 
a patriarch, benignant, wise and gentle¬ 
manly." He noted that the old man lived in a 
clean house. At another house, he saw an old 
woman. "As soon as 1 entered, she covered 
her face and began to weep and sob. It was 
not a satisfactoiy visit" (Hitchcock Papers 
no. 2174). 
The first communication sent by 
Hitchcock from Hokkaido to the Smith¬ 
sonian was from Rubetsu (now called 
Shibetsu) (Honda 1995: 97), which reads: 
"My Dear Mr. Goode, Rubetsu is not on the 
map. It's not a town, as I supposed it was this 
19/HITCHCOCK AND THE SMITHSONIAN 149 
Collecting began in Shari sometime 
after August 17, on which date Hitchcock left 
Rubetsu (fig. 19.3). His first purchases in 
Shari were four "moustache" (prayer) sticks 
(USNM catalog no. 150, 695-99). According 
to Hitchcock's recollection, the price quoted 
by the Ainu owner was rather high, despite 
the present of sake he offered, nevertheless, 
he acquired them because of the finely carved 
decoration and good-quality lacquer finish 
(Hitchcock Papers no. 2174). Three of these 
"moustache" sticks were published in the 
United States National Museum Annual Report for 
1889-1890 (hereafter USNM-AR 1889-90), 
and the accompanying notation regarding 
their use reads: "Used to make libations of 
19.4, 19.5 Cherry-bark and Wooden 
Bowls 
Hitchcock had been instructed to obtain 
a sample of objects actually being 
used, whether or not they were attractive. 
He coliected a set of simple birchbark 
containers (yarnima) from Piratori as 
well as more stylish objects like this 
octagonal wooden bowl (nima) from 
Bekkai. Bark containers were made from 
pliable bark that was soaked in hot water 
and shaped into bowls whose rims 
were reinforced with thin wood strips. 
In anthropological collecting, use and 
function were as important as the object 
itself, and a clean object was not always 
as informative as a used or dirty one. 
The attractive wooden bowl was col¬ 
lected right off the table and still has 
fishscales adhering to it. (NMNH 
150721A, 150685) 
morning—only a place. It consists of a most 
miserable Jap. hotel and one house, with a 
shed for horses. You will readily infer that I 
am on my journey in Yezo. I am indeed quite 
in the interior, miles away from another 
house, among almost unexplored mountains 
. . . I have a long and trying journey before 
me ... I intend to have some knowledge of 
the ainos." The letter continues with a 
description of his small six-mat hotel room 
and the kind of food he ate in order to stave 
off hunger. He ended the letter with the 
sentence: "It is cold here" (Hitchcock letter to 
Goode, August 16, 1888, Smithsonian 
Archives RU 201). 
sake to the gods, and also to raise the 
moustache while drinking sake" (Hitchcock 
1891a: 459, 493, fig. 77). This description 
indicates his awareness of the ceremonial 
function of these objects, which previous 
writers had generally relegated to a class of 
ethnographic curiosities as "mustache sticks." 
Hitchcock continued his collecting 
activities throughout his lonely and hazardous 
journey,- sometimes he was lost in the woods, 
and other times he lost shoes traversing swamps 
in the rain. Nevertheless, he assembled an 
impressive number of artifacts relating to all 
aspects of Ainu life (figs. 19.4—19.9). In addition 
to collecting ethnographic specimens, he 
searched for remnants of the so-called 
koropok-cjuru, the cave-dwelling savages 
150 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS/C. HOUCHINS 
accessions: "Mr. Romyn Hitchcock, return¬ 
ing from japan, after a two years' sojourn 
[actually three years], has enriched the 
ethnographic series with many most desir¬ 
able specimens gathered on the spot with the 
view of illustrating the life of the people.... 
Mr. Hitchcock spent much time among the 
Ainos, utilizing his talent as an artist to add 
value to his material secured by means of 
many pictures" (USNM-AR 1889-90: 127). 
Hitchcock's articles, "The Ancient Pit- 
Dwellers of Yezo" and "The Ainos of Yezo, 
Japan" (1891a, b), demonstrate his passion 
for learning and show the range of items he 
obtained in his search to understand the 
Ainu, including their racial type and their 
lifeways. The Cornell University collection 
of Hitchcock's papers includes a section 
entitled "Lectures on Ainos of Yezo," presum¬ 
ably delivered upon return from his journey 
in Hokkaido, which reveals the collector's 
frustration: "Who are the Ainos? It will not 
suffice to say that they are a peculiar race of 
people with long hair and beards inhabiting 
Yezo and the southern part of Sagharin [Sa¬ 
khalin]. We wish to know where they be¬ 
long. But these questions are still unan¬ 
swered. The Ainos are an ethnological mys¬ 
tery. ..." (Hitchcock Papers no. 2174). 
In an attempt to solve this mystery, in 
addition to his article about the pit-dwellers, 
Hitchcock presented his Ainu ethnographic 
collection catalog with numerous illustra¬ 
tions in the USNM-AR 1889-90 (fig. 19.1 1). 
In the catalog, he first declared the Ainu to 
19.6a 
19.6a, b, 19.7 Raw Materials 
Hitchcock and other anthropological 
collectors were diligent in obtaining 
materials illustrating technological 
processes. Their collections included 
such materials as a raw salmon skin 
and the stretchers used to dry them 
prior to making boots and mitts, and 
bundles of ohyo fiber, processed from 
the inner bark of the elm tree, from 
which attush fabric was woven for 
clothing. (NMNH E150725, BMA 
12.495, NMNH 150653) 
theorized to be the pre-Ainu inhabitants of 
Hokkaido (Tsuboi 1887). Hitchcock's work 
debunked these folk theories and his excava¬ 
tions at ancient pithouse village sites produced 
one of the earliest scientific reports on 
Hokkaido archeology (Hitchcock 1891b),- his 
collections, held at the Smithsonian's National 
Museum of Natural History along with his 
ethnological materials, continue to be of 
interest to specialists in Japanese archaeology. 
Upon his return to Washington in 
1890, he noted in a document titled "Report 
for the Month of May" that "the catalogue 
cards of all the Japanese and Aino ethnologic 
material collected by me were transferred to 
Prof. Mason early in the month" (Smith¬ 
sonian Archives, RU 158). Professor Otis T. 
Mason (1838-1908) was then in charge of 
the newly established Department of 
Ethnology. The USNM-AR 1889-90 lists the 
Hitchcock Collection as one of its principal 
19.6b 
19 /HITCHCOCK AND THE SMITHSONIAN 151 
19.8, 19.9 Attush Robe 
and Leggings 
In addition to obtaining unproc¬ 
essed ohyo (elm-bark fiber), 
skeins of dyed ohyo, and the 
backstrap looms used to weave 
it into attush, Hitchcock collected 
a series of attush garments. This 
woman's robe was collected at 
Tsuishikari near Sapporo, and 
the leggings from Abashiri. 
Golden-colored attush garments 
provided ideal backgrounds for 
contrasting Ainu embroidery. Styl¬ 
ish, yet light and durable, attush 
garments were worn by Ainu in 
Hokkaido, the Kuriles, and Sa¬ 
khalin. Even Japanese seamen, 
fishermen, and farmers working 
in Hokkaido and northern 
Honshu sometimes preferred 
attush for work clothes. (NMNH 
150780, 150649) 
152 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS /C. HOUCHINS 
19.11 Carved Plates 
Hitchcock wrote two long articles on 
his Ainu studies and published them 
in United States National Museum 
Annual Report for 1889-1890, one 
year before John Batchelor's The 
Ainu of Japan appeared (1892). Both 
are still invaluable sources on tradi¬ 
tional Ainu culture. This illustration 
appeared as fig. 74 in Hitchcock’s 
report with comments on the beauty 
and skill demonstrated by Ainu carv¬ 
ers, who used designs similar to 
those made by women on clothing. 
be a "peculiar race," then he categorized the 
material he collected under various headings: 
personal appearance and physical character¬ 
istics (based on photographs and measure¬ 
ments), clothing, dwellings, household 
utensils and food, carrying burdens, mode of 
greeting, marriage customs, burial customs, 
punishments, hunting and fishing, religion, 
the bear cults and feast—all typical catego¬ 
ries of late nineteenth-century museum 
cultural classification. 
Furthermore, Hitchcock prepared an 
Ainu exhibit for installation in the museum 
(fig. 19.10). A wooden model of an Ainu 
house and a model of a pit-dwelling were 
displayed in one case, while another case 
featured an Ainu male mannequin created 
from one of Hitchcock's photographs. The 
Evening Star of March 15, 1890 carried an ar¬ 
ticle about the Ainu exhibit with the subtitle: 
"A Queer People. They live in the Kuriles 
and Northern Japan" (fig. 1.14). The article 
describes the hairy, barefoot, robust man 
wearing a coarsely woven robe and using 
simple, undecorated daily articles indicative 
of Ainu culture, which was described as be¬ 
ing barely a step above savagery. In 1920 this 
Ainu exhibit was replaced by a larger one 
entitled "Aino Man and Woman": the figures, 
wearing ceremonial dress, were accompanied 
by a loom, other items of dress, and house¬ 
hold materials. 
By this time the curatorial viewpoint 
had changed, and the Ainu were no longer 
19/HITCHCOCK AND THE SMITHSONIAN 153 
19.10 a, b Ainu Exhibits 
Shortly after returning to Washington, 
Hitchcock prepared an Ainu exhibit in 
the National Museum that included an 
Ainu homestead model with a house, an 
elevated storage shed, and a bear cage; 
another case featured an Ainu male 
mannequin based on one of Hitchcock's 
photographs. The Evening Star of 15 
March 1890 carried an article about the 
exhibit with the subtitle; “A Queer 
People. They live in the Kuriles and 
Northern Japan." 
In 1920 this Ainu exhibit was re¬ 
placed by a new, larger case display 
showing an Ainu man and woman as 
part of its “Racial Groups and Figures" 
series. Its caption read: “The Aino are 
an especially interesting tribe of unde¬ 
termined relationship, but are thought 
to show traces of Aryan blood. They are 
of short stature, very strong and ac¬ 
tive. The women tattoo a mustache-like 
figure around the mouth. Their art is 
that of peoples of western Asia, a type 
of which would be that of the Amur 
tribes. They subsist by hunting and fish¬ 
ing." (NAA 88-8756) 
portrayed as "barely above savagery" but 
rather as dignified and cultured—though still 
exotic and mysterious—people. 
Hitchcock's association with the 
Smithsonian ended in I 892, but the legacy of 
his scientific work lives on. His "Ainos of 
Yezo, Japan" (1891b) was the most compre¬ 
hensive early ethnographic report on the Ainu 
and, although suffering from the bias of 
"primitivism" common to most early ethnol¬ 
ogy, is the only detailed ethnographic report 
produced during the nineteenth century that 
documents an early Ainu collection. The value 
of Hitchcock's work has been recognized for 
many years, but it received relatively little 
attention until scholarly interest in Ainu culture 
gradually expanded after the 1980s. His 
collection, like most other Ainu collections in 
North American museums, lay dormant after 
the mystique of the "mysterious Ainu" had 
passed, and American anthropologists turned 
increasingly to exploring their own native 
cultures,- even now there are few Ainu 
specialists in the Americas. 
Throughout the twentieth century 
Hitchcock's collection and ethnographic 
notes were virtually unknown to all but a few 
scholars in Japan. Of course, they were also 
unknown to the Ainu, who had no access to 
this information until his report was trans¬ 
lated in 1985 by Yasuo Kitagamae, a Japanese 
archaeologist, who published it in Japanese 
under the title Ainujin to sono bunka.- Meiji chuki 
no Ainu no murakara (The Ainu and Their 
Culture: Ainu Villages in the Mid-Meiji 
Period) (Kitagamae 1985). Recently, this 
author completed a major survey of the 
Hitchcock accession notes and collection 
documentation in collaboration with an 
inventory of the collection conducted by 
Kazuyoshi Ohtsuka in the early 1990s. This 
work was followed by an expanded Ainu 
collection-inventory project organized by 
Yoshinobu Kotani and colleagues (Kotani 
1993a, b, 1997, and this volume), that 
resulted in a list of the major Ainu collec¬ 
tions in North American museums, includ¬ 
ing the Hitchcock Collection. Finally, build¬ 
ing on the Kotani inventory, the Japanese 
television company, NHK (Sapporo) in 1996 
produced a high-quality CD-ROM of se¬ 
lected Ainu pieces that included many 
specimens from the Smithsonian's 
Hitchcock Collection. As a result of these 
efforts and public exhibitions now under¬ 
way, as well as growing interest among the 
Ainu people themselves, Hitchcock's small 
but well-documented and published collec¬ 
tion is receiving belated recognition as one 
of the most important early Ainu ethno¬ 
graphic collections. 
154 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS /C. HOUCHINS 
20/Batchelor, 
Starr, and 
Culin: 
The Brooklyn 
Museum of Art 
Collection 
Amy Poster 
20. 1 
20.1, 20.2 CliliW AND THE AiMU 
In 1909 Stewart Culin, assisted by Togo 
Takayanagi, spent ten months collecting 
ethnological materials in Japan for the 
Brooklyn Museum of Art. During this 
period he traveled for six weeks in the 
Kuriles and Hokkaido. His expedition 
reports reveal interesting details about 
his collecting program, prices paid, and 
reactions to the Ainu. In 1912 Culin re¬ 
turned to Japan and spent August and 
September collecting in Hokkaido, 
where this photograph of Ainu girls was 
taken by Count Carlo Arrivabene near 
Hakodate. (BMA Archives) 
gained some ability in the Chinese language 
from his association with Philadelphia's 
Chinese community, he became a founding 
member of the Oriental Club of Philadel¬ 
phia,- he also belonged to several other 
professional institutions in his quest to study 
Asian culture and folklore. Between 1890 and 
1903, he served as Director and Curator of 
General Ethnology at the recently established 
University of Pennsylvania Museum, positions 
that allowed him to demonstrate and refine 
his abilities in ethnological collecting and 
museum exhibition. 
It was during Culin's tenure at the 
Brooklyn Museum from 1903 to 1929 that the 
core of the museum's present African, Asian, 
Oceanic, and Native American collections 
were accumulated (Fane et al. 1991). Culin saw 
his mission as an ethnologist to document and 
collect from vanishing ethnic cultures, which 
he and many other ethnologists of his day 
believed would completely vanish 
under the social, political, and 
technological revolutions underway 
at the turn of the century. Culin 
organized several expeditions to 
secure Native American objects for 
the Brooklyn Museum. After 
returning from his first North 
American collecting trip in 1900, 
Culin stated: "If our museums are 
ever to have good collections of 
Indian things they must waste no 
time in setting out after them, for 
none will be left ten years from now" 
(Brooklyn Musem of Art Archives, 
Culin Archival Collection, Record, 
Activities Scrapbook, August 5,- see 
Fane et al. 1991: 308, fn 31). In his 
attempts to "save" Asian collections 
from a similar fate, and of course to 
build the Brooklyn Museum 
collections, Culin made three 
expeditions to China, Japan, Korea, and India 
during the years 1909 to 1914 (fig. 20.1). 
The Brooklyn Museum's Ainu collections 
were primarily formed from three different but 
related sources. In the summer of 1911 Culin 
met Frederick Starr, a Chicago-based anthro¬ 
pologist and curator at the Field Museum, who 
organized the Ainu pavilion for the 1904 St. 
Louis Exposition. Starr showed Culin about 
250 Ainu artifacts (mostly from Piratori and 
other Sami River towns) that he had collected 
in 1904, 1910, and 1911, which he offered to 
sell to the Brooklyn Museum for $750. The 
1890 as an educational institution for the 
citizens of Brooklyn, then a prosperous city 
with a population of more than 200,000. The 
museum sought to provide a place where 
people could learn the history of the world, a 
mission much broader than that of a museum 
of art. The appointment in 1903 of Stewart 
Culin as the museum's first Curator of Ethnol¬ 
ogy advanced this mission substantially. 
Culin was born in Philadelphia in 1858 
to a merchant family of Swedish descent. 
After graduating from a local academy, Culin 
became a self-taught ethnologist. Having 
A RECENT INVENTORY OF AlNU COLLEC- 
tions in North American museums 
reveals that more than 3,000 
objects have been located and 
documented in more than thirty different 
institutions (Kotani 1993a, b). Of these, the 
Ainu collection of the Brooklyn Museum of Art 
is the most extensive, consisting of approxi¬ 
mately 1,100 objects, including artifacts, Ainu-e 
paintings, photographs, and manuscript 
materials. The size of this collection, its 
provenance from three collectors working in 
one location-—the Sam River valley—in 
southern Hokkaido during the first decade of 
the twentieth century, and the quality and 
breadth of materials make it one of the most 
important Ainu collections in the world. 
The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and 
Sciences—the forerunner of the Brooklyn 
Museum of Art and itself a scion of institutions 
whose origins began in 1823—was created in 
20. 2 
20/ BMA: BATCHELOR, STARR, AND CULIN 155 
20.3 
20.3, 20.4 Snowshoes 
and Deer Hunter 
Unlike arrows and other materi¬ 
als that were no longer used 
and were therefore easy to pur¬ 
chase, Culin found the Ainu un¬ 
willing to part with objects like 
bentwood snowshoes, which 
they still needed for winter 
hunting. These objects are il¬ 
lustrated in this detail from an 
Ainu-e drawing in Ainu Manners 
and Customs by Hokuyo 
Nishikawa, dating to the mid¬ 
nineteenth century. Culin pur¬ 
chased these boots from John 
Batchelor in 1912. (BMA 
12.385; HML) 
collection impressed Culin as being "carefully 
made and very representative," and from his 
point of view, the price was right. Early the next 
year about four hundred objects collected by 
Starr arrived as a gift of a museum benefactor, 
Herman Stutzer, under an arrangement that had 
produced an additional 150 specimens. Later 
that same year, more Ainu materials appeared as 
a result of Culins 1912 expedition to Hokkaido. 
Culin's expedition reports (1909, 1912,- fig. 
20.3) are the primary sources of information 
about his collecting activities (fig. 20.2). His 
Ainu collections were acquired during August 
and September of his 1912 expedition (this was 
Culins second trip to Japan, following a ten- 
month expedition in 1909, during which Culin 
spent thirty-eight days in the Kurile Islands and 
Hokkaido). While he also visited other areas of 
Japan in 1912, his selection of a motif from an 
Ainu robe for the cover image of his field report 
suggests that his Ainu collections were the 
highlight of the expedition. 
Culin also procured the collection of 
Rev. John Batchelor, the British missionary 
who worked among the Ainu for more than 
sixty years, from 1877 to 1940. Culin briefly 
mentioned that when he stopped in Sapporo 
in 1912, he insured the purchase of the Ainu 
objects from Batchelor's collection by giving 
him a check for one hundred yen. Batchelor, a 
well-known scholar of Ainu culture who 
compiled the first Ainu Japanese-English 
dictionary (Batchelor 1889), helped both 
Starr and Culin in their acquisitions of Ainu 
materials by providing them with valuable 
advice and information about who to see, 
what to purchase, and what price to pay. As 
Kotani has pointed out (1994), the Brooklyn 
collections therefore document the material 
culture and socioeconomic conditions of the 
Saru River and Hidaka provinces during the 
from 1904 to 1912 as much as the interests of 
Starr, Culin, and Batchelor. 
The objects in the Brooklyn Museum 
Ainu collection reveal that household 
materials were a principal focus of Culins 
collection. These items held the most interest 
for him because he was able to confirm that 
the objects he was collecting—for instance, a 
pot-hanger—were still used by the Ainu on a 
daily basis. He wrote: 
Here we entered a number of houses. 
They were much alike, the interior 
consisting of one room with highly 
polished wooden floor, stained black with 
smoke. In the first [house], near the 
15<5 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / A. POSTER 
their costumes: "As I saw the Ainu in everyday 
[Japanese] dress, they appeared to have aban¬ 
doned their old costumes" (ibid.: 175). He 
made a persistent effort, however, to try to find 
objects of good quality among those items 
abandoned by the Ainu. When he acquired a 
pair of fishskin boots (fig. 20.5) in Shana, it 
seems that he weighed values other than 
their cost: 
Last night the old inn-keeper brought me 
a pair of salmon-skin boots made by the 
half-blood Ainu woman at Shana. The 
feet are made of the skin of the large 
salmon [shake] and the legs of the skin of 
the salmon trout (masu). The tops are of 
seal fur and the cords of a plaited grass 
called muri that grows on the hills. These 
boots are filled with pounded rice straw 
and are impervious to water and very 
warm. They are used on the snow and ice 
where they will wear for a long time, but 
not on stones. The old man asked three 
yen for them, much more 1 suppose than 
their value here (ibid.: 135). 
Gulin's notes show that he sometimes 
fell into a common pitfall of museum 
collectors not conversant in the language of 
the people they were collecting from. Such 
collectors often worked with "third language" 
interpreters from the dominant culture, in 
this case, Japanese. He probably asked his 
Japanese interpreter "what are those made 
of?” and recorded the response, which was 
provided in Japanese—shake and masu— 
believing he had been given Ainu terms. 
Gulin was also selective in his search for 
bowls or carved trays, items commonly 
carried by curio shops in neighboring towns 
like Sapporo or even in port cities like 
Yokohama, where antique dealers sometimes 
stocked Ainu materials. He described 
wooden trays sold at a curio store in Sapporo 
as "the Japanese wooden trays with Ainu 
patterns” which "are carved for the shop by 
Ainu who come in from the mountains. They 
are similar to the trays I saw at Nikko which 
must have had an Ainu inspiration" (ibid.: 
161). Here again, we may question Culin's 
views, for without further documentation, 
it seems unlikely that authentic Ainu 
materials or even Ainu-inspired 
materials could have been present 
for sale at a Japanese religious 
shrine like Nikko. 
Culin also had a strong 
interest in religious objects, and 
this is reflected in the large 
20.5 Fishskin Boots 
Culin purchased these fishskin boots 
in Shana in 1912, where he obtained 
details on their construction from a 
“half-blood” Ainu woman who sold 
them to him. She said the soles were 
of salmon; the uppers, salmon trout 
trimmed with seal fur; and the cords, 
plaited grass. Ainu fishskin boots 
were waterproof and, when lined with 
pounded rice straw, were very warm. 
Such boots lasted a long time if one 
used them only on snow and ice. 
(BMA 12.652) 
entrance is the open fireplace from which 
the smoke ascends to the roof. The water 
kettle hangs over this from an iron or steel 
rod, and there are usually several well- 
smoked wooden pot hangers suspended 
above (Culin 1912: 174). 
Culin compared a pair of snowshoes 
(figs. 20.3, 20.4) from an Ainu village near Lake 
Harutori in Kushiro with ones he bought in 
Shana, a village in the Kurile Islands: "1 stopped 
at one house and examined two pairs of 
snowshoes that hung outside. These were the 
same construction as those 1 bought in Shana, 
except that the seal-skin thongs were reinforced 
with cords and wire" (ibid.: 152). On the other 
hand, there were apparently sufficient supplies 
of old discarded things, such as old arrows, 
which were easier to purchase because they 
were no longer in daily use. 
Typically, as when Culin arrived at a small 
Japanese inn at Piratori, he was visited by a 
group of old Ainu men and women, young 
women, and even children, who all brought 
him clothes, dishes, bows and arrows, and 
other things. Culin's view of the acculturation of 
Ainu society was projected in his comments on 
20.5 
20/ BMA: BATCHELOR, STARR, ANDCLILIN i 57 
20.6 Beaded Necklace 
Culin purchased a number of old Ainu 
necklaces from curio shops in Hokkaido. 
He observed that beaded necklaces 
and carved ikupasuy were displayed 
along with treasured objects like 
Japanese lacquered cups and boxes, 
swords, and other heirlooms along the 
treasure wall in Ainu homes. However, 
this necklace came to the Brooklyn 
Museum via Frederick Starr, who pur¬ 
chased it from the Ainu he brought 
to the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. 
(BMA 12.447) 
number of ikupasuy (carved wooden prayer 
sticks) and inaw (sacred tufted sticks,- fig. 20.7) 
that appear in the Brooklyn collection. On his 
1912 trip he saw two inaw placed on both 
sides of the rectangular fireplace in an Ainu 
home in a village near Lake Harutori in 
Kushiro (ibid.: 151),- these inaw were placed 
by the hearth out of respect for the goddess 
of the hearth and home. 
At the curio shop in the same village, 
Culin bought a large necklace of glass beads 
for 1.50 yen that is similar to others he 
collected (fig. 20.6). At Shiraoi, a middle-aged 
Ainu man brought him a number of necklaces 
whose beads looked new to Culin. Some glass 
heads were brought to the Ainu through trade 
with the Asian continent, but others were 
secretly made by the Matsumae clan at their 
headquarters in Hakodate. Culin's report (ibid.: 
151) tells that at an Ainu house in the same 
village, beaded necklaces and carved ikupasuy 
were displayed along with other treasured 
objects like Japanese lacquered cups, basins, 
and boxes, and a pile of old swords or sword 
15 8 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / A. POSTER 
scabbards, in a corner of a house. Such 
household displays of family heirlooms and 
treasures were of special social and ritual 
importance to Ainu families,- the treasures 
demonstrated family wealth and providence 
and were components of a family shrine. 
Culin had several opportunities to 
secure Japanese swords and sword scabbards 
used by the Ainu, but he obviously did not 
purchase them, for only one sword set exists 
in the Brooklyn collection. At Piratori, Culin 
saw swords in an Ainu house and noted: "It is 
these things that have been offered to me in 
such quantities. None of them have any 
practical use nor artistic or pecuniary value" 
(ibid.: 175). Among the other Japanese- 
produced objects of little interest to Culin 
was Japanese lacquerware: when an old 
innkeeper at Shana offered to sell him a 
lacquered box on four legs and a large rice 
bowl, Culin recognized them as familiar 
Japanese artifacts, and although they had 
been used by Ainu, he did not buy them, 
apparently wanting to collect only objects 
that were of Ainu design or manufacture. 
On the other hand, objects of curios¬ 
ity—such as the skull of an albatross and 
other animal skulls used for divination or 
protective purposes—were of interest to 
Culin, who remarked on a group he found in 
a curio store in Sapporo in 1912: "We next 
visited another shop kept by an old man, a 
kind of curio store. His stock consisted of 
worthless trifles, but included several Ainu 
trays which Mr. Batchelor told me were of 
good quality. 1 bought from him also two 
skulls, one of a fox and the other of [illegible] 
both tied with inao" (ibid.: 165). 
Culin found imitation quiver models and 
blunt arrows, which were used for men's rituals 
and for the bear-sending ceremony, at a curio 
store in Sapporo that he visited with Batchelor. 
From Batchelor himself Culin acquired other 
objects related to the bear-sending ceremony, 
including a bear skull and claws, and men's 
ceremonial headdresses. 
Culin's experience with Native American 
artifacts shows that he was a person who 
sought to acquire those items that other 
collectors disregarded or that were simply 
considered unobtainable. One such area 
represented in the Ainu collection at Brooklyn 
is funerary objects. In the Ainu tradition, the 
deceased was laid out by a fireplace,- offerings 
of food and drink were placed beside the body 
and the deceased was then dressed for burial. 
20.7 Ikupasuy 
Like many early Western collectors and 
anthropologists, Culin was fascinated 
by the Ainu ikupasuy (prayer stick), 
which he described with the erroneous 
term “mustache lifter” in his cata¬ 
logues and exhibits. He was not alone 
in this misrepresentation; many eariy 
scholars had made the same mistake 
by not understanding the important role 
of this sacred object in Ainu religious 
ritual. This piece, which displays the 
classic Ainu ayus pattern around its 
elongated slits, is of exceptional qual¬ 
ity, like many purchased by Culin and 
Starr. (BMA 12.245) 
The burial costume consisted of cotton 
appliqued garments, mittens, and leggings, and 
a thin woven-fiber cord that was used to wrap a 
mat securely around the body and then to 
attach the wrapped body to a grave post. This 
cord was prepared by the wife or grandmother 
in secret for a deceased family member. It was 
believed that without it the spirit of the 
deceased would forever wander without a home 
in the next world. Culin collected one of these 
cords and also a special funeral bonnet, which 
widows wore for their one-year mourning 
period,- widows in mourning were also recogniz¬ 
able because they wore their clothes inside out 
and remained isolated indoors throughout this 
period. Culin became interested in grave posts, 
which he saw at a small museum in Sapporo, 
and later on the same trip he photographed 
Ainu graves at Shiraoi (ibid.; 191). 
Culin's contributions to the Brooklyn 
collection should also be examined in light of 
his own personal interests. Textiles, for 
example, were one of Culin's special cross- 
cultural passions, not only finished costumes, 
but also the materials and apparatus used to 
produce them. He purchased a small thread- 
spool whose base was carved out as a 
needlecase, noting that it was one of the few 
new items that he had come across during the 
1912 trip (our Japanese colleagues believe it 
might be a Japanese import or copy). He 
found finely carved wood battens or spatulas 
(attush-pera) used for weaving bark cloth at 
Pitarupa, about which he noted: "To this 
place, men and women brought things for 
sale, mostly carved loom knives which, on 
account of their age and beauty of their 
designs, 1 bought" (ibid.: 170). Other weaving 
equipment in the collection included loom 
frames, a warp spacer, and a back-brace used 
to supply tension to the back-strap loom 
system. Most importantly, he obtained several 
nettle-fiber garments (retarpe) and more than 
twenty fine elm-bark (attusb) costumes (fig. 
20.8); most of these are exquisite works of 
textile arts and embroidery, and some are 
among the finest of their types in existence. 
Within a remarkably short time, Culin 
had assembled a vast range of objects for his 
Ainu collection. He purchased objects on his 
own and secured two large and important 
collections from Frederick Starr and John 
Batchelor. He evaluated the Starr collection 
carefully, and he took full advantage of the 
expertise that Batchelor had gained from his 
long involvement with the Ainu people. 
Culin's experience as a collector and scholar, 
as well as his role in preparing Starr's materials 
for the 1904 St. Louis Exposition, all contrib¬ 
uted to his success as a field collector. Al¬ 
though his approach was not systematic or 
scientific in that he did not try to make a full 
collection of all elements of material culture, 
he succeeded in obtaining an ethnographi- 
cally important and representative collection. 
Culin purchased all the artifacts in the 
collection either in Ainu villages in Hokkaido 
and the Kuriles or from curio shops, bazaars, 
local innkeepers, traders, and, of course, from 
Batchelor and Starr. For Culin, the object 
itself was the most important informant. 
Culin was not always systematic in his search 
for "old material of good quality,” but he was 
adept at evaluating opportunities that 
presented themselves and so he procured rare 
materials from diverse sources. He also had a 
keen economic sense,- although he rarely 
negotiated a price, he was an experienced 
and successful lauyer who was cautious about 
his initial purchases and proceeded by trial 
and error. He often noted in his journal his 
disappointment at being unable to acquire 
certain unusual or fine artifacts. 
Although Culin kept quite meticulous 
records about his field trips and his purchases, 
the objects in the present Brooklyn Ainu 
collection retain little documentation other 
than that in his field logs, expense notebooks, 
and trip reports. In the case of his Native 
American collecting, he often commissioned 
replicas in order to represent rare, unobtainable 
objects. Similarly, Culin's records indicate that he 
found an old cradle and paid a local Ainu woman 
twenty yen to replace the calico and foreign 
strings with Ainu cordage. Culin himself always 
judged an object's authenticity on whether it was 
made for the Ainu's own use or for sale to the 
Japanese,- to collect authentic materials, he 
counted on careful field observations of objects 
in use, and he also consulted reliable traders. 
20/BMA: BATCHELOR, STARR, AND CULIN 159 
60 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS /A. POSTER 
20.8a.b Retarpe Robe 
Culin was an expert in weaving tech¬ 
nology, and so it was natural that he 
would purchase large numbers of 
garments and sewing and weaving 
equipment. This robe is made of 
nettle-plant fiber (irakusa) and is 
called retarpe or tetarape, meaning 
“white things” in the Ainu ianguage. 
Most retarpe were produced in Sa¬ 
khalin and have designs linking them 
to styles used by the Nivkhi and Man¬ 
churian Chinese groups. This stun¬ 
ning robe, possibly the best of its 
type in North America because of its 
exceptional embroidery and applique 
work, was purchased by John 
Batchelor, who sold it Stewart Culin 
in 1912. (BMA 12.690) 
The Brooklyn collection tells a story not 
only about the Ainu but also about the turn-of- 
the-century American curator. Culin was 
charged with the responsibility to introduce 
unfamiliar cultures to an American audience 
using the range of artifacts available in the 
museum collection. He chose a wide range of 
objects to present Ainu culture and displayed 
them at the Brooklyn Museum in 1912 as 
individual objects that highlighted form, style, 
technique, and function in Ainu culture. 
Today's Ainu presentation follows much of the 
spirit of the original Culin display, but 
emphasizes art rather than ethnography. 
Reintroduced after a lapse of eighty years, it 
exhibits a highly selective group of twenty 
objects, from a collection of more than 1,100 
Ainu objects, in the permanent gallery of 
Japanese art. Curators and educators in this 
display chose the objects for the artistic 
quality of individual pieces, but it also 
represents the diversity and artistic heritage 
of the Ainu people. 
The author ipishes to acknowledge the assistance of 
Miyako Yoshinaga, who compiled the materials for 
this paper from Stuart Culin's 1912 "Report on a 
Collecting Trip in Japan, including a Visit to the 
Kurile Islands and the Hokkaido",- of Deborah Wythe 
of the Brooklyn Museum of Art Archives, and of 
Yoshinobu Kotani, who organized the 1993 inventory 
of the Brooklyn Museum's Ainu artifacts. 
20/ BMA: BATCHELOR, STARR, AND CULIN 161 • 
21/An 
Enthusiastic 
Quest: 
Hiram Hiller and 
Jenichiro Oyabe in 
Hokkaido, 1901 
Adria H. FCatz 
IN THE SPRING OF 190 1 HlRAM M. HlLLER, 
an American physician and amateur 
ethnologist (fig. 21.1), had the opportunity 
to go to Hokkaido to see the Ainu, a 
"curious people" whom he had long desired to 
visit. In 1895-96, Hiller had interrupted his 
medical career to accompany his friend 
William H. Furness III on a private expedition 
to the Ryukyus and Sarawak for the purpose 
of gathering ethnographic collections for the 
University of Pennsylvania Museum. While in 
Japan on this trip, Hiller met Dr. Stuart 
Eldridge, author of an article on the arrow 
poison used by the Ainu, and from him 
obtained a small collection of ethnographic 
items, sixteen of which were Ainu,- these 
became the first Ainu specimens to be 
acquired by the University Museum. In 1897, 
with another Philadelphia friend, Alfred C. 
Harrison Jr., he undertook a further five years 
of "eastern collecting" on behalf of the 
21.1 21.2 
21.1, 21.2 Hiller and Oyabe 
When Hiram Hiller went to Hokkaido in 
1901 to make an Ainu collection for 
the University of Pennsylvania Museum 
he recruited Jenichiro Oyabe to accom¬ 
pany him as guide and interpreter. He 
recorded his satisfaction with Oyabe in 
his journal (1901): “It was lucky for me 
that he came, for he turned a doubtful 
undertaking into an enthusiastic quest. 
He was indefatigable, intensely in ear¬ 
nest, a trained student, and an agree¬ 
able companion-all essentials when 
you go to Yezo to visit the Aino settle¬ 
ments.” (UPM S4-142865, T4-893) 
162 
museum, which was financed by Harrison's 
father. At the beginning of their final expedi¬ 
tion, to Sumatra, Hiller and Harrison stopped 
in Japan for several months. They arrived in 
Yokohama at the end of March 1901, and 
while Harrison, who was not interested in the 
side trip, concentrated on completing his 
elaborate Japanese tattoos, Hiller prepared to 
go to Hokkaido. 
Hiller had no trouble making official 
arrangements for his trip, but he needed 
someone to advise him on such practical 
details as methods of transportation, road 
conditions at that time of year, and where he 
should go to see the Ainu "to the best 
advantage." He also needed someone who 
MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / A. KATZ 
knew Ainu and spoke good English to 
interpret for him. As he pursued his inquiries, 
one name kept coming up: the man he needed 
to talk to, everyone said, was Jenichiro Oyabe 
(fig. 21.2). Hiller met Oyabe in Tokyo, where 
Oyabe was working for an Ainu aid society, 
giving lectures to raise money for the educa¬ 
tion of the Ainu people. Oyabe readily agreed 
to accompany Hiller to Hokkaido, and he 
quickly swung into action by notifying the 
newspapers of their trip, booking Hiller's 
passsage to Hakodate, buying goods for trade 
with the Ainu, and recruiting a Tokyo Univer¬ 
sity student named Ryunjiro Shirai to come 
along as a general "servant." 
Oyabe gave Hiller a copy of his autobi¬ 
ography, A Japanese Robinson Crusoe (1 898), and 
while on the steamer to Hakodate, Hiller read 
this account of what had already been an 
extraordinary life. Inspired by the story of the 
Japanese hero Yoshitsune, the young Oyabe 
decided to devote his life to working for the 
Ainu, and in 1 884 at the age of seventeen, he 
left home to go to Hokkaido and live in an 
Ainu village. Concluding, however, that he 
could save the Ainu only by introducing them 
to "a true religion," he resolved to make his 
way to America to get a Christian education. 
He arrived in New York on Christmas Day 
1888, and he soon found his way to the 
Hampton Institute in Virginia, where he 
enrolled in the agriculture department and 
the normal school,- while at Hampton, he 
converted to Christianity. He then studied at 
Howard and Yale, was ordained, and served 
two years in Honolulu as a missionary for the 
Hawaiian Evangelical Association. By the end 
of 1898 he was back in Japan, ready to resume 
his life's mission. On the doors of the 
Yoshitsune shrine near the Ainu village of 
Piratori he wrote a prayer that, two years 
later, Hiller would see and transcribe in his 
journal: ". . . out of pity for the weak and poor 
Ainu you came to help them. The hearts of 
heroes beats [sic] the same today as in those 
days of old. For fifteen years I too have tried 
to help these poor natives as you did long 
ago. Pity me, Spirit of Yoshitsune and accept 
my prayer" (Hiller's journal, 12 May 1901). 
Hiller and Oyabe met in Hakodate on 
May 6, took the steamer to Muroran, and set 
out immediately for the Ainu villages. Shirai 
was sent ahead to the larger towns with the 
baggage, and Hiller and Oyabe traveled light: 
"[Oyabe] has a pocket full of books and 1 have 
a toothbrush and a camera—my baggage is 
21.3 Hiller and Oyabe’s 
Hokkaido Travels 
Hiller’s and Oyabe’s 1901 
expedition to Hokkaido 
was in two parts. The first 
was a tour of Ainu villages 
along the south coast of 
the island, from Muroran 
to Urakawa and up into 
the Mukawa and Saru 
river valleys. The second 
was a circuit of Volcano 
Bay, from Mori to 
Muroran. Hiller consid¬ 
ered, but ultimately re¬ 
jected, the idea of continu¬ 
ing east as far as Nemuro 
or north to the Sshikari 
and Kamikawa regions. 
Dear only knows where" (Hiller to his sister 
Lida, 9 May 1901). They went by train as far as 
Numanohata, then by stage, horse cart, 
horseback, and on foot, staying overnight at 
Japanese inns or the houses of village leaders 
he called chiefs. The first part of the trip, 
beginning in Muroran on May 8 and ending in 
Urakawa on May 27, covered villages along 
the coast and in the Mukawa and Saru river 
valleys (fig. 21.3). The plan was to continue on 
to Kushiro and Nemuro, but in Urakawa Hiller 
took stock. Because "horses were scarce, the 
roads were bad and the Ainus few for the next 
hundred or so miles," he decided to return to 
Hakodate and take a steamer to Kushiro,- in 
Hakodate, however, the steamer schedule was 
interrupted by storms, and Hiller opted for a 
more modest excursion. He and Oyabe 
undertook a weeklong tour of villages around 
Volcano Bay, beginning in Mori on May 29 
and ending in Muroran on June 4. 
loto 
Benkai's'^ori faNT> 
i rlHakodate 
Altogether, they were on the road for 
about a month, often passing through several 
villages a day and rarely spending more than a 
morning or an afternoon in any one of them. 
The pace was killing, the travel strenuous, and the 
weather sometimes wet and cold, but somehow 
Hiller managed to take a good number of photo¬ 
graphs, keep a journal, and acquire a collection of 
nearly three hundred ethnographic and archaeo¬ 
logical objects (figs. 21.4, 21.7, 21.8). 
On previous expeditions, Furness or 
Harrison had taken the photographs, and at 
first Hiller wanted to hire a photographer. 
However, Oyabe pointed out that if Hiller 
could handle the job himself, a photographer 
was unnecessary, and Hiller agreed: "I am going 
to do the photography myself to lessen the 
number of men. . . . Everyone advises taking a 
small party among the Ainu" (Hiller to Lida, 1 
May 1901). He took two cameras, one using 
8x10-inch glass plates and the other a small 
"pocket Kodak." The large camera was 
cumbersome, especially when carried on 
horseback, and Hiller mined a certain number 
of plates: of a batch of twenty-four plates 
developed in Sapporo at the end of the trip, for 
example, six were lost to overexposure, double 
exposure, or fogging caused by leaky 
plateholders. In the end, however, he was glad 
he had brought both cameras: "You can't make 
good photos with films . . . you must have 
plates and focus them, to get good detail. . . . 
Snap-shots are only for . . . genera! effect 
pictures in attitudes impossible in set photos— 
so that they ought always to have some 'action' 
in them. This is what 1 learned as a result of the 
Ainu trip" (Hiller to Lida, 10 December 1904). 
Hiller's photographs, even when posed, tend to 
have an unstudied, impromptu feel. 
One of Hiller's main objectives was to 
make notes on Ainu "manners and customs,” 
by which he meant everything from habita¬ 
tions, possessions, clothing, and ornaments 
to sickness and charms, death and burial, and 
religious beliefs. Although he recognized 
that he could not learn much in just a few 
weeks and that he was handicapped by the 
necessity of working through an interpreter, 
he was undaunted. Before the trip, he 
evidently read the various papers about the 
Ainu that had been published in the Transac¬ 
tions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, including 
several by John Batchelor and Basil Hall 
Chamberlain,- "On the Arrow Poison in Use 
Among the Ainos of Yezo” by Dr. Stuart 
Eldridge,- and "Ainu Economic Plants" by 
John Batchelor and Dr. Kingo Miyabe. In 
Hokkaido he carried with him a copy of 
Batchelor's The Ainu of Japan, which he 
considered "the only good thing in book 
form on these people" (Hiller to Stewart 
Culin, 8 July 1901). When there was time, 
Oyabe read to Hiller passages from Japanese 
books on travel, history, and the Ainu. 
Hiller's journal entries are an often bewilder¬ 
ing mix of travel diary, descriptions of 
villages, people, and objects, and Ainu 
responses to Oyabe's questioning, into which 
information from these various other sources 
is interjected from time to time. 
Hiller's other main objective was to 
21/UPM: HILLER AND OYABE 163 
21.4 
21.4, 21.5 Old-Style Headgear 
Hiller was interested in documenting 
customs and materials that were going 
out of style, like the use of hooded 
headwear, in Motomuroran he photo¬ 
graphed a man and woman wearing 
hoods; the hood displayed here is the 
one that is worn by the woman on the 
right in the photograph. Hiller also re¬ 
corded the Ainu names for most kinds of 
objects he collected. The woman’s hood, 
which he labeled hok abori, was listed by 
John Batchelor in his 1905 Ainu dictio¬ 
nary as hokkamburr, both are Japanese 
terms. (UPM A402; UPM neg. T4-891) 
secure an ethnographic collection for the 
University of Pennsylvania Museum. In Shiraoi, 
Okotsonai, and Piratori, the villages in which he 
did most of his collecting, people brought 
things to sell to him In his journal, Hiller 
described how they proceeded in Shiraoi: 
At the home of [head man] Ikastok we 
gathered in all the villagers who had goods 
to sell: bows, quivers, cloth, loom furniture, 
dishes, etc. Oyabe then put them into piles 
belonging to the different owners. By the 
side of each pile he placed combs, mirrors, 
scissors, cloth, and other bazaar chattels as 
he thought was the equivalent of the Ainu 
goods. It required some time and much 
thought on his part to get the right articles 
for the particular vendor and then began 
the dickering—changing an article here, 
withdrawing one there and finally adding a 
little money. On the whole we paid about 
the right price, for Oyabe sympathizes with 
them and will not cheat. Moreover when 
he finds a man who will only sell for money 
he finds out if he is a drunkard and then he 
will not buy with money only with goods... 
When we had finished our purchasing, the 
articles were all put into a mat, and a 
woman carried them down to our inn ... 
Ikastok accompanied us and helped us put 
the names on each article (Hiller's journal, 
10 May 1901). 
Hiller was particularly eager to collect 
objects associated with Ainu religion or 
"superstitions," but these were harder to obtain. 
Things that had been placed on the nusa 
(special offering places near Ainu houses) and 
objects to which inaw-kike (ritual willow 
shavings) had been attached could almost 
never be bought. Among the things Hiller 
found in his forays into and around Ainu 
houses, but which he did not succeed in 
buying, were some old quivers and knife 
scabbards that "had outlived their usefulness 
and had been dedicated to the gods" hanging 
on a nusa in Shikiu,- skewers for bear's meat 
from the most recent bear ceremony on a nusa 
in Shiraoi,- and an heirloom quiver still in use 
but with "a big bundle of inau" around its 
middle, also in Shiraoi. New skewers were 
made for Hiller, however, and the owner of the 
heirloom quiver sold him a similar one without 
i64 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS/A KATZ 
inaw (Hiller's journal, 8 May to I Sept. 1901). 
Some things were relinquished with obvious 
reluctance. The head man of the village of 
Oshamambe let him have a quiver to which 
were attached inaw and a wallet with a protec¬ 
tive charm (the head of a small bird or animal), 
but according to Hiller, "the old man was veiy 
particular that no one in the village should 
know that he had parted with such sacred 
relics else a deputation would await upon him 
to know why" (Hiller's journal, 31 May 1901). 
Toward the end of his trip, at a village 
near Mori on Volcano Bay, Hiller was finally 
able to obtain a bear skull (after the annual 
Ainu bear ceremony, the skull of the bear was 
added to the nusa]. This nusa belonged to 
Benkai, a head 
man who, accord¬ 
ing to Hiller, had 
"turned Japanese" 
and "does not care 
to be called an 
Ainu." Benkai (fig. 
21.6) was some¬ 
thing of a local 
celebrity, having 
gone to Tokyo 
with two bear cubs 
as a present for the 
Crown Prince on 
21.6 Benkai’s Family at Nusa 
Hiller took this photograph at a village 
near Mori on May 30, 1901, at the 
home of a man who, he said, “had 
turned Japanese” and who agreed to 
sell him a bear skull, which Hiller had 
been unable to acquire else where on 
his trip. Hiller offered to take a photo¬ 
graph of Benkai’s family, and noted, 
“There was a wild scurry and much 
hair-combing before they got ready to 
be photoed, and then they looked like 
a lot of Japanese in old theatricals” 
(Hiller journal). Staging such a secular 
photo opportunity at Benkai’s old sa¬ 
cred nusa (altar) with its animal-skull 
offerings is a vivid presentation of 
how Ainu culture was changing at the 
time. "No orthodox Ainu would have 
dared to desecrate his nusa as 
Benkai did," wrote Hiller, who had his 
images colored for use as lantern 
slides in lectures. (UPM LS-16453) 
the occasion of his 
marriage. Like 
many Ainu head men, he lived in a Japanese- 
style house, but his house contained a 
Japanese shrine and lacked Benkai's "treasures 
in old Japfanese] ware"—his "former heir¬ 
looms"—which he had contributed to a 
collection made by him and a wealthy 
Japanese friend, Dr. Mikaoka, in Mori. "No 
orthodox Ainu," wrote Hiller, "would have 
dared to desecrate his nusa as Benkai did." 
Both Hiller and Oyabe were interested 
in the relationship of the Ainu to the legend¬ 
ary folk called koropok-cjuru, associated with 
the pits to be seen near many Ainu villages, 
and to the Stone Age people whose tools and 
pottery (fig. 21.7) were being discovered at 
various places around Hokkaido. Oyabe was 
particularly excited by these questions: 
"'Koropok Guru,' 'Pits,' and 'Stone Age People' 
agitates the brain of the Japanese students, 
and Oyabe had me riding hither and thither, 
digging holes, Etc. without any organized 
plan" (Hiller's journal, 13 May 1901). Hiller 
insisted that they stop long enough to dig 
properly, and he described and sketched 
trenches dug by him, Oyabe, and Shirai at 
several sites. Excavation of a rectangular pit 
near Niewan yielded ashes, charcoal, charred 
and broken bones, and flat round stones, but 
in similar pits near Okotsonai they found 
"not even a trace of a fire-place." In a ravine 
on the road west of Niikappu, on both sides 
of which were scattered pottery fragments 
and stone tools, they dug down to a pave¬ 
ment of flat stones accompanied by frag¬ 
ments of rope-marked pottery. Near 
Motomuroran they explored a midden that 
was full of broken pottery, stone tools, shells, 
and broken bones. Oyabe was full of 
speculations ("Oyabe's theories would make a 
book"), but Hiller was more skeptical: "From 
the few facts that we gathered in these 
various excavations we are not able to 
conclude anything . . . beyond the fact that 
these pits were in some cases used as 
habitation . . . and that the evidences of 
ante-historic habitations are to be found on 
the south coast of Yezo as well as farther to 
the northward" (Hiller mss., Ch. XVII). 
By the time he and Oyabe got to 
Volcano Bay, Hiller was buying selectively, 
filling perceived gaps in his ethnographic 
collection. Into his description of the stage 
trip to Mori is inserted what appears to be a 
list of objects still wanted: "War club/ Bow/ 
Arrow Case/ Millet shells/ Deer decoy/ Jews 
harp/ Wood pipe/ Japfanese] sake cups." 
After the circuit of Volcano Bay, where he 
found the clubs he had not seen in the first 
part of his trip, Hiller went with Dr. Miyabe 
to see the Ainu collection in the museum at 
the Sapporo Agricultural College: "Some 
Kurile Island and Saghalien Ainu specimans 
[sic] a little different but Deer decoy and 
Jews harp alone are new to our list" (Hiller's 
journal, 6 June 1901). Although he toyed 
briefly with the idea of going north to 
Ishikari and Kamikawa, Hiller felt that he 
had already done most of what he had set 
out to do, so he returned to Yokohama: "The 
collection is all but complete—I have oceans 
of notes but, of course, in a month's trip 1 
can't know all 1 want to about the Ainus—I 
have five big bundles and boxes of specimans 
[sic] that will make a representative collec¬ 
tion—as good as any on earth" (Hiller to 
Lida, 6 June 1901). 
In Yokohama Hiller claimed his baggage 
and released Shirai, who, saying that he was 
"going to teach the Ainus,” left to rejoin 
Oyabe in Sapporo (Hiller's journal, 14 June 
21 /UPM; HILLER AND OYABE 165 
21.7 Spouted Pot 
Hiller was also interested in the ques¬ 
tion of Ainu origins and investigated ar¬ 
chaeological sites and collections in 
Hokkaido. This spouted, rope-marked, 
and dentate-stamped Post-Jomon-pe- 
riod pot is one of a number of well-pre¬ 
served specimens that emerged in their 
quest for the stone age peoples who 
were thought to be the predecessors of 
the Ainu. (UPM A522; neg. T4-895) 
1901). He then turned his attention to 
winding up the Ainu expedition before leaving 
for Sumatra: "My lantern slides (figs. 21.5, 21.6) 
came out beautifully—I have 48, and so well 
made and colored—my enlargements also came 
out fine. The collection has been sent home, 
and I have 55 pages of notes that are in type¬ 
written form, almost ready for the printer" 
(Hiller to Lida, 13 July 1901). He wrote to 
Stewart Culin, the University of Pennsylvania 
Museum's Curator of Asia and General Ethnol¬ 
ogy, that "the Ainu specimans [sic] are labeled 
and most of them can be displayed at once, if 
you want to put them on exhibition" (Hiller to 
Culin 8 July 1901). When he returned to 
Philadelphia in January of 1902 he found his 
Ainu materials on view at the museum (arranged 
on tables, probably), and by June he was able to 
report that Culin had installed the Ainu 
collection in the Oriental Hall, where it filled 
two new cases: "It looks 100% better than I 
thought such rough material ever could look" 
(Hiller to Lida, 17 June 1902). 
Hiller and Oyabe continued to corre¬ 
spond for a couple of years. When they were 
together in Hokkaido, Oyabe had confided to 
Hiller his plan to establish a model school, and 
in September of 1901 he reported that he had 
built the school and a house for himself in 
Abuta, where Shirai was living with him. In the 
spring of 1902 he sent Hiller a few additional 
items for his collection: a mouth harp, a deer 
decoy, and a loom with unfinished cloth 
woven from elm-bark-fiber (attush). (Because 
weaving was done in the fall and winter, Hiller 
had not been able to find a loom set up, with 
cloth on it.) He described a bear ceremony he 
166 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / A. KATZ 
had attended, and he asked Hiller to send him 
a Kodak so that he could record such events in 
the future. He also asked for a copy of the 
British Anthropological Institute's Notes and 
Queries on Anthropology, which described 
standards for field collecting and documenta¬ 
tion The Kodak was gratefully received, but in 
July 1903 Oyabe confessed that he had not 
used it much because film and developing were 
so expensive. Shirai, he said, was doing well 
and was teaching at the school. In this, 
apparently his last letter, he asked Hiller if he 
could help him to arrange to take some Ainu 
objects and an Ainu man and woman to exhibit 
at the St. Louis Exposition (Letters from 
Oyabe to Hiller, 15 September 1901, 15 
March 1902, 14 April 1902, 3 July 1903). 
For nine years after the trip with Hiller, 
Oyabe remained in Hokkaido and continued 
his work to educate the Ainu, and along the 
way he built several impressive collections. 
The LIniversity of Chicago anthropologist 
Frederick Starr, who visited Oyabe in February 
1910, estimated that "he has more books and 
kakemono [literally, "hanging things," usually 
referring to scrolls, and in this case, Ainu-e] of 
the Ainu than are in any other Japanese 
collections," and that his collection of Ainu 
photographs was "probably the most exten¬ 
sive." His archaeological collection, which was 
"fine and includes over 1,000 specimens," he 
considered "the only serious Hokkaido 
Collection Among the ethnographic artifacts 
Oyabe showed him, Starr was most intrigued 
by the great variety of frontlets, divination 
skulls, and "moustache lifters (ikupasuy)". At this 
point, Oyabe was about to leave his school. 
"He claims," wrote Starr, "he has given Ainu a 
sufficient share of his life's energy. . . . He will 
continue to agitate in favor of Ainu advance¬ 
ment but as a secondary interest. His life now 
is to be given to combining the fundamental 
points of Christianity with Shinto—in other 
words to found and preach a reformation of 
Shinto" (Starr 1909-11, Notebook 6. 46-48). 
Why Oyabe left his school is something of a 
mystery: he claimed that the years he had 
devoted to the Ainu had destroyed his health, 
but Starr suspected that there had been some 
disagreement with "the Department." In any 
case, Oyabe returned to Tokyo, where, in 
December 191 1, he sold his ethnographic 
collection to Starr. 
When Hiller returned from Sumatra, 
Alfred Harrison's father offered to set him up 
as resident manager of one of his sugar 
plantations, and Hiller 
was soon caught up in 
plans for a move to 
Cuba and for his 
impending wedding, 
preoccupations that, 
he wrote, "take my 
time away from such 
frivolities as Anthro¬ 
pology" (Hiller to his 
mother, 25 July 1902). 
Even while going back 
21.8 Tashiro with Easie Beak and Talon 
One of the first Ainu objects to enter 
the Pennsylvania collections was a 
knife and sheath acquired by Hiram 
Hiiier from Dr. Stuart Eldridge in 
Yokohama in December 1895. 
Eldridge told Hiller that it was an 
“Ainu chief’s knife,” which had been 
presented to him "out of gratitude for 
a hypodermic of morphia for the relief 
of a bellyache from which the chief 
had been suffering.” Kazuyoshi 
Ohtsuka, Professor at the National 
Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, in¬ 
spected this knife in February 1997 
and concluded that its style was Japa¬ 
nese and that it probably had been 
made by an Ainu for a non-Ainu. The 
bird beak and claw on the sheath 
have been identified as being from a 
white-tailed eagle (sea eagle, 
Haliaeetus albicilla), whose range in¬ 
cludes Hokkaido. (UPM A17744A, B) 
and forth to Cuba, however, he managed to 
give some attention to winding up his Ainu 
research. He turned over to a colleague at the 
University of Pennsylvania Medical School a 
sample of Ainu arrow poison that he had found 
in the house of the head man at Okotsonai and 
had managed to obtain "after a struggle." Dr. 
Edward T. Reichert observed the effects of the 
poison on a number of laboratory dogs and 
concluded that these effects were consonant 
with the findings of Dr. Eldridge and Dr. 
Miyabe that the active ingredient was aconite 
(specifically, according to Miyabe, Aconitum 
spp.) (Reichert 1903). Hiller also expanded his 
notes on "the manners and customs of the 
Ainu" and his travels in Hokkaido into a 
manuscript of some 50,000 words, which he 
submitted to George B. Gordon, Culin's 
successor as Assistant Curator of General 
Ethnology at the University Museum. In 
October of 1905 Gordon notified him that the 
Board of Managers had accepted the manu¬ 
script for publication, but "it happens that 
there is no money on hand at present that can 
be used for this purpose" (Gordon to Hiller, 
28 October 1905),- evidently the money never 
was forthcoming for it is still unpublished. 
Although he was flattered that the Museum 
wanted to publish the manuscript, Hiller 
himself claimed not to think much of it, and 
he did not pursue the matter further. 
The Sumatra expedition, with Hiller's side 
trip to Hokkaido, marked the end of Hiller and 
Harrison's five years of collecting for the 
University of Pennsylvania Museum. On the eve 
of their departure for Gunong Soegi, the last 
Sumatran village they stopped at before heading 
home, Hiller wrote: "Gunong Soegi will likely 
see the last of my Ethnographical & other field 
work, though I am liable to dabble at it for many 
years or even all of my life - in an amateur way" 
(Hiller to Lida, 3 September 1901). In fact, 
during the Cuba years, Hiller's involvement 
with ethnography came to an end. In 1907 he 
returned to Philadelphia to resume the practice 
of medicine, which he pursued until his death 
in 1921. His collections and field work remain, 
however, and what he and Oyabe accomplished 
in Hokkaido, in a short time and under difficult 
conditions, is a tribute to their shared enthusi¬ 
asm, determination, and commitment. 
This article is drawn almost entirely from materials 
relating to Hiram M. Hiller's Hokkaido trip in the 
University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives and 
Photo Archives. Information about Frederick Starr is 
from his field notes in the Department of Special 
Collections, University of Chicago Library. Yujin 
Yaguchi contributed information about the lives of 
Jenichiro Oyabe and Ryunjiro Shirai. 
21 / UPM HILLER AND OYABE 16 7 
From 
Snowshoe to 
"Corn Mortars": 
Early Ainu 
Collections at the 
American Museum of 
Natural History 
Laurel Kendall 
22.1 Shiraoi Ainu 
This photograph of an Ainu group at 
Shiraoi was taken ca. 1900, long before 
Shiraoi became an Ainu tourist attrac¬ 
tion in the late twentieth century. Today 
the Ainu Museum at Shiraoi is an impor¬ 
tant research center for Ainu cultural 
studies where exhibits of Ainu artifacts 
are presented and Ainu cultural tradi¬ 
tions are demonstrated to the public. 
(AMNH 338769) 
IN 1 869, THE YEAR OF ITS INCEPTION, THE 
American Museum of Natural History 
(AMNH) accepted a single Ainu snow- 
shoe (AMNH cat. no. 1/2402) into its 
collection as a gift from the museum's first 
president, Albert L. Bickmore, who had 
recently returned from a zoological journey 
through the Malay Archipelago, the Dutch 
East Indies, Japan, Eastern Siberia, and China. 
In public lectures after his travels, Bickmore 
would pique the curiosity of his audiences by 
asserting the theory, later disputed, that the 
features of the Ainu essentially resemble those 
of Caucasians (Bickmore 1868: 403). Bickmore 
was one of the first to promote this view, and 
his challenge was soon taken up by European 
and American scholars who began to investi¬ 
gate Ainu relationships and ancestry from 
historical, linguistic, and anthropological 
points of view (see Kreiner, this volume). 
In 1898 the museum initiated its first 
handwritten catalogue of "Asian Ethnographic 
Collections" with a gift of some eighty Ainu 
objects from Arthur Curtiss James. In 1896 
James was a wealthy young man with the 
means to realize his scientific interests in an 
expedition, although on a smaller scale than 
that undertaken by the similarly well-endowed 
William H. Furness, Hiram M. Hiller, and 
Alfred C. Harrison, who collected extensively 
for the University of Pennsylvania Museum 
(see Katz, this volume). James organized a 
trans-Pacific cruise to record an eclipse in 
northern Japan. Before his departure, he 
contacted the AMNH, offering his assistance 
to the nascent Department of Anthropology. 
Frederick W. Putnam, then Curator of 
Anthropology, charged him with collecting 
objects of ethnological interest "at any islands 
in the Pacific" and gave some general 
guidelines regarding authenticity ("things 
made and used by native peoples"), including 
the desirability of illustrating methods of 
manufacture by collecting raw materials. 
Putnam was particularly enthusiastic about 
acquiring an Ainu collection and was already 
aware of those signature objects that would 
constitute Ainu culture in many collections 
and museum exhibits to come. As guidance 
for James, Putnam wrote: 
The Ainos weave a kind of cloth from a 
grass which they make into a thread, and 
it will be worthwhile to try to secure a 
complete hand loom with all the articles 
used in weaving, including the grass 
thread and if possible a piece of the cloth 
partly woven on the loom,- also specimens 
of the grass itself. . . . You will come across 
many of the so-called mustache sticks 
[ikupasuy] which are more or less elabo¬ 
rately carved, and a collection of these 
would be especially interesting owing to 
the symbols carved upon them and as 
furnishing the means of studying these 
sticks which probably have some 
religious significance. . . . The Ainos have 
peculiar religious ceremonies, using prayer 
sticks and various symbolic devices all of 
which are important, and still more so if 
you can obtain a knowledge of the 
meaning of the symbols, or how and why 
the various objects are used (Putnam to 
James, 20 March 1896, AMNH Anthro¬ 
pology Archive). 
168 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / L KENDALL 
22.2 Bashford Dean 
Naturalist Bashford Dean was about 
to set out on a zoological expedition 
to Japan when Franz Boas, Curator 
of Anthropology at the American 
Museum of Natural History, suggested 
he try to collect materials from the 
Ainu. Dean took up the suggestion 
and in September 1900 assembled 
a large collection that forms the core 
of the American Museum of Natural 
History’s Ainu collection. In time 
Dean became Curator of Fishes at 
the museum, but his diverse talents 
led him in other directions as well: 
he also became Curator of Arms and 
Armor at the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art and Professor of Zoology at 
Columbia University. This photograph 
was taken when he was a major during 
World War I. (AMNH 312546) 
By the turn of the century the Ainu had 
already been inscribed upon the western 
ethnographic imagination as a people who 
wove textiles from unusual fibers (attusb made 
from elm bark and retarpe from the nettle 
plant) and used in their rituals elaborately 
carved prayer sticks that doubled as libation 
wands (ikupasuy) and whittled offering sticks 
(rump). They were a people possessed of a 
material culture sufficiently distinct and 
mysterious to pique late-nineteenth-century 
curatorial desire. The Ainu had already become 
the subjects of scientific writing and travelers' 
accounts (Chamberlain 1887c). Putnam may 
have been aware of Hitchcock's collecting for 
the Smithsonian and Odium's for the Royal 
Ontario Museum (Kotani 1993a). 
In Hokkaido, James turned the responsi¬ 
bility for collecting over to Professor Nitobe 
of the Agricultural College at Sapporo, who 
was said to be "nearly as renowned as Dr. 
John Batchelor as an authority on Ainu 
manners and customs." Batchelor, whose 
scholarly writings on the Amu had secured his 
reputation, was not available as a collector but 
did send copies of his publications back to the 
museum. Nitobe, armed with a copy of 
Putnam's instructions, agreed to supervise two 
of his students who would "go throughout the 
country and pick up the things you want as 
best they could." James arranged to have the 
collection shipped, and by December 1901, it 
was installed in a museum showcase with a 
plaque acknowledging his contribution (James 
to Winser, 10 December 1901). 
James's activities for the museum raise 
interesting questions about his role as 
"collector" rather than simply as a "benefac¬ 
tor," "donor," or "facilitator." In his case, these 
roles appear to have been mixed more than 
they were in most other museum collecting 
programs. A few years later, James would 
quietly finance the purchase of Ainu artifacts 
assembled on behalf of the museum by 
Bashford Dean. Throughout his life, his 
philanthropy would be cloaked in anonym¬ 
ity, with some of his generosity revealed only 
after his death (New York Times, 6 August 
1964). In this instance, being there—and 
perhaps his youth—seems to have made a 
difference in how he regarded the work,- 
certainly he was closer to the action of this 
modest enterprise than AMNH President 
Morris K. Jesup was to the massive endeavor 
that bears his name, the Jesup North Pacific 
Expedition (fig. 22.3). Even so, it would 
seem that the actual collector of the "James 
Collection" was Professor Nitobe or, most 
precisely, the two nameless students who 
wandered through the villages. In any case, 
the Sakhalin material in this collection, and 
perhaps other things as well, would have 
been precollected by dealers already active 
in Hokkaido. 
What sort of collection was it? Putnam 
had been emphatic that "the value of any 
ethnological object is increased ten-fold by 
an authentic label stating where it comes 
from and such information as can be ob¬ 
tained relating to it." He suggested that 
James take a number of Dennison tags "to tie 
upon the specimens you may obtain and thus 
label them as you secure them" (Putnam to 
James, 20 March 1896). Someone, probably 
Nitobe, did take care to record local words 
and brief slugs of description, as shown by 
some typical catalogue entries: 
70/20. Karop. Used to hold the flint and 
steel, knife, tobacco, and sword guards 
and other things which the Ainu, in case 
of necessity, uses as indemnity, and other 
things used in traveling and hunting. 
70/26. Kamuiparatek. Bear's foot. Not used 
by the Ainu for any particular purpose. 
Perhaps kept for the sake of the Japanese 
(ie. to sell) or by a Japanese. 
Following Putnam's directive, the 
collection includes a range of tools, weapons, 
and objects of daily use, religious objects, 
clothing, and jewelry. The tufted sticks 
(inaw), prayer sticks (ikupasuy), and weaver's 
tools specifically requested by Putnam are 
represented, and there is a house model, one 
22 /AINU COLLECTION AT AMNH 169 
<70 
of many brought to 
the museum in 
those years in order 
to display a range 
of world cultures 
within the confines 
of museum cases. 
Although Nitobe 
and his student 
collectors had put 
together an 
admirable collec¬ 
tion of finished 
Ainu objects, similar to others that had been 
assembled there earlier, Putnams instructions 
for broader representative materials and 
documentation needed to support his 
emergent concept of "museum anthropology" 
was not fulfilled. In Sapporo a collection was 
understood to mean things and tools used to 
make things, but not the raw materials from 
which things were fashioned: for instance, 
loom pieces were collected, but not elm bark 
for weaving. And although Putnam had 
requested photographs both of "the people in 
natural poses" and individual portraits "full 
front and exact profile" to "bring out the 
physical characteristics of the people in the 
way that anthropologists require for compara¬ 
tive study" (Putnam to James, 20 March 
1 896), no photographs were taken. 
A few years later, in September 
1900, Bashford Dean (fig. 22.2) 
traveled through Hokkaido 
and assembled the 
museum's largest 
Ainu collec¬ 
tion. Dean, a true Renaissance man, would 
become the distinguished Curator of Fishes at 
the AMNH, Professor of Zoology at Colum¬ 
bia University, and Curator of Arms and 
Armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
(The link between these apparently disparate 
lines of interest was bodily protection: arms 
and armor, whether of men or Devonian 
fishes [Osborn 1929]). 
Dean became a collector almost by 
accident. About to depart on an AMNH 
zoological expedition to Japan, he met with 
Franz Boas, then Curator of Anthropology, 
who indicated that the AMNH might be 
interested in whatever Dean could collect 
among the Ainu, and a seed was planted. Dean 
describes in a letter to Boas how he went to 
Hokkaido with the idea of merely visiting 
Hakodate but then became inspired to make the 
collection himself and "started in on a somewhat 
enthusiastic collecting trip" (ibid.). Dean is thus 
one among that company of turn-of-the-century 
naturalist-collectors who made an easy transi¬ 
tion between zoological specimens and objects 
of material culture: men like the biologist 
Edward Sylvester Morse, whose sudden 
infatuation with things Japanese would enrich 
the Peabody Essex Museum, and Herbert Lang 
and James Chapin who would make a combined 
zoological and ethnographic collection in 
Central Africa for the AMNH (Rosenstone 
1988, Schildkrout and Keim 1990). 
Dean's handwritten catalogue begins 
with the statement, "The following material 
was collected by me in Hokkaido (Yezo) 
during September 1900, and with the 
exception of some objects from Piratori and 
Saghalien [Sakhalin], it was secured by me 
personally at the Aino villages" (Bashford 
Dean catalogue, AMNH, Anthropology 
Archive, 1901-77). Who accompanied him? 
Who led him to places where objects might 
be acquired? Who led him through delicate 
negotiations over the purchase of 
family heirlooms? Dean's collection 
of 288 objects includes, in his 
words, "a little of everything 
in the Aino way,- weap¬ 
ons, costumes, 
utensils, a few 
models, and 
quite a 
22.5 Ikupasuy 
Among the objects from Hokkaido and 
Sakhalin acquired by Arthur Curtiss 
James was this unusual ikupasuy that 
accentuates the peculiar nature of its 
natural form. "Found objects” and ab¬ 
stract forms of modern Ainu art have a 
long history in Ainu culture. (AMNH 
70/23) 
22.3 Crescent Carving 
This finely carved bone or ivory tool was 
collected by Berthold Laufer from the 
Sakhalin Ainu in 1899 as part of his 
work for the Jesup North Pacific Expedi¬ 
tion. Laufer spent little time with the Ainu 
and his collections from this and other 
groups of the Lower Amur region disap¬ 
pointed Boas, who had hoped for a large 
collection from this region. Although the 
implement's use was not recorded, it 
resembles a sailor’s marlin spike used to 
loosen knots, and its decoration is 
similar to styles from the 
Asian mainland. (AMNH 
70/1739) 
22.4 It’s an IkupasuyI 
These wonderfully abstract prayer sticks 
from Hokkaido illustrate a small portion of 
more than fifty specimens in the Ameri¬ 
can Museum of Natural History, eleven 
collected by Arthur Curtiss James from 
Hokkaido and Sakhalin between 1896 
and 1898, and thirty-nine by Bashford 
Dean from Ainu villages in the Saru River 
region in 1900. The terms used to de¬ 
scribe them are almost as numerous as 
the artistic treatments themselves and 
include mustache stick, mustache lifter, 
libation wand, and prayer stick. But none 
does justice to this complex religious 
article except its own name, ikupasuy. 
(AMNH 70/4189, 70/4192, 70/2955) 
number of pieces connected with their curious 
religious rites" (Dean to Boas, 24 October 
1901). Dean paid particular attention to 
garments (fig. 22.6), recognizing that they 
were "highly prized . . . and they represent a 
vast amount of hand-work, and the ancient 
family belongings are somewhat difficult to 
secure" (ibid.). Memorialized as a man 
possessed of a "native sense of form and 
beauty" (Osborn 1929), Dean brought many 
stunning examples of Ainu textiles to the 
AMNH collection. 
Dean's training as a naturalist is evident 
in the precise field entry he wrote for each of 
the several hundred objects that he col¬ 
lected, which include such useful information 
as the name of the village where each object 
was acquired. Compared with the James 
catalogue, one misses the local words for 
things and the ethnographic descriptions of 
how objects were used. Dean's entries are 
brief and descriptive: "70/3959 (8) Embroi¬ 
dered headband of woman Dark blue and 
white. Shiraoi. 70/3986 (34) Skinning knife 
with long wedge-shaped handle. Shikiu." 
He rarely provides a local word: "Iku-pasui" 
from the James list becomes "mustache 
stick" in the Dean entries. After a few pages 
of such abbreviated entries, it is refreshing 
to stumble upon Dean's note with "corn 
mortar: small specimen" (AMNH 70/4085 
(131) Shiraoi): 
These specimens are difficult to collect. 
I was able to secure the present one on 
condition that the ijobei [inaw], which 
were especially prepared for it, should 
accompany it, attached to its margin, 
in the museum. The owner assured me 
that it had given food to his family for 
several hundred years (?) and that he 
did not want to offend it. So I must 
take it on the condition that the gohei 
shall not be separated from it (Bashford 
Dean catalogue). 
Here, at least, the object is embedded in a 
larger world of meaning that adheres to it 
even when it is entered as a "specimen" in a 
natural history catalogue. But how, and 
through what mediation, was this knowledge 
communicated to Dean? What circumstances 
prompted the owner to give up an object 
that still commanded so much respect? 
Hokkaido Ainu culture had already 
progressed far beyond Putnam's vision of native 
communities, which was informed primarily by 
the Native American situation, where the naive 
traveler, with a minimum of professional 
direction, might easily assemble an ethno¬ 
graphic collection from objects of daily use 
(figs. 22.3-22.9). Dean describes a Hokkaido 
where Ainu material "is very difficult to come 
by at any cost" (Dean to Boas, 24 October 
1901),- things had to be hunted down, and high 
prices paid. Dean's catalogue is sprinkled with 
notations that particular objects were "rare," 
"difficult to acquire," or "the only one in the 
community." In his letter to Boas, he speaks of 
having experienced an "interesting and 
sometimes quite difficult time in securing a 
prize object" and indicates that the cost of 
making an Ainu collection ($250) was far 
11 /AINU COLLECTION AT AMNH 174 
22.6 Retarpe Robe 
Nettle fiber made excellent 
cloth, lighter and thinner 
than elm bark; this cloth 
was called either retarpe or 
tetarpe, which mean “white 
things." Most of these 
garments were produced in 
Sakhalin and share some 
designs with Nivkhi, Nanai, 
and Chinese garments. This 
piece was collected in 
Sakhalin by Berthold Laufer 
during the Jesup North 
Pacific Expedition in 1898- 
1900. (AMNH 79/906) 
172 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / L KENDALL 
■H 
■ MM 
L»ft 
ffipill 
11111 11 ■■- 
pMpi 
'■': : '. 
' T 
'ifliMmfw 
gsgllgfcT 
22 /AINU COLLECTION AT AMNH 173 
22.7 Tobacco Pouch 
Chinese or Russian blue beads adorn 
the margins of this Sakhalin Ainu to¬ 
bacco pouch (ruyomah) collected by 
Arthur Curtiss James ca. 1896-98. 
Pouches made of sealskin, here sewn 
in an elaborate piecework construction, 
were common among Sakhalin Ainu, for 
whom seal was an important economic 
resource. (AMNH 70/15) 
22.8 Carved Pipe 
The Ainu used tobacco pipes (kiseri) of 
two different types: metal and wood. 
Metal pipes were acquired by trade, 
while wood pipes (rasupani) were made 
personally from a curved branch of the 
hydrangea tree, which naturally has a 
hollow core. A rare sacred pipe (kamuy- 
kiseri) used in the bear-sending ceremony 
had two stems carved from a forked 
branch, one stem for the bear and one 
for a man. Bashford Dean collected this 
pipe in Shiraoi in 1900. (AMNH 70/3998) 
greater than he had anticipated (ibid.). 
Local entrepreneurs seem to have 
become middlemen in collecting and securing 
objects from remote villages and even as far 
away as Sakhalin. Someone in Hokkaido 
seems to have been skilled at making the 
models of Ainu life that turn-of-the-century 
museum curators wanted for their displays, 
for models appear in both the James and the 
Dean collections. The Ainu photographs that 
Dean gave to the American Museum of 
Natural History (fig. 22.1) are not his own 
field shots, but appear to be pages from a 
good-quality tourist album. The competitive 
spirit among collectors seems to have been 
well established by the time of Dean's visit. 
As in so many other places, visitors like Dean 
relied on leads supplied by expatriates like 
Batchelor, and the "coup" of a particularly 
good find fueled conversations between them. 
Batchelor evidently saw Dean's materials, for 
the catalogue makes reference to his evalua¬ 
tion of Dean pieces that "appear to be of 
exceptional rarity" (Bashford Dean catalogue). 
Between Bickmore's fragmentary sketch of 
the Ainu published in 1868 and Putnam's letter 
to James in 1896, the Ainu had come into focus 
as a people of ethnographic significance whose 
lifeways might be apprehended through the 
acquisition of their distinctive material culture, 
or so it was assumed at the time. As curators in a 
newly established Department of Anthropology, 
both Putnam and Boas thought it important to 
acquire Ainu collections for the museum. Ainu 
religion, described as "peculiar” by Putnam and 
"curious" by Dean, intrigued both Boas and 
Putnam, and they placed a high value on 
obtaining its material manifestations: if it 
could not be understood, it might at least be 
collected for future decoding. Early reports 
from Bickmore and others that the Ainu were 
Caucasoid look-alikes fueled the interest of 
early anthropologists, but if this were the 
extent of scholarly interest, then we should 
expect only a ghoulish traffic in bones. The 
history of early collecting at the American 
Museum of Natural History instead suggests 
that by the end of the last century, Ainu 
objects were prized by collectors both as 
pieces in an intriguing ethnographic puzzle 
and as examples of beautiful and elaborate 
handiwork, even as these things were passing 
from common use. 
Several members of the staff of the American Museum of 
Natural History assisted in the preparation of this 
essay: Belinda Kaye, Nina Root, Joel Sweimler, Jane 
Liu, and most particularly, Ann Wrigbt-Parsons. 
i74 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / L. KENDALL 
22.9, 22.10 Strike-a-Light Kit 
Ainu fire kits (piwci) contained a steel 
striker, a quartz stone, and tinder of 
powdered wood fungus or charcoal. 
These materials were stored in a 
pouch (karop) and were used to light 
pipe tobacco and fires for cooking 
and heat. The steel usually came 
from broken iron pots or knives. 
Laufer collected this kit, made of 
sturgeon skin ornamented with an 
ivory bead and a Japanese coin, in 
Sakhalin in 1899. The fire kit would 
be worn suspended from a man’s 
belt along with his smoking kit, 
as is seen here in an Ainu-e 
from Drawings of Travels 
through Ezo (1799) by Gentan 
Tani. (AMNH 70/1263; HML) 
22.9 
22.10 
22 /AINU COLLECTION AT AMNH i 75 
Japanese 
Ainu 
Collections 
Nobukatsu Aoyagi 
AND KojI DeRIHA 
The term "Ainu collections" is 
often misinterpreted to mean 
items gathered in the distant past. 
Ethnological collections in general 
are often perceived by the public as consisting 
of materials used to study distant peoples and 
faraway cultures and utilized for educational 
purposes in museums. Although many Japanese 
museums do indeed have such historical 
collections, some museums in Hokkaido 
actively collect and exhibit newly produced 
items in order to represent modern Ainu 
culture and history and will continue to 
collect Ainu-related materials. This essay 
presents an overview of both types of collec¬ 
tions in Japanese institutions. 
Many museums in Japan, especially 
those in Hokkaido, house Ainu-related 
materials,- these collections vary in size and 
quality. Most of these items were gathered by 
scholars and enthusiasts after the late nine¬ 
teenth century, but a limited number of 
objects were collected prior to that time. 
Unfortunately, in some of these collections it 
is not uncommon for artifacts to lack basic 
ethnological information, such as location, 
collector, owner, or makers name. 
The first systematic collection of Ainu 
artifacts in Japan was created in order to 
exhibit these items at the Vienna World's Fair 
of 1873 in the exhibit of arts and special 
products of Japan. Two examples of each 
item were collected so that one could be sent 
to the World's Fair and the other could be 
kept in a museum. Some of these specimens 
are now housed in national ethnology 
museums in Vienna and Berlin,- others that 
remained in Japan became part of the 
collection of the Tokyo National Museum. 
One good example is clothing worn by an 
Ishikari Ainu named Yajuro Shimura in 
1872, which along with a picture of 
Shimura, are rare items that illustrate the 
material culture of the Ishikari Ainu. 
In 1879 a temporary museum of the 
Hokkaido Settlement Mission, Hakodate 
Branch, was established through a recom¬ 
mendation by Horatio Capron, former 
Assistant Secretary of the Department of 
Agriculture of the United States, who served 
as an adviser to the Hokkaido Settlement 
Mission. This was the first publicly founded 
museum outside of a large city, and it was the 
predecessor of the Hakodate City Museum 
23.1 Wood Tray 
This carved tray in the Kono Collection 
at the Asahikawa City Museum displays 
the exquisite carving and patina of an 
old Hokkaido Ainu utensil that must 
have been a treasured family heirloom 
before being sold to a museum or col¬ 
lector. Its central whorl motif, known to 
Ainu as morew and cut in low relief, 
was used widely in Ainu art and decora¬ 
tion. (ACM) 
176 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS/ N. AOYAGI AND K DERIHA 
(Hasabe 1977). Ainu artifacts assembled for 
the museum became the foundation of one of 
the two oldest Ainu collections in Japan, the 
other being that of the Tokyo National 
Museum. In addition to these two collec¬ 
tions, the one gathered by the Hokkaido 
Settlement Mission itself is also reknowned 
as an old collection. Several other Ainu 
collections housed in Japanese museums are 
discussed below. 
The Tokugawa Collection 
(Tokyo National Museum) 
This is the collection of Yorisada Tokugawa, 
the sixteenth head of the Tokugawa family in 
Kishu (Sasaki 1988,- Tokyo Kokuritsu 
Hakubutsukan 1992). The majority of the 
Ainu materials came from the collection of 
the Doda Anthropological Study, which was 
headed by Motohiro Nijo, a prominent 
member of the society (which was estab¬ 
lished by a group of nobles around I 897 at 
the suggestion of anthropologist Shogoro 
Tsuboi). Other materials in the collection 
23.2 Attush Sample Kit 
This sample kit was created for edu¬ 
cational purposes by the Historical 
Museum of Hokkaido for use in 
school tours and docent instruction. 
It includes samples of Hokkaido Ainu 
attush design techniques and identify¬ 
ing labels. (HMH) 
were donated or purchased. The Doda 
artifacts were collected in Hokkaido and 
Sakhalin around 1900 by Kanichi Nonaka, a 
young anthropologist who was supported by 
23.3 Modern Ainu Bags 
Modern Ainu bags are still made with 
traditional embroidery patterns. Such 
items are collected by the Historical 
Museum of Hokkaido to document 
the tradition and change in the his¬ 
tory of Ainu material culture. (HMH) 
23 /JAPANESE AINU COLLECTIONS i 77 
a large carved wooden bowl, a tray, an attusb 
bag, and a Western-style hat woven from the 
fiber of a wild plant (Elymus mollis Trin.), which 
indicates early cultural exchange. Perhaps 
government officials at that time planned to 
develop a craft industry utilizing traditional 
Ainu techniques and designs in hopes of 
promoting tourism and Hokkaido products. 
Compared with collections overseas, 
Japanese Ainu collections have fewer ex¬ 
amples of raw materials used to make tools 
and less information on how the artifacts 
were actually produced. However, the 
Hokkaido Takushokukan collection does 
include such items as specimens of plant 
fibers, which may reveal unusual insight on 
the part of the collectors, whose identities are 
not documented. 
23.4 Antique-Store Laoquerware 
For more than one hundred years, 
when they needed money Ainu sold 
their old household artifacts to mu¬ 
seum collectors, anthropologists, and 
tourists, or to antique shops in Hok¬ 
kaido and elsewhere in Japan. In this 
way most families gradually lost their 
heirlooms and treasures, most of which 
are now in museums around the 
world—3,200 in North America, 5,700 
in western Europe, and an equivalent 
number in Russian collections including 
4,700 in St. Petersburg, and 30,000 in 
Japan. These lacquerware cups, col¬ 
lected in the 1950s, had been used by 
the Ainu for ritual ceremonies. (HMH) 
178 
Nijo, but it is not known how these items 
came into the possession of the Tokugawa 
family. The collection includes a rare Sakhalin 
Ainu ceremonial headdress topped with a bird 
cranium,- a similar article is found in the Kono 
Collection, but they are the only two known 
to exist in Japan. The Tokugawa Collection 
forms the core of Ainu materials in the Tokyo 
National Museum. 
The Hokkaido Takushokukan 
Collection 
(Historical Museum of Hokkaido) 
Many ethnological collections that were 
shown in particular expositions later entered 
the permanent collections of various museums,- 
some Ainu collections in Japanese museums 
were created in this manner. In 1918 an expo¬ 
sition to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of 
the Hokkaido Settlement Mission was held in 
Sapporo,- the Hokkaido Takusho-kukan was 
one pavilion at the exhibition where 392 Ainu 
artifacts were exhibited. After being stored for 
several decades, these artifacts were given to 
the Historical Museum of Hokkaido upon its 
opening (Deriha 1991). These items are valued 
not only as a large collection created in the 
early 1900s but also as a source for learning 
about the public's perception of the Ainu 
people at that time. 
The collection includes such religious 
artifacts as a prayer stick (ikupasuy) and an 
arrow case for ceremonies,- hunting devices 
such as a bow and arrow and a trap,- clothes, a 
sash, and a wooden bowl of the Sakhalin Ainu. 
In addition to the standard items that intro¬ 
duce traditional Ainu culture, also included are 
The Kono Collection 
(Asahikawa City Museum) 
Three generations of Konos (Tsunekichi, 
Hiromichi, and Motomichi Kono) collected a 
total of 1,800 artifacts, including 1,600 that 
are Ainu-related. Exactly when Tsunekichi 
began the collection is not known, but he 
went to Hokkaido for the first time in 1894 
(Aoyagi 1997). After that visit, he frequently 
toured many regions of Hokkaido while 
conducting settlement surveys commissioned 
by the Hokkaido government,- on these 
surveying trips, he also did archaeological and 
ethnological research. The collection includes 
one small wooden box made by the Kurile 
Ainu (fig. 23.5), which was purchased by a 
government official of Nemuro prefecture on 
a fact-finding trip to Shikotan, Urup, and 
other Kurile islands. The official gave the box 
to Tsunekichi in 1909, and it may have been 
the impetus for his collection. 
Tsunekichi's second son, Hiromichi, who 
had studied entomology in college, found a new 
focus for scientific inquiry around 1930 when he 
began serious archaeological and ethnological 
surveys and started to collect of Ainu artifacts. 
He later became a leader in this field, compiling 
notes from surveys of Hokkaido sites that 
provide valuable information, thus enhancing 
the quality of the collection and providing 
indispensable information for studies of Ainu 
collections and culture. The Kono Collection 
(figs. 23.3, 23.6, 23.9) contains a number of 
items that reveal basic technological data,- other 
objects have charming stories. One example of 
the latter involves a sealskin coat that 
Tsunekichi acquired in Sakhalin before 1917 as 
MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / N. AOYAGI AND K. DERIHA 
23.6 Sakhalin Necklace 
Sakhalin Ainu women wore necklaces 
that were similar to those of mainland 
groups around the lower Amur River. 
The brass bar and beads in this fine 
Kono Collection piece probably were 
obtained by trade from the Amur, 
where necklaces were worn not only 
for decoration and status symbols but 
also to ward off ill health and evil. 
Women often cannibalized necklaces, 
mixing and matching until they had a 
style and composition that suited their 
taste. (ACM) 
a gift for his son Hiromichi, who wore it to 
school during the winter. One day when 
Hiromichi was wearing the coat, a dog pursued 
him, sniffing and barking. Although Hiromichi 
ran, the dog followed him until he took off the 
coat, put it under his arm, and sprinted away. The 
dog had become excited by the strong-smelling 
sealskin that the Sakhalin Ainu used to make 
durable clothing. The story is a colorful reminder 
of the Kono family's collecting tradition and 
Hiromichi's boyhood. 
Motomichi, Hiromichi's son, is the latest 
Kono family member to collect Ainu materials. 
After completing graduate school at Tokyo 
University, he has become one of but a few 
anthropologists studying the Ainu. In particular, 
he has researched Ainu design, comparing it to 
patterns found on prehistoric pottery. 
Baba Collection 
(Hakodate City Museum) and 
Kodama Collection 
(Ainu Minzoku Hakubutsukan, Shiraoi, 
and Hakodate City Museum) 
The Baba and Kodama Collections were 
created by two men who grew up in the same 
period in Hakodate without ever meeting each 
other, although both spent their boyhoods 
playing among local archaeological remains 
and became interested in archaeology. Osamu 
Baba organized people interested in archaeol¬ 
ogy and established the Hakodate Archaeol¬ 
ogy Study Group in 1907 when he was only 
fifteen years old. Baba studied dentistry in 
23.5 Kurile Box 
This decorated wood box from the 
Kono Collection in the Asahikawa City 
Museum was collected from the 
Kurile Ainu and displays the distinc¬ 
tive style of this region. (ACM) 
23 /JAPANESE AINU COLLECTIONS 179 
23.7 Neil Munro’s Nibutani Home 
Neil G. Munro, a physician born in 
1863 in Edinburgh, Scotland, moved to 
Hokkaido and spent many years living 
in Nibutani. He served the Ainu both as 
doctor and scholar, recording and writ¬ 
ing about their culture. His work on 
Ainu religion and philosophy are espe¬ 
cially valuable. From about 1931 until 
his death in 1942, he amassed a large 
collection of Ainu artifacts from 
Nibutani. Today his home is owned by 
Hokkaido University. 
college and later opened a practice in Tokyo 
after completing his studies in the United 
States. Sakuzaemon Kodama, after studying 
in Switzerland, obtained a position at the 
Imperial University of Hokkaido in 1929. It is 
amusing to imagine that Baba and Kodama, 
with a three-year difference in their ages and 
a common interest in exploring Hokkaido, 
Sakhalin, and the Kuriles while collecting 
enormous numbers of artifacts, might have 
encountered each other face-to-face some¬ 
where in the city of Hakodate without being 
aware of the other. Baba focused his energy 
on the ethnology and archaeology of north¬ 
ern Japan and began collecting Ainu-related 
materials in April 1930, saying, "If I don't take 
this rare opportunity now, 1 will regret it for 
the rest of my life" (Baba 1971.- 1,-Hasebe 
1992). Meanwhile, Kodama visited local 
antique stores every Sunday from the time he 
began his job at the university, enthusiasti¬ 
cally collecting Ainu articles. He took note of 
the rapid sales of traditional Ainu materials to 
foreigners in the post-World War II period, 
and he commented later, "I planned to buy as 
many materials as possible from merchants to 
avoid losing valuable materials overseas . . . 
part of these materials are now in my posses¬ 
sion" (S. Kodama 1969: 152). 
More than half of the 2,000 articles Baba 
collected were burned when Tokyo was 
bombed in March 1945,- the 755 items that 
survived are currently housed at the Hakodate 
City Museum in the only collection designated 
as Important National Ethnological Cultural 
Property. The remainder of the collection 
includes five kimono (Hasebe 1992), which 
^ VSl: IpfiiffT:-- 
54 
S9H 
Baba acquired from an Ainu woman in Abuta 
during his 1930 collecting trip to the Usu 
region (Baba 1979). Recalling the occasion, 
Baba described how the woman had apolo¬ 
gized to her mother for handing over the 
mother's garments while telling her that Baba 
would take good care of them. On his way 
back to Tokyo, he dropped by the Hakodate 
City Library where he was asked by its 
director, Kenzo Okada, to leave the five 
kimono,- persuaded by Okada's enthusiasm, 
Baba donated them and returned to Tokyo. 
These five kimono survived the war and are 
the only five existing kimono in the collection. 
Among the collections destroyed during 
the war was the great collection of ikupasuy 
gathered by Sueo Sugiyama, a leader in the 
field of craft history,- these items were 
considered to be a gem among the Ainu 
collections. Fortunately, though most of his 
collection burned, it can still be studied 
through pictures published in his books. 
The Kodama Collection includes 5,000 
items, which were published in a catalogue 
raisonne by the Hakodate City Museum 
(1987) and the Ainu Minzoku Hakubutsukan 
in Shiraoi (1989, 1991). Clothing and 
accessories, such as robes and necklaces, 
account for about half of the collection 
Religious items, including 1,400 ikupasuy, also 
make up a large part of the collection. 
Smoking paraphernalia constitute another 
important part of the collection, for these 
objects document smoking rituals of the 
Sakhalin Ainu and illustrate the diversity of 
regional Ainu traditions. 
Because many of the materials were 
purchased at antique shops, they lack basic 
ethnological information,- in contrast, the items 
Kodama collected while conducting archaeo¬ 
logical surveys benefit from his fastidious 
documentation. Although he worked full time, 
Kodama studied the collection in his spare 
time and encouraged his family to share in his 
collection work: his wife began studying 
clothes and accessories in 1947, and his eldest 
daughter, Mari Kodama, engaged in research 
(M. Kodama 1989) on weaving patterns, 
design, and embroidery techniques (see 
Kodama, this volume). 
Neil G. Munro Collection 
(Hokkaido Takushoku Kinenkan) 
Neil G. Munro was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 
in 1863. After completing his medical studies at 
Edinburgh University, he moved to Japan where 
i 80 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS / N AOYAGI AND K DERIHA 
23.8 Tobacco Box 
and Pipe Holder 
This smoking kit with its carved 
ivory or bone ornaments shows the 
remarkable skills of an unknown 
Sakhalin Ainu carver. Few speci¬ 
mens of such high quality as this 
one from the Korio Collection exist 
in American collections. (ACM) 
he worked among the Ainu as a physician, 
gathering information important to Ainu studies 
while providing medical service to the Ainu 
people (fig. 23.7). His collection came primarily 
from Nibutani in Hokkaido and was assembled 
from about 1931 until his death in 1942. 
Munro was especially interested in Ainu 
religion, and his research was published as Ainu 
Creed and Cult (1962). His collection reflects this 
interest with many items related to shamanism, 
faith, and rituals,- its focus is thus on a certain 
facet of the Ainu culture rather than covering 
Ainu life in general. Many such theme-based 
Ainu collections, especially those created after 
the war by scholars and enthusiasts, are found 
in Japan. The Munro Collection is a good 
example of a collection that remains in japan 
but was created by a researcher who was 
educated in Europe. 
Antique Stores 
and Other Collections 
Both historically and in the present day, 
cultural enthusiasts and antique stores have 
played a role in the formation of Ainu 
collections in japan. Some artifacts were 
traded or sold from one enthusiast to another, 
but others were acquired by scholars and 
museums from these collectors. Although the 
number of such collections is unknown, the 
total number of artifacts gathered may be 
assumed to be quite large. Many individual 
enthusiasts seem to pay attention mainly to 
the beauty of the objects or to focus on a 
certain theme, while others collect anything 
related to Ainu culture. Unfortunately, when 
items are collected in this way, ethnological 
data—such as location, year of manufacture, 
producer, and the Ainu-language word for 
the object—are often lost, if they were ever 
known in the first place. Lack of ethnological 
data does not necessarily mean that the items 
are useless for research, for the last collection 
date is usually known, so it is certain that the 
particular item was used or produced prior to 
that date. If a collection was formed by one 
individual during a certain period it is easier 
to date its artifacts more precisely. If the 
acquisition was based on some personal 
relationship between the owner and the 
collector, useful information may be pre¬ 
served, but commercial transactions are 
usually devoid of such data. 
Comparing the contents of collections 
formed at different times reveals the transfor¬ 
mations of Ainu society. A project by 
Professor Yoshinobu Kotani and others 
revealed clearly that collections formed in 
the 1950s had many necklaces, swords, and 
lacquerware, while collections formed in the 
late nineteenth century had few such items. 
The reason for such discrepancies is that 
lacquerware, necklaces, and swords were 
highly treasured by the Ainu people, and 
records written in the last half of the 
nineteenth century confirm that people did 
not readily relinquish such items. That these 
treasures could be collected in large volume 
23/JAPANESE AINU COLLECTIONS 181 
23.9 Lacquerware Tuki 
and Ikupasuy 
Ainu rituals usually involve the offering 
of sake, millet beer, or some other pre¬ 
cious libation to gods from lacquerware 
cups and saucers, using the ikupasuy 
(prayer stick). The ikupasuy is pre¬ 
sented in the manner seen here, rest¬ 
ing across the cup with its “tongue” end 
pointing to the left. The person perform¬ 
ing the ritual dips the pointed end into the 
liquid and then makes offering gestures 
to the venerated object at hand, allowing 
drops to fall on the object, or sends 
drops skyward to the gods. This set from 
the Kono Collection includes both a tuki 
and an ikupasuy with its own visual pun 
—another tuki— and a tigerlike animal 
carving; it is one of the finest sets 
known. (ACM) 
later on may indicate that the Ainu people's 
thinking about their traditions changed over 
time, or, perhaps more likely, that their 
economic situations had worsened and they 
were forced to sell their family treasures. 
Collections in Use 
One mission of museums is to introduce the 
culture and history of the Ainu people 
through the exhibition of their collections. 
Each year special exhibitions of Ainu objects 
are held somewhere in Japan, often in 
Hokkaido, and those museums that own Ainu 
collections regularly exhibit some part of 
them. Museums that do not own Ainu artifacts 
borrow them from others in order to educate 
the public about Ainu culture and history. 
Recently the number of Ainu exhibitions has 
increased. Asahikawa City Museum has 
planned and implemented a traveling exhibi¬ 
tion in cooperation with several museums in 
northern Hokkaido, and special exhibitions of 
Ainu materials are being planned abroad. 
Today there is a movement among 
younger Ainu to learn traditional techniques 
and crafts so that they can be passed on to 
succeeding generations. Lectures, workshops, 
and both long- and short-term courses have 
been held in various areas to enhance under¬ 
standing of the Ainu culture and teach tradi¬ 
tional skills. These classes not only teach 
people to appreciate the technique and beauty 
of Ainu crafts, they also inspire others to make 
the items themselves using traditional patterns 
that have been passed down for generations in 
their home villages. Some artists utilize this 
body of knowledge to develop contemporary 
patterns and new traditions,- they visit muse¬ 
ums in order to study Ainu materials for such 
purposes (Hokkaido Utari Kyokai 1994a). 
Those museums with Ainu collections should 
provide easy access to these people so that this 
potential can be maximized. A new law, 
known as the Ainu Shinpo, was enacted in 
1997 to preserve and promote traditional 
Ainu culture. As a result, the educational role 
of museums with Ainu collections in 
Hokkaido is expected to increase. In recent 
years some museums, recognizing the need 
for Ainu collections to also be utilized in 
classrooms, have lent their materials to 
elementary schools. For instance, Hokkaido 
Takushoku Kinenkan produced replicas of 
hunting tools, clothes, and other items for 
educational purposes, creating a model for 
students to actually use these tools without 
endangering primary reference collections 
(figs. 23.2, 23.3). 
All ethnological collections, not just 
Ainu collections, are valuable to both the 
particular groups whose culture they docu¬ 
ment and to all peoples of the world because 
they show the paths by which humans 
develop. It is imperative that these collections 
be utilized and preserved in the best possible 
condition for use by generations to come. 
182 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS/ N. AOYAGI AND K. DERI HA 
The Ainu Museum Foundation, 
established as the Shiraoi Founda¬ 
tion for the Preservation of the 
Ainu Culture in 1976, is a compre¬ 
hensive cultural education facility whose 
mission is to preserve, research, study, and 
pass on the Ainu culture. The facility incorpo¬ 
rates an Ainu kotaii (fig. 24.1), a reproduction 
of a traditional village that was formerly 
located in the city of Shiraoi, it was moved to 
its present location in 1965 as a social 
organization run by Shiraoi Tour Consultant 
Inc. The Shiraoi Foundation was established 
in 1975 when this company changed its focus 
from tourism to cultural education. 
The first chairman of the foundation, 
Takeo Yamamaru, enriched the institution by 
collecting traditional Ainu artifacts. In 1984 
the Ainu Folk Museum was opened to the 
public as an exhibition space for Ainu cultural 
property, both tangible (material culture and 
24/The Ainu 
Museum 
Foundation 
Shigek.! Akino 
24.1 The Ainu Museum in Shiraoi 
The Ainu Museum at Shiraoi has been 
in operation since 1976 and is now 
incorporated as the Ainu Museum 
Foundation, its dual function of public 
education and preservation of Ainu 
culture is met by displaying Ainu arti¬ 
facts and staging performances 
within the context of an Ainu kotan 
(village), which is open to the public. 
Building collections (such as the recent 
additions of the Kodama and Tanaka 
Collections) and archiving oral tradi¬ 
tions are other programs that fulfill its 
mission. (AMS) 
artifacts) and intangible (songs, dance, oral 
literature), and as a center for academic 
research. In 1990 the corporation was renamed 
The Ainu Museum Foundation, recognizing 
that the museum, established and run by the 
Ainu, had become its primary focus. 
The museum's design utilizes outdoor 
spaces and is divided into modern and tradi¬ 
tional zones of an Ainu kotan (village), includ¬ 
ing several restored houses (chise), food 
storehouses (pu), bear cages (heperset), and 
several boats (chip). The history and culture 
of the Ainu are explained by trained educators,- 
there are also public demonstrations of Ainu 
folk dance by the museum's Oral Tradition De¬ 
partment. Such exhibitions and daily 
demonstrations of folk materials have been de¬ 
signed to preserve and pass down Ainu culture. 
The museum has about 6,000 items of 
Ainu cultural materials and about three 
hundred specimens from minority groups of 
the northern regions, including the Nivkhi, 
Ul’ta, Saami, and Inuit, usually about eight 
hundred specimens are on display at any 
given time. The museum also owns about five 
hundred audiotape recordings used in oral- 
history research,- about two hundred video¬ 
tapes of various ceremonies held by the Ainu 
Museum,- about 150 Ainu-e (illustrations of the 
Ainu),- and about 6,000 books and documen¬ 
tary records. 
The exhibition hall (fig. 24.2) is divided 
into sections with different themes showing 
related materials. Themes include: The World 
of Gods, Gods and People, Hunting, Blessing 
of the Earth, Eating, Clothing, Housing, Life 
of the Ainu, History of the People, and 
Neighboring Peoples. 
As part of its mission to preserve and 
pass on Ainu culture, the museum conducts 
traditional Ainu ceremonies including iyomante 
(sending back the spirit of a bear), iwakte 
(sending back the spirit of human imple¬ 
ments), chip-sanke (a boat-launching cer¬ 
emony), and shinnurappa (a memorial service 
for ancestors) and demonstrates traditional 
handcrafts including weaving on looms, mak¬ 
ing straw mats and traditional clothing, and 
embroidering Ainu patterns,- these activities 
serve to enlighten and popularize Ainu culture 
among the visiting public (fig. 24.3). 
Research and Study 
The establishment of the museum in 1975 
coincided with a resurgence of interest in 
traditional Ainu culture, and arts and science 
professionals have been encouraged to use its 
resources in their research and study. A 
primary research activity is the work being 
done by staff oral historians: there are about 
five hundred recordings of several fuchi 
(respected elder women) including Suteno 
Oda, Matsuko Kawakami, Harushia Sonoura, 
Shin Kawakami—all deceased since their 
stories were transcribed,- the late Masayoshi 
Tochigi ekashi (respected male elder) also 
recorded his recollections of traditional Ainu 
life. These fuchi and ekashi lived at the museum 
for periods of time as resident artists, demon¬ 
strating their traditional handcrafts,- their 
techniques were preserved on video, thus 
24/AINU MUSEUM SHIRAOI 183 
24.2 Ainu Exhibits 
Cultural education is an important activity 
of the Ainu Museum. Interpretive displays 
of the museum’s collections introduce 
traditional and modern Ainu artifacts to 
the public. (AMS) 
enhancing research and study materials. 
The results have been published in the three 
volumes of Ainu and Nature Series and the 
four volumes of Oral History Series. 
A second research program seeks to 
understand Ainu culture comprehensively 
through the museum's collection. Several Japa¬ 
nese researchers are contributing to this study 
in addition to museum employees in the Arts 
and Sciences Department. This group conducts 
various research projects and holds seminars 
and symposia at the museum and overseas. 
Preserving and Passing on 
Ainu Culture 
An important feature of the Ainu Museum is 
its programs to preserve and pass on Ainu 
culture, for example, the demonstration of 
Ainu folk dances to visitors (fig. 24.4). Sixteen 
dances, designated as National Important 
Intangible Cultural Properties in 1984, are the 
the iyomante ceremonies held in 1989 and 
1990 have been made available to scholars 
and the public in published reports. 
Other such ceremonies, including a 
boat-launching ceremony and a memorial ser¬ 
vice for the ancestors are held every year in 
April and in August, respectively. Ceremonies 
for sending back the spirit of man-made 
objects or celebrating the completion of a 
new house are held whenever the appropriate 
situations occur, for example, when disposing 
of museum equipment or when construction 
of a new chise is completed. These traditional 
Ainu ceremonies are not demonstrated to the 
public: while this deviates from the museum's 
education mission, these activities essentially 
serve as a way for employees and Ainu museum 
associates to preserve and pass down Ainu 
culture. For the time being, ceremonies such 
as the iyomante, which involves the killing of a 
bear, are kept private because this important 
24.3 Iyomante Ceremony 
As part of its mission to preserve and 
pass on Ainu culture, the museum 
conducts traditional Ainu ceremonies 
including iyomante (sending back the 
spirit of a bear), iwakte (sending back 
the spirit of human implements), chip- 
sanke (a boat-launching ceremony), 
and shinnurappa (a memorial service 
for ancestors). Some of these ceremo¬ 
nies, such as the iyomante, are pre¬ 
sented only for the Ainu people and are 
not open to the public. (AMS) 
focus of this effort,- three to four such dances 
are demonstrated to visitors daily. 
This preservation program also includes 
conducting different types of rituals. Since the 
Meiji era began in 1868, many Ainu tradi¬ 
tional ceremonies have disappeared because 
of cultural changes and the assimilation policy 
of the Japanese government. Despite the 
logistical difficulties of carrying out tradi¬ 
tional ceremonies, the museum has frequently 
held sending-back ceremonies and memorial 
services for Ainu ancestors for the purpose of 
reviving, preserving, and passing on tradi¬ 
tional culture (fig. 24.5). The iyomante—a 
ceremony for sending back the spirit of a 
bear—was held seven times in the past, most 
recently in March 1996. Documentation of 
Ainu ritual is poorly understood by the pub¬ 
lic,- however, with the recent passage of the 
Ainu Shinpo of 1997, the public image of 
the Ainu has begun to change, and we hope 
to share these ceremonies with wider audi¬ 
ences as appreciation of our traditions con¬ 
tinues to grow. 
Cultural Exchange 
Since the establishment of the Ainu Museum, 
we have initiated an active exchange program 
with minority native peoples and their 
museums in foreign countries. Our exchange 
with the Finnish Saami people is especially 
active: in 1984 we cooperated as a sister- 
museum with the Saami Museum of Inari in 
Lapland, and staff and researchers made 
18 4 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS/ S. AKINO 
several visits. We also developed a memoran¬ 
dum on museum exchange in August 1993 
with the Sakhalin State Museum and the 
Nogliki Town Museum in Sakhalin, Russia, 
and we invited members of that region's 
minority group, the Nivkhi, to Shiraoi. 
Moreover, we have active exchanges with 
Taiwanese native people who were invited 
to the Ainu Museum in October 1993. 
In December 1997 we in turn were invited 
to the International Native Culture and 
Art Festival, commemorating the found¬ 
ing of the Administrative Committee of 
Native Taiwanese. 
Ainu folk dances have been performed 
overseas five times: in Finland, Sweden, 
Norway, and Denmark in 1984,- Finland and 
Sweden in 1989,- England in 1995,- Finland 
and Denmark in 1996,- and Taiwan in 1997. 
Ainu artifacts were exhibited at the Helsinki 
National Museum and the Art Museum of 
the Kodama Collection, comprising 2,263 
items, which is about half of the 5,000 items 
Kodama collected (the Hakodate City 
Museum is also a repository). These materi¬ 
als, assembled by the late Dr. Sakuzaemon 
Kodama, a famous professor at Hokkaido 
University, comprise one of the premier 
collections of Ainu objects in the world. 
Since the museum's opening in 1984, the 
Kodama Collection has been stored here and 
has been shown occasionally in temporary 
exhibits. In April 1998 it was donated 
permanently to the museum by the owner, 
Mari Kodama, Professor Kodama's daughter. 
The museum also owns two other 
important collections. The Ryoshoji Collec¬ 
tion of 181 items was collected by the chief 
priest of a temple in Boda, Hokkaido, and 
includes important materials such as a sapanpe 
(a man's ceremonial headdress) made from 
the mandible of a shark. The Tanaka Collec- 
24.4, 24.5 Ainu Dance 
and Ceremony 
Dancing and demonstration of tradi¬ 
tional handcrafts—weaving elm-bark 
(attush) garments on backstrap horns, 
making straw mats, sewing traditional 
clothing, and embroidering—help to 
popularize Ainu culture among the visit¬ 
ing public. (AMS) 
Umea University, Sweden, in 1984,- the 
Sakhalin State Library and the Khabarovsk 
Regional Museum in 1987; and in the Arctic 
Circle Center in connection with Lapland 
University, Finland, in 1994. These activi¬ 
ties contribute greatly to mutual cultural 
exchanges and enhance understanding of 
the Ainu people overseas. 
The Ainu Collections 
A collection of about 6,000 Ainu pieces forms 
the foundation of the Ainu Museum's hold¬ 
ings, including both historical materials as 
well as ceremonial equipment and handcrafts 
made by museum employees and resident 
artists. Among the historical collections, the 
largest and most important is a portion of 
tion, which includes 154 objects acquired by 
Mr. Chuzaburo Tanaka of Aomori city, was 
sold to the museum in 1985. All of these 
collections are in storage and are available 
for research and display in exhibitions in the 
museum and for loan to special exhibitions 
staged by other museums. 
Paintings 
The museum owns 157 of the paintings 
known as Ainu-e, which illustrate Ainu 
manners and customs from the late Edo era 
to the beginning of the Meiji era (see T. 
Sasaki, this volume). The paintings are 
highly valued historical materials, produced 
by Japanese artists, that document Ainu life 
and culture. Among the museum's holdings 
24/AINU MUSEUM SHIRAOI 185 
24.6 Sun Visor 
The Sakuzaemon Kodama Collection is 
the most extensive and important of 
the Ainu Museum's collections. This 
sun visor {sikahkah), which seems to 
have been used only by the Sakhalin 
Ainu, was worn with the flap over the 
wearer's eyes. It was used to protect 
the eyes of older Ainu and those who 
had eye problems. (AMS 60542) 
24.7 Masahiro Nomoto Begins the 
Smithsonian Ship Model 
During the spring and summer of 1998, 
Masahiro Nomoto, a curator of the Ainu 
Museum at Shiraoi, took up residence in 
Washington, D.C., to build a model chip 
(boat) and a chise (house) for use in the 
Smithsonian’s Ainu exhibition. A master 
woodcarver, Nomoto is seen here begin¬ 
ning the task of reducing a huge North¬ 
west Coast yellow cedar log at the 
Smithsonian’s Office of Exhibit Central. 
are The Ainu Garments and The Scene of Ezo 
Country, eighteenth-century scrolls by Teiryo 
Kodama, and mid-nineteenth-century works, 
The Ainu Sailing Out Fishing and The Tangle 
Collection of the Ezo by Byozan Hirasawa, all well- 
known pieces. 
Although still a relatively young organi¬ 
zation, the Ainu Museum Foundation has 
established a strong research and public 
education program. It has the support of the 
Ainu community and maintains a balance 
between its cultural preservation and transmis¬ 
sion programs and its research and popular 
museum activities. Its staff are known increas¬ 
ingly to the international professional museum 
community and to national and international 
native organizations. We are particularly 
proud to be active participants in Ainu.- Spirit of a 
Northern People through loans of objects and 
Ainu-e, and through the expert advice and 
skillful reconstructions of an Ainu boat model 
and chise, as well as catalogue contributions 
made by our curator Masahiro Nomoto. 
186 MUSEUM COLLECTIONS/ S. A KINO 
25/The Ainu in 
Ethnographic 
Films 
Kazuo Okada 
The making of motion pictures is 
generally said to have begun in 
1895 when the Lumiere brothers 
presented a "cinematograph”—a 
way to project films—at a cafe in Paris. Since 
then, anthropologists around the world have 
used film extensively to record ethnographic 
cultures, and in the autumn of 1897 the Ainu 
were recorded on film for the first time. This 
film and others from this era tell us much 
about early Ainu life that is not recorded in 
written documentation. Comparison of these 
with later films reveals much about changing 
Ainu life and the filmmakers who produced 
this work,- they show how anthropological 
interests have changed over time and how 
Ainu culture has been presented to the wider 
world. Even though Ainu films never became 
popular, like Asen Balikci's Netsilik series, 
Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North, or the 
many commercially oriented Hollywood films 
25.1 Beautiful Japan, Take One 
The classic film Beautiful Japan 
(1918) contains some of the earliest 
images of the Ainu in a village setting, 
in this scene a bear being reared for 
the iyomante festival is being put back 
into a log cage after enjoying exercise, 
feeding, and entertainment with his 
Ainu hosts. (HFSA/SI) 
produced on Alaskan Eskimo themes, the film 
materials that have accumulated over the 
years on the Ainu constitute a sizable body of 
material that is a valuable resource for 
research, public education, and, increasingly, 
for Ainu culture preservation projects. This 
essay concentrates primarily on the history of 
filmmaking on the Ainu from both ethno¬ 
graphic and popular perspectives. 
The Earliest Ainu Films 
At the end of 1896 the Lumiere company 
dispatched Constant Girel, a projectionist and 
25/ AINU IN ETHNOGRAPHIC FILMS 
cameraman, to Japan to introduce the 
cinematograph. Girel arrived in Japan in 
January of 1897 and introduced his cinemato¬ 
graph in Osaka in February, in Kyoto in 
March, and later in Tokyo. Girel had plans to 
make seventeen films in different regions of 
Japan,- two of these were to record the Ainu, 
and in October 1 897 he arrived in Hokkaido 
to film them. Although it is unclear in which 
village the filming took place, Girel, with the 
help of French missionaries and others, 
succeeded in shooting two Ainu dances, one 
performed by men and the other by women. 
While the length of each recording is less 
than one minute, they are marvelous. In a 
letter dated October 18, Girel wrote that he 
had taken a train at the port of Muroran, 
traveled for about six miles (ten kilometers) 
through primeval forests, and then proceeded 
a further thirty-seven miles (sixty kilometers) 
on horseback. 
25.2 Beautiful Japan, Take Two 
This strip shows a group of Ainu in cer¬ 
emonial costumes dancing at one of 
the many festivals held to honor and 
thank the gods for their providence. 
(HSFA/SI) 
We greeted the Ainu people with souve¬ 
nirs, sweet potatoes and fruit. Thanks to 
our interpreter, who had a good rapport 
with the Ainu, they showed us their 
dances willingly. There were two numbers: 
"Dance of Birds" [Crane Dance] performed 
only by women, and "Dance of Warriors," 
performed by men 1 he following day, we 
felt extremely sad saying goodbye to those 
beautiful, dignified people. They are 
disappearing, gradually but surely, as they 
yield to the Yamato [Japanese] race. 
Civilization and western cultures outrun 
things native—this must be indeed a 
struggle for existence. 
188 AINU "DISCOVERY" / K. OKADA 
Girel's film on the Ainu was shown in 
the summer of 1 898, first in Osaka with the 
title Dances by Men and Women of the Hokkaido 
Ainu, and then in Nagoya as Bear Dance of 
Hokkaido Ainu Aborigines. These were the first 
public screenings of an Ainu film. 
At the beginning of the twentieth 
century, before World War I, another film on 
the Ainu was produced by professor 
Frederick Starr, an anthropologist at the 
University of Chicago. Starr, who brought 
several Ainu to America for the Louisiana 
Purchase Centennial Exposition in 1904, had 
an assistant film and photograph the Ainu in 
Hokkaido. The film is said to have been 
photographed in the Saru River region, but 
little can be confirmed about this particular 
work because its present whereabouts are 
unknown. (HADDON, an Internet database, 
mentions an Anthropological Study of Early 
Motion Pictures at the Department of 
Social Anthropology, Oxford Llniversity. It 
states that there was a film about the Ainu 
shown in America in 1912 with German 
subtitles, and it is currently stored in 
England's National Archives of Motion 
Pictures,- whether this is the picture made 
by Starr or not has yet to be determined.) 
Benjamin Buloski, an itinerant Ameri¬ 
can lecturer, visited Japan from 1918 to 
1919, and with the cooperation of the 
National Japan Railways and the Japan 
Travel Bureau, traveled to various regions 
on a special train that carried his film crew 
and equipment. His film Beautiful Japan, 
produced during this visit, includes a scene 
of the bear-sending ceremony (iyomante) 
performed by the Shiraoi Ainu. Judging 
from the fact that the footage does not 
include a scene of a bear actually being sent 
to the godland, it would seem that the film 
crew asked the Ainu people to stage the 
ceremonial situation for the camera. Buloski 
presented his film to the American ambas¬ 
sador to Japan, who later donated it to the 
Smithsonian Institution. It is now stored in 
the Smithsonian's Human Studies Film 
Archives (HSFA) of the Department of 
Anthropology. 
The Earliest Japanese Films 
While opinions differ as to who first began 
filming for anthropological purposes in 
Japan, some would cite Ryuzo Torii. He left 
many remarkable still pictures of various 
ethnic groups, but whether or not he utilized 
ethnic groups, but whether or not he 
utilized motion pictures is uncertain. A 
snapshot by Torii of the Takushoku Interna¬ 
tional Exposition, which was held in Ueno, 
Tokyo, in 1912, shows actual houses of the 
Hokkaido and Sakhalin Ainu as well as a 
projection room called Kankokan. In the 
room, a film was shown that documented 
the situation of the Sakhalin Ainu and 
discussed the influence of Russian culture on 
other territories newly acquired by Japan 
during the Russo-Japanese war. The present 
location of this film is also unknown. 
Of existing films, the earliest by a 
Japanese scholar was produced by Professor 
Saburo Yada, a zoologist in the Agriculture 
Department of the Imperial University of 
Hokkaido and head of the department's 
museum. The film, called Life of the Shiraoi 
Ainu, was made in 1925 for presentation at 
the Pan-Pacific Academic Conference held 
in 1926. This work includes scenes of 
women drawing water from a new well in 
their village,- the transportation of goods,- 
male and female elders greeting one 
another,- attush weaving,- marriage ceremo¬ 
nies,- treatment of illness,- funerals,- the bear¬ 
sending ceremony,- and salmon fishing. 
Yada showed this film at the conference 
during a seminar on the Ainu held by 
Keimeikai, an academic organization. 
Originally he had planned to present his 
reasons for making the film, but due to time 
constraints he was not able to deliver his 
prepared speech (which was, however, 
entered into the seminar record),- unfortu¬ 
nately there exists only a brief explanation of 
the picture. What is noteworthy is that Yada's 
film did not record real Ainu life at the time 
but was a reconstruction of a more traditional 
lifestyle from an earlier period In the 1920s 
Ainu culture was undergoing drastic changes, 
and the traditional ways of life were fading 
away, or in some instances were already gone. 
Yada expressed surprise when he discovered 
that the Ainu folkcrafts housed in museums 
were no longer being used by the Ainu. 
The original copy of the film was kept 
at the University of Hokkaido, but the 
funeral segment was lost during the chaos of 
the post World War II period. In the 1990s, 
however, an English version of the lost 
footage was discovered, and the author of 
this article, with the help of others, restored 
it and converted it and the remaining original 
to a video format. Subtitles in Japanese and 
189 
English were added and the film is now 
available in a user-friendly form. 
Neil Gordon Munro, a Scottish doctor and 
amateur archaeologist who was naturalized in 
Japan in the early 1900s, began studying the Ainu 
in the 1920s. He visited Nibutani frequently, 
becoming a resident in 1930,- he died in the village 
in 1942. Munro began filming the Ainu with a 
grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, obtained 
through the help of supporters at the British Royal 
Anthropological Institute (RA1). He completed his 
first work, Iyomante, depicting the bear-sending 
ceremony, in 1931. In 1933 and 1934 he recorded 
Uepotara, documenting a prayer for recovery from 
illness, and Chise-nomi, a house-consecrating ritual. 
These were exceptional products, with high 
clarity and recorded in 35mm format (although 
the copy Munro sent to the RA1 was a 16mm 
print). Iyomante was produced in the style of an 
academic paper, with the use of captions and 
diagrams and detailed comments on items used 
during the ceremony,- the explanatory section 
accounted for one-third of the film. 
While Iyomante was a completed motion 
picture, Uepotara and Chise-nomi were unfin¬ 
ished, but Munro did show these films at the 
University of Hokkaido and other places. He 
died in the chaotic situation at the outbreak 
of World War II and his works disappeared 
under murky circumstances. In the 1960s, 
however, a 35mm positive print of Iyomante 
was discovered and was reedited, focusing 
particularly on the bear-sending ceremony. 
The editors of this work had no relationship 
or contact with the RAI, and they assigned 
the distribution rights of the English version 
to the Media Extension Center of the 
University of California, Berkeley. 
This action by the editors created an 
uncomfortable situation for all those con¬ 
cerned: because the RAI believed that the 
16mm print sent to them was the original, 
they were offended by the editors' action 
and failure to seek permissions. The Ainu 
were also confused, for although it was clear 
that Munro had filmed in Nibutani, the 
editors used as sound effects yukar, oral 
narratives set in rhythm, which had been 
recorded in the Shizonai region. In the mid- 
1960s, many Ainu people in Nibutani, both 
young and old, who had appeared in the film 
were still alive, but none of them were 
contacted by the editors. It was not until 
1975, more than ten years after the restora¬ 
tion of the film, that the Nibutani Ainu saw 
it for the first time, when it was shown at the 
dedication ceremony for a monument that 
the Nibutani people had built at the site of 
Munro's former residence. The actions of 
those involved with the reediting of Munro's 
films are questionable by today's standards, 
even if they may have meant well. 
1 his author tried unsuccessfully to 
locate the original positive print. When 1 
learned that the editors had not used the 
actual print that had been rediscovered but 
instead had made duplicate negatives for 
editing, I began searching for the original 
print but so far have been unable to find it. 
The prints of Uepotara and Chise-nomi were 
found, however, in the film can containing 
the film Life of the Shiraoi Ainu by Professor 
Saburo Yada. With the support of Shigeru 
Kayano, a prominent Ainu culture-bearer 
whose grandmother was an informant of 
Munro's in Nibutani, Uepotara and Chise-nomi 
were restored and converted to a video 
format in 1992 and organized to follow the 
various stages of Munro's work. Both videos 
have Japanese and English subtitles. 
In 1936 Tetsuo Inukai, a zoologist at 
the University of Hokkaido, filmed Iyomante, 
a bear-sending ceremony performed by 
Kaneto Kawamura, an Ainu elder known for 
his contribution to the preservation of the 
traditional culture of the Chikabumi Ainu 
(Chikabumi is now part of the suburbs of 
Asahikawa, Hokkaido). The movies of the 
bear-sending ceremony as filmed in three 
regions—Shiraoi, Nibutani, and 
Chikabumi — reveal interesting similarities 
and differences in the ritual. 
Ainu culture must have often been re¬ 
corded cinematically during this period, but 
as is the case with many films of traditional 
cultures in other regions, few are extant. 
Production Agency Films 
In the postwar period, documentation of the 
Ainu continued, if sporadically. For example, 
Sakuzaemon Kodama, a doctor and professor 
at the medical school of the University of 
Tokyo, was known for his collection of Ainu 
material culture, and he also edited an 
educational film entitled Ainu Clothes that was 
funded by the Education Committee of 
Hokkaido. Shigeru Kayano and his wife 
appeared in this film. Following the growing 
availability of color film in the 1950s, a 
growing number of documentaries were made 
by production companies and professionals. 
In the early stage of this period, the Ainu 
19 o AINU "DISCOVERY" / K. OKADA 
continued to play a role as subjects and 
"cooperators," but they had very little control 
over their depiction in these films. 
The Collaboration Era 
In the 1970s the circumstances surrounding 
the filming of Ainu began to change gradu¬ 
ally, and Ainu such as Shigeru Kayano became 
actively involved in film production. In 
addition, some artists stressed the importance 
of communicating with their subjects instead 
of simply pointing a camera at them. 
Tadayoshi Himeda and other staff of the 
Ethnic Culture Film Research Institute 
produced many films in a long-term collabo¬ 
ration with Shigeru Kayano. Their high- 
quality works included Wedding (1974), 
Building a House (1974), Bear-Sending Ceremony 
(1977), Children's Play (1978/1984), and Canoe 
Making (1978). Although these films were 
produced by Japanese artists, the views of the 
Ainu are definitely reflected in their work. 
The ongoing activities of the Ainu 
Intangible Culture Preservation Group, 
headquartered in Sapporo since 1976, should 
be noted here. With a grant from the Hok- 
kaido government's Agency for Cultural 
Affairs, funds produced from New Year's 
postcards sales, and other sources, one or two 
films have been produced every year. While 
the gap between the funding needed to 
document Ainu culture and the amount of 
grant money actually awarded is substantial, 
they nevertheless manage to continue 
production. Their accumulated work indicates 
that continuity holds power, for in these films 
the elders of each region, who have since 
passed away, convey the traditions they 
inherited to the younger generations of today. 
Ainu Filmmaking and the Future 
By the 1980s anyone with a video camera 
could make a film, and such activities con¬ 
tinue to accelerate. Properly organizing what 
has already been shot, however, is not an easy 
task, but the fact remains that filming can 
now be done by anyone. Many Ainu families 
possess video cameras and thus are potential 
filmmakers—while there are no known 
professional filmmakers among the Ainu, 
there are many amateurs. 
Shigeru Kayano, who is committed to 
teaching the Ainu language to Ainu children 
in Nibutani, filmed Tonotokamuy, which 
documents the sacred sake-making per¬ 
formed by his parents. The film's style is 
simple yet refreshing: instead of inserting 
voice-over narration, Kayano added his own 
comments as he shot. This method, in which 
the camera operator and the elders interview 
one another, provides a fresh approach. 
Perhaps the most important thing to consider 
is that such modest attempts at documenta¬ 
tion, as shown by Kayano, can now be made 
in every Ainu community. At the same time, 
it is vital that old films about the Ainu be 
collected, copied, preserved, and made 
available to the public. It is important that 
not only researchers but also Ainu interested 
in preserving their own culture have open 
access to these valuable materials. 
Ainu culture is not only of interest to the 
Ainu,- most Japanese today also agree that 
Ainu culture is noteworthy and precious, and 
even those who do not hold it in high regard 
or who consider it only of historical interest 
acknowledge its importance. Hopefully the 
1997 Ainu Shinpo will encourage popular 
recognition and respect for Ainu history, 
culture, and language and understanding of its 
important role in the history of Japan and the 
Sea of Okhotsk region. Footage—old and 
modern—of the Ainu will certainly be 
important in the cultural revitalization and 
public reevaluation process that is now 
underway. It is also likely to become of 
increasing interest to the wider world commu¬ 
nity that has developed a strong interest in 
ethnographic films, as demonstrated by 
enthusiastic responses to Ainu footage 
presented in recent film festivals throughout 
the world. Although the corpus of Ainu 
ethnographic and documentary films is not 
large, it has the capacity of providing a firm 
foundation for research and education projects 
and is increasing rapidly today through local 
media and private efforts. This is none too 
soon, for many of the knowledgeable elders 
are passing away. Film is the media of choice 
for documenting and promoting cultural 
preservation and retention in the modern day,- 
it will certainly be an important resource and 
instrument both for the Ainu people and the 
wider public for years to come. 
191 25/AINU IN ETHNOGRAPHIC FILMS 
' 
msi 
; - 
Iv 
VI \iV)\V 
26/ Kamuy: 
Gods You Can 
Argue With 
Hisakazu Fujimura 
< Shimochi, Grand Chieftain of Atsukishi 
1843 copy by Teiki Kojima after Hakyo 
Kakizaki's work, Portraits of Ezo Chief¬ 
tains. (Y. and M. Kitao Collection) 
26.1 Inaw. Messengers to the Gods 
Ainu gods had different personalities, 
like people do. Prayers were directed 
to them with the assistance of inaw, 
willow sticks that were carved into 
different shapes representing birds 
according to the particular god that 
was being addressed or the cer¬ 
emony in which they were to be used. 
This photograph was taken in 1950 
by Ted Banks III. (MKB, courtesy of 
Edmund Carpenter) 
The word kamuy (god) in the 
Ainu language is a generic term 
for both physical and immaterial 
entities on the earth who possess 
abilities superior to those of man. Specifically, 
gods can be animals, plants, minerals, or other 
geographical and natural phenomena that 
have a place on earth. 
Humans can neither fly nor stay 
underwater for a long time without equip¬ 
ment, nor can they live without food and air. 
Man cannot create fire without a device, but 
he can extinguish fire with water or a fire 
extinguisher when fire spreads. Even if man 
can put out fire, it is not considered in the 
power of humans to extinguish fire because 
they simply make use of the power (spirits) of 
water or the fire extinguisher, which exceed 
human capabilities and thus are gods. When a 
fire becomes too fierce for humans to control, 
they cannot do anything but wait for it to die 
down on its own. This is interpreted as the 
anger of the fire god being so enormous that 
the gods of the water and the extinguisher 
cannot appease its rage. When the fire loses 
its force, it is thought that the fire god has 
finally calmed down. 
The Ainu's concept of gods extends to 
humans and things that man produces, such 
as tools and utensils. Humans die, and 
likewise, things end their life cycles,- after the 
end of their lives, the spirits of both humans 
and things become gods. If the spirits of 
living entities (gods, humans, and things) are 
26.2 Inaw-*Carving Tool 
Men were responsible for communi¬ 
cating with the gods, which they did 
with the assistance of inaw. The art 
of carving inaw was time-consuming 
and required both a steady hand and 
a sturdy specialized tool. 
(AMNH 70/4156) 
referred to as live spirits, then the spirits after 
death or a life cycle are considered dead 
spirits. The difference between live and dead 
spirits is as follows: the gods, humans, and 
things are integrated beings of form and 
spirit, and the spirit activates the function of 
each being. Take, for example, a human. The 
flesh is the container and the soul a medium 
to activate his or her function as man or 
woman,- the body and soul coexist with each 
other. Other beings, both material or 
immaterial, exist in this same way (Fujimura 
1982,-Obayashi 1997). 
Humans and animals die,- plants wither,- 
rivers and lakes dry up,- volcanoes go extinct,- 
and things end their life cycles. At this stage, 
their spirits leave their containers (fig. 26.1). 
In the case of a human being at death, the 
soul departs from the body, yet the soul is 
considered immortal even after flesh decays 
and bones return to the soil. The spirits are 
thought to repeat themselves and reincarnate 
according to their specific species and gender, 
so for instance, a man will always return as a 
man and a female cat as a female cat. 
The Ainu people believe that dead 
spirits live in deep space. These spirits are 
thought to depart "this world" (the earth) for 
"that world" (where spirits travel to after death 
on the earth, i.e., the next world), which is the 
same as "this world." However, those who 
cannot cut their attachment to this world or 
who bear a grudge or demand a proper spirit¬ 
sending ritual (figs. 26.3, 26.4) remain floating 
around on earth instead of moving on,- when 
they find an appropriate person, they try to 
fulfill their wishes using that individual's body. 
26 / KAMUY: AINU GODS 19 3 
Thus, that person becomes possessed by the 
spirit. The Ainu people believe that gods have 
this supernatural power. 
Once possession takes place, it is the 
beginning of a tragedy for the possessed and 
those related to him, for this dead spirit is 
often considered to be an evil spirit. There is 
always a man, however, who can free the 
possessed,- this person is either an expert on 
religious rituals, or, even if he has no knowl¬ 
edge of rites, an earnest and reliable indi¬ 
vidual. Through the use of attentive, proper, 
and calming rituals, this person relieves the 
dead of their resentment and attachment so 
that they can depart for the next world with 
peace of mind. No matter how violent and 
harmful the spirit, sincere and appropriate 
rituals appease the evil mind and help reveal 
the spirit's original good nature. 
Gods, humans, and things are all 
essentially good-natured. Nonetheless, as they 
short-tempered while others are kind. These 
examples illustrate the characteristics of spirits. 
In the same manner, the things that humans 
create have diverse shapes and characters 
depending on their intended use and the 
preference of their creators, and the products 
that satisfy the users tend to live a long life and 
are sometimes kept as tokens when their life 
cycles have ended. On the other hand, some 
products are discarded or destroyed before the 
end of their life. Humans generally are free to 
treat things in any way they like,- if, however, 
they become arrogant and abusive, they will 
have to pay a price. Environmental problems 
and various accidents of nature are counterat¬ 
tacks by things against humans and can kill 
them. Gods and things can live within their 
environment independent of others, a feature 
unique to them. Carnivorous animals eat the 
meat of others,- herbivorous animals feed on 
plants,- water becomes rain, snow, or ice,- water 
26.3, 26.4 Carving Inaw 
The process of carving inaw captured 
the attention of Japanese Ainu-e artist 
Shimanojo Murakami, who depicted it in 
his Illustrations of Ezo Livelihood in the 
early nineteenth century. One hundred 
years later Bronislaw Pilsudski captured 
a similar scene with his camera as 
Sakhalin Ainu prepared for an iyomante 
ceremony. (HML; NAA 87-5542). 
grow older, their minds become complex and 
sometimes create trouble,- when they cannot 
control their minds, they tend to attack 
others. If this uncontrollable mind is treated 
while still alive on the earth, the person can 
go to the next world as a good-hearted god. 
In contrast, if a human cannot solve his 
problems by the time of his death, he will 
become a god with an evil mind. 
The spirit is also believed to be the source 
that determines species, gender, character, and 
ability (spiritual power) in a particular being. 
The spirit, in the form of a human life, grows 
and ages. In addition, the spirit's natural 
abilities exert considerable influence on the 
formation of character and ability in the 
person,- this explains why, for example, some 
people are good at math,- why others have 
aptitude for languages,- and why some are 
vapor creates clouds—these are activities in 
the gods' world. Humans utilize the gifts of 
gods and things but gods do not need gifts 
from humans. In human history, man has 
rarely contributed to gods,- what might appear 
as human offerings to the gods are really favors 
returned (for instance, the bear ceremony). 
The relationship among gods, humans, 
and things is that the life of humans is 
supported by things provided by gods,- thus, 
humans are dependent on the other two and 
cannot live without them. In a sense, the 
weakest being on the earth is the human, and 
the only talent humans are furnished with 
that exceeds the ability of gods and things is 
their ability with language and rituals (figs. 
26.5, 26.6). Humans utilize such skills and act 
as the medium between the gods and things, 
trying to create harmony among the three, 
1 94 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / H FUJIMURA 
26.5 Ikupasuy 
Although there are many types of 
inaw, the form of each type was stan¬ 
dardized. Men’s personal ikupasuy 
(prayer sticks), on the other hand, were 
highly individualistic and artistically 
diverse. Recurrent themes and motifs, 
such as geometric, floral, and fishscale 
designs, ayus and morew (whorl) pat¬ 
terns, and fish motifs (all seen here) 
are found, but no two specimens are 
alike. Humans are never carved on 
ikupasuy. (BMS C18761, C18764, 
C18770, C14724a and C13467) 
which is thought to be the first step in 
creating a peaceful world. An Ainu saying 
states, "Because of humans (and their efforts), 
gods (including things) can exist in peace,- 
because of gods' thoughtful arrangements, 
humans can live a peaceful life." 
This relationship can be explained using 
the concept of duty and rights: the gods have a 
duty to protect humans but they retain the right 
to be compensated for this protection,- humans 
have the right to receive the gods' protection 
yet are obligated to return their favors. In other 
words, gods, including things, and humans are 
equal and maintain their existence through 
mutual cooperation. 
Humans are not flawless. They are quite 
self-indulgent, and once things are going 
smoothly they relax and are apt to become 
lazy. When this situation continues, certain 
gods also relax, following the example of the 
humans, and then the evil gods take advan¬ 
tage of the humans' unguarded mind and try 
to harm them. Sometimes the gods, who are 
supposed to protect humans, instead hurt 
them as a punishment for their careless 
behaviors,- when this happens, the human 
realizes that his laziness invited punishment. 
Regretting his wrong behavior, he conducts a 
ceremony to express his regret and appease 
the anger of the god. Even if the ceremonies 
are performed properly and sincerely, 
however, it is not certain that the gods will 
accept the apologies, for such judgments will 
be made collectively based on the dreams and 
feelings of those participating in the ritual. If 
the gods do not accept the apologies, even 
more courteous rituals will have to take place. 
If the content of the ceremonies becomes too 
26 / KAMUY.- AINU CODS 195 
26.6 Ikupasuy Stories 
The imagery on some ikupasuy seems 
to be narrative. For instance, the juxta¬ 
position of a boat and a whale (bottom) 
suggests commemoration of a hunt or a 
prayer to ensure a successful future 
hunt. The carving on the upper speci¬ 
men has the form of an animal, but it is 
too abstract to identify further. (BMS 
C13466, C12988) 
complex for ordinary people, shamans are 
called upon to read the god's mind. 
If humans conduct proper rituals and are 
grateful for the gods' protection — from cer¬ 
tain harmful situations such as natural disas¬ 
ters, epidemics, poor harvests, abnormal 
weather—but are still plagued by problems, 
they can protest and argue with the gods. 
Occasionally, they get rid of some gods, and 
gods can be compelled through the fire god¬ 
dess to provide a detailed explanation of the 
specific incident in question. Humans can 
demand deprivation of the god's status, purge 
it from the fellowship of other gods, take back 
offerings they provided, and ask for appropri¬ 
ate compensation for damages. The god who 
is sued must apologize to the accuser in a dream 
and pledge future protection. Sometimes the 
god asks for forgiveness through shamans. 
A god, even though the most powerful 
entity, must ask for forgiveness from humans 
because gods (especially the dead spirits) are 
supposed to follow the words of man. The 
words of man (word spirits) become absolute 
power and can bind the dead spirits,- the words 
become a curse. The time required for a god's 
reincarnation, unlike for humans, is very short. 
Human words can eternally bind gods, unethi¬ 
cal humans, and things, who are released only 
by the words of those who initially bound 
them. The words of living humans, therefore, 
are feared by the dead spirits. 
Where do the dead souls—spirits who 
died in this world — go? Death for a human 
is the state when the soul departs from the 
body, but sometimes the spirit tries to 
return. Imagine a situation where a person 
is bedridden for a long time from serious 
illness or aging,- it is obvious to everyone 
that death is near. The Ainu describe this 
situation as one where a person has entered 
the preparation stage of being a god (dead 
spirit). When the person's condition wors¬ 
ens, he may begin talking about matters after 
his death—for instance, a will—and by so 
doing he is notifying the people around him 
that he is dying. Once he loses conscious¬ 
ness the spirit is thought to begin departing 
the body, and his delirious talk and delu¬ 
sions are regarded as conversation with 
people who come to greet him, such as 
grandparents, parents, brothers, and sisters. 
Dying people who are highly sensitive can 
identify these people, and sometimes they 
can also see and hear extraordinary things, 
including physical manifestions of deceased 
people, the sound of rain and tinkling of 
metal, or light. 
Sick people who open their eyes wide 
and stare at the sky are thought to be looking 
for the entrance to the next world,- when such 
movements stop and the patient ceases to 
respond to the voices of others, this indicates 
that his departure from his body is imminent. 
Breathing may stop, but only when the heart 
stops is he considered dead, for the spirits 
that grow in the container—the body—are 
believed to reside in the heart, and they leave 
the heart by passing through holes in the 
body such as the mouth, nostrils, earholes, 
196 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / H. FUJIMURA 
26.7 Exorcising Illness 
An old method of curing disease, one 
of the primary functions of the Ainu 
shaman, is seen in this photograph 
by Sister M. Inez Hilger, who traveled 
in the Ainu region in 1965-66. The 
patient is bound with bulrush cord, 
and harvesting sickles and knives are 
being used to '‘cut’’ the power of the 
evil spirits. (NAA: Inez Hilger 2-5) 
eyes, navel, and anus. Most dead spirits depart 
through the mouth and nostrils. 
A spirit that has left the body may try 
to return to it. This happens when the spirit 
feels uncertain about its destination. When it 
succeeds in returning to the body, the 
memory of its journey is a near-death experi¬ 
ence,- at this point, if the body is moved even 
slightly the spirit could determine that body 
to be someone else's and look for its own 
body. If it finds a corpse similar in shape, it 
may revive in it, so a dead body is not 
supposed to be moved for about twenty-four 
hours. After confirming that the body will not 
revive, people make funeral arrangements. 
The soul that leaves the body, if free of 
attachments, resentments, and unfulfilled 
wishes, departs for the next world quickly. It 
travels through a cave near its village to a 
large lake, then goes to the mountaintop near 
the lake for its departure. Once this soul 
arrives in the next world, it goes to a paternal 
ancestors' village (if the soul is male) or 
maternal ancestors' village (if female) and is 
guided to the womb of a female half of a 
certain couple who live in the village,- there it 
settles in an invisible small container. In the 
container the soul begins to grow as an 
embryo that will eventually be born in the 
next world. The newborn will slowly grow up 
absorbing the culture of the next world, 
although it cannot communicate there 
because it can only speak the language of 
this world, the one it had previously inhab¬ 
ited. How the life of this baby develops is 
preconditioned by the way it lived in the 
previous world. After its life in the next 
world is completed, it will be born again on 
earth through the same process. 
The Ainu people believe that one's flesh 
and bones are nothing but the container of 
the spirit, which exists for the purpose of 
living one's life and will be abandoned after 
this use. Because the soul is immortal, it goes 
back and forth between two worlds eternally. 
In this sense, the concept is similar to the 
transmigration of the spirit in Buddhism,- 
however, the Ainu have neither the notions 
of paradise nor of hell as in Buddhism and 
lack terms for such entities. In the Amu view, 
the conditions in which each human lives are 
a result of one's own efforts in life, not from 
preordained fate, and this notion applies to 
gods and things as well. 
The starting point of the Ainu religion 
is the fundamental idea that the difference 
between life and death lies with the spirits 
and that each spirit possesses a unique abil¬ 
ity or spiritual power. For generations, the 
Ainu people have examined questions and 
rectified problems by applying the theory 
of spirits to their real lives (fig. 26.7), and 
their religion encompasses philosophy, 
science, law, medicine, sociology, and edu¬ 
cation. Specific examples of Ainu cultural 
beliefs are contained in their legends, folk¬ 
lore, and narratives. 
The Ainu people, who today live a 
modern life, still value spiritual aspects of 
their religion even if they have been con¬ 
verted to various Japanese or Western 
ideologies. Through special occasions such 
as funerals, memorial services, exorcisms, 
festivals of gods, and oracles delivered via 
shamans, the Ainu feel that their traditional 
ideas and customs are still alive in them 
and that their identity lies in Ainu culture. 
Although the world faces diverse environ¬ 
mental problems today, the Ainu people are 
inspired by the wisdom of their ancestors to 
create a happy relationship with nature,- now 
they have begun relearning the tradition of 
mutual respect between humans and kamuy 
in the hope that they can contribute to the 
future of the world. 
2 6 / KAMUY: AINU GODS 197 
The Ainu 
Ecosystem 
Hitoshi Watanabe 
27.1 Village Economy 
The kotan, or village, was both the high¬ 
est political structure and the economic 
basis for Ainu life. Hunting, fishing, and 
gathering plant foods, supplemented by 
small amounts of produce raised in gar¬ 
dens, provided the basic resources for 
life. (UMA, photo by B. Lyman) 
The Ainu are the indigenous 
population of southern Sakhalin, 
Hokkaido, and the southern part 
of the Kurile Islands and are 
regarded as a single ethnic group. They are 
distinguished from Japanese and from other 
indigenous peoples like the Okinawans by 
their distinct language and customs. This 
essay describes the culture-ecosystem com¬ 
plex of only one of these Ainu groups, the 
Hokkaido Ainu. 
The Hokkaido Ainu were forced to alter 
their traditional hunting, fishing, and gather¬ 
ing way of life by the Meiji government of 
Japan during the 1880s. For example, they 
were forced to relocate to marginal land in 
often vain attempts to make small-scale farm¬ 
ing the means of earning their livelihood. 
Relocation, economic change, and lifestyle 
changes had a disastrous effect on their social 
structure. This essay will discuss the status of 
the northeastern part abounds in such conifer¬ 
ous trees as silver fir (Picea jezoensis) and white fir 
(Abies sacbalinensis). Large land mammals include 
brown bear (Ursus arctos) and deer (Cervus 
nippon). The ancestors of today's Ainu were 
hunter-gatherers who exploited their resources 
by hunting, fishing, and collecting various wild 
plants. In Hokkaido, the monthly mean 
temperature between December and March is 
below zero degrees centigrade, and the land is 
usually covered with heavy snow during this 
period. This natural environment affected life 
cycles in the biological world and influenced 
Ainu seasonal activities and lifeways. 
The Ainu had permanent dwellings as 
the base for family life, with several houses 
forming a village (kotan,- figs. 27.1, 27.2). The 
house usually had a thatched roof, and a small 
attached porch, used to store fish traps, fish 
spears, and other equipment, led to the living 
room. In the living room was a hearth at the 
27.2 Ainu Kotan 
Ainu life was centered around the 
kotan, which consisted of a small num¬ 
ber of family residences (chise) located 
along a fishing stream or a protected 
coastal bay or river. Nineteenth-century 
Hokkaido Ainu houses were framed 
light-log constructions covered with 
grass or reed thatch. A typical family 
compound consisted of a residence, an 
elevated shed for food, male and female 
toilets, and sometimes a log crib used 
as a bear cage. (Fong Chow Collection, 
photo by Felice Beato) 
the Ainu during the period immediately pre¬ 
ceding this social degradation, before village 
relocation and the Japanese government's 
land-allocation program caused a permanent 
rupture of the Ainu ecosystem. The descrip¬ 
tions here are based on information collected 
from elderly Ainu informants between 1952 
and 1959 (H. Watanabe 1973: 1-5). 
Hokkaido is an island with a range of 
mountains and hills extending from north to 
south in the central area and rivers radiating in 
all directions. In most of these rivers there are 
successive runs of two kinds of Pacific salmon, 
dog salmon (Oncorhyncbus keta) and cherry 
salmon (Oncorhyncbus masou). The island is well 
wooded,- the southwestern part is rich in 
latifoliate trees (represented by beech), while 
center,- at the end of the room was a small 
window (kamuy-puyar), which is considered 
sacred and dedicated to ceremonial use (fig. 
31.5). Occupants of the house generally 
formed a nuclear family. 
Ainu life cannot be explained apart from 
the supernatural environment. Kamuy—the 
spirits believed to pervade all parts of the 
world—provided an active link between the 
Ainu and nature. Belief in kamuy was a basic 
principle that governed all elements of Ainu 
society, including production and consump¬ 
tion, territoriality, kinship, social organization, 
and social sanctions. The house and family life 
in the kotan were an important focus for all 
activities that maintained relationships 
between the people and kamuy. 
198 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / H WATANABE 
27.4 Ainu Ecosystem 
This schematic diagram illustrates the 
iwor, or territory surrounding a village 
that constitutes its resource zone. 
Hitoshi Watanabe's research on 
typical Ainu settlements in river valleys 
revealed the importance of these 
resource zones for the subsistence 
economy, (after H. Watanabe 1973) 
27.3 Changing Lands, Changing Media 
Before the arrival of Japanese set¬ 
tlers, Ainu occupied both coastal and 
interior regions of Hokkaido, as the 
Sakhalin and Kurile Ainu did until they 
lost their lands to Japanese and 
Russians. Paintings like this from 
Shimanojo Murakami’s Curious Sights 
of Ezo Island (1799) reveal the 
importance of coastal resources in 
early Ainu history. Ainu-e rarely depict 
life in the interior of these islands 
because Japanese artists did not 
often venture beyond the Japanese 
settlements on the coast. By the time 
photographic documentation began 
after the 1860s, most Ainu had been 
forced from valuable coastal lands by 
Japanese settlement and were living 
primarily in interior villages. (HML) 
3 4 
hunting 
hut | 
River and tributaries- 
fishing 
River banks- 
plant collecting; i 
cultivation of plants 
River terraces- 
deer hunting (autumn); 
plant collecting; 
habitation 
Hillsides along the river course- 
deer hunting (early winter and spring); 
bear hunting (occasional or subsidiary) 
Riverhead mountain region- 
bear hunting (periodic and intensive); 
collection of elm bark 
The directional orientation of the house 
was determined by the location of the sacred 
window, which was placed in relation to the 
main river of the kotan, namely upstream or 
toward the source of a salmon river. Inside the 
house, allocation of space, such as areas for 
living and placement of furniture, was made 
with reference to the location of the hearth 
and the sacred window. The fire in the hearth 
was where the fire goddess, Fuchi, resided. 
Because communication with all other kamuy 
was considered impossible without Fuchi's 
mediation, all kamuy rituals began with a 
ceremony at the hearth. The sacred window 
provided access to kamuy outside the house 
and was an entrance and exit dedicated to the 
bear kamuy, who visited the house during the 
hear ceremony. 
Outside the sacred window was an altar 
(nusa), which also faced upstream and was 
used for kamuy ceremonies. The space 
between the sacred window 
and the altar was used as the 
ritual site for the bear 
ceremony. The upstream 
orientation came from a 
religious belief that the 
homeland of the bear kamuy 
is in the mountains, where 
the source of the salmon 
rivers is also located. 
Surrounding the house 
were various structures (fig. 
27.2) and sites relating to 
consumption of food and the 
preparation of raw materials, 
including a place to skin 
animals, drying frames for 
meat and fish, a cage for bear cubs, a food- 
storage shed, a storehouse, and disposal 
areas. These structures and sites were also 
arranged along directional orientation lines 
(FT Watanabe 1973: fig. 1). According to 
Ainu belief, food and materials were gifts 
from the kamuy which they brought on their 
bodies. Therefore, all consumption activities 
had to be accompanied by various kinds of 
kamuy rituals. Every sacred place was marked 
by inaw (sacred shaved sticks) set up as 
offerings to the kamuy. 
Kamuy ceremonies were also held at the 
hunting, fishing, and collecting sites. The 
house in the kotan was a ritual center con¬ 
necting the hunting and fishing sites through 
ceremonies led by the family patriarch (fig. 
27.3). The headman of the local group 
presided over the important communal 
rituals, especially those related to salmon 
fishing and hear hunting. 
The kotan was generally situated along 
a river with a dog-salmon run, below the 
upper limit of the run, and was at the center 
of various resource-distribution zones (FT 
Watanabe 1964a: fig. 14). People exploited 
hunting, fishing, and collecting sites sur¬ 
rounding the kotan and transported food and 
other resources into the kotan (FT Watanabe 
1973: figs. 7, 8). The usual configuration of a 
kotan, illustrated in fig. 27.4, was centered on 
a salmon river (Zone 1) near the habitual 
fishing site of the people of the kotan and the 
spawning grounds of dog salmon. This site 
and a secondary site on a branch river for 
fishing cherry salmon during its spawning 
period defined the territory of a local group 
Zone 2 included riverbanks where Ainu 
collected edible plants—in spring, new 
27/ AINU ECOSYSTEM 199 
27.5 River-Fishing Expedition 
The great Japanese commercial photog¬ 
rapher Kusakabe Kimbei was one of the 
first to record the Ainu with a camera. 
This nineteenth-century view, attributed 
to Kimbei, illustrates the use of exotic 
subject matter and composition; such 
tinted images evoked a lyrical landscape 
that appealed to foreign and Japanese 
tourists in the early Meiji period. (LC) 
leaves,- in summer, lily root (turep) (H. 
Watanabe 1986: 247),- in autumn, nuts and 
berries. Zone 3 included terraced fields near 
the edge of the kotan where they hunted deer, 
whose meat was preserved for winter consumption. 
Zone 4, mountainous areas on both sides of the 
river, was rich in coniferous trees and, as the winter 
range of deer, was the site of deer hunting in early 
winter and early spring. Deer hunting also 
occurred in the fields in autumn (zone 3),- in early 
spring the purpose of hunting was mainly to obtain 
the heavy fur the animals had grown for winter. 
Zone 5 was the source area of the salmon river in 
the mountains with shaip slopes above the limit of 
the dog-salmon ain. While there were few deer 
here, this zone had many bear and was the center 
of their hibernation area. This area was the focus of 
bear hunting, which was conducted periodi¬ 
cally according to precise plans, and here, in 
early spring, bears born in January or February 
were captured for the bear ceremony. 
Staples and most other necessary resources 
were procured in zones 1 to 3, which lay within 
a one-day round-trip from the kotan. This prox¬ 
imity enabled people to occupy the kotan 
throughout the year. For hunting and fishing 
trips far from the kotan, small structures were 
built, typically bear-hunting huts in zone 5 and 
winter deer-hunting cottages in zone 4,- salmon¬ 
fishing cottages were built in some areas (FT 
Watanabe 1973: map 2). Because hunting and 
fishing required someone to stay in the seasonal 
huts for a period of time, it was generally con¬ 
sidered men's work (fig. 27.5). Women and 
children remained home, gathering and process¬ 
ing plants and drying and storing 
wild game brought in from the 
hunting and fishing sites. 
In December the salmon run 
stopped, deer disappeared from 
the fields around the kotan, bears 
began to hibernate, and the land 
became covered with snow until 
March (fig. 27.6). During this part 
of winter, the Ainu depended 
primarily on presewed food. Dog 
salmon was the winter staple, and so 
the volume of its annual mn strongly 
influenced Ainu existence. The 
second most important subsistence 
activity was deer hunting, but bear 
hunting was more prestigious. 
Women and children could 
participate in salmon fishing and 
deer hunting, but bear hunting was 
the prerogative of men and was 
conducted with great decorum. 
The spatial distribution of hunting, 
fishing, and collecting sites (zones I to 5) and 
the annual and daily cycles of subsistence 
activities fit well to the spatial-temporal 
structure of the habitat. This adaptation 
depended on the periodicity of the biotic 
environment—the appearance and disappear¬ 
ance of plants, animal movements, and 
hibernation—which characterized the 
northern habitat. According to the traditional 
Ainu view of environment, however, the man- 
nature relationship is not just a single physical 
system. In their view, animals and plants were 
not simply physical entities but had two 
aspects that were thing and non-thing. They 
believed that the periodicity of their habitat 
was not due to scientific principles but was a 
phenomenon maintained and guaranteed by 
their ceremonial activities. This belief is 
clearly expressed in Ainu animal rituals. 
Various ceremonies articulate this view, 
principally the rituals concerning large and 
small species, best represented by those 
focused on bear and salmon. Although these 
two ceremonies have some variation, as do 
lesser ceremonies, the underlying belief was 
the same. According to the hayokpe (disguise) 
theory, bears and salmon are the disguised 
bearers of animal kamuy who visit the Ainu. 
The Ainu reward them with gifts and 
welcome them as honored guests because 
they need the kamny's presents of fish, meat, 
and fur. The people send the kamuy home 
with inaw, sake, and other gifts, hoping that 
200 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / H WATANABE 
the animal kamuy will wish to visit again the 
Ainu who so respectfully welcomed them. 
The principle belief of the salmon ritual, 
which is the same for bear rituals, is enunciated 
in three stages: (1) the first ceremony, held 
while waiting for salmon kamuy to appear, 
includes predictions of when the run will begin; 
(2) the first-salmon ceremony coincides with 
the first run near the kotan and celebrates the 
salmon kamuy as the first visitor of the season,- 
(3) at the end of spawning, a ceremony is held 
at the spawning grounds of the local group in 
which a mandible bone that represents all 
salmon kamuy caught by the local group is sent 
home to the spirit world. For a certain period— 
at the appearance of silver salmon in the late 
phase of the run—between stages two and 
three, the use of bag-nets, fishing implements 
used mainly by women and children for night 
fishing (the most active time of the spawning 
27.6 Ice Fishing 
Hokkaido’s long coid winters, with 
heavy snowfalls, often made deer 
and bear hunting difficult. At such 
times, ice-hole fishing provided im¬ 
portant food resources, as Byozan 
Hirasawa illustrates in this nine¬ 
teenth-century painting. In general, 
Ainu lands offered sufficient food, 
and starvation was rare. (HMM) 
run) was taboo (H. Watanabe 1973: 29). Salmon 
ceremonies are conducted by each local group, 
and all male members of the group participate. 
The ritual procedure of salmon fishing 
was synchronized with the biological cycle of 
salmon, and that in turn was synchronized 
with the exploitation process. The ritual cycle 
of salmon fishing and the relationship among 
these three phases served as both a stimulus 
and pacemaker for the technological cycle 
(H. Watanabe 1973: fig. 4). 
While the homeland of the salmon 
kamuy was identified as the sea, the bear 
kamuy reside in the sacred mountains at the 
headwaters of each hunter's salmon river 
(H. Watanabe 1973: 73; 1990). This place 
was the seat of the chief bear kamuy for 
the entire river basin, who was known as 
metorushi-kamuy and was the highest-ranked 
kamuy of the Ainu pantheon. The bear¬ 
hunting system was managed more strictly 
than other subsistence activities because 
it concerned the kamuy. Only young men 
who were believed capable of administering 
the activity with no errors were selected to 
inherit the management procedures,- thus, 
not all Ainu men were bear hunters. 
The bear ritual involved two types of 
ceremonies: the bear-sending ceremony for 
animals killed in the forests and another 
for bear cubs reared in the kotan. Only the 
highest-qualified and most honored hunters, 
who formed an elite stratum of Ainu society 
(H. Watanabe 1983,- 1992), were permitted 
to be participants in the iyomante bear cere¬ 
mony for this highest-ranked kamuy. Their 
special status was clearly reflected in their 
assigned roles and seats. These ceremonies 
were conducted by the largest Ainu cor¬ 
porate kin groups (sbine itokpa), and all bear 
hunters of each group participated (H. 
Watanabe 1964b: fig. 2). These hunters 
identified their traditional social relationship 
with metorushi-kamuy of their river basin 
through a patrilineal ancestral mark (itokpa) 
common to their group, which was engraved 
on inaw offered to the bear kamuy and on a 
man's ikupasuy (prayer stick). 
The Ainu ecosystem is not a simple 
physical system. Its structure is based on 
principles of social solidarity between man, 
biotic species, and kamuy; two subsystems— 
bear and salmon rituals—deal with physical 
aspects of the biotic world in both techno¬ 
logical and spiritual aspects. Kamuy-nomi, the 
belief that the gods had to be celebrated, is 
the core of the ritual aspect. The function of 
this system was to sustain Ainu behavioral 
adaptation to the spatial-temporal structure 
of the northern environment. 
27/ AINU ECOSYSTEM 201 
Foods of 
Choice 
TOSHIHIRO KoHARA 
28.1 June: Gathering Seaweed 
In his series of sketches describing the 
monthly cycle of the Ainu year, Byozan 
Hirasawa painted this scene of Ainu 
boats sailing off the coast of Hokkaido 
while Ainu gather seaweed, a dietary 
staple and an important export product 
to Honshu. The images in Hirasawa’s 
series, Ainu Manners and Customs, 
painted after 1872, show the different 
activities that occupied the Ainu in 
each season. (HMH) 
INU BELIEVE THAT EVERYTHING 
edible—including such mammals 
as bears and deer, such fish as 
salmon and trout, and such plants 
as the lily—are given to the human world by 
the gods (kamuy) that represent these species. 
Some of these kamuy, notably bears, are still 
worshipped by many Ainu in private and 
public ceremonies. Although Ainu no longer 
explicitly worship the kamuy of salmon, trout, 
or deer, they pray to the kamuy who control 
these animals to ensure that they will return 
to the human world again as gifts of food 
from the gods. While the Ainu do not 
worship plants directly, they give thanks to 
the kamuy who ensure their regeneration and 
who taught humans how to use them for food, 
medicine, and other purposes. These beliefs 
have been handed down in stories that teach 
lessons about the importance of these foods 
and the consequences—famine—if they 
are withheld. 
Although certain aspects of Ainu culture 
such as the spirit-sending ceremonies (iyomante), 
oral traditions, clothing, and material culture 
have been studied, the traditional Ainu diet, 
which was the basis for daily life, has only 
recently become a matter of ethnological 
investigation. As a result, today we know 
about Ainu eating habits and foods dating 
back only to the middle of the nineteenth 
century, after which time the consumption of 
traditional Ainu foods declined greatly due to 
economic and lifestyle changes resulting from 
assimilation policies implemented after the 
Meiji period began in 1868. 
Contrary to the general impression 
created by the image of the Ainu as hunters 
who used poisoned arrows and traps, meat 
was not the dominant element of the Ainu 
diet but was used to supplement more impor¬ 
tant foods like seaweed, plants, and fish 
(fig. 28.1). Wild plants gathered by women 
from fields and hills were particularly impor¬ 
tant (fig. 28.4), and in the past their collec¬ 
tion and preservation consumed a large part 
of daily Ainu life (fig. 28.2). As soon as the 
snow began to melt in spring and the trees 
and grass began their cycle of new growth, 
the Ainu had to begin once again preparing 
for the coming winter. The annual task of 
preserving food was, and continues to be, 
crucial to supplying their nutritional needs 
during a long winter and for avoiding unpre¬ 
dictable famines that occurred when fish or 
game became scarce. 
The best source of information about 
plant foods and uses is the volume dedicated 
to that subject in Mashiho Chiri's Classified 
Dictionary of the Ainu Language (1953—62). In 
most cases the Ainu name plants according to 
their uses: if they are collected when their 
flowers are in bloom, Ainu remember them 
by their flowers, but if they did not eat the 
blossoms or use them to identify the plants, 
they often had no knowledge of them. Plants 
that were of no use to the Ainu were fre¬ 
quently left unnamed, and sometimes similar 
or identical words were given to different 
plants. Rather than using systematic botanical 
classification, the Ainu only categorized those 
plants that were important to them,- this sys¬ 
tem varied from region to region, so identical 
plants had different names or different plants 
had the same name according to local usage. 
202 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / T. KOHARA 
28.4 Ainu Foods 
In addition to salmon (right), tradi¬ 
tional Ainu foods included such 
plants as wild anemone (Anemone 
flaccida), wild garlic, cow parsnip, and 
skunk cabbage, which were collected 
and dried whole or were boiled and 
dried. Lily roots (left) were also boiled 
to extract starch used for dumplings 
(center) in soups and stews. (HACRC) 
However, most plants that were important in 
the Ainu diet are named identically through¬ 
out Hokkaido. (Interestingly, names of ani¬ 
mals and fish do not vary geographically as 
often as do those of plants.) 
In some cases names of regions were 
based on the types of plants common to those 
regions: for instance, areas with particularly 
luxuriant growths of edible plants had names 
reflecting these characteristics. As a result of 
the agricultural and forestry development 
projects that began in the Meiji period, 
however, the plants that gave these regions 
their distinctive names often no longer exist 
and the regions cannot be recognized because 
of the loss of traditional knowledge of local 
flora as well as ecological changes. 
Most preserved foods were made from 
plants that were collected in spring and then 
kept in storehouses next to the family's main 
house. Because there was no possibility of 
preservation by refrigeration (except in some 
north coastal villages where sea ice could 
be gathered and stored) and salt was a very 
expensive commodity that could only be 
obtained by trade from the Japanese, most 
foods were preserved by drying. Plants such as 
wild garlic (cjyoja ninniku), cow parsnip (oohana 
udo), skunk cabbage (bimezazen so), and a kind 
of anemone (nirin so) were collected and dried 
whole or were boiled and then dried. In 
addition, the Ainu, rather than eating the 
tender new growth or young shoots of a wild 
plant, instead waited until the plant grew large 
in order to harvest and preserve as much edible 
28.2, 28.3 Stripping Grain 
Various grains, including barnyard and 
foxtail millet, were grown for food and 
beverage in small garden plots; the 
Ainu also grew wheat, vegetables, 
greens, and root plants. This image 
from the early-nineteenth-century 
work Illustrations of Ezo Livelihood by 
Shimanojo Murakami shows Ainu 
women stripping grain from its sheath. 
Grain-strippers (pipa) made from mus¬ 
sel shells were held in the palm of the 
hand by a loop around the two middle 
fingers. Although the Ainu gardened, 
true agriculture was not practiced in 
Hokkaido until new cold-resistant strains 
of rice revolutionized Hokkaido’s agri¬ 
cultural potential, leading to the open¬ 
ing of Hokkaido to Japanese farmers 
after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. 
(BMA 12.181; HML) 
28/ FOODS OF CHOICE 203 
material as possible. They also caught large 
quantities of salmon and trout from early spring 
into the fall and preserved them by grilling, 
drying, or smoking,- deer and bear meat were 
also dried or smoked. 
Food derived from processing lily root 
(turep) was shaped into a disc with a hole 
pierced through the center so that it could be 
strung above the hearth, where it would be 
kept all year long. The Ainu also picked the 
bulbs of nonflowering plants in June and July 
and extracted starch that was dried and 
preserved in ways that varied from region to 
region in Hokkaido. Sometimes this starch 
was made into dumplings that enriched soup 
or rice gruel. Disc-shaped dumplings made 
with the hardened fibers that remained after 
the starch was removed could be saved for 
years,- these were broken into pieces and 
soaked to extract starch and flavor. Such foods 
continue to have an important role in Ainu 
ceremonial life. 
Historical evidence has shown that 
limited farming was practiced by the Ainu in 
the southern parts of Hokkaido during the 
Edo period (1615-1 868). People cultivated 
and ate barnyard millet, foxtail millet, barley, 
wheat, adzuki beans, hemp, peas, soybeans, 
vetch, rattlebox (Crotolaria), daikon, leek or 
onion, cucumber, tomato, potatoes, and two 
types of American squash (Hayashi 1975), but 
these foods were always supplements and did 
not become staples until farming became fully 
established in the late nineteenth and early 
28.7 
28.6 
28.6-28.8 Cooking Utensils 
Even simple utensils like spatulas for 
stirring millet and serving platters were 
often decorated with artful carving. 
(BMS C13461, C13462; BMA 12.353) 
28.5 Fish Roe Masher 
Mashers, called ciporninap, were used 
to make such traditional foods as 
boiled potatoes and salmon roe. Mash¬ 
ers were made from the katsura tree 
because it imparted the least odor and 
taste. (BMA 12.588) 
28.5 
204 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / T. KOHARA 
28.9 
28.9 Serving Ladles 
Ainu ladles were made in many differ¬ 
ent forms. Soup ladles like these were 
called rurkasup; large ladles used to 
stir rice mash when making sake were 
called sakaekasup. The lower spoon 
was collected in Piratori, Hokkaido, by 
Romyn Hitchcock in 1888. (MPM 
N17027; NMNH 150,670) 
twentieth centuries. Rice was generally not 
grown locally but was obtained, along with 
other grains, through trade with the Japanese, 
and became an essential ingredient for making 
sake and dumplings for use in ceremonies 
(fig. 28.1 3). The introduction of rice is marked 
by the appearance of mortars and pestles 
among the Ainu of southern Hokkaido,- these 
tools were used to create various ground- 
rice products. 
Recent archaeological evidence suggests 
that during the prehistoric Satsumon era, 
people made greater use of plant products 
than has previously been believed (Crawford 
and Yoshizaki 1987). In addition to local plant 
products—barnyard and foxtail millet—seeds 
of barley, wheat, adzuki and inung beans, hemp, 
beefsteak plant (shiso), rice, and melon have 
been found in numerous sites in southwestern 
Hokkaido dating as early as A.D. 900. These 
data suggest that in addition to making use of 
a wide variety of natural resources of their land, 
the early Ainu adopted plants from Japan and 
the Asian continent for use in local gardening. 
The Ainu utilized this variety of food 
resources to create a tasty and varied table 
fare. It was common to have two meals a day, 
one in the morning and one in the evening. 
The typical daily menu consisted of various 
soups and, after an active rice trade was 
established with Japan, rice gruel flavored 
with seasonal wild vegetables and fish. Fish 
and meat—always eaten cooked, not raw— 
were also flavored with freshly picked wild 
plants, vegetables, and legumes and, in 
winter, with dried plants. In addition to 
drying salmon for future use, salmon was 
sometimes eaten raw with green onion, but 
most fish was generally cooked. Other types 
of flavors were obtained by using sardine oil, 
Pacific herring, and Pacific cod,- fat from 
seals, sea lions, whales, and dolphins, and 
small amounts of salt. The Ainu also flavored 
some foods with the sap of sugar-maple trees, 
which sweetened the food as it simmered. 
Most Ainu food, however, would be rather 
bland to modern tastes. 
In Hokkaido and the Kuriles, the Ainu 
crafted bowls, platters, spoons, and cups of 
wood and birch bark (figs. 28.5-28.12),- 
larger bowls were obtained by trade with 
Japan. The Sakhalin Ainu, however, created 
large, beautifully sculpted serving bowls. 
Wooden utensils were frequently decorated 
with delicate sculptural and engraved designs 
in floral and geometric motifs. Because the 
Ainu diet often included soups and gruels, 
their utensils included spoons and small 
spatulas. Chopsticks were also used. 
This brief description has addressed 
traditional Ainu foods primarily in the 
central and southern region of Hokkaido,- 
coastal Ainu had a diet that was rich in 
marine products and varied from region to 
region. Ainu everywhere utilized the many 
wild plant foods available to them, in the 
southern regions, they also practiced garden 
agriculture. With Japanization, the introduc- 
28/ FOODS OF CHOICE 205 
28.10 Kurile Spoons 
Museum records indicate that these 
two spoons were collected from the 
Kurile Ainu in the early twentieth century. 
They resemble festival spoons used by 
the Nivhki of northern Sakhalin, but such 
spoons are found occasionally in Kurile 
and Hokkaido collections, possibly indi¬ 
cating trade or marriage exchange with 
Sakhalin. (BMS C13474, C13475) 
28.11 
28.13 
206 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / T. KOHARA 
28.14 Brewing Rice Wine 
Brewing alcoholic beverages from millet 
and imported rice was an old tradition. 
The large lacquerware vessels used for 
this purpose are illustrated in the pic¬ 
ture scroll Ainu Manners and Customs, 
painted by Hokuyo Nishikawa in the 
late nineteenth century. (HML) 
’'///'//WS'&k 
. ■ ■"/////////,/, 
28.15 Storehouse 
This Ainu-e from illustrations of Ezo 
Livelihood, painted by Shimanojo 
Murakami in the early nineteenth cen¬ 
tury, shows women working at the el¬ 
evated storehouses used to keep food 
dry and away from animals. (HML) 
28.11, 28.12, 28.13 
Bowls and Platter 
Ainu serving bowls and platters varied 
regionally but were often made with 
great care. The bowl with the handle 
(fig. 28.13), collected before 1879, 
suggests a Sakhalin origin, perhaps 
traded from the Nivkhi; the bowl at 
top, collected in Hokkaido before 
1888, lacks this feature and has 
crested ends. Both have elegant 
sculptural form and a deep patina 
from decades of use. The decorated 
platter must also have been well 
used by an Ainu family. Carved plat¬ 
ters became a staple of the Ainu tour¬ 
ist trade by the mid-nineteenth cen¬ 
tury, but old, used examples like this 
one show they had deep traditional 
roots. (PMC 22431, 7046; MPM 
N17296) 
tion of new foods engineered for the northern 
climate and the tight regulation of fish and 
game resources have brought many changes 
to the traditional Ainu diet. Even so, Ainu 
continue to use natural foods obtained from 
the mountains, rivers, and coasts. Even 
though most of these are no longer basic 
subsistence foods, they are still caught and 
hunted and are used in ceremonies to thank 
the gods for the bounty of nature. 
28/FOODS OF CHOICE 207 
Technology, 
Settlement, 
and Hunting 
Ritual 
Hans Dieter Olschleger 
29.1 Family of Hunters 
Hokkaido Ainu hunted in the mountains 
from late autumn to early summer. This 
painting shows three men and a dog 
setting out on a hunting expedition. 
Dogs were not only used for tracking 
and driving game but for companion¬ 
ship and protection. This nineteenth- 
century Ainu-e by Koretsu Matsumae 
was purchased by Edward S. Morse; it 
was accessioned by the Peabody Essex 
Museum in 1920. (PEM E17874) 
OR MORE THAN A HUNDRED YEARS 
the Ainu had the not very flattering 
reputation of being one of the most 
primitive peoples in the world. 
Although depicted as friendly and good- 
hearted, they were seen nevertheless as being 
at the lowest rung of the evolutionary ladder 
that nineteenth-century anthropologists were 
so keen to construct. The English traveler 
A. Henry Savage Landor gave a good example 
of this view: 
As a hog delights in filth, so the Ainu can 
only live in dirt, neglect, and savagery of 
personal habits. They are made that way, 
and they cannot help it. They are excluded 
from progress by an impassable barrier.... 
All in all, the Ainu are the furthest behind 
in the great race of human development 
(Landor 1893: 216, 228). 
But this picture was as far from reality as 
it could be, for closer scrutiny reveals that 
traditional Ainu culture was characterized by 
complexity in social and economical terms, a 
complexity that might be compared to that 
of the coastal Indians of northwestern North 
America. Living in a habitat that offered 
varied and sometimes abundant resources, 
the Ainu found many ingenious ways to use 
these resources within the confines of a 
largely hunting, fishing, and gathering way 
of life (fig. 29.1). 
The Ainu Habitat 
The Ainu habitat was a region of transition 
between the subarctic and the temperate zones 
stretching over more than nine degrees of lati¬ 
tude, between the forty-second and the fifty- 
first parallels. The resulting differences in tem¬ 
perature and precipitation were increased fur¬ 
ther by the influence of ocean currents: the 
warm Tsushima Current along the west coast of 
Honshu and Hokkaido and the cold Chishima 
Current (also called Oyashio) touching the 
Kurile Islands and the east coast of Hokkaido. 
A second cold current, the East Sakhalin 
Current, flows southward from eastern Sakhalin 
and influences the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk 
in northeastern Hokkaido. These varied influ¬ 
ences gave rise to different ecological zones, 
each characterized by a unique composition of 
flora and fauna,- they also exercised a profound 
influence on Ainu culture, resulting in regional 
differences in social and economic behavior 
that are often overlooked when describing 
traditional Ainu culture and society. Precisely 
speaking, there was not one single type of 
Ainu culture but rather many regional varieties 
(Olschleger 1989). 
Ainu Subsistence 
The Ainu were hunters, fishermen, and 
gatherers who exploited a variety of natural 
resources (fig. 29.2). The relative value of 
each of these resources for nutrition, clothing, 
ritual, and other purposes varied according 
to the aforementioned ecological regions. In 
addition, since 1710 small-scale horticulture 
was practiced in some parts of southwestern 
Hokkaido (see below). 
Today the Ainu are often depicted as 
hunters of bears. It is true that the brown bear 
(Ursus arctos) played a prominent part in 
mythology and ritual, but as a part of Ainu 
diet its meat was negligible. Far more impor¬ 
tant nutritionally were other land mammals 
208 TRADITIONAL CULTURE/ H. D OLSCHLEGER 
29.2 Hunter in Mountain Clothes 
Ainu hunters spent many days away 
from their villages while hunting in the 
mountains. For these expeditions 
they were equipped with little more 
than a quiver, a bow, a hunting knife, 
a smoking kit, a fire kit, snowshoes, 
and a heavy fur robe that doubled as 
sleeping gear. A staff was used to 
clear underbrush, vault streams, and 
give protection against bears or 
wolves. (NPS/LNHS) 
29.3 Deer Call 
During the fall mating season hunters 
lured male deer with a whistle (ipakkeni 
or irektep), whose sound approximated 
the call of a doe; these were made 
from the bladder of a frog or salmon. 
(BMA 12.583A) 
such as the Sika deer (Cennts nippon, yuh in 
Ainu) in Hokkaido, and muskdeer and rein¬ 
deer on the island of Sakhalin. 
Sika deer roamed the plains and moun¬ 
tains of Hokkaido in enormous numbers until 
they were drastically reduced by Japanese 
hunters during the last quarter of the nine¬ 
teenth century. The Sika migrated from their 
winter terrain in hills along the rivers to 
spend their summer on the plains, and Ainu 
men hunted them during the spring and 
the fall seasons with different methods. 
During the fall migration the hunters erected 
wooden fences in lengths varying between 
several hundred and several thousand feet 
near the villages. Spring bows with poisoned 
arrows were placed in openings left in this 
fence and checked at intervals. The string of 
the bow was held by a trigger fastened to a 
cord so that when a deer tripped the cord, 
the trigger was released and the arrow struck 
the animal. The paths of the migrating deer 
were also barred with wooden spears whose 
tips were hardened by fire and whose shafts 
were set into the ground. 
Whenever possible, Sika were also 
hunted with hand bows and poisoned 
arrows. This method was of special impor¬ 
tance during the mating season when hidden 
hunters lured the male deer with the sound 
of a deer whistle that imitated the call of the 
doe (fig. 29.3). Bows and arrows were also 
used in the hilly regions where the Sika 
spent the winter (fig. 29.4). 
During the spring hunt the hunters 
took advantage of the snow still covering 
wide areas. They drove the deer—often with 
the help of their dogs—into snow patches 
and killed them while they floundered (fig. 
29.5),- sometimes deer were also caught with 
a lasso and killed with clubs. 
On Sakhalin Island, the Sika deer was 
unknown, but reindeer (Rancjifer tarandus, called 
tunakay by the Ainu) and muskdeer (Moschus 
moscbiferus, called opokay) were both hunted 
during the winter with spring bows erected 
along game paths and with hand bows and 
lances,• muskdeer were also caught in snares. 
The extreme maritime ecology of the Kurile 
Islands meant that land mammals had little 
importance in Ainu subsistence there. 
As already mentioned, the brown bear 
was far more important ritually than for 
nutrition. The bear was hunted during the 
spring and fall by groups of younger and 
more active men (fig. 29.8). After the leaves 
29/ SUBSISTENCE TECHNOLOGY 209 
29.5 
29.4, 29.5 Deer Hunting 
Hokkaido Ainu hunted deer in winter 
with bows and arrows as illustrated in 
this scene from Hokuyo Nishikawa's 
Ainu Manners and Customs. Deep snow 
restricted the movements of deer and 
made them more vulnerable to snow- 
shoe-clad hunters. Bows (ku), about one 
meter long, were made of yew or linden 
and had bowstrings made of twisted 
wisteria vine soaked in fish oil. Some, 
like the upper one illustrated, were 
strengthened by cherry-bark wrappings. 
Arrows had feather fletching and points 
of bone, wood, or iron. (MPM N17025; 
NMNH 150642, 150638; HML) 
fell, temporary huts were erected in the 
vicinity of the bears' wintering territory in 
hilly country,- using these huts as base camps, 
hunters roamed the region placing spring 
bows with poison arrows along the game 
paths or pursuing their prey with hand bows 
and poisoned arrows. After the bears with¬ 
drew into their dens to hibernate, the hunters 
began searching for them and flushed them 
out by prodding them with long poles and 
throwing rocks. When the bear emerged, it 
was shot with poisoned arrows. If it was not 
killed immediately, the furious bear often 
charged the men, who stood their ground 
with their poisoned lances wedged against a 
rock. When the bear reached the spear tip the 
hunter would jump aside, leaving his lance 
in place, and the bear would impale himself. 
The same method was used during the spring 
hunt when hunters hoped to catch newborn 
cubs to take back to the village to rear for the 
iyomante ceremony. 
In addition to these land mammals, the 
Ainu hunted foxes {Vulpes vulpes,- Hokkaido 
Ainu chironnup, Kurile Ainu cawcaw), otters 
(Lutra lutra, Ainu esaman), hares (Lepus timidus, 
Kurile Ainu isepo, Sakhalin Ainu osukep), and 
other species with spring bows (figs. 29.6, 
29.7), snares, and special box traps with 
sliding doors activated by bows and trip lines. 
As important as Sika, muskdeer, and rein¬ 
deer were economically, different species of 
anadromous fish, which spend part of their 
lives in the open sea and return to the rivers for 
spawning, were even more crucial for Ainu sur¬ 
vival. The longer rivers of Hokkaido provided 
optimal spawning grounds for cherry salmon 
(Oncorbyncbus mason, Ainu ichaniw, ikreppo, sakipe) 
and dog salmon (Oncorbyncbus keta, Ainu cbep) as 
well as some other species of salmon 
(Oncorbyncbusgorbuscha, Ainu bmoy-, Oncorhyn- 
cbus nerka, Ainu kapatcbep). In addition, other 
anadromous fish such as trout (especially Houcbo 
pertyii, Ainu cbiray, but also Salvelinus malma) and 
a species of carp (’Tribolodon baknensis, Ainu supun) 
could sometimes be caught in quantities. 
The fishing season on Hokkaido started 
in spring and lasted until the beginning of 
TRADITIONAL CULTURE / H. D. OLSCHLEGER 
winter. The first fish to ascend the rivers were 
trout and carp, which were caught in small 
quantities. With the appearance of cherry 
salmon in July the most productive fishing 
activities began In September the dog- 
salmon run began, adding another staple to 
the Hokkaido Ainu diet. 
Different species of fish were caught 
using different methods. Dogs were trained to 
jump into the water and catch salmon, a 
fishing method reported in Hokkaido as well 
as Sakhalin. Pish were also caught by rod and 
line using a single hook or by lines with 
multiple hooks that were left in the water and 
periodically checked. To exploit the migra¬ 
tions of salmon the Ainu constructed brush 
fences across the rivers with openings left at 
intervals for fish traps. Different kinds of nets 
were also used: a trawl net was slowly dragged 
downstream to catch salmon moving in the 
opposite direction,- a small stream would be 
barred across its course by a net,- or fish would 
be driven into a bag-shaped net. 
The most important fishing device was 
the marek, a long spear with a pivoting iron 
hook at its end (fig. 29.1 1). These spears were 
used from a boat, from the bank of the river, or 
from a "peep-fishing" hut (worun cbise), a simple 
shelter constructed on piles over the open 
water or, in winter, on the ice. During the later 
part of the fishing season (November and 
December), the unuek was used in combination 
with a torch (fig. 29.10) that attracted salmon 
by its light (H. Watanabe 1973: 19). 
Salmon was caught in every part of the 
Ainu region, but they were of special impor¬ 
tance in Hokkaido where the rivers were 
longer than those in Sakhalin or in the Kurile 
Islands. In Sakhalin the most important species 
of fish was Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii, Ainu 
beroki). From March to May these fish gathered 
in large shoals along the western coastline to 
spawn, and enormous quantities could be 
caught by the Ainu with simple hand-nets. 
Sea mammals were important only for 
those Ainu living in close vicinity to the open 
sea, for instance, Uchiura (Volcano) Bay and 
parts of eastern Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the 
Kuriles. One species, the ring seal (Pboca 
vitulina), is restricted to the Nemuro Peninsula of 
southeastern Hokkaido and the Kurile Islands, 
while another (Pboca larcjba) can be encountered 
all over the region. Steller sea lions (Eumetopias 
jubata), which live in groups of several hundred 
or even several thousand individuals during the 
breeding season, used to be numerous along the 
29/SUBSISTENCE TECHNOLOGY 
Pacific coasts of Hokkaido (especially 
Shiretoko Peninsula), Sakhalin, and the Kuriles, 
while the sea otter was found only in the area 
surrounding the Kuriles. 
Harpoons were the most important 
implements for hunting seals and sea lions 
and were made in one-pronged and two¬ 
pronged versions (fig. 29.13) in Hokkaido. 
The tip of the harpoon was detachable and 
was fastened to a long line held by the hunter 
(fig. 29.12). The Ainu of northwestern 
Sakhalin hunted in spring when the seals 
gave birth on the drifting ice. Small groups of 
young men left their villages before dawn in 
boats to search for the seals and pups, and 
their hunt might take them far from land 
(Ohnuki-Tierney 1974: 26). 
The relative importance of all these 
resources varied by region. The nineteenth- 
and twentieth-century Ainu of Hokkaido 
were primarily inland hunters, gatherers, and 
fishermen, and only a minority subsisted on 
maritime resources. Sika deer and two species 
of salmon were the dietary staples for humans 
as well as for dogs, which were used only 
for hunting. Even in Hokkaido, the relative 
proportion of these resources varied accord¬ 
ing to region: the farther upstream, the more 
important were Sika deer due to the greater 
concentration of salmon on the lower reaches 
of the rivers. Brown bear and other mammals, 
birds, and fish species were of secondary 
importance for subsistence, and only in a few 
parts of Hokkaido were sea mammals hunted, 
such as the whale in Volcano Bay. 
The Ainu of Sakhalin relied on salmon 
and herring as food for both people and 
dogs during the cold season. Dogs were 
more numerous in Sakhalin where they were 
used both for hunting and as sledge dogs 
(fig. 29.15). Where Sika deer was absent, 
reindeer and nuiskdeer took its place,- brown 
bear, fur-bearing mammals, and birds were 
also hunted. The smaller islands of the 
Kurile chain, with their relatively short 
rivers, relied most heavily on the maritime 
resources. The Kurile Ainu hunted seals, sea 
lions, and sea otter,- seabirds and their eggs 
were an important part of their diet, and 
salmon, which was available only in small 
numbers, was supplemented by ocean fish. 
Hunting with Poison 
Poisoned arrows (suruku) were used in Hok¬ 
kaido for hunting Sika deer as well as brown 
bear. The exact procedures for producing the 
24 4 
29.8 29.7 
29.7 Spring Bow Trap 
Hunters increased their efficiency by 
using game traps like those depicted in 
Rinzo Mamiya’s Illustrations of Northern 
Ezo (1855); this image shows an otter 
approaching a spring bow armed with a 
poison arrow. (HML) 
29.6, 29.8 Bear Hunting 
Larger varieties of traps and deadfalls 
were used for deer and bear, as seen 
in this nineteenth-century painting by 
Byozan Hirasawa. Trap bows (akpe) 
were often hastily contructed with 
materials found at the site. (NMNH 
E150764; HMM) 
poison differed and were generally kept se¬ 
cret, but one of the main ingredients was the 
monkshood plant (fig. 29.17). The young 
tubers of Aconitum spp. were collected in sum¬ 
mer and dried in the shade until fall. It was 
believed that the most potent poison could be 
extracted from those tubers that had softened 
during drying. After being peeled the tubers 
were ground up and the resulting pulp could 
be used with no further processing (Scheube 
1882: 228). Sometimes the ground monks¬ 
hood tubers were mixed with deer fat and 
buried for a few days (Siebold 1881: 20). 
Additional ingredients occasionally included 
tobacco, poisonous spiders, or other plants. 
To test the potency of the fresh poison, a small 
amount was applied to the tongue or placed 
between two fingers or on the thigh The 
stronger the resulting numb feeling, the better 
the poison (Inukai and Natori 1969: 322). 
Poison was applied to the tips of arrows 
used with hand hows as well as spring bows. A 
bear hit by one of these arrows could walk only 
two hundred to three hundred yards (150 to 250 
meters) or so before dying. Because the alkaloid 
aconitum agent was only deadly upon entering 
the bloodstream, it was safe to eat the meat of 
animals so killed as long as one removed the 
meat around the point of penetration. If a human 
were hit by a poisoned arrow there was only one 
remedy to save his life: cut out the affected spot 
at once and wash the wound out. 
TRADITIONAL CULTURE / H. D. OLSCHLECER 
29.11 
away,- in winter, these cakes were an ingredi¬ 
ent of a nutritious soup. To prepare the col¬ 
lected items for winter storage, a variety of 
methods was employed. Bulbs were dried 
and ground and berries and plants were dried 
and, especially in Sakhalin and the Kurile 
Islands, preserved in herring, salmon, or sea- 
mammal oil. When fall came, the Ainu 
women collected nuts and berries. After 
being cooked, chestnuts were pounded and 
the resulting paste was mixed with fish roe. 
Most of the plants that were used as raw 
materials for producing household items— 
for instance, the inner bark of the elm trees 
used to make cloth (cittush)—were also gath¬ 
ered during the fall season. 
On Sakhalin Island, gathering plants, 
roots, berries, and nuts was far more impor¬ 
tant than on Hokkaido. Families without an 
adult male hunter drew an important part 
of their subsistence from these sources, and 
even under normal circumstances when 
hunting did take place, collected foods con¬ 
stituted a significant share of the diet in the 
cold season (Ohnuki-Tierney 1976a: 304). 
In addition to numerous species of plants, 
the Kurile Ainu collected the eggs of sea¬ 
birds that breed in large colonies on most of 
the islands (Torii 1919: 19). 
Ainu Horticulture 
The Ainu of Hokkaido practiced a simple 
form of horticulture that was first described 
in 1710 but might be older (Takakura 1957: 
29.9, 29.10, 29.11 Salmon Fishing 
Until their numbers were reduced by 
Japanese commercial fishing, large 
numbers of salmon ran up streams 
and rivers in Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and 
the Kuriles, where they were caught 
at night by fishermen carrying 
birchbark torches (sune: fig. 29.10). 
Fishing spears (marek, fig. 29.11) 
equipped with pivoting hooks were 
used to impale the fish, which was pre¬ 
vented from escaping when the hook 
rotated forward. Such scenes attracted 
Japanese artists like Byozan Hirasawa, 
who painted this image (fig. 29.9) as 
emblematic of September in Ainu Man¬ 
ners and Customs (after 1872). (UPM 
A457A; BMA 12.597; HMH) 
29.9 
The Ainu of the Oshamanbe region of 
Hokkaido used the dried spines of a stingray 
to produce an arrow poison that was almost as 
potent as that made from Aconitum; the spines 
were ground and applied to the arrow tip 
together with the plant poison. Sometimes 
the spines themselves, fastened to poles or 
arrows, were used as weapons (Inukai and 
Natori 1969: 323). Arrow poison was un¬ 
known in Sakhalin, but Ryuzo Torii (1919: 
224) described its use in the Kurile Islands 
(Kurile Ainu souroukou). 
Collecting 
Ainu culture was characterized by a strict 
division of labor based on gender. Hunting 
and fishing were male tasks with only minor 
exceptions, while gathering was largely the 
task of women, children, and elders. The 
products of collecting activities were of 
secondary importance for subsistence, but 
they nevertheless provided important 
nutritional needs and raw materials for a 
variety of objects in daily or ritual use. 
Beginning in spring the Hokkaido Ainu 
collected edible plants and roots to serve as 
food for humans and for the bear cubs that 
had been caught during the bear-hunting 
season at the end of winter, and a portion was 
stored for consumption during the cold sea¬ 
son. During the summer the bulbs of 
Cardiocrimim Glebni (Ainu turep) were gathered, 
dried, and ground. The starchy powder was 
formed into cakes that were dried and stored 
29/SUBSISTENCE TECHNOLOGY 2 f 3 
29.12, 29.13 Toggling Harpoons 
Toggling harpoons have been used for 
sea-mammal hunting by North Pacific 
peoples for at least 6,000 years. Ainu 
in Hokkaido used double-pronged har¬ 
poons (kite) to land such diverse prey 
as swordfish, turtles, and sunfish. Unlike 
simple harpoons that held their prey 
with barbs, toggling harpoons turned 
crossways under the prey’s skin or blub¬ 
ber, anchoring the implement so that it 
could be retrieved by the harpoon line. 
(NMNH E150675; AMNH 70-71B) 
island. As Japanese influence gradually spread 
out to embrace the whole island, horticulture 
followed suit. As a rule it can be said that the 
more the Japanese presence made itself felt, the 
more important cultivation became to the Ainu 
economy. Only in a few places on the coasts of 
the Sea of Okhotsk and deep in the Hokkaido 
interior along minor rivers did the Ainu rely 
solely on hunting, fishing, and gathering. 
The main crops grown were turnips 
(Bmssica napobrassica, Ainu atane) and two types 
of millet (broomcorn, Panicum miliaceum, and 
foxtail, Setaria italica), but the Ainu also culti¬ 
vated wheat and barley (Ainu muncji for all 
cereals), beans, peas, and potatoes. In the 
beginning these were of subordinate impor¬ 
tance for subsistence, but as the Ainu were 
increasingly forced to work for the Japa¬ 
nese—often spending several months in 
summer at the coastal fishing stations— 
the products of horticulture gained impor¬ 
tance as winter supplies. It is also reasonable 
to assume that game was rapidly depleted 
by overhunting near Japanese settlements. 
29.13 
29.12 
13, 15). Recent archaeological research at 
sites in southern Hokkaido has recovered 
remains of a variety of seeds, grains, and 
legumes at ninth-century Satsumon sites, and 
these finds have been corroborated at other 
locations, suggesting that early Ainu may 
have had a stronger agricultural base than is 
generally believed (Crawford and Yoshizaki 
1987). Recent Ainu horticulture probably 
stems from these early roots but in any case is 
closely linked to Japanese agriculture systems 
and products. In 1715 the northern frontier of 
cultivation stretched between Shiraoi in the 
east and Shakotan Peninsula in the west, in 
close proximity to the center of Japanese 
settlement in the southwestern parts of the 
29.14 Sea-hunting Expedition 
Competition with the Japanese and 
Russians caused the Ainu to lose their 
sea-hunting territories, but their former 
adaptation has been preserved in illus¬ 
trations such as this from Shimanojo 
Murakami’s Curious Sights of Ezo Is¬ 
land (1799). (HML) 
The choice of a site for cultivation of 
a garden was made for practical reasons. 
Only if necessary did the Ainu resort to slash- 
and-burn cultivation,- otherwise, the under¬ 
brush and trees were cleared and the terrain 
was leveled with a hoe. After seeds were sown 
the garden was left to itself, except for an 
occasional weeding. Harvest began in the 
second half of September, using a knife made 
from the shell of a Sweetwater mussel (fig. 
28.2). After three years the fertility of a gar- 
TRAD1TIONAL CULTURE / H D OLSCHLEGER 214 
29.15 Dogsled Travel 
Dogsleds were used by many North 
Pacific peoples, including the Ainu. Ainu 
sleds are similar to those of Siberian 
peoples, who may have introduced this 
technology. This illustration comes from 
Rinzo Mamiya’s Illustrations of North¬ 
ern Ezo, dated 1855. (HML) 
29.16 Sealskin Mitts 
Seal products were important in the 
economy of northern peoples. Sea- 
mammal meat was nutritious; its 
blubber fueled lamps; its ivory was 
used for tools and art; and its hide 
made strong ropes, boat covers, and 
clothing. Sealskin boots and mitts were 
prized for being durable and water¬ 
proof. These Kurile mitts (called tekkas 
in Hokkaido and matumere in Sakhalin) 
made good work gloves but were not 
very warm. (PMC 51605) 
den plot declined and a new site was found, 
but if slash-and-burn techniques were used a 
garden could be kept for at least five years. 
After a fallow period of five or more years, an 
old garden plot could be cultivated once again. 
Technology 
The products of the exploitative activities 
described above not only provided food but 
were also used as raw materials to make nec¬ 
essary goods. Of course, regional differences 
in the availability of plants and animals led 
to a corresponding variability of materials used 
for the same purpose. Ainu technology was 
also greatly influenced by contacts with other 
cultures. The Ainu had several sources for 
obtaining metal, which became indispensable 
in daily life, by trading with Japanese or 
Chinese via the Amur River, and later with 
Russians in Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands. 
All hunting weapons were made from 
locally available wood except for the metal 
tips of arrows and lances, which were 
obtained in trade. The principal hunting 
device was the bow and arrow (fig. 29.20). 
The simple hand bow was preferably made 
of yew (Tnxus cuspidata, Ainu rannani), and the 
string was made of plant fibers. Cherry bark 
was often wound around the full length of 
the bow. Arrows were quite short and 
consisted of a detachable point of bamboo or 
iron, a foreshaft usually of bone, and a shaft 
of bamboo or reed. The spring bow was of 
simpler design and was often carved on the 
spot where a trap was set. The lances used 
for self-defense in bear hunting had a long 
shaft and — in earlier forms—a tip made of 
the leg bone of a Sika deer. After metal 
became available, metal tips were used. 
Different types of knives were used for 
hunting or as multipurpose tools. The 
common Ainu knife (makiri) was worn by 
men and women (fig. 29.19). The much 
bigger hunting knife (tashiro) resembled a 
short sword (fig. 29.21) and was used in all 
activities connected with hunting and 
fishing. In both types of knives, the metal 
blade was obtained by trade,- the richly 
ornamented handle and sheath were carved 
(by Ainu men using a carving knife with a 
curved blade. 
Since the introduction of weaving 
techniques, clothing was produced from plant 
fibers rather than from fur or hides. On 
Hokkaido, a coarse tan cloth (attusb) was 
woven from the inner bark of Japanese elm 
(Ulmus laciniata) or from linden-tree bark (see 
Kodama, this volume). Elm bark (at) was also 
used in southern Sakhalin, but in addition a 
white cloth (retarpe) was made from dried and 
bleached nettle plant (Urtica takedana Ohwi). 
The simple loom (fig. 45.5) used by Ainu 
215 
29.17 
29.17, 29.18 
Preparation of Poison for Hunting 
Extract from the monkshood plant (Ac- 
onitum spp.) was used widely as a 
hunting poison in northeastern Asia 
and Alaska. Bowls of this type (fig. 
29.18) were used for grinding dried 
roots and leaves and mixing the extract 
with deer fat or some other binder to 
produce an alkaloid poison that attacks 
the nervous system. The poison was 
applied to bamboo arrowpoints. When 
this substance entered the blood¬ 
stream, death was nearly instanta¬ 
neous. (Shin Mouri Collection; NMNH 
Botany Library) 
women consisted of a curved band of wood 
that fitted around the weaver's lower back, a 
rod upon which the cloth was wound, a shuttle, 
a flat weaver’s "knife" of wood, a reed, and a 
heddle to spread the warps. A miniature 
version of this loom was used to weave narrow 
belts and straps (Munro 1994: 23). The Kurile 
Ainu did not have woven cloth except what 
they imported from Hokkaido,- instead, they 
relied on furs and bird skins for clothing. A 
watertight garment tailored from dried seal 
intestines—identical to clothing produced in 
the Aleutians and southwest Alaska—was 
especially useful for the damp and rainy climate 
of the Kurile Islands. 
Mats, used for floor and wall coverings 
and many other purposes, were woven on an 
improvised loom that consisted of a rod sup¬ 
ported horizontally by two forked poles of the 
appropriate height, intricate contrasting pat¬ 
terns were created by incorporating dyed reeds 
in the weave. Woven baskets (saranip), which 
were used during the gathering excursions of 
the women and also for storage, were plaited 
from the inner bark of linden trees (see Tsuda, 
Graburn and Lee, this volume). Pottery disap¬ 
peared from use among the Ainu in the four¬ 
teenth century when iron pots began to be 
available from the Japanese, but Ainu men 
made and used a wide variety of bark and wood 
vessels and containers using special curved- 
blade knives. Many of the plates, bowls, ladles, 
spatulas, and loom parts were decorated with 
elaborate Ainu-style carvings and became 
family treasures and heirlooms. 
Ainu Settlement Patterns 
The Ainu of Hokkaido were overwhelmingly 
inland hunters and fishermen. Their settle¬ 
ments (kotan) of up to a dozen huts were 
erected near salmon-fishing grounds and in 
close vicinity to hunting grounds in hilly or 
mountainous regions. Because the spawning 
grounds that provided the best opportunity 
for fishing were usually located near the 
mouth of a tributary, Hokkaido Ainu kotan 
could normally be found on the river terrace 
near such a place. 
The majority of settlements were small, 
comprising only five huts (holding about 
twenty-five individuals) on average,- only in 
the Hidaka-Tokachi region in southern 
Hokkaido were settlements with up to thirty 
houses occasionally encountered. Within 
villages, houses might be spaced between one 
and five hundred yards apart (about one to 
five hundred meters), and villages were 
commonly two to five miles (four and eight 
kilometers) apart, depending on local food 
availability. These settlements were inhabited 
all year round, at least by the women, the 
children, and the elderly. The men made 
several hunting excursions during each yearly 
cycle into the hilly regions bordering the 
rivers or to the headwaters,- there they slept in 
temporary huts. The location of a kotan was 
only changed when important resources were 
no longer available, as when, for example, the 
salmon run failed. 
Compared to the inhabitants of Hok¬ 
kaido, the Sakhalin Ainu exhibited a stronger 
TRADITIONAL CULTURE / H. D. OLSCHLEGER 2 16 
29.20 
Although data on the migration 
patterns of the Kurile Ainu are scarce, it is 
known that they had even greater settlement 
mobility than either Hokkaido or Sakhalin 
Ainu. Not all of the islands of the Kurile 
string were permanently inhabited, and 
permanent settlements were found only on 
Shumshu, Paramoshir, Onekotan (possibly), 
Shiashkotan, Rasshua, and Urup in the 
central Kuriles, and Iturup and Kunashiri in 
the southern Kuriles. All other islands were 
only temporarily visited during the summer 
to hunt for sea mammals and birds. 
Like the Sakhalin Ainu, the Kurile Ainu 
spent the summer in settlements near the 
beach and moved to other houses in the 
interior of the islands during the winter 
months. All settlements were located near 
good fishing grounds, usually the mouth of a 
river or a freshwater lake. Only children and 
the elderly remained in the settlements all 
year long,- at the beginning of the hunting 
and fishing season all able-bodied men and 
women scattered across the island chain to 
29.19 Maxim 
A man's most trusted companion in 
the woods, even more than his dog, 
was his makiri or sheath knife, which 
was worn hanging from the belt with a 
thong. This example, collected in 
1888 by Romyn Hitchcock in Piratori, 
shows the artistry men used in deco¬ 
rating their prized possessions. 
(NMNH E150729) 
29.20 Quiver with Hunting Bag 
and Arrows 
Ainu hunters kept their arrows in quiv¬ 
ers that were strengthened by cherry- 
bark wrappings, which also imparted 
a beautiful gleaming surface. Bone or 
ivory attachments helped stiffen the 
quiver, which sometimes had a small 
ikupasuy (prayer stick) attached to its 
side. Bearskin hunting bags were of¬ 
ten attached to the quiver to hold 
one's strike-a-light kit, poison ingredi¬ 
ents, mixing bowl, and spare bamboo 
points. This set was collected by 
Frederick Starr in Okotsonai in 1904. 
(BMA 12.389B) 
degree of nomadism, moving to different 
settlements seasonally. They primarily lived in 
the coastal regions, with only a few people 
living permanently in the interior of the island. 
Their summer settlements were built in direct 
proximity to the beach, while the winter 
houses were erected in the upper reaches of 
the short rivers,- in both cases, the choice of 
the location was dependent on the exigencies 
of hunting and fishing. Settlements were small, 
and even Rayciska, the largest Ainu settlement 
on the northwest coast of Sakhalin, had only 
twenty-five to fifty inhabitants. Population 
mobility was higher than in Hokkaido, and 
during the summer men and women alike 
went on fishing and collecting excursions of 
several days' duration. 
29.21 Mountain Knife 
In addition to their belt knives, hunt¬ 
ers used “mountain knives” (tashiro) 
to butcher animals and do heavy work 
while out in the forest. Sheaths were 
often made of a single piece of wood 
that was split in two, hollowed out, 
rejoined, and shrink-wrapped in wet 
salmon skin. When the skin had 
dried, it was replaced with cherry 
bark. (FMC 131696/1-2) 
29 / SUBSISTENCE TECHNOLOGY 
217 
29.23 Hunter on Skis 
Skis were used for travel on hard- 
packed snow, as illustrated in this de¬ 
tail from Illustrations of Northern Ezo 
(1855) by Rinzo Mamiya. (HML) 
29.22 Snowshoes 
In a country where winters were long 
and snow was deep, transport was im¬ 
portant for survival. Ainu snowshoes 
were made of bentwood frames with 
leather or sinew thongs as foot sup¬ 
ports. Different shapes and sizes were 
used for different snow conditions. 
(UPM A407A-B) 
29.23 
summer camps that consisted of temporary 
shelters. If they were not able to return to 
their winter settlements before the stormy fall 
season they had to face a difficult winter in 
makeshift temporary huts. Until the nine¬ 
teenth century many Kurile Ainu lived in 
pithouses dug into the ground and covered 
with logs, sod, and thatch. 
At least in southwestern Hokkaido, the 
various kohw in one river valley formed a 
group that regarded itself as the owner of the 
surrounding territory whose borders were 
formed either by the watersheds separating 
the system of the river and its tributaries from 
neighboring ones or by the tributaries them¬ 
selves. Extended river systems often had 
several of these territorial groups. The mem¬ 
bers of such a group developed a deep feeling 
of unity and were identified by the name of 
the river followed by the words tin kur-. Saru- 
un-kur meant 'people of the Saru River valley." 
The territoiy thus formed was called iwor, and 
Saru-un-kur-iwor was the stretch of land ex¬ 
ploited by the Saru River Ainu, and each kotan 
laid claim to adjacent territory that provided 
subsistence resources such as salmon spawn¬ 
ing grounds, deer- and bear-hunting areas, 
etc.,- these areas were called kotan-un-iwor (Izumi 
1951,- H. Watanabe 1973: 56). 
Actually, the land did not count as 
property per se; rather, the members of the 
territorial group had the exclusive right to 
exploit the natural resources. Outsiders had 
2 1 8 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / H D OLSCHLECER 
the right to trespass on public ways, but they 
were not allowed to hunt or fish without 
paying the local group some compensation. In 
this way, differences in the distribution of 
natural resources were overcome. To fully 
enjoy these privileges, they had to become 
members of the kotan, which could only be 
achieved with the unanimous consent of all 
heads of the residing families and after joining 
one of the patrilineal kin groups (shine itokpa). 
The rights to use specific places in a kotan-un- 
iwor related to hunting, fishing, or gather¬ 
ing— for instance, favorite spots to set a 
spring bow, build a deer fence, a weir, or a 
fishing hut, were owned by individual families 
or by cooperative groups,- even meadows 
where especially potent Aconitum plants could 
be found were treated this way. 
The Ainu of the northwest coast of 
southern Sakhalin did not have any territorial 
organization comparable to the iwor of 
Hokkaido. Officially, the right to hunt and fish 
in the vicinity of a kotan was reserved for the 
agnatic kinship that formed the nucleus of that 
particular settlement, but as kinship relations 
were widespread between the villages, nearly 
everyone could rightfully hunt everywhere. 
The spring hunt for sea mammals was not 
restricted in any way, except by physical 
conditions of the ice itself (Ohnuki-Tierney 
1974: 83-84). The Ainu of the eastern coast of 
Sakhalin are reported to have divided the river 
valleys into privately owned territories, and no 
one except the owner was entitled to hunt or 
fish in a given area (Pilsudski 1912: 136). 
Rituals Related to Hunting 
and Fishing 
Hunting and fishing were surrounded by a 
variety of rituals, which is to be expected 
considering the importance of these activities 
for Ainu well-being and survival. Correct 
behavior toward animals, regarded as visitors 
from their heavenly abode, made sure that they 
returned to earth again and again to make 
themselves available as food and useful 
materials. Various rituals also assured the safety 
and success of hunters. Before any fishing or 
hunting excursion, the kamuy—most impor¬ 
tantly Fuchi, the fire goddess—were offered 
prayers. Curled sacred shavings (inaw-kike) were 
always carried along on hunting expeditions in 
the belief that it made the hunter invisible to 
evil spirits (Munro 1962: 1 12). 
The bear hunt was considered to be the 
most dangerous Ainu hunting enterprise, and 
29/SUBSISTENCE TECHNOLOGY 
therefore the hunters tried to assure success 
in every possible way. The bear was also 
regarded as a supreme deity whose ghost had 
to be appeased carefully. Before leaving, the 
elders of the kotan were assembled to ask for 
the support of the kamuy. During the walk to 
the bear-hunting grounds, in aw (sacred 
shaved sticks) were carved at every resting 
place to seek the favor of the local deities. 
Special rules of behavior had to be followed 
during the bear hunt, and certain words were 
to be avoided: in Sakhalin, the word for seal, 
tukara, was replaced by sinuye, meaning tattoo 
(Ohnuki-Tierney 1974: 21),- in Hokkaido, 
the word for salt, shippo, was replaced with 
urn (ashes) (Munro 1962: 1 14). Likewise, the 
bear hunters in Sakhalin could not sing or 
play instruments. 
After the bear was killed, inaw-kike were 
made to decorate the bears head, the kamuy 
were thanked for the successful outcome of 
the hunt, and the blood of the bear was drunk, 
for it was considered a divine medicine. After 
returning to the village, a feast was held 
during which the elders of the kotan once 
more expressed their gratitude for the safe 
return of the hunters. The head of the killed 
bear, resting in the place of honor near the 
sacred window, was offered food and drink in 
a ceremony resembling that performed during 
the ritual sending home of the bear cub 
If a human being had been killed by a 
bear, the hunters immediately took up the 
chase of the animal and killed it. Cursing and 
striking out with their long hunting knives, 
the men then marched around the dead bear 
before taking its body to the place where the 
person had been killed. The bear was decapi¬ 
tated and half of its skull was buried together 
with the victim, the other half was placed 
on top of the grave. If the dead person had 
already been buried, the bear's head was 
thrown into a bog, thereby consigning it to 
a kind of "hell" (Batchelor 1901: 471-78). 
Before the first salmon started to ascend 
the rivers of Hokkaido to their spawning 
grounds, the Ainu held a ritual to assure their 
arrival. During this rite, which was directed by 
the headman and attended by other family 
leaders, Fuchi and the kamuy of the river were 
prayed to and in aw were set near the spawning 
grounds. The first salmon caught was sent to 
the kotan headman who offered it to Fuchi,- 
likewise, the first dog salmon eaten in each 
house was offered to the same kamuy. This 
salmon was cut open with the knife used for 
219 
29.24 
29.24 Salmon-skin Boots 
with Fishscale Tread 
These elegant salmon-skin boots were 
collected by Alexandra Pogoski in Sa¬ 
khalin before 1893 and appear never 
to have been used. Salmon-skin boots 
were extremely durable and so were 
worn by most coastal Ainu. (FMC 
32116 a, b) 
29.25 Nonskid Boots 
Salmon-skin boots (chep-keri) were 
mainly worn from winter to spring for 
mountain walking. Their soles had fish- 
scales pointing backwards to provide 
traction on the snow, ice, and mud; the 
backfin was left in the middle of the 
sole for the same purpose. Such boots 
were dry and light, but dried grass was 
added for extra insulation, and bark fi¬ 
ber was used for socks. This set was 
obtained by Romyn Hitchcock in Bekkai, 
Hokkaido, in 1888. (NMNH E150637) 
220 TRADITIONAL CULTURE/ H. D. OLSCHLECER 
29.26 Grapevine Sandals 
Sandals (situker) of grapevine bark 
were used in summer for walking 
on slippery rocks while fishing and 
gathering plants. Although brittle 
when dry, grapevine bark that was 
freshly stripped could be woven 
into a tough cushion, ideal for soles. 
This pair, which has straps of twisted 
linden bark, was collected in Hokkaido 
in 1876 by Benjamin Lyman. 
(NMNH E22194) 
carving inaw, and the fish's mandible was tied 
to an inaw and thrown into the river after the 
fishing season ended. This ritual was called 
petorun kamuy-nomi, and its purpose was to see 
the fish spirits off and ensure a plentiful run the 
following year (H. Watanabe 1973: 72-73,- 
Kono and Fitzhugh, this volume). 
Sakhalin also had many different hunt¬ 
ing rituals, especially relating to sea mammal¬ 
hunting, in which taboos had to be observed. 
The kamuy of the sea were believed to dislike 
several species of plants that therefore were 
strictly forbidden on hunting excursions on 
the open sea. As in bear hunting, several 
words in everyday use had to be replaced, 
for example, "to row" and "boat” (Ohnuki- 
Tierney 1974: 25). 
By the turn of century, the Ainu way of 
hunting and fishing had disappeared, either 
forbidden by Japanese laws or made impossible 
by the near-extinction of Sika deer by Japanese 
hunters. Consequently, hunting rituals also 
disappeared, but in recent times some have 
been revived as an integral part of the Ainu 
ethnic renewal that began in the 1970s,- it is 
hoped that interest in Ainu rituals will reveal 
how important they were in eveiyday Ainu life 
and will encourage new approaches to the use 
and conservation of these resources and their 
habitats in modern-day Fdokkaido. 
29.26 
22 1 191 SUBSISTENCE TECHNOLOGY 
The Ainu on 
Whales and 
Whaling 
Masami I wasaki-Goodman 
AND MASAHIRO NOMOTO 
Our ancestors utilized whales 
that were stranded on their shores 
or that they hunted. I am an 
Ainu living in the present day, 
and I would like to talk 
about this as part of the proud 
traditional culture of our people. 
Our pride in those traditions 
will he the basis for renewing 
our ethnic identity as Ainu. 
— Masahiro Nomoto 
VARIOUS ARCHIVAL MATERIALS AND 
recent publications (including 
Y. Watanabe 1992,- Akimichi, 
1984, 1994) discuss the impor¬ 
tant role that whales (humpe) have played 
in Ainu life. Descriptions of Ainu utilizing 
whales are abundant in archaeological records, 
in journals written by early explorers of 
Hokkaido, and in Ainu folktales, songs, and 
dances. Moreover, interviews with Ainu elders 
who recall the old days reveal how the Ainu 
continued to benefit from whales in more 
recent times, within the life span of the elder 
generation. In this essay we use available data 
to reconstruct the relationship between Ainu 
and whales in the past and to examine the 
effort by the present Ainu to renew these ties. 
Archival Studies 
The best-known archaeological material that 
suggests that the people living in Hokkaido 
used whales from ancient times is a bone 
container—possibly a needlecase—found in 
a shell mound on Benten Island in Nemuro. 
An engraving on this container (fig. 3.19) 
depicts several people hunting a large marine 
mammal, which looks like a whale (Akimichi 
1994). Whether the people shown on this 
30.1 Launching a Boat 
For sea travel Ainu adapted dugouts by 
building up the sides with planks that 
overlapped and were lashed together 
with cordage. Different sizes and 
shapes were made for varying condi¬ 
tions, from small shallow-river punts to 
large seagoing sailing vessels up to 
fifty feet in length that carried crews of 
eight to ten people. Most vessels were 
more modest, like this one used by a 
single fisherman who worked inshore 
waters. (NAA 98-10413) 
container were ancestors of the present Ainu 
and whether the animal is really a whale are 
questions that require further clarification, but 
this piece and other archaeological evidence 
indicate that people in Hokkaido have hunted 
whales since at least the late Jomon era (about 
4000 to 2000 years ago) and passed these 
traditions down through the succeeding 
Okhotsk culture (a.D. 500-1200) to the 
modern Ainu of today (see Yamaura and 
Ushiro, this volume). 
The explorers who visited Hokkaido in 
the seventeenth century recorded that the 
Ainu used whale both as food and for trade. A 
Dutch explorer who came to Hokkaido to 
search for gold and silver noted, "the food and 
nutrition source for them [Ainu] were fish, 
whale blubber, fish oil, wild plants and rose 
hips that are abundant" (Kitagamae 1991). He 
also describes trade between Ainu and 
Japanese, listing among Ainu trade items fish 
oil, whale blubber, smoked whale tongue, 
pelts of various kinds of animals, and bird 
feathers (ibid.), and notes that the local people 
knew how to hunt whales. A similar descrip¬ 
tion recorded by officials of the Tsugaru fief 
reported that the Ainu traded whale meat to 
the Japanese (Habara 1939,- Okuyama 1966, 
Abe 1984). Interesting observations are also 
recorded by Daigo Shinbei Sadatsugu, whose 
ancestor Daigo Shinbei founded the commer¬ 
cial whaling industry in Katsuura, Chiba 
Prefecture (Fukuyama 1943). Sadatsugu began 
a whaling operation in Hokkaido in 1856, and 
as he traveled through the southern and 
eastern parts of Hokkaido he observed that 
the Ainu people in this area were hunting 
whales with harpoons. Archival materials of 
the same period mention that Ainu utilized 
whales stranded on the beaches (Abe 1984) 
and describe the rules governing the distribu¬ 
tion of stranded whales, noting that it was the 
chief who made decisions concerning appor¬ 
tioning of whale products (Okuyama 1966). In 
short, numerous documentary sources indicate 
that whales were a significant part of the 
subsistence life of the Ainu in the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. 
Place-Names, Folktales, 
Songs, and Dances 
Place-names throughout Hokkaido reflect the 
Ainu relationship with whales: among the 
mountains and rivers including humpe and umpe 
(a modified form of humpe) in their names are 
Mt. Humpe, Humpe Sapa (whale head), 
Humpe waterfall, Humpe Eto Cape, and Umpe 
River. The names in one locale, Shiraoi, reflect 
an old Ainu folktale about a kamuy (god) who 
was grilling whale meat skewered on a mugwort 
stick. When the stick broke, making a sharp 
noise, the kamuy was frightened, jumped up, 
and fell to the ground on his buttocks. The 
hollowed-out place where he landed came to 
be known as Osorokotsu, and the rock in front 
of the hollow is called Imanitsu and represents 
the stick for grilling meat (Yamada 1984). 
222 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / M. I W AS A K I - C OODM A N AND M. NOMOTO 
30.2 Stranded-Whale Dance 
The Ainu of the Shiraoi region have 
conducted whale dances for genera¬ 
tions and continue to do so at the 
Ainu Museum at Shiraoi. The dance 
is based on an old story in which 
a blind woman discovers a stranded 
whale on the beach (represented 
here by the woman in repose). She 
runs to tell her village, and people 
return with knives and baskets, 
singing songs and dancing to thank 
the gods for this gift. (AMS) 
30.3 Whalebone Knife 
Whales provided a variety of impor¬ 
tant materials used as food and oil. 
Whalebone was also used for making 
artifacts and implements like this 
mountain knife (tashiro) bound with 
cherry-bark wrapping. (MPM 
N17357A/B) 
These place-names are still used and remind 
local people of the special connection Ainu 
had with whales in the old days. 
Th is relationship is also evident in other 
Ainu folktales, songs, and dances. Whales, 
which brought wealth to the Ainu, were 
thanked through the telling of stories, 
singing, and dancing. By these activities Ainu 
asked the gods to continue providing them 
with whales. One of these songs tells of 
stranded whales (Chiri 1986): 
A large whale was stranded 
Oh, how joyful 
The god came down on a carriage. 
I am a very large whale 
From above the garden 
By cold air and wind 
I am blown high. 
“Humpe kamuy ifunke" (a lullaby of the 
whale god) recounts another old Ainu story 
about the god of the whale who wanted to 
marry a human woman (Sapporo Terebi 1983). 
Fde took the form of a human and promised 
Ainu villagers he would send whales to their 
shore if he were permitted to marry a local 
woman. Following their marriage, the villagers 
were blessed with whales that became stranded 
on their shore. This story expresses the joy 
that whales brought to the Ainu. 
The Stranded-Whale Dance (fig. 30.2), 
which Ainu perform at festive occasions, is an 
expression of magical thinking: Ainu believed 
that presenting their wish for a whale to 
strand on their beach by performing respect¬ 
ful dances and rituals would make it happen. 
There are regional differences in how this 
dance is performed, but everywhere its 
purpose is the same—to express thanks to 
the gods. Masahiro Nomoto, who observed a 
Stranded-Whale Dance in Shiraoi describes 
that performance : 
A woman who imitates a whale covers 
herself with a robe and lies on the ground. 
A person performing as a blind elderly 
woman comes in, walking with a stick, 
and trips over the whale. She feels the 
whale with her stick and hands and 
realizes what it is. She shouts to the 
villagers and they come down with bags 
on their backs, singing the whale song. 
They fill their bags with meat. Squawking 
crows gather from different directions and 
try to snatch bits of the meat, but the 
villagers chase them away. After the 
villagers have divided up the whale, they 
go home singing songs The crows have 
their share after the people leave. When 
the crows have gone, only the robe is left 
on the ground. 
30 / WHALES AND WHALING 223 
30.4 Ikupasuy Carvings 
Whales, bears, and salmon are com¬ 
mon themes on ikupasuy, prayer sticks 
used by men when conducting ceremo¬ 
nies honoring the gods. The two out¬ 
side pieces feature bear heads and 
salmon; whales and boats are the 
central motifs on the inside pieces. 
The choice of motif probably indicates 
which important diety was to be 
honored. Some of these carvings 
emblemized a personal narrative— 
an experience while hunting or an 
encounter with a particular animal— 
while others derived from folklore, 
ceremony, or epics. (BMA 12.297, 
12.247, 12.298, 12.326) 
Such folktales, dances, and songs of whales 
have been maintained and are performed by 
younger generations of Ainu. 
Ainu Speak of Whales 
In various interviews Ainu have talked about 
how they used whales. Mr. Tasuke Yamamoto, 
a respected Ainu elder from Kushiro, empha¬ 
sized that Ainu never wasted whale resources: 
"When we get a whale, we dig a big hole in the 
beach within reach of the tide and we bury the 
whale there. We make sure that the hole is 
deep enough so that water keeps running into 
the hole. This keeps the whale from spoiling. 
Ainu know the best way" (Shin'ya 1979). 
Whales were most commonly used for 
food. Ainu liked whale as much as they liked 
eating deer and bear (Batchelor 1925). Ainu 
rendered whale oil and ate it in soup. In 
another interview, an elderly man talked 
about using whale oil for cooking: "Every day 
I heated up some whale oil until it melted and 
poured it over my cooked potatoes. I also 
fried vegetables in it. It lasted two years." 
They cut whale meat into large chunks and 
cooked it in ocean water to season it with 
salt (Natori 1974). In recent interviews, an 
Ainu from the Kushiro area recalled how h'e 
cooked whale in the old days: 
A whale would sometimes get stranded. 
One time, in early spring, a whale got 
stranded, having been caught in the sea 
ice. We had kamuynomi, a ritual to worship 
the gods, for the humpe god. After helping 
to flense the whale, 1 got my share. 1 had 
enough to fill the bag on my back. 1 
cooked it in salt water and ate it as a 
snack. I also made oil out of it and kept it 
in a bottle. I have never heard about a 
"whale-sending ceremony," but we raised 
a tuki [a ceremonial cup], prayed, and ate 
the head of the whale. 
Although whale-sending ceremonies may not 
be performed or be well remembered today, 
a scene from a late-nineteenth-century Ainu-e 
in the Brooklyn Museum of Art that shows 
parts of a killer whale (Orca) in an Ainu ritual 
altar (mtsa) suggests that they must have 
occurred in the past (C. Dubreuil, personal 
communication, 1998). 
Ainu used whale for many purposes other 
than food and cooking. Whale oil was used for 
lighting, and baleen, which can be stripped 
down into thin flexible strands, was used for 
lashing wood pieces together in boat constmc- 
tion. Whalebone was used to make harpoon 
heads (kite) for hunting sea mammals (Natori 
1974; Kayano 1978), and a large and beau¬ 
tifully carved whalebone knife handle and 
scabbard exist in the Ainu collection at 
the Milwaukee Public Museum (fig. 30.3,- 
C. Dubreuil, personal communication, 1998). 
The most precise description of whaling 
operations by Ainu was recorded by Natori 
(1974), who conducted an interview in 1945 
with an Ainu elder who had taken two whales. 
The elder described whaling as practiced 
nearly one hundred years ago: 
One day, we were fishing off the shore of 
Oshamanbe and at about nine in the 
morning, I saw a whale—a minke whale. 
The elder threw the first kite [harpoon]. 
The weight of the harpoon made it go 
deep into the whale. The whale jumped 
up, then dived deep into the sea and swam 
around in a circle. An hour later, when the 
whale came up to the surface and blew out 
water, I threw the second harpoon, and the 
whale went down again. When the whale 
came up to the surface an hour and a half 
later, Shiromare threw the third harpoon. 
The whale dragged us around. . . . When it 
became dark . . . ten boats with strong men 
224 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / M. IWASAKI-GOODMAN AND M. NOMOTO 
30.5, 30.6 Killer Whale Marks 
Representations of the orca or killer 
whale are symbolic elements seen on 
ikupasuy; these special marks 
(shiroshi) identify the man's lineage. 
Shiroshi are always placed on the 
underside of the ikupasuy and some¬ 
times take the form of a stylized orca 
backfin. These ikupasuy with a whale 
carving (top and detail, bottom) and a 
sea monster (center) were collected 
before 1893 by Alexander Agassiz from 
Nemuro in eastern Hokkaido, where 
whales were common and ceremonies 
honoring them were held frequently in 
the past. (PMC 51647, 51646) 
from Rebunge village joined us. We were so 
happy we almost cried. The men prayed to 
a god and threw their harpoons into the 
whale. . . . When the whale was landed on 
the shore, many people gathered. . . An 
Ainu elder offered inatv [sacred shaved 
sticks] and spread a mat beside the whale 
and prayed to god. 
Natori also examined the harpoon head 
that Ainu used for whaling. He reported that 
after the harpoon head penetrated the whale's 
body, it became detached from the shaft and 
turned sideways so that it stayed tight, 
toggled inside the body. Amu also used 
poison taken from Aconitum, also known as 
monkshood, a blue-flowered poisonous herb 
of the buttercup family, to increase their 
efficiency in hunting whales. 
In various interviews, experiences with 
stranded whales have been reported. One Ainu 
elder in Shiraoi talked about a whale stranding 
that he had witnessed in his youth: "On June 8, 
1949, two orca chased a whale ashore at 
Shiraoi. While it was struggling, waves washed 
it higher onto the beach. Farther out in the 
ocean the killer whales were squeaking and 
jumping, appearing to be angry about the 
Ainu stealing their prey. The whale was three 
ken [about fifteen feet, or five meters] long 
and was a baby" (Fujimura 1976). 
Elderly people who were present at that 
time conducted a simple ritual to send off the 
spirit of the stranded whale after flensing it. 
The prayer given at the ritual was as follows: 
"We deeply thank you for coming down to 
visit our village. You might be feeling lonely 
for being away from your parents. You came 
down for us utari [relatives] and brought us 
your presents of meat and blubber. We 
appreciate it very much." 
In 1985 many elderly people born 
between Meiji 31(1899) and Taisho 12 
(1923) were interviewed in Shiraoi about 
whales and orcas. 
We did not go hunting for whales. 
Rather, we got whales more or less 
accidentally when they were chased by 
orcas and became stranded. Once, after 
World War II, we got a whale weighing 
about two tons. The elders prayed to the 
god of the ocean [the killer whale] and 
the whale was flensed. Afterward, they 
held kamuy-nomi in order to cleanse the 
beach. When we hunt a whale, we do not 
go out with the sole intention of catching 
a whale. We used the same kite [harpoon] 
that we used to fish for swordfish (Ainu 
Minzoku Hakubutsukan 1985). 
It became clear in the interviews that 
by this time Ainu no longer had the right to 
use stranded whales. When a whale became 
stranded, it was the local Japanese fishermen 
who had a proprietary right to stranded 
whales. This traditional right had been taken 
away from the Ainu by the Japanese. 
Of all the various whale species, the orca 
brought Ainu wealth by chasing whales and 
other fish and sea mammals onto their 
beaches. Orca was regarded as the highest- 
ranking god of the ocean, as high as the bear 
god on land. The motif that depicts the backfin 
of an orca, called asbipe in Ainu, is found in 
Ainu carvings not only in the coastal region 
but in other areas as well (Ainu Bunka Hozon 
Taisaku Kyogikai 1969,- C. Dubreuil, personal 
communication). An orca pattern (fig. 30.5) is 
also used as one of the Ainu crests that were 
inherited through the paternal line and that 
identifies a male Ainu lineage (Natori 1974,- 
Maraini 1994). An elder in Shiraoi spoke 
about his past experience with orcas: 
Orca have a strong kamuy. They are found 
in areas where sirikap [swordfish] live and 
are so fierce that none can deal with 
them. That is why it is called kamuy. 1 
once had a frightening experience with 
orca, and thought I would be attacked. 
30/ WHALES AND WHALING 225 
Several orcas together can even attack a 
whale. When we are fishing in the ocean, 
sometimes repun-kamuy [orcas] come near 
our boat. When this happens, we are 
supposed to give some of our lunch to 
them by throwing it in the ocean. It is said 
the god of the ocean will eat it and give 
fisherman a good catch and a safe trip 
(Ainu Minzoku Hakubutsukan 1985). 
Revitalizing Ainu Whale Culture 
Although the traditional Ainu relationship with 
whales has changed through time, especially due 
to the termination of aboriginal whaling, whales 
and whaling still remain part of the Ainu legacy 
and modern belief system. Because of recent 
efforts to revitalize Ainu traditional culture, more 
Ainu today are familiar with folktales telling how 
Ainu benefited from whales in the past. More 
Ainu have begun dancing the Stranded-Whale 
Dance and singing whale songs, but the motiva¬ 
tion for these activities is different from that of 
one hundred years ago. Ainu now perform these 
dances and songs to revitalize traditional Ainu 
culture in the present day. Although the Ainu 
ancestors danced the Stranded-Whale Dance to 
entice whales onto the land, their descendants 
who dance the same dance today are searching 
for their Ainu identity. 
The crest of the orca (fig. 30.5), which 
is worshiped as the god of the ocean, is used 
by a number of Ainu carvers and others who 
conduct rituals. The crest functions as an 
identification of their own lineage and at the 
same time gives pride to those who inherit 
traditional Ainu culture. A young man who 
inherited the orca crest says: "I am using the 
mark of repun-kamuy, the orca, which is carved 
on the ceremonial cup that we have at home. 
I have a strong feeling toward the orca that 
the crest symbolizes,- I am proud to use the 
mark and feel a strong responsibility for it." 
An effort to revitalize the traditional 
relationship that Ainu had with whales is also 
seen in the reconstruction of kamuyrini, an 
assemblage that includes wooden figures 
suspended from a plate shaped like an orca 
(Aoki 1990). Included among the figures are 
images of whales, dolphins, sea otters, and 
other marine mammals that were thought to 
be brought to shore by orcas. Kamuyrini were 
often centerpieces of family areas, which 
included personal treasures, and they were 
the locus for prayer in the home. A kamuyrini 
assembled in 1990 near Yoichi (Otaru) in 
western Hokkaido shows that the repun-kamuy 
belief has been revitalized and is being 
maintained into the present. 
Recently, some aboriginal groups in 
Canada and the United States (such as the 
Makah of Washington state) are making an 
intensive effort to resume whaling after de¬ 
cades in which it was not practiced. They 
emphasize that it is important for aboriginal 
people of today to inherit the whaling tra¬ 
ditions of their ancestors as a base for renew¬ 
ing their ethnic identity. Clearly those 
groups that have a tradition of utilizing whale 
resources have maintained their relationship 
with whales into the present. 
On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, 
Japanese aboriginal people have begun efforts 
to revitalize those ancient traditions that link 
them with whales. Modern Ainu are taking 
steps to reestablish their ethnic identity, 
recognizing that its foundation lies in Ainu 
traditional culture. 
30.7 Humpback Whale 
Whales continue to be important to the 
Ainu today, although more for spiritual 
than economic reasons. Takeki Fujito, a 
famous Ainu sculptor, envisioned a 
humpback whale about to surface in 
this carving he completed in 1993. 
(Takeki Fujito Collection) 
226 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / M. IWASAKI-COODMAN AND M. NOMOTO 
31/Home and 
Settlement: 
Kotan and Chise 
Masahiro Nomoto 
The traditional Ainu village 
was called a kotan, meaning 
"community" or "village" (fig. 31.1) 
Although the Ainu continue to use 
this word to refer to the places where they live, 
few of their modern villages resemble the old 
kotan because most communities where Ainu 
today live are more like towns or cities. Within 
the kotan were individual houses, called chise. 
This essay describes the traditional organization 
of the Shiraoi Ainu kotan, the spatial arrange¬ 
ment and construction of the chise as well Ainu 
social and political organization, and the changes 
that have occurred since 1868 when the Meiji 
Restoration initiated an active Japanization 
process (Ainu Minzoku Hakubutsukan 1993: 7■ 
Mitsuoka 1987: 211). 
separated from each other by approximately 
150-to-350-foot-wide (forty-five to one 
hundred meter) wooded areas,- similarly, each 
kotan was surrounded by a resource zone, or 
iwor, from which residents drew sustenance 
through hunting and gathering. 
The basic criterion for a kotan location 
was that it be near a river where salmon ran 
that was also large enough for boat transport. It 
was also important that it be located near such 
mountain food resources as deer and bears or 
to ocean resources like whales, seals, and 
swordfish. The availability of firewood, nuts, 
wild plants, bark to make clothing, and housing 
materials was another important consideration. 
Marshlands were important for their cattails, 
which were used to make mats, raincoats, and 
31.1 Ainu Mosir, Kamuy Mosir 
This painting (1984) by Tetsuo Kitaichi 
illustrates the Ainu world (Ainu mosir) 
seen from the perspective of the family 
and its home (chise)-, the village (kotan) 
and its surrounding lands (iwor) with 
animals, plants, and other necessary 
resources are carefully depicted, as 
are traditional practices and spiritual 
aspects of Ainu life. The world of gods 
(kamuy mosir) is represented by the owl 
(protector of the village), by the gods 
of bears and other animals, and the 
spirits of deceased humans. Mediation 
between the two worlds is accom¬ 
plished by ritual and prayers transmit¬ 
ted to the gods by human prayers, with 
the aid of ikupasuy, and by rituals like 
the bear-sending ceremony (iyomante), 
in which bear gods are sent back to 
the god world. (AMS) 
Kotan 
Although it seems likely that Ainu economic 
and political organization was more complex 
before the Japanese appeared in their lands, for 
the past two hundred years the kotan has been 
the highest unit of traditional Ainu social life. 
The basic Ainu kotan comprised a group of 
scattered houses—from a few to a dozen or 
more. Coastal settlements were usually located 
near the mouths or deltas of rivers, where 
salmon fishing and ocean fishing were 
productive and boats could be hauled out of 
the reach of the sea, and inland kotan were 
often located near marshlands or where 
tributaries ran into a main river. Most villages 
were located directly on rivers, which provided 
opportunities for both transportation and 
fishing. Within a kotan, houses were usually 
roof thatch. Each kotan population determined 
the area in which it would obtain vital natural 
resources, and these resource areas were part of 
the kotan territory,- each village was ideally a 
self-sustaining, independent economic unit. 
The borders between kotan were set by natural 
rivers and mountains: a main river channel 
separated kotan whose territories conformed to 
tributary streams on either side,- when moun¬ 
tain ridges and hills set the borders, the bound¬ 
aries ran straight down the axis of the ridge to 
the ocean. 
Records from the Edo period indicate 
that the average kotan supported from five to 
ten chise and populations of twenty-five to 
fifty people,- these numbers varied regionally 
according to kotan territory size and the 
abundance of available resources. 
3 1 / KOTAN AND CHISE 227 
31.4 Shell Lamp 
Inside the chise, light was provided by 
scallop-shell lamps (ratcako) fueled by 
fish or marine-mammal oil and fitted 
with a marsh rush or cotton rag wick. 
(NMNH E150701) 
31.2 Ainu Village in Winter 
The Ainu kotan at the Ainu Museum at 
Shiraoi is seen here in winter with its 
houses, elevated storehouses, and 
bear cages. (AMS) 
Chise 
Because of their geographic proximity, both 
Japan and continental Asia influenced Ainu 
traditions, but these cultural contacts were 
localized and their impact on the varieties and 
construction materials of the traditional Ainu 
house (chise) used in Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and 
the Kurile Islands differed from region 
to region. By around 1900 Amu houses in 
Sakhalin were often of plank or log construc¬ 
tion, reflecting both the colder climate and 
tions, beginning with the selection of the 
house site and the location of its fireplace 
(Takabeya 1939,- Takabeya and Takakura 
1969). Among the factors influencing site 
location were its convenience in terms of 
facilitating the activities of daily life,- proper¬ 
ties of the river (propensity to flood, for 
example),- sun exposure,- wind and air circula¬ 
tion,- availability of nuts and wild plants,- and 
the potential for growing cereal crops such as 
foxtail millet and Japanese millet. The next 
consideration was the proper placement of 
the fireplace, which would be the home of 
the fire goddess that protected the house and 
its occupants. To determine if a particular 
spot were suitable, a fire was lit there and a 
ground-purifying ceremony was held,- 
through the fire goddess, the head of the 
household asked the god of the land for 
permission to use the site for a home, and 
similar requests were made to the gods of the 
31.3 At Ikorek’s House 
On May 22, 1901, Hiram Hiller jotted in 
his journal,"photoed the inside of 
Ikorek’s house—two plates of the 
fireplace.” The location was Fucani, 
near Monbetsu, Hokkaido. His report 
described the scene: The fire-box 
occupies the center of the room, and is 
the very center of the household as well. 
A space three or four feet wide by five or 
six feet long is filled with earth and 
ashes. They use stones for pot-rests; a 
shelf suspended from the rafters swings 
a few feet above the fire-box and from 
this shelf hang the pot hooks. Upon the 
shelf are kept a few cooking utensils and 
often mats covered with millet or beans, 
or meat and fish are hung there to cure. 
This is the fireplace. All of their heat and 
most of their light is derived from this 
fireplace, and the whole family life 
centers about this box of earth and 
ashes. (UPM archives) 
the influence of Siberian styles in this area 
(Yamamoto 1943: 360), whereas in the 
Kuriles, where there were no forests, pit- 
houses based on housing traditions of Okhotsk 
and Satsumon predecessors were still in use 
(Hitchcock 1891a). The origin of the Hok¬ 
kaido Ainu house described below is unclear, 
but it was already in use when descriptions of 
Ainu culture began to appear in historical 
documents around 1400. What follows is a 
description of the Ainu house based on 
practices followed in the Shiraoi region of 
southern Hokkaido (fig. 31.2). 
Choosing a Location 
Nearly everything about the building and 
organization of the Hokkaido Ainu chise was 
determined by a set of rules based upon 
practical considerations and spiritual sanc- 
228 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / M NOMOTO 
river and its waters. Permission was considered 
granted if the household head had no bad 
dreams for seven days. If such omens appeared, 
it indicated the presence of an evil god, and 
it was then necessary to change the location 
of the house or hearth or to hold a special 
ceremony to purify the land (Takakura 1969). 
Typical Floor Plan 
The chise itself was laid out according to a 
precise plan that reflected the Ainu worldview 
(fig. 3 1.5). In general the house was rectangu¬ 
lar in shape and lacked internal compartments 
or additional rooms or annexes, except for an 
entrance vestibule and a storeroom. Its dimen¬ 
sions were determined by family size, but in 
general houses were about twelve by eighteen 
feet (four to six meters). The house timbers 
were made from small trees lashed together 
31.5, 31.6 Floor Plan 
The typical Shiraoi Ainu house, entered 
through an anteroom in the west end, 
was laid out around a central rectangu¬ 
lar hearth where most everyday activi¬ 
ties took place. Family treasures were 
stored in lacquerware containers along 
an elevated platform in the northeast 
corner of the house or were hung on 
the walls behind them. Guests of honor 
were seated at the east end of the 
room near the god's window, which was 
reserved for the passage of gods. Out¬ 
side this window stood the ritual altar 
□ □ or nusa. (HML, AMS) 
with grapevines and bark. Depending on 
the availability of local materials, the walls 
and roof were covered with bark or a thatch 
of Japanese nutmeg, reeds, or bamboo grass. 
The form of the roof was particularly 
important and had symbolic meaning,- it was 
based on two tripod-shaped elements called 
ketounni (waist of a house) that were erected 
at either end of the house and supported the 
central roof beam. The tripod shape was also 
important in the ground-purifying ceremony: 
a small pothook decorated with sacred wood 
shavings (inaw-kike) was suspended over the 
ritual fire from a cross-beam between two 
small tripods. Construction ceremonies like 
this are not relics of the past, for they are 
still practiced by some Ainu people today 
when building modern houses. 
The typical Shiraoi house had its long 
axis oriented in an east-west direction, which 
was especially important for the proper place¬ 
ment of the windows. Every house had three 
small windows, one on the east side and two 
on the south side. The east window, called 
god's window (kamuy-puyar), was reserved for 
the use of gods entering and leaving the house. 
People never looked through this window 
except during ceremonies and other special 
occasions. The more easterly window on the 
south wall let sunlight into the room, and the 
wall beneath it was removable so that fish or 
other materials needing processing could be 
brought more easily into the house,- the 
southwest window provided light to the 
kitchen area. The entrance to the kitchen was 
located on the south side, and a small annex 
was built on the west end for storing equipment 
and firewood. The door consisted of a straw 
mat or blinds made of Japanese nutmeg or reed. 
In the center of the single interior room 
was a central rectangular fireplace (fig. 3 1.6) 
with two carving stands at the east end where 
men could sit and create sacred shaved sticks 
(inaw) or carve wooden implements (fig. 3 1.8),- 
inaw (fig. 31.7) erected to the fire goddess 
were placed at the northeast corner near this 
carving stand. All the daily prayers and 
prayers for ceremonies took place at this 
location, hire tongs, an ash leveler, and other 
tools were found around the fireplace. Above 
the fireplace were racks for drying and smok¬ 
ing fish,- an apparatus used to suspend pots 
over the fire was also hung over the hearth. 
The space above the rafters was used for 
drying food and for storing mats, reeds, and 
other materials. 
The chise floor was prepared by spread¬ 
ing grass upon the dirt and covering this with 
two layers of matting: first, a cover of mats 
woven from Japanese nutmeg or reeds, and 
then a final surface of woven cattail matting. 
The elders today who used to live in these 
traditional houses say that this type of layered 
floor allowed the heat from the fireplace to 
spread through the matting and warm the floor. 
The northeast corner of the chise had a 
slightly raised floor that was reserved for 
worshipping the gods of the house, of hunt¬ 
ing, and of rearing children. Lacquerware, 
swords, and other valuables obtained by trade 
3 I / KOTAN AND CHISE 229 
from the Japanese were placed on this plat¬ 
form. The number of these items displayed 
were a source of pride and gave some indica¬ 
tion of a family's wealth. 
31.9a-d Ainu House Construction 
The process of building an Ainu 
house is illustrated in this series of 
Ainu-e by Shimanojo Murakami from 
Illustrations of Ainu Livelihood, 
painted in the early nineteenth cen¬ 
tury. Construction began by measur¬ 
ing and cutting logs (a), erecting the 
roof frame (b), raising the roof frame 
onto forked wall posts (c), and cov¬ 
ering the house exterior with 
bundles of grass thatch (d). (HML) 
Building a House 
House construction (figs. 3 1.9a-d) began by 
assembling the rectangular roof on the ground: 
beams were cut to required dimensions and 
bound together,- the two tripods that formed 
the opposite ends of the roof were erected and 
joined by a connecting roof beam,- lateral 
beams were inserted into notches along the 
sides of the frame and lashed down,- and cross¬ 
beams needed to support the roofing materials 
were then lashed into place horizontally along 
the sides of the inclined beams (fig. 31,9b). 
The next step was to dig holes for insertion of 
the wall posts, whose tops were notched to fit 
into the roof frame and were angled slightly 
inwards to help bear the weight of the roof. 
hearth. At the climax of this celebration, the 
head of the household shot an arrow into the 
ceiling to exorcize any evil spirits that 
remained—only then was it safe for a family 
to move into the house. 
Soon after the house was finished, its 
members completed work on peripheral 
structures. An altar (nusa) consisting of a short 
wall of reeds or matting was erected a few 
meters outside the god's window,- this sacred 
place was used during ceremonies to honor 
the gods and send the spirits of animals back 
to the god world (kamuy mosir). A cage for 
housing animals—such as owls or bear cubs 
caught in the mountains—was erected within 
view of the house. This cage, made of a log 
crib that was raised above the ground on stilts, 
served as the home for gods in animal form 
while they visited the kotan, and they lived 
there until they were returned to kamuy mosir in 
special sending ceremonies. A convenient spot 
31.9a 31.9b 
Finally, a group of people was assembled to lift 
the roof frame up onto the wall posts (fig. 
31,9c). After the roof framework had settled, 
cross-beams were installed at intervals up the 
side of the walls and the wall-covering materi¬ 
als lashed to them. Once the framework was 
completed, the roof and walls were covered 
with layers of preassembled bundles of thatch 
(figs. 3 1,9d, 31.11). Construction of the hearth 
signaled completion of the house,- the entryway 
and storage shed were added last. 
House construction took an average of 
three to seven days to complete. When a cbise 
was finished, people gathered for a ceremony 
to bless the house and install its protective 
god. The village elder lit the first fire in the 
fireplace and carved the inaw that represented 
Fuchi, the goddess of house and hearth, 
placing it at the northeast corner of the 
was chosen for the storehouse, also built on 
stilts, which held the family's winter food, and 
racks for drying fish and wild plants were 
erected nearby. Finally, separate toilets for 
men and women were built, and special places 
were designated for disposal of wastewater, 
different kinds of trash, and fireplace ashes. 
Political and Social Organization 
and Traditions 
The kotan and chise were more than simply 
places to live—they also represented the 
political and religious organization that gov¬ 
erned all Ainu social traditions. Ainu society 
was organized into groups based on male and 
female genealogical lineages. Paternal lineage 
handed down two traditions: ancestral family 
marks or crests (itokpa) passed down from 
father to son, and specific ritual practices 
230 TRADITIONAL CULTURE/M. NOMOTO 
31.7 Inaw 
Inaw, sacred shaved sticks represent¬ 
ing birds that carried men's prayers to 
the gods, were prominently displayed 
in Ainu houses. Taking different forms 
for different purposes or for different 
gods to which they were dedicated. 
inaw had an important role in main¬ 
taining the safety and security of the 
home. The most important inaw were 
those dedicated to Fuchi, the goddess 
of the home, and were placed at the 
northeast corner of the hearth box. 
(AMS) 
relating to dealings with the gods. These 
practices were never revealed to people 
outside one's own patrilineage, and the ritu¬ 
als associated with ceremonies honoring 
bears and killer whales or specific mountains 
and places were especially important. 
The maternal line also handed down 
certain specific traditions, the most well 
known of which was the construction and 
design of a special woven belt (fig. 31.10) 
worn by women beneath their clothes. This 
belt had the force of a special personal charm 
and was acquired by a young woman from 
her mother or grandmother when she first 
began to menstruate. The power of each 
individual matrilineage was evidenced by the 
specific construction technique (length, 
number of strands, etc.) and in the woven 
pattern. The Ainu believed that without this 
belt a woman would not find her rightful 
place in the afterlife. Other important 
31.8 Makiri for Carving inaw 
Men used special types of knives 
to carve inaw. one was similar to 
a regular man’s knive but had a 
wide hooked tip; another (fig. 
26.2) was a thin iron blade with 
a wooden block fitted to the end. 
The block served to guide the 
blade when shaving long, thin 
curls. (NMNH 324511) 
traditions passed down through the female 
line were particular clothing patterns and 
styles of embroidery. 
Human relationships in the kotan were 
also determined by patrilineage. Men moving 
into a new village had to cut their ties with 
their former lineage and adopt the beliefs 
and rites of the dominant lineage in a formal 
ceremony conducted before the elders. 
Likewise, a woman who married into the 
kotan had to adopt her husband's patrilineage 
and its specific religious symbols, rituals, and 
ceremonies. Memorial services for ancestors, 
bear-sending rituals, and all other major 
ceremonies were conducted by those in the 
kotan and their blood relatives,- in this way 
the dominant lineage of each kotan directed 
the spiritual life of the community. 
This hierarchy also determined the 
3 1 / KOTAN AND CHISE 231 
31.10 Woman’s Ritual Belt 
Both men and women wore special per¬ 
sonal charms that protected them from 
harm and misfortune caused by evil 
gods. A woman's belt was secret and 
was never seen even by her husband; 
its design, a special family-specific pat¬ 
tern, was inherited from her mother and 
grandmother. Such a belt functioned as 
a spiritual chastity belt and was worn 
continuously after a woman began to 
menstruate. (AMS) 
location of dwellings within the kotan, with the 
dwellings of the dominant male lineage in the 
center,- one of these wotild typically be the home 
of the village leader. When a kotan consisted 
of only one clan, its leading elder, kotan-kor-kur 
(village-own-person), represented the kotan If 
a kotan had two lineages, the elder who was 
most eloquent and who had the best judgment 
became kotan-kor-kur,- the kotan-kor-kur was 
selected by mutual agreement among the 
residents and was not a hereditary position. 
Although such a leader held consider¬ 
able respect and influence, he did not hold 
autocratic power,- his main duty was to confer 
with other elders about issues involving diplo¬ 
macy and administration of justice and to 
gather and determine consensus. He also 
arranged care for families without a household 
head or for childless elderly couples who 
needed help. Because most kotan were orga¬ 
nized around a single paternal lineage in 
which respect for elders was paramount, vil¬ 
lage life tended to function smoothly and with 
a minimum of friction and controversy. 
The typical Ainu family consisted of a 
husband, a wife, and their unmarried children, 
all of whom lived together in one house. When 
children became older and married, they left 
home,- men settled in nearby houses while young 
women usually married men from a different 
kotan. Thus, the Ainu family structure was the 
typical so-called nuclear family identified and 
studied by sociologists. The household leader 
—the father—was called cbise-kor-kur (house- 
own-person). Much as the spatial organization 
of the kotan reflected the patrilineage, the cbise, 
with its special seat reserved for the father, 
expressed the organization of the family. 
When a young man took a wife, the 
couple built a new home near the man's 
parents in the same kotan. As children married 
and moved out, the youngest child often was 
the last to remain with the parents, and it 
232 TRADITIONAL CULTURE/M NOMOTO 
became customary for this youngest child 
to stay with his or her parents,- when the 
youngest child married, the spouse would 
move into the in-laws' home. For this reason 
it was sometimes said that the Ainu trans¬ 
ferred the leadership of the family to the 
youngest child. 
The youngest child, however, did not 
usurp the rights of elder siblings in matters 
of inheritance. When the parents passed away, 
the father's lacquerware, swords, rights to hunt¬ 
ing and fishing territories, and other important 
possessions and entitlements were usually inher¬ 
ited by the oldest son who then assumed most 
of the family's political and economic power. 
The mother's accessories, clothing, and work 
tools were handed down to her daughters. 
Handing down within one's male or female 
line—from fathers to sons and from mothers to 
daughters—ensured that the younger genera¬ 
tion continued the Ainu traditions. 
Changes After Japanese Contact 
Ainu began actively trading with the Japanese 
in the Edo period (1615-1868), especially 
after Japanese fishing stations were estab¬ 
lished along the coast and Ainu were at¬ 
tracted (or forced) to work there (Takakura 
I960,- Kayano 1994). People who had been 
living in various scattered kotan began to live 
near the fisheries because this was convenient 
for the Japanese,- in the late Edo period, as 
many as twenty or thirty households are 
recorded in a single village Under these 
conditions, the traditional organization of the 
Ainu kotan collapsed, and routine hunting 
ceremonies were no longer held because most 
of the men were working at the fishery. 
There were also changes in regional 
administration and the process by which village 
leaders were selected. The Japanese Matsumae 
domain that controlled Ezo established the 
policy of giving each kotan leader the title of 
otona, a Japanese term for the head of a patrilin¬ 
eal clan. Besides otona, the Japanese designated 
assistants and gift receivers,- the latter were to 
bring gifts from the Matsumae officials to the 
villages. When groups of kotan from a certain 
area joined forces, overlords (so-otona) and 
underlords or assistant chiefs (waki-otona) were 
appointed as their representatives. 
These Japanese policies gradually 
replaced the traditional Ainu ways of govern¬ 
ing their villages. The situation worsened for 
the Ainu in 1868 when the Meiji government 
encouraged Japanese emigration to Hokkaido 
31.11 Traditional Ainu House 
This house was constructed by Ainu 
for the Ainu Museum at Shiraoi. Ainu 
houses in other areas of Hokkaido 
differed considerably from the Shiraoi 
pattern, as seen in photographs of 
other Ainu villages (e.g., figs. 22.1, 
27.2). Many of the Kurile Ainu contin¬ 
ued to live in pithouses until the 
nineteenth century, while Sakhalin 
Ainu used Siberian-styie log houses. 
(AMS) 
to begin farming and forestry operations in 
unsettled areas, thus encroaching upon the 
rights of the indigenous Ainu as well as the 
very land upon which they lived The result 
was rapid destruction of the natural environ¬ 
ment, which made it impossible for the Ainu 
to maintain their traditional subsistence 
lifestyle and their close relationship to nature. 
Even more disastrous was the government 
decree in 1877 that designated land tradition¬ 
ally owned by Ainu as "unowned" land, 
making it available to Japanese settlers. 
Many kotan were located on the lower 
reaches of rivers and along the seashore 
where natural resources were plentiful,- these 
areas were also the most suitable lands for the 
Japanese settlers, and they quickly took them 
from the Ainu. New regulations took life- 
sustaining traditional rights to catch salmon 
and trout away from the Ainu and gave them 
to the Japanese. Ainu were also encouraged 
to take up agriculture as a full-time occupa¬ 
tion but were given poor-quality land, which 
left them unable to compete with Japanese 
farming enterprises. In these and other ways, 
government policy eliminated the economic 
base for Ainu culture, and its social focus, the 
kotan, was completely destroyed. 
Ainu Living Space Today 
The form and location of the traditional chise 
and kotan encompassed both practical and 
spiritual considerations, while also reflecting 
the unique social organization of the Ainu. 
Modern Ainu can look to that heritage as 
a source of inspiration as they work to 
maintain their culture. For instance, though 
Ainu today live in modern, Japanese-style 
houses, they hold a traditional ceremony 
before building the house, and a traditional 
housewarming party takes place. Inaw are 
commonly seen hanging on contemporary 
houses, often over doorways, to ward off 
evil spirits. New educational initiatives, 
like the one at the Ainu Museum where six 
restored chise are exhibited, have increased 
demand for the traditional house. As Ainu 
cultural promotion continues, it is important 
that the Ainu themselves use the chise as a 
means to sustain their cultural identity 
without turning it into a simplistic cultural 
icon or tourist attraction. 
It is more difficult to find a modern 
expression of the traditional kotan community 
organization and land-use practices, because 
it is difficult today for Ainu to have access to 
a large range of land. Various government 
initiatives—most lacking Ainu participa¬ 
tion—have studied this problem: in 1996 a 
report proposed the revival of the traditional 
living space as a vehicle for the study, trans¬ 
mission, and preservation of Ainu culture, 
and in 1997 the Hokkaido prefectural gov¬ 
ernment established a committee for the 
maintenance and study of traditional living 
space. So far these initiatives have only 
produced exploitative activities that feature 
the Ainu as cultural relics in tourist-oriented 
memorial parks. What is needed now is for 
the Ainu themselves to articulate the modern 
relevance of the social structure provided by 
kotan and iwor and to implement policies for 
new living spaces that they can be proud of, 
which link past and present, and which can 
inspire a new cultural strategy. 
3 1 / KOTAN AND CHISE 233 
Village 
Work: 
Gender Roles and 
Seasonal Work 
Mitsunori Keira and 
Tqmoko Keira 
32.1 
In the Ainu language the village is 
called kotan, and the wilderness around 
the kotan where the resources—animals 
and plants—needed for life could be 
found was called iwor (fig. 32.1); together 
they provided the basis for traditional Ainu 
life. The kotan was usually comprised of two 
to six households surrounded by lands 
sufficient to supply food and other living 
necessities without infringing on the lands of 
other villages. Today, of course, this tradi¬ 
tional life is gone, but even though it no 
longer exists in its original form, it is known 
from oral tradition and scholarly literature. 
The breakdown of the traditional 
structure of Ainu society began at the end of 
the eighteenth century as the political and 
military influence of the Wajin (Japanese) from 
Honshu was bolstered by commercial ex¬ 
change. This structure was completely 
destroyed with the birth of the modern 
Japanese nation during the Meiji Restoration, 
which began in 1868. At this time Japanese 
leaders regarded Hokkaido as a land without a 
master and took possession for the emperor, 
disregarding its indigenous population and 
their livelihood. Even the areas where Ainu 
people were living were proclaimed "official 
land," making it impossible for Ainu to carry 
on their traditional economy. 
Hunting, fishing, food gathering, and 
small-scale agriculture provided the necessities 
of life, while trade introduced variety and 
environmental differences created distinct 
traditions in Ainu culture. The year was divided 
into two seasons, winter and summer. According 
to an Ainu saying, "The winter is the man's 
season while the summer belongs to women." 
This reflected the fact that hunting was the most 
important activity undertaken in winter, with 
bear and deer hunting being paramount, while 
summer was the season for gathering and 
processing plants, which was directed by 
women. While there was no fixed division of 
labor in Ainu society, de facto sexual division of 
labor existed due to gender and physical 
abilities. One's status as an adult was determined 
by one's ability to perform important tasks. 
Men's Work 
Men's primary work included the preparation 
and execution of religious ceremonies, as well 
as hunting, fishing, and the production of 
tools (fig. 32.2). Inaw, the sacred shaved sticks 
used in ceremonies, were made by scraping 
shoots of willow, dogwood, and amur cork. 
The size and shape of inaw varied depending 
on the kind of ceremony for which they were 
made, but for all purposes, inaw had to be 
made skillfully and beautifully. Men also made 
the prayer stick known as ikupasuy, which was 
used when offering prayers and sake to the 
gods. Ikupasuy were carved with elaborate 
sculptural forms that represent some of the 
234 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / M. KEIRA AND T. KEIRA 
32.1 February: Hunting in the 
Mountains 
Winter was the season for hunting 
in the mountains. Often groups of 
Ainu men would cooperate on hunt¬ 
ing expeditions, but individuals also 
ventured out alone. This copy of a 
panel from Byozan Hirasawa’s Ainu 
Manners and Customs shows a 
hunter preparing a fire while his 
dogs romp and others hunt deer in 
the distance. (HMH) 
32.2 Quiver and Arrows 
Deer and bear hunting were done 
principally with bow and poisoned 
arrows. Quivers, of elaborate con¬ 
struction and decorated with 
cherry-bark wrappings, were as dis¬ 
tinctive as one's clothing style and 
identified a man with a particular 
regional group. An ikupasuy (prayer 
stick) was often bound to the out¬ 
side of the quiver. (FMC 88075) 
32.3 
32.3 Hunting Group with Dog 
This painting by Rinzo Mamiya from 
illustrations of Northern Ezo (1855), 
shows a group of Sakhalin Ainu 
equipped for a hunt with spears, bow 
and arrow, and a hunting dog. The child 
appears to be wearing a fur garment; 
the middle figure wears sealskin boots 
and a fishskin robe; and the man at 
right, who is carrying his quiver with a 
burden strap, wears an embroidered 
attush (bark-cloth) robe. (HML) 
•-M 
finest carving traditions of the Ainu (see 
Maraini, this volume). 
While there is no doubt that women 
prayed, men had the main responsibility for 
praying and sending messages to the gods 
during ceremonies. Reciting prayers in the old 
Ainu style was a difficult task: a young boy 
had to memorize the prayers by listening to 
his father and grandfather at every ceremony 
until he had mastered them A line of prayer 
from Tatsujiro Kuzuno, one of today's oldest 
elders, speaks of the relationship between 
humans and gods: "People live because of the 
gods, and because humans exist the gods can 
be adored and prayed to." This exquisite 
statement spells out the basic equality of gods 
and man and reveals man's awe of the gods, 
who possess immense power, even as it 
expresses pride in being human. 
"Hunting" meant bear hunting in general, 
but deer hunting was also an important sub¬ 
sistence activity 
(fig. 32.3). Smaller 
animals such as fox, 
raccoon dog, and 
rabbit were targets 
as well Devices 
made by men to 
catch small animals 
and birds included 
bows and arrows, 
spring bows, spears, 
and heavy hunting 
knives. 
Men also had 
to know how to 
build several types 
of boats for use in 
the ocean, lakes, or 
rivers, and fishing gear had to be prepared for 
specific types of fish and for different condi¬ 
tions, such as narrow, fast-current streams 
or wide, slow-moving rivers. A particular 
implement known as marek (a fishing spear 
with a special pivotting hook) was used by 
the Ainu. Tools and traps for capturing 
salmon, a major part of the Ainu diet, were 
found in a great many varieties. As with other 
peoples around the North Pacific, the Ainu 
used a special wooden club to kill salmon. 
The Ainu version, called isapakikni, carried 
carved inaw-kike (sacred wood shavings) on its 
shaft and was considered sacred. 
Because the Ainu believed that the gods 
were found in every object, each tool had a 
spirit. In order to protect these spirits from 
harm, objects were carved with sculptural 
forms to keep "demons" from entering them. 
People believed that the more beautiful 
and powerful the carvings, the stronger the 
defense against the evil gods. For this reason 
men worked hard to improve their carving 
ability, creating ever more beautiful designs 
using only their makiri (a man's basic utility 
knife,- figs. 32.4-32.6). 
Women's Work 
Ainu women were busy from early spring to late 
autumn gathering food, gardening, making 
clothes, producing utensils needed for daily life, 
bearing children, and caring for their families. 
Cbise-kor-kdtkemat—the woman of the house— 
had little rest, and as the seasons changed her 
hands were always busy processing new materials 
into products needed in the household. 
As soon as the spring thaw began, 
women went into the fields and mountains to 
pick wild plants that they had not been able 
to harvest for the previous six months. At 
least thirty mountain plants were used, plus 
an assortment of lowland plant and seaweed 
species. Those that were edible were con¬ 
sumed fresh or were preserved for later use, 
and medicinals were also collected. Because 
salt was a scarce commodity (except in 
coastal areas), most plants were instead 
preserved by drying. Dried vegetables were 
used in cooking during the winter when the 
forests and fields were covered with snow. 
Spring also was a time for collecting, 
peeling, and processing bark used to make 
clothing and other materials. While women 
assisted in this process, this work was normally 
done by men. Two types of trees were used: 
the inner bark of the elm tree was made into 
obyo thread, while linden produced nipes. The 
general method was to scrape off the hard 
outer bark while still in the mountains and 
bring the soft inner bark back to the village for 
processing. Bundles of inner bark would be 
sunk into a marsh or a hot spring and left there 
for several weeks. When the bark was in a 
condition that permitted it to be scraped by 
hand, it would be removed from the water, 
rinsed in river water, and the sticky surface 
would be peeled off. When the bundle of fiber 
was dry, it could be stripped into fine threads 
and worked into cloth using a backstrap loom. 
Thin threads of bark could also be braided into 
a strong line for making bags and weaving 
mats. Bark fiber was an indispensable material 
used to produce clothing, bags, and carrying 
32 / WORK AND GENDER ROLES 235 
32.4, 32.5, 32.6 Men's Knives 
Men’s carving knives (makiri), worn 
suspended prominently from the belt, 
were highly visible statements of one's 
carving prowess. This group displays 
some of the variety and elegance of 
this important implement. In addition 
to a blade and sheath, the knives usu¬ 
ally had a netsuke-like toggle and a 
glass bead attached to the thong that 
fastened the knife to the belt. These 
toggles offered a unique format for 
such miniature sculptures as a knife, 
an animal jaw with incisors, and an 
awl. (MPM N17340A; AMS 62228; 
NMNH 325243) 
implements,- to build and equip houses,- and in 
many other aspects of daily life. A third type of 
clothing material (rdarpe), very light and almost 
white in color, was made from the fibers of the 
nettle plant and was most popular among the 
Sakhalin Ainu. 
32.5 
Spring was also the time to tap sugar- 
maple trees (fig. 32.8). Like the peoples native 
to the eastern woodlands of North America, the 
Ainu used the tree sap to sweeten their diet. 
Women also gathered and processed an 
important food material called turep in early 
summer when the roots of this large-leafed lily 
were full of starch (fig. 32.9). When the 
leaves began to wither, the plant would be 
dug up and the stalk could be eaten steamed 
or boiled. Starch from the remaining root was 
extracted by cleaning, rinsing, and pounding 
the roots in a mortar with a pestle. When the 
crushed roots became sticky they would be 
placed in a tub of water,- after one or two days 
the fiber would float free and the starch would 
remain on the bottom. Fiber was skimmed off 
and the water in the tub would be changed 
repeatedly, leaving high-quality starch that 
could then be used for medicine or food. 
The fiber that was removed was wrapped 
in a woven mat and placed in the shade for 
about a week until it fermented. It was then 
shaped into a fibery doughnut-shaped disk 
called turep akam about one inch (three centime¬ 
ters) thick and eight inches (twenty centimeters) 
in diameter. This important food could be easily 
stored by running a line through the holes and 
236 TRADITIONAL CULTURE: / M. KEIRA AND T. KEIRA 
32.7 Pillow Box 
Ainu called boxes in general suop. 
Most boxes had special purposes, 
such as storage of beads, neck¬ 
laces, ceremonial items, or monks¬ 
hood roots used to make hunting 
poison. A man’s workbox {pon suop) 
was used to store his knives and 
tools and was kept near his place at 
the hearth. Often boxes doubled as a 
pillows and had ornamental raised 
panels at each end. (BMA 12.674 A,B) 
32.8 Gathering Maple Syrup 
Hokkaido maples were tapped in 
spring using troughs and pails, and 
the sap was collected and boiled with 
meat and fish to make sweet soups 
and stews. This illustration is from 
the late-nineteenth-century picture 
scroll Ainu Manners and Customs by 
Hokuyo Nishikawa. (HML) 
hanging them up in a dry place. To be eaten, the 
dried disk was placed in a mortar and pounded 
until it separated into powder and fiber fractions. 
The powder was collected and mixed with water 
and formed into a small ball to be mixed into 
porridge. Because the processing of turep took a 
lot of water, it was done at the river. Elders re¬ 
member women of the kotan gathered together 
working cheerfully at this common task, one of 
the most important of the summer season. 
Communal Work and Celebration 
The elders used to say, "When the cuckoo 
sings, it's time for planting." The work on 
small garden plots was begun in spring and 
continued throughout the summer by women, 
children, and old people. Later, during the 
autumn, grains, roots, and beans were har¬ 
vested, and nuts and mushrooms were gath¬ 
ered and preserved for the coming winter. 
Women also had to begin securing materials 
needed for various winter manufacturing 
tasks, which included the making of mats 
(toma) which were used to keep the house 
warm, clean, and comfortable, and flower 
mats (cbitarpe) used for decoration and cer¬ 
emonies,- materials for both were gathered in 
the fall. Cattails, rushes, and sedge that grew 
along the shores were cut, dried, and pre¬ 
served. Women had to secure large amounts 
of these plants during a very brief time period 
after the leaves had matured but before they 
dried and withered. 
Cattails, the best material for mats, were 
prepared along the shore by cutting the plant 
stems free from the root. The leaves were sepa¬ 
rated, overlapped, and rinsed with water, then 
bundled and tied by their leaf ends so that the 
bottoms would spread like a fan and diy. They 
were then left in the shade for two or three 
weeks, always watched carefully to prevent 
mold from growing. This work is called kinacha. 
Autumn was the traditional time for local 
and regional ceremonies that would take place 
in the various kotan. These are the ceremonies 
where people shared their thankfulness for 
the harvest of the land with their gods, ances¬ 
tors, and neighbors. In addition to the impor¬ 
tant role that men played in these ceremonies, 
women also participated by making sake to 
32/WORK AND GENDER ROLES 237 
32.9 32.10 
32.9, 32.10 Wild Harvest 
Ainu obtained much of their produce from 
nature. Wild lily roots, dug up in the spring 
with wooden hoes and digging sticks, 
were boiled and converted to starch for 
dumplings. In winter, waternuts were 
gathered through holes in pond ice. 
These illustrations, which show details 
of Ainu tools, dress, and daily activities, 
are from the late-nineteenth-century 
picture scroll, Ainu Manners and Customs 
by Hokuyo Nishikawa. (HML) 
32.13 April: Twisting Thread 
After elm bark had been stripped from 
the trees, it was processed into fiber. 
This illustration in Byozan Hirasawa’s 
Ainu Manners and Customs, painted 
after 1872, shows a fireside scene 
with game and produce hanging from 
the rafters, a man smoking a pipe, a 
woman tending the fire, and a woman 
twisting fiber into thread. (HMH) 
32.13 
be used for offerings and preparing traditional 
foods. After the men had finished praying 
in memorial services to the gods, the women 
performed songs and dances. 
With the arrival of late fall, the men 
would begin to fish for the salmon that began 
to swim up the streams. Women joined in the 
work, processing and drying the fish, a major 
staple during the winter months. When snow 
began to fall the women cut nettles, silver 
grass, and bay punkar {Celastrus orbiculatus), a 
woody vine. Thread was produced from fibers 
extracted from the nettle skin and made into 
fabric and embroidery thread. Silver grass was 
used as material for reed screens. The strong 
transparent fibers were also braided to make 
bowstrings as well as the secret narrow sash 
women wore as a symbol of chastity or, if 
married, of faithfulness to their husbands, 
whose design was handed down from mother 
to daughter. Finally, with all the materials 
gathered and processed, the women's summer 
work came to a close. 
By the time snow began to accumulate, 
the men had begun their fall hunting and 
women's production work was in full swing. 
They began by making thread (kaeka) by 
twisting two fine strands of elm or linden bark 
into a single strand between the thumb and 
forefinger (fig. 32.13). Although not a diffi¬ 
cult technique, close attention must be paid 
in order to keep the thickness of the thread 
even. More than two hundred feet (about 65 
meters) of thread are needed for a regular-size 
mat, 518 feet (190 meters) to make a saranip 
(woven bag), and 902 feet (280 meters) to 
make a tar (backpack strap), so women could 
not afford to waste a single minute. 
Mats for the floor or walls, which do not 
have any patterns, are made from cattails with 
238 TRADITIONAL CULTURE: / M. KEIRA A N D T. KEIRA 
32.11 32.12 
32.11, 32.12 Making Rice Cakes 
A ubiquitous implement was the large 
mortar and pestle, which was carved 
from logs. It is shown here being used 
by two women in an old postcard cap¬ 
tioned, “Young Women’s Rice-Cake 
Making. Aborigine's Custom Hok¬ 
kaido.” When making special rice 
cakes to be used in iyomante ceremo¬ 
nies, rice flour was mixed with other 
ingredients and formed into cakes, as 
shown in a late-nineteenth-century 
Ainu-e titled “Masticating Offertory 
Rice Cakes" from Ainu Manners and 
Customs by Hokuyo Nishikawa. (NAA 
98-10408; HML) 
32.14 Garden Hoe 
Gardening was an important but 
supplementary activity for most Hok¬ 
kaido Ainu families. Originally the only 
hoes available were simple ones made 
from the branch of a hardwood tree, 
like the hoe shown here. As iron be¬ 
came more available, iron shoes re¬ 
placed wooden blades, giving them a 
much longer life. (NMNH 150682) 
thread from twisted linden or elm used as the 
warp. Using looms, women wove mats, paying 
dose attention to the evenness of the threads. 
The size of the flower mats used for ceremo¬ 
nies and decorations varies according to use,- 
they are woven with the same techniques 
used for other mats, and the patterns are 
created using the dyed inner bark of 
elm and linden A black color is 
obtained from the boiled bark of 
the walnut tree and red from 
the boiled bark of the alder 
tree. With these colors, 
beautiful geometric 
patterns of contrasting 
black and red against 
a white background 
are produced. 
The saranip, still made today, is an indis¬ 
pensable article that is used especially as a 
container for preserving food. Women make 
saranip in various sizes and styles for different 
purposes, and various methods are used from 
region to region Individuals also develop their 
own personalized styles. Another important 
woven product was the tar, which was used to 
carry bundled wood or grass. The sash-type 
straps were, on average, about thirteen feet 
(four meters) long and three inches (seven 
centimeters) wide, and the central headstrap 
portion was often decorated with black-and- 
white designs. The strap was used in the same 
manner as the Native American carrying strap, 
or tumpline, with the wider central part of the 
strap worn over the forehead and its two ends 
extending over the shoulders and tied around 
the load This important implement was carried 
by men and women nearly all the time. When 
not in use it was folded and hung from one's 
belt or tucked into a waistband. 
Most of the products produced by women 
were decorated with embroidered designs, and 
embroidery continues to be widely practiced by 
the Ainu today. Although styles have gone 
through many changes, they continue to evolve. 
The patterns used on ceremonial clothing, while 
refined, serve a definite purpose, for Ainu 
believe that the patterns protect the wearer from 
malevolent forces, help repel sickness and 
disease, and guard against evil spirits. In old 
times Ainu women embroidered these designs 
on the clothing of their loved ones to keep them 
safe from danger when they were out hunting in 
the mountains or at sea. One can imagine the 
long nights of winter passing slowly as the 
women's work progressed 
32/ WORK AND GENDER ROLES 239 
WHEN DISCUSSING HUMAN 
relationships and their 
workings among the Ainu, 
the term "sociality" is more 
accurate than the older standard anthropo¬ 
logical term "social organization," which fails 
to emphasize the interplay between individu¬ 
als and their social group (fig. 33.1). Rather 
than discussing abstract principles of social 
organization, this essay will describe the day- 
to-day behavior of Ainu individuals (figs. 33.2, 
33.3)—including the bear-sending ceremony 
(iyomante), shamanistic practice, and other 
activities—as more illustrative of the concept 
of sociality. Although this discussion refers to 
other Ainu groups, my ethnography depends 
more on the Ainu of the northwest coast of 
southern Sakhalin rather than the Hokkaido 
Ainu. My fieldwork among the Sakhalin Ainu 
took place after they moved to Hokkaido at 
the end of World War II, in several periods 
33.1 
Ainu 
Sociality 
Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney 
between 1965 and 1973. While the present 
tense is used for ethnographic descriptions, 
some of the beliefs and practices described 
have changed or been discontinued. 
At the outset, two common misconcep¬ 
tions about the Ainu people must be pointed 
out. First, the Ainu have never been a 
monolithic group. In addition to intragroup 
variations, the Ainu of Hokkaido, Sakhalin, 
and the Kuriles were distinct social groups 
who inhabited three different ecological 
zones. The Hokkaido Ainu formed perma¬ 
nent settlements in areas abundant in natural 
resources, and some of their settlements were 
quite large and their political organizations 
well developed and more formal. The 
Sakhalin Amu, on the other hand, moved 
seasonally between their summer and winter 
settlements and had less formalized political 
organization. The Kurile Ainu, with smaller 
and more mobile settlement patterns, were 
the hardest-hit victims of the Russian and 
Japanese fur traders,- the last of the Kurile 
Ainu died in 1941 (Ohnuki-Tierney 1974). 
Variations among these three groups are also 
due to the fact that each had been in contact 
with different outside cultures who influenced 
and were influenced by each group of Ainu in 
quite different ways. 
The second misconception involves 
representations that the Ainu were bypassed 
by history,- on the contrary, they have never 
been isolated but rather were successful, wide- 
ranging traders. What is rarely recognized is 
that their culture developed in dynamic ways 
owing to their interactions with others, and 
these historical dynamics profoundly affected 
the development of Ainu culture in general,- 
these influences even affected religious prac¬ 
tices and beliefs, which are often assumed, 
erroneously, to lie at the core of any culture 
and thus be shielded from outside influences. 
Needless to say, interaction also resulted in 
the devastating impact of Russian and Japa¬ 
nese colonialism (Takakura 1943, 1960). 
Iyomante— 
The Bear-Sending Ceremony 
Of all the rituals of the Ainu, the bear-sending 
ceremony is by far the most elaborate (figs. 
33.4, 33.5). This is the only ceremony shared 
by all Ainu in all regions (except the northern 
Kuriles), although it had much regional 
variation. The ceremony involves not only 
the members of the immediate settlement 
240 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / E. OHNUKI-TIERNEY 
33.2 Greeting Demonstration 
Jesse Tarbox Beals photographed 
Sangyea and Sangtukno demonstrating 
a greeting ceremony outside the Ainu 
house at the St. Louis Exposition in 
1904. (NAA 93-10385) 
33.3 Greeting Ritual 
Ainu custom called for a simple 
greeting ritual when people met, as 
shown in this illustration from a 
version of Shimanojo Murakami’s 
Curious Sights of Ezo Island (1799). 
These and other rituals were among 
the vivid memories of early visitors to 
the Ainu. (NMNH 392,023-25) 
33.1 Festival Scene 
This hanging silk scroll, collected by 
Edward S. Morse and inscribed 
"Autumn, 1871,” was painted by 
Byozan Hirasawa (1822-76). The 
painting shows a large group of Ainu 
people enjoying themselves in an 
exuberant social setting with an elder 
(ekashi) singing and playing the tonkori. 
One feels the warmth of the family 
atmosphere through details of facial 
expression, and all the clothes and 
hairstyles of people of different ages 
are carefully illustrated. (PEM 3279) 
but those from other communities as well, 
thus contributing to regional communica¬ 
tion. It provides a significant opportunity 
for male elders to display their wealth, sym¬ 
bolizing personal and community political 
power to those from other settlements 
(Pilsudski 1915). 
Items that connote wealth—especially 
such trade goods as Japanese lacquerware, 
swords, beads, and other materials acquired 
through the Santan trade—were considered 
the most respectful offerings to the deities. 
The Santan trade (Takakura 1939) was a very 
active trade network that stretched from 
Korea and Osaka (Japan), along the Sea of 
Japan coasts of Honshu, Hokkaido, and 
Sakhalin, throughout the lower Amur region, 
and all the way to Manchuria, involving 
many peoples. The objects are not items of 
wealth per se but are Ainu expressions of 
respect toward the deities. Thus, the bear- 
33.2 
sending ceremony, iyonmnte, which is often 
considered to be quintessentially "Ainu," does 
not represent a "closed" culture and society 
because it was predicated upon Ainu involve¬ 
ment in trade,- at the same time it is also an 
expression of a unique religious practice. 
From the perspective of the Ainu, the 
bear-sending ceremony is a "ritual of rebirth" 
for the bear. This is an important point that is 
often misunderstood by outsiders. The cere¬ 
mony's purpose is to send off the soul of the 
bear in a ritually proper way so that it will be 
reborn in the mountains where the bear deities 
(kimun-kamuy) reside. If humans treat the bear, 
which is affectionately referred to as "deity- 
grandchild," with love and respect and send its 
soul back with gifts and offerings to the bear 
deities, then the bearkumuy will be pleased and 
will revisit the Ainu with gifts of meat and fur 
as reassurance of their goodwill toward hu¬ 
mans. The iyomante is the most important 
form of gift exchange, and it occurs at a cos¬ 
mic scale—between humans and deities. It is 
noteworthy that the cycle is initiated by the 
deities, who first sacrifice themselves for 
humans by offering their meat and fur. It is the 
deities who establish the model for generosity, 
which is the human value most treasured by 
the Ainu, as we will see later. 
The entire process of the bear cere¬ 
mony normally takes at least two years and 
consists of three stages. Hunters first capture 
a bear cub, either while still in its den or 
shortly after emerging. It is usually raised by 
the Ainu for about a year and a half, and at 
times women nurse these newborn animals. 
Although the time of the ceremony differs 
according to region, it is most often held in 
the beginning of the cold season, for the 
Sakhalin Ainu, it takes place just before they 
33.3 
move from their summer settlements into the 
interior for the winter. 
In the major ceremony, the bear is 
ritually killed and its soul is sent back to the 
mountains. The ceremony is multidimen¬ 
sional: it is religious, political, social, eco¬ 
nomic, and even joyful, with the merriment of 
eating, drinking, music, and dancing. But for 
the Ainu, for whom even the disposal of food 
waste is ritually controlled, religion is never 
isolated from life in general. All participants 
don their finest clothing and adornments for 
the iyomante. Prayers are offered to Fuchi, the 
fire goddess and the deity of the hearth and 
home, but the major focus of the ceremony is 
on the deity of the mountains who has sent 
the bear as a gift to humans. 
Among the Sakhalin Ainu, after the bear 
is taken out of the bear house it is killed with 
33/AINU SOCIAL LIFE 241 
two pointed arrows (fig. 33.4), whereas the 
Hokkaido Ainu use blunt arrows (beper-ay) 
before critically wounding the bear with 
pointed arrows,- they then strangle the bear 
between two logs. Male elders skin and dress 
the bear, which is then placed in front of the 
altar (nusa) where treasures are hung (fig. 33.5). 
After preliminary feasting outside at the altar, 
the Ainu bring the dissected bear into the 
house through the sacred window and con¬ 
tinue their feast. Among the Hokkaido Ainu, 
the ceremony ends when the skull of the bear 
is placed on the nusa outside the house on a 
pole decorated with maw; the elder recites a 
farewell prayer while shooting an arrow to¬ 
ward the eastern sky, an act that signifies the 
departure of the deity. The Sakhalin Ainu take 
the bear skull, dressed in ritual wood shavings, 
and the bones, eyes, and penis (if a male) to a 
sacred pile in the mountains. They also sacri¬ 
fice two carefully chosen dogs, which are 
Shamanism 
In contrast to the leading role played by men 
in the bear festival, Ainu women play an 
important—though not exclusive—role in 
shamanism. In Sakhalin Ainu oral tradition, 
shamans in the past were also powerful politi¬ 
cal leaders who had supernatural ability to 
communicate with deities (Kindaichi 1914; 
Ohnuki-Tierney 1969); their religious power 
may have been even more important than 
their physical ability in combat. Shamanism 
among the Sakhalin Ainu differs considerably 
from that of the Hokkaido Ainu. Among 
the former, cultural valuation of shamanism 
is high, and well-regarded members of the 
community, both men and women, can be¬ 
come shamans. 
Although shamans sometimes perform 
rites for divinations of various sorts and 
for miracle performances, most rites are 
performed for the diagnosis and curing of 
33.4 
33.4, 33.5 Sakhalin Ainu Iyomahte 
Bronislaw Pilsudski spent several years 
studying the Sakhalin Ainu in the early 
1900s, and he later sold copies of his 
photographs to the Smithsonian, 
including pictures of the Sakhalin bear 
ceremony. The ceremony concludes a 
multiyear cycle: a bear is reared from 
cub to adulthood and is then killed so 
that its spirit can be sent back to the 
god world with presents and praise 
from its human hosts. (NMNH 87- 
5540, 81-3596) 
33.5 
considered to be servant-messengers to the 
bear deities. (For the Hokkaido Ainu bear 
ceremony, see Munro's film and Kitagawa 
[1961 ],- for Sakhalin, see Pilsudski [1915] and 
Ohnuki-Tierney [1974: 90—97]). 
Although often mistaken as cruel by 
outsiders, the bear ceremony is a ritual 
whereby the Ainu express their utmost 
respect to their deity, and its paramount 
significance is a sacred act. For the Sakhalin 
Auni, the bear is not important as a food 
source: like other hunting societies that do 
not regularly eat their most prestigious big 
game—the iKung San of the Kalahari Desert, 
for instance, do not regularly eat giraffe— 
Ainu rarely eat bear meat, and the bear 
ceremony is held only once a year, if that. 
Even so, Ainu men and women find bear meat 
exquisite, unparalleled by any other food. 
illnesses. These include particularly grave 
illnesses whose etiological cause—"Why did 
it befall this particular individual?"—must be 
sought from the spirits and deities. When a 
shaman is possessed by a spirit, she/he enters 
a state of trance and the spirit speaks through 
the shaman's mouth, providing the client 
with necessary information such as the diag¬ 
nosis and cure of an illness or the location of 
a sought-after missing object. 
Less is known of shamanism among the 
Hokkaido Ainu. Here shamans are usually 
women, although male shamans are known to 
have existed in the past. The Hokkaido Ainu 
shaman also enters a possession trance, but she 
does so only if a male elder induces it in her 
by offering prayers to the deities. Her function 
is confined to diagnosis of illness, after which 
male elders take over the healing process. Male 
TRADITIONAL CULTURE /E. OHNUKI TIERNEY 
33.6 
33.7 
33.6, 33.7 Corporal Punishment 
Ainu social code included provisions 
for corporal punishment. Councils of 
elders considered the offense and 
prescribed the punishment. For 
serious crimes, the offender was 
beaten with a grooved wooden club 
that sometimes carried a carving of a 
animal, in this case, a snake. This 
image from Illustrations of Ezo 
Livelihood by Shimanojo Murakami 
dates to the early nineteenth century. 
(UPM A470B; NMNH 392,024) 
elders must, however, consult a shaman before 
they make important decisions for the commu¬ 
nity, such as a declaration of a war. 
The shamanistic ritual is held at night, 
for Ainu consider the daytime to be the time 
for humans and night the time for deities and 
demons. The ritual is held inside a house, at 
the hearth, which the Ainu consider to be a 
miniature universe and the abode of Fuchi, 
"Grandmother FJearth" and the most powerful 
female deity in the Ainu pantheon. She 
becomes the mediator between humans and 
other deities whose knowledge and power are 
being sought. 
Among the Sakhalin Ainu, the ritual 
begins with drumming by the shaman,- 
drumming announces the beginning of the 
ritual, expels evil spirits, and helps the 
shaman reach a state of trance. The shaman's 
assistant produces an aromatic smoke by 
burning Ezo spruce or larch, a plant called 
nuhcha, and minced dried leek. Throughout 
the rite the shaman frequently drinks a 
solution—considered too salty for ordinary 
human consumption—consisting of seawater 
(or river water during winter), Ezo spruce, 
nuhcha, and dried kelp coated with sea salt. 
Shamans do not wear special garments except 
for a headdress, a headband to which various 
charms are attached, a necklace, and two inaiv 
(for Ainu shamanism see M. Chiri 1973c,- 
Ohnuki-Tierney 1976a, 1976b, 1981). 
From a symbolic perspective, several 
aspects of shamanism reveal the importance 
of the female principle in Ainu culture: the 
rite is held in the woman's domain, inside the 
house, and most importantly, beside the 
hearth where Fuchi, the female counterpart of 
the bear deity, resides. It is here that women 
prepare the daily meals, converting natural 
resources into culturally edible food,- for Ainu 
this is accomplished by thorough cooking, as 
distinct from their neighbors, the Nivkhi 
(formerly known as Gilyaks, a people of 
northern Sakhalin and the lower Amur delta 
region) and the Japanese, whose diet often 
includes raw food. 
In other words, shamanism is expressive 
of the act of cooking, the conversion of raw 
natural products into culturally acceptable 
food, and it also involves healing, the way 
humans prevent a person from returning 
to nature through death. In this sense, it 
33/AINU SOCIAL LIFE 243 
33.8 Tobacco Pouch 
As in other cultures, smoking was one 
of the most enjoyable forms of male 
and female social activity, and great 
amounts of time went into acquiring 
tobacco and making smoking kits and 
paraphernalia. Women did not usually 
participate in the production of 
smoking equipment, but this pouch, 
collected in Sakhalin, was probably 
made by women and may have been 
imported. Bleached sealskin pouches 
with dyed skin and colored embroidery 
were common among mainland Amur 
River peoples. (FMC 32075) 
* *.-( 
K 
ffl 
\ 
33.9 Praying with Inaw 
Inaw, usually made of willow sticks 
shaved into different shapes and forms 
(depending on the ceremony or use) 
helped carry human prayers to the 
gods. Each inaw was carved in a form 
recognizable to the god for which it was 
intended. Men, who had responsibility 
for communicating with the gods, had 
to learn to carve inaw correctly, with 
precision and beauty, as well as how to 
pray in the appropriate language and 
with the prescribed rituals. This scene 
comes from Drawings of Travels 
Through Ezo, painted by Gentan Tani in 
1799. (HML) 
has the same symbolic purpose as the bear 
ceremony—the use of deities and nature 
for human spiritual and physical nourishment. 
However, while the role of women is expressed 
privately as an individual act in shamanism, the 
bear ceremony expresses the role of men in the 
political structure, in their public role. 
Social Hierarchies and Gender 
Among the Ainu, women are generally 
assigned a lower social status than men. This 
status is given a clear cultural explanation: 
women are considered to be a defiling 
presence because of the smell of menstrual 
and parturient blood, which in Ainu belief 
does not disappear after washing. This is 
why women retreat (in Sakhalin custom) to 
their houses when the bear is being killed 
during the iyomante. Despite this, extraor¬ 
dinary power is assigned to female blood. 
When an epidemic, such as smallpox, threat¬ 
ens a settlement, male elders recite a sacred 
epic to ward off disease, believed to be spread 
by demons However, if their recitation fails 
and victims begin to sicken, the only antidote 
considered effective is women's menstrual 
blood, which is applied to the afflicted spots 
of the sick person's body. In this case, young 
women hold powers complementary to that 
of older men. Similarly, the belief in the power 
of menstrual and parturient blood led to a 
practice whereby hunters always carry part 
of a woman's undergarment—such as under¬ 
clothing from his mother or sister—close to 
him because of the power of the blood to 
protect him from deities and demons. These 
biological factors define the female body 
only during its reproductive years,- therefore 
"uncontaminated" women past menstruation 
gain considerable power and collectively have 
higher status than young men. 
The social hierarchy of Ainu women 
and men is further complicated by age, which 
is another important factor in determining the 
rank of individuals within society. The Ainu 
believe that the aged, both men and women, 
are closer to the deities than the young, 
and they alone have the privilege of using a 
special language of the aged, onne-itak. Only 
male elders, who are the officiants of the 
bear-sending ceremony, can recite the most 
sacred oral tradition, which is narrated in 
the language of the deities, called kamuy-itak 
(fig. 33.9). It is the older women who become 
official caretakers of the bear cubs. 
The importance of age among the Ainu, 
whose economy is based upon hunting and 
gathering, means that the cultural valuation 
of individuals and the resultant social hierar¬ 
chy are not based on a utilitarian criterion. 
For example, elders who are no longer the 
major food providers are assigned more power 
than the young. Ainu notions of men/women 
and the aged/young transcend the biological 
givens of contemporary Western society. 
The intricate hierarchy between men 
and women and the aged and the young is 
played out not only in ceremonial situations 
but in everyday life. Above all, it is expressed 
in the seating arrangement around the hearth. 
The most important direction in the Ainu 
universe is that facing the mountains,- this is 
east for the Ainu of western Sakhalin, with 
north being next in importance. Among the 
Sakhalin Ainu, the sacred window through 
which the slain bear is brought into the 
house during the bear-sending ceremony is 
built into the wall facing the mountain side, 
usually north. The master of the house and 
his wife sit on the north side, and male elders 
who are guests sit on the mountain side. 
Young males sit on the south side, whereas 
young women sit on the west side, the lowest 
in the hierarchy of directions. 
These cultural institutions express com¬ 
plex complementarity among the principles 
that govern social categories and hierarchy. 
As hunters of land and sea mammals, young 
men bring meat that not only sustains the 
body but enriches humans through the spiri¬ 
tual power embodied in meat and fish, the 
flesh of deities or the products of deities. 
Young women, on the other hand, gather 
plants and engage in daily cooking and in 
healing, other tasks important for sustaining 
human life. The aged, both men and women, 
are revered for their knowledge of religious 
244 TRADITIONAL CULTURE/ E. O H N LI K I TIERNEY 
33.10 Pipe with Carved Decoration 
Ainu pipes (kiserii) were decorated with 
beautiful and intricate carvings on 
portions of their stems. Sometimes, 
as here, the carvings covered the 
entire length of the stem and served 
as a public advertisement of a man’s 
artistic skill. Pipe carving was one of 
the most challenging carving tasks a 
man could undertake. (PMC 86052) 
33.11 Pipe with Burl Bowl 
Pipes, like men's prayer sticks 
(ikupasuy), could take almost limitless 
shapes and forms, so men were free 
to express their personalities, artistic 
natures, and carving skills. The carver 
of this pipe took a highly unconven¬ 
tional approach. (UPM 56.8.9) 
matters, including shamanism,- their wisdom is 
the most precious reservoir of human knowl¬ 
edge about the deities that govern the Ainu 
universe. 
In cases where political organization was 
more developed, as with the Hokkaido Ainu, 
the bear ceremony and its political signifi¬ 
cance came to overshadow shamanism. 
Shamanism then became culturally devalued 
and was relegated to women, a common 
phenomenon in many parts of the world. 
Among the Hokkaido Ainu, men cannot start 
the healing process without a woman shaman's 
diagnosis,- the male political leader cannot 
declare a war or make other important deci¬ 
sions without a woman shaman's ritual per¬ 
formance for prognosis and diagnosis,- and 
at times aged women even held more power 
than aged men, as in the case of an older 
Sakhalin Ainu woman who overturned the 
verdict of accidental homicide that had been 
agreed upon by a body of male elders. 
Contrary to some Marxist scholars' 
romanticized image of the egalitarian society 
of hunter-gathers, principles of hierarchy 
and social division prevail among the Ainu as 
in any other population. These principles, 
however, are fluid and complementary rather 
than being inflexible rules upholding a linear 
model in which those above enjoy exclusive 
power over those below. Therefore, among 
the Ainu the relationship between men and 
women is one of complementarity rather than 
antagonism or power inequality (the latter 
being enormously important components of 
the contemporary Western sense of "gender"). 
The basis of the Ainu notion of sociality 
is the emphasis on a person's generosity as the 
paramount moral value. Its practice starts with 
Ainu deities who offer their own bodies and 
flesh to humans for the sustainment of life. 
Political leaders are chosen on the basis of 
generosity—a person who is willing to share, 
ceremony is at once an expression of mutual 
generosity—the sharing of the bear meat by 
all—and an expression of social hierarchy 
demonstrated by the order in which the meat 
was partaken, with male elders eating first. 
But no society is without conflicts. 
The Ainu principle of conflict resolution 
also indicates the primacy placed upon the 
sociality of individuals, i.e., individuals who 
are members of a social group. Here again 
shamanism offers a supreme example: One 
category of illness that shamans use in their 
diagnoses is called aymawko abun (penetration 
by the spirit of an arrow). The symptom of 
this illness is a patient's experience of a sudden 
sharp pain, localized, for example, in the 
stomach, chest, or side of the torso, like an 
arrow wound. This may happen if someone 
utters words of hostility toward another, but 
the victim is often neither the instigator nor 
the one verbally attacked, there may be no 
particular relationship, kinship or otherwise, 
between the offender and the victim. The idea 
is that if a person verbally assaults another, 
someone in the community will suffer from 
this illness. Therefore, when someone gets 
angry and utters harsh words against another, 
people in the community reprimand the 
offender. It is the collective responsibility of 
the members of the community to uphold this 
code of ethic,- social disharmony is not simply 
a matter of one individual against another but 
affects everyone (Ohnuki-Tierney 1981: 66). 
Generosity is a moral value that links an 
individual to his/her society. It is expressive 
of the way in which Ainu society works, not 
by rigid principles but through the combina¬ 
tion of principles of social organization with 
individual achievements and qualities. 
Generosity is the most important human 
value among the Ainu, and complementarity 
is the cardinal principle of Ainu sociality. 
These are not abstract notions,- they are 
3 3/ AINU SOCIAL LIFE 2 45 
Ainu 
Children's 
Play 
Miyuki Muraki 
The play or- Ainu children was 
fun, as play is supposed to be, 
but their play was closely related 
to everyday life. The Ainu were 
hunter-gatherers, and so the children imitated 
hunting, fishing, sewing, and cooking in their 
play activities and thus acquired necessary 
life skills through recreation. By mimicking 
religious ceremonies, they learned about faith 
in the gods and how to relate themselves to 
nature and the gods. Through their play, Ainu 
children gradually learned their future roles as 
men and women (fig. 34.1). 
Boys played a game on the beach that 
trained them to catch swordfish, as 
well as to hunt such large marine 
mammals as sea lions and seals. A long 
string was attached to a bundle of dry 
grass or reeds that represented swordfish 
(sirikap), and one of the boys tied the string 
around his waist. The boy with the string 
pulled the sirikap while others pursued the 
swordfish with sticks resembling harpoons (kite) 
until one eventually struck the bundled grass 
with the "harpoon.'1 
Another similar game that entailed 
throwing a wooden spear at a ring tossed in 
the air was played by two teams—one to toss 
and the other to try to throw the spear 
through the ring (fig. 34.5a). The team that 
missed the ring would lose one member to the 
opposing group, and if they succeeded they 
gained a player from the opposing side. The 
team that had to give away all its players lost. 
This game trained boys to hunt and develop 
the hand-eye coordination needed to pursue 
moving targets. 
Boys' play included playing with arrows 
(kue sinot) or ope sinot, a similar game played 
with the sharpened root of a forked tree. Kue 
sinot involved shooting play arrows with a 
play bow (fig. 34.2) at hoops rolled by a 
playmate along the ground or at shells hung 
from a tree branch. In ope sinot, one boy threw 
a sharpened tree root so that it stuck in the 
earth, and his opponent threw a similar stick 
trying to knock the standing stick down. These 
games enhanced boys' agility and helped them 
master the use of spears and bows. 
In another activity called acikiri terke, 
similar to "three-legged 
races" played by 
American children, 
several boys would cross 
one of their legs with the 
eg of another and then would 
34.3 
34.1 
pull each other while hopping on their free 
legs. The one whose leg became detached 
from this chain of legs or who fell would lose. 
Other sporting activities included pole-vault¬ 
ing and high-jumping, much like the track- 
and-field events played in the Olympic Games. 
These were good exercises to help boys master 
the use of a mountain staff, a valuable tool 
when hunting in rough terrain, needed to go 
down cliffs and jump streams. A rope-skip¬ 
ping game (fig. 34.5b, c), in which a boy 
skipped forward and then back or touched the 
ground with his hands after each skip, likewise 
built the strong bodies needed for hunting on 
steep mountainsides. Other games included 
hide-and-seek, tag, cup and ball, and cat's 
cradle. Seasonal fun included sledding, snowball 
fights, and swimming in rivers and the ocean. 
Girls learned the roles of wife and 
mother through play, by imitating homemak¬ 
ing and sewing tasks. In one such activity, 
called ayusinukar, a girl drew patterns unique 
to the Ainu, such as the morew (whorl) crest, in 
the beach sand or in the hearth ash (fig. 34.6). 
Ainu patterns are not only physically attrac¬ 
tive they are also thought to have the power 
to protect those who wear them from evil. 
The form of these designs varied from region 
to region, and they were passed from mothers 
to daughters for generations, evolving over 
34.4 
246 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / M. MURAKI 
34.6 
34.1 Girls Playing Cat’s Cradle 
This photograph, taken by Bronislaw 
Pilsudski ca. 1903-05, shows Sakhalin 
Ainu girls playing string games. Scientific 
curiosity about the Ainu physical type 
and questions about racial mixing 
prompted him to note that the girl on the 
left was the daughter of a Russian man 
and an Ainu woman. (NAA S8-10370) 
34.2, 34.3, 34.4 
“Galloping Clams" and Other Toys 
Among the many toys and games 
made for Ainu children were miniatures 
of men’s hunting weapons and tools 
like bows and knives; women’s imple¬ 
ments like mortars and scoops; and 
games like hoops and “galloping 
dams.” The latter were used by boys 
and girls, who slipped the shells 
between their first and second toes 
and, while keeping tension on the line, 
galloped about the house like a horse. 
(UPM A479, 516; BMA 12.177, 
12.159, 12.201, 12.438a,b) 
34.5 a-d Games 
Some of the many games played by Ainu 
children were illustrated in Ainu-e draw¬ 
ings, including ring toss (a), bar jumping 
(b), skipping rope (c), and pole vaulting 
(d). The first three images were drawn by 
an unknown artist in Ainu Manners and 
Customs', the latter derives from Draw¬ 
ings of Travels Through Ezo (1799) by 
Gentan Tani. (HML) 
34.6 Teaching. Sewing Skills 
Mothers teach their daughters to make 
thread, use the backstrap loom, and 
learn Ainu clothing patterns by tracing 
them in the sand in this Ainu-e. (AMS) 
time. When a mother made clothes, girls would 
sit next to her imitating her sewing movements. 
A young woman was expected to create her own 
patterns by repeatedly drawing and erasing the 
pattern. Other girls' play included picking wild 
vegetables, gathering nuts, and cooking. 
Play that taught children spiritual 
aspects of Ainu culture included the imitation 
of the bear-sending ceremony (iyomante). In 
this game children made a small bear by 
putting coal on a sallow flower,- they then 
34.5a 
is f (lyy 
i- 
5 
5 
f 
v 
i 
circled the bear while clapping, singing, 
and dancing with bamboo leaves in their 
hands. Through such activities both boys 
and girls learned their roles in social groups 
to prepare them to participate later in 
actual ceremonies. To take their proper role 
in Ainu society it was imperative that they 
understood how to relate themselves to 
nature and the gods. 
There were also language-related games 
such as "fast talk” and "riddle play," which 
helped develop speaking skills. Children also 
enjoyed learning to play the flute and 
mastering the mukkuri (a mouth harp). These 
instalments do not use the Western scale — 
"do, re, mi . . ."—but they produce sounds 
and rhythms unique to the Ainu, and these 
instruments continue to be played today. 
The games described here are only 
part of the wide range of activities enjoyed 
by Ainu children. Most recreational activi¬ 
ties and competitive sports had an impor¬ 
tant role in cultivating the abilities and 
skills necessary to become a responsible 
adult. As the traditional Ainu hunting-and- 
gathering way of life changed, however, 
some aspects of children's play lost its 
meaning. Today many rules and original 
forms of games have become obscure, and 
it is now nearly impossible to pass on the 
old traditions of play to future generations. 
34.5d 
34 / CHILDREN’S PLAY 247 
*
S»
5K
< 
Spirit- 
Sending 
Ceremonies 
Shiceki Akino 
Before defining aspects of spirit- 
sending ceremonies, 1 offer a chrono¬ 
logical description of the iyomante, the 
most prominent of such rituals, as it was 
enacted at the Shiraoi Ainu Museum in 1994. 
Preparation begins about two weeks 
before the event with firewood being collected 
and men making sacred shaved sticks (inaw, 
fig. 35.15), prayer sticks (ikupasuy, figs. 35.1, 
35.9), and bundles of mugwort or bamboo 
grass (takusa) to burn for purification,- at the 
same time, women begin preparing rice wine 
and food offerings. As the time approaches, 
messengers travel to neighboring villages to 
invite people to the festival. 
The day before the ceremony, guests 
bearing gifts begin gathering at the designated 
house (cbise), where many fine articles are 
already on display. The iyomante officially 
begins when the local elder offers a prayer to 
Fuchi, the goddess of the fire and hearth. The 
elder, followed by other men, goes to the bear 
cage (beper-set), where they offer prayers, take 
kimun-kamuy, god of the mountains (the bear 
god), out of the cage and parade him around 
the open space to let him exercise and play 
(fig. 35.2). After this, several men shoot blunt 
ceremonial arrows (heper-ay, fig. 35.8) toward 
kimun-kamuy and then strangle him between 
two logs (fig. 35.6). While he is "sleeping," the 
bear is skinned and the head is severed to 
separate the spirit from the body. The skin is 
then folded neatly and the spirit of the bear 
whose head has been enshrined on top of the 
folded skin is invited into the room through 
the god's window (kamuy-puyar) located in 
the east wall of the house. In the evening, the 
feast begins (figs. 35.7, 35.1 2). In front of 
kimun-kamuy, food and rice wine are offered, 
and people dance and sing until midnight. 
On the second day of the ceremony, 
men decorate the head of kimun-kamuy with 
35.1 
35.2 
inaw-kike (sacred wood shavings). This is the 
last and best form in which it is displayed to 
the participants before its journey to the god 
world. In the evening, a final feast is held. 
As before, food and rice wine are consumed 
with the bear, and people dance and sing. 
At the conclusion of the evening ancient Amu 
yukar (tales of heroes) are recounted by an old 
woman, to which those present listen intently, 
holding their breath in anticipation of the final 
climax. The storytelling is abruptly terminated 
just as the final episode begins in order to 
encourage the kimun-kamuy to return next year 
to hear the end of the story. The guests offer 
their final farewells to kimun-kamuy, enshrined 
on a wooden seat (yuksapaoni) and its head is 
mounted (fig. 35.1 I), facing east, on the altar 
248 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / S. AKINO 
35.1 Kamuy-nomi: Praying to the Gods 
Despite repressive official policies, 
Ainu continued to observe traditional 
religious practices throughout the dif¬ 
ficult period of the mid-twentieth cen¬ 
tury. This photograph was taken by 
American anthropologist Ted Banks III 
in the 1950s or early 1960s, probably 
in Nibutani. (MKB, courtesy of 
Edmund Carpenter) 
35.2 Exercising the Bear 
As the bear cubs being raised for the 
iyomante grew larger, their care and 
feeding became more difficult to man¬ 
age. Twenty men using heavy lines 
were needed to supervise the exercise 
of this nearly full-grown bear, indicat¬ 
ing that the time of iyomante was at 
hand. (NAA 83-16285) 
(misa) located outside of the sacred window 
(figs. 35.10, 35.14). When all arrangements are 
concluded, kimun-kamuy returns to the god 
world aided by ceremonial arrows that people 
shoot off to guide it. 
Early the next morning, after the kimun- 
kamuy has left on its journey, the festival is 
concluded by changing the direction of the 
yuksapaoni toward the west and holding a 
shinnurappa, a memorial service for the ancestors. 
The Ainu believe that gods exist and 
that they are similar in appearance to people 
and lead their lives in a similar fashion. They 
believe that above the human world (Ainu 
mosir) there is a world where gods live (kamuy 
mosir), but gods also have a role in the human 
world. While gods are in the human world, 
they disguise themselves as virtually anything, 
including such natural objects and phenom¬ 
ena as the sun, moon, wind, or fire,- animals 
such as bears, foxes, raccoon dogs, rabbits, 
Having certain obligations, the gods 
disguise themselves when they visit the 
human world. For example, mountain gods 
(kimun-kamuy) disguise themselves as bears, 
and when they visit the human world they 
bestow their fur and meat upon humans as 
gifts. The Ainu respectfully welcome gods 
who visit the human world as honored 
guests. Welcomed gods—which in the case 
of animals means those that are shot and 
killed—are sent back to the god world with a 
simple ceremony held at the location where 
they were killed or at the hunting hut. Bear 
hunting is conducted from January to March, 
when the bears are hibernating and after 
their cubs have been born. If baby cubs are 
found, they are taken to the village because 
the Ainu believe that the parent bears, as 
parent gods, have entrusted them to bring up 
their cubs (fig. 35.4). Generally cubs are 
raised in the village for a year or two. 
fish owls, or jays,■ and such man-made objects 
as boats, pots, and straw mats. Animal spirits 
have the closest relationship with and are 
most important to human beings, and the 
Ainu treat these spirits—especially bears and 
fish owls, which are their two highest-ranking 
gods—with great respect. Instead of keeping 
these spirits in the human world after they 
have been caught or "used up” (as in the case 
of spent or broken man-made objects), the 
Ainu return them to the spirit world with 
elaborate "sending" ceremonies. Of these, the 
bear-sending ceremony (iyomante) best repre¬ 
sents Ainu religious beliefs. Sending ceremo¬ 
nies are also held to return the spirits of 
plants, inanimate objects, and spent tools or 
artifacts, to the spirit world. 
-3 5 / SPIRIT-SENDING CEREMONIES 
When the time comes, the iyomante— 
a ceremony to return the spirit of the grown 
cub to the god world where its parent 
resided—is carried out in the form of a 
ceremonial feast (figs. 35.6, 35.7). At this 
occasion the bear god (kimun-kamuy) is sent 
home with many gifts. Upon his return, this 
kimun-kamuy then invites other gods to his 
house for a party at which such human gifts 
as sake (tonoto), dried salmon (.satchep), and 
sacred shaved sticks (inaw) are shared 
together with stories about how respectfully 
the god was treated. These gifts are meant to 
convince the other gods to visit the Ainu 
world in the future to receive more benefits 
from them and in turn provide the Ainu with 
gifts of their own: their flesh and hides, claws, 
249 
35.3, 35.4, 35.5 Care and Feeding 
As an honored guest, a bear was given 
loving care by its hosts, who treated it as 
a member of the family. As a cub it was 
brought into the house, fed like a human 
infant, and given toys (heper-iutam) like 
the chewing bar pictured here (fig. 35.3). 
Later, caution required feeding the bear 
in its cage with troughlike “spoons” 
(heper-nima). An Ainu-e by Hokuyo 
Nishikawa (fig. 35.4) shows the bear 
as an “infant," eating from a lacquer 
bowl; another image (fig. 35.5), by 
Shimanojo Murakami, shows a later 
stage in the process with Ainu dancing 
around the bear cage at the beginning 
of the iyomante ceremony. (UPM 
A531C, A442; HML) 
teeth, and other products. Likewise, the gods 
gain prestige and rank in their world if they 
return from the human world with many gifts. 
For human beings, the number of gods 
who visit equals the number of animals taken 
during the hunting season, so their regular 
visits ensure the Ainu a plentiful food supply. 
It is said that gods achieve ever higher rank in 
the god world by their repeated visits to 
earth, gaining more wealth and prestige and 
therefore being of more assistance to humans 
as their power and rank advances,- this belief 
is reflected in the Ainu saying, "A true god 
is very useful to human beings." In this way 
the iyomante becomes the forum representing 
the symbiotic relationship among animals, 
humans, and the spirit world and provides a 
mechanism for influencing earthly events: it 
signifies and validates the relationship 
between humans and gods. 
While the iyomante usually refers to send¬ 
ing back the spirit of a semidomesticated 
bear, similar ceremonies are used in Hokkaido 
to send back the spirits of other animals. This 
essay, which is based on published records, 
describes these ceremonies and their regional 
variations. The iyomante demonstrates this 
variation even within different regions of 
Fdokkaido, where linguistic and cultural varia¬ 
tion is seen in a welter of different terminolo¬ 
gies and practices (Sato 1961,-Aoyagi 1984). 
Here, in addition to kamuy-opunire (the term 
for the bear ceremony held in the mountains) 
and iyomante (the term for village ceremonies 
for cubs and domesticated bears), both used 
in Kushiro and Nayoro, we find in Yagumo 
terms like yomande for the village rite and 
peurep yomande for the mountain rite. Other 
terms like okanomi (oka, catching,- nomi, pray) 
are used in Asahikawa, apparently to desig¬ 
nate rites for bears killed in the mountains,- 
this usage is disputed, however, because this 
35.4 35.5 
250 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / S. AK1NO 
35-8 
35.8 Flower Arrows 
Early in the bear-sending 
ceremony the bear is 
taken out of its cage and 
the host shoots at it with 
“flower arrows" (heper-ay) 
that have blunt tips. The 
arrows, which in some ar¬ 
eas were decorated with 
inaw-kike (wood shavings), 
are meant to excite the 
bear's spirit to prepare it 
for its journey home. 
Flower arrows also are 
used later in the iyomante 
when they are shot off 
into the sky to guide the 
bear’s return to kamuy 
mosir. (MPM N17284c, 
N17285e, N17100a, 
N17200e, N17285C) 
35.6 
35.6, 35.7 Iyomante 
After the bear (,kimun-kamuy) is 
killed, it is skinned and given the 
place of honor at a feast where it is 
entertained with gifts, speeches, and 
story-telling. Two versions of the cer¬ 
emony—a modern bear-sending cer¬ 
emony conducted at the Ainu Mu¬ 
seum at Shiraoi and a bear-sending 
ceremony painted by Shimanojo 
Murakami in 1799—document two 
hundred years of iyomante tradition. 
(AMS; HML) 
term encompasses the sending of gifts, which 
can only be done at village ceremonies. 
Unfortunately, because the bear ceremony 
was discontinued in most areas during much 
of the twentieth century, regional variations 
will remain difficult to decipher. 
Opunire 
Although many of the same animal spirits are 
sent back in another type of ceremony called 
opunire, the form of these ceremonies is dif¬ 
ferent. A broader definition of opunire con¬ 
notes the place where the ceremony takes 
place: at the spot where animals were killed 
in the mountains,- at an altar built alongside 
a cavern or hunting hut,- or in the village after 
bringing animals back from the mountains. 
Depending on the geographic origin of the 
speaker, the words hopunire, hopuni, or opunika 
are used in addition to opunire, and there are 
subtle differences in their meanings and 
linguistic forms. 
Even Ainu informants and oral histori¬ 
ans from the same geographic locations 
reveal differences in their use of the words 
opunire and iyomante. For instance, in concept 
opunire is (1) a ceremony for a variety of 
animals, while iyomante is a ceremony spe¬ 
cifically for sending back the spirit of a bear,- 
(2) a ceremony for all animals including fully 
grown bears, while iyomante is a ceremony 
only for domesticated bears,- (3) a ceremony 
for sending back the spirits of all other 
animals raised by people except for bears, 
for instance, for fish owls and foxes, etc.,- 
(4) a ceremony for sending back the spirits 
of higher-ranked animals such as bears, 
raccoon dogs, and foxes. In terms of form, 
35 / SPIRIT-SENDING CEREMONIES 2 51 
35.9 Ikupasuy 
Prayers offered to the bear with 
ikupasuy and sake honor its spirit 
and bestow gifts for it to take back 
to kamuy mosir. The ikupasuy second 
from the left is decorated with inaw- 
kike, indicating that it was used in the 
iyomante ceremony. Those on the 
right have carvings of a bear head 
and what appears to be a ritual sword 
with an itokpa mark on its bevelled 
end. These decorative motifs are simi¬ 
lar to those found on Ainu carvings and 
garments. (BMA 12.332, 12.307, 
12.316, 12.325) 
opunire is (1) a ceremony held on the spot 
where animals are killed, for instance at an 
altar built on the side of a bear's den or hunt¬ 
ing hut, and it may be held either by hunters 
on the spot or by people from the village who 
have gathered there for a feast,- (2) a ceremony 
held in the village after taking animals from the 
mountains,- or (3) a ceremony held in the 
mountains to send back things (inaw or animal 
remains) that were worshipped in the house. 
The long-eared or fish owl, identified 
as the god of the village (kotan-kor-kamuy), is 
the highest-ranked god in various places in 
Hokkaido, and its sending ceremony is similar 
to that for bears (figs. 35.15, 35.16). In areas of 
southern Hokkaido like Shiraoi where few owls 
are found, bears are the highest-ranked god 
and ceremonies for fish owls are rarely seen. 
Raccoon dogs (nioyitk) are treated as 
high-ranking gods in various areas and are 
given elaborate sending ceremonies. In 
Kushiro and Obihiro, Ainu people believe 
that raccoon dogs are uncles of bears, and 
when they are captured alive they are taken 
back to the village to be raised and sent back 
to the god world in ceremonies similar to 
those for bears,- Hidaka and Saru Ainu have 
similar beliefs, believing moyuk to be servants 
of bears. Asahikawa people see raccoon dogs 
as ranking second behind bears, and skull¬ 
sending (sapa-opuni) ceremonies are held after 
several skulls are collected. In general, a 
ceremony for raccoon dogs is similar to that 
for bears because they are considered uncles, 
aunts, or servants of bears, and thus are the 
gods ranking closest to them. 
The sending ceremonies for foxes 
(cbiromup) in Kushiro, where baby foxes were 
raised by people, is similar to that for bears 
(fig. 35.1 3). Obihiro people put up inaw for 
foxes killed in the mountains, and when the 
head of a fox was cut off at home, an inaw was 
also put up. In Asahikawa, only white foxes 
(upas cbironnup) with long fangs were sent back 
because they had the highest rank among 
foxes. The skull was wrapped in a straw mat 
with woven patterns (chitarpe) and enshrined 
within the house as a charm, but it was never 
placed on the altar (nusa). Fox-sending cere¬ 
monies were mostly practiced in northeastern 
Hokkaido and are not known for southwest¬ 
ern Hokkaido. 
Fox spirits are a matter of dispute among 
different Ainu groups, with some believing 
them to be helpful spirits while others see 
them as evil. Nevertheless, their skulls were 
often used as guardian spirits for fishing, 
hunting, and daily life, and they were also 
used for fortune-telling. Whether it was 
believed that the spirits remained in skulls 
used for this purpose is ambiguous: theoreti¬ 
cally, if they had been through a sending 
ceremony, they should have lost their active 
power,- to be a guardian deity, its spirit must 
exist. Ethnography has not yet provided 
answers to such questions. 
In many traditional societies the treat¬ 
ment and spiritual station of dogs often re¬ 
flect their unusual place as a domestic animal 
that straddles both the human and natural 
worlds,- Ainu dog-sending ceremonies also 
contain these ambiguous elements. In 
Shizuuchi the ceremony for dead dogs is 
called iwakte, elsewhere this term refers to 
sending ceremonies for inanimate objects 
(see Utagawa, this volume),- white dogs in 
252 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / S. AKINO 
35.10, 35.11, 35.12 
Nusa and Benkai’s Bear Skull 
At the end of the iyomante the bear's 
head is placed on the nusa, a fencelike 
altar located outside the god’s window 
at the end of the house. The skull, 
dressed in specially prepared ritual 
shavings and mounted on a forked 
stick, then joins similar relics from 
earlier ceremonies. This skull was 
sold by an Ainu named Benkai in 
Motomuroran to Hiram Hiller who 
theorized that because Benkai had 
given up his Ainu beliefs and become 
Japanized, he was willing to sell it 
(fig. 21.8). A modern nusa from 
Shiraoi, decorated in a colorful woven 
mat, is also seen here along with an 
Ainu-e showing a ceremony at a nusa. 
(UPM A494; AMS) 
particular are treated with great respect as 
descendants of the gods of great wolves. In 
Hidaka and Saru dead dogs are deified by 
placing two willow inaw beside them at a 
high place within sight of the river. Unlike 
bears and foxes, their heads are not cut off 
and their pelts are not skinned. After the 
ceremony, the remains are placed in a box 
together with offerings of rice, tobacco, and 
dried fish, and a hole allows the spirit of the 
deceased to pass through. The remains are 
left in a bush with their heads pointing 
toward the river. In Kitami and Bihoro, 
special ceremonies are held for dogs killed 
by poisoned arrows released by tripping a 
spring-bow trap (amappo). These dog-sending 
ceremonies are similar to the ceremonies 
performed for objects whose useful life has 
been spent In Sakhalin dog spirits are sent 
back when a person is seriously sick or when 
a new house is built. Similar rites involving 
the sacrifice and display of dogs are prac¬ 
ticed by the Koryak and other peoples of 
northeastern Siberia to drive away pestilence 
and disease. The concept behind these 
practices reaches beyond tbe normal sending 
ceremonies of dead animals and carries the 
connotation of other religious beliefs, in¬ 
cluding propitiation, sorceiy, and even a 
nuance of human sacrifice. 
In Obihiro animals such as sparrows or 
squirrels are not left where they are killed, 
rather, people make inaw for them, and 
ceremonies are held for pheasants and jays. 
Inaw-kike are wrapped around their necks, 
the tip of a small inaw is notched and attached 
to the cranium, and they are taken to the 
nusa. Even small animals are treated respect¬ 
fully and are given simple sending ceremonies. 
One historical record for the Tokachi and 
Honbetsu area reads: "Heads of mice and 
35.12 
rabbits are cooked and eaten, and their skulls 
are put neatly on a table on a pedestal. When 
they start to pile up, the collected heads 
are turned into an altar, and prayers for gods 
are held in spring and fall." 
Deer and salmon are the primary Ainu 
food sources, and salmon is especially 
valuable as evidenced by its names: si-ipe (real 
food) and kamuy-cbep (fish of gods). Despite 
the dietary importance of these 
animals, deer-sending ceremonies 
are found only in a few areas, and 
although several rites are associated 
with salmon runs (see Watanabe, 
this volume), they do not conform 
to the format of sending ceremonies 
for other species. Salmon are 
celebrated in a first-salmon cer¬ 
emony each autumn when they 
begin to swim upstream. 
Although recent ethnography 
reveals little about the deer-sending 
ritual, skulls of male deer are 
illustrated enshrined in nusa in old 
35.11 
35 / SPIRIT-SENDING CEREMONIES 253 
paintings such as Ezo God Festival dating to the 
Edo period, indicating that such rituals were 
apparently held in the past. After the begin¬ 
ning of the Meiji period in the late 1800s, 
records report ceremonies for deer (yuk- 
kamuy) in such locations as Tokachi, Ashoro, 
Shiraoi, Kitami, and Bihoro. For example, 
according to FJisakazu Fujimura: 
Deer (yuk) were sent back in a ceremony 
held by an old man named Kijima [his 
Ainu name was Ekashiparo] who moved 
from Chitose in about Taisho 12 [1923], 
After holding a sending ceremony for 
Japanese deer that had been butchered in 
the mountains, the skins, crania, and meat 
were taken back to the village. The deer 
skins were folded just like those of bears, 
and the crania were placed on top. Then a 
prayer for the god was performed by 
adding inaw. The left sides of the crania 
were broken to extract cerebrospinal fluid 
and the crania were decorated beautifully 
individual animals, but there are times when 
several different animals are sent back at one 
time In these situations, the sending order is 
decided by the role and rank of each animal,- 
most of those ceremonies accompany a bear 
ceremony. Some examples reveal interesting 
information about human and animal-world 
relationships. For instance, in Nayoro, when 
ceremonies are performed for both a bear and 
a raccoon dog, the bear is sent back first. In 
Bihoro, when a ceremony is conducted for a 
domesticated fish owl and a domesticated 
bear, the bear is treated first. Also in Bihoro, 
in the case of ceremonies for male and female 
bears, the ceremony for the male bear is held 
first, because a male bear will get angry if the 
female is treated first. In Ashoro, when 
sending back the spirits of a bear and a fox, 
the ceremony for the fox is held first, and a 
fox is treated before a raccoon dog, and a 
raccoon dog before a bear. Finally, in Ashoro, 
35.13 Fox Sending 
Among some Ainu groups, the fox is a 
high-ranked god and is given an elaborate 
sending ceremony like that for the bear. 
This photograph showing a fox-sending 
ceremony was taken by Bronislaw 
Pilsudski, ca. 1903-05, when he lived 
with the Sakhalin Ainu. (NAA 98-10366) 
35.14 Nusa 
As testimony to a celebratory past, 
many bear skulls rest on the sacred 
altar or nusa in this photograph. 
(Courtesy of AMS) 
with inaw-kike. A formal sending ceremony 
was held when the crania were inserted 
into a prepared forked kibada tree and an 
altar was set up (Fujimura 1977). 
In general, the Ainu believe that deer 
and salmon do not come down to the human 
world as gods themselves but are sent by a 
god who controls deer (yuk-atte-kamuy) and a 
god who controls salmon (chep-atte-kamuy): 
perhaps it is due to this spiritual belief that 
sending ceremonies are not held for these 
animals. In practical terms, sending ceremonies 
are not held for animals that can be caught 
constantly and in large quantity, like fish 
Sending ceremonies are usually held for 
when ceremonies are held for a bear and a 
fox, the fox is treated first because the fox's 
role is to carry baggage for the bear and, as 
in the West, foxes are believed to have a 
cunning character,- therefore, the fox should 
be sent back before the bear so that it will 
not run off with the bear's gifts. 
IWAKTE 
Like iyomante, iwakte means sending spirits 
back, but in this case the ceremony refers 
to broken, old, spent, or no-longer-necessary 
tools of daily use,- depending on the geo¬ 
graphical region, small animals may be 
included in this category. For example, in 
254 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / S. AKINO 
Kushiro an iwakte ceremony is held even when 
such small animals as squirrels (niow), rabbits 
(isopo), or little birds (poncbikap) are caught 
(Sato 1961). Natori (1984) also discussed the 
distinction: "lyomante is used for important 
gods, but iwakte is used for gods of other 
hunted animals. Iwakte has a casual meaning, 
to celebrate and send, and the ceremony itself 
is also simple." Like iyomante, the opunire and 
iwakte sending ceremonies have various 
aspects and regional differences. 
The Ainu, like other hunting-and- 
gathering cultures whose food resources until 
recently were largely dependent on the forces 
of nature, have been accustomed to a constant 
search for sustenance. To ensure a steady 
supply of food and other life-sustaining 
products, they deify everything necessary for 
life, including animals, plants, and natural and 
man-made objects, and they believe that gods 
and people exist in a mutually reinforcing, 
symbiotic relationship. The Ainu also believe 
that catching animals by hunting them is 
35.15, 35.16 
Inaw for the Great Owl 
The owl, guardian of the village, is also 
given special attention by some Ainu 
groups. In 1903-05 Pilsudski photo¬ 
graphed a nusa dedicated to the owl 
in Sakhalin. The importance of this 
animal can also be seen in an owl¬ 
sending ritual illustrated by Hokuyo 
Nishikawa in his late-nineteenth-cen- 
tury picture scroll Ainu Manners and 
Customs. (NAA 47401; HML) 
largely a passive act, because gods, of their 
own accord, bring food to the human world 
by pretending to be animals. Therefore, 
when the Ainu send spirits back to the god 
world, the gods will return the favor by 
constantly replenishing the human world 
with their spiritual and material resources. 
The iyomante and associated sending ceremo¬ 
nies provide public validation of the recipro¬ 
cal values by which people rationalize their 
world and existence through practical action, 
shared belief, and ritual acts. 
35 / SPIRIT-SENDING CEREMONIES 255 
The 
Archaeology of 
Iyomante 
Hiroshi Utagawa 
JYOMANTE REFERS TO AlNU CEREMONIES 
of sending back spirits—that is, the 
spiritual essence of things—to the 
heavens. In the Ainu language, the 
ritual was called "i-yomante," meaning "thing/ 
send" or "thing/let go," or simply "sending 
back spirits" (H. Kono 1935). It is usually 
understood in a narrower sense as the sending 
back of bear spirits. This essay explores the 
history of the spirit-sending ritual as a specific 
expression of Ainu culture in the archaeologi¬ 
cal record. The perspective taken is that of 
paleoethnology, in which religious behavior 
and ritual performed by Ainu predecessors are 
gleaned from the silent remains of archaeo¬ 
logical evidence. 
According to Ainu belief, everything 
has a spirit, or kamuy. The spirits live in the 
heavens, and when they appear in the human 
world they are disguised (hayokpe) as various 
things or animals. For example, the god of the 
the house and consisted of a short wall of 
grass stalks or mats,- ritual offerings, including 
animal bones decorated with wood shavings 
(kike) and tufted prayer sticks (maw), were 
attached to this altar (fig. 36.3) 
Among hunting peoples throughout the 
world, the worship of an animal's spiritual 
essence was common. The guardian spirits of 
animals, forests, brush lands, and oceans were 
also worshipped, and these practices consti¬ 
tuted a fundamental aspect of animistic belief 
or religion. Ainu who lived in coastal regions, 
where the sites of their ancestors could still 
be seen as pithouses and "kitchen" midden 
refuse, thought the remains of mollusks, fish, 
and animal bones were left over from ancient 
sending ceremonies. Hiromichi Kono 
explained their nature as follows: 
Ainu believe shell mounds contained the 
cadaveral remains of ancient nusa where 
spirits that had been ushered into the 
36.1 36.2 
36.1 Iyomante: The Bear- 
Sending Ceremony 
The iyomante is thought by some schol¬ 
ars to be the central core that gives 
meaning and identity to Ainu culture and 
society. Here an iyomante is illustrated 
in detail in a scroll painting by Byozan 
Hirasawa dating to the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury. Dancing, storytelling, feasting, and 
many other activities conducted during 
the celebration are shown, in addition to 
fine detailing of Ainu material culture 
and clothing design. (NMNH 392,025) 
36.2 Nusa at Yurap Village 
This photograph in the Kurile Ainu village 
of Yurap, taken by Romyn Hitchcock in 
1888, shows Ainu gathered around a 
nusa. (NAA 87-5538) 
mountains, kimun-kamuy, cloaks himself as an 
Asian brown bear (fig. 36.1),- the god of the 
deep ocean, repun-kamuy, dresses himself as a 
killer whale or as a dolphin,- and the god of 
the village, kotan-kor-kamuy, clothes himself as 
a fish owl. The belief that disguised kamuy 
supplied food and furs to people is reflected 
in the careful management of resources that 
the Ainu still practice today. In order not to 
displease the gods, the Ainu did not waste 
food remains or leave bones about after a 
meal but rather sent leftovers back to the 
spirit world with respect and with a variety of 
gifts and ritual observances. The site where 
the Ainu performed these rituals is called the 
nusa, the "sending-back" place, and is an Ainu 
form of altar (fig. 36.2). In the traditional 
Ainu village the nusa was typically located 
outside the "god's window" (kamuy-puyar) of 
heavens were deposited. Therefore, shell 
mounds are viewed and treated fundamen¬ 
tally differently from the trash heaps of 
modern civilization. [As a sign of respect to 
the gods] it was strictly prohibited to 
desecrate ancient shell mounds with 
common modern garbage (1935). 
The Eastern Kushiro shell mound in 
Kushiro, which dates to the early Jomon period, 
is a typical example of such a site. The excava¬ 
tion of five porpoise skulls (Phocoena phocoena 
Linne) arranged in a face-to-face circular pattern 
could hardly be other than archaeological 
evidence of an ancient sending ceremony. 
Sending Ceremonies 
There are three types of sending ceremonies 
known in Ainu society: those for animals, 
plants, and tools. The animal-sending cer- 
256 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / H. UTAGAWA 
36.3 Dancing before the Nusa 
Byozan Hirasawa used dancing before 
the nusa at the end of the iyomante 
ceremony as the feature for the Novem¬ 
ber panel from his Ainu Manners and 
Customs. The archaeological remains 
from such activities would be seen as 
a concentration of animal skulls. (HMH) 
emony itself has two types: one is the 
iyomante, most commonly known today as the 
bear-sending ceremony,- the other involved 
sending ceremonies for foxes, raccoon dogs, 
wolves, deer, whales, and fish owls. Two 
different ceremonies honored bears, one for 
bears captured by hunting and another for 
bears killed after being reared as cubs in the 
village. Rituals for the cub-rearing ceremonies 
are only known in the lower Amur River 
basin, including Sakhalin and Hokkaido, and 
in regions inhabited by such groups as the 
Nanai, Ul'chi, Negidal, Orok, Nivhki, and 
Ul'ta. Ainu groups in Sakhalin and Hokkaido 
(but not in the Kuriles) often referred to 
iyomante only in the sense of the cub-rearing 
rituals, but iyomante also referred to sending 
ceremonies for fish owls, which were the 
guardian spirits of communities (kotan). 
The sending ceremony for animals in 
general is called opunire, and the ceremony 
for hunted (as opposed to reared) bears 
belongs to this type. When bears killed in 
the forest were brought back to the village, 
the ceremony that took place was called 
kamuy-opunire in the Kushiro region. It seems 
likely that in its earliest form the opunire 
ceremony honored animal spirits in general, 
but over time separate rituals evolved for 
different species. 
Sending ceremonies were also practiced 
for some plants, for instance, rice bran, 
millet, and barnyard grass. In an illustration 
in Shimamojo Murakami's Ezo seikei zusetsu 
(Illustrations of Ezo Livelihood, 1799) such a 
ceremony is captioned as mur-kuta-usbi-kamuy, 
the ceremony is accompanied by maw 
representing gods "inhabiting the place 
where rice bran is stored." Sometimes plants 
were honored in the same sending ceremo¬ 
nies as tools and utensils. 
Tool-sending ceremonies (fig. 36.4) 
focused on everyday implements as well 
as festival objects: both unused and old 
damaged tools could be sent in a ceremony 
known as iwakte, meaning "sending back with 
blessings" or "having them return." Evidence 
of iwakte rituals have been observed fre¬ 
quently in archaeological deposits. Because 
such sites contain the remains of used and 
broken tools, which in Ainu belief would be 
given sending ceremonies when discarded, 
they offer important insights into "Ainu" 
beliefs in prehistory. Unfortunately, from a 
practical, scientific point of view, in most 
cases the physical archaeological remains of 
iwakte ritual are limited to ashes, stains, and 
patches of burned soil, which are common in 
ancient sites generally, making specific 
interpretation as iwakte difficult. 
Dates for Archaeological Nusa 
Because most archaeological objects can be 
dated precisely by their type or style, the age 
of nusa deposits can be determined by 
materials that are found, for instance, clay 
and iron pots with inside lugs. At the 
Raitokoro Kawaguchi site in Tokoro, ritually 
deposited fish bones were discovered near 
the top layer of Pithouse 1 1 and interior-lug 
pottery vessels and bone harpoon heads were 
found together in what appears to have been 
the location of an iwakte ritual dated to the 
fifteenth century. Iron pots with interior lugs 
were introduced later from Honshu, replac¬ 
ing the indigenous clay pots, between the 
36/ARCHAEOLOGY OF IYOMANTE 257 
36.4 Sending Ceremony 
for Broken Tools 
Ainu held a simple spirit-sending cer¬ 
emony (iwakte) when discarding their 
used and broken tools. The spirits of 
these implements could then return to 
the other world with gifts of sake and 
praise from humans about the kindness 
and respect they had received on earth. 
This in turn convinced the tool gods to 
return to earth again someday, bringing 
life to new tools and useful objects. This 
Ainu-e from Shimanojo Murakami's 
early-nineteenth-century Illustrations of 
Ezo Livelihood shows a broken iron pot 
and cracked ceramic vessels from an 
iwakte ceremony. (HML) 
36.4 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the 
seventeenth centuiy, hanging-grip iron pots 
became popular. Use of these changing styles 
for dating is sometimes complicated by the 
persistence of technological traits for long 
periods. For instance, some features of 
eighteenth-century harpoons (kite) are already 
observed at Satsumon sites from the eighth to 
the thirteenth centuries. The detailed history 
of these tool forms, as well as pipes and coins 
of the Kan'ei period, provides a means of 
dating later nusa deposits to the latter half of 
the seventeenth century. 
Archaeological sites can also be dated 
by volcanic ash levels that can be assigned to 
eruptions of known dates. Examples include 
Komagadake C2 ash dating to A.D. 1694,- 
komagadake D ash dating to 1640,- Usu B2 
ash from 1663,- Usu C2 ash from 161 1,- 
Tarumae A ash of 1739,- and Tarumae B ash of 
1667. In these cases, dates of mtsa deposits 
can be determined by comparing the physical 
relationships between archaeological remains 
and ash levels. 
Forms of Nusa 
Characteristic types of nusa locations are 
classified into five groups, the first being the 
"soil-conscious" form, found in the ground. 
The remains of pithouse villages in Hokkaido 
(fig. 36.5) can still he observed if they have 
not been disturbed by buildings or agriculture,- 
later generations believed these depressions 
were ancient sacred sites and used them for 
their own nusa rituals. The upper level of 
Pithouse 1 1 at the Raitokoro Kawaguchi site, 
mentioned previously, is typical of this type. 
In some cases, people built a low rectangular 
mound and placed bear skulls inside. 
The second type is the "stone-conscious” 
form, characterized by an intentional arrange¬ 
ment or placement of rocks or by use of areas 
near rocks and outcrops. At the Tobinitai site 
in Rausu, stones were piled at the upper part 
258 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / H. UTACAWA 
36.7 Bear Ceremonialism 
Excavations at Shibecha in the 1970s 
uncovered a probable nusa site at the 
base of a tree containing the remains 
of two hundred to three hundred 
bears, deposited there after iyomante 
ceremonies held between 1870 and 
1939. Bear ceremonialism like that 
practiced by the historic Ainu can be 
traced back to Okhotsk, Satsumon, 
and Jomon cultures in Japan and the 
Russian Far East. Bear ceremonialism, 
identified by ritual placement of bear 
bones and production of bear carv¬ 
ings, is a common theme in circumpo¬ 
lar cultures. This ikupasuy has a carv¬ 
ing of a bear poised above a stream 
with three salmon; it may have been 
used in a first-salmon ceremony. 
(MPM N17302) 
36.5 Destroyed House 
After someone died, it was customary 
for their house to be destroyed. This 
pithouse, photographed by Romyn 
Flitchcock in the Kurile Islands, was 
1870 and 
1939 (Utagawa 
1989). Many hares 
(Lepus timidus) and foxes 
(Vulpes iwipes) were sent 
from this site as well. 
Archaeologically, the fact that 
few fish owls have been found sent 
back in ancient sites is noteworthy, 
because Ainu often performed rituals for 
this animal, the god of the village. Everyday 
tools and ceremonial instruments were also 
sent back. 
The fifth type is a form that did not have 
a specific geographic context. For example, 
at the Fushikokotan-chashi site in the city 
of Kushiro, a loggerhead turtle (Lepidocbelys 
367 olivacea) was buried with its head pointing 
toward the ocean, suggesting that the turtle, 
like the orca, was considered an atuy-hor-kamuy, 
god of the ocean, by early Ainu. 
The first and third forms of nusa rituals 
have been found amongst the Sakhalin and 
36.5 
destroyed after its owner had drowned 
at sea. Such destruction often left the 
material possessions of the former 
owner in well-preserved archaeological 
context. (NAA 10362) 
36.6 Fox-Sending Site 
Many sending ceremonies took place in 
the woods, away from Ainu dwellings 
and villages. The use of a tree or a 
stump for a fox-sending ritual, seen in 
this photograph by B. Pilsudski in Sa¬ 
khalin, ca. 1903-05, gives meaning to 
the "tree-conscious" form of iyomante. 
Such sites would be difficult to find 
archaeologically, but chance discover¬ 
ies of animal skulls and broken-tool 
deposits, made during modern building 
and construction, may be the remains 
of sending ceremonies. (NAA 10367) 
36.6 
of houses where iron pots and a pipe bowl of 
pumice stone were found together with sea 
mammal and fish bones. 
The third type is the "shell-mound" 
form, which also includes so-called bone 
mounds. Excavators of the Tanneushi shell 
mound in Shari reported three separate areas: 
one for shells and mammal bones, one 
primarily for fish bones, and one for shells. 
These mounds may have been the locus of the 
earliest misu-deposit observances. 
The fourth type is the "tree-conscious" 
form in which a tree represented the tree spirit 
(fig. 36.6). This author conducted a study on 
the Shuwan site of Shibecha in 1976 and 1978, 
which is thought to have been a nusa deposit 
situated at the base of a spirit tree where two to 
three hundred bears were sent back between 
Kurile Ainu, and similarities with Hokkaido 
have been noted. At the site Ropatoka-1 on 
the Kamchatka Peninsula, the upper layer of 
the shell mound contains shells, bones of sea 
mammals, birds, and fish, remains character¬ 
istic of the third form of such sites,- it also has 
interior-lug ceramics and toggle harpoons, 
suggesting Ainu were present or that its 
inhabitants had been influenced by Ainu in 
the latter half of the seventeenth century 
(Dikova 1983). 
Toyohiro Nishimoto (1996) has defined 
some key conditions for recognizing animal¬ 
sending ceremonies in archaeological data, 
which include the presence of a skull, bones 
representing part of a single species, a methodi¬ 
cal arrangement of bones, the accompanying 
remains of a building or structure, and evidence 
36/ ARCHAEOLOGY OF IYOMANTE 259 
of processing, such as burned bones or holes 
in the skull. Several of these criteria must be 
present in order to conclude that a sending 
ceremony took place,- these conditions are met 
in the case of both Satsumon and Okhotsk 
culture evidence that indicates the presence of 
opunire-type bear-sending ceremonies. 
Archaeological evidence also permits us 
to recognize changes in the history of sending 
ceremonies. In the fifteenth century there 
were more soil-conscious forms that made use 
of the upper levels of pithouse sites,- in the 
sixteenth century the shell-mound form was 
added to the soil-conscious forms in the 
inventory of nusa deposit sites, and it occurs in 
approximately equal numbers. During the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the ratio 
of these two types remained the same, and in 
the nineteenth century all forms also appeared 
in more or less equal numbers. In the 
twentieth century the tree-conscious form, in 
which sending took place at the base of a god 
tree, increases. The number of stone-conscious 
sites, such as Rock Shade cave, is also 
relatively large. 
Bear-Sending Ceremonies and 
Ainu Culture 
This author divides Ainu cultures into two 
historical expressions: the "proto-Ainu 
culture" of the fourteenth to eighteenth 
centuries, and the transformed "new Ainu 
culture" of the post-nineteenth century 
(Utagawa 1989). The transition between 
the two, which occurred in the nineteenth 
century, can be seen in their sending cer¬ 
emonies. The specific cub-type iyomante is 
believed to have begun in the eighteenth 
century even though nusa deposits for ma¬ 
ture bears existed in the thirteenth-century 
Satsumon period. At the Otafukuiwa Iwakage 
site in Rausu on the Shiretoko Peninsula, 
thirteen bears were buried side-by-side, and 
ten were found to be older than three years. 
The fact that only remains of mature bears 
were recovered suggests that people at this 
site treated cubs in a different way 
(Nishimoto and Sato 1991). Evidence of 
different rites for mature bears and cubs has 
not yet been found at Satsumon sites. There 
is a report (O. Takahashi 1993) of a bear 
whose cranial bones indicate an age of 
between eleven and fourteen years old bur¬ 
ied in a pit at Bibi Site 8 in Chitose. The 
find was from the lower part of the Tarumae 
B volcanic ash-level, which establishes the 
date in the first half of the seventeenth 
century. This is a significant discovery of a 
bear-sending ceremony, even though only 
one bear was found. 
Of all these rituals, the epitome of Ainu 
culture is the cub type of iyomante. Hitoshi 
Watanabe has argued that this is the defining 
ritual of Ainu culture, for it is his belief that 
"the bear ceremonialism complex," including 
the various cultural elements closely tied to 
the iyomante (fig. 36.7), is at the heart of Ainu 
culture (H. Watanabe 1972). 
This idea can be extended by consid¬ 
ering the Ainu cultural complex from an 
archaeological point of view (Utagawa 
1989, 1992). Placing sending ceremonies 
such as the iyomante, opunire, and iwakte at the 
center of this complex allows one to see 
how Ainu society is structured by relation¬ 
ships between these ceremonies and fami¬ 
lies, groups, and communities. The sending 
ceremonies and rituals represented by the 
iyomante are an important mechanism for 
those with blood relations who hold the 
identical mark—in Ainu, the shine itokpa — 
inherited from their ancestors. These cer¬ 
emonies allow the Ainu to maintain their 
ethnic identity and their sense of belonging 
and solidarity in modern society. 
260 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / H. UTAGAWA 
Ainu 
Shamanism 
Kan Wada 
edited by Igor Krupnik 
SHAMANISTIC IDEOLOGY IS DEEPLY 
rooted in the foundation of tra¬ 
ditional Ainu culture (Ohnuki- 
Tierney 1973b,- Wada 1996,- Irimoto 
1997). The Ainu share in common with their 
Siberian neighbors—the Tungus, the Ul'ta 
(Orok), and the Nivkhi people—several 
distinctive features of their shamanistic 
practices and beliefs, bor example, the Ainu 
have a basic mythological theme of "wander¬ 
ing in the other world" in which a shamanlike 
hero Samaikur traveled to the multilayered 
other world to get back the spirit of the 
goddess who was abducted by an evil spirit. 
The shaman's journey was made by riding a 
baby cradle (sinta), just as Siberian shamans 
use their drums for flight. Like the Siberian 
shaman narratives, the Ainu myth followed a 
story of struggle in which the hero fought 
with many different enemies with the help of 
his protective spirit(s). The Ainu morpheme 
sama clearly has the same origin as the 
Tungus and Orok word sama/saman which 
denotes a shaman and, hence, is the root of 
the term that is recognized worldwide. 
Ainu shamanistic beliefs also reveal some 
of the basic Siberian features. In the course of 
a shamanistic rite, called tusu, a shaman 
becomes possessed by a spirit or spirits who 
usually receive instructions from higher deities 
or ancestors and convey their messages 
through the shaman. Therefore, during a 
typical shamanistic rite at least four classes of 
participants are involved in spiritual interac¬ 
tion: the shaman, his/her personal helping or 
protective spirits, other spirits who conveyed 
the message, and the higher deities. Among 
the Sakhalin Ainu, one particular spirit, the 
goddess of the hearth, reportedly played a 
special role as the key intermediary between 
the shaman and various deities (Ohnuki- 
Tierney 1973b: 18). 
37.1 Shamanic Seance 
Relatively little is known about Ainu 
shamanism, especially in Hokkaido, 
where it seems to have disappeared 
as a formal institution and survives 
today primarily in the form of female 
healers. Shamans continued to prac¬ 
tice their trade in Sakhalin into the 
early twentieth century, however. This 
photograph of a shaman performing 
a seance at the hearth of a Sakhalin 
Ainu house, taken by Bronislaw 
Pilsudski in 1903-05, is the only 
photograph of an Ainu seance known 
to exist. (NAA 98-10382) 
37 / AINU SHAMANISM 261 
Types of Ainu Shamanism 
Ainu shamanistic practices are generally 
divided into two types, according to the two 
major Ainu historical areas: the Sakhalin type 
and the Hokkaido type (Wada 1996: 305). 
There may have been an independent third 
version of Ainu shamanism in the Kurile 
Islands, but unfortunately there is no precise 
information about this. 
Regional variations in culture are highly 
developed among the Ainu people, and Ainu 
shamanism, in particular, illustrates these 
profound regional differences. With regard to 
Sakhalin Ainu shamanism, we owe much to 
the famous Polish ethnographer Bronislaw 
Pilsudski, whose fieldwork supplied the core 
of our present-day information on Sakhalin 
Ainu folklife and traditions (Pilsudski 1906, 
1907a, 1909a, 1909b, 1912). According to 
Pilsudski's observations, many Sakhalin Ainu 
shamanistic practices were typical of general 
indigenous shamanism patterns elsewhere in 
Siberia. For example, an Ainu shamanistic 
seance usually took place in a dim hut and was 
conducted by a male shaman in a state 
of ecstasy, the so-called shamanistic trance 
(fig. 37.1). The shaman used an oval drum 
called a kaco (most probably, a word borrowed 
from the neighboring Tungus-speaking Orok 
people), sticks, carved wooden hats, tufts of 
shaved wood (inaw-kike), ceremonial sacred 
sticks (inaw), as well as other paraphernalia 
that typically provided a rattling sound, such 
as metal chains (fig. 37.2). The use of a drink 
37.2 Amulet String 
This amulet string (senisteh) has sev¬ 
eral charms attached to it, including a 
two-headed carved-wood bear, wooden 
animal figures (one possibly an otter), a 
bundle of netting, and a small engraved 
metal plate. It was found in an aban¬ 
doned Ainu house in Niitoi (now Novoe), 
Sakhalin, around 1945. Although its 
specific function is unknown, neighbor¬ 
ing indigenous peoples of the lower 
Amur region and eastern Siberia used 
similar amulets. (Kan Wada Collection) 
262 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / K. WADA 
(nuhcha), which the shaman drank during a 
seance, is also documented. Dogs were com¬ 
monly used for sacrifice before or after the 
performance (fig. 37.3). The Sakhalin Ainu 
shamanistic seance was a well-organized 
community ritual that included several com¬ 
ponents common to Siberian indigenous 
shamanism, such as a gradual falling into a 
state of self-oblivion by continuously striking 
drums and use of intoxicants, the invitation 
of protective spirits, strong dance movements, 
spirit gestures and imitation sounds, and 
divine revelations. 
Like their Siberian counterparts, Sakhalin 
Ainu shamans were initiated after having 
endured a disease (bubyou) early in life, which 
was taken as a sign that the spirits had chosen 
that individual as a vessel. The shaman's role 
in the Sakhalin Ainu community ranged from 
healing to divination to protection of the 
community (fig. 37.6). The major function 
of the Ainu shaman was, of course, healing, 
through the diagnosis and treatment of ill¬ 
nesses. In the past, shamans reportedly also 
conducted rituals to benefit the community 
as a whole such as ceremonies for successful 
hunting, good weather, and protection 
from dangerous epidemics, such as smallpox 
(fig 37.7). Among the Sakhalin Ainu most of 
the reported shamans were men—according 
to Pilsudski (1909a), six shamans out of eight 
he personally encountered in Sakhalin were 
male—which differs from the situation 
among the Hokkaido shamans but is a similar 
ratio to that found among Siberian shamans. 
The Sakhalin Ainu also had a custom of 
making wooden effigies called nipopo (wooden 
baby), which represented both protective 
and evil spirits (Wada 1959). These wooden 
effigies (figs. 37.4, 37.5) may resemble the 
general Siberian tradition of the ancestral- 
shaman/shaman-aide images, the oncjons, which 
the Russian ethnographer Dmitri Zelenin 
(1936) once associated with the origin of 
shamanistic practices in Siberia and elsewhere. 
The shamanistic traditions of Hokkaido 
Ainu are very different from those once prac¬ 
ticed in Sakhalin. Unfortunately, perhaps 
because shamanism was not as well developed 
among the Hokkaido Ainu and their spiritual 
culture was more significantly transformed 
under Japanese influence, we have very little 
firsthand evidence of traditional Hokkaido 
Ainu shamanism. Even the best early studies 
of the Hokkaido Ainu culture discussed sha¬ 
manism only in passing (e.g., Batchelor 1901, 
37.3 Ritual Sacrifice of Dogs 
Many native groups of Eastern Siberia be¬ 
lieved that sacrificing and displaying dead 
dogs could help avert epidemic disease 
and other misfortune. Similar rituals were 
practiced by the Sakhalin Ainu, who are 
seen here hanging pups. (NAA 98-10368) 
37.4, 37.5 Nipopo Dolls 
Sakhalin Ainu shamans produced abstract 
wooden figurines called nipopo (“wooden 
baby"), used primarily as amulets for cur¬ 
ing or warding off childhood disease. The 
addition of strips of red and blue cloth or 
a blue bead (on the upper figure) was 
thought to increase their power; such 
dolls were dressed in inaw-kike (wood 
shavings) to increase their efficacy. The 
two-headed figure may have been a charm 
to enhance the probability of giving birth 
to twins. (Twins were believed to bring 
success in fishing and hunting among the 
Sakhalin Ainu and neighboring Eastern 
Siberian groups. A similar belief was also 
held by the Kwakwaka'wakw, the native 
people of Canada’s Northwest Coast.) 
These nipopo were collected in Novoe, 
Sakhalin, in 1945. Both have the deep 
patina of long-held personal treasures. 
(Kan Wada Collection) 
37.4 
37 
1927,- Kindaichi 1925: 288-300,- Munro 
1962: 104) or supplied rather vague details. 
Thus, much of the early ethnographic infor¬ 
mation on Hokkaido shamanism is probably 
lost. For example, there is little direct evi¬ 
dence to confirm the existence of male sha¬ 
mans in Hokkaido in the past, and more 
recent descriptions usually refer to Amu 
shamans as women. A woman shaman was 
usually induced into an ecstatic state by a 
special prayer which was offered by a male 
elder,- the reports describe a kind of hypnotic 
procedure used by the male elder to aid the 
female shaman, but during several encounters 
I had in Hokkaido after World War II, all the 
Ainu female shamans were able to put them¬ 
selves into a slightly ecstatic state on their 
own. None, however, had any special noise¬ 
making paraphernalia such as a shaman drum 
or metallic clothing, as was the case in Sa¬ 
khalin. While praying in order to fall into an 
37.3 
ecstatic state, one female shaman clattered 
her Buddhist prayer beads {juzu) and murmured 
Buddhist sutra to the dragon god Ryujin, a 
god of Japanese folk belief. Another female 
shaman beat a Japanese drum (uchiwadaiko) 
with a handle because she was also a follower 
of the Nichiren Buddhist sect, to which that 
drum belongs. 
In traditional Ainu society, women were 
not allowed to play leading roles in any 
religious ceremonies. This may explain why 
even a female shaman remains a rather passive 
medium during her seance. Gerhard Huber, 
however, in his description of Hokkaido Ainu 
culture describes prophecy as a power of the 
female realm: 
Hosting religious practices is largely a male 
responsibility [among Ainu]. Females 
should never pray, much less assume any 
religious functions. Instead, women were 
granted the right and power of prophecy 
... as all males are essentially priests, all 
females were shamans in the past. . . . For 
37 / AINU SHAMANISM 263 
example, before the chief took on an 
important undertaking, he let his wife drink 
sake and pray for divine revelations to get 
some idea about the outcome. As he prayed, 
the wife fell into the state of fantasy through 
a kind of self-hypnosis. She stares into space 
and . her face reddens and her body 
starts shaking. Then she reveals her illusion 
as if she were singing a song (1964: 93). 
Kindaichi (1942: 173), in his classic 
volume Ainu jojisbi: Yukarcjaisetsu (Ainu epics: 
Outlines of yukar), stated that "almost all 
females were mediums in the Ainu society until 
recently, without even asking the elders.. .. 
The females were considered chosen to cook 
sacred food for the gods, as well as be pos¬ 
sessed and give revelations." Although the role 
of a female medium here is not comparable to 
a Sakhalin shaman, whose job was a special¬ 
ized profession, it nevertheless suggests that 
for a period of time in Hokkaido there existed 
certain shamanistic practices involving women. 
The actions listed by Kindaichi were, however, 
much closer to the old ritual practices of 
Honshu than to the typical shaman perfor¬ 
mances of the Sakhalin Ainu. 
There are, nevertheless, other vague 
references to the old forms of Hokkaido Ainu 
shamanism. For example, occasional reports 
mentioned that there were also male shamans 
(tusukur) in Hokkaido. One of the first Ainu 
shamans whom the Reverend Batchelor met 
during his sojourn in Hokkaido (which lasted 
for half a century) was male. He sat by the 
fireside heating time with a shaman's stick and 
displaying fox cranial bones (Batchelor 1927: 
274-79). The wooden sticks, which Batchelor 
called "shaman's sticks,” were probably the 
same as clappers (repni) commonly used to 
beat the rhythm of a yukar recitation in recent 
years. Mashiho Chiri (1954: 35) even sug¬ 
gested that in Hokkaido Ainu dialect the 
word repni formerly referred to the shaman 
drumstick, as both this word and the term for 
a shaman drum, kaco, appear in Hokkaido 
Ainu mythology. 
It is now widely assumed that the 
Hokkaido Ainu shamans once used special 
drums, although no identifiable Hokkaido 
shaman drum has been recovered to date. In 
addition, it is believed that foretelling the 
future with the use of animal cranial bones is 
closely related to shamanistic practices. 
Among Hokkaido Ainu this type of divination 
was widely practiced tinder a special name, 
kamuy-tusu. When the smallpox epidemics 
spread through Hokkaido (see Walker, this 
volume), people displayed straw dolls as a 
form of protective magic (Kubodera and 
Chiri 1940). The Sakhalin Ainu ascribed a 
similar function to this practice although 
there it was executed following a special 
order by the local shamans. It is likely that 
this as well as several other Hokkaido Ainu 
ritual practices were the last vestiges of the 
old shaman customs after the disappearance 
of true shamans. 
Despite the scarcity of good ethno¬ 
graphic evidence on the former Hokkaido 
Ainu shamanistic patterns, valuable informa¬ 
tion can also be retrieved from Ainu myths 
and language data as well as from travelers' 
records from the late nineteenth and early 
twentieth centuries. 
Ainu Terms for Shamanism and 
Related Practices 
The most general Ainu word for shamanism is 
tusu (Jujutsu in Japanese), and a shaman is 
commonly called tusu/susu-kur by adding an 
affix -kur, which refers to humans. This term 
exists in both Hokkaido and Sakhalin Ainu 
dialects, although Sakhalin Ainu also call 
their shamans tusu aynu (aynu means "man"), 
nupuru aynu (nupuru means "holy"), or nupuru 
kuru ("holy persons"—see Ohnuki-Tierney 
1973b: 18). 
In addition to tusu, some other terms 
were documented in ethnographic literature 
and collections of old Ainu folklore. Kyosuke 
Kindaichi in his volume of old Ainu songs 
listed the word kinra and stated, "kinra in 
Hokkaido means insanity and madness, while 
in Sakhalin it refers to a curse or fortune¬ 
telling" (1914: 36). It is fairly certain that this 
2 64 TRADITIONAL CULTURE/ K. WADA 
word indicated shamanistic practices linked 
with supernatural experience and behavior. 
Chiri (1954: 36, 58, 646) listed several more 
words used to designate a shaman or shaman¬ 
like behavior, such as mipur, ojna, saman, imu, 
and sinot. Batchelor (1926), in his famous Aimi- 
Encjlish-Japanese Dictionary, explains that the 
word saman or shaman means "magician." There 
is a related morpheme, esamanki, which means 
"magic using animal cranial bones." Kindaichi 
(1925: 33-34) also linked such Ainu words as 
esamanki and saimon, which means "the hot 
water trial,” to old shamanistic practices that 
by the early twentieth century were already 
extinct in Hokkaido. Chiri (1953-62: 88) 
argues that a cultural hero of several Ainu 
creation myths, Samaikur, can be interpreted 
as saman-ye-kur ("shaman say god"), asserting 
that this hero was indeed a shaman in ancient 
society. Examining all these theories, it is 
obvious that a series of close word forms— 
saman, saimon, and samai-kur in the Ainu 
language—is closely related to the Tungus 
language, especially to the term sama/sauna 
(shaman) in the Ul'ta (Orok) language of the 
closest Siberian neighbors to the Ainu in 
central and southern Sakhalin. 
Ainu Myths Related to 
the Origins of Shamanism 
A Sakhalin Ainu story recorded by Pilsudski 
(1912: 59) is believed to be the vestige of the 
old myth related to the origins of shamanism. 
It concerns a girl named Saunnonnu, who 
was born to the ocean god and a woman. 
She practiced tusu and created the island of 
Chulaini (Kaiyaku-tou) through a set of special 
shamanistic practices. The theme of a 
shaman's origin through the mythical inter¬ 
course between a divine spirit and a human 
has been advanced by Shternberg (1925) as 
a worldwide cultural phenomenon to which 
the story of Saunnonnu among the Sakhalin 
Ainu conforms. 
Although Ainu mythology has more 
recently been influenced by Japanese folk¬ 
lore, it is still possible to recognize other 
typical shamanistic figures therein. For 
example, the Ainu cultural hero is usually 
called kotan-kur-kamuy, ("creator of the 
world") although he is also referred to as 
sama-i-kur. Etymologically, this name prob¬ 
ably means "the god who shamanizes." 
In fact, he has a character similar to that 
of the so-called First Great Shaman in 
Siberian mythology. The core theme of the 
Samaikur myth is the celestial journey that 
Mircea Eliade explored (1964). The etymol¬ 
ogy of the various names of the main charac¬ 
ter of the Samaikur myth as well as his gaudy 
dress and ornaments, which were different 
from those of the common people, clearly 
identified him as a shaman. It seems more 
appropriate, however, to describe Samaikur 
as the Ainu "first shaman" and a cultural hero. 
It is common for a cultural hero in shaman 
mythologies to be depicted as the first 
person who bestowed the most important 
cultural elements to a people, including 
the technique of self-oblivion. Therefore, 
Samaikur certainly possessed some shaman¬ 
istic skills and served as a mediator between 
the spiritual universe and human world as 
demonstrated in his alternative name 
Ainurakkur ("god with human elements"). 
There are several different versions of 
37.6 Shaman Belt 
Sakhalin Ainu women used a sealskin 
belt (kanikuh) to secure their clothes 
and hold their work knife and other 
paraphernalia. Such belts often had 
decorative brass ornaments, obtained 
by trade with the mainland, which 
doubled as charms. These belts were 
so important that they were buried with 
a woman when she died. They were 
also major sources of power for Sakha¬ 
lin Ainu shamans. This belt was col¬ 
lected in Sakhalin by Arthur Curtiss 
James ca. 1898. (AMNH 70-14) 
i 
37 / AINU SHAMANISM 
265 
the myth with regard to Samaikur's childhood, 
but he is generally depicted as "a boy who 
grew up by himself," either in solitude or 
reared by his brothers and sisters,- he had an 
eagle as a caretaker in some Sakhalin Ainu 
versions. The place where he grew up is often 
located at the base of a tree or in the moun¬ 
tains. The appearance of a nest in ayachidamo 
tree (Fraxinus mandshurica) in one of the 
Sakhalin versions is particularly noteworthy: a 
winged creature abducts the soul of a shaman 
candidate, brings it to the world tree, and his 
soul is taken care of until the hero's initiation is 
complete. In a Hokkaido version of the same 
myth the tree is replaced by a harunire tree 
(Ulmus davidiana), which in the creation myth is 
said to be the first tree to take root in the 
highest Hokkaido mountains. The main 
components of these stories are, however, 
more or less identical, and represent a typical 
pattern of the initiation mythology—again 
with an almost worldwide cultural distribution. 
What should be pointed out here in 
relation to the origins of Ainu shamanism is 
that Samaikur was brought up in trees and 
mountains, which may be representations of 
the "center of the universe." The harunire tree 
thus functions as the tree of life affecting the 
birth and cultural training of an Ainu hero. 
Moreover, as the nest of the winged spirit 
creature, the tree provides the context for the 
first Ainu shaman—Samaikur—to be raised by 
a heavenly god. The central symbolism here is 
the representation of animal mother(s) who 
take part in a shaman's upbringing and 
initiation, which leads to the mythical bonding 
of a human soul with a powerful spirit. 
The Bubyou: 
An Ainu Shaman's Initiation 
It is next to impossible to obtain reliable informa¬ 
tion today about the traditional initiation rite of 
Ainu shaman as few living elders have memo¬ 
ries of it. The only convincing firsthand 
documentation on Ainu shaman initiation is 
found in a footnote in one of Pilsudski's works 
(1909a). Together with Sakhalin Ainu initia¬ 
tion mythology, which describes the origins 
of shamanism as a mythical encounter between 
the divine spirit and human beings, there is 
no question about the existence of bubyou as 
an initiation rite. This telltale illness—the 
time when the human soul is away from its 
body and bonding with a spirit—inaugurates 
the shaman's role as a conduit between the 
human and supernatural world 
According to Pilsudski, the bubyou 
appeared at puberty and its main symptoms 
were depression, fatigue, and catatonic stupor. 
These symptoms, publicly recognized as signs 
of bubyou, were quickly alleviated as soon as 
the person became a shaman. As Pilsudski 
(1909a: I 84) put it, "others perceived those 
who showed the symptoms [of bubyou] as 
people who were 'chosen to host the spirit 
and to be used as an instrument of the spirit.'" 
Among the women in Hokkaido who 
are called shaman (tusukur) today, there are 
some who have had some sort of supernatural 
experience in the past, but the existence of 
the Sakhalin-type bubyou recognized by the 
community as a "shaman initiation" cannot be 
confirmed. However, Munro (1962: 163) cites 
the translation of certain prayers called "the 
prayer for transforming the neurosis patients 
who were unable to obtain imu through a 
treatment ritual into tusu " Imu is a well- 
documented psychoneurotic pattern among 
Hokkaido Ainu (Batchelor 1927,- Munro 1962,- 
Wada 1996: 307-1 1), but in folk terms it is a 
possession by a spirit: some 1 10 cases of imu 
were studied from 193 1 to 1937 among Ainu 
of Hokkaido and Sakhalin,- all were women 
called imu-juchi or imu-pakko, meaning "an old 
woman falling into a fit of imu." These 
temporary fits or possessions (imu) were seen 
as dangerous unless ritually controlled,- there 
are several reports that women with minor 
symptoms were treated through the use of 
black magic by having them become an 
established "/mu-possessor," while those with 
heavy symptoms became a tusukur. As Munro 
(1962: 12-44) described, when the "purifica¬ 
tion" by the elders was successful, the evil 
spirit was driven out and the virtuous spirit 
remaining became a person's protective spirit 
that would function as an assistant when a 
shamanistic seance was performed. 
In view of the firm belief that imu can 
often be initiated by a special magical proce¬ 
dure, both its symptoms and the prescribed 
treatment are reminiscent of the illness institu¬ 
tionalized in shaman-initiation ceremonies of 
the past. Likewise, in the archaic Ainu myth 
collected in the northeastern part of Hokkaido 
(Chiri 1973a), the tusukur1 s ecstatic dancing to 
the beating of a shaman's drum is described 
using the word imu, which in that myth can be 
translated as "the shaman's jumping in ecstasy." 
In Hokkaido, Ainu tusukur never acted in such 
a violent manner. Therefore, this myth may 
he regarded as evidence that shamanism of 
266 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / K WADA 
37.7 Marching to Ward off 
Evil Spirits 
Ainu men with swords drawn and 
women (behind) march to exorcise 
evil spirits, (courtesy of AMS) 
the Sakhalin type had once been prevalent in 
northern Hokkaido and that the word imu 
originally signified "behavior typical of 
shaman in ecstasy" (Chiri 1973a: 203). 
Of course, the possibility remains that 
several features of Ainu traditional shamanism 
were strongly influenced by their northern 
Siberian neighbors, the Tungus (particularly 
Ul'ta/Orok) and the Nivkhi, both in Sakhalin 
and in Hokkaido, as evidenced by several 
similar elements in Sakhalin Ainu shamanistic 
practices as well as from such key borrowed 
terms as sama, kaco, and others. On the other 
hand, we may assume that this influence came 
relatively late (in a general perspective of Ainu 
histoiy) and was rather superficial, in that it 
only changed some vocabularies, details, and 
objects used for or during shamanistic rituals. 
With that in mind, what may be called the 
"prototype" of Ainu shamanism had certainly 
been established well before the Japanese 
influence made its impact in Hokkaido, and 
also later in Sakhalin. The decline of Ainu 
shamanism in Hokkaido was triggered by the 
impact of Japanese culture introduced initially 
through fishing contracts, and it accelerated 
between the Edo and the Meiji periods. 
Although this topic is still being studied, Ainu 
shamanism seems to have been a composition 
of complex and elaborated rituals and beliefs 
that have much in common with the ancient 
eastern Siberian shamanism. 
3 7/ AINU SHAMANISM 267 
38/Life and 
Death 
HlSAKAZU FUJIMURA 
38.1 Offering Condolences 
to the Chieftain 
This scene, from Ainu Manners and 
Customs (late nineteenth-century) by 
Hokuyo Nishikawa, illustrates an elabo¬ 
rate funeral gathering at which a large 
number of people pay their respects to 
the chief's deceased child. (HML) 
Ainu people had their own 
interpretation of birth before the 
era of scientific explanations. 
Their view evolved from their 
observations of different patterns of family 
structure. To explain such differences in 
families, especially issues concerning chil¬ 
dren—why a married couple could not have a 
child, why a woman would experience 
repeated miscarriages,- why a family had many 
sons but no daughters, or vice versa,- why a 
couple had only one child, twins, or triplets,- 
why one family had a handicapped child,- and 
why a couple lost their infants—the Ainu 
drew on their own medical practices as well as 
the concepts of animism that ordered their 
world (Fujimura 1982, 1985b,-Obayashi 1997). 
When a woman could not conceive, 
Ainu people believed it was the result of 
broken negotiations among the couple's 
ancestors who were responsible for determin¬ 
ing the gender of the unborn. In deciding 
\ 
gender, the ancestors on both the paternal 
and maternal side referred to their family 
histories, and if all agreed, their conclusion 
determined the sex of the baby. Some 
believed that a single consultation among the 
ancestors determined the gender of all the 
babies that would be born to the couple,- 
others thought a meeting was held each time 
the woman became pregnant. 
The side that had priority in determin¬ 
ing the gender of offspring chose one person 
among their ancestors, someone who had 
lived a previous life in the other (living) 
world, to be born again to the couple. The 
order of rebirth depended on the way a 
particular person had lived his or her pre¬ 
vious life, not on who had lived first: the 
more righteous a life he had as a human, 
the earlier his turn to be born again. Thus, 
those living in this world (on the earth) were 
considered privileged, for they had been 
selected by their ancestors to be born again. 
268 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / H FUJIMURA 
38.2 Grave of an Ainu Chief 
in Sakhalin 
Sakhalin Ainu used elaborate con¬ 
structions in the burial of chiefs and 
high-ranking leaders. This drawing 
from Rinzo Mamiya's Illustrations 
from Northern Ezo (1855) shows the 
details of a burial structure deco¬ 
rated with ornamental carving. A 
similar construction in the area of 
Shiretoko Ainu, northern Hokkaido, 
was described by Dutch sailors in 
1643. (HML) 
H 
4. 
i 
l N 
; * * 
\ 
y 
i * * 
&<*** 
■ijL U 1 - 
^ & £ rz /r^ 
fa'ii * j jj_ if ^ 4 i- 
/C? 
tr> 
<T) -£_ Jy 
Af •&'. 
-T t s nt f 
it 1 k ? t 
iL i- 
t # 
i 
I) '** ■&- 
S. h i, 
x t ? I 
-> -7 J? j| i 
CF> 
2 
38 /LIFE AND DEATH RITUALS 
I_ 
269 
a
H
f
i
 
38.6 Spirit Guardian 
The black-and-white twisted-cotton cord 
(eka eka) attached to this amulet was 
believed to have special powers to cure 
disease and ward off illness; it was 
often worn by women as a necklace or 
tied around the wrist. Eka eka were 
made and worn only by Ainu women; 
when used as a necklace it was called 
rekutunpe. The cord received its power 
only after the two strands had been 
twisted and a respected elder had 
prayed to the god of fire, asking that it 
be given a soul. The end of the thread 
was then burned slightly in the fire. 
Once empowered, the charm cord 
could be attached to such materials 
as herbs, a poison plant, glass beads, 
or a grass coil, depending on one’s 
need. This amulet was collected by 
Sakuzaemon Kodama. (AMS; Kodama 
Collection 61025) 
This theory applied to all entities existing 
on the earth, including animals, plants, tools, 
and other things. 
The soul of the person who was to be 
horn on earth and who had departed the body 
of the deceased and lived in the other world 
was thought to return to this world accompa¬ 
nied by two guides. One was a goddess of 
midwifery and the other was the so-called 
possessing god (itimn kamuy-. everyone was 
believed to possess his own god from birth), 
who was interested in the soul of the baby 
and wished to live together with it,- the pos¬ 
sessing god was sometimes a single god, at 
other times a multiple god. The task of the 
midwife goddess was to place the soul in the 
mother's womb, oversee her delivery, and 
ensure the safe birth of the baby. After per¬ 
forming her duties the goddess would return 
to the other world, sent off with words of 
gratitude from the people of this world. 
38.6 
38.3 
38.3, 38.4, 38.5 Mourning and Burial 
After a death the body was wrapped in 
ceremonial clothes, and the family, 
similarly attired, gathered to mourn the 
deceased at home. After a suitable period 
the body was carried to the grave site 
in a funeral procession. Rituals were 
then conducted, and the body was buried. 
(AMS; NAA 98-10405, 98-10406) 
38.4 
When she began her journey back, she would 
take with her the soul of a person who had 
just died in this world (figs. 38.1, 38.2). 
After the mother recuperated from the 
fatigue of delivery, her husband and father-in- 
law performed a ceremony on behalf of the 
three generations of the family in order to 
thank Fuchi, the goddess of home and hearth, 
for the good health of the newborn and the 
mother. In this ritual, the baby met the fire 
goddess for the first time and the parents 
asked for her protection in raising the baby. 
As the baby matured, the possessing god also 
grew accordingly. 
The new baby was called by a tempo¬ 
rary name, often a repulsive one, and a 
permanent name was not given until the age 
of seven or eight. The reason for this practice 
was the high infant-mortality rate at that 
time, for people believed that official naming 
had something to do with early death. The 
Ainu did not have fixed common names but 
rather created a name by combining various 
words that expressed the child's character or 
the parents' wishes for its future. Although 
there were names with similar pronunciation, 
it was extremely rare to find exactly the same 
name. Names like "cute thing" or "loving 
creature" were not used because parents 
feared that a god might become too closely 
attached to the child and its spirit might be 
taken away. Similarly, it was thought that an 
unpleasant name protected the child from 
losing its soul because an evil god would not 
2 70 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / H. FUJIMURA 
38.7, 38.8 Spirit Figures 
In addition to nipopo dolls, Sakhalin 
Ainu produced small humanlike 
wooden carvings whose upper and 
lower bodies were carved as a link. 
Whether their lower sections were to 
represent legs, fins, or flippers is not 
clear, but the links themselves sug¬ 
gest metal chains, whose sounds and 
brightness were believed by Siberian 
native groups to attract favorable 
spirits. (MPM N17361, N17363) 
38.7 
38.5 
he likely to become fond of it. Ainu parents 
were also afraid that evil spirits of illness or 
injury might detect a child's weakness in his 
formal name and attack his soul, causing him 
to die; for this reason, even mothers and 
fathers were not supposed to call their child 
by its permanent name. 
By around age three a child sometimes 
showed peculiar characteristics that were 
thought to he signs of a possessing god with 
an evil spirit. When this happened, the 
parents and other relatives tried to find the 
cause. If they could not determine the 
identity of an evil possessing god, they 
assumed that the god's power exceeded theirs 
and asked for the help of a shaman (figs. 38.7, 
38.8). To ward off the evil spirit, parents 
made every effort to take good care of the 
child by praying to the gods for protection 
of their offspring (figs. 38.6, 38.12, 38 13, 
38.14). If a child eventually died, its possess¬ 
ing god departed for the next world with the 
child's dead soul, and only then was the 
relationship between them dissolved. 
When children reached the age of 
seven or eight their parents began teaching 
them the necessary skills of life. Fathers 
taught boys and mothers tutored girls by 
using them as assistants in daily activities. 
They employed a one-on-one teaching 
method and catered to the child's abilities 
to make sure that each one acquired the 
competence to deal with life's problems,- 
given the natural environment surrounding 
the Ainu people in those days, one had to 
possess specific skills for self-defense. In 
addition to learning pragmatic skills, the 
children were repeatedly told many stories 
that served as examples to them, tales 
about the ecosystems of animals and 
plants, human relations, and gods and 
souls. These stories enhanced the 
children's ability to respond to danger with 
flexibility. While there was no formal 
school system, a hands-on educational 
process took place daily. 
Once they learned life skills, young 
men and women were regarded as self- 
supporting and were treated and respected as 
independent people. As proof of adulthood, 
38 / LIFE AND DEATH RITUALS 27 i 
38.10 Grave Posts and Burial Articles 
This illustration from Shimanojo 
Murakami’s Curious Sights of Ezo Island 
(1799) shows the form of a man’s grave 
marker with his hunting equipment and 
a woman's grave marker with its deposit, 
including an iron pot, a reaping sickle, a 
container, and a beaded necklace, which 
accompanied the owner to help in the 
next life. (HML) 
38.11 Grave Posts from West Ezo 
Even within Hokkaido, Ainu burial tradi¬ 
tions varied considerably. This illustration 
shows customs of western Hokkaido, 
where posts were engraved with personal 
marks and adorned with inaw, in this re¬ 
gion, burial goods were not deposited on 
the surface, but they were frequently bur¬ 
ied with the deceased. (HML) 
men were given their family crest (itokpa), 
which showed the paternal family line, and 
they were allowed to participate in religious 
rituals. Women were provided waistbands (fig. 
3 1. \0)(raunkut), woven by their mothers in a 
pattern that indicated the female family line. 
These crests and waistbands were abstract 
symbols of the family's ancestral gods. Specific 
family matters—who their particular gods 
were, why these gods were their ancestral 
gods, and on what occasions the gods were to 
he prayed to—were relayed from generation 
to generation in a confidential manner. 
The family was the smallest unit of the 
society. When the training of young men and 
women by their parents was completed, the 
young people were regarded as adults in the 
village, considered to be a collective body of 
families, and marriage became a consider¬ 
ation. There were various types of marriage 
in the Ainu community: a child might be 
promised in marriage by its parents before or 
after its birth,- a young man and woman 
might have met growing up. The most 
important issue in deciding marriage was to 
assure that the ancestors of both parties had 
not been married several generations back— 
they could not share the same ancestor gods 
in order to avoid consanguineous union. 
Because the Ainu frequently adopted chil¬ 
dren, it was also necessary to examine their 
lineage, so crests and waistcloths served as 
useful proof of family lines. 
The Ainu people regard death to be the 
separation of soul and body and considered 
the soul to be immortal Humans experience 
272 
38.9 Grave Markers 
Grave markers were erected in the 
form of posts: a man’s resembled a 
spear, while a woman’s resembled 
the eye of a needle. Leaving the 
grave, mourners were not to look 
back, sob, or otherwise express sor¬ 
row, or the soul of the deceased 
would return to possess the living, 
(courtesy of AMS) 
38.9 
38.13 
38.14 
38.12 Ritual Sword 
When an Ainu died it was believed they 
went to another world where to survive 
they needed the same tools and equip¬ 
ment as they had used in this world. 
Men's grave goods included a bow, 
quiver, knife, ikupasuy, and other items. 
Swords were tools of a similar category, 
but rather than bury such treasures, 
wooden replicas (pons emush) were 
made; such swords might be little more 
than a piece of wood in a birchbark 
sheath. In some areas, ritual swords 
were kept under a man's pillow to pro¬ 
tect him from sickness and ensure that 
children conceived by him would be 
male. (MPM N17346) 
38.13 Ritual Quiver 
As in the case of a man's sword, a 
small model quiver (pons ikayop) was 
often made for use as a man’s charm 
during his lifetime and as a grave 
good upon his death. These models 
were carefully carved and decorated. 
(MPM N17056) 
38.14 Bear Fetish 
Wooden figurines called inoka appear 
to have been produced solely by the 
Sakhalin Ainu. It is not known if they 
had shamanic use, but they were used 
as charms. Inoka were often covered 
with the genital skin or pubic hair of a 
female bear and were used in iyomante 
ceremonies to promote fecundity 
among bears. (ACM 4439) 
happy and sad times repeatedly throughout 
their lives and often deplore the problems 
from which they suffer. The Ainu believe that 
suffering is inflicted upon humans by gods in 
order to strengthen human spirituality. Once 
humans overcome life's difficulties, they 
become stronger and their level of spirituality 
is raised, so life is a time given by the gods to 
man to become a noble person (a "saint," as 
in Buddhism). A life that achieves this goal 
in this world has promise in the next life and 
hope for the earliest possible return to the 
earth. Ainu (the word means "human" in the 
Ainu language) have a saying: "Become a 
righteous man among men." This is the way 
humans are supposed to exist and live. 
Ainu people believed that all spirits 
were immortal—even those of inanimate 
objects—and never ceased to exist,- there¬ 
fore, after an old person's death his or her 
house would be burned so that the deceased 
would have a place to live in the other world. 
At the funeral service, people broke the late 
person's utensils, tools, bows, and arrows, 
and these implements were buried with the 
corpse (figs. 38.3-38.5, 38.9-38.1 I). Because 
all the spirits of the implements were alive in 
this world, the deceased person could begin 
to live another life by using them in the other 
world. This view of the world was founded 
on a belief in the immortality of all spirits 
and their transmigration between worlds. 
38.15 Entrance to the Other World 
The souls of the dead were often 
thought to gain entrance to the spirit 
world through caves, natural fissures 
in the earth, or other remarkable 
geological formations. This was one 
such site known to the Ainu of the 
Shiraoi region, (courtesy of AMS) 
38 / LIFE AND DEATH RITUALS 273 
Mythology 
and Animal 
Tales 
Shinko Ogihara 
39.1 Goddess of the Cave 
This painting from Shimanojo 
Murakami’s Curious Sights of Ezo Is¬ 
land (1799) illustrates a scene from 
Ainu mythology. In this myth, a goddess 
from the southern god land drifted 
ashore and, finding herself without 
food or shelter, took refuge in a cave. 
Soon a dog carrying a flower appeared 
and brought her food from the sea and 
the mountains; some time later the 
goddess gave birth to a baby dog. 
Although this tale is one of sev¬ 
eral Ainu origin myths, many Ainu dis¬ 
like it because of the discrimination 
they have faced from Japanese. The 
word “A-inu" in Japanese means “Oh! 
A dog!" and this taunt is all too famil¬ 
iar to Ainu schoolchildren, who con¬ 
tinue to be harassed cruelly. For this 
reason parents of mixed Ainu-Japa- 
nese marriages often do not reveal 
their ethnic background to their chil¬ 
dren. (NMNH 392,023-25) 
274 
UNTIL RECENTLY THE AlNU WERE 
a people without a written 
language, and as is typical for 
such groups, they had a rich 
oral tradition encompassing various genres 
and styles. Part of this tradition survives today 
in the Ainu community as living oral compo¬ 
sitions, while other aspects are preserved only 
as texts and recordings. Within Ainu oral 
tradition there are several formally named 
genres of verse and prose. Included in the 
verse genre are epic styles known as kamuy- 
yukar, oina, and yukar, each with a style of 
utterance, or "grace voice" (atomte itak, sakoro 
itak, or kamuy itak), that differs from the 
common voice of prose (yayan itak). 
As is the case with the oral traditions of 
arctic and subarctic native peoples, myths, as 
a category of literature, do not constitute a 
special distinctive genre within the Ainu oral 
tradition. While creation myths in particular 
while very little materia! exists from the 
Kuriles. Today the oral traditions of these 
groups are to be found in various regions of 
Hokkaido where Sakhalin and Kurile Ainu 
settled. The materials 1 describe here are 
based on the oral traditions of the Iburi and 
Hidaka areas of the Pacific coast of south¬ 
western Hokkaido, where narratives have 
been preserved by virtue of the relatively 
large Ainu population that continues to live 
there. For this reason the oral traditions of 
this region have become a point of reference 
for comparative studies of Ainu oral traditions 
found elsewhere in Hokkaido. 
The Creator: Kotan-kor-kamuy 
Kamuy is often interpreted as being similar to 
the Japanese kami (god),- however, for the 
Ainu the word encompasses every phenom¬ 
enon of nature (including supernatural 
beings), including all aspects of the Ainu— 
are presented in various forms of legends and 
tales, stories of the origins of Ainu culture are 
restricted to the tales of a culture-hero in the 
genre known as oina. Most kamuy-yukar consist 
of animal tales where the animal-hero narrates 
the story in the first person, but other natural 
beings or phenomena may also be the subjects 
of these tales. 
Ainu oral literature also has a strong 
regional cast, varying widely according to 
specific dialect. These differences are espe¬ 
cially pronounced between groups of Ainu 
who originated in Hokkaido and Sakhalin, 
TRADITIONAL CULTURE / S. OGIHARA 
meaning "man" or "human"—themselves. For 
the Ainu the world consists of kamuy and 
"human-Ainu,” and both are equal members of 
nature itself and have the same interests, 
feelings, and way of life. The difference lies 
only in the territories they occupy, whether 
they are beings like animals, fish, birds, and 
insects, or water, trees, sky, thunder, and so 
on, with fire considered to be the "first" 
among kamuy. Even artifacts like boats or 
grave posts are called kamuy,- in other words, 
kamuy completely surround the human/Ainu 
and are counterparts for all that human/Ainu 
have contacts with. In this sense kamuy is 
unlike a "god," "animus," or "owner" as is the 
case among native peoples of the North. 
The Ainu word kamuy has several 
different meanings, one of which may be 
translated as "deity." For example, the name of 
the creator, kotan-kor-kamuy, who was so huge 
that he often ate whales grilled whole on 
giant wooden skewers, translates literally as 
"land-making-deity." In one tale kotan-kor- 
kamuy and his sister descend upon the top of 
Mount Daisetsu, the highest peak in Hok¬ 
kaido, as it emerged from the ocean at the 
dawn of time, and create Ainu mosir ("human 
land") from the clouds. The black clouds 
became rocks and the yellow ones soil, and 
then mountains, rivers, and islands were 
formed. In some tales an animal—for 
example, a dog or an otter—assists the 
creator in shaping the land. Another story 
relates that kotan-kor-kamuy created the land 
on what he thought was a solid spot in the 
midst of muddy water, but when he returned 
to heaven he realized that he had formed the 
land on the back of a very large fish. To 
immobilize it, he sent two deities to push 
down on the fish, but whenever the emissaries 
release their pressure—for instance, to take 
their meals—the fish moves, thus causing 
earthquakes (Sarashina 1971a, b). 
The origin of human beings is vague in 
Ainu myths. One tale ascribes their creation 
to kotan-kor-kamuy, who created a man from an 
elm tree, while in another version the Ainu 
sprang from a woman who married a dog. In 
the principal version of this story, a beautiful 
maiden drifts ashore in Hidaka, where a dog 
helps her hide in a cave (fig. 39.1); the dog 
and the maiden produce two children, a boy 
and a girl, who become the ancestors of the 
Ainu (Sarashina 1971a: 37-38). In the tales in 
which the creator is the main actor, kotan-kor- 
kamuy and his spouse turn tools or belongings 
or parts of the body into living creatures or 
plants. For instance, according to one story, 
after completing the task of creating the land, 
kotan-kor-kamuy decided to have a smoke. The 
black soot from his smoke became the bear, 
yellow smoke gave rise to the smallpox spirit, 
and flints he tossed into the ocean turned into 
a whale and a sea lion. In another tale, the 
crane originated from kotan-kor-kamuy's wife's 
spit, bush clover from her nose mucus, turtle 
and octopus from her dress and her girdle 
being thrown into the sea, and finally, her 
body hair turned into a type of grass. 
Culture Heros and Ainu Culture 
The oina texts of the Iburi and Hidaka 
regions are concerned with Ainurakkur 
(literally, "he with a human-Ainu smell"), 
who as the ancestor of the Ainu is respon¬ 
sible for the lifestyle and customs of the 
Ainu. The oina implies a sacred tradition, so 
the culture hero is also called Oina-kamuy 
and Aeoina-kamuy, which mean "the kamuy 
about whom we sing oina." Okikurumi (also 
Okikirmui, Okikirma) is another name for 
the hero of oina and generally thought to be 
identical to Ainurakkur. There is, however, a 
cycle of tales concerning Okikurumi and his 
negative counterpart, Samaiukur, who plays 
a rather ridiculous role much like that of the 
trickster in the raven myths of the Koryak 
and arctic peoples of the Russian Far East 
and Northwest Coast of North America. 
This similarity leads me to believe that 
Okikurumi may have a northern origin quite 
apart from the Ainurakkur myths in the Ainu 
oral tradition. 
Stylistically, oina has two specific 
features: one is the refrain (sakebe) and the 
other is its first-person narration by 
Ainurakkur himself. The use of this refrain 
and first-person narration makes oina similar 
to kamuy-yukar, and in other places in 
Hokkaido Ainurakkur tales are included in 
the genre of kamuy-yukar (although they 
have quite different themes than the latter). 
Some texts explain the heavenly origin of 
Ainurakkur by asserting that he was born on 
earth to an elm tree-maiden and the brother 
of a heavenly deity, who visits the tree- 
maiden disguised as thunder,- the elm's 
usefulness as fuel for making fire is reflected 
in the garment of the culture hero, which is 
described as having a hem sparkling with 
fire—possibly a reference to brilliant 
garment embroidery. 
Ainurakkur's first contributions to 
mankind are heroic deeds in which he 
exterminates wicked beings that bring harm 
or disaster to humans: as a young boy caring 
for his sister, he becomes aware of the 
violence being done by evil monsters and 
rushes to fight them. The evil beings appear 
as monstrous troutlike fish, otters, or 
monsters shaped like huge hills with arms 
and legs capable of destroying fishing lakes 
or abducting the first pair of deities dis¬ 
patched from heaven to earth. In one oina 
tale, which may have evolved from an 
attempt to explain an eclipse, Ainurakkur 
39/ MYTHOLOGY AND TALES 275 
rescues the sun goddess from an underground 
chamber where she had been imprisoned by a 
monster,- he makes a ship out of mist and sails 
her up into the sky in this vessel. In this way 
the world regained the sun and order was 
restored to the universe (Kannari and 
Kindaichi 1961). 
When Ainurakkur exterminates the 
wicked beings, he instantly releases the living 
creatures they had captured and fills the rivers 
with salmon and other fish, the sea with fish 
and sea mammals, and the fields with deer— 
all animals that are principal food sources 
for the Ainu. Other tales relate that when 
Ainurakkur ran away from heaven, he stole a 
handful of millet and gave it to humans, thus 
becoming the source of plants on earth. 
There is a rather comical oina tale 
featuring Ainurakkur and his bride, who is a 
heavenly maiden, that emphasizes the 
lovesickness felt by Ainurakkur and the 
maiden (Kannari and Kindaichi 1961: version 
111). When the latter ascends back to the sky, 
the maiden's father sets the suitor to various 
tasks. First, he and his bride must listen to all 
the yukar, oina, and love songs that can be 
recited by six different singers,- no matter how 
humorous the performers are in their delivery 
of the songs, the young couple must not 
laugh. For the second task, Ainurakkur and his 
bride are instructed to make in a day every 
kind of object used by Ainu men and women. 
Having successfully completed these trials, 
they are given the father's blessings to go 
down to the land and show humans the 
proper way to live. In this way, such imple¬ 
ments as mortars, pestles, winnowers, knives, 
looms, and spatulas were given to men for 
their work,- embroidered clothing, head¬ 
dresses, necklaces, and other goods were 
provided to the women (Kannari and 
Kindaichi 1961). 
Kamuy-yukar: Animal Tales 
Kamuy appear as heroes in kamuy-yukar, where 
various animals, meteorological phenomena, 
certain kinds of artifacts, and cult deities 
recite their own experiences in intercourse 
with the human-Ainu. The distinctive features 
of this genre are its first-person narration, its 
refrain (sakebe), and the ritualized ending, 
usually phrased "thus spoke a kamuy" or "so 
told some kamuy himself." The sakebe, repeated 
either at the beginning or end of every verse 
or in some other place, gives kamuy-yukar 
rhythm and humor: originally the refrains 
sought to imitate the hero-animal's distinctive 
sound or the noise it might make in move¬ 
ment. For example, the refrain "ban kakkok" 
clearly represents a cuckoo kamuy to a knowl¬ 
edgeable listener, just as the sound "howewe hum" 
might indicate the bear kamuy. There are many 
variations of sakebe, but unfortunately many of 
them can no longer be interpreted,- this is a 
common problem with oina but generally not 
with heroic-epic yukar. 
Though kamuy-yukar show a great 
diversity in content, ranging from myths to 
heroic epics to love stories, they are still 
largely animal tales (Kubodera 1977a). In the 
most simple kamuy-yukar, two types of animal 
tales can be distinguished. In the first type, the 
hero narrates his own failure or bitter experi¬ 
ence while living in the human world. In a 
typical situation, an evil deed or foul disposi¬ 
tion usually leads the subject to a miserable 
death, and in this case the hero-animal ends his 
narration with words addressed to his animal- 
fellows, such as "do not have evil intentions 
toward humans'',- "do not make fun of the 
words of humans",- or "do not do these things." 
In one example a fox kamuy went down the 
river to visit an Ainu hamlet, where he snuck 
into the storehouse and devoured the fish he 
found there,- he returned home and boasted of 
his exploit. The next time he dared to repeat 
the deed he found poisoned fish prepared for 
him by the humans, who intended to punish 
the offender. The kamuy ends his narration 
with a warning: "Now I'm dying, and from now 
on, young fox-fellows, you better not steal fish 
while going to visit the Ainu" (Kubodera 
1977a: #22). 
The second type of kamuy-yukar has a 
theme quite different from this one. Here the 
hero narrates what has happened to him in 
the human world and relates that his benevo¬ 
lent deed has gained him the respect of the 
Ainu. In one such tale, a hare kamuy tells how 
he warned the people of a tidal wave that was 
about to strike their village, but Samaiukur— 
Okikurumi's "negative brother"—and his 
villagers would not listen to him. Thus insulted, 
the hare kamuy ran away from that village and 
came to the village of Okikurumi, who told his 
people to come out and bow to the hare kamuy. 
When the tidal wave broke upon the village, 
Okikurumi and his people escaped harm by 
running up the hillside, while Samaiukur and 
his villagers met catastrophe. The hare kamuy 
closes his narrative by saying that Okikurumi 
brewed sake, offered him a lot of it to drink, 
276 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / S. OGIHARA 
and gave him in aw, and that he is now wor¬ 
shiped as a high deity (Kubodera 1977a: #31). 
In addition to these two types of kamuy- 
yukar, there is a third type that provides 
explanations about the significance of rituals, 
especially that of the bear-sending ceremony. 
The verses carefully describe how the bear, as 
a guest visiting the human world, is captured 
and reared,- how bears have a social and 
family life similar to humans,- how they 
welcome the ritual entertainment given them,- 
and why bears like to visit the human world. 
In this way different kinds of animal kamuy 
reveal their individual natures and the divine 
origin of the rituals. 
A fourth type of kamuy-yukar 
explains the origin of various living creatures 
and inanimate objects. For example, a verse 
about the cicada reveals that the insect 
originated as an old woman who was trapped 
on the roof of her house when her village was 
struck by a tidal wave. Distraught, she cried 
so loudly that she aggravated all the kamuy 
and humans in the world until she was told 
she could only cry during the daylight hours 
in summer (Kubodera 1977a: #34). 
These four types of kamuy-yukar can be 
classified as myths according to theme and 
content, but there is another large group of 
verses whose content qualifies them as heroic 
epics. The heroes of this group are usually 
animals who recount their love affairs and 
marriages to others of their own—or some¬ 
times different—species, and quite often these 
tales involve the culture-hero Okikurumi or 
his sister. In this respect they differ from the 
standard heroic epics known as yukar, in 
which the hero is exclusively a youth named 
Poiyaunpe (see Oginaka, this volume). 
Many animal tales play a didactic role 
in Ainu society. Two types of kamuy-yukar— 
those about negative deeds and those about 
positive deeds—provided models for teach¬ 
ing young children about proper behavior. 
Women, who are primarily responsible for 
child-rearing, sang the rhythmic refrains 
of these verses, which were simple enough 
that children would learn them easily and 
sing them by themselves. Verses about 
ritual and belief systems provided explana¬ 
tions for these aspects of Ainu culture, while 
those about animals helped people under¬ 
stand the origin and behaviors of different 
kamuy. Taken together, these four types 
of kamuy-yukar instructed the younger gen¬ 
erations about proper human behavior in 
general and, especially, their relationship 
with kamuy. 
39/ MYTHOLOGY AND TALES 277 
Yukar: 
Epics 
of Heroes 
Mie Oginaka 
40.1 Man Reciting Yukar 
This illustration from Ancient Manners 
and Customs of Ezo by Hokuyo 
Nishikawa shows a group of Ainu 
seated around the hearth listening to 
a man reciting traditional yukar, while 
beating time with repni (sticks) on the 
hearth frame. (HML) 
Yukar is generally defined as 
Ainu epic poetry, particularly 
tales of heroes. The classic study 
of yukar (pronounced "yu-ka-ra" 
by most Ainu) is Kyosuke Kindaichi's 1931 
treatise, A Study of Yukar: the Ainu Epics, 
which presents the genre as illustrated by 
an 8,22 1 -line epic of an Ainu hero,- other 
forms of yukar take the form of poetry and 
divine songs. The most complete presenta¬ 
tion of yukar in English is a compilation 
published in Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans 
(Philippi 1979). 
In the Sakhalin dialect, yukara means "a 
song, to sing,” and heroic epics were called 
bawki, but other terms were used in different 
regions. For instance, in Hokkaido heroic epics 
are called sakorpe ("having a tune") in areas from 
Tokachi to Kushiro in eastern Hokkaido, 
Bihoro and Kitami in the north, and Asahikawa 
in central Hokkaido. The number of regions 
using the term sakorpe exceeds those using 
yukar. In many cases, narrators who used to 
call heroic epics sakorpe adopted the term yukar 
from Sakhalin Ainu simply because others did 
so. While this trend is understandable given 
that yukar is an accepted part of the Japanese 
language, it is a shame to lose any words from 
the Ainu vocabulary. 
In Sakhalin narrators recited stories while 
lying down and looking up, which was also the 
case in Hokkaido,- Tokunai Mogami described 
this presentation form in Watarishima Hikki 
(Oshima Notes). In later years, both narrators 
and audience sat together and beat the wooden 
hearth frame with a stick called a repni (fig. 40.1) 
The audience would shout bet! bet! to create 
rhythm and to encourage the narrator. 
People who grew up observing these 
performances learned how to recite them and 
gradually became proficient narrators, 
developing distinctive personal tunes, 
278 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / M. OGINAKA 
intonation, and diction, each subtly different 
from one another. Some recite rather emo¬ 
tionally, while others narrate in a quiet tone. 
Except for the fixed content of the story and 
certain idiomatic phrases, the delivery often 
changes greatly under the influence of each 
narrator's personality. After repeated perfor¬ 
mances and with the passing on of stories to 
following generations, yukar became even 
more refined as an art form of oral tradition. 
Many heroes of the epics reside in castles 
in a fabulous land called Otashut (or Qtasam), 
while the homes of other heroic characters are 
found in various places,- Shinutapka is the most 
frequently mentioned location. Kuro Yae, a 
narrator who lived in Shimosetsuri (located 
between Kushiro and Lake Kussharo) and 
who considered that village his permanent 
home, was an excellent storyteller. Yae could 
become absorbed in the world of sakorpe. The 
hero of Yae's sakorpe lived in a castle in 
Otashut and was called Pon-otast-un-kur 
(pon = small,- otasbu, un = be,- kur = god/man,- 
so, this name means "small otashut man"). 
Hokkaido has a place named Osorokotsu, 
near Shiraoi, that is featured in a legend about 
a nation-creating god (see Iwasaki-Goodman 
and Nomoto, this volume). In the legend, the 
god fell on his rear end after being surprised by 
flying sparks as he tried to broil whale meat. 
This was an enormous god, so enormous that 
when he landed he created a pair of depres¬ 
sions large enough not only to hold the rock to 
broil fish but also to contain several houses. In 
some regions, this legend concerns the 
progenitor of man, and the hero is "half-human 
and half-god." 
Much like the trickster transformation 
figures in Native American mythology, the 
heroes in Ainu epics can transform themselves 
into deer and foxes, run in the sky, dive into 
the earth and ocean, and are equipped with 
the ability to always revive, all while still 
being human. 
The following is a condensation of Yae's 
favorite sakorpe, a story of an adventurous boy 
who can turn himself into a deer: 
1 live with my foster aunt 
in a castle in the nation of Otashut. 
Above my bed is a costume 
of deerskin and antlers. 
One day, while my aunt dozed, 
1 disguised myself as a buck and went out. 
It was then that 1 saw the castle, 
the castle where 1 lived, 
for the first time, 
the first time from the outside. 
It was so huge and beautiful. 
1 was mesmerized. . . . 
After staring at it awhile, 
I went on and soon came to a steep path 
leading toward the forbidden mountains, 
mountains that had been prohibited 
to village people since the old days. 
Without hesitating, 1 took this path. 
Passing beneath tall trees, 
leaping over brush, 
soon 1 arrived at the summit 
where there were ponds and beautiful 
trees. 
I recognized it immediately as the 
playground 
of a god with whom I was familiar. 
While I was playing there, 
a big man carrying a golden staff came 
toward me, 
flanked in front and behind by six young 
men [six is read as "many" in Ainu]. 
He told them to shoot me. 
Well, it was easy for me to overwhelm 
them. 
When the big man tried to attack me, 
raising his golden staff over his head, 
1 threw him into the pond 
and rushed back to the castle— 
just before my aunt woke up. 
Thereafter my life continued as before 
until one day some small birds came to me. 
They said an evil woman 
saved the big man and married him. 
Recently they discovered the identity of 
the buck 
and sent their followers to attack me. 
So, making sure that my aunt was not 
watching, 
! again disguised myself as a buck 
and dashed out into the country to find 
the rascals. 
The barking of vicious dogs announced 
my arrival, 
and the big man, the evil woman, 
and their followers came out for battle. 
Soon I heard a sound, 
the sound of an approaching god, 
and I fought on, knowing that help would 
come. 
The god who descended to me was my 
foster aunt 
and she was carrying a woman's spear. 
From that moment on, we fought 
together. 
We fought on, side-by-side, day and night, 
traveling from one place to another 
pursuing our enemies. 
Finally, as we battled on, 
40 / YUKAR: EPIC POETRY 2 7 9 
40.2 Contemporary Presentations 
of Yukar 
Ainu today continue to recite yukar, re¬ 
taining an important oral tradition, as 
shown in this photograph of two Ainu 
elders—(left) Zenjiro Hikawa and (right) 
Tasuke Yamakawa—taken in Akan in 
the late 1980s by Morio Senke. 
we approached the nation of the evil 
island. 
By now there were only four enemies left. 
Here, using shamanism, 
by shifting quickly between sky and earth, 
we finally prevailed. 
Well, now it's time for me to rush back to 
my castle. . . . 
In the full Ainu version, the narration is 
quite detailed: it gives an excellent descrip¬ 
tion of nature, including the trees, rivers, 
mountains, and fields,- the sunlight, wind, and 
rain,- and animal movements. The tone of the 
battle scenes is ferocious and strident, while 
that of love is soft and mellow. 
Some of the stories are quite long and 
cannot be recited in one night. The use of 
repetition and details identifying even obvious 
things is a device used often in oral traditions 
to create mood and enhance the reality of the 
prose. Although the redundancy can be 
annoying in written works, when the story is 
listened to, the audience excitedly anticipates 
the next development, usually cued by 
repetition. The idiomatic expression draws on 
the nuances of time and place to engage the 
listener in ways that written text cannot. In the 
days when heroic epics were narrated as part of 
daily life, the world they described was also a 
part of everyday living. The action of the hero 
was admired and anticipated, and he was seen 
as a cultural role model. 
It is rare that a narration of an Ainu yukar 
ever really ends,- unless specially requested, "the 
end of the story" is left untold to interest the 
audience in hearing a future installment. When 
these epics are given for the deceased, however, 
it is customary to complete the narration to 
ensure that the dead will not hold any attach¬ 
ment to this world. In similar fashion, when the 
story is for the gods, such as in the case of the 
bear-sending ceremony (.iyomante), the last part 
of the story also remains untold, for people wish 
the gods to return to earth again to listen to the 
ending of the epic. 
Today the word yukar can be found even 
in a small Japanese dictionary. Many dictio¬ 
naries define yukar as "the story of a hero, 
Poiyaunpe," a word that actually means "a 
male orphan from the new land'' and was 
originally a nickname used only by the hero 
Ponshinutap kaunkur. (Heroes are often 
called by names that begin with "pon," which 
in this case means "junior.") 
Only a few narrators still remain who 
are able to sustain the flow of words with 
surging passion. With the audience joining in, 
shouting bet! bet! as they followed the progress 
of the story, these were breathtaking mo¬ 
ments of emotion both for the storyteller and 
the listeners. It has been a long time since I 
experienced such moments. 
280 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / M. OCINAKA 
Song of Kararat 
(Carrion Crow) Goddess 
This kamuy-yukar was recorded iii writing on 
October 28, 1932, by Itsusbiko Kubodera from the 
reciter Hiraga Etenoa. 
A crow goddess amuses herself by performing the 
"dance of the glittering treasures, dance of the 
glittering metals" (tama kin tapkar, kane kin 
tapkar). When she does this dance, acorns and 
chestnuts come dropping down from her hands. News 
of this dance of hers spreads among the gods, and she 
begins to be invited to the drinking feasts of the gods. 
The Ainu distinguished between two types of crows.- 
the hondo jungle crow (Corvus cononoides), 
which was disliked and called shi-pashkur or shi- 
e-pashkur ("dung-crow," "dung-eating-crow") 
and the carrion crow (kararat, Corvus corone), 
which was regarded as auspicious. 
The text is kamuy-yukar 47 in Kubodera's Ainu 
jojishi: Shinyo, seiden no kenkyu, pp. 218—20: 
I lived 
in the Upper Heavens, 
dwelling 
among the gods. 
However, 
whenever 1 would hear 
the sounds of feasting, 
the sounds of drinking 
of the gods 
who had received [presents of] 
human inaw 
and human wine, 
1 would always 
be longing to have them. 
I longed for them 
so very much that, 
when I would get lonely, 
I would stand up and 
would do 
the dance of the glittering treasures, 
the dance of the glittering metals 
on a floor at the head of the fireplace. 
Then acorns would come dropping 
down 
from one of my hands, 
and chestnuts would come dropping 
down 
from my other hand. 
Thanks to this, 
I was able to amuse myself, 
and this was the way 
I continued to live 
on and on 
uneventfully. 
Then news spread 
among the gods 
that I was doing this, 
and only then 
did the gods 
become aware for the first time 
of my existence. 
After that, 
when wine was delivered 
from the humans, 
1 was invited for the first time, 
and I was able 
to attend a drinking feast. 
I drank, and 
o how very 
delicious 
was the wine! 
As ! drank, 
my heart 
was very 
mellowed by the wine, 
mellowed by the liquor. 
At that time 
1 did 
the dance of the glittering treasures, 
the dance of the glittering metals, 
moving up along the floor 
and down along the floor. 
As I danced, 
acorns came falling down 
from one of my hands, 
and chestnuts came falling down 
from my other hand. 
Then the gods 
began to race each other 
to pick up 
the chestnuts 
and to pick up 
the acorns 
on the floor. 
Sounds of loud laughter, 
sounds of great merriment 
rose up all at once. 
While this was going on, 
the God Ruling 
the Upper Heavens 
spoke these words: 
"I did not know 
until now 
that the weighty deity 
the kararat goddess 
had her dwelling 
so very close by, 
near my own house. 
One of the reasons 
why I invited 
the kararat goddess 
was because 1 wished 
to apologize to her, 
but look 
how mellowed by the wine 
are her spirits!" 
Thus did he speak. 
The peerless feast 
wore on to its conclusion. 
After that, 
I have remained 
in my own house. 
Every since then, 
whenever the gods 
are worshiped 
by the humans 
and wine is delivered, 
there is not a banquet, 
not a drinking feast 
from which I am 
ever omitted. 
1 am always invited 
and attend every feast, 
and as I drink, 
my spirits are 
mellowed by the wine. 
After that 
I do 
the dance of the glittering metals, 
the dance of the glittering jewels 
among the guests at the feast, 
and acorns fall down 
from one of my hands, 
and chestnuts fall down 
from my other hand. 
The gods 
race each other 
to pick up 
the chestnuts 
and the acorns. 
Sounds of loud laughter, 
sounds of great merriment 
rise up all at once, 
and I take 
delight in all this 
as 1 attend 
all the noble drinking feasts, 
the noble feasts. 
This is the way 
I continue to live 
on and on. 
Whenever wine 
or inaw 
are delivered 
from the humans, 
I am given 
portions of inaw 
and portions of wine, 
and this enhances 
my glory as a deity. 
This is the way 
I continue to live 
on and on 
uneventfully. 
40/ YUKAR EPIC POETRY 281 
41/To Live 
Is to Sing 
Kazuyuki Tanimoto 
Among the traditional Ainu 
dances still performed in various 
areas in Hokkaido, the crane 
dance (sarorun rimse; fig. 41.1) has 
the largest number of variations and is most 
widely distributed in the region (Nihon 
Kokogaku Kyokai 1965). Most of the Ainu 
dances reported by the Wajin (Japanese) at 
the end of Tokugawa Shogunate era refer to 
the crane dance. In one of these records (Ezo 
soshi, I 808), Tokunai Mogami, a shogunate 
official sent to Ezo, wrote, "When the 
banquet livened up, women stood up and 
began to dance in a circle, keeping time by 
clapping and shouting. Among the dances 
performed was the crane dance, one that 
imitated the cranes opening their wings and 
eating." Mogami observed the dance per¬ 
formed at "banquets" held on such occasions 
as uimam, meetings with the local shogunate 
officers who governed Ezo, and at receptions 
sang songs and danced. One performed 
a dance of a turtle swimming through the 
waves, and the other performed a crane 
dance. Old Ainu celebrate the new year 
by dancing like turtles and cranes—this 
indeed is the glory of the Meiji Emperor era" 
(Nagata 1911). 
Nagata seems to have associated the 
depiction of turtles and cranes with a tradi¬ 
tional Japanese aphorism on longevity— 
"cranes live 1,000 years, turtles live 10,000 
years"—and deduced that his guests wished 
him a long life. The crane dance, which is 
now known to Ainu throughout Hokkaido, 
may therefore be an example of a dance form 
that the Ainu developed in response to 
pressure exerted by the shogunate system in 
Ezo, an element of Japanese culture seen 
reflected in an Ainu mirror. 
In 1857 Nakanojoh Tagawa, a clansman 
of the domain of Sendai, wrote in his travel 
41.1 Crane Dance 
The crane dance, known as sarorun 
rimse or hararki, is one of the most 
widespread of traditional Ainu dances. 
Tokunai Mogami, a shogunate official 
who lived in Ezo, described it in 1790, 
and a few years later this dance was 
painted in a spirited manner by Gentan 
Tani in his Drawings of Travels Through 
Ezo (1799). (HML) 
for officials on inspection visits. It can be 
assumed that the Ainu felt obliged to perform 
the crane dance on these occasions as a 
courtesy to their hosts. 
More than a century later, a report from 
the local shogunate office described another 
greeting ceremony: "Two Ainu elders came 
over for New Year's greetings. 1 offered sake 
with an ikupasuy on a takatsuki [a small saucer- 
stand] telling them to conduct kamuynomi 
[prayers to the gods]. They were very pleased 
and had sake in the Ainu manner and began 
telling old stories.. . . Soon the two old men 
journal the lyrics of a song accompanying a 
crane dance: 
pirika menoko-to with a beautiful woman 
tonasino mokoro go to bed early 
nesatta paskor until crows sing tomorrow 
chishikorachi want to sleep in 
These lyrics in the Ainu language are a 
translation of a Wajin (Japanese) Dodoitsu, or 
lyrical song, "Killing crows of the world, 1 want 
to sleep in with the master." This song, like the 
dance itself, also spread throughout Hokkaido. 
The evolution of many songs shows 
how conflict between the culture of the 
282 TRADITIONAL CULTURE / K. TANIMOTO 
41.3 
41.2, 41.3 Playing the Mmmm 
One of the old Ainu instruments is the 
mukkuri, which produces sounds like 
a mouth harp. It consists of a thin 
piece of bamboo with a semidetached 
tonguelike reed in the center which 
vibrates when the wood is given sharp, 
repetitive jerks on the toggle string. 
By varying the passage of air and size 
of the mouth cavity, the player can 
produce a variety of sounds. There can 
be no simpler method of producing 
music except with the human voice. 
The method of playing is demonstrated 
in an illustration by Hokuyo Nishikawa 
in Ainu Manners and Customs. (BMA 
12.167; HML) 
Wajin, the ruler, and that of the Ainu, the 
ruled, was expressed through integration. The 
traditional Ainu "Song of good hunting" with 
lyrics expressing "abundant deer, abundant 
fish" was gradually replaced by a "farming 
song" in which Japanese and Ainu words were 
mixed. The process of transformation from 
their original hunting and fishing way of life 
to an agricultural culture imposed by the 
Japanese is clearly reflected in the songs and 
dances passed down for generations. These 
also expressed the various thoughts and 
feelings of the Ainu people as these changes 
took place. 
The meaning and functions of songs 
and dances in traditional Ainu society can be 
collectively observed in the ceremonies that 
are a symbolic reflection of the hunting and 
fishing way of life, such as the bear-sending 
(iyomante) and owl-sending rituals. As the 
time for such ceremonies neared, women 
pounded grains such as barnyard millet with 
a mortar and pestle to make sake and 
dumplings to offer to the gods. Chants like 
the sake karupopo (sake-making song) and the 
iyuta upopo (the pounding song) sung on these 
occasions are not labor songs,- rather, they are 
magic-oriented, for they are sung to ward off 
evil spirits. For instance, in the lyrics of the 
pounding song, "bessa iyuta hessa, hessa pirke 
hessa" (let's pound, let's pound), hessa is 
shouted repeatedly. Hessa derives from hess, 
a kind of "magical breath" used to exorcise 
impurities that possessed the body, and this 
became the refrain of many Ainu songs. 
In Sakhalin, Ainu people sing and dance 
iso ko hechiri (the bear dance) around the cage 
of the bear cubs for several days prior to the 
ceremony. The accompanying song, which 
suggests the roar of a bear, energizes the 
bear, the central focus of the ritual, and thus 
serves to invite the bear god to the cer¬ 
emony. This singing causes the bear spirit, 
which lives in the surrounding mountains, to 
respond and join in, creating a noisy atmo¬ 
sphere. The sound "da da" in the lyrics is 
meant to imitate a bear's roar, one of many 
such examples of onomatopoeia in Ainu oral 
traditions. The growls of animals, chirps of 
birds, and imitations of the sounds of nature 
such as rain and wind are basic elements of 
the melody in many Ainu songs. The tune of 
an epic kamuy-yukar (song of the gods) in 
which the hero is an animal god is typical: 
the sounds of animal gods, such as frogs and 
owls, and the imitation of sounds created by 
animal movements are incorporated as a 
refrain, while the lyrics telling the story are 
inserted between the refrains. For example: 
Han kakkok ranrna kame Han cuckoo as always 
Han kakkok oka anike Han cuckoo every place 
Han kakkok rukun mosita Han cuckoo in the 
heavens 
Here, “ban kakkok" imitates the sound of the 
cuckoo, a hero in kamuy-yukar. 
Ainu people not only imitate the 
characteristic sounds of each animal and bird, 
but they often mimic their movements in 
their dances. Many animal dances and songs, 
including the aforementioned crane dance 
41 / SONG AND MUSIC 283 
41.5 
41.5, 41.6 Tonkori 
Tonkori, such as these five- and six¬ 
stringed versions, varied considerably 
in shape. The five-stringed tonkori was 
collected by Mabel Todd in Hokkaido in 
1896; the six-stringed version was col¬ 
lected by Berthold Laufer in Sakhalin in 
1900. (PEM E3382; AMNH 70-1256) 
(.sarorun rimse), the rain swal¬ 
low dance (chikap ne), and the fox dance 
(chironnup rimse), incorporate animal features 
that are linked to belief in animal spirits and 
the Ainu hunting and fishing lifestyle. 
In the bear ceremony, songs that explain 
each scene are sung according to the program 
of the rite. Symbolic meaning and positioning 
of certain scenes are interpreted and ex¬ 
plained through the songs and dances, 
creating a sequence. When a cub is taken 
from the cage: 
peiorep rekdw 
set ko rimse 
set ko tapkar 
cub is singing 
dance, facing the cage 
jump toward the cage 
During the ceremony, as a blunt ceremonial 
arrow (heper-ay) is shot at the cub so that he 
can take it to the hear god as a souvenir, the 
following is sung: 
ay ta haw o hay "Hai," the shooting sound 
of the arrow 
41.4 Playing the Tonkori 
The tonkori is a four-, five-, or six¬ 
stringed instrument that is played 
vertically by plucking with the fingers, 
as shown in Teisuke Murakami's 
illustration. Ainu used the tonkori 
frequently to accompany yukar presen¬ 
tations. It was such an important part 
of Ainu culture that it was considered a 
god in itself. The maker of a tonkori 
gave it life by placing a small pebble 
inside the body of the instrument. (HUL) 
41.4 
called ukouk. The first 
singer begins singing, and then the next 
person sings the same notes and words one beat 
behind. This continues, regardless of the 
number of singers, round after round The term 
upopo is onomatopoetic, from the sound of 
boiling food, which creates a unique cacophony. 
Unlike polyphonic Western music, which has a 
more melodic and harmonic character, each 
singer's segment is not designed to be distin¬ 
guished independently,- it simply serves to 
create musical "chaos,” which increases passion 
in the ceremony. 
Such techniques, which produce ritual 
sites for magical ceremonies by transforming 
everyday space into chaos, are also employed 
in dancing. In the bear dance (iso ko hechiri) of 
the Sakhalin Ainu, dancers are divided into two 
groups,- they advance in loops, coiling and 
crossing each other. Each group breaks into two 
subgroups and advances in opposite directions, 
creating a chaotic situation when the beginning 
and end of the lines become unclear. 
On festival nights, when people 
celebrate with the gods, various dances are 
performed indoors (fig. 41.8). At such times 
the sword dance (emush rimse) may be performed 
by men. The dancers hold an arm out with 
the palm up, and they move the arm up and 
down while dancing with heavy steps and 
making a banging sound. This dance simu¬ 
lates a ritual exorcism that men perform when 
a village is struck by disaster,- the brandishing 
of swords and vigorous stomping scare away 
evil spirits (fig. 41.7). Some women's dances, 
such as u-sampe-wante (compare the hearts), 
ara hukkun, and hachinna (a dance contest), 
have competitive elements: two people or two 
groups face each other and compete to see 
which side can continue the vigorous dance 
When the cub is killed by choking it between 
two logs after it is shot with a real arrow, the 
words below are sung: 
hutta tu karari being placed on the leaf 
of bamboo 
being placed on the sword 
let's cut the throat 
ah, it is dead 
emush karari 
hoy surse 
hoy susumau 
And when the bear god is sent off to the god 
land, as the dead cub lies in front of the altar: 
kamuy hopni na the god is about to leave 
hio rimse let's dance 
hechiw dance 
The songs that are sung and danced 
during ceremonies are generally called rimse or 
upopo (hechiri in Sakhalin). In some regions, 
upopo is a general term for songs performed 
while sitting. This "sitting song" is sung by 
people who sit in a circle and beat lightly on 
the lid of a lacquerware treasure box,- it is 
characterized by the way it is sung, which is 
41.7 Sword Dance 
The sword dance has been per¬ 
formed by the Ainu at least since the 
eighteenth century, when it ap¬ 
peared in Ainu-e illustrating exor¬ 
cism rituals. This dance is one of 
many instances in which a foreign 
element—in this case the sword— 
has been adopted into Ainu culture 
and transformed into a purely Ainu 
tradition. Sword dances are per¬ 
formed regularly for tourists at the 
Ainu Museum at Shiraoi, as seen 
here. (Courtesy of AMS) 
the longest. Such competitive song and dance 
is found in various northern ethnic groups. 
One such activity inviting direct 
comparison with northern peoples is the 
"throat game" or throat-singing (rekuxkara, 
literally "throat-make") of the Sakhalin Ainu. 
This is an unusual game in which two (or 
sometimes more) women sit facing each 
other, and each player makes a megaphone 
with her cupped hands and connects the ends 
of the "speaker" to her partner's. They then 
begin making sounds into their opponent's 
mouth by closing their throat and aspirating 
strongly. The players exercise their ingenuity 
by creating different sounds that combine 
high/low, long/short, exhalation/inhalation, 
and stress/relief voicing. Similar games are 
found among Eastern Canadian hunt and 
Siberian Chukchi. While today these games 
are simply thought of as women's traditional 
play, their origins were not confined to play. 
The disappearance of the traditional 
Ainu lifestyle and the loss of the environ¬ 
ment that fostered their traditional culture 
can be attributed to the government's 
assimilation policy over the past 200 years,- 
in particular, changes after World War II 
have had a drastic effect on traditional songs 
and dances. The ukouk singing method 
mentioned previously serves as an example: 
in the 1950s all the people who were asked 
to gather to record upopo songs could sing in 
the ukouk style, although the situation varied 
depending on the region. During the 1960s 
people needed practice before recording. In 
the 1970s it was impossible to find enough 
singers in one area, and help from other 
districts was needed. In the 1980s people sang 
in unison instead of ukouk in most areas, and the 
number of songs had decreased significantly. 
In recent years, however, the number of 
groups trying to preserve Ainu traditional 
41.7 41.8 
41.8 Dancing Continues 
Although some maintain that Ainu 
culture has become little more than 
a "museum culture” preserved only 
for tourists and for commercial pur¬ 
poses, a few Ainu continue to practice 
their traditions in the privacy of their 
homes. This sword dance was photo¬ 
graphed by Sister M. Inez Hilger during 
her visit to Hokkaido in 1965. On 
January 21, 1984, traditional Ainu 
dances were designated Intangible 
Cultural Assets, which along with the 
recent passage of the Ainu Shinpo 
(the new law on promotion of Ainu 
culture) may sustain these traditions 
into the future. (NAA T-10) 
For example, the Ainu believed that throat¬ 
singing had the power to call the god who 
could scare away such epidemics as smallpox,- 
perhaps these games were once related to 
magical power or shamanism. 
While songs and dances for ceremonies 
are basically performed in groups, most lyric 
songs (sinotcba) that express personal emotions 
are sung by one singer. Examples include 
iyobaocbisi (sorrow songs), sung with tears, 
expressing agony and pains,- yaikatckara (love 
songs) that express feelings for a lover,- and 
yaishama, a kind of an impromptu song in 
which a singer sings whatever flows into his 
mind between refrains of "yaisbamanma." 
Because these songs are produced in the 
course of daily life, any changes in lifestyle 
directly influenced the melodies, and in the 
areas where early contact with Wajin oc¬ 
curred, the melodies of lyric songs were soon 
altered to Japanese-style folksongs. 
songs and dances has increased, and their 
activities have accelerated. At present, more 
than twenty such preservation groups are 
active in Hokkaido,- of those, seventeen are 
designated as an Intangible Cultural Asset by 
the national government (Ainu ni densho 
1960). Members of the groups are learning 
directly from elders, recording songs, and 
reconstructing songs and dances that once 
were lost by utilizing existing recordings and 
visual materials. Moreover, different groups 
come together for cultural festivals, and 
active exchanges with various ethnic groups 
overseas such as the Nivkhi of Sakhalin, 
Native Americans, Canadian Inuit, Scandina¬ 
vian Saami, and other indigenous populations 
in Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand are 
underway. These activities, intended to 
"express and pass on true Ainu spirit and 
energy based on tradition,' have strengthened 
the sense of identity among the Ainu people. 
41 / SONG AND MUSIC 285 
i | ! 
: 
S1S1SI 
Sfc J 
|pM| 
42/Ainu Art: 
The Beginnings 
of Tradition 
Chisato O. Dubreuil 
42.1 Ainu Fashion 
Ainu announced their ethnic identity by 
the design of their clothing, tools, and 
implements. Within the conventions of 
different garment types and regional 
styles, Ainu textile artists found innu¬ 
merable ways to express artistry and 
individuality while remaining distinc¬ 
tively “Ainu.” A sample of Ainu finery 
is seen in the image for December 
from Ainu Manners and Customs by 
Byozan Hirasawa (seen here in a copy 
dating from after 1872), which depicts 
preparations for the iyomante (bear¬ 
sending) ceremony. (HMH) 
< Chieftain of Heshikai, Poloya 
This Ainu-e, copied by Teiki Kojima from 
Portraits of Ezo Chieftains by Hakyo 
Kakizaki, shows the proper manner of 
carrying a smoking kit, with the imple¬ 
ments hung from a man's belt. (Y. and 
M. Kitao Collection) 
IN ITS ENCOUNTER WITH A MODERN INDUS- 
trialized society traditional Ainu 
culture, like many native cultures, was 
transformed,- that process of change is 
reflected in many facets of Ainu society 
today. The most visible changes occurred in 
Ainu art,- for example, fishskin garments with 
designs stitched with durable, waterproof 
animal sinew gave way over time to cotton 
garments with designs made of imported 
silk, while wooden carvings developed an 
increasing abstractness rarely matched in 
any culture. All through the traditional 
period—which begins, according to earliest 
known artistic evidence, around the thir¬ 
teenth century and includes the transitional 
years inaugurated with the Meiji Restoration 
of the 1 860s to after the turn of the cen¬ 
tury—the creative process in its entirety was 
governed by fundamental cultural rules. For 
example, gender determined the form of 
artistic expression practiced by all members 
of Ainu traditional society. Women were 
responsible for all clothes construction and 
for the distinctively stylized artwork which 
is found on most Ainu textiles (see Kodama, 
this volume). Men, on the other hand, were 
the woodworkers. They not only built such 
fundamental constructions as houses but 
also carved the various items used in reli¬ 
gious ceremonies to honor the gods (kamuy), 
such as the very important ikttpnstiy, or prayer 
sticks, inaw, or sacred shaved sticks and staffs, 
and inatp-kike, bundles of shavings. Men were 
also responsible for creating such utilitarian 
items as intricately carved bowls, plates, and 
spoons. These opportunities for artistic 
expression could more accurately be de¬ 
scribed as cultural expectations, which not 
only dictated gender roles but also defined 
the acceptable limits of artistic subject mat¬ 
ter, medium, and motivation. 
Ainu Women as Fabric Artists: 
Tradition and Originality 
Sewing was a very important task for Ainu 
women. It was a means of being highly 
appreciated not only as wife and mother but 
as a fabric artist as well. The great amount of 
time that Ainu women spent on needlework, 
sewing, and creating original designs was 
even sung about in one of the epic narratives 
(yukar), entitled Yaosbkep-kamuy (Song of the 
Spider Goddess): 
Doing nothing but needlework, 
I remained with my eyes 
focused on a single spot, 
and this is the way 
I continued to live 
on and on until . . . 
(Kubodera 1977a: 55-58; the translated 
narrative in Philippi 1979: 78) 
While the decorative designs began as simple 
embroidery on fishskin (fig. 42.2) and woven 
elm-bark fabric (attusb) garments (fig. 42.3), 
later pieces of colorful cloth obtained 
through trade were integrated into traditional 
designs. Silk, wool, and later cotton were 
extremely costly, but they became so impor¬ 
tant to the Ainu that traders from Santan and 
Manchuria (see S. Sasaki, this volume) often 
took as payment for the material the children of 
the Ainu, who could then be trained as 
interpreters to expedite trading. It is estimated 
that possibly hundreds of Ainu were assimilated 
into the mainland culture of the traders during 
the seventy to one hundred years of the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries during 
which this practice took place (S. Kodama 
1970c: 74). 
Because of the high cost of doing 
business with mainland Asia, and later with 
42 / BEGINNINGS OF AINU ART 287 
42.2 Child’s Salmon-Skin Coat 
Originally all Ainu garments were made 
of skin, fur, and feathers, and these 
types of clothing survived in Sakhalin 
and the Kurile Islands into the twenti¬ 
eth century. Salmon skin was highly 
prized for making strong, light, du¬ 
rable, waterproof garments. Sakhalin 
Ainu decorated fishskin garments with 
delicate applique, as did their neigh¬ 
bors in the lower Amur River region. 
This child's coat has a Sakhalin Ainu 
cut but was collected in Hokkaido— 
like people, artifacts often end up far 
from home. This coat may have come 
to Hokkaido with Ainu refugees ex¬ 
pelled when Sakhalin was turned over 
to the Russians in 1875. In 1896 it 
was sold to Mrs. Mabel Loomis Todd, 
a participant in an Amherst College 
expedition that came to to Hokkaido 
view a solar eclipse. (PEM E3390) 
288 LIVING ARTS/C. DUBRELII! 
42.3 Attush Robe 
After the introduction of the 
backstrap loom, Ainu ancestors 
began weaving attush, cloth made 
from the inner bark of the elm tree 
and from linden and nettle plants. 
Men were responsible for procuring 
the bark, but weaving, sewing, and 
decorating clothing were women's 
tasks. Designs were embroidered 
on old cotton clothing or fabric 
scraps obtained from the Japanese 
and then sewn onto the attush. 
Although many anthropologists have 
been reluctant to believe it, Ainu 
insist that the designs have no 
meaning and are done only to 
please the gods. This man’s robe 
was collected in Tsuishikari, Hok¬ 
kaido, by Romyn Hitchcock during a 
trip on behalf of the Smithsonian in 
1888. (NMNH E150779) 
42 / BEGINNINGS OF AINU ART 28 9 
42.4 Ruunpe 
The ruunpe, a distinctive, colorful, 
intricate garment, is found on the 
Pacific Coast of Hokkaido from Yakumo 
to Abuta, and from Usu to Shiraoi. For a 
photograph of someone—presumably 
the owner/designer/artist—wearing 
this garment at the time of sale in 1909, 
see figure 45.16.(UPM L122-19) 
290 LIVING ARTS/C. DUBREUIL 
42.5 Learning Designs 
Girls learned Ainu designs at a very 
young age by tracing the patterns in 
the sand. They took their lessons 
seriously because they knew they 
would be judged for the rest of their 
lives on how well they designed the 
family's clothes. Shimanojo Murakami 
recorded this lesson in a scene from 
his Curious Sights of Ezo Island 
(1799). (HML) 
the Japanese, Ainu garments continued to be 
made of attush with imported cloth normally 
used only for decoration until the early 
twentieth century. The fabric remnants and 
other materials needed to complete more 
intricate garments were accumulated over a 
long period of time, and some garments, such 
as the ruunpc, took up to three years to 
complete (Mikami 1986: 87). Imported cloth 
was valued so highly that Ainu men and 
women would often wear small cotton strips, 
usually red, through slits in 
their ears as a sign of wealth 
and prestige. Gradually 
cotton became more avail¬ 
able, particularly in areas that 
had ready access to trade 
goods,- all-cotton gowns 
began to appear around the 
end of the Edo period, but 
they never totally replaced 
attush garments. 
An Ainu woman put her 
soul into each stitch as she 
made a garment because it 
42.5 
was thought that a garment made without a 
purpose would not have a soul. The most 
important thing to know before beginning a 
new garment was who would wear the 
clothes (Fujimura 1985a: 17-19). Size was 
not the source of concern because other 
than length, there were no structural 
differences between the garments of men 
and women. Innovation in design which was 
highly prized, differentiated women's skill 
to decide on a design never produced before 
42.6 Embroidered Fishskin Boots 
These fishskin boots were collected 
by Edward S. Morse in 1882 from 
the Ainu of the Ishikari River region 
in Hokkaido, and they 
are still stuffed with 
the original cotton 
grass used to keep 
the feet warm. It is 
unusual to find 
embroidery applied 
directly to the fishskin, 
as seen here, because 
the work could not be 
transferred to a new 
garment when the 
original wore out. 
These boots have 
seen heavy use. 
(PEM E491) 
and choose the material and colors for it, the 
seamstress contemplated all aspects of the 
person who was going to wear the garment 
and visualized the person as he or she wore 
it. It was this process that elevated an Ainu 
garment to wearable art (fig. 42.4). 
The basic designs were passed down 
from mother to daughter,- however, many 
Ainu girls learned not from formal instruc¬ 
tion from their mothers but by accepting the 
cultural expectation that each girl would 
become accomplished at this art form on her 
own initiative, learning all the variations of 
the regional designs. Among the interesting 
paintings of Ainu life by Shimanojo 
Murakami compiled in Ezo-shima kikan (Curious 
Sights ojEzo Island) is one that shows an adult 
woman drawing patterns in the sand at a 
beach for two little girls to practice (fig. 
42.5). Either formally or informally women 
were expected to learn the basics of Ainu 
traditional patterns and design and then 
create their own. Although these designs are 
extremely complex and each was unique, the 
seamstress did not use a fixed pattern to 
trace on the cloth. Ainu designs are a 
combination of, and variation on, a few 
simple design elements, but the juxtaposition 
of many interrelated elements is what makes 
Ainu designs so exciting and unique. 
42/BEGINNINGS OF AINU ART 2 91 
While each garment design was an 
original, most Ainu scholars agree that each 
band of geographically separated Ainu had a 
similarity of design that identified the wearer 
as coming from a certain region. However, 
this idea has led many researchers to assume 
that all persons from the same area would 
wear the same design,- my examination of 
hundreds of garments suggests that there are 
too many design anomalies for this to be true. 
I hypothesize that when a woman married a 
man from a different band—which was 
usually the case—she may have combined the 
generic designs from each region to create a 
hybrid that was, in a sense, a totally new 
design. It must have been very challenging, 
creatively, to stay within the bounds of 
tradition and at the same time make the subtle 
but distinct design changes necessary for peer 
recognition, social acceptance, and family and 
personal pride. 
42.7 Woman’s Tattooed Arm 
The Ainu believed that tattoos on the 
face, arms, and hands protected 
women from harmful disease and 
misfortune. Similar types of tattoos 
were worn by early Eskimo peoples of 
the Bering Sea region as early as 
2,000 years ago. These Ainu tattoos 
were recorded by Shimanojo Murakami 
in his Curious Sights of Ezo Island 
(1799). (HML) 
The Meaning of the Designs 
The meaning of the designs on clothing has 
long fascinated Ainu researchers, both 
Japanese and Western anthropologists as well 
as native Ainu scholars. While the Ainu tried 
to live all facets of their lives honoring their 
gods (kamuy), incorporating any of the animal 
gods in textile compositions was taboo. 
Nonetheless, many anthropologists have 
erroneously attempted to attach specific 
totemic meanings to Ainu designs on gar¬ 
ments. For example, R. U. Sayce describes the 
wavy or zigzag line designs as snakes, even in 
the simplest or most conventionalized form 
(1933: 23-24, 156). While snakes do play a 
292 LIVING ARTS/C. DUBREUIL 
role in such Ainu religious rituals as exorcism 
and, to a lesser degree, in their mythology, 
no other references support Sayce's claim. 
In another example, V. and T. Hauge 
describe designs on the back of some 
garments as prominent symbols of the owl, 
guardian god of the village (1978: 247). It 
would be easy to misinterpret these paired 
eyelike shapes, which appear frequently in 
Ainu design, and other stylized designs as 
bears or other representative forms, particu¬ 
larly if one were influenced by other ethnic 
art such as that of Northwest Coast Native 
America and tried to find parallels with it. 
Another common idea is that all Ainu 
designs can be traced back to their respect 
for the bear. However, no Ainu elder or 
cultural leader, man or woman, supports 
these ideas. 
All of the elder Ainu women I inter¬ 
viewed stated that they would never incor¬ 
porate designs of wild animals into their 
garments because they adored, worshipped, 
and respected animals and their spirits as 
kamuy. They expressed much fear that the 
spirits would become angry if they were 
"trapped" in the design or in any other mode 
of artistic expression,- this taboo also ex¬ 
tended to humans represented in art. Isabella 
Bird, a wealthy author and adventuress from 
England who traveled throughout Japan in 
1878, experienced this taboo firsthand when 
toward the end of her trip she spent a month 
with the Ainu. An amateur artist, she found 
herself with several elder Ainu men and, 
unbeknownst to anyone, started to sketch 
one of them. She states: 
1 took a rough sketch of one of the 
handsomest, and showed it to him, asked 
if he would have it, but instead of being 
amused or pleased, he showed symptoms 
of fear, and asked me to burn it, saying it 
would bring him bad luck, and he should 
die (Bird 1881: 109). 
Another interesting theory holds that 
because the Ainu greatly respected and 
revered all of nature—not just animals, but 
such inanimate elements as thunder, wind, 
rain, or snow as well—the creative, person¬ 
alized designs were also revered. The late 
Ainu cultural leader Tasuke Yamamoto 
believed that Ainu women were given by 
spirits a special consciousness of the natural 
environment which allowed them to create 
designs of nature (Yotsuji 1981: 228-29). 
The Ainu themselves have also investi¬ 
gated the meaning of these designs,- for 
42.8 Knife and Sheath 
The small multipurpose knife (makiri) 
was a man's most indispensable 
implement. It was used to make such 
sacred objects as inaw (a wooden 
staff with tufted shavings) and 
ikupasuy (prayer stick), as well as 
hunting weapons and domestic uten¬ 
sils. The first estimation of a man's 
worth was made by a quick glance at 
his knife sheath, makiri handle, and 
tobacco case. This knife was obtained 
from the Ainu at the Louisiana Pur¬ 
chase Centennial Exposition in St. 
Louis in 1904. (AMNH 70-0002A/B) 
42.9 Bone Carving 
This small ivory carving in the shape 
of a whale tail is engraved with typical 
Ainu whorl designs, but the collection 
records regarding its provenance are 
ambiguous: “Ainu Siberia Gilyaks 
Sakhalin." It was collected by Otto 
Esche before 1874, from Sakhalin. Its 
function is unknown, but its small 
size, ornamental quality, and the 
presence of a hook indicate that it 
may have served as a chest ornament 
or necklace pendant. (PEM E1990) 
back prevented evil spirits from entering a 
person. Examples of this meaning of sermak 
permeated Ainu life: Ainu men wore their 
swords hanging from their backs, whereas the 
Japanese wore swords at their sides. When 
Ainu men prayed, they sprinkled sake over 
their heads and shoulders with the prayer 
stick, ikupasuy, which showed respect to their 
guardian spirits,- in addition, as an Ainu went 
out of the house, the hosts would often say 
"sermaka-omare," which meant "put something 
on your back." When one Ainu met another, 
they greeted each other by touching the head 
and shoulders, which also showed respect to 
their guardian spirits. 
Ainu embroidery likewise seems to have 
had a prophylactic function. When an Ainu 
woman left the house, she put on an embroi¬ 
dered garment so that the guardian spirits of 
these items would protect her from harm 
(Chiri 1973a: 1 34-36). One of the oldest 
known Ainu garments is from the Kuriles,- it is 
made of puffin feathers and is owned by the 
Hokkaido University Ainu Museum in 
Sapporo. While it has often been treated as a 
curiosity, this garment may be a very impor¬ 
tant forerunner of Ainu design It is made of 
three white birdskins with sexual organs 
attached, and there are red embroidered 
"webs" on the back of the garment. The 
Kurile Ainu called the upper area of the back 
eyamatau. From the meaning of eyam, "take 
good care of," and atau, "a place where a thing 
is kept," the compound can be translated as "a 
place where a thing that is taken good care of 
is kept." It is therefore an important place on 
the body,- because this design appears on the 
back of this early garment and the upper back 
area is often richly embroidered in other 
garments, it is likely that these designs were 
intended to protect this special place. 
instance, the Ainu cultural leader Shigeru 
Kayano (1978: 59-60) has stated that the 
idea of designs in general was derived from 
the concept of warding off evil. Traditionally 
women embroidered a simple "rope” around 
the neck, front openings, sleeves, and hem on 
the earliest garments to keep evil spirits from 
entering the body. The original rope designs 
were nothing more than a solid color, usually 
dark blue, which probably originated from a 
real-life practice: an Ainu mother working in 
the mountains or fields with her baby would 
encircle the infant with a rope to protect it 
while it slept. Any evil spirits in the area 
would not be able to enter inside the rope to 
harm the baby (Kayano 1978: 59-60,- 
interview, Oct. 1984). 
The design patterns are also likely 
related to the highly important concept of 
sermak, which links the original meaning of the 
Ainu word sermak, meaning "back" or 
"shadow," to the belief that protecting the 
42/ BEGINNINGS OF AINU ART 293 
42.11 
Other Ainu scholars have pointed to a 
similarity in style rather than function as the 
unifying element in Ainu design: Kindaichi and 
Sugiyama stated (1942: 18-19) that the basic 
element of Ainu design was the morew, which 
means "turn gracefully" in the Ainu language,- 
this is now commonly known as a curvilinear 
design (figs. 42.6, 42.9). Kayano supports the 
contention that this pattern, morew-noka, simply 
means "a shape or motif that turns gracefully" 
and does not have any other meaning (1978: 
58-60). However, it is generally agreed that the 
use of curvilinear design in the unique Ainu 
tattoos on the back of women's hands and 
around their arms was intended to protect them 
from evil spirits (fig. 42.7). The tattoo design 
was also a sign of maturity and recognized as 
such among adults. 
One concept that is found repeatedly in 
the literature, espoused by many Ainu scholars, 
is that Ainu garment designs are always sym¬ 
metrical. While there is no doubt that most 
often symmetry was attempted, I have seen 
dozens of garments with asymmetrical designs. 
Some differences are to be expected on hand¬ 
made objects, such as random width and fluctua¬ 
tion in the length of line or differences in the 
amount of negative or positive space surround¬ 
ing patterns. Other garments, however, are very 
obviously asymmetrical. For example, in one 
book on Ainu garments, Ainu no mon'yo by Ichiro 
Yotsuji (1981), there are at least twelve examples 
42.11 Three Inaw 
Inaw are sacred shaved sticks that 
symbolize birds, which accompany a 
man's prayers to the god world. Willow 
branches were gathered a week (and 
sometimes as early as a month) be¬ 
fore a ceremony; the bark was then 
peeled and the wood was dried for 
several days. The sticks were carved 
into a wide variety of beautiful shapes, 
each intended for a specific god or 
function. (ACM) 
42.10 Ikupasuy 
Prayer sticks, known to Ainu as 
ikupasuy. are the vehicle through which 
men communicate with the gods. The 
carving on the ikupasuy also identified 
the worshiper. Often misidentified in 
early literature as a “mustache stick’’ 
or "mustache lifter,” the ikupasuy 
carried a man's prayers to the gods. Its 
artful and creative manufacture was a 
major concern; hours of thought and 
energy went into making one. (BMA) 
42.10 
294 
42.13 Flower Arrow 
Blunt arrows with tips carved to 
resemble partially opened flowers 
(heper-ay) were used in the 
iyomante. Carved with the family 
crest of the owner, these arrows 
identified the ceremony's sponsor. In 
some areas, red cloth covered the 
tip of the arrowhead. Heper-ay were 
shot at the bear but caused it no 
harm: their purpose was to excite 
the animal in preparation for its 
journey to god land. (MPM N17284C) 
42.12 Ceremonial Headdress 
A man’s ceremonial costume included 
a special headdress called a 
sapaunpe, which was woven from 
grapevines and other materials. It was 
common to mount small carvings of 
bears, wolves, or other animals at the 
front of the headdress, and flaps of 
colored silk were sometimes attached 
to the sides to show wealth. This 
specimen was collected by Stewart 
Culin for the Brooklyn Museum in 
1912. (BMA 12.574) 
of asymmetrical designs that range from the 
subtle to the overt In almost all cases the differ¬ 
ences are found in the bottom half of the gar¬ 
ment, from the waist down. In five cases the 
asymmetry is apparent on both the front and 
back, while on the remaining seven it is found 
only on the back. These are genuine composi¬ 
tional differences, although some are not obvi¬ 
ous due in part to an "orderly confusion" of 
design. Unfortunately, limited experience in the 
past led researchers to believe that the examples 
of symmetrical designs they encountered were 
representative of all Ainu designs, and over time 
this became dogma. 
While controversy over the exact 
meaning of the designs in Ainu garments or 
the relative importance of the unifying 
elements continues, it is certain that the skills 
of Ainu women as makers of these beautiful 
and unique objects has long been valued. 
Ainu Men as Wood Carvers of 
Art and Artifact 
As with women, Ainu men's creative energy 
seems to have been culturally directed into 
very narrow areas of expression but was 
centered on woodworking. They had at least 
three intentions: to carve with a singular and 
absolute spiritual purpose,- to combine 
spiritual and artistic purpose in their cre¬ 
ations,- to embrace the dual intent of utility 
and beauty. The seemingly endless number of 
carvings executed by the Ainu men through¬ 
out their lives all have intricate designs and 
beauty of form. Some were created in 
accordance with religious beliefs, some 
because of personal ego, and others through 
household necessity. There are only a few 
rare examples of toys or other objects carved 
with the intent of being simply a plaything. 
Because until the twentieth century most 
Ainu men did not have the same definition of 
"art" as the western world, the Ainu men 
treated wood with respect, as a living thing from 
prehistoric times. They believed that if you 
carved an object with devotion, it would have a 
spirit of its own. To show their reverence 
toward these wooden artifacts, when they were 
worn out or broken the Ainu usually performed 
a simple ceremony to send the spirit of the 
wood to god land (see Utagawa, this volume). 
The Traditional Ainu Carving Tool: 
The Makiri 
Ainu men have taken great pride in creating a 
variety of carvings using only a knife called a 
makiri (fig. 42.8), which was used not only for 
carving household goods for daily life but 
also for creating ceremonial objects. This 
same tool was used for cutting and skinning 
game and was essential for a variety of other 
uses. An Ainu boy learned to master the makiri 
by watching his father or grandfather from an 
early age. 
Ainu men always wore the makiri at their 
sides, usually encased in an intricately cawed 
wooden sheath. The design on a sheath and 
hilt was cawed with devotion by Ainu men, 
whose carving skill was judged by the quality 
of both design and technique found thereon. 
When he had mastered the skills needed to 
use the makiri, a man was considered to be an 
independent cawer as well as an adult in the 
community. Displaying the makiri was a 
statement of a rite of passage. 
42/ BEGINNINGS OF AINU ART 295 
The Ainu woman also had her own 
makiri for cutting cloth or skinning a hide, and 
this was called menoko-makiri, or woman's knife. 
When a young man was interested in a young 
woman for marriage, he carved a beautiful 
menoko-makiri and gave it to her. If she accepted 
it and wore it at her side, she had tacitly 
accepted his proposal (Kayano 1978: 28). 
The Prayer Stick: Ikupasuy 
The most important article of spiritual and 
artistic carving was the ikupasuy or prayer 
stick (fig. 42.10). Normally twelve to sixteen 
inches (thirty to forty centimeters) long and 
two to four inches (five to ten centimeters) 
wide, it usually has rounded edges and is 
tapered at one end. They were made from 
yew, willow, or spindle trees and were carved 
in a somewhat flattened shape (see Maraini, 
this volume). 
42.14 Sword Holder 
A man's sword (emush) and sword 
holder (emushat) were among his 
most important treasures, and Ainu 
women took took great pride in the 
manufacture of the woven holder 
and strap. (N. Tsuda Collection) 
Even though the ikupasuy presents a 
limited area for carving, the Ainu employed 
an aggressive and creative approach to this 
space. Low- and high-relief designs ranging 
from very complex to quite simple are 
juxtaposed, but the compositions never seem 
busy. The integration of the prayer stick's 
religious symbolism and its artistic design are 
complementary. 
In their depiction of religious symbol¬ 
ism, however, the ikupasuy represent a 
dramatic and interesting departure from 
anything else in the Ainu artistic repertoire. 
Although living organisms, including both 
people and animals, were almost never used in 
designs for fear of angering the god spirits as 
discussed relative to Ainu women's art, the 
ikupasuy was one of the few exceptions to this 
cultural dogma. In this format the Ainu have 
made countless artistic renderings of their 
personal spirit totems, representations that 
range from exact realism to the most abstract 
forms. Examples of totemic figures include 
bears, killer whales, seals, fish such as salmon 
and swordfish, birds such as albatross and 
ducks, snakes, and flowers,- objects made by 
humans also appear, especially boats. 
Ceremonial Carvings: Inaw 
Inaw are carvings of up to seventeen inches 
(forty-five centimeters) in length, although 
some up to eight feet (2.5 meters) or longer are 
known. They were made from a simple, 
straight tree limb that was finely shaved and 
tufted at one end. Although the original defini¬ 
tion of inaw has been lost (if there was one), 
it was—and is—one of the most meaningful 
artifacts in the Ainu religion (fig. 42.1 I) be¬ 
cause it acts as a messenger to the gods. Aside 
from their spiritual use, inaw have a sublime 
beauty unusual in traditional Ainu art, which is 
more often characterized by visual excitement. 
Many different types of inaw were 
carved depending on the type of ceremony, 
local region, and ranking of the god who was 
the object of the prayers. The inaw was used 
only for a specific ceremony or function and 
was never reused (Fujimura 1982: 76-77). 
It has been estimated that several hundred 
different kinds of inaw were found throughout 
the Ainu regions (H. Kono 1933b). 
The Ainu carved inaw from different 
types of trees depending on the purpose of 
the ceremony in which they were used. For 
the "good gods,'' who brought prosperity, the 
most common materials were willow and 
296 LIVING ARTS/C. DUBREUIL 
42.15 Smoking Kit 
A man's smoking kit consisted of a 
tobacco box, a pipe holder, and a 
pipe. The tobacco box and pipe 
holder were attached to each other 
with an adjustable cord regulated with 
a cowrie shell: these small shiny 
shells from marine snails were once 
used as currency in China. This kit is 
quite different from most tradi¬ 
tional ones and takes a more 
modern form—it has bronze 
pipe fittings and a simplified 
tobacco box. This piece was 
collected by Hiram Hiller 
in 1901. (UPM A458) 
dogwood because the 
grain is fine, the color is 
white, and the wood is easy to 
carve. There is a myth that describes 
how the Ainu began creating inaw-. 
A long, long time ago, the creation god 
came down to the human land (Ainu mosir) 
from the god land (kamuy mosir) in order to 
create a country. After the god created it, 
he had to go back to the god land, but he 
couldn't bring the things he used in the 
human's land. One of these objects was the 
chopsticks he had used at meals, so he put 
them in the ground and left them. Soon 
roots came out of the chopsticks and they 
became a willow tree. The Ainu knew it 
was a god tree, and they decided to carve 
the inaw from that tree. And then they 
began to offer inaw to the gods (Kayano 
1978: 283). 
In ritual ceremonies men set several inaw 
in front of their altar (nusa) and dipped an 
ikupasuy in sacred sake, which was then 
sprinkled over the inaw as they prayed The 
Ainu believe that the inaw turns into a bird 
after receiving a message (kindaichi and 
Sugiyama 1942: 3-4). 
In the traditional Ainu home a variety 
of inaw were placed around the interior of the 
house. The inaw for the god of fire was placed 
in the fire pit and an inaw for the home treasure 
was placed in the northeast corner of the 
house. At the so-called "god window" on the 
east side of the home another type of inaw was 
placed. These offerings to different gods stayed 
where they were placed until they fell into 
decay, except 
for the inaw for the 
fire god, which was 
burned after a single use 
(Takakura 1970a: 634-45). 
Men's Ceremonial Headdresses: 
Sapaunpe 
Another exception to the rule that human 
and animal forms be intentionally avoided 
in design elements (except for ikupasuy) 
is men's ceremonial headdresses, sapaunpe, 
which usually have carved totem animals 
such as bears, killer whales, wolves, or owls 
attached to the front (fig. 42.12). The 
headdress is usually made from the woven 
bark of young tree saplings or from grape¬ 
vine. These ceremonial headdresses were 
worn by male participants during the bear¬ 
sending ceremony (iyomante) (see Akino, 
Kodama, this volume). 
Ceremonial Flower Arrows: Heper-ay 
Special arrows (heper-ay) were carved to 
shoot the bear during the iyomante ceremony 
(fig. 42.13). The conical arrowhead, about 
half an inch (1.25 centimeters) in diameter 
with the actual point less than a quarter of an 
inch (0.5 centimeters) in diameter and about 
one inch (three to four centimeters) long, 
was darkened with black charcoal and then 
beautifully carved with the creator's ancestral 
design (itokpa). The tip of the arrowhead was 
shaved to resemble the petals of a partly 
opened flower, then a small piece of red 
cloth was fit over the arrowhead and affixed 
with more shavings. A shaft about ten to 
eleven inches (twenty-five to thirty centime¬ 
ters) long was inserted in the arrowhead. 
The Ainu believed that shooting these 
arrows at the bear let the bear god play just 
before the bear was put to death. They shot 
the "harmless” beper-ay arrows at the bear 
to give it a shock, and when the bear became 
wild after being hit by the arrows they 
4 2/ BEGINNINGS OF AINU ART 297 
42.16, 42.17 Platter and Spatula 
Ainu whori designs are carved in 
the center of this beautiful old 
platter, which was collected for the 
Golden Gate International Exposi¬ 
tion in 1939, as indicated by the 
U.S. Customs label still affixed to 
it. The fine cooking spatula was 
used to stir and cut dumplings 
before its collection by Stewart 
Culin in 1912. (BMS C13464; 
BMA 12.678) 
42.16 
believed that it was expressing its joy about 
returning to god land. The number of arrows 
used was determined by the age of the bear. 
The leader of the family that sponsored the 
ceremony was honored by shooting the first 
arrow, which was incised with their itokpa to 
let the god know who had staged this event. 
SWORDS: EmUSH 
Another artifact that Ainu men particularly 
valued was the sword (emusb), which was 
acquired by trade with the Japanese. Unlike 
the Japanese, they did not use swords as 
weapons but only as part of a ceremonial 
outfit and as symbols of wealth. During the 
bear-sending ceremony the Ainu men danced 
with these swords, which were also used in 
rituals for warding off evil spirits (fnukai 1970: 
629-31). Ainu men also personalized these 
items by carving intricate designs on the 
sword's wooden scabbard, which hung through 
a woven sword holder (emushat, fig. 42.14)— 
made by an Ainu woman—from their right 
shoulder to their left hip with the sword 
resting on the back (see Siddle, this volume). 
Tobacco Box and Pipe Holder: 
Tanpakuop,■ Tobacco Pipe: Kiseri 
Another important carved item was a set of 
smoking implements (fig. 42.15), which 
consisted of a tobacco box and pipe holder 
(tanpakuop) and tobacco pipe (kiseri). The 
hexagonal or octangular shapes of the 
tobacco boxes are similar to those of the 
Japanese medicine case (inro). While it is 
possible that pipe smoking was introduced by 
maritime traders, it is more likely that the 
Ainu adopted pipe smoking from their 
Chinese trading partners. The pipe was made 
from hardwood, and its stem was as long as 
fifteen inches (forty centimeters). Although 
pipe holders are similar in shape to ikupasuy, 
they have one hole near the end in which 
to put a pipe head and their designs never 
included any animals or other significant 
depictions found on the prayer sticks. Pipe 
holders instead are carved with delicate 
curvilinear or geometric designs. 
Like the makiri Ainu men customarily 
wore at their sides, smoking implements 
were displayed and carried in a similar fashion 
(see illustration on p. 286). An old custom 
called "pipe exchange" demonstrates their use 
in daily life: as a friendly gesture to a person 
he had met for the first time, an Ainu man 
filled his pipe with tobacco and offered it to 
the other man to smoke. His gesture would 
be reciprocated (Kayano 1978: 246), and in 
the process of exchanging their tobacco 
pipes each examined the other's carving 
levels and skills. 
Utilitarian Artifacts 
Ainu men also carved such household objects 
as bowls, trays, ladles, and spatulas (figs. 
42.16-42.20). Much of this type of carving is 
plain and simple, which emphasizes the 
natural beauty of the wood; however, like 
298 LIVING ARTS/C. DUBREUiL 
42.18 Bowl 
This wooden bowl has heart- 
shaped flower designs carved on 
each side of it, with a fish-scale 
background design filling in the 
area between design elements. 
Although the overall design is 
Ainu, use of a heart motif is not 
typical and may indicate that the 
piece was commissioned for 
sale. (PEM E7909) 
carved artifacts from other native cultures, 
such as those found on Canada's Northwest 
Coast, many of these utilitarian objects are 
beautifully carved with extremely intricate 
design elements similar in complexity to 
those created by women for garments. For 
example, Ainu women kept their sewing 
needles in a small tube called a chispo, which 
was made of wood or bone and hung around 
the neck (fig. 42.2 1). Because needles were 
very difficult to acquire until the modern era 
and were extremely valuable items to Ainu 
women, Ainu men carved curvilinear designs 
on these needlecases, very much like those 
applied by women to garments. Through use 
and age many very old utilitarian objects 
have developed a deep and beautiful patina. 
Conclusion 
Whether manifested as incredible carvings 
or beautiful textiles, the creativity cultivated 
by the Ainu produced some of the most 
impressive art of any indigenous people, and 
the important knowledge needed to continue 
these traditions has not been lost. While 
42.19 Plate 
Ainu wooden bowls and plates are 
found in a variety of shapes. Small 
plates were normally used to serve 
food, while large platters were used 
for such purposes as kneading 
dough, washing food, or as cooking 
utensils. Many elaborately carved 
platters were made for sale or trade 
(NMNH 324509) 
42.20 Eating Utensil 
Small flat wooden spatulas were 
used as eating utensils by children 
or older people; adults also used 
them when they ate porridge made 
of lily roots. Most early pieces, like 
this one collected by Benjamin 
Smith Lyman in 1876, had intricate 
carved designs. (NMNH E022269) 
42.18 
42.19 
42 / BEGINNINGS OF AINU ART 299 
42.21 Needlecase 
Ainu women kept their sewing needles 
in smail, beautifully decorated wood, 
bone, or ivory tubular needlecases 
(chispo) that they hung around their 
necks. Needles were stored on a 
cloth strap that could be pulled out of 
the case. Because steel needles were 
expensive and difficult to obtain even 
as late as the early nineteenth cen¬ 
tury, they were extremely important 
items for Ainu women. Needlecases 
similar to this in form and decoration 
were used by other native peoples of 
the North Pacific Rim, including the 
Koryak, Chukchi, and Yup’ik Eskimos 
of Alaska. This case was collected in 
Hokkaido between 1909 and 1929 by 
Soshichiro Mouri; a Chinese coin is 
attached to the end of the strap. 
(Shin Mouri Collection) 
anthropologists record these artifacts in terms 
of materials, scale, function, and so on, sadly 
some of the most important information — 
such as the artist's identity—often was not 
recorded. Because of incomplete collection 
notes, it would be extremely difficult—if 
not impossible—to track characteristic 
carving styles and distinctive designs to 
individual artists. Today, however, many 
modern Ainu textile artists are able to visit 
museums with Ainu collections in order to 
examine the techniques used to create these 
extraordinary garments, and they use this 
knowledge to produce contemporary 
examples. Ainu men continue to create 
traditional wooden objects, especially the 
sacred ikupasuy, which are still used in 
ceremonies, and the inaw, which are still 
placed around the modern Ainu home. Ainu 
men also continue to practice traditional 
carving techniques. Many carving designs 
are dominated by curvilinear elements in the 
center of the object and delicate fish-scale 
and/or crosshatching patterns artfully 
executed around them, and Ainu cultural 
leader Kayano states (1978: 217) that in the 
Nibutani area there has been a rule relating to 
the carving of these patterns for at least the 
last hundred years. When fish-scale patterns 
are carved on an ikupasuy, the stroke of the 
knife is worked away from the body, but 
when the patterns are carved on a tray or 
spatula, the knife is worked towards the body. 
Although the original reason and meaning for 
this practice has been lost over time, these 
rules are still followed today. 
There is no doubt that Ainu traditional 
art is experiencing a revitalization like that 
experienced by the North American Indians. 
While Ainu traditional art does not have the 
worldwide recognition of Native American 
art or command such high prices in the mar¬ 
ketplace, things are changing. The most 
important instrument of change is the Ainu 
Shinpo (see Dietz and Tsunemoto, this vol¬ 
ume), a law enacted by the Japanese Diet in 
1997 that essentially recognizes the unique¬ 
ness of Ainu culture and provides funding to 
protect, preserve, and promote traditional art 
for generations to come. While the Ainu have 
no word for art, there is a word they use to 
describe it: pirika means beautiful, and it is. 
300 LIVING ARTS/C. DUBREUIL 
43 /Saranip 
and Tenki: 
Ainu Basketry and 
North Pacific 
Affinities 
Nelson Graburn 
and Molly Lee 
For almost a century, investigators 
who have studied the basketry of the 
the Northern Pacific have noted simi¬ 
larities between the basketry of Alaska 
and Siberia (e.g., Jochelson 1908: 631-32), 
but to date equally apparent resemblances 
between Siberian baskets and those of the 
neighboring Ainu have rarely been explored 
(Montandon 1937: 107). The reason for this 
oversight is simple: the Ainu are concen¬ 
trated in Hokkaido, the northernmost island 
of Japan,- thus, investigators tend to stress 
the relationships between Ainu and Japa¬ 
nese material culture, overlooking cultural 
elements stemming from their close prox¬ 
imity and cultural ties to Siberia and the 
North Pacific. 
One cultural domain in which these 
shared similarities are evident is in the coiled 
and twined basketry traditions of the Ainu 
and other cultures of the North Pacific Rim. 
This study provides an historical overview of 
Ainu basketry, describes Ainu basket types, 
and then considers these types in relation to 
basketry of Siberia and Alaska. 
Historic-Period Ainu Basketry 
The antiquity of woven basketry among the 
Ainu is difficult to determine. For one thing, 
information about the material culture of the 
various Ainu subgroups is uneven. In addition, 
changes in territory and ethnonyms (names 
given by ethnic groups) add confusion. At 
one time the Ainu appear to have occupied 
43.1 Twined Basket 
Basketry traditions around the globe 
have ancient roots and are often 
indicators of cultural contact and 
change. Ainu basketry has interested 
anthropologists because of its 
similarity with that of other North 
Pacific cultures. Twined-grass 
baskets like this saranip with a 
braided rim are nearly identical to 
baskets made by Yup'ik Eskimos in 
southwestern Alaska, but whether 
this is due to ancient connections, 
recent contact, or chance remains a 
mystery. (PMC 64026) 
43/AINU BASKETRY TRADITION 301 
territory stretching north from Honshu to 
southern Sakhalin and the Kuriles. Archaeo¬ 
logical evidence and early historical sources, 
such as the eighth-century Kojiki (Record of 
Ancient Matters) (a.D. 701), place peoples 
presumed to have been the ancestors of the 
Ainu in northern Honshu. These people, 
whom the Japanese called Emishi (barbarians), 
most probably made the Neolithic pottery 
figurines that exhibit tattoo patterns and show 
clothing similar to those of the historic Ainu of 
Hokkaido. Eventually the Japanese pushed them 
north onto Hokkaido (Sansom 1958-63: 1:91, 
104,- Sjpberg 1993: 1, 109). 
Even after their expulsion from Honshu, 
however, the Ainu were by no means isolated. 
On Sakhalin they had inter-Ainu trading 
networks and tributary trade with China and 
the nearby peoples of the Amur River basin 
(Stephan 1971: 23-25). Rinzo Mamiya, who 
visited Sakhalin in 1808-1809, reported 
(1 855) that they used manufactured Chinese 
goods gained in their tributary trade with the 
Manchu dynasty to trade with Japanese 
merchants, who then traded these goods in 
Edo (Tokyo) for large profits. At about the 
same time, the Kurile Ainu were acquiring 
foreign goods from the encroaching trade 
networks ot Russia and Japan (Krasheninnikov 
1776: 63,-Stephan 1974: 52-54,- Torii 1919: 
1 32-35). Finally, in 1945 the Russians drove 
the Sakhalin Ainu out of Japanese-controlled 
southern Sakhalin and later that year expelled 
them from the Kuriles. Both groups resettled 
in Hokkaido, where Japan's political and 
43.2, 43.3 Saranip 
Ainu women gathered wild vegetables, 
nuts, and edible roots, which they 
carried and stored in twined baskets 
called saranip. Fiber from the inner bark 
of the elm tree—the same material 
used to weave traditional Ainu cloth 
(attush)—was also used for weaving 
baskets and produced a tough, durable 
product. Japanese linden bark, which 
had a whiter fiber, was also used. 
Saranip ranged in size from small utility 
bags to large storage containers like the 
one seen in this nineteenth-century 
Ainu-e painting. This bag was collected 
in Penkatori. Hokkaido, in 1951. (AMNH 
70-2/932; BMV) 
43.3 
302 LIVING ARTS / N. GRAB URN AND M . LEE 
43.4 Ainu Folk Crafts 
Twined saranip baskets are the oldest 
and most widespread of Ainu basketry 
types and are found throughout Ainu 
territory. This illustration comes from 
the 1978 book Ainu no mingu (Ainu 
folk crafts), which was written by 
Shigeru Kayano to document and 
preserve disappearing Ainu traditions. 
One of the first such works to be 
written by a member of an indigenous 
population, this book is a primary 
source on Ainu material culture. 
cultural policies forced them to assimilate, 
much as they had forced the Hokkaido Ainu 
in the nineteenth century. 
Ainu basketry is first mentioned in the 
eighteenth-century literature, but whether it 
was known earlier is unclear. The archaeologi¬ 
cal record indicates that predecessors of the 
Ainu (jomon) in northern Honshu and Hok¬ 
kaido as well as Sakhalin and the Kuriles made 
a type of pottery similar to the Japanese 
(Takakura I960: 22,• Torii 1919: 187-99, 277- 
79), but no basketry is reported, either because 
it was unknown or because its cellulose fibers 
did not survive under archaeological condi¬ 
tions. At least by the eighteenth century, how¬ 
ever, Ainu culture shared less with the Japanese 
than it did with the Amur River and 
Kamchatka peoples. The use of basketry may 
have arisen through these contacts, but it is 
unlikely that it was introduced as a substitute 
for pottery, which was displaced by imported 
accounts of Ainu basketry. Only Kayano 
(1978: 131) points to the spiritual importance 
of basketry as sentient beings with souls that 
could punish or reward humans according to 
the treatment they received,- he also notes that 
some baskets look like ghosts and are jokingly 
referred to as such. 
Basketry Types and Distribution 
Ainu basketry consists of two main types: 
twined-basketry bags and coiled baskets. 
A third category includes a few types typical 
of Japanese basketry, which were probably 
made by both Ainu and Japanese (with the 
latter examples misattributed to the Ainu). 
Because these descriptions are based on the 
literature and published illustrations from 
museum collections rather than examina¬ 
tion of a sufficiently representative sample, 
the types described here must be consid¬ 
ered provisional. 
43.4 43.5 
43.5 Archival Documentation 
A description of Ainu basketry was first 
found in notes written by Shimanojo 
Murakami (also known as Mochimaro 
Hata) about his 1798 expedition to 
Hokkaido and the Kuriles. His detailed 
comments and drawings, which 
provide information about materials 
used and construction techniques, 
were compiled in Ezo-shima kikan 
(Curious Sights of Ezo Island). (TNM) 
iron and lacquerware during that century 
(Sjqberg 1993: 100-102,-Torii 1919: 188). 
Most recently published catalogues of 
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ainu 
material culture include examples of basketry 
(e.g., Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan 1992,- 
Kokuritsu Minzokugaku Hakubutsukan 1993,- 
Kotani 1993b,- Kotani and Kreiner 1993; 
Kokuritsu Minzogaku Hakubutsukan 1991), 
though it is overlooked in most ethnographies 
(e.g., Ohnuki-Tierney 1974,- Ohtsuka 1993; 
ST.cn berg 1933). Of the ethnographers, 
Shimanojo Murakami, also known as 
Mochimaro Hata (Ezo-shima kikan, cited in 
Tanisawa and Sasaki 1982), Shigeru Kayano 
(1978), George Montandon (1937), and 
Rinzo Torii (1919) offer detailed field-based 
Twined-Basketry Bags 
The most widespread type of Ainu basket is 
the soft, utilitarian storage or carrying bag 
made in several variations of twining (figs. 
43.1-43.4). There are many variations of the 
basic technique, but the Ainu seem to use 
mainly plain or open-twining with some cross¬ 
warp twining for decorative effects (Mason 
1970: 232-34). Most of these baskets are 
finished with a border made by separating 
the weft strands into groups of four or five 
and braiding these up a few inches, then 
fastening the ends of the braids together with 
a braided border, creating the same effect as 
eyelet embroidery. The spaces between the 
gathered and braided weft strands form loops 
through which a braided cord is run for use 
43/AINU BASKETRY TRADITION 303 
43.6 Coiled-Grass Basket 
Tenki, baskets of coiled grass, are found 
primarily in the Kuriles (and to a lesser 
extent in Hokkaido) and seem to be a 
more recent addition to Ainu culture. 
They are made by building up a spiral coil 
of bundled grass stems and then sewing 
each coil to the coil below; this gives the 
basket a rigid body, making it suitable for 
use as a storage container. Most Ainu 
examples are small and have lids. This 
tenki, which was collected by Alexander 
Agassiz from Shikotan Island in the 
Kuriles before 1893, is made with an 
overlapping stitch that gives it a rough 
appearance. (PMC 51630) 
304 
as a drawstring or tumpline (Mason 1970: 
263). Some basketry bags are decorated with 
a few rows of cross-warp twining. Twined- 
basketry bags vary in size from about twelve 
to twenty-four inches in height. 
These twined-basketry bags, known in 
Ainu as saranip (Kotani 1993b: 96, 108, 125,- 
Kreinerand Olschleger 1987: 59-61), are 
the earliest and most widely reported of 
Ainu basketry types (Kayano 1978: 128-31,- 
Montandon 1937: 96). Examples from all 
three Ainu areas are represented in collections, 
although most are from Hokkaido. These 
utilitarian baskets were made by Ainu women, 
who used them for carrying and storage of 
household commodities (fig. 43.3), especially 
for "gathering wild lily bulbs and other wild 
vegetables" (kokuritsu Minzogaku 
Hakubutsukan 1991: 167). 
The materials Ainu used for twined- 
basketry bags vary. According to Saito (1995) 
the most common was beach grass (Elymus 
mollis,- see M. Okada 1988). On his 1798 
expedition to Ainu territory Murakami 
collected a Kurile Ainu twined-basketry bag 
(fig. 43.5), which is illustrated as Figure 3 in 
his account of his travels (Ezo-shima kikan cited 
in Tanisawa and Sasaki 1982,- Sansom 1958- 
63: 3: 176, I 81). The caption contains useful 
information about basketry materials: "Picture 
LIVING ARTS / N. CRABURN AND M. LEE 
of a Tenki [a general Ainu term for grass basket] 
made of morochi [Ainu for beach grass], found 
in big and small sizes in Shikotan and Etoro 
[two Kurile islands]. Female Ainu make these 
beautiful and elaborate crafts that should 
be cherished" (Ezo-shima kikan in Tanisawa and 
Sasaki 1982: 170). According to Murakami, 
morochi (also called kina by the Ainu) also grew 
along the Hokkaido shoreline (the name 
"Hokkaido” included Sakhalin and the Kuriles 
at that time). Nonetheless, the Hokkaido 
examples, which comprise the majority in 
museum collections, mainly use the scraped 
bast, or inner bark, of trees such as the 
mountain elm (lllmtts montana var. lacinata), 
Japanese linden (Tilia ulmijolia var. Japonica), or 
wild grapevine (Vitis coignetiae) (Tokyo 
Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan 1992: 44, no. 1215— 
27,- Kreiner and Olschleger 1987: 63-64, pi. 
56, 57,- Kokuritsu Minzogaku Hakubutsukan 
1991: 167). Other fibers include rush (Juncus 
effusus var. decipiens), the kind used for the 
ubiquitous tatami mats in Japan, and reed 
(Kokuritsu Minzokugaku Hakubutsukan 1993: 
103, 1 17, 125-27). 
According to Murakami and others, the 
plant variously called morochi and kina was 
also called tenkiso or tenkikusa by the Ainu,- -so 
and -kusa are alternative readings of the 
Japanese character for grass. These terms 
translate into Japanese as hamaninniku 
(literally, "beach garlic," called "beach grass" 
in English). It will be helpful to note the 
probable meanings of these overlapping 
terms. Whereas morochikina seems to be the 
Ainu name for the whole beach garlic plant 
(also used as a medicine by the Ainu), the 
Ainu term tenki was probably reserved for the 
dried stems and blades that were used for 
making baskets (Tanisawa and Sasaki 1982: 
222, fn. 12). Alternatively, Hata implies that 
Ainu tenki was used to mean the basket itself,- 
from this we can infer that Ainu tenki-kusa/so 
means "basket-grass." 
Saranip are the only kind of basket 
described in the early accounts from all Ainu 
areas and, not surprisingly, are the most 
common type found in Ainu collections 
(e g., Kotani 1993b,- Kreiner and Olschleger 
1987: 59-61,- Kokuritsu Minzogaku 
Hakubutsukan 1991: 167: 10-1 1). Of par¬ 
ticular note is Murakami's 1798 description 
of Hokkaido (Yezo) basketry (Tanisawa and 
Sasaki 1982) and that of by Rinzo Mamiya 
(I 855) from Sakhalin. Later in his account 
Murakami related that when he returned to 
43.8 Twineo Yup’ik Basket 
Connections between Ainu basketry 
traditions and those of other North 
Pacific cultures seem likely because 
of similarities in construction and the 
nearly identical method of gathering 
the warp remainders into a braided 
rim, as seen here. Both types appear 
very early in their respective cultures, 
so the question of their origin and 
relationship will have to be pursued 
through archaeological studies. 
(UAFM 554-544G) 
Hakodate (southern Hokkaido) "on August 
5th [he] met an official and gave him a 
present of a tenki amikago [woven-grass basket] 
from Tokachi" (Tanisawa and Sasaki 1982: 
253). This is perhaps the first historical ac¬ 
count of Ainu basketry assuming the role of 
tourist art (Low 1976,- Sjpberg 1993: 162, 
167, fig. 14). 
Coiled Basketry 
The number of Ainu coiled baskets (tenki) 
found in museum collections around the 
world is smaller than that of the twined- 
43.7 Decorated Tenki 
Ainu, like the Koryak and 
Itel'men peoples of Kamchatka, 
Yup'ik Eskimos of southwestern 
Alaska, and Labrador Inuit, 
decorated coiled-grass baskets 
with a checkerwork of dyed grass 
wrappings. This illustration of 
such decoration on an Ainu 
coiled basket derives from a 
1919 book by Ryuzo Torii. 
basketry bags. Nevertheless, these items are 
significant enough to warrant attention. The 
baskets are made from beach grass by a 
technique known as bundle coiling (Mason 
1970: 248). Two variants of bundle coiling 
are found among the Ainu. Kurile Ainu 
examples have overlapping stitches placed 
tightly side-by-side (fig. 43.6), and some 
Hokkaido Ainu baskets are similarly made. 
One Hokkaido example (Montandon 1937: 
96e), however, has stitches placed half an 
inch apart, giving it a rough, unfinished 
appearance. Ainu grass baskets are smaller 
in size than the basketry bags, averaging 
about two inches (5.5 centimeters) in diam¬ 
eter and four inches (ten centimeters) 
in height. Some coiled ware is decorated by 
substituting darker-dyed materials for the 
shiny, yellowish, dried beach grass. Ainu 
coiled baskets usually have well-fitted lids, 
and these sometimes have pulls of braided 
straw or other material (fig. 43.7). No func¬ 
tion is recorded for the Ainu coiled baskets, 
but their size as well as their mass-produced 
look suggests that they were probably made 
as trade items rather than for indigenous 
purposes,- given the Kurile Ainu's proximity 
to Kamchatka, where coiled baskets seem to 
have been made for the marketplace, this 
seems probable. 
Most bundle-coiled grass baskets were 
made in the Kuriles (Torii 1919: 184, fig. 
52), although a few references to grass bas¬ 
ketry are found in more recent ethnographies 
of the Hokkaido Ainu (Kreiner 1993: 29, pi. 
5,- Montandon 1937: 103-107,- Kotani 
1993b: 78). The Japanese also made coiled 
baskets for various purposes (Softie et al. 
1976), but they are usually made in a differ¬ 
ent coiling technique called two-rod coiling 
(Mason 1970: 251) or amikomu ("woven alter¬ 
nately") in Japanese (Miyazaki 1985: 4.2b-e),- 
thus, it is more likely that coiling spread 
southward from the Kuriles than that it was 
borrowed from the Japanese (Koji Deriha, 
personal communication 1997). The Japanese 
also made small, loosely bundled coiled bas¬ 
kets for bird nests (Rossbach 1973: 106, pi. 
127), but these are not mentioned by Sofue 
(Sofue et al. 1976: 194, pi 1). These re¬ 
semble the coiled basket from Hokkaido 
illustrated by Montandon (1937: 96, pi. 26e). 
Perhaps the more recent Montandon ex¬ 
ample, which differs from the bundle-coiled 
Kurile Ainu coiled ware, was borrowed from 
the Japanese. 
43 / AINU BASKETRY TRADITION 305 
Ainu Baskets with 
Japanese Prototypes 
A few examples of anomalous baskets, which 
seem to be Japanese in origin, have been 
reported for the Ainu. By far the most widely 
reported is the basket bag made of matting, 
also called saranip. Kayano (1978: 204) uses 
the Japanese term "jutsu," which means "ordi¬ 
nary," to describe the loom-woven baskets in 
his text (as opposed to the twined type we 
have described above, which he calls by the 
special term chie-oshke-saranip in Ainu). They 
are made like cjoza, the ordinary Japanese 
mats, which are woven on a simple upright 
loom. The loom, known for centuries in 
Japan, Korea, and China, has been in use in 
Hokkaido at least since the seventeenth cen¬ 
tury, and indeed, according to Kazuyoshi 
Ohtsuka (personal communication 1998), the 
stone weights used for looms, called pit 
in Ainu, have been excavated from pre-Ainu 
sites of the Satsumon period. 
The warp of the mats is made of bul¬ 
rushes and the weft of dried and twisted elm or 
the inner bark of linden (Hilger 1971: 79). 
Once finished, the mat is sewn into a cylinder 
to make the body of the basket bag, and the 
bottom is bent inward and secured to form the 
base. A traditional saranip border of braided 
weft strands is then added to form the rim of 
the basket. Still found commonly in Hokkaido 
Ainu households in the 1970s, the mat saranip 
is used for carrying as well as for storage. Mat 
saranip come in many sizes, from the small pon- 
saranip with a capacity of about two quarts (1.8 
liters) to the enormous totta, an approximately 
125-gallon (630 liters) storage basket (Hilger 
1971: 80,- Kayano 1978: 126-29). 
Another type of Ainu basket that may 
be borrowed from the Japanese is made in 
checkerwork, also called plaiting, which is the 
simplest form of weaving (fig. 43.7). A set of 
warp strands is laid out horizontally and weft 
strands of the same dimensions are woven 
in and out of the warps (Mason 1970: 223). 
Checkerwork baskets, made in the regular 
twined-basketry-bag shape (narrower at the 
bottom) and also in a stiffer, square-shaped 
variety (Kayano 1978: 126, 205), have been 
published by twentieth-century ethnogra¬ 
phers such as Montandon (1937: pi 26d, f). 
Like mat saranip, they may be a recent phe¬ 
nomenon in Hokkaido. Montandon also 
illustrates a basket made in lattice caning 
(1937: 103, pi. 26f) that he found in two 
Hokkaido villages. Lattice caning is a typi¬ 
cally Japanese technique, but whether the 
basket was copied from the Japanese or 
was Japanese-made is unknown,- in any case, 
lattice-caned baskets are not part of tradi¬ 
tional Ainu culture. 
Regional Specificity 
There are still many unanswered questions 
about the distribution of Ainu basket types. 
This is due in large part to the sketchy 
information in early accounts, inadequate 
documentation of museum examples, and/or 
historical circumstances, in particular the 
forced removal of the Kurile and Sakhalin 
groups and the question of which basketry 
traditions they brought with them and which 
had been practiced in Hokkaido all along. 
Descriptions of types, techniques, and 
functions of baskets in the nineteenth-century 
literature are minimal, but there are a number 
of helpful illustrations of baskets in these 
accounts. Illustrations of Ainu life, particularly 
early Ainu-e paintings, often include illustra¬ 
tions of baskets. For example, a catalogue 
from the Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan 
(Tokyo National Museum of History) includes 
two Ainu-e plates showing twined saranip 
(1993: 53, pi. 2a, b). Rinzo Torii (1919: fig. 53) 
includes a photograph of two Ainu women 
making baskets,- in the same photo is a man 
making a house model, a commodity nor¬ 
mally made only for outsiders, which sug¬ 
gests that basketry, too, may have been made 
as souvenirs as well as for Ainu consump¬ 
tion (Torii 1919: pi. VXII-C). Finally, a late- 
nineteenth-century Japanese illustration of an 
Ainu house interior includes a twined basket 
with its characteristic rimloops (Tokyo 
Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan 1993: 9, pi. 9). 
The twined-basketry bag seems to have 
been made in all three locations (Kreiner and 
Olschleger 1987: 59). Compared to baskets 
from the Hokkaido and Kurile Ainu, however, 
examples from Sakhalin are rarely mentioned 
in the ethnographic literature and are sparsely 
represented in museum collections. These 
small numbers mirror the paucity of ethno¬ 
graphic data from Sakhalin generally. One 
possible explanation for the lack of artifacts is 
that Sakhalin was the main conduit of trade 
between China and Japan, and thus the local 
Ainu had greater access to such imports as the 
iron pots and lacquerware that replaced 
basketry and pottery in small-scale societies 
across the world (Harrison 1954: 291). 
Of the few Sakhalin saranip that have 
30 6 LIVING ARTS / N GRAB URN AND M . LEE 
43.9 Modern Yup’ik Basket 
Rita Pitka Blumenstein, a Yup'ik 
Eskimo artist, has been making 
coiled baskets since childhood. This 
example shows Yup’ik-style 
checkerwork decorations similar to 
those found on Koryak, Itei'men, 
Labrador Inuit, and Ainu coiled 
baskets. The fact that coil basketry 
appears to be only a few hundred 
years old in the Kuriles and Hokkaido 
suggests that this tradition might 
have been introduced by Ainu 
contacts with peoples of Kamchatka, 
possibly with the assistance of early 
explorers and whalers active in these 
regions in the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries. (R. Blumenstein 
Collection) 
been reported (e.g., Kreiner 1993: 29), most 
appear to have been made of dried nettles 
(Urtica takedana) rather than the grass com¬ 
monly used as material in the Kuriles or 
the elm and linden bark used in Hokkaido. 
It also may be that the Sakhalin Ainu used 
birch-bark baskets like those of the Nivkhi 
of northern Sakhalin. This is suggested by 
an illustration of two birch-bark specimens 
collected in Sakhalin at the turn of the 
century (Kreiner and Olschleger 1987: 37, 
fig. 22, 63-64, pi. 56-57). 
Ainu and North Pacific Traditions 
The foregoing described several types of 
Ainu basketry and considered the relationship 
between them and the basketwork of the 
neighboring Japanese. Two types of Ainu 
basketry—the twined-basketry bags (saranip) 
and the less-common coiled ware (tenki) — 
do not have Japanese prototypes. This raises 
a final question: what is the relationship 
between Ainu twined and coiled ware and 
that of other nearby peoples? 
Twining 
Wide distribution as well as archaeological 
and historical evidence support the claim 
that twined-basketry bags similar to the Ainu 
saranip occur widely throughout the North 
Pacific (Koya 1937,- Mason 1970: 397, pi. 
138-40,- Montandon 1937: 107-1 10,- Popov 
1954; Torii 1919: 77-89). Archaeologically, 
shreds of twining have been excavated from 
late prehistoric sites along the coast of the 
Chukotka Peninsula (Sergei Arutiunov, per¬ 
sonal communication). In the Aleutian 
Islands, excavations in the Kagamil caves 
have yielded twined fragments, including at 
least one open twined-grass carrying basket 
(Dali 1878: pi. 7). Elsewhere in Alaska 
twined ware is documented for the prehis¬ 
toric populations from Point Barrow to the 
Alaska Peninsula (Giddings 1964: 70). Far¬ 
ther south, on the northern tip of the Olym¬ 
pic Peninsula, open-twined fragments dating 
from circa A.D. 1350-1500 have been exca¬ 
vated at Ozette (Gleeson and Grosso 1976: 
fig. 15). Even without evidence that twining 
was used for basketry bags in all cases, this 
widespread distribution certainly suggests 
that its practitioners may have belonged to a 
larger, culturally related group. 
This evidence is bolstered by the 
distribution of twined-basketry bags during 
the historic period. Closed twined-basketry 
bags of grass or woven nettle fiber are found 
among the Ainu's closest Siberian neighbors, 
the Kamchadal (Itel'mens) and the Maritime 
Koryak (Jochelson 1908: 633-37, 708). 
Braided borders are known for the Koryak 
(Popov 1954: 117, pi. 24), though large soft 
bags of other types were equally common, 
especially close-twined bags decorated with 
allover geometric designs made by inserting 
darker-colored warp-strands (Jochelson 
1908: 707). 
The most striking similarities to the 
Ainu saranip, however, are found on the 
opposite side of Bering Strait, among the 
Aleuts and the Central Yup'ik (Eskimos) 
of the Bering Sea (Nelson 1 899: 202,• 
Shapsnikoff and Hudson 1974). The Aleut 
examples are cylindrical, open-twined, 
and share the same looped and braided rim 
finish with the Ainu. In construction tech¬ 
niques, the Central Yup'ik twined basket (fig. 
43.8) is virtually indistinguishable from Aleut 
and Ainu examples. 
One compelling historical fact links 
Aleut and Ainu twined weaving. According 
43/AINU BASKETRY TRADITION 307 
to Valerii Shubin (1994), the Russian Ameri¬ 
can Company sent Aleut and Koniag Eskimo 
sea-otter hunters to Urup, Simushir, and 
Shumshu Islands, the northernmost Kurile 
Islands, between 1828 and 1870. Shubin does 
not list twined-basketry fragments among his 
findings of 10,000 archaeological objects, 
whether because of seeming insignificance, 
because none survived, or because none ap¬ 
peared in the excavations (Shubin 1994: 341— 
44). He does note, however, that Aleut and 
Koniag women were sent along with the 
hunters in the migrations of the 1820s and 
1830s (Shubin 1994: 338). Assuming that 
cross-fertilization could have occurred at this 
time, it is unclear in which direction the 
twined-basketry bags traveled. On one hand, 
Murakami had collected one Ainu saranip 
earlier (Ezo-shima kikan, cited in Tanisawa and 
Sasaki 1982: 170),- on the other, William 
Healy Dali excavated fragments of a twined 
basket in the Kagamil caves in the Aleutians 
in the 1870s. Whether these fragments have 
been radiocarbon-dated is unknown. Thus, 
Shubin's research raises as many questions as 
it answers, though it does provide us with 
one definite point in time when a trans- 
Beringian cross-fertilization of culture could 
have taken place. In the broader context, 
then, the Ainu examples seem to be the 
westernmost occurrence of a weaving tech¬ 
nique with a scattered distribution along the 
Pacific Rim from Ainu-occupied Hokkaido to 
northern California. 
Coiled Basketry 
Compared to twined basketry, the bundle- 
coiled grass basketry practiced by the Ainu 
has had a more limited temporal and spatial 
distribution across the North Pacific. Ainu 
coiled basketry seems to have occurred only 
marginally—if at all—on Sakhalin and was 
limited mainly to the Kuriles,- some later 
examples were collected in Hokkaido, where 
they probably were made by basketmakers 
from the northern islands or their descen¬ 
dants who resettled there. 
Coiling was probably introduced to 
the Kurile Ainu by way of the Kamchadal 
(Itel'men) because the two groups jointly 
occupied the southernmost tip of the 
Kamchatka Peninsula as well as the Kurile 
Islands according to Stepan Krasheninnikov, 
who explored the area between 1735 and 
1741. He points out that Shumshu, the 
nearest of the Kuriles, was occupied jointly 
by Kamchadal and Ainu, and that the extent 
of intermarriage between them made it 
difficult to distinguish one from the other 
(Krasheninnikov 1776: 3, 58, 70, 195, 295, 
311, see also Kreiner and Olschleger 1987: 
13 and Montandon 1937: 1 10). Both the 
Kamchadal and the Maritime Koryak to 
the north of them are known to have prac¬ 
ticed coiled basketry. In the Jesup Expedi¬ 
tion collections deposited at the American 
Museum of Natural History, New York, are 
fifteen Koryak coiled grass or nettle baskets 
and three from the Kamchadal (Lee 1995: 66 
and Lee research notes),- they are virtually 
indistinguishable from one another and 
closely resemble Ainu coiled grassware 
(Montandon 1937: 107-109,- Torii 1919: 
183, pi. 52). Krasheninnikov illustrates two 
Maritime Koryak examples that are clearly 
part of this same tradition (Krasheninnikov 
1776: 218). Moreover, the Eskimos of west¬ 
ern Alaska began making baskets (fig. 43.9) 
that closely resemble the Koryak coiled ware 
(Nelson 1899) as early as the 1870s, a period 
of lively trade between American whalers 
and traders and various native groups on 
both sides of Bering Strait and as far south as 
the Sea of Okhotsk (Lee 1995: 64). 
It seems likely that coiling spread to 
the Ainu from Kamchatka and that the tech¬ 
nique was established in this area far more 
recently than twining,- not only was its dis¬ 
tribution more limited, but there is no con¬ 
vincing evidence that coiling was known in 
prehistoric times on either side of Bering 
Strait (Lee 1995: 57). The existence of coil¬ 
ing in the North Pacific, of which the Ainu 
coiled baskets serve as the southwestern 
boundary, is evidence of intergroup trading 
connections facilitated by the broader Asian 
or European-Asian "world systems" economy 
trade that took hold in Siberia during the 
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centu¬ 
ries (Lee and Graburn 1997). This system 
created a web of interdependent relationships 
between the peoples of Japan, the East Asian 
mainland, the Ainu homelands, the Kamchakta 
Peninsula, and northeastern Siberia. 
308 LIVING ARTS/ N. GRABURN AND M. LEE 
44/A Personal 
Rebirth 
through Ainu 
Traditional 
Basketry 
Nobliko Tsuda 
My grandparents are Matoku 
and Saki Miyamoto, who lived 
in Shiraoi. My father was 
Ainu, born as the second son, 
and my mother is Japanese. When I was with 
grandmother Saki-fucbi 1 came in contact with 
Ainu customs for the first time. My earliest 
memory of my grandfather Matoku-ehis/.k is of 
sitting on his lap, running my fingers through 
his long beard while listening to him tell a 
story. He was making the image of a big wave 
as he told me a story about how difficult it 
was to shoot a gun on the sea, because the 
waves rocked the boat. He told me that he 
had been to northwestern America to catch 
sea otter and he specifically mentioned the 
coffee he drank there—it must have been 
very fine coffee because he never forgot that 
memory. He also talked about swordfish 
(sirikap; fig. 44.2). I can vividly remember him 
saying: "You see, a very large fish called sirikap 
44.1 Making a Basket 
As part of their activities at the 
Louisiana Purchase Centennial 
Exposition held in St. Louis in 
1904, Hokkaido Ainu demonstrated 
techniques for producing twined 
and coiled baskets for fair visitors. 
Shirake and Yazu demonstrate the 
use of a suspension yoke to make 
a twined-grass basket in this 
photograph by Jesse Tarbox Beals. 
(NAA 98-10382) 
swims in the ocean. The eyes of sirikap were so 
big, and while the entire fish is fine-tasting, 
the eyes were the most delicious part." 
Last year 1 had occasion to talk about 
my grandparents to Mr. Okino of the Agricul¬ 
ture Department Museum at Hokkaido 
University. After listening to my stories, he 
said, "Let's go see the eyes of the sirikap," and 
he took me to his specimen room. Obviously 
there were no "delicious eyes" on the skeleton 
hanging from the ceiling of the room, but 
there were two big holes wider than Mr. 
Okino's outstretched fingers. I was excited to 
have confirmed that story from my child¬ 
hood. I thank both of my grandparents for 
leaving me these memories. 
My uncle's wife was very good at knit¬ 
ting,- she knitted using thread connected to 
the edge of a braid hanging from the ceiling, 
and as her fingers moved in what seemed like 
complicated dances the braid developed little 
by little (fig. 44,1). When I was probably 
eight years old or so, I remember her knitting 
a braid from which to hang a sword (emushat). 
It was as if 1 were watching magic. 
I became interested in Ainu knitting 
when I was about twenty-two years old. 1 
visited the Ainu elder, Tare Urakawa-/«cLi, to 
learn how to make the pattern for the emushat 
and the backpack strap (tar). It was in 
October 1968, and I stayed overnight at her 
place in Urakawa, learning knitting and 
chatting about this and that. When Tare 
learned that I often did not feel well, she 
opened the door of the wood heater, adjusted 
the wood with an iron poker, and twisted a 
thin line of white and black threads that she 
held with her teeth. Then, in the Ainu 
manner, she prayed, gesturing with the 
twisted thread three times toward the burning 
fire. After that she said, "1 wish you good 
health," and she tied the twine around my 
wrist. I later learned that the thread was an 
amulet (ekaeka,- fig. 44.3). 
For twenty years after that incident 
1 was not involved with Ainu culture because 
1 got married and was busy raising my chil¬ 
dren, but later I began to think of my heri¬ 
tage. I thought that objects that were stored 
in museums might reveal aspects of my ances¬ 
tral culture, so I went to the Agriculture De¬ 
partment Museum of Hokkaido Llniversity to 
study them. I completed a replica of one item 
in two weeks, although it was hard work,- 
when it was done, I was deeply moved by the 
fact that I had just made a copy of one of the 
tools the Ainu people had valued since the 
old days. However, I was also overwhelmed 
by a sadness 1 could not control: I neither 
speak nor understand the Ainu language,- 1 did 
not know how Ainu people think and behave,- 
I did not understand various things I would 
have known if I had been brought up in an 
Ainu environment. That was the moment 
when 1 truly understood that I had to study 
my culture. Gradually I realized that I could 
learn directly from elders in the community 
who still knew the old ways, in addition to 
getting knowledge from books and material 
44/REBIRTH through basketry 309 
44.2 Ikupasuy with 
Swordfish 
Swordfish, along with whales, orcas, 
and bears are among the large animals 
that were most important for Ainu 
subsistence and in their spiritual life. 
This prayer stick (ikupasuy), which has 
a lacquer finish, combines foreign 
symbols—a yin-yang motif and 
hearts—with a native motif, swordfish. 
(BMA 12.317) 
44.3 Female Spirit Guardian 
The power of this amulet is greatly 
enhanced by its sacred lanyard made of 
twisted strands of black-and-white cord. 
Such cords (eka eka) were made and used 
by women to help ward off evil spirits, 
especially those dangerous to health and 
fertility. (AMS 61022) 
goods. In 1990 I was able to begin visiting 
many people. 
Through various encounters with 
older women I learned a great deal about 
handcrafts. Nabe Shirosawa of Chitose in 
Hokkaido gave me a particularly valuable 
lesson in May 1992, the year before she 
died, when she was eighty-six years old she 
taught me how to weave a grass basket 
(saranip) from the recollections of her youth. 
Until then saranip weaving had died out in 
the Chitose region, but through her instruc¬ 
tions I was able to continue the tradition. 
The death of anyone who can orally 
relay traditions is a great loss for the Ainu 
culture. The government did not prohibit us 
from making Ainu crafts,- the inadequate 
preservation of Ainu traditional knowledge 
was due to the prohibition of the Ainu 
language and the ban on traditional meth¬ 
ods of hunting and salmon fishing. It is also 
true that the need for making daily necessi¬ 
ties by hand decreased because of the avail¬ 
ability of cheap, machine-made Japanese 
products. While the technique for weaving 
a sword strap was not inherited because 
swords are no longer used, the technique 
has survived, and the number of people who 
can weave the strap is increasing. Some 
technologies that once were thought to be 
lost are now being revived by the repro¬ 
duction of museum items and artifacts, but 
these skills must be integrated into our daily 
lives even though they may not be everyday 
necessities. Through 
efforts to preserve original 
techniques, Ainu culture can 
be regained. 
Handcrafts of Ainu Women 
The Ainu people, who led a hunting and gather¬ 
ing existence, had to make their daily necessities 
by hand, including their clothes, mgs, bags, and 
straps. Lacking measuring devices, they used body 
parts, such as the width or length of fingers or a 
hand, for measuring. 
Woven baskets (saranip) were used for 
carrying food and as containers for food 
storage (figs. 44.4, 44.6). Made of such 
materials as linden or cattails, their size ranges 
from large bags for food preservation to small 
ones for holding items like cigarettes or 
lighters,- they do not have lids and their rims 
are sometimes braided. There are two ways to 
make them, one using tools and the other not. 
The method Nabe Shirosawa employed 
was the latter (figs. 44.5). She had never made 
a saranip herself, but as a child she had 
watched others making them. Her power of 
recollection was amazing, and she taught me, 
as follows: prepare the warp and weft,- make 
the bottom part first,- attach the ring-formed 
part, which was made according to the length 
of the bottom- tie the ring with a hanging 
thread and suspend it,- weave the body part as 
it hangs. The trick to this process is hooking 
the ring and hanging string. A simple ring is 
made using a twig attached to the bottom of 
3 40 LIVING ARTS/N TSUDA 
44.4 Woven Basket 
This twined elm-bast basket (saranip), 
collected in Piratori, Hokkaido, by 
Bashford Dean for the American 
Museum of Natural History in 1900, 
shows a complicated decorative 
weaving pattern. (AMNH 70/4094) 
the saranip, to which the hanging string is 
hooked, then dangled. The hanging string is 
measured according to the length of both 
arms extended, and the ring at the bottom is 
tied at the end of the string. The strings for 
the second and the third locations are passed 
through from the other side, and the end 
of the string is tied and fastened at the fourth 
place. The first and fourth locations are fixed, 
but the second and third are adjustable so that 
the strings can be set at the same length. 
Toyo Sasamura showed me another 
method that suspended the starting ring with 
four strings rather than one. She told me a 
story: "Once, when I went out with my elder 
sisters for mountain work, it started raining 
suddenly, so we waited for the rain to stop in 
a hut. Someone said, 'Let's have fun,' and we 
began making saranip, really fast!" They used 
bark from a nearby tree, which they peeled 
with a hatchet. 
Saranip can also be woven with an 
44/REBIRTH THROUGH BASKETRY 
upright loom (iteseni), which is also used for 
mat weaving (fig. 44.7). In order to use this 
loom, two stones (pit) are needed for each 
warp. If you weave using ten warps, twenty 
stones will be necessary. The structure is 
made of two three-legged tree limbs with a 
detachable straight limb as a cross member so 
it can come apart for easy transport. 
Ainu women handcrafted various other 
items, including: skin clothes and footwear,- 
bags for the transport, gathering, and storing 
of food and for storing rugs and bedding,- and 
mats, which were used not only as floor cov¬ 
erings but also to help insulate the walls of 
the house. The materials for these products 
were secured by both men and women. 
People gathered tree bark in the spring, and 
after it fermented and was rinsed with water it 
was dried and stripped into threads for mak¬ 
ing fabric. Grasses and cattails, the materials 
used for mats, were also gathered in summer 
and dried in a shady and breezy place. Men 
31l 
44.5 Basketry Technique 
These diagrams by the author illustrate 
stages in the production of saranip 
using a suspension system, (courtesy 
of Nobuko Tsuda) 
44.6 Plaited Basket 
Baskets using the same twining and 
rim-braiding techniques found in elm- 
bast baskets could also be made with 
strips of reed, bulrush, or thin wood 
splints. Although more fragile than elm- 
bast baskets, plaited baskets could be 
produced quickly and were handy for 
storing clothing and household effects. 
44.6 
44.7 
and women also caught salmon and dried 
their skins for making boots and rainproof 
garments. Throughout the rest of the year 
these materials, which were indispensible to 
Ainu life, were processed and produced, espe¬ 
cially during the winter when it was difficult to 
work outside. It was during this period that Ainu 
women took up their looms and needles and 
began the laborious, artful task of producing the 
garments whose design and decoration signified, 
more than any other product, the identity of the 
Ainu people. 
44.7 Weaving with a Loom 
Saranip may also be produced with a 
standing loom frame, which was more 
frequently employed for making large floor 
and wall mats as illustrated in the 
photograph of the artist’s grandmother, 
(courtesy of Nobuko Tsuda) 
312 LIVING ARTS / N. TSUDA 
45 Clothing and 
Ornamentation 
Mari Kodama 
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE FROM EVERY CORNER 
of the world are known for their artistic 
ingenuity in the areas of clothing and 
fashion. It boggles the modern mind to 
see the creativity of our ancestors' dress, 
whoever they might have been. From the 
earliest times clothes were always more than a 
way to keep warm and dry,- fashion was a by¬ 
product of invention, personal expression, and 
the influence of other cultures. Ainu fashion 
(fig. 45.1) certainly fits this description. 
Gender roles determined the form of 
artistic expression practiced by members of 
Ainu society, as it did in many ancient cultures. 
Women, by virtue of the fact that they made all 
garments and other fabric items, were totally 
responsible for clothing design, which is one of 
the most distinctive and public forms of Ainu art. 
Designs, decorative features, and the names of 
these varied depending on region, intermarriage, 
individual creativity, and materials available. 
45.1 A Variety of Fashions 
Ainu seamstresses produced a wide 
variety of clothing types with designs 
that varied from region to region. This 
illustration from Shimanojo Murakami's 
Curious Sights of Ezo Island (1799) 
shows Hokkaido Ainu wearing many 
different types of clothing, from fur and 
feather to fabrics, while performing a 
circle dance. (HML) 
Clothing materials can be divided into 
two general categories: those of animal origin 
and those of plant origin. A third category 
involves materials that the Ainu did not 
procure locally from natural sources but 
obtained from Honshu or the Asian conti¬ 
nent, either as intermediate fabrics or as 
finished products. Clothes made of animal 
materials include hide—from both land and 
marine mammals—birdskin, and fishskin 
garments,- plant products were derived from 
bark and grass fibers. The Ainu also made 
clothes from cotton obtained from neighbor¬ 
ing regions, while silk was introduced only in 
such finished products as textiles from 
Honshu and cloth imported by Santan traders 
from the continent via Sakhalin (Ezonisbiki, 
calico, muslin, velvet, and other Chinese 
cloth) (see S. Sasaki, this volume). 
Animal-hide materials were derived 
from land and sea animals. Land animals 
whose hides were used for clothing included 
bear, deer, raccoon dog, fox, dog, and rabbit. 
Besides providing material for clothing, these 
hides were used as outerwear in cold weather, 
sometimes with fur intact and sometimes with 
the fur removed. Among the sea mammals, 
seal, sea otter, fur seal, and sea lion were often 
used in the clothing of the Sakhalin Ainu , 
whose women also used animal fur for their 
hairbands. Ainu-e, the prints and drawings that 
provide some of the earliest visual evidence 
about this culture, include images of Hok¬ 
kaido Ainu wearing animal-hide clothing as 
late as 1800. 
Like other North Pacific native peoples, 
the Ainu made durable and stylish clothes 
from a variety of fish (see Dubreuel this 
volume), including salmon, Sakhalin trout, ito 
(Japanese buchen), and others,- several dozen 
fishskins were required to make one garment. 
For birdskin clothes (fig. 45.6), skins (with 
their feathers attached) of seabirds such as 
tufted puffin, goose, seagull, and albatross 
were used to produce light, warm, and 
waterproof garments. Birdskin clothing, worn 
primarily in the Kuriles, where land mammals 
were mostly absent, is extremely rare even in 
museum collections. 
The Ainu people utilized the wild game 
they hunted for more than just hides to make 
clothing and ornaments. Of course, the meat 
and internal organs of the animals were food 
sources, and bone, ivoiy, and horn were made 
into utensils, hunting tools, and sewing 
needles. Sewing thread made from both 
animal sinew and plant fibers was an indis¬ 
pensable commodity. 
Two types of cloth were made from 
plants: bark and grass. Bark cloth (attush) was 
made by weaving fiber obtained from the 
endodermis of the elm tree,- the Japanese 
linden and the harunire (litmus davidiana planch 
var. japonica Nakai,- chikisani [Ainu]), were also 
sometimes used, but the quality was inferior 
to that of the elm. Garments made from bark 
cloth (fig. 45.7) were worn as formal clothes 
if they were appliqued or embroidered, 
45/CLOTHING AND ORNAMENTATION 313 
45.2, 45.3, 45.4 Preparing Ohyo 
In addition to its use for making cord, 
rope, and basketry, the inner bark (bast 
fiber) of the Japanese elm (fig. 45.2) 
provided fiber for weaving attush. the 
staple material used to make Ainu 
clothing before cotton and silk fabrics 
were imported. Preparing ohyo involved 
stripping bark from the elm (fig. 45.3) 
while leaving enough so that the tree 
would survive. The soft inner bark was 
then separated from the outer bark and 
submerged in water for several days, 
as shown in this illustration (fig. 45.4) 
from a nineteenth-century copy of 
Shimanojo Murakami's Curious Sights 
of Ezo Island. Within a few days the 
fibers loosened and could be peeled 
into strands that could be used to 
make thread and cord, (courtesy of M. 
Kodama; HML; NMNH 150677) 
45.4 
nonpatterned ones were used as casual wear. 
The fiber for grass cloth came from the 
endodermis of the nettle plant found growing 
wild in the fields (fig. 45.5a); like elm bark, 
these fibers were twisted into thread, which 
was then woven on a loom. Such fabrics were 
once woven in Sakhalin, but because this 
technique has been lost, nettle weaving is 
known only from old documents and 
existing garments. 
Gathering and Treating 
Bark-Fiber Materials 
The lengthy process of making attush begins 
with gathering plant materials and process¬ 
ing them as thread. To test the quality of the 
fiber a small cut is made into the bark of a 
young elm tree whose surface has not 
matured and become rough. Once the quality 
of the hark has been determined, a cut of 
about five to six inches (twelve to fifteen 
centimeters) is made and the strip of bark is 
peeled off (fig. 45.3). 
After the bark is peeled, its outer surface 
is immediately removed, for once it dries it 
will not come off. The inner bark is then 
soaked in a hot spring—or for about a week 
or longer in a slow-moving stream or swamp 
water—to soften it (fig. 45.4) so that it will 
be easy to split. Once the bark is divided into 
several pieces it is taken out of the water and 
its sliminess is removed by running water,- if 
this slimy layer is not removed thoroughly, 
the bark cannot be peeled thin because the 
layers will stick to each other when dried. 
The washed inner bark, which may have as 
LIVING ARTS/M KODAMA 
45.5 a-e From Fiber to Fabric 
Once elm bast was separated into 
strands, it was twisted into two- 
strand thread and rolled into balls 
or skeins. Women performed the 
laborious task of twisting thread, 
documented in this Ainu-e from a 
nineteenth-century copy of 
Shimanojo Murakami's Illustra¬ 
tions of Ezo Livelihood. 
In Hokkaido and Sakhalin fiber 
was also extracted from the nettle 
plant; it was obtained by a slightly 
different process than that used 
for elm bast. Bronislaw Pilsudski's 
1903-05 photograph (a) illus¬ 
trates nettle-fiber preparation. 
Garments made with nettle fiber 
were finer and lighter in color than 
rough, golden-colored attush and 
created a striking contrastive 
ground for embroidery. 
Cloth was woven on a backstrap 
loom so simple and efficient that 
it could be packed into a small 
bag. This loom could produce 
narrow straps and belts, or bolts 
of cloth up to 15 to 20 centimeter 
wide. A backstrap loom is 
tensioned by a strap or, in the 
Ainu version, by a wood brace that 
fits around the back of the 
operator's waist. By leaning back 
the operator causes the warp to 
tighten and the various parts of 
the loom can function. The loom 
parts illustrated here (d) from left 
to right include a warp guide 
(wosa), separator (kamakap), warp 
rolling post (ahunkani), weft spool 
and heddle (sokobo; pekauuni), 
weft beater (attush-pera), cloth roll 
stick (itumamuni), and backstrap 
brace (ishitomushni). The spatula¬ 
shaped weft beater (e), used to 
spread the warps and tamp in the 
wefts, was often carved with 
beautiful Ainu designs. 
(a = NA A47380; b = NAA 47545; 
c = HML; d = courtesy of M. 
Kodama; e = PEM E3105) 
45/ CLOTH I NG AND ORNAMENTATION 3 15 
Ob 
i nl jjgp* 
* 
RL 1 
' 'KSm .tvJB 
iiwfflS 
PI' - 
" ' % 
tsT * m 
Bjp4i£ •, V 
Wy " i n 
pjT 
( 
T|ll. 
; Wk 
-wSfc' ts 
HL& 
45.6 Duckskin Robe 
Ainu living in the northern Kuriles did 
not have access to the hides of such 
fur-bearing animals as bears and deer 
to produce warm winter clothing, so 
they made use of a readily available 
resource: ducks. Skins of ducks, cor¬ 
morants, gulls, puffins, albatrosses, 
ravens, and other marine birds were 
often used for clothing by island-dwell¬ 
ing peoples throughout the North in 
places where land mammals were 
absent or rare. In addition to being 
plentiful, duckskins could be pieced 
together to produce beautiful patterns. 
This robe, collected from the Kuriles by 
Alexander Agassiz before 1893, is one 
of the few Ainu feather robes extant. 
(PMC 51603) 
many as nine layers, is dried for four to five days 
in the sun. Fibers from the inner bark are long 
and must be split carefully by hand,- they are 
then twisted and tied into a skein (fig. 45.5c). 
Clothing Made from 
Imported Cotton 
Other textiles were introduced to the Ainu 
from nearby areas, typically in the form of old 
cotton remnants and used garments. The 
legend of the Honshu fisherman whose cotton 
clothing was replaced with a hide outfit when 
he was blown ashore in Ainu territory 
illustrates the importance the Ainu placed on 
cotton garments. 
Cotton clothing was made from old 
cotton remnants that were patched together 
into a full robe. The robe would then be 
appliqued with cutouts of silk and other 
materials and embroidered. The length of this 
garment originally was about four inches (ten 
centimeters) below the knee, but as time passed 
it eventually settled at the level of the ankle. 
Such cotton garments open in the front, have 
sleeves, and look identical to a Japanese 
kimono at a glance, but they have neither the 
vertical collar nor the uniformly wide sleeves 
specific to a kimono,- instead, the sleeves taper 
from the armpit to the wrist. 
Tapered sleeves (mojiri) are the most 
common type of sleeve seen on Ainu robes. 
This form was utilized primarily for working 
clothes in Honshu because the angled cut at 
the bottom made it easier to move the arm, 
whereas the square-cut dangling sleeve of the 
Japanese formal kimono interfered with the 
wearer's ability to perform many tasks and so 
signified that the person was at leisure. Ainu 
garments were more practical. Although the 
wide Wajin (Japanese) sleeve is often seen in 
clothing made of attush, only a few cotton 
garments use this sleeve type. Other sleeve 
types that utilize minimal fabric (like the mojiri) 
are tube and boat-bottom. 
316 LIVING ARTS/M. KODAMA 
are then surrounded on both 
sides with white chain-stitching. 
Many cbikarkarpe are still 
worn today in former ports and 
fishing sites on the west coast 
of Hokkaido (fig. 45.9). The 
garments in this region are longer 
and come in two forms: one type 
utilizes men's Japanese kimonos from 
Honshu which are then appliqued and 
embroidered; the other removes the vertical 
collar from the kimonos and adds embroi¬ 
dered applique. The width of the applique of 
this garment is a bit narrow, and the space 
between the appliques is wide. Much of the 
embroidery is done with single chain-stitch. 
Chijiri 
These clothes have embroidered patterns only, 
with no applique (fig. 45.10). In addition to 
cotton, velvet and serge are sometimes used. 
Some chijiri are embroidered over the entire 
surface area,- others have patterns on the upper 
and lower parts of the back or collar and the 
bottom edge of the garment, or on the end of 
the sleeve. In the Asahikawa region, colored 
thread is used for this embroidery, while 
elsewhere monochromatic thread is used 
Ruunpe 
45.7 Attush Robe 
This bark-cloth (attush) robe was 
donated to the Peabody Essex 
Museum in 1916 by six friends: 
Edward S. Morse, W. S. Bigelow, 
C. S. Rea, W. C. Endicott, P. Lowell, 
and R. Osgood. Although the place 
and date of its origins were not 
recorded, it was probably collected 
in Hokkaido in the late nineteenth 
century. (PEM E16503) 
Cotton clothes are categorized into four 
groups, described below: cbikarkarpe, chijiri, 
ruunpe, and kaparamip. Differences in these four 
are mainly in the type of cotton used, 
appliques, and cutout patterns, but there are 
many regional differences as well. 
Chikarkarpe 
Cbikarkarpe fall into three different categories. 
One type still in use in the Shizunai region is 
made of thick striped cotton (shima) and is 
appliqued all over with black or dark-blue 
cotton. Another type is made of a soft cotton 
with dyed designs. It is appliqued with black or 
dark-blue cotton at the hip area and in the 
upper and lower back,- the back midsection 
does not have a design In the Saru River area, 
the chest of the garment also remains without 
ornamentation. Many garments from this 
region have a distinctive style of patterning at 
the bottom edge: red thread is used to make 
embroidered patterns in the central area which 
Among Ainu clothing, ruunpe (figs. 45.11, 
45.12) is the most colorful and intricate and 
boasts a large amount of applique and em¬ 
broidery. The applique cloth consists of a 
narrow band that is sewn straight or turned 
in right angles to make patterns. In addition 
to red silk bands, which were most com¬ 
monly used, applique was applied to rem¬ 
nants of kosote (a type of muslin), calico, and 
white cotton hand towels with narrow 
stripes. These garments are made of old 
cotton remnants with a narrow extension 
under both arms to extend the width of the 
design, and sometimes extra cloth is added at 
the hip. The ruunpe collar takes two forms: in 
one version a cloth is attached to the back 
collar area and is then embroidered,- in the 
other, more applique is sewn to the collar 
and then embroidered. The front area has a 
simple collar-type applique. The edge of the 
applique is sewn to the garment in a manner 
similar to the method used in making 
fishskin clothes among the Sakhalin Ainu, 
the Nivkhi, and the Nanai, who live in 
northern Sakhalin and near the mouth of the 
Amur River. The applique pattern seen at the 
45 / CLOTHING AND ORNAMENTATION 31 7 
45.9 Chikarkarpe Robe 
(AMS) 
45.9-45.14 Ainu Robe Series 
Most of the robes in this series illustrate 
prominent styles used by the Hokkaido 
Ainu; the nettle-fiber cloth in fig. 45.14 
is characteristic of Sakhalin. 
45.8 Ainu Robe and Japanese Kimono 
Ainu robe (a) and Japanese kimono (b) 
shapes are illustrated in these two 
drawings by M. Kodama. The major 
difference between them is that Ainu 
garments have tapered rather than 
square-cut sleeves; there are other 
differences as well, especially in their 
decorative treatment. 
45.15 Spearing Octopus 
This Ainu-e from Teiryo Kodama’s 
eighteenth-century Scenes from Ezo 
Island shows Ainu gathering food at the 
seashore. The figure spearing an octo¬ 
pus is wearing a gold-colored bark-cloth 
(attush) garment while the middle 
figure holding the basket is wearing 
clothing made from bleached nettle 
fiber, (courtesy of M. Kodama) 
318 
45.10 Chijiri Robe 
(AMS) 
bottom edge of the garment and the tip of the 
sleeve also resembles designs used by the 
Sakhalin Ainu, suggesting some kind of con¬ 
nection between them. 
Ruunpe are seen on the Pacific coast 
(Uchiura [Volcano] Bay) of Hokkaido from 
Yakumo to Abuta, Usu, and Shiraoi, while 
people in the Hidaka region do not even 
know the word. Ruunpe are of several types: 
the applique may be made only from narrow 
pieces of cloth, or, as in Shiraoi, made with 
patterns cut out of twelve-inch-wide (thirty 
45.11 Ruunpe Robe 
(AMS) 
centimeters) pieces of muslin, silk, or calico, 
with remnants applied to the upper back part 
of the garment. Many of these remnants are 
red, but other colors are also used. One of the 
characteristics of some ruunpe is a contrasting 
color thread that is placed alongside the 
applique, and this thread and the applique are 
cord-stitched together. This method is often 
employed on ruunpe using silk, muslin, and 
calico applique. 
Sewing thread is made from such plants 
as nettle and staff trees (tsuruume modoki; Celastrus 
obiculatus tbuub). The nettle plant is made into 
embroidery thread,- black, white, and red 
cotton thread and colored silk (komacbi) 
thread are also used for ruunpe embroidery. 
Kaparamip 
Kaparamip are cotton clothes with a large 
amount of white cloth appliqued in cutout 
patterns. The layout of the white cloth varies 
depending on the desired pattern. In one type 
the white cloth is used vertically, covering 
from the bottom of the back body to the chest 
LIVING ARTS/M. KODAMA 
45.12 Ruunpe Robe 
(AMS) 
45.13 Kaparamip Robe 
(AMS) 
45.14 Retarpe Robe 
(AMS) 
45.16 Women of Piratori 
In 1909 a collector of Ainu materials 
asked a group of Ainu women from 
Piratori to pose for a picture in their 
ceremonial garments. The woman on 
the left is wearing a robe that Mary 
Sharpies Schaffer purchased for the 
University of Pennsylvania Museum 
(seen in fig. 42.4). It was rare for 
photographs to be taken of Ainu 
using or wearing objects that were 
then acquired by museum collectors, 
(photo by Mary Schaffer, WMCR) 
area of the garment,- in 
another, white cloth is 
used horizontally from 
the back to the front 
of the body. 
Many kaparamip 
are made with these 
methods. Some of the 
earlier styles of 
kaparamip had patterns 
made up of individual 
small pieces of white 
cloth, while others 
were made by 
stitching together small pieces of white 
cotton cloth to make one large applique that 
was then covered with detail stitching. This 
seemed to reflect a time when obtaining large 
quantities of cloth was difficult. 1 used to 
believe that kaparamip had first been made in 
the Shizunai region in the Taisho era (1912— 
1926), but in 1995 Japanese scholars who had 
studied Ainu materials in Russian museums 
convinced me that examples of this style date 
to the nineteenth century. 
Patterns of kaparamip can be divided into 
two principal types: one uses morew, a whorl 
pattern (fig. 45.13),- in the other, the area of 
white cloth is large and the cutout areas are 
small, creating a reverse or negative pattern. 
Another variation has cloth inserts between 
the lining of the garment to give the cutouts 
the illusion of depth. All these types originate 
in the Shizunai region but now have spread to 
all areas of Hokkaido. According to elderly 
people in the Asahikawa area, kaparamip were 
worn during mourning. 
Clothes of the Sakhalin Ainu 
Some Sakhalin Ainu clothes are similar to 
those worn in Hokkaido, while others are 
completely different. Of the clothes made 
of animal material, most of those made of the 
hides of sea mammals (such as seal, fur seal, 
and sea lion) and from fish materials (such as 
Sakhalin trout, salmon, and ito) are unique 
to the Sakhalin Ainu. 
These animal-skin garments are made 
in a "western" style, that is, with a stand-up 
collar, open front, buttons, narrow sleeves, 
and flaring skirt: they are completely 
European in style. On the other hand, 
Sakhalin Ainu fishskin clothes are quite 
similar to those of the Nanai people, who 
live near the estuary of the Amur River, 
which suggests that the Asian continent also 
influenced these clothing forms. One line of 
thread is sewn alongside the applique on 
fishskin garments, a technique also seen on 
the ruunpe of the Hokkaido Ainu. 
Retarpe, the nettle-fiber cloth of Sakhalin, 
is a white or gray textile against which 
embroidery done with colored thread is quite 
striking (fig. 45.14).These grass-fiber clothes 
use patterns and colors characteristic of conti¬ 
nental areas. For example, the fade-resistant 
dyed red cloth used for the applique work was 
made in China. 
Generally, the clothing of Sakhalin Ainu 
utilizes many different types of collars and 
sleeves. Compared to the clothes and 
ornaments of the Hokkaido Ainu, which 
have been greatly influenced by Honshu, 
those of the Sakhalin Ainu seem to be 
strongly influenced by the Ul'chi and Nivkhi 
45 / CLOTHING AND ORNAMENTATION 319 
45.17 Sealskin Robe 
Sealskin garments 
were worn by many 
North Pacific 
coastal peoples, includ¬ 
ing the Ainu. Although this material has 
little insulating property, it was durable 
and attractive. The natural beauty of 
this well-tailored sealskin coat is en¬ 
hanced by colorful trim and embroidery 
done in a Sakhalin style. (PMC 7044) 
who shared the narrow island, as well as the 
clothing of other continental ethnic groups. 
Women's Underclothes and 
Children's Garments 
45.18 Design School 
Every mother taught her daughter tradi¬ 
tional Ainu design motifs and how to 
make clothing, and by the age of twelve 
most girls were already helping with 
clothing production. Gender-based work 
was practiced by most native peoples, 
and garment-making was definitely an 
Ainu woman’s task. (NAA 98-10385) 
Ainu women's underclothes were called mour, 
literally "deer," a sort of one-piece dress with 
an open front,- it is said that in the old days 
they were made of hides. In Kushiro, deerskin 
mour were said to have been worn, which may 
be where the name derived from. Ainu 
women began wearing mour at the age of 
fourteen or fifteen. In some regions, the mour 
worn by an old woman who had enjoyed a 
long life was reused to make clothes for a 
newborn baby, in hopes of giving the child 
a long life. 
Soft materials were used for children's 
clothing, and as noted, clothing for a 
newborn baby was often made from older 
women's underwear. Some historical docu¬ 
ments note that Ainu children were almost 
always kept naked until the age of three or 
four. Older children's clothing was made from 
adults' used attush, which was softer than new 
material. Traditionally the Hokkaido Ainu 
people preferred not to dress their children 
up, but that custom has changed. Sakhalin 
Ainu, on the other hand, traditionally embroi¬ 
dered children's clothes or attached small 
pieces of metal at their bottom of their gar¬ 
ments,- according to older Sakhalin women, 
the sound of these metal chimes kept them 
informed of their children's whereabouts, and 
in most Amur Region cultures, bells and metal 
objects have since ancient times had spiritual 
connections—they either warded off evil 
spirits or attracted friendly ones. 
Designs on Clothes 
For the Ainu the design and ornamentation of 
clothing are not simply for beauty and 
enjoyment. The importance of traditional 
patterns can be seen in the fact that young 
Ainu girls played by drawing patterns in the 
sand and in the ashes of the hearth,- this gave 
them training for making clothes and patterns 
when they grew older. The patterns and 
designs have been passed down along 
maternal lines for generations, from grand¬ 
mothers to mothers, from mothers to daugh¬ 
ters (fig. 45.18). 
The patterns can be categorized by 
method and design. The methods have gener¬ 
ally two types: embroidery and applique. Em¬ 
broidered patterns are applied on most fabric 
items, including garments, headbands, and 
sword straps. Garments, in particular, have 
exquisite applique and cutout patterns that 
use several stitching techniques. According to 
Dr. Sakuzaemon Kodarna, a specialist in em¬ 
broidery, there are eleven basic techniques. By 
combining some of these fundamental meth¬ 
ods, many dozens of stitching combinations 
can be created The eleven basic techniques 
are illustrated in fig. 45.20. 
Applique patterns, called iechunu, are 
made by stitching pieces of cotton or silk 
cloth to the basic garment fabric. The 
applique patterns are categorized as remnant 
applique and cloth-cutout applique Remnant 
applique is applied on clothing such as attusb, 
ruunpe, chikarkarpe, and retarpe,- many of the 
patterns use straight lines, while curved lines 
are few. Cloth-cutout applique patterns are 
made by placing relatively large pieces of 
white cloth over a garment's base fabric and 
then cutting away unwanted pieces to leave a 
positive or negative picturelike pattern that 
was then stitched to the textile. These 
patterns are often seen on kaparamip of the 
Hidaka region and are characterized by many 
curves. 
There are nineteen traditional patterns, 
of which ay us and morew patterns are most 
common. The ayus ("having a thorn") pattern 
is similar in shape to mathematical parenthe¬ 
ses ({ j). A single ayus pattern is never used, 
they are always arrayed in multiples, forming 
320 LIVING ARTS/M KODAMA 
45.19 Ainu Design Motifs 
These nineteen design elements are 
the basic decorative motifs seen on 
Ainu clothing, (courtesy of M. Kodama) 
1. Design pattern with thorns 
2. Whorl design 
3. Whorl design with thorns 
4. Whorl design with many corners 
5-7. Cruciform designs 
8, 9. “Eye" design 
10. Double whorl design 
11. Whorl design with “eyes" 
on both sides 
12. Whorl design with thorns 
13. Whorl design with 
squared-off corners 
14. Bud-shaped design 
15. 16. Blooming flower design 
17. Design of the tip of a whorl 
18. Vinelike design 
19. Bell-shaped design 
45.20 Embroidery Stitches 
Embroidery was usually applied to 
appliqued fabric or occasionally di¬ 
rectly on to the garment itself. The 
eleven most common stitches are 
illustrated here. 
1. Karami (intertwined) stitch or koma 
stitch (Ainu ikarari): couching stitch and 
cord stitch 
2. Kusari (chain) stitch (Ainu oho): 
chain stitch and open chain stitch 
3. Hashiri (running) stitch (Ainu ohoturi): 
running stitch; also occurring as a 
twisted running stitch, used for tacking 
4. Sen stitch (Ainu horkakemash): 
outline stitch 
5. Hajo stitch (no term in Ainu): 
feather stitch 
6. Kata hajo stitch (Ainu earoho): 
single feather stitch 
7. Henkei chidorigake: a variation of 
the couching stitch 
8. Sashi stitch: darning stitch 
9. Kaeshi stitch: back stitch 
10. Henkei hajo stitch: 
closed feather stitch 
11. Juji stitch: cross stitch 
Among these eleven stitches, 
numbers one through six, and 
especially one and two, are most 
commonly employed. 
45.21 Needlecase 
Needles were very important items 
for Ainu women, and they were kept 
safe in specially carved neediecases. 
This small example holds needles in 
a chamber at the base, which slides 
open. The concave sides of the elabo¬ 
rately decorated panel served as a 
thread spool. (BMA 12.789) 
45.20 
continuous lines. This pattern is used in a 
number of ornamentation styles and is an 
important element of Ainu designs. 
The morew pattern is a simple spiral, 
v/hich makes one-and-a-ha!f or fewer circles. 
When one pattern is used independently, 
which is rare, it is placed at the center-line of 
the back; this use of an independent pattern is 
often seen on the hanging part of a woven 
sword strap. Scholars have advanced various 
theories to explain the meaning of the 
patterns, ranging from personal artistic 
expression to animal-form designs, but older 
Ainu women state emphatically that there is no 
hidden meaning and that the abstract patterns 
as a whole are made simply to please the kamuy, 
or gods. Berthold Laufer, the pioneering 
ethnologist of the lower Amur, received a 
virtually identical answer when he asked this 
question of the Sakhalin Nivkhi in 1900. 
Women's and Men's Accoutrements 
As in all other cultures, Ainu use accessories to 
complete their basic complex of dress and 
personal ornamentation, including various 
types of headgear and jewelry that are still 
worn today by Ainu people both in everyday 
and ceremonial life. Womens accoutrements 
included several types of headgear, leggings, 
and jewelry,- attush aprons (fig. 45.24) are also 
a common part of a woman's costume. 
45.21 
45/CLOTHING and ornamentation 321 
45.23 
45.22 Embroidered Headband 
Cotton headbands (matanpush) were 
originally worn by Ainu men to keep 
their hair in place as they worked, but 
Ainu women have worn them during 
ceremonies for at least two centuries. 
Red cloth, one of the earliest textiles to 
be imported, has had special signifi¬ 
cance for Ainu people for centuries; this 
red cloth appears to be old and was 
probably recycled from family heir¬ 
looms. (FMC 234945) 
45.23 Choker 
Chokers (rekutunpe) of this type were 
worn by Sakhalin Ainu women, who had 
access to a wide variety of continental 
trade goods. This piece, collected by 
Arthur James in Hokkaido in 1898, is a 
veritable treasure chest of exotic 
items, including glass and pewter 
beads, a sword hilt, and Chinese bells. 
(AMNH 70/11) 
322 LIVING ARTS/M. KODAMA 
45.24 Attush Apron 
Men and women generally wore 
aprons as part of their regular cos¬ 
tume. Many of these were given the 
same decorative treatment as cer¬ 
emonial robes, probably for the 
same reasons: to protect vulnerable 
spots from evil gods. The commonly 
used ayus pattern can be seen here, 
(AMNH 703/4895) 
45.25 
45.25, 45.26 Rosette IVIolo 
and Choker 
A choker (rekutunpe) often made of 
black or dark blue velvet, was a 
standard accessory for Ainu 
women. Rekutunpe often had 
small metal rosette decorations 
attached to them, which may 
have originated as Japanese family 
crest designs. The Japanese originally 
made pewter rosettes for trade to the Ainu 
until Ainu began to mold them. This mold 
(fig. 45.25) was collected by Stewart Culin 
in 1912. (BMA 12.175; FMC 88019) 
Headbands (fig. 45.22) are worn with 
formal dress on such occasions as ceremonies 
and dancing. There are two kinds of 
headbands: matanpush are made of black 
cotton embroidered in the center area and 
are about forty inches (one meter) long and 
two to three inches (five to eight centime¬ 
ters) wide. In recent times matanpush embroi¬ 
dery has become increasingly brighter, 
whereas in the past, when the band was worn 
by both men and women, it used to be done 
only in black. Matanpush are seen primarily in 
Shiraoi and the Saru River area. 
Chepanup, an eighty-inch-long (two 
meter) headcover of black cloth, is folded 
three or four times and stitched. The way in 
which it is tied varies depending on the 
occasion, that is, whether it is worn for 
mourning or for celebration. The chepanup is 
seen on the coastal areas from Niikkappu to 
Samani in southern Hidaka. 
Ainu women wear chokers, called 
rekutunpe, made from a strip of cloth 
about one inch (three 
centimeters) wide of black 
and dark-blue cotton or 
velvet (figs. 45.23, 45.26). 
Designed to be tied in the 
back with separate straps of 
cloth or buttoned, they fit the 
throat tightly. Sometimes one or 
several metal ornaments are 
attached to the front of the strap or to 
a small flap that hangs down from the 
choker strap. 
Necklaces (tamasay) composed of large 
glass beads were treasures for Ainu women, 
who wore them at formal occasions and 
ceremonies (figs. 45.27). Old necklaces were 
imported from China, but those from the 
end of the Edo period (1615-1868) to early 
Meiji period (late 1800s) were usually made 
in Sakai (Osaka) and Edo (Tokyo) in Honshu. 
Tamasay come in two forms: one has an 
ornamental plaque called a sbitoki (figs. 45.28, 
45.29), and the other has a very large 
central glass bead (fig. 45.27). 
45/CLOTHING and ornamentation 323 
45.27 
45.29 
324 LIVING ARTS/M KODAMA 
45.27 Beaded Necklace 
Beaded necklaces (tamasay) were 
worn by Ainu women on ceremonial 
occasions. In addition to their impor¬ 
tance as fashion, necklaces also 
provided the wearer with spiritual 
protection; similar beliefs were held by 
Siberian mainland peoples. Black-and- 
white glass beads, as seen in this 
necklace collected by Stewart Culin in 
1912, were very popular, but blue and 
multicolored beads were also common. 
Some Ainu beads have been traced to 
Central Asia, but China and Russia 
were the usual sources (especially for 
large turquoise-colored ones) until the 
Dutch began supplying beads in the 
seventeenth century. (BMA X2001.26) 
45.28, 45.29 Necklaces with 
Medallions 
Imported medallions were thought to 
be especially effective amulets, and 
some were made for this purpose in 
China and Japan. The expense of 
obtaining such valuable trade items 
reinforced the Ainu belief in their 
protective power. Ainu-e illustrations 
(fig. 45.29) and most early photo¬ 
graphs of Ainu women show them 
posed with their prized necklaces, 
(courtesy of M. Kodama) 
45.30, 45.31 Beaded Earrings 
The earliest mention of earrings 
(ninkari) being worn by the Ainu was 
by Jesuit Father Girolamo de Angeiis 
in 1621; he noted that both men and 
women wore silver hoops in their 
ears. The ninkari in fig. 45.30 are 
decorated with glass beads; those in 
fig. 45.31 have engraved brass 
beads. In 1876 the Japanese prohib¬ 
ited the Ainu from wearing earrings, 
but the Ainu continued to import the 
materials needed to make them from 
the Asian continent and Japan. 
(AMNH 70/4040A, B; BMS C18767) 
45.31 
In addition to necklaces made only of beads, 
some had old coins placed between the beads 
or had ninkari (hoop-shaped earrings) sus¬ 
pended on the right and left sides of the 
necklace string. In Sakhalin, necklaces are 
called imuhsay, and the Ainu there preferred to 
make them with small blue beads,- Hokkaido 
Ainu also wore this type of necklace. 
Earrings (figs. 45.30, 45.3 1) are called 
ninkari in the Ainu language. The lobes of Ainu 
women's ears were pierced when they were 
young, and a red silk or cotton cloth was 
placed through the holes to keep them open. 
On certain special occasions, such as at 
celebrations, people wore ninkari made in the 
form of hoops of brass, trade silver, and lead 
wire ranging from one to six inches (three to 
fifteen centimeters) in diameter. In recent 
years ninkari are worn only by women, but in 
the Edo period men also wore them. 
Traditionally it was customary for women 
to wear tattoos on the lips, forearms, and hands,- 
the eyebrows and forehead were also sometimes 
tattooed (fig. 45.33). While the age at which a 
girl was tattooed varied from region to region, 
the first part of the tattoo design was generally 
applied at the age of six or seven. After the 
initial pattern was applied, tattooing was 
repeated several times over the course of 
several years, and it was usually completed 
before marriage. Girls were considered to be 
adults by the time their tattooing was com¬ 
plete. Tattoos were an important component of 
an Ainu woman's beauty. 
Tattoos were produced by first making 
many tiny cuts with an obsidian-blade knife 
(fig. 45.32) in the area to be tattooed. Soot 
taken from the bottom of a pot suspended 
over a birch fire was rubbed into the wound, 
followed by the application of antiseptic juice 
from plants like mugwort. Tattoo patterns 
differ from region to region, 
and their meaning, if any, is 
unknown, but they are 
thought to protect the wearer. 
At various times 
Japanese authorities prohib¬ 
ited the use of tattoos by the 
Ainu. In 1799, during the Edo 
period when Ezo was con¬ 
trolled by the shogunate, a 
ban on tattoos was issued: 
"Regarding the rumored 
tattoos, those already done 
cannot be helped, but those 
still unborn are prohibited from being 
tattooed." In 1871, after the Meiji Restora¬ 
tion, the Hokkaido Development Mission 
proclaimed that "those born after this day are 
strictly prohibited from being tattooed." 
Today the custom of tattooing has completely 
disappeared. 
Men's special accoutrements included 
ceremonial headgear and swords. Adult Ainu 
men today still wear a crownlike headdress 
(called sapanpe or sapaunpe) as part of their 
ceremonial attire. Most are woven from small 
tree limbs and grapevine stems whose surfaces 
have been shaved up from the stems into tufts 
(inaw-kike) that are twisted together,- for 
religious ceremonies the wood of the dog¬ 
wood tree is usually used. Some sapanpe are 
made only of woven shavings. The headdress 
is tied in back and front so that it grips the 
head, and wood shavings (kike) are attached to 
it. Some sapanpe have carved wooden bear or 
wolf heads or shaved "wooden flowers," while 
some have shark teeth or bear claws attached 
to the front. Others have two- to three-inch 
strips of cloth hanging at the front and back 
of both ears. Generally cotton cloth was used, 
but Chinese silk, imported through the 
Santan trade, appears on some early speci- 
45/ CLOTHING AND ORNAMENTATION 325 
in dances it was thought that they warded off 
evil spirits. Emusbat were valued accordingly 
and elicited feelings of reverence and awe. 
The practice of making exciting and 
creative garments is now enjoying a vigorous 
revitalization after a period in the mid¬ 
twentieth century when very few garments 
were made. Ainu women are examining 
traditional designs, materials, and construc¬ 
tion techniques by studying Ainu garments 
found not only in the public museums of 
Japan but in North America and Europe as 
well. We see more and more traditionally 
made clothes being worn proudly at Ainu 
celebrations, and there are competitive craft 
shows held in several areas in Hokkaido as 
well as exhibitions of modern weaving held 
throughout Japan. Traditional patterns are 
also being adapted for contemporary clothi.ng 
designs, such as in modern vest designs for 
both men and women that command pre¬ 
mium prices. There is no doubt that the 
future of Ainu traditional attire is safe in the 
skilled hands of its people. 
45.32 Tattoo Knife 
The Ainu considered tattoos to be a 
mark of a woman's beauty, and when 
her tattoos were completed in her late 
teens, she was considered ready for 
marriage. In 1888 Romyn Hitchcock 
observed the Ainu practice of tattooing, 
and he made note of the technique 
(1891b: 442): "The tattoo marks are 
made by cross-hatching the skin with 
knives which they get from the Japa¬ 
nese. Into the cuts thus made the soot 
of burning birchbark (kaba) is rubbed, 
which is collected on the bottom of a 
dish held over the fire." Hitchcock 
collected this tattoo knife in Piratori, 
Hokkaido. (NMNH 150715) 
45.33 Arm Tattoos 
In this Ainu-e from Shimanojo 
Murakami's early-nineteenth-century 
Illustrations of Ezo Livelihood, a woman 
holds a mussel-shell knife; the tattoos 
on her forearm and wrist are clearly 
visible. Again, Romyn Hitchcock ob¬ 
served (1891b: 442):”The faces of the 
women are disfigured by tattooing 
around the mouth, the style of which 
varies with the locality. Young maidens 
of six or seven have a little spot on 
the upper lip. As they grow older, 
this is gradually extended until a 
more or less broad band sur¬ 
rounds the mouth and extends into 
a tapering curve on both cheeks 
toward the ears. The arms also are 
tattooed in various patterns.” 
(HML) 
45.34 Sword and Sword Holder 
Weaving a man's sword holder 
(emushat) was one of the most 
challenging and important tasks an 
Ainu woman, because for the 
emushat was believed to be imbued 
with ritual and spiritual powers 
equal to those of the sword. (AMS) 
mens. Because a man's sapanpe was used for a 
long period of time, it was refurbished 
occasionally with new inaw-kike. 
The emusbat, a sword strap made from 
woven bark fiber (fig. 45.34) is carried by 
men, mainly at ceremonies. Men suspend the 
sword over their shoulder so that it touches 
the left side of the waist,- this manner of 
carrying swords is very old. The weaving 
technique used for this piece is complex and 
employs thirty-six separate warp strands. The 
design is woven to create contrasting black- 
and-white or dark-blue-and-white patterns, 
with red cotton thread also used. 
Swords were among Ainu men's most 
valued treasures and were handled with 
utmost care and respect. Swords were believed 
to be very powerful spiritually, and when used 
326 LIVING ARTS/M KODAMA 
4 6/Ikupasuy: 
It's Not a 
Mustache Lifter! 
Fosco Maraini 
46.2 Ritual Use of the Ikupasuy 
Miyamoto (whose Ainu name was 
Ekashmatok), chief of the Shiraoi 
Ainu in the 1950s, is seen here 
dipping his ikupasuy into a fuk/just 
before sprinkling some drops of 
millet beer on the altar (nusa) 
outside his house in 1954. 
46.1 Ikupasuy 
Ikupasuy, the Ainu prayer 
stick, is used in sake-drinking 
rituals to help send a man’s 
prayers to the gods. Although 
small and deceptively simple, 
these implements embody 
much of Ainu art and 
imagination. (PMC 51648) 
The Ainu, like many indigenous 
peoples, had very few prized 
personal possessions. Ainu women 
held their sewing needles most 
dear,- men, while valuing their knives for secu¬ 
lar needs, relied completely on their ability 
to talk to the gods, and that couldn't be done 
without their all-important prayer sticks, 
known in Ainu as ikupasuy (fig. 46.1). I have 
adapted this article from one I wrote in 1942, 
relying on David Dubreuil to provide a more 
contemporary perspective on the topic. 
The first known mention of an ikupasuy 
by a westerner dates back to February 28, 
1565, when the Portuguese Jesuit Father Louis 
Frois wrote a letter from Meaco (now Kyoto) 
giving his superiors back home interesting 
news about Japan. Father Frois, who 
died in 1597, was among the most 
knowledgeable of the many Jesuit 
priests who resided in Japan during 
the latter half of the sixteenth 
century and some of his works offer 
fascinating reading even today. 
Among other intriguing bits of 
information that Father Frois 
conveyed on this occasion was a 
brief passage on the people of Ezo 
(present-day Fdokkaido), the large 
island at the northern end of the 
Japanese archipelago. He states: 'To 
the north of Japan about 300 leagues 
from the city of Meaco there lies a 
vast land inhabited by men of 
the forests. These people cover their 
bodies, which are very hairy, with 
animal skins,- they have wondrous 
beards and enormous mustaches, 
which they lift with a small wand 
when they are about to drink" 
(Bickmore 1868). 
Over the next few centuries the 
misconceptions about the name and 
use of the prayer stick spread 
throughout the western world. In 
Europe a tradition of using this term 
followed Frois, and at some- point this 
idea was transferred to North 
America, where its use may have 
been initiated by Benjamin Smith 
Lyman. On a trip to Japan in 1876, 
Lyman, an American geologist hired 
by the Japanese government, 
traveled through several areas of 
Honshu and Hokkaido. Intrigued by 
the uniqueness of Ainu material 
46.1 
culture, Lyman bought at least thirty objects, 
which he donated to the Smithsonian Institu¬ 
tion later that year. Two of the items he 
purchased in Yokohama were catalogued by 
the Smithsonian as "moustache sticks." 
The Reverend John Batchelor (1 854- 
1944), an Anglican Church of England 
missionary who lived among the Ainu in 
Hokkaido for sixty-three years (1877-1940), 
continued the use of this misnomer. His 
terminology may have been due to sheer 
conservative spirit in employing a term that 
was by then outmoded. Nevertheless, it's 
strange that Batchelor, who wrote many 
articles and books on the religion and culture 
of the Ainu, including an Ainu-English- 
Japanese dictionary, did not place more 
emphasis on the religious significance of the 
ikupasuy, for he certainly understood the 
importance to Ainu of libation offerings to 
the gods using the ikupasuy-. 
It is a curious instrument and [is] only 
called into use when drinking. Its purpose 
is two-fold. The men invariably use it 
when they are at worship, for with the end 
of it they offer drops of wine to the gods 
to whom they pray [figs. 46.2, 46.6, 46.7], 
Further, the moustache lifters are used to 
keep the mustache out of the cup while 
the men drink (Batchelor 1 892: 77). 
Further evidence of Batchelor's knowledge 
about the social and religious nature of the 
implement is contained in Smithsonian curator 
Romyn Hitchcock's report of a conversation 
with Batchelor (Hitchcock 1891a): 
46/ IKUPASUY SYMBOLISM 327 
of the liquor. But that is far from being its 
real function. In recent times they have 
become generally known as drinking 
sticks. . . . But they are really prayer sticks, 
as I discovered many years ago. [Although] 
sometimes they are used as libation- 
wands ... all elders consider the prayer 
stick as a sacred object, a messenger of 
prayer (1962: 39). 
Simply put, the ikupasuy functions 
primarily as a sacred prayer stick, a mediator 
to deliver messages between the user and the 
gods (kamuy), because the Ainu believe they 
can not pray directly to them (Sasaki 1995: 
56). It has a secondary use as a libation wand 
to administer a liquid offering: in older times 
a very mild home-brewed millet beer was 
used,- it has been replaced with commercially 
distilled sake. 
The literature is confusing, however, and 
even Munro appears to contradict himself, for 
he sometimes uses the terms prayer stick and 
libation wand interchange¬ 
ably. Early in his book 
Ainu Creed and Cult (1962), 
Munro states that "In 
prayer an elder may say 
that his language is 
faulty, but that the prayer 
stick will convey his 
meaning correctly" 
(1962: 40), while later, in 
a chapter describing the 
housewarming ceremony, 
he states that the 
respected elder adminis¬ 
tering the rite asks the 
fire goddess "to inspire 
the libation wand as her messenger so that, 
should the prayers be unsuitably worded, the 
meaning will become clear to the good kamui" 
(1962: 78). Even though Munro occasionally 
uses the term "libation wand," the meaning is 
clearly that of a prayer stick used for convey¬ 
ing prayers to the gods. As a mediator, 
a libation wand would not alter words, 
content, or meaning. 
The etymology of the word ikupasuy is 
intriguing. Iku in Ainu means to drink inebriat¬ 
ing liquors. In Ainu pasuy means chopsticks, 
and the Japanese word for these utensils is 
basbi. While some Ainu scholars have postu¬ 
lated a connection between pasuy and basbi, the 
reasoning is unclear because chopsticks come 
in sets of two, whether they are Chinese, 
Japanese, or Ainu in origin, while the ikupasuy 
is a single piece of wood. In some collections 
46.3 Offertory Ware 
In communicating with the gods, 
the Ainu most often send their 
prayers through the ikupasuy, prayer 
stick. The ikupasuy is dipped into a 
mild offertory liquor (figure 46.5), 
such as millet beer or later,- sake, to 
anoint the object of the prayer. The 
vessel holding the liquor is a 
lacquerware cup, tuki, which is placed 
on a separate lacquerware saucer 
stand, seen here. (For a complete set 
of offertory ware, see figure 23.9.) 
These items, which were obtained 
from the Japanese through trade, had 
by the 1600s assumed a central place 
in Ainu ritual. (BMS 18765, 18767) 
Mr. Batchelor tells us that in drinking sake 
[using the prayer stick], three drops must 
be given to the fire goddess, Fuchi, three 
thrown toward the east window [god’s 
window], and three toward the northeast 
corner of the hut, where the Aino 
treasures are kept, and then three drops 
must be offered to any special god, for 
whose benefit the libations are offered or 
to whom the Ainu are paying worship. 
FJitchcock also reported (1891 b: 459-61) 
seeing several variations of the ritual during his 
46.5 46.4 
46.4 Neil Munro and Patient 
Neil Munro, a Scottish physician who lived 
with the Ainu in Nibutani from 1930 to 
1942. ministered to them spiritually as 
well as with medicine. He also studied 
their belief system, and his 1962 book 
Ainu Creed and Cult explored Ainu ritual. 
He is seen here comforting a patient. 
46.5 Tuki mo Ikupasuy 
Ainu protocol calls for the ikupasuy to be 
laid across the top of the tuki with its 
pointed end to the left. When one begins 
the ritual, the tuki is grasped with the left 
hand and the ikupasuy between the right 
thumb and forefinger. The pointed end of 
the prayer stick is dipped into the liquid, 
gestures are made toward the god, and a 
few drops of liquid are sprinkled in the 
appropriate direction. 
one-month stay among the Ainu in the summer 
of 1888. Similar information is recorded in 
FHitchcock's accession records for specimen 
150664: "Moustache stick used to make libations 
of sake to the gods, and also to raise the 
moustache while drinking sake” (1891b: 493). 
The first western person to have 
understood the real meaning of the ikupasuy 
may have been the Scottish doctor Neil 
Munro (fig. 46.4), who studied the Ainu for 
many years before directly ministering to 
their health needs in the Nibutani area from 
1930 until his death in 1942. Munro wrote of 
the ikupasuy-. 
I cannot say who first named them 
moustache-lifters, but it was one of those 
guesses, based on imperfect acquaintance, 
repeated in popular writings. . It is 
sometimes used to keep the moustache out 
328 LIVING ARTS/F. MARAINI 
46.8 Offering Prayers 
Kayano-ekashi is shown performing 
a 1971 iyomante ceremony. This 
photograph is taken from the point 
of view of the bear as Kayano 
offers libations and prayers over 
the bear's cage. 
there are old examples of ikupasuy made of 
natural tree limbs that have forked double 
branches close together, suggesting chopsticks, 
but it is perhaps too easy to draw what seems 
to be an obvious connection. Sometimes, 
however, chopsticks have been substituted 
when a "normal" ikupasuy wasn't available. For 
example, after the funeral of famed Ainu artist 
Bikky Sunazawa (193 1-89), relatives and 
friends held an impromptu ceremony in the 
Ainu tradition to honor Sunazawa, but because 
no ikupasuy were available, chopsticks were 
used (D. Dubreuil, private communication, 
May 1994). In other situations even a tobacco 
pipe would be used as a substitute (Kayano 
1978: 243-44). This usage indicates that the 
intent was more important than the form and 
the prayer more significant than the artifact 
that conveyed it. 
Because the Ainu do not pray directly to 
the gods, the ikupasuy acts as an intermediary 46.8 
46.6 
46.6, 46.7 Prayers to Fuchi 
Two ekashi, Torizo Tanaka from Nibutani 
and Ginosuke Kikuchi from Bihoro, offer 
libations and prayers to Fuchi, goddess 
of fire and an important protector of the 
household. Fuchi is believed to reside in 
the hearth. These photos were taken in 
Nibutani in 1954. 
46.7 
between the gods and the worshipper in a 
wide variety of religious ceremonies. While 
the Ainu had shamans who normally were 
used to cure sickness, they were not consid¬ 
ered priests and did not officiate at other 
rituals. Respected men, usually elders, con¬ 
ducted all ceremonies in the home and village 
and at the hunting and fishing areas. 
Although the Ainu had no temples or 
shrines, the home was considered sacred to 
a large number of gods (kamuy), the most 
important being Fuchi, goddess of fire. The 
home is also the location of the god's window 
(kamuy-puyar), where the gods entered and 
left, ceremonial items were taken in and out, 
and the head, skin, and meat of the bear were 
passed during the bear-sending ceremony 
(iyomante: figs. 46.8, 46.9a-c). Another 
important ceremony held in the home is 
shinnurappa, a memo¬ 
rial ritual for Ainu 
ancestors. During 
these and many other 
ceremonies the 
ikupasuy is used 
extensively. As might 
be expected, the 
actual time given to 
prayer while using the 
prayer stick is far 
greater than the time 
it takes to sprinkle the 
required offering of 
sake on the fire, 
sacred ritual carved staffs (inaw), or other 
objects being offered. 
The ikupasuy is almost always used with 
a lacquerware cup and holder, which are made 
by the Japanese and called by the Ainu name, 
tuki (fig. 46.3),- occasionally a tuki carved from 
raw wood will be used, for instance during 
ceremonies held while hunting or fishing. 
When Ainu men hunted, a stick, similar to an 
ikupasuy and called pushka-un-ni, was often built 
into the quiver, but this was not a prayer stick. 
A special prayer stick was used to pray for 
hunting success and thanksgiving after the 
hunt, and it was also used to protect the 
hunter and to identify him in case of death 
(Munro 1962: 40). When Ainu traveled, a 
small bowl without a cup-holder was fre¬ 
quently used. 
For use during ceremonies, the tuki is 
46 / IKUPASUY SYMBOLISM 329 
46.9a 
46.9b 
46.9c 
46.9a-c Bear-Sending Ceremony 
These illustrations from a copy of 
Shimanojo Murakami’s Curious Sights 
of Ezo Island (1799) show three stages 
of the bear-sending (iyomante) 
ceremony: preparations around the 
bear cage (heper-set) (a); strangling the 
bear (b); and the ceremonial feast and 
celebration (c). (NMNH 395,023-25) 
partially filled with sake and the ikupasuy is 
placed across its rim with the tapered end 
pointed to the left. The user takes the tuki in 
his left hand and picks up the sacred prayer 
stick at its end between the thumb and fore¬ 
finger of his right hand. He dips the pointed 
or tapered end into the sake, and with great 
gentleness and reverence he slowly sprinkles 
the offering on the object of worship (figs. 46.6, 
46.7). When sharing the tuki and ikupasuy with 
others participating in the ritual, ceremonial 
etiquette demands that the prayer stick be 
properly returned to the tuki and slowly and 
deliberately turned until the tapered end is 
pointed toward the person's left (fig. 46.5). 
This small courtesy, called pasuy-oshipi, is 
characteristic of the dignified approach to 
both ritual and social behavior found 
throughout Ainu culture. 
Types of Prayer Sticks 
There are two basic types of prayer sticks. The 
most common, the ikupasuy, resembles a wide 
letter-opener with design elements carved in 
relief. Averaging one foot (thirty centimeters) 
in length and one to one-and-a-half inches 
(four centimeters) wide, the overall thickness is 
about one-quarter inch (one-half centimeter). 
It is not uncommon, however, for some design 
elements to rise above the surface by a half¬ 
inch (one centimeter) or more. These elements 
feature a multitude of subjects, anything from 
bears to mountains. 
The second type, kike-ush-pasuy, is 
generally used only for specific ceremonies 
such as the bear-sending ceremony (iyomante), 
and is thought to be more sacred, producing a 
more intense spirit (ramat). Always made of 
raw wood, usually willow, their most distin¬ 
guishing characteristic is the wood shavings 
(kike) that remain attached to the prayer stick 
(fig. 46.10) (H. Kono 1933a: 366-68). The 
prayer stick will normally only have ritual 
signs—family crests (itokpa) and/or abstract 
designs with private meaning to an individual 
(sbiroshi)—carved into its surface. After the 
ceremony the kike-ush-pasuy is usually ritually 
destroyed by fire in the hearth or sometimes 
attached to an upright branch of the altar 
(nusa) where skulls and other body parts left 
over from the iyomante are placed. 
Sueo Sugiyama (1934: 149) illustrated 
and described an unusual prayer stick from 
Sakhalin, which he called horoka-basui, that was 
carved from a branch with two natural oppos¬ 
ing dogleg turns. Sugiyama was told that it was 
330 LIVING ARTS/ F. MARAINI 
46.11 Parts of the Ikupasuy 
As a ritual implement the ikupasuy 
has a specific structure, and each 
section of the item is named, as 
illustrated here. The central panel on 
the upper surface (noshki) is used for 
the owner's artistic statement, while 
the owner's family mark or crest 
(itokpa) is coded in the parallel cuts 
at both ends of the stick. The pointed 
distal end. representing a tongue, 
sometimes carries a small v-shaped 
parunpe (representing the tongue of 
god); this surface may also have one 
or more incised shiroshi, emblematic 
marks of animals or creatures which 
are frequently difficult to interpret. In 
some cases they definitely represent 
birds, bears, and orca fins, (after 
Maraini 1942) 
46.10 Inaw and Kike-Ikupasuy 
Inaw are sacred shaved sticks 
that symbolize birds, which act as 
messengers to carry the host’s 
prayers to the gods. Inaw take 
different forms depending on the 
god being addressed, and each 
individual god has a specific type 
of inaw associated with it. Kike- 
ikupasuy, prayer sticks with inaw- 
kike carved into their upper 
surface (c, d), are used only for 
the iyomante and then are 
destroyed. Other ikupasuy (a, b) 
may be reused as long as the 
owner wishes. (Maraini 1942) 
itokpa itokpa 
l I \ noshki | . ohontoki 1 ^_._n j / akapari ikeshi 
etu 
( ^ X > 
shiroshi 
parunpe 
supposed to have been used in a special but 
not-specified bear-related ritual: if the prayer 
stick were reversed and the blunt end dipped 
into ceremonial liquor, it would produce some 
kind of curse. While this tantalizing bit of 
hearsay is interesting, unfortunately there is no 
information to corroborate it, and this particu¬ 
lar prayer stick is thought to have been de¬ 
stroyed by fire during World War II along with 
most of Sugiyama's Ainu collection. 
Ikupasuy Nomenclature 
Figure 46 I 1 identifies the various parts of the 
ikupasuy using the type found in the FJidaka 
region of the Saru River,- an Ainu name for 
each element is given but as with many items 
of Ainu material culture, terminology varies 
from region to region. 
Starting with the blunt end and working 
toward the tip, the end of the ikupasuy is 
called ohon-toki. The first carving is the itokpa, 
which consists of a series of straight notches 
cut across the width of the prayer stick. The 
cuts, of varying lengths, are secret marks of 
ownership that may have been all or part 
of a family crest. This element is one of the 
most consistent parts of the ikupasuy. It is 
extremely rare for the itokpa to not be present, 
and some argue that without the itokpa the 
object is not an ikupasuy. There are, however, 
examples of smoothly carved sticks that only 
have the pointed tip, so perhaps it's a re¬ 
gional phenomenon In some cases the 
carving of the itokpa runs into the middle 
element's design, making it difficult or im¬ 
possible to differentiate. 
The middle element (noshki) occupies 
the largest surface of the prayer stick and is 
the zone where the artist can demonstrate his 
creativity. The designs encompass a vast 
array of extraordinary and complex ideas and 
motifs, ranging from extremely abstract 
geometrical compositions that appear to be 
floral in concept (fig. 46.16) to family crests. 
Animals such as the killer whale (the god of 
the ocean) and other objects are also 
realistically depicted (figs. 46.12, 46.1 3). 
Other elements important to Ainu belief 
system and/or subsistence needs are included: 
bears, bear heads, bear tracks, bears in cages, 
and bears laid out as in the iyomante. Other 
significant animals such as otter, fox, seals, 
other whales, salmon, swordfish, cranes, and 
snakes are carved, along with boats, houses, 
swords, tuki (fig. 46.15), and mountains. 
There seems to be no restriction on the 
subject matter in the area of the noshki—one 
extreme example of artistic freedom is an 
ikupasuy with two small airplanes carved on 
it—but it is extremely rare to find a prayer 
stick without some carving in this narrow and 
confined area. 
While their relationship with the Japanese 
has always been tenuous at best and hostile at 
worst, Ainu sometimes carved decorative 
elements in the area of the noshki which to 
them were symbolic of the Japanese, for 
example, Japanese swords. While this par¬ 
ticular example may simply reflect the fact 
that the Ainu coveted swords and scabbards, 
it is more difficult to explain such objects as 
Japanese family crests, or kuwasaki, hornlike 
46/ IKUPASUY SYMBOLISM 331 
46.12 Orca Symbols 
Ethnographic information from the 
Ainu and inspection of hundreds of 
ikupasuy have shown that many 
shiroshi marks are abstracted 
versions of one of a few types of 
basic animal symbols. The most 
common image—the orca back fin 
and abstractions based on it—is 
widely understood by Ainu to 
represent this animal. Other forms, 
however, are less well understood, 
(after Maraini 1942) 
** $5 
JUL.. X JL 44m 
46.12 
46.13 Orca Shiroshi 
This ikupasuy has a very 
recognizable orca mark on its 
bottom, while the upper surface 
carries carvings of a bear and 
three salmon. (MPM N17302) 
46.13 
46.14 Lacquered Ikupasuy 
Ainu do not generally lacquer 
ikupasuy themselves; rather, 
they carve the forms and 
arrange for the lacquer to be 
applied by Japanese artisans. 
Other than this special and 
rather unusual finish, these 
implements are similar to the 
more common forms with 
natural finishes. This illustration 
was prepared by Japanese artist 
Yonu Makino from lacquered 
specimens in Japanese 
collections. (Maraini 1942) 
ornaments often seen on samurai helmets. 
That the samurai who defeated the Ainu in all 
major battles with the Japanese would be so 
honored on ikupasuy is intriguing, but symbols 
of adversaries are also found on artifacts from 
other cultures,- for example, the Plains Indians 
of North America sometimes depicted the 
American flag in their beadwork. 
The next decorated area past the noshki is 
another itokpa, which may be the same as the 
first itokpa or may be different. These can be 
viewed as two separate parts of the same secret 
mark of ownership. Depending on region, near 
the tip of the prayer stick a small triangular 
incision called the parunpe, or tongue, is carved. 
While some are inclined to say this serves to 
collect a small amount of sake to be sprinkled 
on the object of worship, others, like Munro, 
believed that it was a "tongue" that helped 
speak reverently to the gods. Most Ainu who 
express an opinion on this matter today sup¬ 
port the latter belief (Chisato Dubreuil, private 
communication, May 1989). The parunpe ap¬ 
pears on the front or the back of the ikupasuy 
depending on region. 
Shiroshi are present only on the back of 
the ikupasuy. In a study of three hundred 
ikupasuy (Maraini 1942: 43-77), only 42 
percent were found to have the shiroshi 
mark(s), while other studies have shown even 
fewer instances of such carving. Interestingly, 
research has shown that most shiroshi appear 
to be related to the god of the sea, the killer 
whale (repun-kamuy),- the bear (kimun-kamuy), 
332 LIVING ARTS/ F. MARAINI 
the Ainu's most important god, and other 
influential gods are rarely seen. While I have 
found 1 10 variations of the sign of the killer 
whale (Maraini 1942: 121-23) and Chisato 
Dubreuil has found two more (1995: 522), 
I have only found seven bear-related symbols 
(kimun-shiroshi), four related to birds (chikap- 
katnuy), and two to the sun (cbup-kamuy). 
Lastly, the tip consists of the point (ikesbi); 
the sides of the point (etu), or nose,- and the 
akapari, a slightly concave area that narrows to 
a point and may be carved to serve as a recep¬ 
tacle for a small amount of sake. The meanings 
of other named parts appear to be lost. 
Although the overwhelming majority of 
prayer sticks do not have a surface treatment 
other than carvings, a fairly small number 
have a thick lacquer finish applied to them 
(fig. 46.14). It appears that such lacquerwork 
was done by the Japanese in the past, but 
the practice of using Japanese techniques or 
artisans for ikupasuy has fallen out of favor. 
In fact, no contemporary carved prayer sticks 
with a lacquered surface treatment are known, 
although the wood is occasionally stained. 
The significance, if any, between lacquered 
versus unlacquered ikupasuy is not known, 
other than that the Ainu liked shiny objects. 
While there are hundreds of ikupasuy in 
museum and private collections, acquisition 
hasn't always been easy. In 1878 Isabella 
Bird, a wealthy and adventurous woman from 
England, spent a month living with the Ainu. 
On August 23 she wrote from Piratori: 
46.16 Three Ikupasuy 
A variety of floral decorations to 
ikupasuy are seen in these three 
specimens collected by Frederick Starr 
from Piratori and Porasaru in 1910; 
other styles emphasize geometric or 
sculptural forms. (BMA 12.309, 
12.248, 12.302) 
46.15 Ikupasuy with Turn Image 
This unusual ikupasuy with a tuki 
carved in the middle of it was 
collected by Frederick Starr in Piratori 
in 1910. It is certainly not meant as 
a joke or visual pun, but the precise 
symbolism is elusive; it may have 
been the owner's representation of 
the unending nature of the ritual 
cycle. (BMA 12.282) 
4 6/ IKUPASUY SYMBOLISM 333 
46.17 Fantastic Ikupasuy 
A small percentage of ikupasuy take 
unusual naturalistic forms where art 
and abstraction imitate life, as in this 
specimen made from a stick which has 
been encircled by a strangling vine. 
(MPM 17000) 
46.18 Three Ikupasuy 
Some of the earliest ikupasuy in 
American museums are held by the 
Peabody Museum, Harvard University. 
These examples were collected by 
Alexander Agassiz in 1875 and 1893 
from Nemuro, Hokkaido. One is 
lacquer-coated and has two snakelike 
images with hooks or fins at one end; 
another has a carving of a bird in the 
center flanked by geometric and 
fishscale panels and two circular yin- 
yang symbols; and the third features a 
complex geometric relief carving with 
incised decoration. (PMC 51643, 
51647,51648) 
I tried to buy the sake-sticks with which 
they make libations to the gods, but they 
said it was "not their custom" to part with 
the sake-stick of any living man, however, 
this morning Shinondi [an Ainu man she 
befriended] has brought me, as a very 
valuable present, the stick of a dead man! 
(1881:246) 
Later she wrote about death customs 
and the objects that are placed with a 
deceased man for use in the other world. 
These include "... his knife and sake-stick, 
and, if he were a smoker, his smoking appara¬ 
tus" (1881: 282). Today it is extremely rare, 
if not impossible, to see contemporary Ainu- 
made prayer sticks for sale in any of the Ainu 
tourist shops. Although carvings resembling 
ikupasuy can be found, I stress that these only 
resemble ikupasuy because they are made by 
Japanese and the Ainu do not consider them 
to be sacred (D. Dubreuil, private communi¬ 
cation, May 1998). 
Today modern young Ainu, like their 
ancestors, make prayer sticks to use in age- 
old ceremonies like the iyomante, traditional 
house-raising, or boat-launchings—it's truly 
an exciting rebirth. As Shigeru Kayano, 
one of the first of contemporary Ainu who 
worked tirelessly to preserve Ainu tradition, 
states unequivocally, the sacred ikupasuy is 
a living thing with a soul (1978: 241-44). 
It's definitely not a mustache lifter! 
334 LIVING ARTS/ F. MARAINI 
47 Ainu 
Journey: 
From 
Tourist Art 
to Fine Arts 
Chisato O. Dubreuil 
Native art has traditionally been 
art created by anonymous 
people, primarily because artists 
in traditional societies did not 
need to sign their works,- their identities were 
readily apparent to villagers who saw the 
objects they made every day. Anthropologists 
and museum curators have compounded the 
problem of identifying these artists by 
focusing their interests more on the collective 
concept of "culture" than on its individual 
expression. Early Ainu art conforms to this 
pattern: of the fifteen or twenty thousand 
Ainu objects in the worlds museums, very few 
can be attributed to known individuals. 
47.1 Chopstick Case and 
Cigarette Holder 
Early in the nineteenth century, as 
the work of Ainu carvers gained 
popularity, they were commissioned 
to produce such works as this 
chopstick case and wooden cigarette 
holder, which have Japanese form but 
are decorated with Ainu designs. 
Around this time, a very few Ainu 
artists also began to sign their work 
(a practice that unfortunately was not 
practiced on a routine basis until 
much later). An inscription inside the 
lid of this chopstick case identifies 
the Japanese owner, “Mr. Ohnishi, 
April 1856, East Ezo”; the name of 
the Ainu artist is given as “Itakiekaru 
from Sarunkur” (the Saru River area). 
This case was acquired for the 
Brooklyn Museum of Art by Stewart 
Culin in 1912. The cigarette holder, 
which seems to never have been 
used, was purchased by Frederick 
Starr in Porusaru in 1904 while he 
was collecting for the Louisiana 
Purchase Centennial Exposition. 
(BMA 12.160, 12.173) 
The passage from artistic anonymity to 
personal recognition as fine artists coincided 
in Ainu society, as in many other cultures, 
with major changes in economic practices, 
religious beliefs, and social structure. When 
Ainu began to trade or sell their everyday 
objects to neighbors centuries ago, the 
creators of these utilitarian objects began to 
recognize them as a means to acquire other 
goods. When Hokkaido tourism was pro¬ 
moted by the new Meiji government after 
1890, it brought new opportunities to Ainu 
artists, but tourist art was rarely signed 
because it was created as a commodity,- its 
signature was its Ainu style or subject matter. 
While freedom of expression and pride in 
authorship is not a precondition to creating 
fine art, it often accompanies its develop¬ 
ment. Prohibition on the use of animal 
representations, which was dictated by 
fundamental Ainu religious 
beliefs and social structure, 
limited artistic production to the family 
economy rather than allowing it to be utilized 
by individuals for personal enhancement and 
was typical of the factors that impeded the 
development of Ainu art from its traditional 
roots into twentieth-century forms. 
In traditional times Ainu art communi¬ 
cated core features of identity and ethnicity. 
The distinctive style of decorative arts that 
was displayed on clothing, tools, and body 
ornamentation was often described by early 
travelers and explorers to Ezo along with their 
bear ceremonies and reverence for nature 
(S. Kodama 1970a, b; Yamakawa 1980: 79- 
80). Although Ainu material culture was fre¬ 
quently cited for its artistic design, Ainu art 
did not become a subject of professional 
study until the publication of Ainu no mon'yo 
(Ainu design motifs,- Sugiyama 1926). This 
was followed by a three-volume work, Ainu 
geijutsu (Ainu art, Sugiyama andKindaichi 
1941, 1942, 1943) that surveyed Ainu textile 
art, woodcarving, metalwork, and lacquer- 
ware. These works brought Ainu art to the 
attention of scholars and laid a foundation for 
professional study of Ainu art as a folk genre, 
but the complex of Ainu traditional, tourist, 
and fine arts that has evolved from traditional 
roots has not yet been studied or researched 
in detail. Indeed, many Japanese art historians 
and contemporary arts specialists continue to 
classify all Ainu art in the ethnic or folk art 
genre. In part this is a result of Japanese colo¬ 
nial policies and social attitudes, which were 
marked by disrespect of all things Ainu, in¬ 
cluding their culture, literature, and art. Cen¬ 
turies of discrimination do not disappear 
overnight. However, a sign of improvement 
can be found in recent exhibitions dealing 
with Ainu contemporary artists: an exhibition 
of Ainu design at the Kokuritsu Minzogaku 
Hakubutsukan in Osaka (1993),- an exhibition 
of contemporary Ainu woodcarving at the 
Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum in 1993,- and 
a 1994 Hokkaido exhibition organized as part 
of the United Nations' International Year of 
Indigenous Peoples. 
In recent years Ainu fine art has evolved 
from traditional and tourist art, and Ainu 
artists have found new outlets and recognition 
for creative expression. This essay chronicles 
the historical and artistic evolution of Ainu 
art as a function of Ainu economic survival. I 
will show how Ainu tourist art was officially 
incorporated into the development of tourism 
in Hokkaido after the Meiji Restoration in 
47/MODERN ART AND ARTISTS 335 
47.2, 47.3 New Spoons and Figurines 
As Ainu artists began to produce items 
for new markets they adapted old 
forms to the tastes of a new clientele. 
Kurile and Hokkaido Ainu appealed to 
Japanese taste by making spoon handles 
and bowls that simulate bamboo and 
seashells. Sakhalin Ainu refugees, who 
had been resettled in Hokkaido, 
transformed their traditional nipopo 
(“wooden baby”) figurines, previously 
used as children's amulets, into a new 
type that became a popular early- 
twentieth-century tourist item. This 
spoon was collected in Etorofu, Kuriles, 
by Romyn Hitchcock in 1888; the pair of 
figures was made by an Ainu artist 
named Suzuki from Asahikawa in the 
1960s. (NMNH 150722; KM) 
1 868, focusing on the Asahikawa region as 
an example of deliberate artistic develop¬ 
ment. This is followed by discussion of the 
emergence of Ainu fine arts seen through the 
life and works of several pioneering twenti¬ 
eth-century artists, most of them also from 
Asahikawa. Among the artists featured, 
special attention is given to Bikky Sunazawa, 
whose life and works epitomize his people's 
struggles and represent their undying spirit. 
From Maritime Trade to Tourist Art 
>^Vmong the earliest European reports of 
Ainu art is an account from 1643 by a Dutch 
sea merchant of "finely carved heads of either 
a lion or a dragon" on Ainu grave-site struc¬ 
tures (Kitagamae 1983: 80). Dutch records 
also note the existence of a flourishing Ainu- 
directed maritime trade, which brought Ainu 
into contact with Japanese and various 
peoples of the lower Amur River and Asian 
mainland, both as suppliers of goods and as 
middlemen traders (ibid.: 43,-Takakura 1960). 
Trade supplied the Ainu with foreign materials 
that were incorporated into the design of 
clothing and implements. When the 
Tokugawa Shogunate systematized Ainu trade 
after 1603, forcing the Ainu to deal with their 
agents at Matsumae, Ainu contacts abroad 
began to decline and became increasingly 
focused on interaction with Japanese in 
Hokkaido (Asaji, Miyatake, and Nakama 
1993: 32-35). By the mid-1700s these 
interactions had become based more on cash 
than barter, and in addition to selling their 
services for wages, Ainu began offering 
artistically designed woodcrafts and attush 
(bark-fiber) clothing for sale (Yamakawa 1980: 
79-80). By 1818 the Ainu were supplying 
many types of household equipment to the 
growing number of Japanese in Hokkaido 
(Takakura 1942: 170), and well-known Ainu 
artists were often given commissions for such 
specialty items as chopstick cases, cigarette 
holders, brush-holders and towel hangers 
(fig. 47.1, R Saito 1994: 147). 
With the opening of Hokkaido during 
the Meiji Restoration, which began in 1868, 
the Ainu were forced to assimilate rapidly into 
Japanese society, and the practice of Ainu 
customs, religion, and language was forbid¬ 
den. The government demanded the Ainu 
take up agriculture and used land allotments 
as inducements. However, drastic changes in 
their way of life and receipt of poor-quality 
land kept most Ainu from becoming success¬ 
ful farmers, and many had to supplement 
their earnings by selling carvings and textile 
works (fig. 47.2). 
Isabella L. Bird, a doughty Englishwoman 
who wrote a book about her travels in Hok¬ 
kaido, described her efforts to purchase Ainu 
handcrafts in her diary for August 23, 1878: 
... I was anxious to help them by buying 
some of their handiwork ... a tobacco box 
and pipe-sheath, and knives with carved 
handles and scabbards, and for three of these 
I offered 2'A dollars . . . [the Ainu said] they 
were not worth more than 1 dollar 10 cents, 
and they would sell them for that, and I 
could not get them to take more ... I [also] 
bought a bow and three poisoned arrows, 
two reed-mats, with a diamond pattern on 
them in reeds stained red, some knives with 
sheaths, and a bark-cloth dress. I tried to 
buy the sake-sticks [ikupasuy] with which 
they make libations to their gods, but they 
said it was "not their custom" to part with 
the sake-stick of any living man . . . For 
"indoor recreation" men carve tobacco 
boxes, knife-sheaths, sake-sticks, and 
[weaving] shuttles, and the women weave 
a nearly indestructible cloth . . . for barter, 
and the lower class of Japanese are 
constantly to be seen wearing the product 
of Ainu industry (Bird 1881: 64-67). 
336 LIVING ARTS/C. DUBREUIL 
47.3 
47.4-47.6 Fetish to Fashion 
The carving of bears underwent a 
remarkable evolution during the first 
half of the twentieth century. 
Traditionally, bear carvings were 
produced exclusively for such 
religious objects as prayer sticks 
(ikupasuy) and men's headdresses; 
only the Sakhalin Ainu made full- 
figured bear carvings (inoka), which 
they used as fetishes to promote 
fertility among bears (fig. 47.4). 
When tourists began to travel to Ainu 
homelands in the early 1920s, Ainu 
began carving bears for sale to 
visitors, but their stiff, ungainly 
results soon earned the nickname of 
“pig-bears” (fig. 47.5). During the 
twenties and thirties bear carving 
advanced rapidly, and Umetaro 
Matsui emerged as the premier artist 
carving in a highly naturalistic manner 
(fig. 47.6). His work won many 
awards and in 1938 he was chosen 
to carve a bear for Emperor Hirohito. 
Following this official recognition, 
many Japanese began to acquire Ainu 
bear carvings as souvenirs. (ACM 
4449, 4436, 12.3.1.1) 
Asahikawa: Japanese Tourism 
and Tourist Art 
In the 1880s the Japanese constructed a rail¬ 
way network in Hokkaido. Soon the govern¬ 
ment began to promote Hokkaido's wild, 
unspoiled environment and its Ainu people as 
tourist attractions. Having been defeated 
militarily and economically, the Ainu were 
now forced to play "Ainu" for the tourists 
(Asaji, Miyatake, and Nakama 1993: 61). 
When Japanese began to settle in 
Asahikawa in large numbers around 1890, 
they moved into a city whose infrastructure 
had been built by a combination of Japanese 
and Ainu prisoners and by Japanese soldiers 
sent (from 1875 to 1904) to develop farmland 
and defend Hokkaido against Russia. In 1899, 
a year after the railway reached Asahikawa, 
the Seventh Japanese Army Division 
arrived. Japanese businessmen found a 
good market among the newcomers for 
selling Ainu platters, bowls, spoons, and 
textiles, and they promoted sales by having 
local Ainu present carving and weaving 
demonstrations. One of the first shops to 
open, in 1900, was the Yamada Shuchin-dou 
(Yamada Collectible Curio Shop,- Ishijima 
1980a, b). Soon after, Ainu from Chikabumi 
village near Asahikawa opened their own 
shop in order to bypass merchants and sell 
directly to the public. 
At first the Chikabumi Ainu were al¬ 
lowed to keep their profits, but in 1917 
Asahikawa appropriated 1,000 yen from the 
Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act 
budget and forced the Ainu to sell their 
products to the city, paying the Ainu from this 
account (K. Saito 1979: 4). The city even 
forced the Ainu to buy wood for carving 
through the city forest office (Ishijima 1980a: 3). 
This symbiotic relationship could have been 
arranged to enhance Ainu profits, but instead 
Japanese merchants benefited disproportion¬ 
ately. In 1917 the city bought 2,537 pieces for 
442 yen, creating a large surplus in their bud¬ 
get. The Ainu were encouraged to carve more, 
but it was not until 1924 that they succeeded 
in carving enough to exhaust the budget. 
Around this time the Asahikawa Ainu began 
carving the figures known as "Ainu dolls” 
(nipopo) (fig. 47.3) even though making human 
images was against Ainu traditional beliefs,- the 
Ainu had little choice but to engage in this 
work because they were financially depen¬ 
dent on the government (Ishijima 1980b: 3). 
47.5 
Bear Carving 
The most prevalent early Ainu tourist art is 
the carved wooden bear. Traditionally the 
image of the bear, kimun-kamuy (god of the 
mountains), appeared in miniature form only 
on prayer sticks (ikupasuy), the man's ceremo¬ 
nial headdress, and a few other special 
religious objects. The Ainu had not made 
larger secular images of bears previously, and 
by tradition such depictions were stylized, 
not in realistic poses. Only the Sakhalin Ainu 
had produced bear images (fig. 47.4),- these 
figures, used in the bear-sending ceremony 
to promote fecundity of bears, were approxi¬ 
mately four to six inches (ten to fifteen 
centimeters) high and covered with a female 
bear's genital skin and/or pubic hair (M. Kono 
1985: 15). Consequently, when Hokkaido 
Ainu first began to carve bears commercially, 
their attempts were unsuccessful and far- 
from-faithful representations of the animal. 
These ungainly creations (fig. 47.5) have 
47/MODERN ART AND ARTISTS 337 
47.7 
47.7, 47.8 Miniature Totem Poles 
The Ainu have always been interested 
in the wood carvings of other native 
peoples, especially those of the 
Northwest Coast Indians whose 
symbolism they did not understand but 
which they admired as works of art. The 
miniature pole on the left, carved by 
Koyama and acquired in Akan. 
Hokkaido, in 1986, shows a bear with 
a cub, an owl, and an Ainu woman. It 
was stained black to simulate totem 
poles made from argillaceous rocks by 
Canada’s Haida Indians. The pole on 
the right, by an unknown artist, features 
an Ainu man and woman and a bear, 
rendered in bright, decorative colors. 
Small totem poles with Ainu motifs 
were probably first carved to sell to 
American soldiers who occupied 
Hokkaido after World War II. Model 
totem poles continue to be a small but 
important part of contemporary Ainu 
tourist art production. Today such 
tourist areas as Akan and Shiraoi have 
full-scale Ainu-style totem poles in their 
museum compounds. (Dubreuil 
Collection) 
338 
been called "pig bears” or "alligator bears” 
(Arai 1992: 82). 
The origin of commercial Ainu bear 
carving has been a matter of dispute that re¬ 
quires further study. Some (Ohtsuka, this vol¬ 
ume) claim that it was stimulated by examples 
of bear carvings that Japanese farmers in 
Yakumo, Hokkaido, brought home from Eu¬ 
rope to show Ainu carvers,- others claim that 
the bear-carving tradition began independently 
among the Ainu of the Asahikawa region. 
Whatever the case, bear carving among the 
Chikabumi Ainu progressed rapidly, and by the 
early 1920s Umetaro Matsui (1901-49) 
emerged as the most celebrated Ainu bear 
carver in Hokkaido. Even as a young man, 
Matsui carved bears that were more lifelike 
than those of other carvers, in part because he 
had hunted bears in the wild, knew them as a 
respected and formidable foe, and wanted his 
carvings to render them in their natural condi¬ 
tion (fig. 47.6). Eventually Matsui became 
immortalized as a "legendary Ainu person" for 
his bear-carving skills (Arai 1992: 82-84). 
By 1932 Ainu carving skills and market 
development had improved to the point that the 
LIVING ARTS/C. DUBREUIL 
best carvers were able to substantially increase 
their personal income. Matsui received a special 
award in 1933 at the Ainu Art Craft Exhibition 
sponsored by the Hokkaido Prefectural Office 
(Arai 1992: 83), and while this was a great 
honor, it was far surpassed when Matsui was 
asked to carve a bear for presentation to 
Emperor Hirohito on his visit to Hokkaido in 
1936. The publicity generated by this event 
instantly made Chikabumi bear carvings 
famous. Sales of all Ainu tourist art increased 
generally, and Matsui began to sign his work 
from that point on (Ishijima 1981: 11). 
Around the 1930s Kensei Kato (1 894— 
1966), a Japanese sculptor from the Tokyo Art 
School, was invited to Asahikawa to give Ainu 
carvers guidance and training. This was the first 
time that Ainu carvers had received formal 
training in the use of tools and in design and 
composition. This experience had a positive 
impact and helped Chikabumi gain the domi¬ 
nant market share over other Ainu tourist 
areas. Armed with the confidence created by 
the Matsui presentation and new-found pro¬ 
duction and marketing skills, Chikabumi Ainu 
began traveling to other tourist areas to sell 
carvings and give demonstrations. 
During the war years the market for 
tourist art was curtailed, but immediately after 
the war the Asahikawa Folkcraft Organization 
began producing woodcarvings to respond to a 
new market opportunity: American Occupation 
Forces (Ohtsuka 1982: 16, 17). In addition to 
producing the beautiful carved platters, bowls, 
and other items that they were famous for, Ainu 
now began to carve electric lamps, bookends, 
magazine racks, decorative forks and spoons, 
and other everyday items. Business was so good 
that they experimented with exporting tourist 
art to the United States (Ishijima 1980a: 4). 
Almost all of these items featured bears or 
traditional Ainu designs (fig. 47.8). 
Throughout this period the Asahikawa 
Ainu maintained a leading position in the 
production and sales of tourist art and were its 
largest wholesalers. Even Shiraoi, today's 
best-known Ainu tourist village, bought its 
bear carvings from Asahikawa until the 1950s. 
Other Ainu tourist resorts such as Soun-kyo, 
and most of all Akan, were also greatly 
influenced by the Asahikawa Ainu, and in 
1962 Nibutani Ainu also took up the bear¬ 
carving industry (Ohtsuka 1982: 17). 
While producing tourist art was mod¬ 
estly successful for some Ainu men, the more 
creative, skilled artists soon grew impatient 
carving the limited choice of subjects for the 
tourist market,- they wanted to produce art 
that was respected as art, not as koijei (handi¬ 
craft) or Ainu tourist art. Penetrating the 
Japanese fine-art market proved very difficult, 
however, because the discrimination that 
blocked Ainu participation in other areas of 
society was perhaps even more rampant in the 
elitist Japanese art world. Most of Japan's 
successful artists had been trained prior to 
World War II by prestigious art schools or 
were apprenticed to master artists or teachers. 
Securing such mentors usually required family 
wealth and influence, which the Ainu lacked. 
Before the 1950s, it was rare for an Ainu youth 
to finish high school, and there were few con¬ 
temporary Ainu role models. Umetaro Matsui 
was respected in Hokkaido as its foremost 
bear carver during the 1930s and 1940s, but 
he was never accepted as an artist by the 
contemporary Japanese art world. 
In traditional indigenous societies, 
artistic practitioners were usually restricted 
to gender-related areas, and the Ainu were 
no different: carving was normally the men's 
prerogative, and textile production was 
generally the domain of women. There are 
examples of women who carved tourist art 
pieces to help support their families, but by 
and large, unlike the Ainu men, women had 
few new creative outlets during the 1930s 
and 1940s. Soon, however, both men and 
women would have new opportunities. 
Ainu Fine Art Begins 
47.9 Kuma (Bear), 1993 
Takeki Fujito 
Takeki Fujito's understanding of and 
respect for nature are products of his 
Ainu upbringing. Having witnessed the 
destruction of much of Hokkaido's 
wilderness in the twentieth century, 
including the extermination of wolves 
and the near-extinction of bears, 
Fujito has dedicated his art—which 
expresses a reverence for animals 
and nature—to teaching respect for 
nature. His bears, like this one, seem 
nearly alive. (Collection of Shigeru 
Kayano) 
47.10 Winter (Hibernation), 1980 
Takeki Fujito 
A hibernating bear was called suyo- 
kamuy in Ainu, meaning “the god who 
is in the cave." After a long winter the 
flowers blossomed and the owls 
hooted, announcing the arrival of 
spring, time for the Ainu to hunt bear. 
During the hunt bears were often 
flushed from the apparent security of 
their dens; it was such a sanctuary 
that Takeki Fujito chose to depict in 
this work. (KM) 
Takeki Fujito 
o ne of the first artists to elevate the 
Asahikawa bear-carving tradition to a powerful 
personal expression is Takeki Fujito, who was 
born in 1934 as the first son of Ainu carver 
Takeo Fujito. Due to the family's poverty, the 
young Fujito left school at the age of twelve 
and joined his family's carving business. To 
improve his skills he and his father traveled to 
different Ainu tourist resorts in Hokkaido to 
learn from respected Ainu carvers, eventually 
settling in the majestic village of Akan in the 
early 1950s. Shortly after his father died in 
1962, Fujito managed to establish his own stu¬ 
dio, a small private museum, and a 
gift shop. 
Fujito calls himself kumahori, 
meaning "bear carver" in 
Japanese, and he takes 
great pride in his calling: 
Traditional [Ainu] art ob¬ 
jects such as the prayer stick, 
spatula, and the knife sheath all 
are simply done, but they 
are decorated with 
47.10 
magnificently carved designs. The bear¬ 
carving tradition is derived from that 
traditional craftsmanship. It's said that the 
origin of bear carving began around the 
1930s. There are various theories, for 
example that [it] was imported from 
Switzerland, or started in Yakumo, and so 
on. However, I must say that today's bear 
carving began in Asahikawa. There is 
no doubt that the great Ainu carvers from 
my father's generation came from 
Asahikawa, like the late Umetaro Matsui. 
I'm going to devote myself to carving 
bears catching game or bears playing with 
each other for the rest of my life (Chiri 
and Yokoyama 1995: 118). 
Fujito's bears have a strong naturalistic 
quality. One example (fig. 47.9), entitled 
Kuma ("bear” in Japanese), captures the 
instant when a wild bear raises its paw to 
attack or give warning,- Fujito used the 
natural grain of the Manchurian ash to add 
strength and tension By contrast, Winter 
[Hibernation) (fig. 47.10) exudes the peaceful 
47/MODERN ART AND ARTISTS 339 
47.13 Fuchi, 1993 
Takeki Fujito 
Fuchi, which means "respected female 
elder,” is often colloquially rendered as 
“grandmother." This sculpture is Fujito’s 
tribute to a very special woman: Take 
Fujito, his grandmother. (NME H189023) 
suspension of bear life in the midst of a harsh 
Hokkaido winter. Fujito's Ainu upbringing has 
given him a special awareness of the environ¬ 
ment in which the animals he carves live. 
Fujito describes himself as a bear carver, 
but he is much more. His carvings capture the 
spirit of the animals he creates whether they are 
whales feeding on krill, a sea otter diving into 
ocean surf for its dinner, eagles swooping down 
to catch rabbits (fig. 47.1 1), or caribou calling 
for a mate. His works beautifully communicate 
the Ainu respect for animal gods (kamuy). 
Fujito has also created remarkable full-size 
wooden sculptures of the ekashi (male elders) and 
fuchi (female elders) who transmitted the flame 
of Ainu culture to him (fig. 47.12). One portrays 
the late Shinchiro Hikawa (second figure from 
left), who was one of last of the Ainu elders able 
to perform traditional ceremonies entirely in the 
Ainu language. 
He was a highly respected individual 
who realized that to survive the Ainu had to 
exist in two worlds: Japan and Ainu mosir. 
While it must have been tempting to depict 
Hikawa in traditional Ainu clothes performing 
a ceremony, Fujito immortalized him wearing 
a modern Japanese suit with his hands in his 
pockets and Ainu traditional leggings over his 
47.11 Eagle Sculpture, 1978 
Takeki Fujito 
While some species of eagles are native to 
Hokkaido and Sakhalin, the majority migrate 
from the Asian continent through the Kurile 
islands. Eagles became economically 
important to the Ainu, who traded eagle 
feathers to the Japanese and Chinese in 
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 
Fujito carved this eagle in the act of 
capturing its prey. 
47.12 
pants. More than a statement of cultural 
blending, Hikawa Ekashi stands tall and 
powerful, gazing quietly and confidently at 
his viewers. 
Fujito also produced a sculpture of his 
late grandmother, Take Fujito, with whom he 
had an especially close relationship because 
he lost his mother right after his birth. In this 
sculpture (fig. 47.1 3), Fujito has shown his 
grandmother in traditional Ainu clothes. Her 
somewhat melancholy expression seems to 
take us back to the hard times when Ainu 
were being forced to abandon their culture, 
but her demeanor suggests the more peaceful 
life the Ainu once had. 
47.12 Life-sized Wooden Figures, 
1991-93 
Takeki Fujito 
Fujito immortalized in wood four Ainu elders 
because he greatly respected their roles as 
keepers of the Ainu tradition. They include 
from right to left: Konusa Kawakami-ekas/i/ 
(1993); Fusa Sugimura-fuc/ii (1992); Zejiro 
Hikawa-ekas/i/(1991); and Kaneto Kawamura- 
ekashi (1991). All three male elders have 
passed away, but Fusa Sugimura-fuchi is still 
an active cultural leader in Asahikawa, 
Hokkaido. (Fujito Collection) 
340 LIVING ARTS/C. D U B R E U I I 
47.14 Necklace, 1968 
Bikky Sunazawa 
The style of jewelry created by Bikky 
Sunazawa in the 1960s utilized 
various Ainu designs; this necklace, 
completed in 1968, is one example. 
His jewelry styles have remained 
popular, and while most artists in the 
tourist industry copied his designs, 
his unique style is his legacy. Today 
the omnipresent Bikky mon'yo, or 
“Bikky Patterns," are found wherever 
Ainu tourist art is sold. (KM) 
Fujito's talent for the exacting detail that 
lends naturalism its power is seen in a wide 
variety of other works. He did life-sized 
statues of Kannon (the Buddhist goddess of 
mercy), a statue of Lenin commissioned by 
the Russian Embassy in Japan, and countless 
versions of his beloved bear and other 
animals. While he does not often talk about 
his work, it speaks strongly of the legacy of 
Asahikawa Ainu bear carvers. 
Bikky Sunazawa 
Bikky Sunazawa was unique. He was one of 
the first Ainu artists of the post—World War II 
generation to integrate the art of two worlds, 
Japanese and Ainu. His art cannot be appreci¬ 
ated from a narrow, one-sided (for instance, 
Ainu) point of view, nor does he fit just one 
category. Bikky was a forceful proponent for 
Ainu identity, both politically and through his 
art. Self-taught and innovative, Bikky Sunazawa 
created a complex body of abstract art that was 
intricately interwoven with his equally com¬ 
plex life. His fierce pride, his Ainu upbringing 
and ethnicity, his parents' role as Ainu cultural 
leaders, and later, his own role in the fight 
for Ainu rights and in ending discrimination 
toward the Ainu (Siddle, this volume)—all 
shaped his persona and his art. 
Bikky was horn in 1931 and brought up 
in the Chikabumi Ainu village near 
Asahikawa. His youth was a mixture of two 
cultures, both of which were undergoing 
dramatic changes: the traditional Ainu way of 
life was being assimilated into a Japanese 
society that had itself been experiencing 
constant change since the beginning of the 
47.15 a, b Ki-men (Masks), 1975 
Bikky Sunazawa 
Bikky’s mask series broke more new 
ground for Ainu artists. Masks were 
totally unknown in Ainu tradition. He 
was aware of—if not influenced by— 
masks of other native North Pacific 
peoples, and from the beginning his 
masks took an expressive mode. He 
commented in an interview; “I wanted 
to express both faces of masks: the 
front and the back.” (Asahi Shimbun, 
19 July 1976). (HOVO) 
Meiji era. Bikky's grandparents lived in a 
traditional Ainu home next to his parents' 
Japanese-style house,- his grandparents spoke 
to him in the Ainu language, and his parents 
spoke to him in Japanese. During his first six 
years, living in a small Ainu village, he had 
little contact with Japanese children. When 
the segregated school system ended in 1937 
and an ''equal'' educational system was made 
open to Ainu children, Bikky started elemen¬ 
tary school with Japanese children. This was 
a painful period for Bikky and other Ainu 
children, for they were constantly ridiculed 
by their Japanese classmates. In recalling his 
boyhood, he said, "Racial prejudice was 
severe, and I naturally began to bate people. 
I was much more intimate with cattle and 
horses than with people" (Asahi Shimbun, 21 
November 1960). Bikky's personal experi¬ 
ences seem to have precipitated his retreat 
into a private artistic world in which he 
escaped the pain of discrimination. 
After I finished supper in the shed, I 
began making sketches of the cattle and 
horses I had seen in the daytime. In the 
beginning I just wanted to draw a horse as 
it was, but gradually 1 changed. It was 
interesting—the more I drew, the more I 
wanted to capture the essence of the 
horse, not only its sturdiness or its 
strength. At that time I was on the 
mountain, and I could not get in touch 
with the world, even by means of a 
newspaper. With nothing to distract me, 
the form of the animals I drew turned into 
abstract forms (Yamakawa 1988: 183). 
Struggling against prejudice, he realized 
when he was only seventeen that the core of 
47.15b 
47 / MO D ERN ART AND ARTISTS 34 i 
47.16 Bear and Hunter 
(Ekashi), 1973 
Bikky Sunazawa 
The artist learned about animals and 
wilderness from his father, whose Ainu 
name, Koa-kanno, meant "two arrows 
aren't necessary,” which referred to his 
prowess as a bow marksman. Bikky's 
understanding of the physical and 
psychological struggle between the 
hunter and the hunted expressed itself 
in this epic confrontation between man 
and bear. (KM) 
47.17 Totem Pole, 1979 
Bikky Sunazawa 
Bikky's first full-scale totem pole was 
carved in 1979 for the Ainu Memorial 
Museum in his home village of 
Chikabumi, Asahikawa. The pole, which 
stands outside the museum, consists 
of several Ainu elements, most 
dominant of which is the itokpa (family 
crest emblem) of the killer whale. Also 
included in the carvings are a prayer 
stick (ikupasuy), offertory cup and 
saucer (tuki), images of the chief Ainu 
deities (killer whale, bear, owl), and the 
canoe, important to the survival of the 
Ainu. (Ainu Memorial Museum of 
Kaneto Kawamura in Asahikawa) 
his problem was his own inferiority complex. 
He understood that to change discrimination 
against the Ainu, he first had to change himself: 
It came to me [in 1948] that the Ainu 
shouldn't have to suffer from poor self- 
consciousness to the point that many Ainu 
had to hide their identity. 1 couldn't con¬ 
front the racial prejudice against the Ainu 
until I could get rid of my own inferiority 
complex. Rather than hiding behind my 
Ainu-ness, I thought I should grapple 
squarely with it. It was then that I made up 
my mind to use my childhood nickname, 
"Bikky," instead of my real [Japanese] 
name, Hisao (Yamakawa 1988: 180-82). 
"Bikky," which means "frog" in Ainu, also 
became his artistic signature. While there is 
at least one sculpture in which the name is 
spelled in Japanese characters, in all other 
works he asserted his cultural independence 
from Japanese convention by adopting the 
romanized spelling "Bikky." 
In keeping with his rebellious nature (and 
in contrast to Fujito and most other Ainu carvers 
whose livelihood depended on the bear-carving 
trade), Bikky rejected the Ainu bear-carving 
tradition, which he saw not as the focus of Ainu 
identity but as part of a mental enclosure that 
imprisoned the Ainu people as surely as the 
stone walls of a penitentiary. Bikky's father had 
sent him as a teenager to a master bear carver to 
learn proper carving techniques, but after only a 
month he was asked to leave because he refused 
to carve the bear in the usual way,- for example, 
he would carve horns on his bears. 
I don't like bear carvings because they are 
not the real Ainu work of Hokkaido. The 
essence of Ainu art should be an expres¬ 
sion of the life of living things or an 
expression of empathy which is received 
from living things seen through the 
medium of wood. The Ainu carver should 
then revive these elements to modern 
times (Asahi Shimbun, 22 November 1960). 
Tourist Art Chances 
Bikky's first contribution to Ainu art came at 
age twenty-one when he created wooden 
jewelry with Ainu designs to sell at the Akan 
tourist resorts. He began to carve pendants 
and earrings with intricate Ainu designs 
(fig. 47.14) as well as the wooden rings that 
had first brought him acclaim. The designs 
were derived from traditional Ainu patterns 
that Bikky had learned from his mother while 
helping her make clothing. Bikky recalled, 
My mother asked me to do the embroi¬ 
dery on the cbikarknrpe [cotton embroi¬ 
dered robe], 1 was very young, and even 
though 1 felt bashful at the time, I was very 
attracted to the designs. ... 1 appreciate 
what she taught me because now it's in my 
blood (S. Ogawa 1986: 13). 
For a boy to learn what was considered 
girl's work was a radical departure, but Bikky's 
experience with garment-making added a 
huge inventory of complex designs to his 
subconscious repertoire, which later ap- 
3 42 LIVING ARTS/C. DUBREUIL 
47.17 
47.18 Kami no shita (Tongue of 
God), 1980 
Bikky Sunazawa 
In this massive work Bikky sought to 
express the presence and power of gods 
in the lives of Ainu people. Its inspiration 
may have come from the parunpe, a 
triangular mark cut into the end of the 
ikupasuy, which conveyed a man's 
prayers to the gods. The precision of 
Bikky’s chisel cuts across the face of 
this large-scale piece gives its surface 
an undulating sheen that invites 
touching, something the artist encour¬ 
aged but which unfortunately violates 
contemporary museum rules prohibiting 
the touching of artwork. (MCAS) 
peared, transformed, in his work. Bikky 
pushed his designs first into a signature style 
for his jewelry, a precursor of his hallmark 
design, the so-called Bikky mon'yo (Bikky pat¬ 
terns). Later they were integrated into some 
of his larger bird and totem-pole sculptures. 
While he didn't know it at that time, he had 
revolutionized Ainu tourist art, giving it new 
vitality. Today "Bikky patterns" are found on 
many items wherever Ainu tourist art is sold. 
Art and Politics 
In 1953 his private and artistic life took a 
dramatic turn: he got married and left 
Hokkaido to live in Tokyo for a decade, 
although he returned to the Akan tourist 
resorts during summer seasons to make the 
money he needed to stay in Tokyo. In Tokyo 
Bikky was exposed to the intoxicating world 
of avant-garde art and intellectual thought, 
and every day seemed to offer inspiring new 
experiences. Although Bikky studied the 
paintings exhibited in galleries and museums, 
he never undertook formal art education 
because he felt it restricted self-expression. 
He read about art and artists, however, and 
reported (author's interview with Junko 
Takagi, 3 May 1995) that during this period 
his work was influenced by abstract sculptors 
including Ossip Zadkine (1 890-1967) and 
Shigeru Ueki (1913-84). Like them, Bikky 
explored the many possibilities of bio- 
morphic forms, shapes that were featured in 
his first abstract series, "Animals," which led 
to his acceptance into the Modern Art 
Association of japan in 1962. 
Bikky divorced and moved to Sapporo, 
which in the 1970s was the locus for social 
activism and racial consciousness for Ainu 
and enlightened Japanese. Bikky soon 
became embroiled in the fight for Ainu 
rights, as his parents had been forty years 
earlier. He made use of his artistic talents and 
was at the forefront of the Ainu movement. 
Some Ainu remember Bikky more for his 
work as an Ainu activist than for his art 
(Siddle, this volume). 
Early Major Works 
In 1975 Bikky began a new series of carvings, 
Ki-men (Wooden Masks). He carved variants of 
masks whose form incorporated homonyms 
of the "ki" sound in kanji, the written Chinese 
language. First, he picked one of the "ki" 
characters, and developed an image through 
sketches that drew on the character's shape 
or its meaning, then he carved these images 
into masklike sculptures, creating as many as 
150 masks. Some resemble pictorial symbols, 
others odd creatures,- some are simple 
abstract forms, while others are quite sensual 
(figs. 47.15a, b). 
During these years Bikky found it 
difficult to make a living from his abstract 
sculpture. People could not easily understand 
his art, and his involvement in Ainu activism 
hurt sales. Eventually he was forced to work 
with a large craft company, Kitanihon 
Mingei-sha. Although he produced much 
more tourist art than fine art during his 
tenure at the craft company, he also 
stretched the boundaries of the traditional 
bear-and-hunter format, which he had 
previously shunned, creating an exquisite 
ensemble called Bear and Hunter (Ekasbi) 
(fig. 47.16). Carved from a stump of a tree, 
47/MODERN ART AND ARTISTS 343 
47.19 
47.19 Juka (Wooden Flower), 1989 
Bikky Sunazawa 
The form of the works in this series was 
inspired by inaw, the tufted-wood sticks 
that traditionally mark places of Ainu 
ritual. It was Bikky’s intention that 
viewers participate in the creation of 
these wooden flowers by arranging the 
sculpted willow branches as they chose. 
(HOVO) 
47.20 Totem Poles at Kispiox 
When Bikky—whose name means "frog" 
in Ainu—visited an Indian site at Kispiox, 
British Columbia, in 1983, he was 
impressed upon seeing how frogs and 
other motifs were skillfully interwoven on 
the totem pole. His comment: “Obviously 
how to incorporate frogs into the design 
elements appears to be something 
extraordinary, but it’s also just simply 
great sculpture. Frogs suddenly appear, 
coming out of fingernails or from eyes 
and mouths . . .just incredible!” 
(Yamakawa 1988: 197). 
47.20 
this work was his single attempt to represent 
the struggle of the Ainu against both natural 
and human forces. Like Matsui, Bikky had 
accompanied his father, Koa-kanno, who was 
renowned as a bear hunter, on many hunting 
trips, where he observed the competition 
between nature and humans. In Ekasbi his 
observations of the hunt, his feelings about his 
father, the plight of nature, and human 
struggles can all be perceived. 
In 1978, facing a professional crisis and a 
second divorce and remarriage, Bikky quit the 
craft company and moved from Sapporo to 
Otoineppu, a small village only fifty-five miles 
(ninety kilometers) from the northern tip of 
Hokkaido where the harsh winter season lasts 
for six months of the year. Here Bikky found 
his ideal working environment, with few 
distractions, plenty of wood, and natural 
surroundings as inspiration. Bikky began 
working on a commission for a totem pole to 
be erected at the Ainu Memorial Museum in 
Chikabumi, Asahikawa, where he had been 
born and raised. (Although totem poles were 
not part of the traditional Ainu repertoire, 
small-scale totem poles had been erected at 
tourist areas since the end of World War II.) 
Bikky's first full-scale totem pole was a 
composite of Ainu ceremonial symbols 
featuring a killer whale itokpa (family crest), an 
ikupasuy (prayer stick), and tuki (lacquered sake 
bowl), as well as images of the most important 
kamuy-—bear and killer whale (gods of the 
mountains and sea) and an owl (the protective 
spirit of the village). The pole (fig. 47.17) was 
erected in April 1979. 
In 1980 Bikky created another piece of 
massive sculpture with an Ainu theme. Kami no 
shita {Tone)ue of God; fig. 47.18) is most impres¬ 
sive: the six-foot-high (two-meter) tongue 
symbolizes communication with the spirit 
world and the immense power of the gods. 
The contrast between its cracked and stained 
body, suggesting a weathered old denizen of 
the forest, and the glinting, machinelike 
precision of its chiseled surface is astonishing, 
and invites touching. Bikky drew inspiration 
from the v- or triangular-shaped parunpe 
(tongue), traditionally carved at the end of the 
ikupasuy (see fig. 46.11), whose function is to 
deliver a message or prayer to the gods. Bikky 
probably intended his sculpture to function in 
a similar fashion. 
Another Ainu theme emerged in the Juka 
(Wooden Flower) series Bikky began in 1982. 
These works (fig. 47.19) consist of a founda- 
344 LIVING ARTS/C. D U B R E U I 1 
47.21 Images of British Columbia, 
1983 
Bikky Sunazawa 
This sculpture seems to have been 
inspired by the conceptual images 
Bikky admired in Northwest Coast art. 
Here a Coast Salish Skhwaikhwey 
mask form, with its peg eyes, deep 
eye sockets, and prominent nose, is 
reinterpreted: Bikky’s work has similar 
peg eyes and deep eye sockets, but 
he placed his mask on an N-shaped 
body, evoking a power figure or fetish. 
(Shinobu Ishijima Collection) 
tion "stalk" to which scores of "branches" or 
"petals," made of slender willow shoots whose 
bark has been carefully peeled, could be at¬ 
tached. Bikky intended this to he a participa¬ 
tory series in which viewers would build a 
flower from a pile of peeled shoots stacked 
nearby, like a bird building a nest. 
Although the wooden flowers resemble a 
fireworks "starburst," there is little doubt that 
Bikky's inspiration was based in part on inaw, 
the shaved sticks that accompanied Ainu 
rituals and were believed to turn into birds 
that helped deliver messages or prayers to the 
gods. Like this religious icon, so beautiful and 
flowerlike in its simplicity, Bikky's series was 
produced in a variety of shapes and sizes. 
Bikky hoped that this participatory art would 
encourage the viewer to experience art 
physically and spiritually: to touch, to play, to 
enjoy. In other installations the viewer 
entered a darkened gallery and was guided by 
a rope to a piece of sculpture, which could 
only be experienced by touch. 
47.22 Gozen sanji no gangu 
(Toys at 3:00 A.M.), 1987 
Bikky Sunazawa 
Mysterious insectlike creatures 
were often described in Bikky’s 1976 
book of prose and poetry, Aoi sakyu 
nite (In the blue sand dune), which 
was based on his dreams from 1964 
to 1973. He created a series of 
sculptures from these themes, like 
this dragonfly-like creature. (HOVO) 
Northwest Coast Connections 
In 1983 an unexpected meeting with Douglas 
Sanders, a Canadian professor of indigenous 
law, led Bikky into contact with the famous 
Haida artist Bill Reid, who invited him to visit 
British Columbia. Like many Ainu artists, 
Bikky had been inspired by Northwest Coast 
art and readily accepted an opportunity to see 
totem poles in their natural setting at old 
Gitksan village on the 
Llpper Skeena River and on 
the Queen Charlotte Islands 
(Higuchi 1987: 195). 
Cracked and split, rotting 
and returning to nature, 
these ancient, weathered 
poles were powerful 
witnesses of native history 
(fig. 47.20). 
. . . these creations were 
terrifically magical, demon¬ 
strating the serious observa¬ 
tion and struggle of native 
artists towards nature. . . . 
When I confronted them, my 
previous knowledge about 
totem poles just blew away. 1 
had seen them before as a 
humorous curiosity, like 
something you might do as a 
hobby. But upon experi¬ 
encing them in person I 
became overwhelmed and 
felt nauseous. This was 
47.21 
caused by my hasty ignorance without 
grasping the content of the gigantic 
monumentality of the totem poles 
(Bankaha Shinpo, 18 November 1983). 
Bikky was struck by the symbolism of 
mythical creatures revealed in the last breath 
of their power, returning to nature, and he 
became aware that this aspect of the cycle of 
life had been missing in his art. He became 
deeply embarrassed that he had called his 
previous columnar art "totem poles." Now that 
he knew them firsthand, physically and 
emotionally, he never again used the word 
"totem" to describe his work. He quickly 
abandoned his intention to carve a totem 
pole, which he had announced in a local 
newspaper before departing for his trip, but 
working in Reid's studio on Granville Island in 
Vancouver he did produce a number of 
paintings and sculptures, including Images of 
British Columbia, which reflects his impressions 
of the art of Canada's First Nations, such as 
this abstract version of a Coast Salish 
Skhwaikhwey mask (fig. 47.21). 
47/MODERN ART AND ARTISTS 345 
47.23 Praying to the Gods 
This photo shows Bikky conducting a 
kamuynomi, or special prayer to a tree 
spirit, using an ikupasuy (prayer stick) 
and ceremonial sake on January 18, 
1986 in front of his studio in 
Otoineppu, Hokkaido. He performed 
this ritual in preparation for carving the 
log before which he kneels. (Fukao and 
Kitayama, 1986) 
47.24 Kaze ni kiku (Listening to the 
Wind), 1986 
Bikky Sunazawa 
Bikky created these sculptures shortly 
before his death in 1989. The work is 
accompanied by this poem: 
Wind, 
You are a four-headed and four-legged 
monster. 
As you are so furious, people love your 
intermediate moments, 
which are called the four seasons. 
I pray, blow the strongest wind upon me 
and my entire body. 
Especially, blow it upon my eyes. 
Wind, 
While you are a four-headed and four¬ 
legged monster, 
I'd like to present you with a nice pair of 
four-legged pants. 
And please, hold me once. 
(MCAS) 
Bikky was also impressed by the status 
contemporary native artists enjoyed in British 
Columbia. Their works were sought after, 
widely published, and exhibited in public and 
private galleries and museums (Yamakawa 
1988: 208-209). "On meeting Bill Reid, my 
stereotype image of Indians was shattered. Here 
was a native person who was successful and 
respected, someone with pride" (Banknba Shinpo, 
18 November 1983). By contrast, most Japanese 
considered Ainu artists as second-rate artists— 
souvenir-makers with little artistic skill. 
His trip also helped him confront 
something else: "I had another fact to confirm 
in Canada other than my creation of art" 
(Hariu et al. 1989: 103). Although he never 
elaborated, I believe he was referring to his 
struggle with ethnicity. His experience in 
Canada helped him break through his self- 
consciousness at being called an Ainu artist in 
the professional world of Japanese art. He 
began accepting wider boundaries and 
realized that being Ainu could be a positive 
force in his career. 
Last works 
Returning to Otoineppu changed by his 
Canadian experience, Bikky's art was also 
dramatically transformed, especially in terms 
of its relationship to nature. He began to 
focus on the theme of wind with a monu¬ 
mental outdoor sculpture called Yottsu no kaze 
(Four Winds; fig. 47.25), emphasizing that 
both the material and the context of this 
finished piece were provided by nature: 
I make use of the trees in nature, grown 
without touching human hands, as materi¬ 
als. Thus, they are living things. It's quite 
natural that living things will atrophy and 
decay I will reconstruct them anew . . . I'm 
trying my luck with wooden sculptures. 
Outdoor sculptures are always done in 
bronze and stone, but I'm going to submit 
wooden sculptures. The intention of the 
creation is to establish my work in an 
outdoor environment, and the natural 
phenomena of snow and wind will add to 
their completeness. ... I calculate that it 
will stand there at least fifty years (Hariu 
et al 1989: 100-101). 
He was commissioned to produce a 
large sculpture for the opening of the 
Museum of Contemporary Art in Sapporo, 
and for this work four-hundred-year-old 
Japanese red spruce trees were delivered to 
Bikky's studio. Before proceeding with a new 
work, Bikky usually performed an Ainu prayer 
346 LIVING ARTS/C. D U B R E U 1 L 
47.25 Yottsu no kaxe (Four Winds), 
1988 
In this simple but powerful large-scale 
work, the natural overall shape of the 
Japanese red spruce logs is retained 
but a concave portion of each piece, 
facing a different direction, is carved 
out. The rough-hewn interiors contrast 
with the exterior surfaces, which are 
marked with thousands of chisel 
marks, creating a new grain for the 
tree. (MCAS) 
ceremony, kamuynomi, but this time his 
prayer for the god of the trees was filmed by 
Hokkaido Shimbun (fig. 47.23,- Fukao and 
Kitayama 1986), consistent with his decision 
to accept—and to promote—his Ainu 
ethnicity in a more open manner. 
Kaze ni kikit (Listening to the Wind) is a 
twenty-foot (six-meter) abstract canoe¬ 
shaped piece designed for horizontal floor 
display accompanied by four cylindrical 
forms to be arranged by the presenter 
(fig. 47.24). At the top of each cylindrical 
form is a rectangular projection, which is 
probably intended as a head and gives the 
impression of an abstract human figure 
standing, bending, or stooping. The 
cylindrical forms create a different impres¬ 
sion every time they are rearranged. For 
example, they can seem like they're talking 
to each other in a group, or they can be 
arranged to be excluding one from the 
conversation. The latter composition might 
suggest a well-known Ainu myth about the 
wind that was performed as a ritual by the 
Yakumo Ainu. In this tale the evil east wind 
blew so hard that salmon could not swim 
upstream, but the other winds caught him 
after a dramatic battle and made him 
apologize to the people. Bikky would have 
known this myth and may have intended it 
as one permutation of his composition. 
Early in 1987 Bikky started a new series 
entitled Cozen sanji no gancju (Toys at 3.00 A.M.; 
fig. 47.22). As the title suggests, the series 
was created early in the morning, close to 
daybreak. Bikky had lived in his own time 
frame since his youth, and his personal 
biological clock operated differently from 
other people's. 
1 try to devote from 1 1 P.M. to around 
3:34 A.M. to shaping my ideas. I always 
stop at 3:34 A.M. because that is the time 
when the express train, Rishiri, passed by, 
and then I begin carving. The sound of 
the train became a signal for me to begin 
carving. 1 have worked by this routine for 
eight years (Hariu et al 1989:105). 
Although he was very gregarious and 
loved socializing, he needed complete 
privacy for his artistic activity, when he was 
"confronting himself," as he described it. 
Carving at night in the northern Fdokkaido 
winter was a considerable challenge, because 
the temperature in his studio, with only one 
small heater, was often well below zero. Fde 
frequently would lose sensitivity in his 
hands, and fragments of ice would fly when 
he struck green wood with his chisel or adze. 
The ideas for such important works as Four 
Winds took shape on these cold winter 
nights. Just as his father had gained fortitude 
from spending long cold nights in snow 
caves while hunting, Bikky used self-imposed 
adversity to bring out his creativity. 
The Toys at 3.00 A.M. series was done in 
small scale so that people could play with them 
with their hands. While most of Bikky's large- 
scale works have rough or small rhythmical 
chisel marks on the surface, Toys at 3.00 AM. 
were finished with polished, smooth surfaces 
that illustrate the mysterious shininess that 
almost all new life exhibits. 
Toys at 3:00 A.M. expressed the primordial 
spirit-world creatures that shared the nights 
with Bikky. All these insectlike creatures have 
articulated segments such as long, slender, 
flexible feelers, tails, and antennae, which are 
47/MODERN art and artists 34 7 
47.27 Nitne-kamuy (Evil God), 1988 
Bikky Sunazawa 
Nitne-kamuy was a legendary evil Ainu 
god who people in the Asahikawa region 
where Bikky was born believed capable 
of inflicting great harm and calamity. 
Some regional place-names are derived 
from incidents ascribed to this god. 
Bikky may have confronted his mortality 
in this piece, which was completed 
shortly before his death. (HAMA) 
47.26 Kani (Crab), 1987 
Bikky Sunazawa 
Bikky also created sculptures of other 
creatures, including insects, reptiles, 
and fish whose articulated wings, tails, 
heads, and limbs were fastened with 
wooden pegs and whose surfaces are 
covered with intricately carved Ainu 
designs in relief. (KM) 
348 
47.28 
connected with hinged wooden joints so that 
they can move freely. This type of detailed and 
delicate artistry is technically related to the 
variety of sea world creatures and fish he 
created when he was working at the Kitanihon 
Mingeisha (Kitanihon Folkcraft Company) in 
Sapporo in the 1960s and 1970s (fig. 47.26). 
Bikky's last work, titled Nitne-kamuy (Evil 
God; fig. 47.27), was begun early in 1988 but 
was interrupted by other work during the 
summer (Echizen 1992: 4). The sculpture 
consists of three spherical forms piled one on 
top of the other, with the uppermost form 
resembling a budding flower. Nitne-kamuy is 
the name of the evil god who played tricks on 
the Ainu people. No one seems to know why 
Bikky put an evil god's name on his last work, 
hut perhaps he had begun to feel a force 
affecting his fate, the spell of the evil trickster. 
In the fall of 1988 Bikky was diagnosed 
with a deadly form of cancer. In spite of his 
painful malignancy, full knowledge of which 
was withheld from him, he maintained his 
pace of work and even participated in the 
opening of "The Contemporary Artists' Series 
'89'' at the Kanagawa Prefectural Gallery near 
Tokyo. Bikky flew in from Hokkaido and 
arrived at the gallery on a hospital gurney 
with intravenous paraphernalia attached to 
his arm. The gallery had asked him to write 
something for the exhibition catalogue, and 
he wrote a single word with ink and brush— 
kiki, which he had coined, meaning "spirit of 
wood"—and gave it to them. This word was 
47.28 Untitled, ea. 1980s 
Peramonkoro Sunazawa 
Bikky’s mother, Peramonkoro Sunazawa, 
born in 1897 in Chikabumi, Asahikawa, 
devoted herself to learning and 
teaching Japanese-style dressmaking 
to Ainu women in the community, but 
she was also a respected master of 
traditional Ainu embroidery. Recognized 
as one of the most talented textile 
artists of the twentieth century, she 
made important contributions to Ainu 
textile design. (Collection of Kazuo 
Sunazawa) 
47.29 Ryo (Force or Spirit), 1989 
Noriko Kawamura 
A leading contemporary Ainu textile 
artist, Kawamura is known for making 
very large works. The spiral design in the 
center of this piece, similar to the paired 
eyelike shapes sometimes found on the 
back of Ainu robes, is called kamuychik 
(god’s eye). Such designs were 
traditionally believed to ward off evil and 
protect the wearer from evil spirits. 
Noriko's contem-porary design evokes 
that kind of protective power. (N. 
Kawamura Collection) 
47.29 
not only appropriate for the subject of the 
exhibition, it also expressed his consonance 
with Ainu religious beliefs, acknowledging 
the spirits who endowed his works in the 
same way that his ancestors had for genera¬ 
tions. Soon after, he died, on January 25, 
1989, at the age of fifty-seven, just four days 
after his last exhibition. 
Bikky Sunazawas greatest contribution 
to modern art was his ability to create a 
vision of nature that transcends the mere 
natural forms found on earth. More than 
simply manipulating wood and form, his 
belief in the spirit of the tree allowed him 
not only to listen to the trees, but to give them 
another life. He constantly tried to see the 
supernatural order of things beyond nature, 
reaching for kamuy that coexist with earth's 
nature with dignity. In so doing, he went 
beyond the concept of naturalism and reached 
deeply into the Ainu soul. He once stated, 
"I don't consciously try for an Ainu theme, but 
I have an expression, descent, and foundation 
that is different from the Yamato [Japanese] 
race. I think it has to come out in my work" 
(Y. Abe, Asabi Sbimbun, 26 January 1989). 
During the exhibition on which he 
worked so hard immediately before his 
death, several of his sculptures sprouted wild 
mushrooms. Bikky would have been pleased 
to know that nature was finishing his work. 
Bikky's legacy has been immortalized by 
more than mushrooms. On November 29, 
1987, two Japanese amateur astronomers, 
K. Endate and K. Watanabe, members of the 
International Astronomical Union, discovered a 
small unknown planet. After a rigorous inde¬ 
pendent review, they registered the planet with 
the Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian 
Astrophysical Observatory on September 1, 
1993, and received registry number 5372. They 
also named the planet. Eschewing the custom 
of using only the family name, they gave the 
planet the honor of carrying only a nickname: 
that of the gifted contemporary Ainu artist, 
Bikky (Marsden 1993: 22509). 
Noriko Kawamura 
Noriko Kawamura, a textile artist, was born 
in 1947 as the third of eight daughters of 
Kaneto (1893-1977) and Tome Kawamura 
(born 1915). Kaneto was the hereditary chief 
of the Chikabumi Ainu and a grandson of the 
famous Ainu chief Monokute, whose 
ancestors were said to have moved to 
Chikabumi from the lower Ishikari River. 
47/MODERN ART AND ARTISTS 349 
47.32 47.30 
47.30 Hokkaido no shiki: Aki 
mon 'yo (Four Seasons in Hokkaido: 
Autumn Patterns), 1990 
Noriko Kawamura 
47.31 Hokkaido no shiki (fuyu): 
Fukuro no sumu mori (Four Seasons 
in Hokkaido. Winter: The Forest 
Where Owls Live), 1991 
Noriko Kawamura 
These two (of four) pieces from the 
series Hokkaido no shiki evoke vividly 
the dramatic seasonal changes in 
Hokkaido, where the artist was born 
and raised. She stated in an interview 
that "because Hokkaido's winter is very 
cold, I want to create textile art for the 
interior of the home. I want the textile to 
evoke warm feelings” (Hokkaido 
Shimbun, 6 January 1994). (SOTD) 
47.32 Mokurei (Wooden Spirit), 
1991 
Noriko Kawamura 
In Mokurei (Wooden Spirit), done in 
1991, gray tones establish a rhythmic 
vertical structure; overlaid with Ainu 
elements with contrasting color 
accents, the design produced is 
reminiscent of Henri Matisse's late- 
phase cutout works (e.g., Jazz). 
(N. Kawamura Collection) 
350 
Norikos family was active in the flourish¬ 
ing tourist industry, which in those days 
promoted the image of a primitive Hokkaido, 
even suggesting that the Ainu still lived as 
hunter-gatherers. Some Ainu criticized the 
family for "selling" Ainu culture, but Kaneto 
countered with statements that these same 
Ainu were ashamed of their race. Although the 
Ainu at that time were being forced to 
assimilate into Japanese society, Kaneto moved 
in the opposite direction, reaffirming his Ainu 
identity. Because her grandfather and father 
built the local Ainu museum and were involved 
in Ainu tourism, Noriko had opportunities to 
travel frequently in Hokkaido and throughout 
Japan, demonstrating traditional Ainu culture 
and dance. The iyomante (bear-sending) 
ceremony was often performed in her child¬ 
hood, both for spiritual and tourist reasons. 
She understood the grave situation the Ainu 
faced at that time and accepted her role in the 
tourism business out of pride for the great 
contribution to the Ainu community that had 
been fostered by her father. 
At a time when scholars and historians 
were forecasting the demise of the Ainu, 
Noriko was actively strengthening Ainu culture 
by shifting from dance performance to reviving 
traditional Ainu robe design in the 1980s. 
Ainu designs have a deep sense of power. 
When 1 am working on a garment I 
sometimes become very tired, and it's very 
difficult to continue, but I feel strong 
pressure from the design. Because Ainu 
LIVING ARTS/C. DUBREUIL 
designs were traditionally done to prevent 
evil spirits from attacking the [wearer's] 
body, its nature is to be powerful (Hokkaido 
Shimbun, 6 January 1994). 
After she learned traditional robe design 
from her mother and other elder women, 
Noriko confronted the proverbial "artistic 
wall," feeling powerless to change what she 
felt were nearly perfect traditional designs. As 
she struggled to discover her own style, she 
happened to see a different type of textile art 
done by Peramonkoro Sunazawa (1897-1971), 
who was Bikky Sunazawa's mother and is one 
of the most respected textile artists of the 
twentieth century (fig. 47.28). Inspired by 
Peramonkoro's work, Noriko synthesized 
some of these forms into a new style called 
Mon'yo (design patterns) in 1989, whose 
curvilinear designs are somewhat similar to 
the flowing curvilinear "formline" design 
system that underlies most Northwest Coast 
Indian art styles. This new style allowed her 
to express her ideas in ways that traditional 
gowns could not and brought Ainu textile art 
to new level of artistic achievement. 
In that same year, Noriko created a piece 
entitled Ryo, meaning in Japanese "power," 
"force," or "spirit," in which the contrast of colors 
and movement in the design does indeed create 
tremendous power (fig. 47.29). The graphic 
strength of the Ainu spiral dominates the center 
of the work, surrounded by streams of vividly 
colored diagonal cloudlike formations. 
A large-scale four-part textile work entitled 
47.31 
47.33 A Daughter's Happiness, 
1991 
Chinita Sunazawa 
Bikky Sunazawa was Chinita’s father, 
and as a child she immersed herself 
in his art books. Gradually she found 
in drawing a way to escape the 
discrimination faced by Ainu people. 
While Chinita respects her father's 
artistic achievements and is proud 
to carry on his tradition, today she 
makes her own contributions to Ainu 
art. (Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku 
Center) 
Hokkaido no shiki (Four Seasons in Hokkaido), produced 
in 1990 and 1991, displays the colorful foliage of 
autumn in Akimon'yo (Autumn Pattern, fig. 47.30) 
seen as dark waves of color accented by abstract 
Ainu designs. The winter piece, Fukuro no sumu mori 
(The Forest Where Otols Live, fig. 47.31), features the 
owl, Shamafukuro (Bubo blakistoni), revered by the 
Ainu as kotan-kor-kamuy (god of the village). The 
sequential presentation of design elements in the 
work recalls the unfolding of a stoiy in an Ainu 
yukar (oral epic tale). 
Noriko's textiles, like Bikky's sculptures, 
show how modern Ainu artists have created 
new artistic genres within an Ainu cultural 
framework. Mokurei (Wooden Spirit, fig. 
47.32).She has stated (author's interview on 2 
February 1998) that when she begins a new 
work she feels the presence of a guardian 
spirit, sermak, protecting her back from evil 
spirits. Fder belief in the power of kamuy is 
perhaps best expressed in her work. 
Chinita Sunazawa 
Chinita Sunazawa was born in Chikabumi, 
Asahikawa, in I960,- she is the daughter of the 
late Ainu sculptor Bikky Sunazawa. Chinita, 
whose name means "dream" in Ainu, grew up 
watching her father create art in many media— 
not just the wooden sculpture for which he is 
primarily famous but also thousands of paintings 
and sketches—and began drawing at a young 
age. Like her father, her talent for drawing began 
as a hobby, but as the years passed she became 
more serious about her work. Because she had 
no formal artistic training, her progress was slow, 
but eventually she became committed to 
pursuing a career in commercial art 
Fder first professional break came in 1991 
when she was asked to do the illustrations for a 
Japanese translation of Ainskii Fol'klor by Nikolai 
A. Neviskii (1892-1937), a Russian linguist 
who lived in Japan from 1915 until 1929 and 
compiled a great collection of Ainu folklore. 
Fdis work, published posthumously in Russia in 
1972, remained unknown in Japan until 1991, 
when it was translated by Kazuyukt Uoi. 
Chinita illustrated these tales with 
imaginative images of Ainu people and with 
Ainu geometrical designs. Although the 
influence of "Bikky designs" (Bikky mon'yo) is 
most evident in the latter, her images of Ainu 
woman are more striking. For example, A 
Daughter's Happiness tells the story of an Ainu 
girl who grows into a beautiful woman under 
the protection of the bear kamuy. In this work 
(fig. 47.33) an Ainu woman, drawn in a flat 
style reminiscent of the schematic ledger art 
of the Plains Indians of North America, is seen 
in an exuberant moment dancing to Ainu 
music with her hair flying. Another story, "Sad 
Fox," tells of a fox who tried to transform 
himself into a god (fig. 47.37) but was caught 
in the act by Okikurumi, a yukar hero, who 
punished him severely. Chinita shows the fox 
trapped in a cocoonlike state, head bowed in 
shame, enmeshed in Ainu designs. 
47/MODERN ART AND ARTISTS 351 
47.34 
47.36 Untitled, 1992 
Chinita Sunazawa 
Chinita’s love for indigenous 
design elements recalls that 
of her father: like Bikky, she 
believes that indigenous art 
has a special essence that 
speaks to the core of those 
who create it. (C. Sunazawa 
Collection) 
While Ainu designs are the central 
feature of Chinita's art, she mingles them with 
design elements representing many other 
ethnic styles (fig. 47.36): 
When 1 draw and paint, 1 mix and combine 
graphic designs from all over the world. . . . 
Unity, balance, and harmony [are] the main 
focus in my work. I'm especially conscious 
of the concept of symmetry and asymme¬ 
try. When you first look at the design 
elements of traditional Ainu robes, they 
appear symmetrical, but when you observe 
them carefully, the many divergences 
merge into a single unified design (inter¬ 
view with the author, Febaiary 1998). 
This concept of unity reflects her cultural 
identity as well She often refers to herself as a 
"hybrid" and considers being Ainu just one part 
of her self, not the dominant source of her 
creative inspiration. She describes her psycho¬ 
logical state when painting: 
1 feel like I'm in a trance, like going on a 
shamanic journey across design boundaries 
of all ethnic people. I get into ecstasies, 
become one with the painting, and am 
surprised at the outcome (interview with 
the author, February 1998). 
Since 1991 Chinita has been working 
with smaller works of graphic art, but she 
occasionally has undertaken large-scale 
paintings, like Yin (1998) and Yang (1997) 
(figs. 47.34, 47.35), which incorporate the 
two Chinese characters for "happiness" and 
"longevity" in a dynamic composition—bold 
pictographic elements dominate. 
Yin and yang are dominant themes in 
Chinita's art, as is her expression of the ideas 
of Tao, a religion concerned with harmony 
between humans and nature and the discov¬ 
ery of nature's essential rhythms. Chinita is 
concerned with problems of world peace and 
the future of children and humanity and 
wants to address these issues in her work. 
Like other young Ainu artists, she uses the 
legacy of her culture to advance her vision of 
a world in which ethnic traditions and 
diversity serve as positive forces to mold the 
future of mankind. 
Conclusion 
When the Ainu began to respond to external 
market opportunities, producing, for instance, 
towelracks with Ainu decoration for sale to 
Japanese in FJokkaido in the early 1800s, secular 
commercial forces were introduced to tradi¬ 
tional Ainu art that would forever change it. As 
the power of religious restrictions on the use of 
352 LIVING ARTS/C. DUBREUIL 
47.35 
47.34 Yin, 1998 
Chinita Sunazawa 
47.35 Yang, 1997 
Chinita Sunazawa 
In these works, Chinita expresses the 
Tao—a path, way, system of order— 
one of the most important concepts 
in Chinese language: "Tao is the 
center of all philosophical and 
spiritual discourse.” (Sankyo Co. Ltd.) 
47.37 Sad Fox, 1991 
Chinita Sunazawa 
Ainu considered the fox to be a 
shaman’s spirit helper. In her 
illustrations for a collection of Ainu 
folktales, Chinita stylized the fox’s 
tail into a spiral reminiscent of the 
traditional Ainu morew. (Hokkaido 
Shuppan Kikaku Center) 
animal and human images weakened, new 
opportunities emerged for Ainu artists, and by 
the beginning of the twentieth century an 
explosive new phase of development stimulated 
by Ainu poverty, market demands, tourism, and 
government intervention was initiated. In the 
latter part of the twentieth century, traditional 
Ainu art continues to be a defining element of 
Ainu social identity, as it has been for centuries, 
and tourist art continues to play an important 
economic role in Ainu life. Art created from 
both of these impulses will likely remain an 
important factor in the living Ainu tradition. At 
the same time, the emergence of Ainu fine arts 
as a new genre has made it possible for Ainu 
artists to add their unique voices to the ranks of 
modern artists throughout the world. Despite 
the many losses Ainu have suffered over the 
past several hundred years at the hands of 
external forces (primarily Japanese), Ainu 
people, culture, and art have successfully 
survived conquest and assimilation, in part 
because the flame of artistic creativity 
continued to provide a focus for Ainu 
identity. For the Ainu, like many other 
indigenous peoples, artistic creativity had no 
special name or linguistic term. Art was in 
their souls and bones and was celebrated 
even in the worst of times. 
Today Ainu fine art is still in its 
infancy. The few artists profiled above are 
only a small part of this new wave, but they 
exemplify the new life that is being brought 
to the Ainu tradition as younger artists 
express their individual creativity. New art 
and new artists will emerge and will express 
Ainu-ness in different ways, certainly not 
always within an identifiable Ainu tradition. 
In today's shrinking world, jewelry deco¬ 
rated with "Bikky designs" can appear in 
Fdokkaido Ainu tourist shops supplied by 
craftsmen from other Asian countries just as 
easily as Ainu textile patterns may someday 
appear in Paris or New York fashion houses. 
Such challenges demand the attention 
and skill of native artists who have a major 
responsibility today as spokespersons and 
interpreters of cultural traditions. Art has 
functioned as a powerful enunciator of Ainu 
tradition in the past. While artistic challenges 
remain, it is my hope that the 1997 Ainu Shinpo 
(a law for preservation and promotion of Ainu art 
and culture) will help young artists receive the 
training needed to excel and compete in today's 
competitive art market. Anonymity is no longer 
acceptable. For the Ainu, it seems that the 
moment of extinction has passed, and the artistic 
flame, rekindled, grows. 
Qnnirn 
47/MODERN ART AND ARTISTS 353 

48/Shishirimuka: 
A s mu i River Tale 
Koichi Kaizawa 
< Inikari, Chieftain of Barasanmo 
1843 copy by Teiki Kojima after Hakyo 
Kakizaki's work, Portraits of Ezo Chief¬ 
tains. (Y. and M. Kitao Collection) 
JAPAN IS MADE UP OF MANY ISLANDS, ONE 
of the largest being the northernmost 
island of Ainu mosir, also known as 
Hokkaido. In the southern part of the 
island on the Pacific side is the Hidaka 
region. The Shishirimuka River is the longest 
of the rivers running through Hidaka. Like my 
ancestors, ! was born and raised in the hills 
about thirteen miles (twenty-one kilometers) 
upriver from the ocean. When 1 was a child, 
the ground would freeze solid and the snow 
would pile up during the winter months,- 
unable to work their farms, many laborers left 
to toil in the mountains from November to 
March. That was still in the days when they 
cut trees with a saw and hauled them out to 
the nearest road with horses, the days when 
work was done by humans and horses. The 
ground being frozen and blanketed with snow, 
there was no damage to the hillsides, so it was 
fl!® A N ' j 111|||| i 
MHBa 
- 1 
n. ■ - 
' * M-T l 
^ScIIsSl-er d tisss?, ■ 1! 
48.1 Tadashi Kaizawa 
Koichi Kaizawa's father, the late 
Tadashi Kaizawa, was one of the Ainu 
leaders who fought to preserve the 
Saru River and the lands surrounding 
Nibutani village. The majority of this 
land was given to the Ainu as "allow¬ 
ance land” by the Japanese govern¬ 
ment in the Meiji period. As the elder 
Kaizawa neared his death he told his 
son, "With this dam as my screen, I 
can deliver the voices of the Ainu to a 
country and a government that has 
never once tried to listen.” He was pho¬ 
tographed standing in silent protest in a 
buckwheat field that is now underwater. 
also a gentle season for the young trees and 
undergrowth. Trails were made by spreading 
branches from the felled trees and covering 
them with snow to protect what lay below 
from any damage. 
At that time, my grandfather Yojiro 
worked as a tree cutter about two and a half 
miles (four kilometers) upriver, across the 
Shishirimuka from a village called Penakori. 
Neither a bridge nor roads led to the moun¬ 
tains where my grandfather cut trees. Oil 
lamps provided the only light in the rented 
shed that served as their bunkhouse. To make 
matters worse, moonlight would spill through 
the cracks of the straw walls as the tempera¬ 
ture outside dipped down to minus twenty or 
thirty degrees Fahrenheit. A straw mat hung 
in place of a curtain in the entryway; even 
when the fifty-gallon (two hundred-liter) 
barrel that had been cut in half and made 
into a stove became so hot it glowed red, 
one's back remained cold. Despite this 
lifestyle, my grandfather—who always 
favored me—often invited me to stay with 
them. I cannot really recall whether or not I 
went happily each time, but the stew my 
grandmother Hekasunure (later she was 
given the Japanese name Fume) made was 
always delicious. I have yet to taste anything 
that comes close to it these days. It was chock- 
full of all sorts of ingredients seasoned prima¬ 
rily with salt. 1 think she used wild plants that 
had been picked at their peak in springtime. 
Plants like a small, flowering herb called 
pukusakina and wild garlic root (pukusa) were 
often dried and left hanging from the ceiling. 
It was these kinds of things and dace fish 
(supun) that went into my grandmother's stew. 
When December came around, it was 
time to move the logs across the 165-foot- 
(fifty-meter) wide river. Where the river ice 
was still thin, branches were scattered across 
it and covered with snow,- after they were 
stomped down, water was thrown on them, 
and in just one night a sturdy ice bridge was 
formed. This would begin to soften toward 
the end of February, and after that the river 
could only be crossed at nightfall when the 
temperature dropped. There were many 
times when a cry of "A horse has fallen!" or 
"The sleigh has been swept away!" came out 
of the blackness, and everyone would rush to 
the river. Thankfully, my grandfather's party 
never did suffer a loss, either human or horse. 
The river no longer freezes over like it did 
thirty years ago, though, due to the construc¬ 
tion of a hydroelectric dam at a place upriver 
called Iwashi. The power plant causes the 
water level to rise in the evening and fall 
again in the morning, so nothing more than 
spongelike ice ever forms on the river, and its 
uneven surface makes it dangerous to cross. 
Before the dam was built, the river was 
crystal clear. We could easily see the river 
bottom more than seven feet (two meters) 
below, and the clean water also prevented the 
rocks from getting slippery. During the 
summer, we children often went to the river 
on our own to play,- with 85-degree days few 
and far between—one can barely call it 
"summer" in Hokkaido—we were nearly 
48/A SARU RIVER TALE 355 
48.2 Toroshino Kaizawa (1889- 
1982) With Radishes 
As industrial enterprises expanded in the 
late twentieth century, Ainu found it in¬ 
creasingly difficult to maintain a living by 
farming, fishing, and hunting. Fishing for 
salmon had been banned; hunting was 
tightly regulated; and agricultural lands, 
mostly of low quality, were being lost to 
industrial development and economic 
transformation. In photographs like this 
one, taken in Nibutani in the fall of 1965, 
Sister M. Inez Hilger recorded Ainu village 
life of the Saru River region when the tradi¬ 
tional economy still supported many Ainu 
families. (NAA-T-7) 
always swimming on cold days. We used to 
gather up driftwood and light a fire so we 
could warm ourselves after swimming. Tired 
and hungry, we would sometimes sneak into a 
nearby field and swipe potatoes and corn to 
cook over the fire. We grilled fish, too, when¬ 
ever we managed to catch some. 
Although less than fifty years have passed 
since my grandfather harvested lumber in these 
mountains, nowadays the logging companies 
use bulldozers and power shovels to cut trees 
year-round. They tear into the mountainsides 
and build roads so that their trucks can haul logs 
from the very tops of the mountains. After the 
trees have been hauled away, the smallest 
amount of rain washes the soil from the aban¬ 
doned roads, carrying it down into the river. In 
no time at all this runoff can cause flooding. 
Such reckless deforestation, combined with the 
drainage of non-sewage waste water, has left the 
Saru River (as the Japanese renamed the 
electricity for 1,000 households,- it is also 
destroying some of the surrounding irrigation 
systems by forcing dam water into them. 
With only 140 households, the village of 
Nibutani has a population of just less than 
500, more than 70 percent of whom are of 
Ainu heritage. Nibutani has the densest 
population of Ainu in the world. It was here 
that the government chose to build a dam. 
In our village, we have a ceremony 
known as the chip-sanke. With the govern¬ 
ment's policies to assimilate the Ainu into 
Japanese culture threatening to extinguish 
Ainu culture, Diet member and Ainu cultural 
leader Shigeru Kayano endeavored to, at the 
very least, preserve this custom in the form of 
a festival. In the Ainu language, chip means 
"boat," and scwke means "to bring down",- it was 
originally a ceremony to mark the first launch¬ 
ing of a new boat. Begun twenty-nine years ago, 
the festival is held to ensure that the boats 
48.2 48.3 
48.3 Nibutani Dam 
In 1996, ignoring the protests of Ainu 
and other local residents, the govern¬ 
ment constructed a dam on the Saru 
River in the district of Nibutani, which 
has the largest Ainu population in Hok¬ 
kaido. Although the dam's efficiency 
has been questioned and the Sapporo 
District Court has mandated compensa¬ 
tion to the Ainu because their lands and 
rights were violated by the construction, 
the existence of the dam is a modern 
example of continued Japanese vio¬ 
lence to Ainu lands and culture. 
Shishirimuka) thoroughly polluted. 
In 1996 the central government com¬ 
pleted the construction of another dam on 
the same Saru River (fig. 48.3). This dam’s 
original purpose was to supply water to a 
planned industrial sector some thirty-eight 
miles (sixty kilometers) away in Tomakomai. 
The proposed industrial development was 
eventually deemed a mistake, and as the plans 
for the industrial park underwent thorough 
reconsideration, only the dam was built. 
Despite having lost its primary purpose, the 
Nibutani dam was constructed and is now 
producing 3,000 kilowatts, enough to provide 
now being housed in museums are floated 
upon the river at least once each year (fig. 
48.4). This festival is held not only for us, the 
Ainu, but for all people. 
In August 1996, four months after the 
dam halted the river's flow, the floodgates were 
opened one last time for the sake of the festi¬ 
val. With the water draining faster than usual, 
it took only four days for the river to return to 
its normal flow. Although the water had been 
stagnant for only four months, the river bot¬ 
tom was now covered with sludge, four inches 
(ten centimeters) thick in shallow water and as 
much as ten inches (thirty centimeters) thick in 
35 6 PRESENT AND FUTURE / K. KAIZAWA 
the deeper areas. A foul smell emanated from 
the water and drifted throughout the village as 
the wind changed directions, and the river- 
hanks were so choked with silt that it was 
impossible to walk along them. The govern¬ 
ment hauled away the silt and spread gravel 
alongside the river. Somehow we managed to 
hold the chip-sanke, but the water level rose to 
its former height only three days after the 
festival,- thus, it would seem that the 
government's stated alternate purpose for the 
dam, flood control, is an unlikely possibility. 
Could the dam manage a flood, even if it 
reportedly only happens in this area once 
every hundred years? In 1966 a levee sufficient 
to handle the once-in-a-century flood was 
constructed from the mouth of the river all the 
way to Nibutani, and there has yet to be any 
risk of flooding. 
The places of my childhood are gone. 
An intersection for a national highway needed 
48.4 Chip-sanke Ceremony 
In the canoe-launching ceremony (chip- 
sanke) Ainu pray for the protection of a 
newly made canoe before launching it 
in the river or the sea. The Chip-sanke 
Festival has been held every August 20 
since 1972 on the Saru River in 
Nibutani; it has become both a major 
tourist attraction and an important Ainu 
communal gathering. The inaw on the 
bow of this festival vessel is a vestige 
of prayers offered for a safe passage. 
for the dam is at the spot where I used to stay 
with my grandparents during the winter 
logging. An embankment meant to stop the 
flow of silt into the dam was built where they 
used to haul the timber over the ice bridge. 
The dam was topped with an impressive 
permanent bridge that is off-limits to the 
general public. Some engineers have con¬ 
cluded that the high silt content makes the 
Saru River naturally unsuitable for a dam,- in 
this year alone, the embankment has filled up 
with silt. With a water-level allowance of only 
thirty-three feet (ten meters), they say it is 
conceivable that in just ten years the Nibutani 
dam basin could be buried under silt. Given 
all this, one has to wonder why such an 
utterly useless dam was built in our village. 
My father, Tadashi Kaizawa, before his 
death on February 3, 1992, joined with 
Shigeru Kayano to oppose the construction 
of the Nibutani dam. When they began their 
fight, my father said, "With this dam as my 
podium, I can deliver the voices of the Ainu 
to a country and a government that has 
never once tried to listen." They first filed a 
legal objection to the confiscation of their 
land by the Hokkaido Land Expropriation 
Committee. A total of fifteen attorneys 
assisted them without promise of compensa¬ 
tion, and more than 10,000 people showed 
their support by signing a petition. My father 
and Kayano argued the following points as 
they presented their case to the Land Expro¬ 
priation Committee, the Ministry of Con¬ 
struction, and the Sapporo District Court: 
that the Ainu people are, historically, the 
indigenous people of Japan,- by failing to 
consider the needs and wishes of the Ainu 
people, construction of the dam was illegal,- 
and construction of the dam has robbed 
those Ainu living in Nibutani of their culture. 
Although my father had never con¬ 
sulted me about anything before, he came to 
me and said, "This legal action, it could last 
ten, maybe even twenty years. I don't know 
if i'll be around to see it through. What do 
you think? Will you finish the fight?'1 He was 
healthy at the time and so, never imagining 
that he would die so soon, I casually replied, 
"Sure, I'll take it up when you're gone." 
My father was given only two opportu¬ 
nities to present his opinion officially: once 
before the Hokkaido Land Expropriation 
Committee at its first hearing on February 15, 
1988, and again on April 26 of the following 
year during an on-site inspection. The com¬ 
mittee handed down its decision—approval of 
the forced expropriation—one year later, on 
February 3, 1989. The plaintiffs quickly filed a 
request for an investigation with the Minister 
of Construction, provided for under the Land 
Expropriation Act, but it was another two years 
before they were able to present statements to 
the Construction Ministry on a bitterly cold 
March day in 1991. 
By that time, my father had undergone 
surgery for cancer and had suffered a relapse, 
and the doctor had informed us that he had 
only six months to live. We went to a room, 
one that is not normally open to the public, 
48/A SARU RIVER TALE 357 
48.5 Old Man and Child 
During her visit to the Nibutani region 
in 1965 Sister M. Inez Hilger photo¬ 
graphed a girl and her grandfather visit¬ 
ing an abandoned homestead. Dams 
and highways are not the only threat to 
traditional Ainu life; change has not 
favored the rural economy of Hokkaido. 
It remains to be seen whether the Ainu 
can find ways to protect valued aspects 
of their traditional life from the relent¬ 
less modernization that has been im¬ 
posed on them. (NAA-3-16) 
on the first floor of the Ministry of Construc¬ 
tion. We were not served tea and the room 
was without a heater. It must have been a 
difficult time for my father. Nevertheless, 
hiding his pain, he made his appeal: 
This concrete monstrosity has become a 
symbol of the environmental degradation of 
the peaceful land around Nibutani's Saai 
River. How, indeed, would it look to the 
Ainu ekashi and jucbi [male and female elders] 
who, since ancient times, lived on this land 
and thought always of the welfare of their 
descendants? We, their descendants, have 
been silent and obedient in the face of these 
evils of civilization. During this long history, 
we have lived through struggle and 
oppression, facing one thing after another. 
No one stops to listen to our voices because 
those in power want only to see results, and 
so the building goes on and on. I cannot 
predict whether or not I will live until the 
dam is completed, but I have resolved to 
build a little house on the land my ancestors 
left to me. When the water is dammed up, 1 
will become a human sacrifice at the bottom 
of that lake. If I did not do this, I would have 
no explanation for my ancestors when I join 
them. Someone must accept responsibility 
for the destruction of Ainu mosir. 
My father finished his statement, but even 
before we left the building he turned to me 
and said, "Koichi, take my place." 
Exactly one year later, on February 3, 
1992, my father closed his eyes for the last 
time at Oji Hospital in Tomakomai. On May 
27, 1993, I went with Shigeru Kayano to the 
Sapporo District Court, and together we filed 
a lawsuit demanding a reversal of the decision 
by the Hokkaido Land Expropriation Com¬ 
mittee. When the court handed down its 
verdict on March 27, 1997, Judge Ichimiya 
read from the decision: 
From an historical viewpoint, the Ainu are 
an indigenous people and lived here well 
before our country began its rule. Further¬ 
more, keeping in mind the historical 
sequence of events that precipitated the 
decline of the Ainu culture, in a situation 
where the utmost consideration was called 
for, there was instead unjust negligence and 
utter disregard, and it is therefore illegal. 
Despite the above ruling, the court approved 
the dam's continued existence, and so from 
the government's point of view, the matter is 
nearly closed. It is now merely scurrying to 
find justification for the completed dam. 
The day will come when the folly of the 
Nibutani dam will finally be acknowledged. 
They will then open the floodgates, letting 
the Shishirimuka River return to its original 
state, and the dam will become a seventy- 
billion yen bridge. It must be left standing, 
though, as proof of the aggression against the 
Ainu and to symbolize our "empty inherit¬ 
ance,” if only so that people will understand 
that all humans are equal! 
358 PRESENT AND FUTURE / K. KAIZAWA 
4C Ainu in the 
International 
Arena 
Kelly L. Dietz 
During the preceding three 
decades countless indigenous 
groups around the world have 
challenged the notion that they 
are assimilated and demanded the right to 
determine the future of their communities. 
Although most indigenous peoples are now 
active to some extent domestically, unrespon¬ 
siveness or ongoing oppression by govern¬ 
ments has led significant numbers to seek 
political redress on another front. Indigenous 
groups are taking their direct action beyond 
what, to them, are arbitrarily imposed borders 
in order to join 
together in the 
struggle for their 
rights. Increasingly 
aware of the global 
indigenous commu¬ 
nity and the possibili¬ 
ties it holds for their 
own movement, 
many Ainu are look¬ 
ing beyond Japan's 
borders and allying 
themselves with other 
native peoples in 
indigenous actions at 
49.1 Oiichi Nomura, former Execu¬ 
tive Director of Utari Kyokai (Ainu 
Association of Hokkaido), addressing 
the United Nations General Assembly, 
10 December 1992 
An excerpt from Nomura's speech at 
the opening ceremony for the Interna¬ 
tional Year of the World’s Indigenous 
People, follows: 
Human Rights Day, which marks forty- 
five years since the adoption of the 
Declaration of Human Rights, is a day 
that should rightly be commemorated 
by all mankind. For we Ainu, who 
have formed a distinct society and 
culture in Hokkaido, the Kurile Is¬ 
lands, and southern Sakhalin from 
time immemorial, there is yet another 
reason today will have special signifi¬ 
cance in our history. This is because 
up until 1986, a mere six years ago, 
the Japanese government denied 
even our existence in its proud claim 
that Japan, alone in the world, is a 
“monoethnic nation.” Here today, 
however, our existence is being 
clearly recognized by the United Na¬ 
tions itself. In the eyes of the govern- 
the international level. 
The Ainu belong to a global community 
that is at once remarkably diverse yet intrinsi¬ 
cally connected Indigenous peoples live on 
every continent, in every hemisphere,- their 
environments range from mountainous rain 
forest to desert, from tundra to tropical island, 
from isolated village to the heart of Manhat¬ 
tan. Some hunt and kill their food daily, 
others phone in an order for pizza delivery,- 
some are fighting in armed struggle, others 
are fighting rush-hour traffic In other words, 
although the term "indigenous peoples" refers 
to a collectivity, it is a global collectivity of 
distinct peoples whose cultures, languages, and 
lifestyles are arguably as diverse as those 
among nonindigenous peoples. Given this 
diversity, one may wonder what inspires and 
enables many Ainu to actively seek ties with 
other indigenous groups. 
A common historical experience and its 
enduring legacies have played a key role in 
propelling Ainu activists into the global indig¬ 
ment, we were a people whose exist¬ 
ence must not be admitted. You need 
not worry, however, I am most defi¬ 
nitely not a ghost. I am standing here 
firmly before you. (UN 182264) 
enous movement. Renamed Hokkaido in 1869, 
the greatest portion of Ainu land officially 
became Japan's first colonial conquest during its 
imperialistic expansion in Asia. Thereafter the 
Ainu were, by law, denied the freedom and 
robbed of the means to practice their own 
culture, speak their own language, and 
determine their very existence. Like other 
indigenous peoples forgotten or ignored as 
distinct communities in the wake of 
decolonization, the Ainu were subsumed 
under the rubric of "nation-building." Dispos¬ 
session, vigorous assimilation policies, and 
widespread discrimination have led to eco¬ 
nomic and social second-class citizenship for 
the Ainu. According to a survey conducted 
by the Hokkaido Division of Public Welfare 
in 1993, the number of Ainu receiving wel¬ 
fare assistance is more than double that of 
the majority Japanese population. Only 1 1.8 
percent of Ainu youth advance to higher 
education, compared with 27.5 percent 
among majority Japanese,- 34.6 percent of 
Ainu work in primary industries such as 
fishing and logging, with Japanese filling 
only 6.9 percent of such positions. Finally, 
the survey indicates that discrimination in 
the workplace, in matters of marriage and 
especially in schools, remains prevalent. That 
such social hardships are shared by indig¬ 
enous peoples the world over reveals the 
need to define the term "indigenous peoples" 
so that it neither reflects the "purity" of one's 
native blood nor is a designation arbitrarily 
developed or sought by indigenous peoples 
themselves. The world's nation-states will 
collectively be forced to address the specific 
historical and contemporary realities of the 
indigenous experience. 
Indigenous Politics 
at the International Level 
Indigenous issues have long been considered 
the sole jurisdiction of nation-states. This 
categorization made it possible for govern¬ 
ments to maintain their assimilation policies 
while ignoring the wide economic and social 
gap between indigenous and majority popu¬ 
lations. Two key developments in the latter 
half of this century, however, marked a 
monumental change in the international 
treatment of indigenous matters. The first, 
developed largely through the Llnited Na¬ 
tions system, was that human rights be 
established as a focus of international law. 
In the wake of World War II, the interna¬ 
tional community of nations was forced to 
admit that human-rights violations were 
often committed by governments themselves 
and that explicit measures were necessary in 
order to protect the fundamental freedoms 
49 / INTERNATIONAL arena 359 
and basic human rights of the world's peoples. 
This led to the formulation of what is known 
collectively as the International Bill of Human 
Rights—five documents, including the Interna¬ 
tional Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 
which elaborate basic rights such as self- 
determination, political participation, freedom 
of thought and religion, the right to work and 
to equal pay, to social security, to food, educa¬ 
tion, health care, and to an adequate standard 
of living. The inclusion of human-rights instru¬ 
ments in international law provides a frame¬ 
work of standards that nations must seek to 
appropriate or else suffer the criticism or 
condemnation of the international community. 
At the same time, many in the world commu¬ 
nity recognized that existing instruments did 
not sufficiently address indigenous circum¬ 
stances, specifically, they do not accord 
indigenous peoples the right to self-determi¬ 
nation as peoples,- this is a right all indigenous 
communities enjoyed before being dominated 
by a nation-state. Put simply, while all other 
peoples in the world enjoy the right to self- 
determination, indigenous peoples no longer 
do. Without this right to decide for them¬ 
selves how best to promote and preserve their 
culture, the very identity of an indigenous 
community is left to the whims of an external 
power. 
With this in mind, indigenous activists and 
nongovernmental organizations around the 
world began demanding that governments 
acknowledge responsibility for the current 
circumstances of the world's indigenous 
peoples and give back to them the right to 
decide the course of their communities. This 
burgeoning activism by indigenous peoples 
themselves was the second factor that focused 
international attention on indigenous issues: 
through their efforts, indigenous issues now 
have a place on the agenda of many interna¬ 
tional and multilateral conferences and are a 
growing focus within the United Nations 
system. In order to prevent history from 
repeating itself, in the form of new "prescrip¬ 
tive" measures by governments as inappropri¬ 
ate as those enacted in the past, the active 
participation of indigenous representatives 
themselves is crucial. One example is the 
significant input from indigenous representa¬ 
tives that is reflected in the International 
Labor Organization's (ILO) Convention on 
Indigenous Peoples (No. 169), which in 1989 
replaced ILO Convention 107 and its under¬ 
lying philosophy of assimilation. 
Of particular importance are two annual 
working groups on indigenous matters now 
being held at the United Nations headquarters 
in Geneva, Switzerland. First convened in 
1982, the Working Group on Indigenous 
Populations (WGIP) has two mandates: to 
review specific developments pertaining to the 
promotion and protection of human rights of 
indigenous peoples, and to work toward 
standards enunciating those rights. In addition 
to the designations of 1993 as the International 
Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples and 
1994 as the beginning of the International 
Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples, the 
WGIP produced a landmark draft document, 
"Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous 
Peoples," the guiding principle of which is the 
collective right to self-determination. Discus¬ 
sions on treaties, sustainable development, 
and the establishment of a permanent forum 
for indigenous peoples within the UN system 
are also among the issues taken up by the 
WGIP. A higher-level Intersessional Working 
Group, established in 1995 under the Com¬ 
mission for Human Rights, is now charged 
with elaborating on the draft declaration 
created in the WGIP. 
Global Action 
as a Strategy for Change 
Japanese society does not exist in a vacuum, 
and domestic policy is by no means driven by 
internal factors alone. There is solid evidence 
to suggest that the Ainu can expect successes 
in the global indigenous movement to pro¬ 
vide significant leverage against the Japanese 
government. A precursory look at its legal 
track record shows that the government is far 
more apt to enact or reform domestic law 
when it risks being judged from the outside— 
specifically by powerful nations—as falling 
below international human-rights standards. 
There have been many cases wherein pressure 
from outside Japan—in the form of human- 
rights law—has been the key force behind 
dramatic changes in the government's domes¬ 
tic policy. At least eight laws that had long 
been under fire for violating the rights of 
resident foreigners and refugees were re¬ 
formed only when the Japanese government 
ratified the International Covenant on Eco¬ 
nomic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1979), the 
International Covenant on Civil and Political 
Rights (1980), and the Covenant Relating to 
the Status of Refugees (1982). Similarly, the 
government passed the Equal Employment 
360 PRESENT AND FUTURE / K. DIETZ 
Opportunity Law in 1985, the same year in 
which it ratified the UN Convention on the 
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination 
Against Women. 
The influence of outside judgment is 
likewise evident in changes in the Japanese 
government's official position toward the Ainu 
m the past twenty years, which have resulted 
largely from developments at the interna¬ 
tional level and from participation by Ainu 
activists in the global indigenous movement. 
As a signatory to the International Covenant 
on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which it 
ratilied in 1979, the Japanese government is 
required to report periodically on the measures 
it has adopted to ensure the protection of the 
rights contained in the covenant. Of great 
significance to the Ainu is Article 27 of the 
49.2 Ainu Demonstration in Tokyo, 
1992 
On March 27, 1992, Hokkaido Utari 
Kyokai (Ainu Association of Hokkaido) 
organized a demonstration in Tokyo to 
petition the Japanese government for 
quick passage of the Ainu Shinpo, a 
new law protecting the civil and cul¬ 
tural rights of the Ainu people. Most of 
the five hundred people who marched 
to the Diet Building of the Japanese 
government wore traditional Ainu robes. 
This was the culmination of an interna¬ 
tional campaign for indigenous rights 
that began to make its way into the vil¬ 
lages of the Ainu during the 1970s. 
ICCPR, which concerns "ethnic, religious, or 
linguistic minorities" living within a state and 
their right to "enjoy their own culture, to 
profess and practice their own religion, or to 
use their own language" The four reports 
submitted by the Japanese government thus far, 
specifically its statements regarding Article 27, 
show the gradual evolution of Japan's official 
stance toward the Ainu. 
The initial change was one of simple 
recognition. In its first report to the ICCPR in 
1980 the Japanese government denied the 
very existence of the Ainu, briefly stating that 
"minorities of the kind mentioned in the 
Covenant do not exist in Japan." By the time 
it was due to submit its second report seven 
years later, however, actions by the Ainu had 
made it difficult for the government to con¬ 
tinue to deny their existence. Ainu representa¬ 
tives attended international indigenous confer¬ 
ences in Greenland and Asia in the early 
1980s,■ also, having traveled to China and 
Alaska in the late 1970s and witnessing the 
relative autonomy enjoyed by minorities 
(and especially indigenous communities) in 
those areas, the leaders of the Amu Associa¬ 
tion of Hokkaido demanded that the Japa¬ 
nese government enact a new law to replace 
its 1899 F-lokkaido Former Aborigines Pro¬ 
tection Act (Siddle 1996). In 1984 the Ainu 
Association and the Hokkaido prefectural 
government jointly submitted a draft for a 
new law, one based on indigenous rights. 
The year 1986 proved to be a turning point 
in Ainu politics: Prime Minister Yasuhiro 
Nakasone made his now infamous statement 
that Japan was a "monoracial" society. Deter¬ 
mined to refute this claim, the first Ainu 
delegation attended the WG1P in the sum¬ 
mer of 1987. When the government submit¬ 
ted its second periodic report in December 
of the same year, although it did not use the 
term "minority" found in Article 27, it did 
acknowledge that the Ainu "preserve their 
own religion and language, and maintain 
their own culture." 
With Ainu presence at the LIN and 
other international forums, the Japanese 
government is not only compelled to re¬ 
spond to their demands as never before, but 
it is now also increasingly obliged to respond 
in the international arena In addition to 
their ongoing participation in both LIN 
working groups and contribution to the 
development of ILO Convention 169, since 
the 1980s Ainu representatives have attended 
major conferences on indigenous issues in 
Asia, Oceania, North America, Greenland, 
Europe, Africa, and Siberia. These include 
participation in several nongovernmental 
organization co-summits held in conjunction 
with major conferences such as the LIN 
Conferences on Women in Nairobi and 
Beijing. The Japanese government started 
sending a representative to the LIN working 
groups after the Ainu themselves began 
participating and, beginning with its third 
periodic report in 1991, added general 
information (referring track as far as 1974) on 
its welfare initiatives, including a planned 
budget increase aimed at "improving their 
living environment." 
The Struggle for Recognition 
Government recognition of the Ainu — 
beyond mere acknowledgment of their 
existence—remains a highly politicized 
issue. The 1991 report contained the 
49 / INTERNATIONAL ARENA 36 i 
49.3 Toroshino Kaizawa (1889-1982) 
Toroshino Kaizawa-fuch/', a very re¬ 
spected woman from the Nibutani area, 
lived through the passage of the Hok¬ 
kaido Former Aborigines Protection Act 
of 1899 and World Wars I and II with¬ 
out witnessing an effective solution to 
the institutional discrimination that pre¬ 
vented Ainu from advancing in Japa¬ 
nese society. As the international cam¬ 
paign for indigenous rights made its 
way into Ainu villages, even the older 
generation, whose many grievances had 
been ignored by the dominant society, 
became excited that maybe this time 
fairness would prevail. Unfortunately, 
few of the elders lived to see the im¬ 
pact that twenty-five years of positive 
international pressure had on the Japa¬ 
nese government. (NAA: Hilger) 
government's first official recognition of the 
Ainu as an "ethnic minority," but in keeping 
with the position it has steadfastly maintained 
at the UN working groups, the Japanese 
government refuses to recognize the Ainu as 
an indigenous minority. Japan, along with some 
other Asian governments, maintains that in 
the absence of an official, internationally 
accepted "objective definition" of the term 
"indigenous peoples" (senju minzoku), it cannot 
make such a determination. To be sure, the 
Ainu do not seek this acknowledgment out 
of a need to confirm their own identity,- for 
them it is a human-rights issue (fig. 49.2). 
Like many other indigenous groups, their 
chance for greater autonomy and guarantees 
against political and economic neglect hinges 
in no small part on official recognition by the 
Japanese government. It will help to ensure 
that Japan will face criticism if it does not 
comply with international instruments con¬ 
taining provisions regarding the rights of 
indigenous peoples. For the Japanese govern¬ 
ment, acknowledging the Ainu as an indig¬ 
enous minority is an economic and social 
issue: it runs the risk of having to allow Ainu 
the freedom to catch salmon in Hokkaido 
rivers, to allow Ainu history, language, and 
culture to be taught in the public schools, 
and to allow the Ainu a greater say in their 
own affairs. 
It is evident that the Japanese 
government's refusal to recognize the Ainu as 
an indigenous people rings hollow with the 
world community. Perhaps the greatest coup 
for the Ainu to date came in 1993 when 
Ciichi Nomura, then head of the Ainu Asso¬ 
ciation of FJokkaido, was invited to speak to 
the United Nations General Assembly at the 
opening ceremony marking the International 
Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples (fig. 
49.1). Also notable are official visits in 1992 
and 1993, respectively, to the Ainu commu¬ 
nity by Erica-Irene Daes, chairperson of the 
WGIP, and Rigoberta Menchu Turn, Goodwill 
Ambassador for the International Year and 
winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. At a 
1997 ceremony commemorating twenty years 
of collective action by indigenous peoples at 
the UN, an Ainu activist was chosen by the 
indigenous representatives from Asia to speak 
on behalf of the region. In the same year, a 
young Ainu woman was one of four indigenous 
representatives chosen to be the first to partici¬ 
pate in a six-month internship program at the 
LIN Center for Human Rights in Geneva. 
The issue of recognition intensified in 
1997, when, in a landmark ruling, the 
Sapporo District Court recognized the Ainu 
as an indigenous minority within Japan. Two 
Ainu living in Nibutani, a farming village 
where Ainu make up nearly 80 percent of the 
population, filed a lawsuit against the central 
government challenging the legality of the 
government's expropriation of their land for 
the purposes of constructing a dam. Among 
other violations, the dam would flood land 
sacred to the Ainu, including the traditional 
site of the chip-sanke, a boat-launching cer¬ 
emony performed annually on the river. 
Arguing that the dam would irretrievably 
impinge on their right to practice their cul¬ 
ture, the plaintiffs invoked the provisions in 
Article 27 of the ICCPR as a central part of 
their legal argument. Because construction of 
the dam was completed by the time the case 
came to an end and the land under question 
was already submerged, the court dismissed 
the plaintiff's primary claim to return their 
land. It nonetheless found the expropriation 
of the land to be illegal because the govern¬ 
ment did not attempt to assess the negative 
impact of the dam on Ainu culture and the 
plaintiffs' ability to practice their culture. 
The court decision revealed a contradic¬ 
tion in the government's current stance on 
the "indigenous question." Although the 
government maintains that it cannot identify 
the Ainu as indigenous without an interna¬ 
tionally accepted definition, the court based 
its decision on its finding that the Ainu fall 
within the general understanding of the term 
"indigenous peoples" at the international 
level. The verdict reads that "the Ainu 
people have inhabited mainly Hokkaido, 
maintaining their distinct culture and iden¬ 
tity, before Japan extended its rule over 
them, and they still form a social group with 
a distinct culture and identity. . . ."(Sapporo 
Chiho Sai-bansho 1997: 75-76). The court 
made this determination after referring to 
international legal texts (for example, 1LO 
Convention 169) and a "working definition" 
currently in use. That the judicial branch of 
the government found these to be reliable 
standards for determining the indigenous 
status of the Ainu sets a powerful precedent 
for the application of international law in 
Japan's domestic courts. Moreover, the 
government made no move to appeal the 
court's decision within the allotted period, 
indicating that it saw no way to refute the 
362 PRESENT AND FUTURE / K. DIETZ 
49.4 Oki Kano, Ainu Musician 
During the 1990s, using traditional 
Ainu music as a vehicle, Oki Kano 
began to popularize Ainu culture and 
rights, carrying on the work begun by 
his father, Bikky Sunazawa, in a new 
genre. His performances in Japan 
and overseas have helped the inter¬ 
national community gain an aware¬ 
ness of Ainu culture, musical tradi¬ 
tions, and the aspirations of modem 
Ainu people. His participation in "new 
age" musical ensembles has shown 
the viability of Ainu traditions in evolv¬ 
ing modern tradition. 
court's decision or the basis for its decision: 
that the Ainu are an indigenous minority. 
That there has been significant change 
in the government's stance in the span of 
twenty years is indisputable. Many Ainu point 
out, however, that this has not translated into 
policies that better their daily lives and that 
recent government initiatives run counter to 
international trends. Some governments 
around the world are now addressing their 
responsibility by offering official and public 
apologies for past aggressions and racist 
policies, recognizing semi-autonomous re¬ 
gions, and implementing such measures as 
land compensation schemes and native educa¬ 
tion systems. Although the Japanese govern¬ 
ment abolished the hundred-year-old Hok¬ 
kaido Former Aborigines Protection Act in 
1997—the blueprint for its assimilation 
policies—many in the Ainu community were 
angered when the government offered neither 
reflection nor apology. In its place, and amid 
great fanfare, the government enacted the 
Ainu Shinpo. 
The long-awaited legislation remains 
controversial, however. Although the govern¬ 
ment hails it as the country's first "ethnic law," 
the Ainu community is expressing dissatisfac¬ 
tion over the fact that the Aino Shinpo no 
longer resembles the official draft submitted 
by the Hokkaido prefectural government and 
the Ainu Association. The new law provides 
for the promotion of Ainu culture in order "to 
realize a society that will respect the ethnic 
pride of Ainu individuals" and to "contribute 
to the development of Japan's diverse culture" 
(emphasis added). It is a source of consider¬ 
able funding to study or teach Ainu language, 
traditional crafts, and other general aspects of 
Ainu culture, be the applicant Ainu, Japanese, 
or even a foreign scholar of Ainu culture, but 
most Ainu argue that the redrafted version has 
no meaning for the vast majority of the 
community. It will benefit instead only those 
who have the luxury of time and an interest in 
traditional Ainu culture. Promoting a stable 
lifestyle through non-welfare-based eco¬ 
nomic assistance was one element of the 1984 
draft, a holistic document that guaranteed the 
economic, social, and cultural rights of the 
Ainu as an indigenous people. 
International conferences, and the 
working groups in particular, not only provide 
the Ainu with opportunities to build a global 
network and enhance their strategies but also 
offer a valuable forum to update the interna¬ 
tional community on developments within 
Japan from the Ainu perspective (fig. 49.5). 
In his intervention at the 1997 International 
Working Group, Ainu participant Oki Kano 
(fig. 49.4) cited the Japanese government's 
Ainu Shinpo as an example of "potential co¬ 
optation of indigenous culture by a govern¬ 
ment." In addition to the government's 
narrow definition of Ainu culture, he referred 
to provisions that give the Prime Minister's 
office, the Ministry of Education, and the 
Hokkaido Development Agency the author¬ 
ity to decide what specifically will be tar¬ 
geted for promotion, who will receive fund¬ 
ing for such promotion, the extent of such 
funding, and so on. The Japanese govern¬ 
ment representative listened along with the 
rest of the working group—UN member- 
states, UN bodies such as the World Health 
Organization and the International Labor 
Organization, and international human- 
rights organizations and indigenous repre¬ 
sentatives from around the world—as Kano 
explained how the government's new law 
actually runs counter to the principles con¬ 
tained in the draft Declaration for the Rights 
of Indigenous Peoples. 
Adding to the controversy, and indeed 
the confusion, was the timing of the law's 
adoption. The Nibutani verdict was handed 
down on March 27, 1997, just six days after 
the Cabinet formally accepted the final draft 
of the Ainu Shinpo, which had been stripped 
of any mention of indigenous rights or the 
Ainu as an indigenous people. With height¬ 
ened media attention, the government faced 
demands from Ainu leaders to reincorporate 
recognition of their indigenous rights 
(senjuken) into the draft before it moved to the 
Diet for formal passage into law. There was 
considerable debate within the government's 
ruling coalition but not about the term "in¬ 
digenous rights",- rather, the debate was 
suddenly over whether to include recogni¬ 
tion of the "indigenous nature" (senjusei) of 
the Ainu. The government's interpretation is 
that although the Ainu lived in Hokkaido 
before the ethnic Japanese, it was not Ainu 
territory. In a press conference the day 
following the Nibutani decision, Prime Min¬ 
ister Hashimoto himself had stated that it was 
"historical fact" that the Ainu lived in Hok¬ 
kaido before the Japanese. Although this was 
hailed by the media as a turning point for the 
Ainu, reports show that in the past several 
prime ministers have referred officially to the 
49 / INTERNATIONAL ARENA 363 
49.5 Think Globally, Act Locally 
While important developments were 
taking place on the international scene, 
local programs like the development of 
the Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum were 
advancing through symposia such as 
the one, pictured here, held at Nibutani 
in 1993. (NACH) 
"indigenous nature" of the Ainu in speeches or 
writing (Uemura 1997). After much debate 
within the ruling coalition, it was finally deter¬ 
mined that to revise the text of the Ainu 
Shinpo would pose a "technical difficulty." 
Instead, the cabinet adopted a special resolu¬ 
tion of consent confirming the prime minister's 
statement, and the government's "new" stance 
was included in its most recent report to the 
ICCPR, submitted in July 1997. It acknowl¬ 
edged that the Ainu "lived in Hokkaido . . . 
even before the Wajin [ethnic Japanese],” yet 
the land on which they lived was and is "inherent 
Japanese territory" (emphasis added,- ICCPR 1997). 
It must be stressed that, for Japan, ac¬ 
knowledging the Ainu as an "indigenous 
people" has economic and even territorial 
implications beyond the domestic sphere. 
The Japanese government is currently negoti¬ 
ating with Russia over joint development and 
eventual return of what is referred to as the 
Northern Territories, a 
group of islands off the 
northeast coast of 
Hokkaido that were 
seized by the Soviet 
Union in the final days 
of World War II. The 
dispute over the is¬ 
lands—Etorofu, 
Kunashiri, Shikotan, 
and the Habomai 
group of islets—has 
kept the two countries 
from ever signing a 
peace treaty, for the Japanese government has 
maintained that the islands are a part of Japan. 
At a bilateral summit in 1997, Russian Presi¬ 
dent Boris Yeltsin and Prime Minister Ryutaro 
Hashimoto pledged to work toward the sign¬ 
ing of a peace treaty by the year 2000. With 
economic development of—and ultimately 
sovereignty over—the disputed islands at the 
very center of the high-level negotiations now 
taking place, for the Japanese government to 
alter its position that Hokkaido is Japan's 
"inherent territory" would no doubt weaken its 
claim to the Northern Territories. 
In addition to the present political envi¬ 
ronment in Japan, such social realities as a lack 
of cohesive representation among the Ainu and 
discrimination by the general population shed 
additional light on why many Ainu activists are 
extending their activities into the international 
arena. That the Ainu Association of Hokkaido, 
which remains the largest Ainu organization, 
364 PRESENT AND FUTURE / K. DIETZ 
officially accepted the new law despite its 
drastic redrafting by the government has led 
to considerable frustration and disillusionment 
with this organization. Although the Associa¬ 
tion was for many years the most visible pres¬ 
ence at the UN and other forums, a marked 
shift has occurred in recent years as a handful 
of "nonaligned" Ainu activists have begun 
participating internationally. Indicative of their 
overall strategy, this new generation of par¬ 
ticipants is putting a great deal of energy into 
studying international human-rights law. 
Within Japan, reluctance to assert one's 
Ainu identity for fear of the social conse¬ 
quences remains an enormous barrier to 
mobilization of the Ainu community, thus 
leaving it without strong organized represen¬ 
tation In many ways action at the interna¬ 
tional level transcends these political and 
social obstacles found in the domestic arena 
at the same time it offers the Ainu opportuni¬ 
ties for effective collective action. 
Grassroots Exchange 
While the UN working groups and other 
high-profile conferences remain powerful 
sites for activism, Ainu involvement in the 
international arena takes many forms, all of 
which are significant. Early "diplomacy" took 
place in the form of participation in world's 
fairs and cultural expositions. Since the 1970s 
Ainu have sought to expand their community- 
level ties with other indigenous communities: 
countless Ainu groups and individuals have 
visited and hosted indigenous peoples living 
in North America, Oceania, Asia, Siberia, and 
northern Europe,- a conference billed as the 
"Nibutani Forum," held in 1993 to commemo¬ 
rate the International Year, was attended by 
representatives of twenty-seven indigenous 
peoples (fig. 49.5), and another large-scale 
conference is planned for 1999. Such meet¬ 
ings within Japan, along with visits by other 
indigenous groups, are important because 
they raise awareness among the vast majority 
of Ainu who do not participate in the inter¬ 
national arena, helping to strengthen the 
collective identity among the Ainu them¬ 
selves and mobilize many to action. More¬ 
over, because of a general apathy toward 
human-rights issues among the general public, 
the publicity surrounding such activities is 
critical because it serves to educate the non- 
Ainu population. 
Grassroots-level contact between Ainu 
and other indigenous groups often fosters 
49.6 Masahiro Nomoto 
Masahiro Nomoto (born 1963) is one 
of the young leaders bringing Ainu 
culture to a broader world. Nomoto, 
who serves as curator at the Ainu 
Museum at Shiraoi, is skilled as a 
carver and possesses a deep knowl¬ 
edge of Ainu culture and traditions. 
His participation in international meet¬ 
ings—like the 1997 Conference on 
Hunting and Gathering Societies in 
Darwin, Australia, where he performed 
the sword dance, pictured here—and 
his collaboration on Ainu: Spirit of a 
Northern People have helped broaden 
contemporary understanding of Ainu 
culture and concerns. 
lasting ties, leading to greater opportunities 
for action, political or otherwise. An example 
is cooperation with indigenous activists living 
on the island of Sakhalin (just north of 
Hokkaido) regarding the current negotiations 
over the development and possession of the 
disputed Northern Territories. Several Ainu 
groups have also established regular visits 
with indigenous communities in various 
countries,- one such organization travels 
annually to a community in British Columbia 
with the aim of experiencing together their 
shared traditions, such as teaching traditional 
hunting methods to the children of both 
communities. Study tours to North American 
and European museums with Ainu collec¬ 
tions, joint exhibitions, and even collabora¬ 
tive music ventures with other indigenous 
peoples are other examples of Ainu activity in 
the international arena. 
It is clear, then, that not all activities are 
explicitly political, cultural exchange with 
other indigenous groups remains a primary 
motivation for grassroots-level contact. 
Nevertheless, through this interaction the 
Ainu are better able to consider their own 
situation in Japan as they share information 
and learn of indigenous circumstances in other 
countries, existing human-rights laws, and 
indigenous-rights instruments now being 
formulated within the UN system and other 
multilateral bodies such as the Organization of 
American States, the European Union, and the 
Organization of African Unity. Use of such an 
"international measuring stick" has long been 
an impetus for Ainu activism. Interviews with 
Ainu activists indicate that as they become 
aware of the successes achieved by other 
indigenous movements, they gain confidence 
in their own ability to make a difference for 
the Ainu and are encouraged to continue and 
even step up their own activities. Be it at the 
UN in Geneva or in a rural village in British 
Columbia, interaction with other indigenous 
groups is having a significant impact on those 
Ainu who participate in such exchanges and 
on the Ainu situation in general. 
In the midst of a changing global environ¬ 
ment, indigenous activists are demanding their 
right to equal participation in the international 
community—some as nations in their own 
right, others as autonomous regions within 
existing countries, all as the arbiters of their 
own will. The Ainu have much to gain and 
little to lose from participating in the interna¬ 
tional indigenous movement. Like many 
countries, Japan has long tried to keep interna¬ 
tional developments out of its internal affairs 
and its domestic politics separate from its 
international affairs. A look at developments 
over the past twenty years indicates, however, 
that the domestic and the international are 
becoming increasingly intertwined. Although 
the Japanese government is growing more 
responsive to Ainu issues, recent moves suggest 
that the Ainu community has a struggle ahead 
before they will enjoy any form of self-determi¬ 
nation, even the right to administer their 
internal affairs. This fact is motivating many 
Ainu to utilize their limited resources to partici¬ 
pate at the international level, inspired by the 
belief that involvement in the global indig¬ 
enous movement will help them achieve 
success at home. Indeed, it is providing neces¬ 
sary and effective leverage against the Japanese 
government, not least of which is the un¬ 
equivocal confirmation of their indigenous 
identity by the international community. 
Developing a global network among 
other indigenous groups and concerned 
nongovernmental organizations provides 
Ainu activists with opportunities for ex¬ 
changing information and strategies and 
gaining confidence in their own efforts. 
Because many gains of the global indigenous 
movement (such as the adoption of the 
declaration now under deliberation at the 
LIN) will benefit the Ainu community as a 
whole, international activism can often 
transcend most major political and social 
obstacles to domestic activism. Furthermore, 
the proliferation of formal and informal 
coalitions has provided the Ainu with more 
avenues for collective action, including 
meaningful exchange at the grassroots level. 
By moving into the international arena 
and uniting with those who share similar 
histories and the legacies of those histories, 
the Ainu are proving that they remain a 
distinct people who are willing to fight for a 
greater degree of control over the future of 
their community. 
49 / INTERNATIONAL ARENA 365 
The Ainu 
Shinpo: 
A New Beginning 
Terliki Tsunemoto 
On July 1, 1997, the Ainu 
Shinpo (literally, "Ainu New 
Law") was enacted. The law, 
whose intent can be summed 
up by its official description, "Law on Promo¬ 
tion of Ainu Culture and Facilitation of Popular 
Understanding of Ainu Tradition," acknowledges 
for the first time in Japan the existence of a 
separate ethnic group inside the country and 
calls for respect of its culture and traditions. For 
Japan, which until recently officially saw itself as 
a homogeneous nation, that recognition is a 
landmark, which lends the bill its significance. 
The Ainu in Hokkaido enjoyed their 
own culture before Japanese people from 
Honshu arrived. Subsequently, the Ainu way 
of life became extremely impoverished due to 
harsh pressure from the immigrant Japanese, 
for they were prohibited from using their own 
language and were forced to give up much of 
their culture. In 1899 the Meiji government 
50.1 Tokyo, 1992 
In 1992 Ainu staged a rally in 
Tokyo to gain support for replacing 
the archaic Elokkaido Former Ab¬ 
origines Protection Act of 1899, 
which still governed Ainu relations 
with Japan, with new legislation. 
The Act for the Promotion of Ainu 
Culture, also known as the Ainu 
Shinpo, was finally enacted on July 
1, 1997, but many Ainu are dis¬ 
pleased because it ignores political 
issues and only supports the pro¬ 
motion of Ainu culture and lan¬ 
guage. 
enacted the Hokkaido Former Aborigines 
Protection Act—similar to the Daws Act in 
the United States—which tried to force the 
Ainu to assimilate into Japanese society as 
farmers, but the attempt was unsuccessful. 
Today the population of Amu living in 
Hokkaido is estimated to be between 24,000 
and 50,000, and many have continued to 
suffer from social and economic disparities 
and discrimination. Since 1974, however, the 
national government of Japan and the Hok¬ 
kaido prefectural government have been 
trying to implement the Hokkaido Ainu 
Welfare Measure in order to rectify these 
366 PRESENT AND FUTURE IT. TSUNEMOTO 
disparities. Although the measure has un¬ 
doubtedly helped to improve such living 
conditions as housing and employment, it has 
not necessarily met the real needs of the Ainu 
people. It did not guarantee the participation 
of the Ainu in its planning and implementa¬ 
tion, and it failed to address the issues of 
discrimination and the conservation of ethnic 
culture and heritage. In the 1970s the grow¬ 
ing international movement for indigenous 
rights prompted the Ainu to campaign for a 
new law to establish their status as an indig¬ 
enous population (fig. 50.1). 
The Ainu Shinpo 
In 1984 the Ainu Association of Hokkaido, the 
largest Ainu political group, drafted a new law 
to replace the Hokkaido Former Aborigines 
Protection Act. The Ainu Affairs Council, 
which was appointed by the Governor of 
Hokkaido and recommended the introduction 
of the law in March 1988, summarized the 
association's draft in the following five points: 
(1) declaration of basic human rights to elimi¬ 
nate discrimination,- (2) reinforcement of the 
protection of human rights,- (3) promotion of 
the Ainu culture,- (4) establishment of the Fund 
for Ainu Self-reliance,- and (5) establishment of 
consultative bodies on Ainu policies. 
The council, consisting of representa¬ 
tives of the Ainu and law professors, among 
others, adopted the concept of senjuken, "in¬ 
digenous rights," as the basis for enactment of 
the new law, with indigenous rights defined as 
the inherent right of the Ainu population to 
land, resources, and culture, as well as politi¬ 
cal self-determination in appropriate cases. 
The emphasis on indigenous rights was based 
on the historical fact that the Ainu are the 
indigenous population of Hokkaido and 
should be recognized legally as such. The fact 
that the Japanese government in 1899 had 
enacted the Hokkaido Former Aborigines 
Protection Act in order to force the assimila¬ 
tion of the Ainu was a de facto recognition 
that the Ainu were a separate ethnic group 
native to Hokkaido. While the association's 
proposal included designation of special seats 
for the Ainu in the Diet (the Japanese Na¬ 
tional Parliament) as well as in local assem¬ 
blies, this idea was rejected by the govern¬ 
ment on the grounds that it would contravene 
constitutional provisions mandating the 
equality of voting rights and representation of 
"all the people" by Diet members. 
In March 1995 the Japanese govern- 
merit, led by Prime Minister Murayama from 
the Social Democratic Party, convened the 
Experts Meeting on Ainu Measures, headed 
by a former supreme court justice, to discuss 
new Ainu policies,- its members included 
constitutional scholars, specialists on ethnic 
and gender studies, novelists, and the gover¬ 
nor of Hokkaido. The panel submitted its 
report in April 1994, after one year of delib¬ 
eration. This document stated that the Ainu 
are indigenous to Hokkaido, having lived 
there long before the arrival of the Japanese, 
and are an ethnic group with their own cul¬ 
ture. Based on this, the panel recommended 
promotion of the Ainu culture as a source of 
identity that would enhance the public's 
understanding of the Ainu and eliminate 
discrimination. 
However, the panel avoided judgment 
on the issue of the Ainu's "indigenousness." 
(Although the Japanese government has 
50.2 Ainu Lands and Resources 
Unlike many indigenous peoples of 
the world who won remuneration for 
lands and resources lost when they 
were absorbed into larger states, the 
Ainu have never received consider¬ 
ation for their claims to traditional 
homelands in Hokkaido, the Kuriles, 
and Sakhalin. In all of these regions, 
Ainu interests have been ignored as 
the Japanese and Russian govern¬ 
ments advanced their national inter¬ 
ests and territorial claims. (NAA-3-11) 
acknowledged the Ainu as a minority popula¬ 
tion, it has never officially recognized them as 
indigenous people, citing as cause for its 
inaction that such rights have not yet been 
defined internationally.) The report also failed 
to include any specific measures to help pro¬ 
mote social and economic independence for 
the Ainu. The panel chose to recommend only 
those measures that could be implemented 
immediately, based on such considerations as 
the current situation between the Ainu and the 
Japanese,- the Japanese government position on 
indigenous rights, which was less advanced 
than the international standard,- and the sched¬ 
uling of legislative actions immediately after 
the panel's report was delivered. The govern¬ 
ment was also concerned over such poten¬ 
tially difficult issues as political self-determi¬ 
nation and compensation for land taken from 
the Ainu (fig. 50.2). 
The Ainu Shinpo and 
the Nibutani Decision 
The Hokkaido Development Agency, the 
Education Ministry, and the Prime Minister's 
Office are designated as the enforcement 
agencies of the Ainu Shinpo. The purpose of 
the act was "the realization of a society 
where the pride of the Ainu is respected," to 
he brought about by the promotion of Ainu 
culture and tradition. Specific measures call 
for the establishment of legally defined 
organizations for the promotion of research 
on the Ainu people and culture, including 
language, music, dance, and crafts (fig. 50.3),- 
the participation of the Ainu people in 
managing such organizations was also guar¬ 
anteed. In addition, the Hokkaido govern¬ 
ment, assisted by the central government, is 
planning to secure a large tract of land to 
create a site where Ainu traditional skills can 
be researched and reconstructed, as well as 
to facilitate further cultural development for 
the implementation of the spirit of the law. 
Although the law is obviously a positive step, 
it still does not directly address the legal 
issues of senjuken, the indigenous rights of the 
Ainu, and by that omission does not recog¬ 
nize that such rights exist. 
On March 27, 1997, however, the 
Sapporo District Court in Hokkaido made a 
decision that seemed in conflict with the 
government position. In a ruling on a case 
over the dam construction on the Saru River 
in Hokkaido's Nibutani region, an area 
considered sacred by the Ainu, the court 
found that the government failed to mitigate 
the negative impact of dam construction on 
the culture of the Ainu, and that was illegal. 
Although the court stated that the completed 
dam cannot be demolished, the dramatic 
opinion included extremely important points 
that were at odds with the national 
government's position, to wit: (I) The Ainu 
are an indigenous people in view of the 
international definition suggested in various 
documents, including the 1989 International 
Labor Organization's Convention on Indig¬ 
enous Peoples (no. 169) and the Cobo 
Report,- (2) Article 27 of the International 
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 
50 / AINU SHINPO LAW 367 
50.3 Continuity and Change 
Ainu continue to pass on their tradi¬ 
tions and values to younger genera¬ 
tions. Although the financial and moral 
support provided by the Ainu Shinpo 
has been a focus for cultural revitaliza¬ 
tion, the continuance of Ainu traditions 
lies with the Ainu people themselves. 
Despite modernization and increasing 
social integration, Ainu festivals, cer¬ 
emonial events, art exhibitions, and 
arts workshops have given Ainu people 
a new sense of optimism about the 
survival of their culture. 
legally binding domestically, guarantees the 
cultural rights of a person belonging to a minor¬ 
ity,- and (3) Article 13 of the Japanese constitu¬ 
tion makes the government responsible for 
protecting a minority member's cultural rights, a 
responsibility that is greater in the case of an 
indigenous minority because the indigenous 
people were forced to be a minority in the 
nation It was a surprising, epoch-making 
decision, and neither party filed an appeal. 
Following the court decision, Prime 
Minister Ryutaro Fdashimoto acknowledged 
the historical fact that the Ainu lived in 
Fdokkaido before the Japanese. Although the 
Ainu Shinpo did not address their indigenous¬ 
ness, a supplemental resolution in the Diet 
recognized it unanimously. Although a 
supplementary resolution has no binding 
power, this declaration of the Diet, the high¬ 
est legislative body, will have significant 
impact on future developments regarding the 
Ainu. The Japanese government will have to 
weigh the significance of this resolution to 
determine its position on the Declaration on 
Indigenous Rights currently being debated 
before the United Nations. 
Many unaddressed issues remain con¬ 
cerning the Ainu Shinpo because it focuses 
solely on cultural promotion,- however, in 
Japan, a country that has chosen not to admit 
any kind of ethnic problem, perhaps there 
was no realistic alternative but to begin with 
benign but important issues on which consen¬ 
sus-building was relatively easy. The most 
important goal is to create a climate of self- 
determination, a society where the Ainu 
people, if they choose to live as Ainu, can live 
with pride and free from discrimination. It is 
no exaggeration to say that everything pro¬ 
ceeds from this fundamental idea. 
368 PRESENT AND FUTURE / T. TSUNEMOTO 
51/ Beyond the 
Ainu Shinpo: 
An Ainu View 
Jiro Sasamura 
51.1 Schools and Culture 
During the early part of the twentieth 
century Ainu children were assigned to 
attend special Ainu schools, as many 
Native Americans were in the United 
States, in the belief that Ainu children 
could not keep up intellectually with 
Japanese children. The Regulation for 
the Education of Former Aborigines’ 
Children, which was promulgated in 
1901 to provide primary-school edu¬ 
cation for Ainu children, was abol¬ 
ished in 1936 when the negative re¬ 
sults of ethnic segregation in school¬ 
ing became apparent. Since then 
Ainu children have been integrated 
into Japanese schools, but many Ainu 
children still face severe discrimina¬ 
tion from their schoolmates. (Hilger: 
NAA-4-14) 
We, the Ainu people, the 
indigenous population of 
northern Japan, have lived in 
northern Japan (the Tohoku 
district of northern Honshu and Hokkaido), 
Sakhalin, and the Kuriles since the ancient days, 
with our own language and culture. According 
to a Hokkaido government survey in 1993, 
there are about 24,000 Ainu in Hokkaido,- if the 
Ainu people living in other parts of Japan, who 
were not covered in the survey, were included, 
the estimated population would increase by 
several tens of thousands. 
Many Ainu people are economically 
disadvantaged as a result of societal and histori¬ 
cal circumstances that unfortunately have bred 
prejudice and contempt toward them. How¬ 
ever, there is a new confidence in Ainu identity 
and a commitment to the preservation of Ainu 
traditional culture and the improvement of 
social and economic status. 
The Ainu people led a peaceful life in the 
northern areas of Japan for many centuries 
until the Yamato people (ancestors of most 
modern-day Japanese) extended their power 
from the center of Honshu to the north, 
inviting confrontations with the Ainu in many 
areas. The existence of the Ainu was threat¬ 
ened by the Yamato's abuse of power, mani¬ 
fested in unfair trade practices and ecological 
disturbances like devastation of rivers—upon 
which the Ainu depended for subsistence 
resources (plants, fish, game)—for gold 
mining. The largest of these confrontations 
was a battle in 1669 when more than 20,000 
Ainu, led by the hero Shakushain, rose against 
the Japanese to defend their people and way 
of life, but it ended in defeat. Although the 
Ainu waged other battles around the same 
time, they were not victorious. Japanese rule 
was fortified by each victory, and their de¬ 
mands became even more unreasonable. 
When the Meiji Restoration began in 
1868, the modernization of Japan caused the 
central government to pay serious attention to 
the exploration and economic development of 
Hokkaido. A year later the Hokkaido Settle¬ 
ment Mission was established as an administra¬ 
tive organization to rule the region, and a large 
number of former samurai warriors and farmers 
emigrated to Hokkaido. Ainu mosir ("the people's 
land"), where the Ainu people had freely 
hunted and gathered food, was regarded by the 
Japanese as a land with no master, and it be¬ 
came a part of the territory of Japan and was 
allocated to Japanese immigrants. 
The Ainu people were classified as 
"Japanese" and forced to assimilate into 
Japanese society. They were prohibited from 
using their own language, even at home,- 
they were not allowed to practice Ainu 
customs and public ceremonies,- and they 
were forced to engage in newly imported 
rice agricultural systems with which they 
were unfamiliar. Although the language and 
culture were on the verge of extinction, they 
were kept alive, albeit in a small way, by 
those who cared about Ainu traditions. 
Today, a concerted effort to restore the 
traditional culture is making steady progress. 
In 1899, exactly one hundred years ago, 
the Japanese government enacted the Hok¬ 
kaido Former Aborigines Protection Act as a 
means to accelerate the assimilation of the Ainu 
people. Although the stated purpose of the law 
was to help the Ainu by allocating land, assist¬ 
ing the poor, and providing education to the 
children (fig. 51.1), these goals were not 
achieved. Instead, this statute, which contained 
the term "aborigines," connoting an uncultured, 
uncivilized foreign race, deprived the Ainu 
people of basic human rights, not only in 
educational and cultural spheres (such as 
restrictions on the use of their own language 
and customs) but also in terms of social and 
economic status. In an annual general meeting 
in 1984, the Ainu Association of Hokkaido 
passed a resolution calling for the Hokkaido 
51/BEYOND SHINPO 369 
51.2 The Ainu Rally in Sapporo 
The year 1993 was designated as the 
International Year of the World's Indig¬ 
enous People by the United Nations. 
Hokkaido Utari Kyokai (Ainu Association 
of Hokkaido) organized a general rally 
to petition the Japanese government 
for quick passage of the Ainu Shinpo in 
Sapporo on August 23, 1993. Support¬ 
ing the Ainu were other indigenous 
people from Canada, the United 
States, Sweden, and the Philippines 
who had been participating in the Indig¬ 
enous People’s Conference, held in 
Nibutani, Hokkaido. The "Nibutani Fo¬ 
rum '93" was an important event for 
the average Ainu person, who for the 
first time learned how other indigenous 
peoples were treated in their home 
countries and how important interna¬ 
tional communication was for the Ainu 
movement. Although the Ainu were not 
alone in their grievances, other indig¬ 
enous people had been recognized by 
their governments and had legal stand¬ 
ing, whereas the Japanese government 
had failed to acknowledge Ainu rights. 
(AAH) 
Former Aborigines Protection Act to be re¬ 
scinded and replaced by a new law to recognize 
the rights of the Ainu people and strengthen 
human-rights activities, promote culture, and 
establish a fund to facilitate self-determination. 
The major purpose of the resolution for a new law 
was to make the government accountable for the 
human rights of the indigenous population and to 
call for implementation of measures to achieve 
social and economic independence (fig. 51.2). 
In 1984 the Ainu Association of Fdokkaido 
began working to draft a new law to protect 
the rights of the Ainu, these efforts included 
petitioning the governor of Fdokkaido and the 
national government and appealing to the 
international community through a forum at 
the United Nations. As a result of the work 
by activists and after repeated discussions 
both in Fdokkaido and at the national level, 
the Ainu Shinpo (summarized as the 'Law on 
Promotion of Ainu Culture and Facilitation of 
Popular Llnderstanding of Ainu Tradition") 
was enacted on May 8, 1997,- simultaneously, 
the Fdokkaido Former Aborigines Protection 
Act was abolished. 
Through the legislative process, the final 
version of the law came to differ greatly from 
the content that was initially envisioned, for it 
deals only with cultural aspects. Nonetheless, 
in a country where high-ranking government 
officials once claimed that Japan was an ethni¬ 
cally homogeneous country, passage of a law 
that acknowledges the existence of a different 
ethnic group was an epoch-making event. Even 
though the act may not admit "indigenousness" 
in a strict legal sense, it states that the Ainu are 
an ethnic group and it seeks to realize a society 
where the pride of the Ainu, as a people, is 
respected. 
As a provision of this law, a new non¬ 
government organization was established 
with financial assistance from the national 
and Fdokkaido governments that would 
promote Ainu culture and research, although 
this is a good start, other issues still confront 
the Ainu people. One of these concerns 
indigenous rights, or senjuken. In the legislative 
process, even though the "indigenous nature," 
senjusei, of the Ainu people as traditional 
occupants of northern Japan was established 
as a historical fact, the language of the act 
uses the ambiguous term "indigenousiiess" and 
specifically denies that this status accords 
territorial rights to the Ainu. Therefore, the 
next task will be to implement specific rights 
that are due the Ainu as an indigenous popu¬ 
lation by participating in other related move¬ 
ments, such as the United Nations' discussion 
on the declaration of indigenous rights. The 
national government has begun moving in this 
direction with establishment of a committee to 
formulate a comprehensive human-rights 
protection law that covers women, the handi¬ 
capped, the Ainu, and others. 
There is an Ainu term, urespa mosir, which 
means "the land where all things grow help¬ 
ing each other." On the eve of the millen¬ 
nium, a new world order is being sought. 
This new era demands a partnership be¬ 
tween indigenous populations and 
nonindigenous people, and together they 
can contribute greatly to the international 
community. Fulfilling the promise of the 
future of mankind with hope is the wish of 
the Ainu people. 
.3 70 PRESENT AND FUTURE / J. SASAMURA 
52/Ainu 
Language: 
Present and Future 
Hiroshi Nakagawa 
52.1 Language Education in Nibutani, 
May 1993 
The Ainu were discouraged from 
speaking the Ainu language after 
1871 when the Colonization Commis¬ 
sion was established in Hokkaido. In 
schools, Ainu children receive a 
“Japanized" education, and the num¬ 
ber who learn the Ainu language in 
their homes is fast approaching zero. 
Shigeru Kayano, the cultural leader of 
Nibutani, developed the first Ainu- 
language classes, and his efforts 
were joined by other Ainu communi¬ 
ties; now there are thirteen Ainu-lan- 
guage classes offered throughout 
Hokkaido. As required by one of the 
four main provisions of the Ainu 
Shinpo of 1997, the Ainu language is 
also taught in several colleges and 
universities. 
The Ainu language, ever since 
it has been studied, has been 
labeled by linguists a "dying 
language.1' Kyosuke Kindaichi 
wrote in his Study of the Ainu (1925), "It is 
common knowledge that the Ainu population 
will disappear completely from the earth within 
the next two generations." Shiro Hattori 
stated in the introduction to his Ainu Dialect 
Dictionary (1964): "In the autumn of 1954, I had 
an opportunity to meet with Seiichi Izumi, 
assistant professor of the Anthropology 
Department of Tokyo University, to discuss 
the status of Ainu studies of the Association 
of Japanese Ethnology, which I had always 
Chitose dialect. Although today the Chitose 
region is considered to be the center of the 
Ainu language-revitalization movement, 
serious study of the region's dialect began 
only in the late 1980s; prior to that time, few 
Ainu-Ianguage researchers knew that the area 
had so many Ainu speakers. 
Over the past two decades, progress has 
also been made in the study of other dialects, 
for instance, the dialect spoken in the Shizunai 
region of the eastern part of Hidaka. This 
region is the site of the Shakushain memorial 
festival, the largest Ainu festival, and the area 
is well known for preserving traditional 
customs,- however, it wasn't until the 1970s 
been interested in. I heard shocking news 
that the Ainu language would die out within 
four to five years." Seventy-five years have 
passed since the publication of Kindaichi's 
study and more than forty years since Hattori 
was astonished by Izumi's prediction, but the 
Ainu language has not disappeared, although 
it is gravely endangered. 
This essay concerns language-revitaliza¬ 
tion efforts currently being implemented in 
southern Hokkaido. (Readers interested in 
details about Ainu language, its dialects, and 
relationships should read the essay by 
Tamura in this volume). 
Recently, the author of this essay pub¬ 
lished Ainu-Japanese Dictionary—Chitose Dialect 
(1995) and Express Ainu (1997b), a self-learn¬ 
ing textbook for beginners based on the 
that linguists started systematically recording 
the dialect. In 1986 Kirsten Refsing, a Danish 
linguist who has produced compilations of 
Ainu language and folktale materials, pub¬ 
lished The Ainu Language, the most comprehen¬ 
sive book on Ainu grammar, based on this 
dialect. Another example is the Samani dia¬ 
lect, spoken in the area east of Shizunai. Some 
vocabularies of this dialect had been recorded 
in the 1950s, but it was not until the 1980s 
that the text was first recorded properly. 
Shiro Hattori, who had been so aston¬ 
ished at the prediction about the demise of 
Ainu, wrote, "There will probably be less than 
twenty fluent speakers of the language even if 
we look for them all over Hokkaido " His 
dictionary, however, to which all the linguists 
at Tokyo University at the time contributed, 
52/LANG U AGE SURVIVAL 374 
did not include the Chitose, Shizunai, or 
Samani dialects,- at that time there must have 
been more than twenty fluent speakers in 
either the Shizunai or Chitose region. In other 
words, it was not that there were no speakers 
but that the speakers did not reveal themselves 
to Hattori and his fellow linguists. 
The primary reason for this was that Ainu 
speakers did not use their language in public, 
especially in the presence of Japanese, because 
of discrimination in matters ranging from 
marriage to jobs,- Ainu still face such obstacles 
today. Many Ainu speakers even today hide 
their identity and their ability to speak the 
language, and the story is often told about 
parents who were fluent in Ainu but never spoke 
a word of it in front of their children. So, while 
the researchers claimed that "no speakers re¬ 
grant from the Hokkaido and national gov¬ 
ernments, the Association initiated Ainu 
language classes—lessons taught by the Ainu 
for the Ainu (fig. 52.1). The program began 
in Nibutani and slowly spread to other re¬ 
gions. Today, there are fourteen such classes 
throughout Hokkaido. 
In 1994 the Association published a 
textbook for the class, Akor itak (Our lan¬ 
guage). This project marked a breakthrough, 
because Ainu representatives and several 
Japanese researchers worked together. The 
fact that the Ainu themselves for the first time 
presented their views on methods of expres¬ 
sion and discussed in editorial meetings the 
standardization of the language was indeed 
significant. Also in 1994, the Hokkaido Ainu 
Cultural Research Center, the first such 
main" or "the language is fading away," the research institution, was founded in Sapporo, 
Date Population Source of Data 
1854 17,810 (including Sakhalin) New History of Hokkaido, 1969-81, Hokkaido 
1873 16,272 (including Kurile Islands) Ibid. 
1898 17,573 (including Kurile Islands) Ibid. 
1913 18,543 (including Kurile Islands) Ibid. 
1936 16,519 (including Kurile Islands) Ibid. 
1972 18,298 (only Hokkaido) Report of the 1972 Survey of Socio-Economic 
Conditions of the Hokkaido Ainu, 1972, 
Hokkaido Minseibu (Dept, of Public Welfare) 
1979 24,180 (only Hokkaido) Report of the 1979 Survey of Socio-Economic 
Conditions of the Hokkaido Ainu, 1979, 
Hokkaido Minseibu 
1986 24,381 (only Hokkaido) Report of the 1986 Survey of Socio-Economic 
Conditions of the Hokkaido Ainu, 1986, 
Hokkaido Minseibu 
1993 23,830 (only Hokkaido) Report of the 1993 Survey of Socio-Economic 
Conditions of the Hokkaido Ainu, 1993, 
Hokkaido Seikatsu Fukushibu 
speakers were in fact present—if silent—but 
were gradually disappearing. 
Facing the disappearance of their lan¬ 
guage, a few Ainu people with knowledge of 
Ainu language, such as Shigeru Kayano and 
Motoanrek Nabesawa, began searching 
during the postwar period for a way to pre¬ 
serve and revive it using their own methods 
and personal resources. They published 
materials and cultural descriptions in Ainu and 
taught Ainu language classes. Their efforts 
accelerated in the 1980s when the Hokkaido 
Ainu Association became involved: with a 
where several Ainu researchers have been 
studying their own culture. 
The activism that led to the adoption 
of the Ainu Shinpo raised the level of 
awareness of Ainu identity. Attendance at 
the 1987 United Nations Working Group 
on Indigenous Populations—a first for Ainu 
people—and participation in various activi¬ 
ties during the International Year of Indig¬ 
enous Peoples in 1993 brought interna¬ 
tional recognition and assured the Ainu that 
they were not alone in the world. 
With these developments, the environ- 
3 72 PRESENT AND FUTURE / H. NAKACAWA 
52.2 Declining Use of Ainu Language 
in the Home 
Until the mid-1900s Ainu language 
had a strong basis in the home, but 
since then integrated schooling and 
the breakdown of social and economic 
barriers between Ainu and Japanese 
have nearly extinguished the use of 
Ainu. Language-preservation efforts 
have shifted to school classes and 
special instructions, but there is resis¬ 
tance to maintaining instruction in the 
native Ainu language as part of the 
official public school program. New 
approaches have nevertheless 
strengthened school language pro¬ 
grams, and today increasing numbers 
of Ainu are showing show interest in 
learning and using traditional lan¬ 
guage. (Hilger, NAA-T-1) 
ment surrounding the Ainu language has been 
gradually changing, and Ainu speakers who 
previously had avoided speaking Ainu have 
now begun to use the language. Toshiko 
Ueda, a well-known narrator of oral literature, 
started speaking Ainu openly some ten years 
ago when her elder sister, also a famous 
narrator, passed away. While Ueda is today 
fluent enough to converse in Ainu, she said 
that as a child she never communicated with 
her parents or siblings in the language,- the 
stories she narrates from memory are those 
she learned from her sister only a year before 
she died. It must be that Ainu had been her 
native language as a child, but if so, she had 
forgotten it after decades of speaking Japa¬ 
nese It is also possible that her sister's death 
motivated Ueda to speak the language again. 
II her sister had died twenty years ago instead 
of ten, she might have kept her sister's stories 
hidden in her mind, having forgotten forever 
that she was able to speak Ainu. This is just 
one of many similar stories. It is unclear how 
many potential Ainu speakers exist, but 
history has shown that their number has 
frequently been underestimated (fig. 52.2). 
More visible evidence of the resurgence 
of Ainu language is the increase in the num¬ 
ber of people who are now learning the 
language. In addition to the Ainu classes 
mentioned previously, places where one can 
study Ainu, such as universities and citizens' 
groups, have also been on the rise. Some Ainu- 
language homepages have also appeared on 
the Internet. While most people who study 
Ainu are primarily Japanese, a number of 
young Ainu people whose native language is 
Japanese have began participating in classes 
or have created their own study groups for 
Ainu language and culture. For example, in 
Chitose, Ainu people in their twenties to 
forties—the generations who had lost the 
use of the Ainu language—performed a play 
in Ainu. This group also holds study sessions 
for the purpose of restoring knowledge of 
traditional ceremonies. 
Although the Ainu Shinpo, enacted by 
the Japanese government on May 7, 1997, 
includes a major section about the Ainu 
language, the law is far from what the Ainu 
people originally envisioned because it 
addresses only cultural issues and not im¬ 
provement of social and economic status or 
land claims. For this reason, the law has been 
criticized by many people, including the 
Ainu. The very small agency called the 
Institution for Promotion and Education of 
Ainu Culture and Research, established in 
July 1997 following the enactment of the 
law, has been in trouble from the outset, 
caught in conflicts with the Ainu people, 
management, and scholars, and it thus faces 
an uncertain future. The fact remains, 
however, that the government, for the first 
time in history, allocated funds to promote 
Ainu culture. There is no doubt that with 
the Ainu Shinpo, the movement to revive 
the Ainu language has entered a new phase. 
No one can predict in what manner the 
language will survive, but it is clear that 
Ainu is not yet a "dead" language, though 
certainly an endangered one. 
52 / LANGUAGE SURVIVAL 373 
Itaomachip: 
Reviving a 
Boat-Building and 
Trading Tradition 
Kazuyoshi Ohtsuka 
IN THE SUMMER OF 1989, A SUCCESSFUL 
effort was made to reintroduce the lost 
art of Ainu boat-building as one element 
of the reaffirmation of Ainu cultural 
identity following decades of decline under a 
government-imposed policy of assimilation. 
The assimilation policy, which was enforced 
by the Meiji government, in effect denied the 
Ainu their independence, and the resulting 
social discrimination has created an image of 
Ainu society as being more "primitive" than it 
actually was. Researchers also have a unidi¬ 
mensional and almost stereotyped image of 
the Ainu and have pursued studies largely 
oriented toward "traditional" rather than 
modern Ainu culture. In this view, the Ainu 
were thought to be collectors of wild foods 
and to have mainly fished for salmon and 
trout,- they have thus been arbitrarily classi¬ 
fied as having a subsistence economy that 
relied on gifts from nature. 
domain evaded the ban on foreign trade by 
using the Ainu as middlemen,- they made a huge 
profit reselling high-priced Chinese products. 
The goods obtained from the continent in the 
Ezo (Hokkaido) area were circulated into 
Japanese society under descriptions such as "Ezo 
brocade" or "Ezo treasure." This northern trade 
system was different from the officially ap¬ 
proved international trade that operated out of 
the southern entrepot in Dejima (Nagasaki), and 
because it was conducted in secret, few docu¬ 
ments describing its existence remain. 
In 1809 the shogunate built the Shiranushi 
port in the southernmost part of Sakhalin. From 
this base they monopolized trade with people in 
the lower reaches of the Amur River and else¬ 
where on the Asian continent. The Ainu were 
then prohibited from traveling to the continent, 
thus crippling their trading economy. The 
cessation of independent trade turned a well- 
maintained commodity structure and the 
53.1 Ainu Boats Sail Again 
After more than two hundred years 
when use of the traditional oceangoing 
craft virtually ceased, a new but 
smaller version of the fifty-foot 
itaomachip was launched in Kushiro, in 
August 1989. A launching ceremony 
(chip-sanke) was performed by Ainu 
elder Seijiro Yae-ekashi. This photo¬ 
graph shows the boat’s elegant shape 
and balance as it moves through the 
waves with wind in its sails. The boat 
is now on display at the National Mu¬ 
seum of Ethnology in Osaka. 
imm 
sissȤilf*@ 
On the contrary; historical documents 
show that the early Ainu were traders and 
seafarers (fig. 53.2). They built board-bound 
boats called itaomachip and shipped products to 
and from the lower reaches of the Amur River 
on the Asian continent. In addition to trading 
their own products such as furs and marine 
goods, they traded products obtained from the 
Japanese (including pottery and iron pots) for 
luxury goods such as Chinese silk, metal 
handcrafts, and glass products. In Hokkaido, 
they made a profit selling these goods to Japa¬ 
nese merchants and the Matsumae domain in 
the Hakodate region. Until recently, this image 
of the Ainu as powerful traders has not been 
considered. Under the national isolation policy 
of the shogunate in the pre-Meiji era (before 
1868), Japanese merchants and the Matsumae 
PRESENT AND FUTURE / K OHTSUKA 
economically stratified Ainu society that 
supported it into a subsistence economy 
based primarily on the procurement of foods 
from the wild. These forces effectively termi¬ 
nated the progress the Ainu had been making 
over several centuries in developing into a 
politically organized society. 
In spring 1988 Tokuhei Akibe, an Ainu 
man living in Kushiro (Hokkaido), visited the 
National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka to 
ask for assistance in reviving the itaomachip 
boat-building tradition,- if we would help, he 
promised to give the boat to the museum 
collection. Late in autumn 1 heard from Akibe 
that he had located a large katsura tree that 
was growing in the Furano Experimental 
Plantation of Tokyo LIniversity at the south¬ 
western foot of the Daisetsu Mountains in 
374 
53.2 Early Maritime Vessel 
This work by an unknown artist is the 
oldest painting (ca. 1798) of an 
oceangoing canoe (itaomachip). 
Seven Ainu in yellow robes power the 
boat with oars and a woven-mat sail; 
two men in kimono are Japanese. The 
inscription in Japanese reads, “pas¬ 
sage to Kunashiri and iturup Island," 
two of the southern Kurile Islands. 
The painting documents the use of 
Ainu boats to transport Japanese offi¬ 
cials and trading partners, but as com¬ 
petition increased, the Ainu lost their 
competitive edge in trade between 
Japan, Korea, and the Amur River re¬ 
gion, and their maritime tradition 
faded away. Boat-building traditions 
have been resurrected as commu¬ 
nity and museum projects, aided by 
Ainu-e illustrating boats, (courtesy 
of K. Ohtsuka) 
Hokkaido. (Even in Hokkaido with its large 
forests, trees more than three feet in diameter 
are found only on the experimental planta¬ 
tions.) Therefore, a major decision had to be 
made about the relative value of a huge tree 
growing successfully versus the value derived 
from Ainu people reviving the technology of 
itaomachip. Dr. Watanabe, an official at Furano 
Experimental Plantation, struggled with this 
issue when Akibe brought it to his attention, 
and many meetings were needed to resolve it. 
Akibe insisted that "the tree was more than 
two hundred years old....Please consider this 
tree as one once owned by the Ainu and give 
us permission." This plea had the desired 
effect, and permission was eventually granted 
to take the tree. 
Three people participated in the cre¬ 
ation of the itaomachip: the leader, Tokuhei 
Akibe, his brother, LItarian Narita, and his 
brother-in-law, Takashi Yoshikawa. With 
Tokuhei's almost superhuman organizational 
skills and discipline, Utarian's sense of form 
and his technique as a woodcarver, and 
Yoshikawa's carpentry skills and faithful 
personality, it would be hard to find a more 
accomplished team to overcome the unknown 
challenges and technical problems associated 
with creating this traditional vessel. The team 
intended to use as a guide drawings of boat¬ 
making depicted in the Ainu-e drawings in 
Illustrations of Ezo Livelihood drawn by Shimanojo 
Murakami from the early nineteenth century. 
In March 1989, with Ainu from all over 
Hokkaido in attendance, a ceremony was held 
by the respected elder Hikawa: permission was 
sought from the god of the tree to cut it down, 
and prayers were offered for the success and 
safety of the work. Then the gigantic katsura 
tree was cut down and carried to the shore of 
the Takkobu swamp in Kushiro, where con¬ 
struction began. It took more than thirty days 
to shape the log canoe base that was the 
foundation of the boat. When hollowing out 
the interior of the canoe, the team experi¬ 
mented to ascertain whether the work-would 
be easier if the wood were charred (as is shown 
in the Illustrations of Ezo Livelihood drawings). 
The most difficult task was the widen¬ 
ing of the sides of the canoe after it was dug 
out: water was poured into the canoe and 
heated to boiling temperature with many hot 
stones, for the heat and water make the wood 
more pliant and make it possible to spread the 
sides of the boat,- boards covered the cavity to 
maintain the high water temperature pro¬ 
duced by the hot stones. (Similar techniques 
are used by Northwest Coast Indians for 
spreading the sides of their log canoes.) 
Once the sides had been spread, holes 
were drilled at fixed intervals down each side 
of the canoe, then sturdy broad planks were 
cut and bound by rope through these holes 
to raise the sides of the craft. It was quite 
difficult to bind two or three planks edge-to- 
edge tightly enough so that they would not 
leak,- fortunately, Yoshikawa, who had experi¬ 
ence with fishing boats, put his know-how as 
53/REVIVAL OF AINU BOATS 3 75 
53.3 Building an Itaomachip 
One section of Illustrations of Ezo Live¬ 
lihood illustrates the process of build¬ 
ing an itaomachip and identifies many 
features specific to it. The Ainu crafts¬ 
men who built a traditional boat in 
1989 used this illustration as a guide. 
The interior of a log was first burned 
and then filled with water heated with 
hot stones, allowing its sides to be 
bent outward; a similar technique was 
used by canoe-builders on the North¬ 
west Coast of North America. 
a rope specialist to good use, and the planks 
were firmly bound. This process required 325 
feet (100 meters) of half-inch (twelve millime¬ 
ter) hemp rope and several pine boards sixteen 
inches wide and one-half inch (forty centime¬ 
ters by twelve centimeters) thick. 
The various difficulties encountered in 
the creation of the itaomachip were overcome, 
and it was successfully launched with great 
ceremony on August 1 3, 1989, in Sapporo 
after a ceremony that ensured that the spirit 
of the original tree would remain with the 
boat. According to local custom, the boat was 
launched with a girl seated in the center, with 
Utarian and Tokuhei aboard as rowers. The 
scene of the boat floating well-balanced on 
the water was wonderful, and it moved swiftly 
when rowed,- even though it is forty-five feet 
(13.5 meters) long, it looked small out in the 
middle of the lake, and it almost disappeared 
between the waves. 
The boat then traveled through Nibutani 
in Piratori, Hidaka, and was displayed in Kushiro 
at the 1989 World Conference of Indigenous 
Populations, an annual conference dedicated 
to aborigine minority groups whose leaders 
support international efforts to insure native 
self-determination and folk rights. Because 
the 1989 conference was held in Japan, it was 
historically significant for the Ainu, who took 
the lead in sponsoring it. The conference 
representative from Polynesia proved to be a 
skilled boat captain and demonstrated some of 
the techniques Polynesians use to cross vast 
ocean areas by canoe. Although only a short 
time was available to study these techniques, 
we learned enough about the vessels handling 
characteristics to confirm early accounts of 
Ainu ocean transport and trade. 
This project, which reaffirmed historical 
accounts of early Ainu craftsmanship and 
seafaring abilities, also contributed to the 
modern Ainu sense of cultural identity, just as 
have similar projects undertaken by tribes of 
the northwest coast. Knowledge of and revival 
of parts of one's history can be effective ways 
to reestablish a sense of cultural identity. This 
has been the lasting value of the itaomachip 
project, for it has provided the Ainu and the 
museum's visitors with a new understanding 
about Ainu history: the stereotype of a people 
surviving by hand-to-mouth subsistence is 
gone, replaced by the story of proud and 
independent maritime traders. 
376 PRESENT AND FUTURE / K. OHTSUKA 
54/The Nibutani 
Ainu Culture 
Museum 
Hidek.1 Yoneda 
I BELIEVE THAT FUTURE GENERATIONS OF 
historians will consider the late twen¬ 
tieth century to be the beginning of a 
cultural renaissance for the Ainu people. 
To both those involved in the Ainu movement 
and the public at large, such a claim may seem 
an exaggeration,- however, as the 1997 Ainu 
Shinpo indicates, the movement to regain 
rights for the Ainu population has made 
unprecedented progress in the past few de¬ 
cades. While acknowledging the risk of 
oversimplification, I assert that the movement 
has been and will continue to be a historic 
process characterized by drastic shifts in 
perception—from negative to positive, from 
restraint to manifestation, from repression to 
progress, from discrimination to respect, from 
resignation to hope. 
Museums and similar institutions in 
various areas, with their staff and volunteers, 
have played an important role in this develop¬ 
er - 
54.1 Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum 
The Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum in 
Piratori opened to the public in April 
1992. Although Piratori’s population 
is only 7,000, the museum attracts 
30,000 visitors annually, from all over 
Japan and abroad. The museum was 
funded by the government to assuage 
opposition to a controversial dam on 
the Saru River at Nibutani, home of 
the greatest concentration of Ainu in 
Flokkaido. 
ment. The Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum 
(fig. 54.1) and its predecessor, the Nibutani 
Ainu Culture Information Center, is one 
institution that has made significant contribu¬ 
tions to the cultural movement of the Ainu 
people. Its influence extends beyond Piratori 
(the larger town district of which Nibutani is 
a part) where the museum was established and 
reorganized by the town authority. Piratori, 
located at the western foot of the Hidaka 
Mountains that extend southeast from central 
Hokkaido, has a population of slightly less 
than 7,000. Nibutani is one district of Piratori, 
and some 70 percent of its residents are said 
to be of Ainu lineage. Nibutani—and perhaps 
all areas of Piratori—is known as one of the 
most famous Ainu kotan (a village in the Ainu 
language), and many of its people are quite 
knowledgeable about Ainu traditions and 
customs. For this reason, many Ainirresearch- 
ers, including foreign scholars, have visited 
and studied in Nibutani. 
The Nibutani Ainu Culture Information 
Center was established in this small village by 
the Hokkaido Ainu Association in 1972. The 
late Tadashi Kaizawa, the first director, and 
Shigeru Kayano, the second director, made 
pivotal contributions to this center. Tadashi 
Kaizawa, as deputy president of the Hokkaido 
Ainu Association, was instrumental in estab¬ 
lishing the center and managed it during the 
initial phase. Most of the folkcrafts exhibited 
at the center were from the collection of 
Shigeru Kayano: since the 1950s he has 
collected Ainu culture materials and restored 
them using his own money,- in addition to 
collecting artifacts, he examined the records 
of oral literature. In those days, talking about 
Ainu culture and history was almost taboo 
even in Nibutani, so there were few people 
who understood or supported the activities of 
Kaizawa and Kayano. 
The Nibutani Ainu Culture Information 
Center was moved from the Hokkaido Ainu 
Association to Piratori in 1977. In 1991 the 
town constructed a new building and named 
it the Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum. Mean¬ 
while, Kayano created a new private museum 
in the old building to exhibit, in addition to 
Ainu folkcrafts, artifacts of a variety of indig¬ 
enous peoples from around the world. This 
facility was named the Shigeai Kayano 
Nibutani Ainu Information Center. On April 25, 
1992, both institutions held opening ceremo¬ 
nies, and Nibutani became the site of two 
museums, one public and the other private. 
A large-scale dam that was constructed 
in 1996 on the Saru River, which flows 
through the Nibutani area, has been a contro¬ 
versial government project, opposed by many 
local people. Because the museum was con¬ 
structed as a means of appeasing the opposi¬ 
tion to the dam project, some people avoid 
involvement with it, but to focus solely on 
this fact leads to a misunderstanding of the 
history of the controversy and overlooks 
issues of greater importance. 
Without the long-term efforts of people 
committed to preserving Ainupuri (Ainu 
customs and tradition), no achievements 
would have been made. The fact that 
54/ NIBUTANI MUSEUM 377 
Nibutani is regarded today as a key base for 
the Ainu cultural movement is the result of the 
will and hard work of individuals such as 
Kaisawa and Kayano, who were deeply com¬ 
mitted to the cause—other elements became 
less important. Educating people who are 
willing and able to preserve their cultural 
tradition, especially young people, is an urgent 
task, for it will become the basis for future 
advancement. It is essential to increase the 
number of such people and to teach them how 
to deal with fundamental issues as well as how 
to implement specific measures geared toward 
research and the preservation of Ainu culture. 
The basic philosophy of the museum is 
to "promote traditional culture into the con¬ 
temporary Ainu culture of today" in other 
words, it must be an ongoing comprehensive 
project to examine the past, understand the 
current political and cultural environment, 
and search for opportunities to preserve 
tradition (fig. 54.2). Whether this can be 
achieved will depend on how large the circle 
of involved people will become and how 
strong their resolve will be. 
Ainu activities in urban areas will add 
momentum to the renaissance movement, and 
there are signs that this is already happening. 
It must be remembered, however, that Ainu 
tradition has its roots in a hunting, fishing, 
and gathering lifestyle and is nonagricultural/ 
nonurban in nature,- the contradiction will 
successfully coexist as long as people do not 
forget their roots and continue to establish 
new traditions. As we enter the twenty-first 
century, the importance of museums located 
in areas of indigenous cultures will no doubt 
increase, and with this increased importance 
comes the responsibility to continue to 
improve as an information resource. 
54.2 Ainu Culture Exhibitions 
The specimens in the Nibutani Ainu 
Culture Museum reflect traditional life 
and customs of the Ainu of the Saru 
River region in the district of Hidaka, 
Hokkaido. Most of the museum’s col¬ 
lections were donated by the Ainu cul¬ 
tural leader Shigeru Kayano. The mu¬ 
seum also displays contemporary Ainu 
artists’ work. 
378 PRESENT AND FUTURE /HYONEDA 
The Heart 
Fucbi 
Conveyed 
Tomoko Keira 
I WAS BORN IN 1947 INTO A FISHERMAN'S 
household facing the Pacific, and 1 lived 
in that house until I graduated from 
junior high school. While I was raised in 
an Ainu family, I rarely had an opportunity to 
be touched by Ainu customs and language,- I 
only knew my grandmother on my father's 
side—an Ainu woman—through a small 
picture of her and an old kimono of hers that 
! had been given. Before the days of my 
grandparents, older Ainu people in my town 
apparently observed ethnic customs, but by 
the time my parents were born we were 
already in the last stage of japan's assimilation 
policy—becoming completely Japanese and 
forgetting Ainu traits was thought to be the 
best path. Therefore, my parents were taught 
55.1 
55.1 Tomoko Keira Listening to a 
Story from Suteno-fi/chj 
Suteno Orita (1899-1993), born in 
Shizunai, Hokkaido, was raised solely 
in the Ainu language until her early 
twenties. She contributed her exten¬ 
sive knowledge of Ainu culture to vari¬ 
ous fields such as yukar (Ainu epics) 
and traditional cooking. In a book that 
Tomoko Keira wrote in 1995 to com¬ 
memorate Suteno-fuchi, Keira de¬ 
scribes her as a great teacher who 
was a role model for all Ainu women. 
55.2 SUTENO-FUCH/ HOLDING TUKI 
In addition to her skillful rendition of 
Ainu yukar and practice of traditional 
crafts, Suteno -fuchi also promoted 
traditional Ainu cooking and wrote the 
first cookbook (1992) that codified 
many traditional recipes. 
neither the Ainu language nor Ainu customs, 
and even though 1 had some Ainu blood, it 
took me a long time to consider myself Ainu. 
It was only after I moved to the city for 
a job that I began wondering "What is Ainu?," 
and I became interested in learning all 1 could. 
1 was surprised—and angry—about how little 
the people around me knew about the Ainu, 
and how deep their prejudices were. 
I was twenty years old when I decided to 
do what I could to add to public understand¬ 
ing about the Ainu, and I went back home to 
work at Ainu tourist areas. 1 worked as a 
traditional dancer for two years at a tourist 
location, but my hope that this would educate 
the public about Ainu culture did not come 
true. However, I met Haru-fuchi (fucbi is the 
Ainu term for "respected female elder"), who 
was also working at the tourist area (fig. 55.4). 
The time ! spent with her had a significant 
impact on my life, for I was able to learn, for 
the first time, how Ainu feel and how Ainu 
women think,- I learned to reach the Ainu 
heart and was filled with contentment. 
In the 1970s, inspired by the growing 
activism of various indigenous/minority 
populations around the world, the campaign 
for Ainu liberation grew. It was, at the same 
time, a movement to revitalize and protect 
Ainu culture, which was fading away. 1 joined 
the movement,- at the same time, 1 got married 
and began raising my children. I met older Ainu 
people in different regions and had many 
opportunities to work with them for the cause, 
and 1 was lucky enough to inherit their wisdom. 
55.2 
One day Haru-fucbi passed away. The 
death of someone who had become so close 
to me, who taught me how to feel Ainu, was 
shocking. More than a mentor, I felt I had lost 
someone I could rely on. Although 1 was 
involved in conferences both at home and 
abroad with indigenous people of many 
countries, 1 was searching for the life I should 
live as an Ainu. My search led to my decision 
to move in with Suteno-fucbi (figs. 55.1, 55.2), 
who was then in her eighties and alone,- I had 
been introduced to her by Haru-fucbi. 
In the spring of 1991, I looked forward 
to a relaxed life, for I was now relieved of my 
family and work obligations because my two 
children were grown and my husband sup¬ 
ported my decision. As soon as 1 put down my 
luggage, however, fuchi handed me the inner 
3 79 55/ FUCHI WISDOM 
55.3 Peramonkoro Sunazawa with a 
Sculpture by Her Son 
Peramonkoro Sunazawa (1897-1971) 
was one of the few Ainu women of her 
generation to graduate from high 
school. She became a master of tradi¬ 
tional Ainu design and embroidery, and 
by sharing her knowledge and fabric 
compositions she influenced the artis¬ 
tic development of her son, artist Bikky 
Sunazawa. In addition to her contribu¬ 
tions to the field of Ainu textiles, which 
have been recognized by scholars, she 
was admired for her prowess in pre¬ 
senting yukar and keeping alive the oral 
tradition of Ainu epic poetry. 
55.3 
55.4 Haru Torao, 1903-1991 
Haru-fuchi was born in Shizunai, Hok¬ 
kaido. When she began attending el¬ 
ementary school at the age of nine, 
she was bullied by Japanese children, 
who often threw stones at her. After 
she was severely injured by a stone, 
she stopped going to school. Although 
the conspicuous tattoo around her 
mouth made her a target of discrimina¬ 
tion, she was proud of her culture and 
tried to teach Ainu values to young Ainu 
people until she died. She was a gener¬ 
ous and understanding person who 
was greatly respected. 
bark of the linden tree (nipes) and began to 
teach me to twine bags and baskets, saying, 
"You should learn this now and you will find it 
useful in the future." We then started to weave 
a carrying strap (tar) and moved on to making 
bags (saranip) with the thread we made. Later 
we brought in cattails from a marsh and began 
weaving mats. Without realizing it, I was 
experiencing that part of an Ainu woman's 
existence that is described as "thinking while 
moving your hands." I was surprised that 1 neither 
questioned nor resisted the situation. The 
simple, gentle old woman was a great teacher. 
I learned so much by doing women's 
seasonal work with her. She told me many 
stories during our breaks from manual or field 
work and at meals,- she told me what she 
believed in and valued, what she inherited 
55.4 
from ancestors, and what she was told by 
respected male elders, the ekashi. As she mixed 
her own experience with old tales, she always 
told me to fulfill my responsibilities and work 
as an Ainu woman in a fun manner. I never 
had the feeling that I was being taught, nor 
did fucbi mean to teach or lecture,- rather, she 
shared with me her stories and her memories. 
Something, unexplainable through words or 
logic, took hold in my mind. 
When I was young, 1 was neither con¬ 
scious of being born Ainu nor did 1 under¬ 
stand the meaning of my existence as a person 
of different ethnicity. When I left my home¬ 
town, I saw myself as different from others for 
the first time, and I asked myself, "Who am I?" 
It was the various fucbi who made me feel 
Ainu and helpes me to understand Ainu 
women. The short period of time 1 shared 
with the fucbi, who are gone now, created a 
special and unique core in my heart, and it 
was Sutcno-fucbi who implanted that core 
throughout my being. I feel that I am here to 
digest what fucbi told me, make it my own, 
and in turn convey her words to my children 
and grandchildren. 
Going home after a year of living with 
Suteno-fucbi, together with my husband and 
friends I formed a new organization to revive 
and convey the traditional culture of the Ainu 
in contemporary everyday life. Since 1992, 
the number of programs to 
spread traditional Ainu skills 
and spirit through workshops 
and seasonal field activities 
has increased, and there has 
been a steady growth in the 
number of participants—one 
noteworthy tradition that was 
revived after 1 30 years was 
the Ainu way of hunting deer. 
Among Suteno-fucbi's 
words, those that have made 
me the strongest impressions 
on me were these: "Because I 
am teaching you right, you 
should be careful not to 
teach others wrong when it's 
your turn",- "Try hard",- and 
"Work your best, and when 
working is done, the god of 
paradise will come to take 
you." She completed her 
work in 1993 and began her 
journey, as she herself said, 
to the world where her 
ancestors waited for her. 
In 1995 I participated in the World 
Woman's Conference in Beijing. Despite the 
conference slogan, The Twenty-first Century: 
The Century of Human Rights," the disparities 
between the conditions of the indigenous/ 
minority people of the world, including the Ainu, 
and the majority population sometimes seem a 
chasm yet to be bridged. While the struggle to 
rectify economic and social inequality continues, 
there is a long way to go and the tasks are enor¬ 
mous. Spiritualism alone will not open a door, but 
if that spirit is lost, there is no future. 
380 PRESENT AND FUTURE /T.KEIRA 
55.5 Into the Future 
The experience of growing up Ainu is chang¬ 
ing. Much of what made people “Ainu" in 
the past no longer exists, yet despite 
changes in Ainu perceptions of their own 
ethnicity and uncertain relations with the 
world around them, Ainu still find strength 
in their shared past and their unique art, 
traditions, beliefs, and personal experi¬ 
ences. Although their bridge to the future is 
unsteady due to unresolved civil rights is¬ 
sues and the absence of legal support for 
their self-determination as an indigenous 
people, increased public recognition and 
support both in Japan and abroad have 
made many Ainu people today more confi¬ 
dent in their future than they have been for 
the past hundred years. (Hilger, NAA-1-19) 
At the Beijing conference, I presented 
these words of Sunazawa-/t<cfoi (then sixty- 
seven years old), which she had spoken at 
the Ainu Culture Conference held in 1964. 
Although our ancestors did not have an 
alphabet, the education which families 
provided was solid. I will tell you about 
this in the Ainu language: 
Tane anakne shisam-utar kotankorine 
Now the Japanese behave as if our towns 
were theirs 
Fuchi iyaiikakka 
They make the fuchi prof oundly sad 
Ekashi iyaiikakka 
They make the ekashi profoundly sad 
Chi-oira ine 
We forget the good customs of the Ainu 
Shisam puri patek chi-ki-wa okai 
And we learn only the bad Japanese 
customs 
Ekashi-ki-ya yukar hene 
We try to follow the yukar that the ekashi 
performed, 
Upopo hene 
the songs and dances, 
Fuchi utar yaisama hene 
and the fuchi's impromptu poems,- 
Opitta-wa oira isam 
We have forgotten all of them 
Whenever I think about these words, 1 
cry in my heart. Looking at so many 
people gathered on this occasion, I do 
not know how to express my pleasure, 
except with tears (nuke turano), feeling the 
joy fuchi and ekashi would have felt. 
My fellow Ainu people, the pillar of the 
Ainu family is woman. 1 would like to ask 
you to educate our grandchildren and 
children about the enormous power of the 
woman so that they will grow up with 
pride about being born Ainu. I would like 
to ask you to join me, hand in hand, and 
let's follow the manners of ekashi and fuchi 
so that we won't forget our ekashi's language 
and yukar and the pride of being Ainu 
Please, my fellow Ainu people, 1 sincerely 
ask you to do me this favor. 
Nube turano ku-haw tapanna. lyairaikere. 
[With tears, this is what I tell you. Thank 
you veiy much.] 
55 / F U C H I WISDOM 381 
AMNH: American Museum of Natural 
History (New York) 
70-0002A/B Knife and Sheath 
Fig. 42.8, p 293 
Smith, col. 1904, St. Louis 
A: L20.3, W2.5, H1 3,- B: Ll 8.5, W5, H2.2 
wood, metal, bark, bone, cloth 
70/1 I Choker 
Fig. 45.23, p. 322 
A. C. James, col. 1896, Hokkaido 
L38, W1 3.5, H 1.5, cotton cloth, glass and lead beads, 
steel, brass 
70/1 4 Shaman Belt 
Fig. 37.6, p. 265 
A. C. James, col. 1896-98, Sakhalin 
Belt: L57, Wl 3, Hi, Knife case: L17.5, W4.5, Hi.3 
Sealskin, brass, wood 
70/1 5 Tobacco Pouch 
Fig. 22.7, p. 174 
A. C. James, col. ca. 1896-98, Sakhalin 
L34, Wl5, Hi ,5; sealskin, glass beads, cotton, 
string, fur, pigment 
70/23 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 22.5, p. 170 
A. C. James, col. 1896-98, Hokkaido 
L32.5, W4, H1.5, wood 
70/71 B Toggling Harpoon 
Fig. 29.12, p. 214 
A. C. James, col. 1896-98, Hokkaido 
L20, W5.5, H5, iron, bone, cloth, wood, sinew 
70/966 Retarpe Robe 
Figs. 22.6a, p. 172,- 42.4, p. 290 
B. Laufer, col 1899, Sakhalin 
L120; nettle fiber, cotton, thread, embroidery, applique 
70/1 256 Six-String Tonkori 
Fig. 41.6, p 284 
B Laufer, col. 1900, Sakhalin 
L129, W24.5, H5.5, wood, cloth, wire, hide, 
pigment, cord 
70/1263 Strike-a-Light Kit 
Fig. 22.9, p. 175 
B. Laufer, col. 1899, Sakhalin 
L20.8, W7.2, I 13i sturgeon skin, metal, bone, 
quartz, wood 
70/1 739 Crescent Carving 
Fig. 22.3, p. 170 
B. Laufer, col. 1899, Sakhalin 
Ll 3.4, Wl .5, Hi .5, bone 
70/3998 Carved Pipe 
Fig. 22.8, p. 174 
B. Dean, col. 1900, Shiraoi, Hokkaido 
L27.4, W2, H2, wood 
70/4040A, B Beaded Earrings 
Fig. 45.30, p. 325 
B. Dean, col. 1901, Shikiu, Hokkaido 
A: L8.3, W5.2, H1 7; B: L8.5, W5.5, Hi.7 
Brass, glass beads 
Checklist of 
Artifacts Illustrated 
in this Volume 
(Measurements in centimeters: L — length, 
W — width, H — height, D — diameter) 
70/4094 Saranip Basket 
Fig. 44.4, p. 31 I 
B. Dean, col. 1900, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L27, W22, Hi 1, grass, elm-bark fiber 
70/4156 Inaw- ( Carving Tool 
Fig. 26.2, p. 193 
B. Dean, col. 1900, Shiraoi, Hokkaido 
Ll5.1, W5.8, H1.3, wood, iron 
70/4189 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 22.4, p 171 
B. Dean, col. 1901, Abuta, Hokkaido 
L36.5, W3.5, H 1.5, wood 
70/4192 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 22.4, p. 171 
B Dean, col. 1901, Usu, Hokkaido 
L36.5, W3.6, H2, wood 
70/2932 Saranip Basket 
Figs 1.15, p 16, 43.2, p. 302 
Norbeck, col. 1951, Penkatori, Hokkaido 
L28, W23, H6, elm-bark fiber 
70/2955 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 22.4, p, 171 
Norbeck, col. 1951, Niokonson, Hokkaido 
L32.3, W2.4, H1.4; wood 
70/34895 Anush Apron 
Fig, 45.24, p. 323 
J. Bird, col. 1983 
L56, W46; elm bark, cotton cloth, thread 
ACM: Asahikawa City Museum 
12.3.1.1 Carved Bear 
Fig. 47.6, p. 337 
By Umetaro Matsui, 1920s 
L36, W35, H25, wood 
4439 Bear Fetish 
Fig. 38.14, p. 273 
Sakhalin 
LlO.9, W4.2, H6.8, wood 
4436 Carved Bear 
Fig. 47.5, p. 337 
Sakhalin 
Ll2, W2.6, H4.1, wood 
4449 Bear Fetish 
Fig. 47.4, p. 337 
Sakhalin 
L1 1.9, W4.2, H6.2; wood 
4506 Bear Carving 
Fig. 11.2, p. 92 
Col. ca. 1920s 
L15, W7.5, H7.5, wood 
BMA: Brooklyn Museum of Art 
X2001.26 Beaded Necklace 
Fig. 45.27, p. 324 
S. Culin, col. 1912, Sakhalin 
Class beads 
382 CHECKLIST 
12.447 Beaded Necklace 
Fig. 20.6, p. 158 
F. Starr, col. 1904 
Class beads 
1 2.1 59 Toy Mortar 
Fig. 34 4, p. 246 
S. Culin, col. 1912, Hokkaido 
H6.4, wood 
1 2.1 60 Chopstick Case 
Fig. 47.1, p. 335 
S. Culin, col. 1912, Hokkaido 
L. 30.1, wood 
! 2.1 67 Mouth Harp (mukkuri) 
Fig. 41.2, p. 283 
S. Culm, col 1912, Northern Japan 
Bamboo 
I 2.1 73 Cigarette Holder 
Fig. 47.1, p. 335 
F. Starr, col 1904, Porusaru, Hokkaido 
Ll 1.9, wood 
1 2.! 75 Rosette Mold 
Fig. 45.25, p. 323 
S. Culin, col. 1912, Hokkaido 
Ll 1.6,- wood 
12.177 Toy Knife 
Fig. 34.4, p. 246 
J. Batchelor, col. before 1912, prob. Saru River, 
Hokkaido 
Wood 
12.181 Grain-Stripper {pipes) 
Fig. 28.2, p. 203 
F. Starr, col. 1904, Okotsonai, Hokkaido 
Ll0.9; mussel shell 
12.20! Winnower Scoop Model 
Fig. 34.4, p. 246 
J. Batchelor, col. before 1912, prob. Saru River, 
Hokkaido 
Ll 1.2, wood 
1 2.229 Ikupasuy 
Fig. I 3.5, p 105 
F Starr, col. 1910, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L3 3 1, wood 
12.245 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 20.7, p 159 
S. Culin, col. 1912, Hokkaido 
L33.6, wood 
12.247 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 30.4 (second from left), p. 224 
F. Starr, col 1904, Okotsonai, Hokkaido 
L29.9, wood 
1 2.248 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 46.16 (center), p. 333 
F. Starr, col. 1904, Porusaru, Hokkaido 
L32 1, wood 
1 2.250 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 18.8 (right), p. 143 
F. Starr, col. 1904, Porusaru, Hokkaido 
L33.6, wood 
1 2.282 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 46.15, p. 333 
F. Starr, col. 1910, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L39.7, wood 
12.297 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 30.4 (left), p. 224 
J. Batchelor, col. before 1912, prob. Saru River, Hokkaido 
L34.1, wood 
I 2.298 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 30.4 (second from right), p 224 
F. Starr, col 1910, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L37.2, wood 
1 2.302 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 46.16 (right), p. 333 
S. Culin, col. 1912, Hokkaido 
L33.2, wood 
12.307 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 35.9 (second from left), p. 252 
F Starr, col. 1910, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L29.2, wood 
! 2.309 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 46.16 (left), p. 333 
F. Starr, col. 1910, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L32.8, wood 
12.315 Ikupasuy 
Fig 18 8 (left), p 143 
F. Starr, col. 1910, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L.35.4, wood 
12.316 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 35.9 (second from right), p 252 
S. Culin, col 1912, Hokkaido 
L34.2, wood 
12.317 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 44.2, p 310 
F. Starr, col. 1910, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L35.3, wood, lacquer 
12.323 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 18.8 (second from right), p 143 
F. Starr, col 1910, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L32.5,- wood 
12.325 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 35.9 (right), p. 252 
S. Culin, col. 1912, Hokkaido 
L31.9, wood 
1 2.326 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 30.4 (right), p. 224 
J. Batchelor, col. before 1912, prob. Saru River, Hokkaido 
L32.9; wood 
12.33! Ikupasuy 
Fig. 18.8 (second from left), p 143 
F. Starr, col 1904, Porusaru, Hokkaido 
L31.4; wood 
12.3 32 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 35.9 (left), p. 252 
F. Starr, col. 1910, prob. Saru River, Hokkaido 
L32.2; wood 
12.353 Ovoid Platter 
Fig. 28.8, p. 204 
S. Culin, col. 1912, Hokkaido 
L26.4, wood 
1 2.389B Quiver with Hunting Bag and Arrows 
Fig. 29.20, p. 217 
F. Starr, col. 1904, Okotsonai, Hokkaido 
L52.9,- wood, cherry bark, bearskin, feathers 
12.495 Salmon-Skin Stretcher 
Fig. 19.6A, p 151 
F. Starr, col. 1904, Porusaru, Hokkaido 
L76.7; wood, salmon skin, sinew 
I 2.582 Ainu Robe 
Fig. 18.9, p. 144 
F. Starr, col. 1904, Porusaru, Hokkaido 
Cotton, silk, thread, embroidery, applique 
I2.583A Deer Call 
Fig. 29.3, p. 209 
J. Batchelor, col before 1912, prob. Saru River, 
Hokkaido 
1-8.1, W5; wood, salmon or frog bladder, sinew 
12.588 Fish-Roe Masher 
Fig. 28.5, p 204 
J Batchelor, col before 1912, prob. Saru River, 
Hokkaido 
L17 2, katsura wood 
12.597 Fish Spear (marek) 
Fig. 29.11, p. 213 
F. Starr, col 1904, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L44.7, wood, iron 
12.661 Tobacco Box 
Fig. 1.21, p. 19 
F. Starr, col. 1904, Okotsonai, Hokkaido 
Wood, ivory 
1 2.674A Pillow Box 
Fig 32.7, p 237 
S. Culin, col 1912, prob. Saru River, Hokkaido 
L32.9, wood 
12.678 Spatula 
Fig. 42.17, p. 298 
S. Culin, col. 1912, Hokkaido 
L58.3; wood 
12.690 Woman's Robe (retarpe) 
Fig. 20.8, p 160 
J. Batchelor, col. before 1912 
Nettle-plant fiber, cotton, thread, embroidery, applique 
12.789 Thimble and Needlecase 
Fig. 45.21, p. 321 
S. Culin, col. 1912, Hokkaido 
L8.5; wood 
CHECKLIST 
383 
BMS: Buffalo Museum of Science 
Cl 2988 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 26.6 (lower), p. 196 
G. Umlauff, col. 1939, Kurile Islands 
L33.5, W2.5, H2; wood 
Cl 3461 Cooking Spatula 
Fig. 28.6, p. 204 
S. Sugiyama (?), col. 1939, Hokkaido 
Displayed at Golden Gate Expos. 
L51.25, wood 
Cl 3462 Cooking Spatula 
Fig. 28.7, p. 204 
S. Sugiyama (?), col. 1939, Hokkaido 
Displayed at Golden Gate Expos. 
L50; wood 
Cl 3464 Platter 
Fig. 42.16, p. 298 
S. Sugiyama (?), col. 1940, Hokkaido (?) 
L28.1, W29.3,- wood 
Cl 3466 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 26.6 (upper), p. 196 
Collector and location unknown, 1940 
Wood 
CI 3 4 6 7 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 26.5 (bottom), p. 195 
Collector and location unknown, 1940 
L35.5, wood 
CI 3474 Spoon 
Fig. 28.10 (right), p. 206 
S. Sugiyama (?), acc. 1940, Kurile Islands 
L31.2, wood 
Cl 3475 Spoon 
Fig. 28.10 (left), p. 206 
S. Sugiyama (?), acc. 1940, Kurile Islands 
L23, wood 
Cl 4724A Ikupasuy 
Fig. 26.5 (second from bottom), p 195 
Around Sea of Okhotsk 
L35.5; wood 
Cl 8752, 18755 Sake Cups 
Figs. 8.5, p. 77; 46.3, p 328 
B. Sharrow, acc. 1954 
H6.3, D12; wood, paint, lacquer 
Cl 8756, 1 8757 Sake Saucer Stands 
Figs. 8.5, p. 77; 46.3, p. 328 
B. Sharrow, acc. 1954 
H9.5, D14, wood, paint, lacquer 
Cl 8759 Lacquerware Container 
Fig. 12.4, p. 99 
B. Sharrow, acc. 1951, Hidaka, Hokkaido 
L22, wood, lacquer 
C1 8 76 I Ikupasuy 
Fig. 26.5 (third from top), p. 195 
B. Sharrow, acc. 1954 
L29.2, W2.5; wood 
384 
C1 8764 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 26.5 (top), p. 195 
B. Sharrow, acc. 1954 
L28, W2.2; wood 
Cl 8766 Necklace with Flowered Medallion 
Fig. 10.5, p. 90 
B. Sharrow, col 1940s or early 1950s, Hidaka (?), 
Hokkaido 
Glass beads, brass 
Cl 8767 Hoop Earrings 
Fig. 45.31, p. 325 
B. Sharrow, acc. 1951, Hidaka, Hokkaido 
D8.1, brass, glass beads 
Cl 8770 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 26.5 (second from top), p. 195 
B. Sharrow, acc. 1954 
L33, W3, wood 
Cl 8783A, B Sword and Hanger 
Fig. 12.2, p. 97 
B. Sharrow, acc. 1951, Hidaka (?), Hokkaido 
Blade: 1.42.5; Scabbard: L51, Hilt: D35.5, wood, steel, 
linden-bark fiber or celastrus-plant fiber, cotton thread, 
cotton cloth 
Cl 8799 Lacquerware Box 
Fig. 12.5, p. 100 
B. Sharrow, acc. 1954 
H43.2, D35.5; wood, paint, lacquer 
David and Chisato Dubreuil 
Collection 
Llncatalogued: Totem Pole Miniature 
Fig. 47.7 (left), p. 338 
By Koyama, col. 1986, Akan, Hokkaido 
H36, W4.5, wood, paint 
Llncatalogued: Totem Pole Miniature 
Fig. 47.8 (right), p 338 
Unknown artist, col Sapporo, Hokkaido 
H3 1.5, W5.3-5.7, wood, paint 
Uncatalogued: Iyomante 
Fig. 16.6, p. 127 
By Shunri Chishima, ca. 1790-1820 
FMC: Field Museum of Natural History 
(Chicago) 
32075 Tobacco Pouch 
Fig. 33.8, p. 244 
A. Pogosky, col. before 1893, Sakhalin 
Ll 1, W17.5, sea-lion skin, cotton, thread 
32I04A, B Salmon-skin Boots 
Fig. 29.24, p. 220 
A Pogoski, col. before 1893, Sakhalin 
H48, L27, W16; seal and sea-otter hide, cotton, thread 
88019 Choker with Rosette Medals 
Fig. 45.26, p. 323 
Collector unknown, Hakodate, Hokkaido 
L40.5, W7,- velvet, pewter 
CHECKLIST 
88075 Quiver and Arrows 
Fig. 32.2, p. 234 
Collector unknown, "Yezo, Japan" 
L54.4; Wl 3, 1 18,- wood, cherry bark, birchbark, bearskin 
I 3 I 696.1—2 Mountain Knife and Sheath 
Fig. 29.21, p. 217 
Collector and location unknown 
L45, W4.5, I 14; steel, wood, cherry bark 
234945 Embroidered Headband 
Fig. 45.22, p. 322 
Collector and location unknown 
L175, W15; cotton cloth, silk thread 
Takeki Fujito 
Llncatalogued: Eagle Sculpture, 1978 
Fig. 47.1 1, p. 340 
By Takeki Fujito, Akan, Hokkaido 
H36, W22, D30.5, walnut wood 
Llncatalogued: Life-Sized Wooden Figures, 1991-93 
Fig. 47.12, p. 340 
By Takeki Fujito, Akan, Hokkaido 
Walnut wood 
Uncatalogued: Sea Otter Sculpture, 1993 
Fig. 1.30, p. 24 
By Takeki Fujito, Akan, Hokkaido 
L45.5, W31, D21, wood 
Uncatalogued: Whale Sculpture, 1993 
Fig. 30.7, p. 226 
By Takeki Fujito, Akan, Hokkaido 
H29, W60, D28.5, wood 
HACRIG Hokkaido Archaelogical and 
Cultural Remains Investigation Center, 
Sapporo, Hokkaido 
Killer Whale Effigy (replica), Middle Jomon 
Fig. 3.5, p 41 
Kikyo-2 site, Hakodate, Hokkaido 
L6.4, W4, D3.1, ceramic 
HMH: The Historical Museum 
of Hokkaido 
Ceramic Figurine (replica), Final Jomon 
Fig. 3.8, p. 42 
Motowanishi site, Muroran, Hokkaido 
L6.7, W5, D3.5,- ceramic 
Duck-Shaped Figurine (replica), Final Jomon 
Japanese National Important Cultural Property 
Fig. 3.1, p. 39 
Bibi-4 site, Chitose, Hokkaido 
L3 1.7, W17, D9; ceramic 
Ceramic Mask (replica), Final Jomon 
Japanese National Important Cultural Property 
Fig. 3.6, p. 42 
Mamachi site, col 1986, Chitose, Hokkaido 
L17.9, Wl8.2, D6, ceramic 
Bone Spoons (replicas), Epi-Jomon 
Figs. 3.15a, B, p. 45 
Esan site, Hokkaido 
A: 1—15; B: L7; antler, bone 
Bone Spoon (replica), Epi-Jomon 
Fig. 3.16, p. 45 
Usu-10 site, Hokkaido 
L27.3, W4.5, D4.3; antler 
Sea Otter Figurine (replica), Okhotsk 
Fig. 3.18, p. 46 
Tokoro Fort, Hokkaido 
L6.2, W2.3, Dl.7, ivory 
Bronze Belt Ornaments (replicas), Okhotsk 
Fig. 4.8, p. 51 
Menashitomari, Hokkaido 
L5.5, W5.6, bronze 
Toggling Harpoon Head (replica), Epi-Jomon 
Fig. 3.13, p. 44 
Esan site, Hokkaido 
L12.7, W 1.9, DO.9; bone, agate blade 
Fishhook (replica), Epi-Jomon 
Fig. 3.12, p. 44 
Esan site, Hokkaido 
L7.5, W5.2, DO.7, bone 
Harpoon Head (replica), Okhotsk 
Fig. 3.14, p. 44 
Kafukai-A site, ReBun, Hokkaido 
Ll 1.4, W2, DO.7, bone 
Wide-Mouth Vessel, Okhotsk 
Fig. 3.17, p. 44 
Futatsuiwa site, Abashin, Hokkaido 
L30.4, W26.6, Dl 1.3, earthenware 
Stone Rod (replica), Final Jomon 
Fig. 3.9, p 42 
Kashiwagi-B site, Eniwa, Hokkaido 
L35.7, W3.3, igneous rock 
Pedestal Vessel, Epi Jomon 
Fig. 3.10, p. 43 
Minamikawa site, Setana-cho, Hokkaido 
L2 I, W27, Dl 2.5, earthenware 
Ceramic Vessel, Incipient Jomon 
Fig. 3.4, p. 40 
Narukawa site, Narukawa-cho, Hokkaido 
L20.3, W 17.6, DO.6, ceramic 
Engraved Needlecase (replica), Okhotsk 
Fig. 3.19, p. 46 
Bentento site, Nemuro, Hokkaido 
L8.3, Wl .5, D1.1, birdbone 
Ceramic Figurine (replica), Final Jomon 
Fig. 4.6, p. 50 
Ohnakayama site, Nanae, Hokkaido 
L18.4, W14.5, D7.2; earthenware 
Lacquered Comb (replica), Late Jomon 
Fig. 4.5, p. 50 
Bibi-4 site, Chitose, Hokkaido 
L1 1.8, W7.3, DO.6; wood, lacquer 
Needlecase with Geometric Engraving 
(replica), Okhotsk 
Fig. 4.9, p. 50 
Kafukai-A site, Rcbun, Hokkaido 
L.I2, Wl.4, DO.7, birdbone 
HAMA: Hokkaido Asahikawa 
Museum of Art 
Nitne-kamuy (Evil God), 1988 
Fig. 47.27, p. 348 
By Bikky Sunazawa, Asahikawa, Hokkaido 
Hi22, W26, D48, katsura wood, Manchurian ash, walnut 
HPGBE: Hokkaido Prefectural 
Government Board of Education 
(Sapporo) 
Owl Eyes (fragment), Final Jomon 
Fig. 3.7, p. 42 
Bibi-4 site, Chitose, Hokkaido 
LlO, WlO; earthenware 
Noriko Kawamura Collection 
Uncatalogued: Ryo (Force or Spirit), 1989 
Fig. 47.29, p. 349 
By Noriko Kawamura, Otaru, Hokkaido 
L200, W300, textile 
Uncatalogued: Hokkaido no sbiki: Aki mon’yo 
(Four Seasons in Hokkaido: Autumn), 1 990 
Fig. 47.30, p. 350 
By Noriko Kawamura, Otam Junior College, Sapporo, 
Textile 
Uncatalogued: Hokkaido no sbiki (fiiyu): Fukuro no 
siimu mori (Four Seasons in Hokkaido: Winter), 199 I 
Fig. 47.31, p. 350 
By Noriko Kawamura, Otani Junior College, Sapporo 
Textile 
Llncatalogued: Mokurei (Wooden Spirit), 1 99 I 
Fig. 47.32, p. 350 
By Noriko Kawamura, Otaru, Hokkaido 
L300, W1 80, textile 
KM: Kitanihon Minceisha Co., Ltd. 
(Sapporo) 
Uncatalogued: Figures of Man and Woman, 1960s 
Fig. 47.3, p. 336 
By Suzuki, Asahikawa, Hokkaido 
L65.6, D30, wood, paint 
Uncatalogued: Winter (Hibernation), 1980 
Fig. 47.10, p. 339 
By Takeki Fujito, Akan, Hokkaido 
H47.5, W45, D23.5; walnut 
Llncatalogued: Bear and Hutiter (Ekasbi), 1 973 
Fig. 47.16, p. 342 
By Bikky Sunazawa, Sapporo, Hokkaido 
L69.5, W78, D56.5,- Casteraralia wood 
Uncatalogued: Kani (Crab), 1987 
Fig. 47.26, p. 348 
By Bikky Sunazawa, Sapporo, Hokkaido 
L47, W38,- lauan wood, oil stain, pigment 
Llncatalogued: Necklace, 1968 
Fig. 47.14, p. 341 
By Bikky Sunazawa, Sapporo, Hokkaido 
L30.6, Wl 1, Japanese spindle-tree wood, 
oil stain, pigment 
Llncatalogued: Gozen sanji no gangu 
(Foys at 3:00 A.M.), 1987 
Fig. 47.22, p 345 
By Bikky Sunazawa, Sapporo, Hokkaido 
L41.7, W22, DlO.2, wood 
SM: Shin Mouri Collection 
Llncatalogued: Japanese Clogs 
Fig. 1 1.4, p. 94 
Soshichiro Mouri, col. 1909-29, Hokkaido 
L22.8, W9.4, H7.2, wood, cow leather 
Uncatalogued: Poison-Preparation Bowl with Point 
Fig. 29.18, p. 216 
Soshichiro Mouri, col. 1909-29, Hokkaido 
Bowl: L24.3, W5.7, H2, Point: L6.4, WI 5, wood, 
bamboo 
Llncataloged: Needlecase 
Fig. 42.21, p. 300 
Soshichiro Mouri, col. 1909-29, Hokkaido 
L29.5, deer bone, cotton, needle and thread, coin 
MPM: Milwaukee Public Museum 
N I 7000 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 46.17, p. 334 
Hokkaido 
L34.3,- wood 
NI 7025 Bow 
Fig. 29.4 (upper), p. 210 
Acc 1969, Edward V. Dommcr Foundation 
L120, wood, bark 
N I 7027 Ladle 
Fig. 28.9 (upper), p. 205 
Location and date of collection unknown 
L66, wood 
N 1 705 3 Ritual Sword 
Fig, 13.8, p. 107 
Acc 1969, Edward V. Dommer Foundation 
L32.5, wood 
N17056 Ritual Quiver 
Fig. 38.13, p. 272 
Acc. 1969, Edward V. Dommer Foundation 
L51, W14, wood 
N17058 Makiri, Sheath, Netsuke 
Fig. 1.24, p. 21 
Acc. 1969, Edward V. Dommer Foundation 
L25.6, W7.5; wood, bone, iron, glass bead 
CHECKLIST 
385 
N I 71OOA Flower Arrows 
Fig. 35.8, p. 251 
Hokkaido 
Wood, feathers 
N 1 7284C Flower Arrows 
Figs. 35.8, p. 251, 42.13, p. 295 
Hokkaido 
Wood, feathers 
N I 7285C, E Flower Arrows 
Fig. 35.8, p. 251 
Hokkaido 
Wood, feathers 
N I 7296 Carved Platter 
Fig. 28.12, p. 207 
Hokkaido 
L26.7, W21.9, walnut 
N I 7302 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 36.7, p. 259 
Hokkaido 
NI 7340A, B Knife Handle and Sheath 
Fig. 32.4, p. 236 
Hokkaido 
L23, wood, iron 
N1 7346 Ritual Sword 
Fig. 38.12, p. 273 
Acc. 1969, Edward V. Dommer Foundation 
L25, wood 
N 1 7357A, B Knife Handle and Sheath 
Fig. 30.3, p. 223 
Acc. 1969, Edward V. Dommer Foundation 
L43.2, whalebone, cherry bark 
N I 736 I Spirit Figurine 
Fig. 38.7, p, 271 
Acc. 1969, Sakhalin 
L27.2, wood 
N1 7363 Spirit Figurine 
Fig. 38.8, p. 271 
Acc 1969, Sakhalin 
L15.6, wood 
HMCAS: Hokkaido Museum of 
Contemporary Art, Sapporo 
Uncatalogued: Kami no shita (Tongue of God), I 980 
Fig. 47.18, p. 343 
By Bikky Sunazawa, Sapporo, Hokkaido 
H201; Japanese oak 
NME: National Museum of 
Ethnology, Osaka 
Hi 89023 Fucbi, 1993 
Fig. 47.1 3, p. 340 
By Takeki Fujito, Akan, Hokkaido 
H162; walnut wood 
386 
NMNH: National Museum of Natural 
History, Washington, D.C. 
19415 Semicircular Plate 
Fig. 1.9, p 13 
H. Capron, col. 1875, Hokkaido 
I. 26.5, W19, H2.5, wood 
E22194 Grapevine Sandals 
Fig. 29.26, p 221 
B. Lyman, col. 1876, Hokkaido 
L24.7; grapevine bark, linden bark 
E22259 Smoking Kit 
Fig. 18.1, p. 138 
B. Lyman, col. 1876, Hokkaido 
L33, Wl 1.5, H5, hardwood 
22261 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 1.12, p. 14 
B. Lyman, col. 1876, Yokohama 
L38, W2.5, Hi.2, wood 
E022269 Wooden Spatula 
Fig. 42.20, p. 299 
B. Lyman, col, 1876, Hokkaido 
L20.7, W3.6, Hi.2, wood 
El 50637 Salmon-Skin Boots 
Fig. 29.25, p. 220 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Bekkai, Hokkaido 
L21.8, W20 2, H 10; salmon skin 
I 50638 Iron-Tipped Arrow 
Fig. 29.4, p. 210 
R Hitchcock, col. 1888, Shari, Hokkaido 
L49.5, W1.2, HO.6, wood, iron, feather 
150642 Bow 
Fig. 29.4, p. 210 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Hokkaido 
L107.5, W8.3, H 1.8, wood, cherry bark 
I 50649 Attush Leggings 
Fig. 19.9, p. 153 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Abashiri, Hokkaido 
L31.2, W29.2, HO.6, elm bark, thread 
I 50653 Elm-Bark Fiber 
Fig. 19.7, p. 151 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Abashiri, Hokkaido 
L55.9, W20.3, H8.3; elm bark 
1 50670 Ladle 
Fig. 28,9 (lower), p 205 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L48.2, Wl 3.3, I 15.7; wood 
1 50675 Sea-Mammal Spear 
Fig. 29.13, p. 214 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Hokkaido 
Ll 19 (three sections); wood, metal, rope 
I 50677 Elm Bark 
Fig. 45.2, p. 314 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Abashiri, Hokkaido 
L75, Wl 1.4, H3.1, elm bark 
CHECKLIST 
150682 Garden Hoe 
Fig. 32.14, p. 239 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L93, W30.4, Hi2.7, hardwood 
1 50685 Octagonal Bowl 
Fig. 19,5, p. 150 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Bekkai, Hokkaido 
L29.2, W30.5, H6.3; wood 
I 50688 Cloth Mittens 
Fig. 8.7, p. 78 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L22.7, Wl2.7, HO 6; cotton cloth 
150698 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 19.3, p. 149 
R Hitchcock, col. 1888, Etorofu, Kurile Islands 
L33, W3.2, HO.6, wood 
1 50706 Beaded Necklace 
Fig. 10.7, p. 91 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Hokkaido 
L50.8, W 12.7, H 1.3, glass beads, brass, thread 
I 5071 5 Tattoo Knife 
Fig. 45.32, p. 326 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L19.7, W2.5, Hi.3; wood, metal 
I 5072 1 A Birchbark Bowl 
Fig. 19.4, p. 150 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L2 1.6, W14, I 15.7,- birchbark, wood 
1 50722 Wooden Spoon 
Fig. 47.2, p. 336 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Etorofu, Kurile Islands 
L30.5, W4.4, H4.4, wood 
1 50725 Salmon Skin 
Fig. 19.6B, p. 151 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Abashiri, Hokkaido 
L49.5, W 17.8, I 16.3,- salmon skin 
El 50729 Knife and Sheath 
Fig. 29.19, p. 216 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L29.2, Wl7.1, H2.5, wood, metal 
El 50764 Spring Bow 
Fig. 29.6, p. 212 
R. Hitchcock, col 1888, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L55.8, W81.2, I 110.1; wood 
1 50768 Baby Carrier 
Fig. 6.5, p. 64 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Shikotan Island, Kurile Islands 
L48; wood, grass 
El 50779 Man's Robe 
Fig. 42.3, p, 289 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Tsuishikari, Hokkaido 
L.122, Wl27, H 1.2, elm bark, cotton thiead, embroidery, applique 
1 50780 Womans Robe 
Fig. 19.8, p. 152 
R. Hitchcock, col. 1888, Tsuishikari, Hokkaido 
L 121.5; elm bark, cotton thread, embroidery, applique 
324509 Wooden Plate 
Fig. 42.19, p. 299 
Stockbridge, col. 1922 
L24.1, W22.9, H2.5; wood 
3245 I I Inaw Knife 
Fig. 31.8, p 231 
Stockbridge, col. 1922 
Sheath L20.3, W5, H 1.9, Knife: L21.6, W3.2, H1.3, 
wood, ivory, iron 
325243 Man's Knife 
Fig. 32.6, p. 236 
Novakovsky, col 1923, Hokkaido 
L35.6, W20.3, F13.2, wood, bone, iron, cord 
Kazuyoshi Ohtsuka Collection 
Uncatalogued: Towel Hanger 
Fig. 1 1.3, p. 93 
Col I 829, Hokkaido 
Rack: L40, H46.8; Case: L43.2, WlO, H4.3; 
walnut wood, Japanese cedar, bamboo nails 
OVOH Otoineppu Village Office, 
Hokkaido 
Uncataloged: Ki'men (Wooden Masks), 1975 
Figs. 1.29, p. 25; 47.15A, B, p.341 
By Bikky Sunazawa, Sapporo, Hokkaido 
L30.5, W18, D7; L38.5, W21, D14.5, wood 
Uncataloged: Juka (Wooden Flowers), 1989 
Fig. 47.19, p 344 
By Bikky Sunazawa, Otoineppu, Hokkaido 
L210, W210, H280, willow wood 
Uncataloged: Gozen sanji no gangu 
(Toys at 3:00 A.M.), 1978 
Fig. 47.22, p. 345 
By Bikky Sunazawa, Sapporo, Hokkaido 
H44.5, W52, D25.5, wood 
PEM: Peabody Essex Museum 
(Salem, Massachusetts) 
E491 Embroidered Boots 
Fig. 42.6, p. 291 
E. Morse, col. 1882, Ishikari River region, Hokkaido 
L36.8, W24 I, H14, fishskin, velvet, cotton 
El990 Bone Carving 
Fig. 42.9, p. 293 
O. Esche, col. before 1874, Sakhalin 
L8.9, W5, H 1.7, ivory 
E3105 Weft Beater 
Fig. 45.5e, p. 315 
Matsuki, location and date unknown 
L36.8, W6.3, H 1.7, wood 
E3279 Festival Scene Ainu-e 
Fig. 33.1, p. 240 
By Byozan Hirasawa, Scenes ojEzo Everyday Life, 1871 
E. Morse, col. 1871 
L89, W57; silk, paint 
E3382 Five-String Tonkori 
Fig. 41.6, p. 284 
M. Todd, col. 1896, Esashi, Hokkaido 
L97.5, W24.8, 1 14,5; wood 
E3 390 Child's Coat 
Fig. 42.2, p 288 
M. Todd, col. 1896, Esashi, Hokkaido 
L90.2, W1 37, H3.8, salmon skin, cloth 
E7909 Wooden Bowl 
Fig. 42.18, p. 299 
Ll 8, Wl4, H7.6, wood 
El 6503 Robe 
Fig. 45.7, p 317 
E. Morse (?), acc. 1916, Hokkaidof?) 
Elm bark, cotton thread, embroidery, applique 
El 7874 Three Hunters Ainu-e 
Fig. 29.1, p. 208 
By Koretsu Matsumae 
E. Morse, col. before 1920, Hokkaidof?) 
L179.3, W52.2, paper 
E75 I 90 "Invasion of Yezo by Russians" 
Fig. 7.4, p 70 
Artist unknown, Publication on the Ainu People oj Japan, 
undated 
L18.4, W26, paper, ink 
PMC: Peabody Museum of Archaeology 
and Ethnology (Cambridge, 
Massachusetts) 
64026 Twined Basket 
Fig. 43 1, p. 301 
Col. before 1904 
L4I.3, W 19.7, Hi2.7, elm bark 
86052 Wooden Pipe 
Fig. 33.10, p. 245 
L. H Farlow, col. before 1915 
L31 1, W2, wood, metal 
D3260 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 46.18, p. 334 
L Warner, col before 1928 
L36.8, W3 I, HO.6, wood 
7044 Sealskin Robe 
Fig. 45.17, p, 320 
Brooks, col before 1888, Sakhalin 
L108, W1 33, seal and fox skins, glass beads, silk, velvet, 
cotton bast, wool fabrics 
7046 Wooden Bowl 
Fig. 28.1 1, p. 206 
Brooks, col. before 1888, Hokkaido 
L21, W21, ! 19.5; wood 
22431 Bowl with Ledge Handle 
Fig. 28.13, p. 206 
Col. before 1879, Sakhalin (?) 
L27.3, W15.2, H7.0; wood 
51603 Duckskin Robe 
Fig. 45.6, p 3 16 
A. Agassiz, col. before 1893, Kurile Islands 
Duckskin, feathers 
5 1 605 Sealskin Mittens 
Fig. 29.16, p. 215 
A. Agassiz, col. before 1893, Shana Storop, 
Kurile Islands 
L24.8, Wl9, Hi .9, sealskin 
5 I 625 Beaded Necklace 
Fig, 18.2, p. 139 
A. Agassiz, col. before 1893, Storop, Kurile Islands 
L55.8, Wl 5.4, H3.8, glass beads, lead beads 
5 1 630 Coiled-Grass Basket with Lid 
Fig. 43.6, p. 304 
A. Agassiz, col. before 1893, Shikotan Island, 
Kurile Islands 
L5.7, W8.9, grass 
51631 Needlecase Set 
Fig. 128, p 23 
A. Agassiz, col. before 1893, Shikotan Island, 
Kurile Islands 
Lea. 15, bone, wood, animal hide, pigment, 
copper wire 
51643 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 46.18, p. 334 
A. Agassiz, col. before 1893, Nemuro 
L35, W3.8, HO.6, wood 
51646 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 30.6, p. 225 
A Agassiz, col. before 1893(?), Nemuro 
L33.7, W3.8, HO.6, wood 
51647 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 46.16, p. 333 
A. Agassiz, col. before 1893, Nemuro 
L33, W3.8, HO.6, wood 
5 1648 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 46.18, p. 334 
A. Agassiz, col. before 1893, Nemuro 
L35, W3.8, HO.6; wood 
51649 Ikupasuy 
Fig. 30.5, p. 225 
A. Agassiz, col. before 1893, Nemuro 
L33, W3.8, HO.6, wood 
RTBE: Rausu Town Board of Education 
Uncataloged: Vessel with Bear's Head Carving 
(replica), Okhotsk Culture 
Fig. 3.1 1, p. 43 
Matsunorikawa Kitagishi site, Rausu, Hokkaido 
L32, W3 1.5, DI 3.7, charred wood 
ROM: Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto) 
888.6.13 Smoking Kit 
Fig. 1.20, p. 19 
E. Odium, col. 1888, Shana, Kurile Islands 
Cherry bark, wood, bearskin, metal, glass bead 
CHECKLIST 
387 
Chinita Sunazawa 
A Daughter’s Happiness, 1 99 1 
Fig, 47.33, p. 351 
By Chinita Sunazawa 
Uncatalogued: Untitled, 1 992 
Fig, 47.36, p. 352 
By Chinita Sunazawa 
Uncatalogued: Yang, 1997 
Fig. 47.35, p. 353 
By Chinita Sunazawa 
Li 93, Wl 30, acrylic on canvas 
Uncatalogued: Yin, 1998 
Fig. 47.36, p. 352 
By Chinita Sunazawa 
L193, W130, acrylic on canvas 
Kazuo Sunazawa 
Uncatalogued: Untitled, ca. 1960s 
Fig. 47.28, p. 348 
By Peramonkoro Sunazawa, Akan, Hokkaido 
Textile 
Uncatalogued: Ichitaro Sunazawa, Carved 
Mask, 1992 
Fig. 14.3, p 111 
By Kazuo Sunazawa, Akan, Hokkaido 
L30, Wl6, HI I, wood 
AMS: The Ainu Museum 
at Shiraoi 
60542 Sun Visor 
Fig. 24.6, p. 186 
S. Kodama, col. 1929-1970 
L90; cotton, silk 
61022 Female Spirit-Guardian Necklace 
Fig. 44.3, p. 310 
S. Kodama, col. 1929-1970 
L20, W1.2; cotton cord, glass beads 
61025 Female Spirit-Guardian Necklace 
Fig. 38.6, p. 270 
S. Kodama, col. 1929-1970 
L36.2, W3.3; cotton cord, grass 
61049 Blowfish Amulet 
Fig. 13.2, p. 103 
S. Kodama, col. 1929-1970 
L10.3, W6.1, H7.1; blowfish 
62228 Mans Knife 
Fig. 32.5, p. 236 
S. Kodama, col. 1929-1079, Hokkaido 
L24.3, W3.7, Hi.9, ivory, bone, tooth, steel 
IIPM: University of Pennsylvania Museum 
of Archaeology and Anthropology 
56.8.9 Tobacco Pipe with Burl Bowl 
Fig. 33.11, p. 245 
Hartshorne, col. 1897-1900, Hokkaido 
Li9.3, W3.5, D2.2,■ wood 
A402 Womans Embroidered Hood 
Fig. 21.4, p. 164 
H. Hiller, col. 1901, Motomoruran, Hokkaido 
L40.8, cotton 
A407A, B Bent-Wood Snowshoes 
Fig. 29.22, p. 218 
H. Hiller, col. 1901, Shiraoi, Hokkaido 
L45, W22.5, Dl 1.5; wood, deerhide, sinew 
A442A Bear-Cub Feeding Trough 
Fig. 35.3, p. 250 
H. Hiller, col. 1901, Shiraoi, Hokkaido 
L68.6, wood 
A454 Hunter's Pouch 
Fig. 2.8, p. 36 
H. Hiller, col. 1901, Okotsonai, Hokkaido 
L29, W18, D8,- bearskin 
A457A Birchbark Torch 
Fig. 29.10, p. 213 
H. Hiller, col. 1901, Okopunai, Hokkaido 
L29, W5.5, D4, birchbark 
A458A, B, C Smoking Kit 
Fig. 42.15, p, 297 
H Hiller, col 1901, Yezo/Hokkaido 
A: L32.5, W2, Dl, B L38, W3, D7; C: L9.3, 
W9, D4.5, wood, bronze, cowrie shell, tobacco, 
vegetable fiber 
A470B Wooden Club 
Fig. 33.6, p. 243 
H. Hiller, col. 1901, Hokkaido 
A479 Boy's Bow 
Fig. 34.2, p. 246 
H. Hiller, col. 1901, Okotsonai, Hokkaido 
L42.5, wood 
A494 Bear Skull and Mandible 
Fig. 35.10, p. 253 
H. Hiller, col 1901, Motomuroran, Hokkaido 
Wood, bone 
A5 1 6 Galloping Toy 
Fig. 34.3, p. 246 
H. Hiller, col 1901, Piratori, Hokkaido 
Ll 1, clamshell, rope 
A53 I C Bear Cub's Toy 
Fig. 35.3, p. 250 
H. Hiller, col. 1901, Rubeshibe, Hokkaido 
L22.5, wood 
AI 7744 Knife with Eagle-Beak Sheath 
Figs. 21.6, 21. 6A, p. 167 
Eldredge, col. before 1895, prob. Yokohama 
A: L39.5, W4, D2; B: L31.5, W5, D2.2, wood, steel, 
cherry bark, pearl, puffin beak, bird claw 
L122-19 Woman's Ceremonial Robe 
Fig. 42.4, p, 290 
M. Schaffer, col. 1909, Piratori, Hokkaido 
Ll 31, Wl23, D5.5, cotton, thread, embroidery, applique 
Ll 22-32 Plaited Basket 
Fig. 44.6, p. 312 
M. Schaffer, col. 1909, Piratori, Hokkaido 
L26, W28, D19; linden bark 
Kan Wada Collection 
Uncatalogued: Amulet String 
Fig. 37.2, p. 262 
B. Wada, col 1945, Novoe, Sakhalin 
L40, leather, metal, wood 
Uncatalogued. Two-Headed Nipopo Doll 
Fig. 37.4, p. 263 
B. Wada, col. 1945, Novoe, Sakhalin 
L27.5, W1 1, H7.5, wood, cloth 
Llncatalogued: Nipopo Doll 
Fig. 37,5, p. 263 
B. Wada, col. 1945, Novoe, Sakhalin 
L27, W6.5, wood, cloth, glass bead 
388 CHECKLIST 
List of 
Illustrations 
Fic Pace Caption title 
42.3 1 Atlush Robe 
41.1 2-3 Crane Dance 
Introduction 
Ainu Ethnicity: A History 
1.0 8 Ishu retsuzo (Portraits of Ezo Chieftains) 
11 9 Man and Woman of Shari 
1.2 9 Blessing Ritual 
1.3 10 Traditional and Modern Ainu 
Territories 
1.4 10 Villagers of Shikotan, Kurile Islands 
1 5 1 1 Ainu of Sakhalin 
1 6 1 1 Sea-Lion Hunters of Moneron Island 
1.7 12 Native Peoples of the Greater North 
Pacific 
1.8 12 Ainu Documentation Team 
1.9, 110 13 Ainu Design 
III 14 Bringing the Bear to Iyomante 
1 12 14 Prayer Stick 
1 13 15 Ainu and the "Caucasoid Hypothesis' 
I 14 15 A Queer People 
115 16 Twined Basket 
I 16 16 "All the World's a Stage" 
117 17 Population History Model 
118 17 Early Ainu Art 
119 18 Ainu Chieftain 
1 20 19 Making it Ainu 
1.21 19 Traditional Tobacco Box 
122 20 Woman with Weaving Instrument 
123 22 Nanai Motif 
1 24 21 Matin' with Bead and Bear 
1.25 22 Morew Pattern 
126 22 Eskimo Spirit Carving 
127 23 Sealskin Boots 
1 28 23 Kurile Needlecases 
1.29 25 Ki-men (Wooden Mask) 
1.30 24 Sea Otter 
1.31 26 Ainu Cultural Rebirth 
I Theories of Ainu Origins 
Ainu Origin Theories 
1.0 28 Ichirikayani, Son of Ikotoi 
1.1 29 Abashiri Ainu 
1.2 30 Ainu Men of Sakhalin 
Ainu Homelands: Natural History from Ice Ace to 
Modern Times 
2.1 32 Ice-Age East Asia and Today 
2.2 32 Sea-Level History 
2.3 33 Bathymetry of Soya Strait 
2 4 33 Late Glacial Fauna 
2.5 34 Present Vegetation Zones of North 
and East Asia 
2.6 34 Phytogeography of Japan at Late 
Glacial Maximum 
2.7 35 Vegetation History 
2.8 36 Hunter’s Bearskin Pouch 
2.9 36 Salmon and Ainu Today 
2.10 37 Chief Noshikosa of Shamokotan 
2.1 1 A, B 38 Land-use Change from Meiji Period 
to Present 
2.12 38 Kingfisher Owl, Guardian of the 
Village 
Prehistoric Hokkaido and Ainu Origins 
3.1 39 Duck-Effigy Flute (replica) 
3.2 40 Archaeological Cultures of Hokkaido 
3.3 40 Geological Stratigraphy and Culture 
Periods of Misawa River Region in 
Chitose and Tomakamai Regions 
3.4 40 Ceramic Vessel 
3.5 41 Killer Whale 
3.6 42 Ceramic Mask (replica) 
3.7 42 Owl Eyes 
3.8 42 Ceramic Figurine 
3.9 42 Stone Rod (replica) 
3.10 43 Pedestal Vessel 
3.1 1 43 Bear-Effigy Vessel (replica) 
3.12-3.14 44 Fishhook and Harpoons (replicas) 
3.15A, B, 3.16 45 Effigy Spoons (replica) 
3.17 44 Wide-Mouth Vessel 
3.18 46 Sea-Otter Figurine (replica) 
3.19 46 Engraved Needlecase (replica) 
Ainu Ties with Ancient Cultures of Northeast Asia 
4.1 47 Winter in a Sakhalin Village 
4,2 48 Microlithic Industries of Siberia and 
East Asia 
4.3 49 Upper-Paleolithic Artifacts from 
Sakhalin 
4.4 49 Late-Neolithic Artifacts from Sakhalin 
4 5 50 Lacquered Comb (replica) 
4 6, 4.7 50 Evocative Women 
4.8 51 Bronze Belt Ornaments (replicas) 
4.9 50 Needlecase with Geometric Engraving 
(replica) 
4.10 51 Sakhalin Okhotsk Assemblage 
4.1 1 51 Mixed-Race Family of Sakhalin 
Ancient People of the North Pacific Rim: Ainu 
Biological Relationship with Their Neighbors 
5.1 52 Ainu Woman on the Amur 
5.2 54 Sinodont and Sundadont Tooth Types 
5.3 55 Jomon Teeth 
5.4 56 Ainu Genetic Distances 
5.5 56 Ainu Cranial Distances 
Ainu Language: 1 Features and Relationships 
6.1 57 Map of Hokkaido Ainu Dialects 
6.2 60 Preparing Inaw 
6.3 61 Entertaining Japanese Officials 
6.4 63 Ainu Place-names 
6.5, 6.6 64 Carrying Children 
II History 
Ainu History: An Overview 
7.0 66 Ikotoi, Chieftain of Atsukeshi 
7.1 67 Uimam Ceremony 
7,2 68 Ainu Sword and Hanger 
7.3 69 Shakushain 
7.4 70 Invasion of Ezo by Russians 
7.5 71 Ainu Northern Regions Before 1868 
7.6 71 Hokkaido and Surroundings, 1869-1945 
7.7 72 Modern Hokkaido 
Early Ainu Contacts with the Japanese 
8.1 74 Historical Map of Northern Tohoku 
and Hokkaido 
8.2 75 A Fishery Scene from Ezo Country 
8 3 76 The Japanese Ezo Fishery 
8.4 77 Trade Goods and Ceremonial Life 
8.5 77 Lacquered Cups and Saucer Stands 
8.6 77 Mutual Influence 
8.7 78 Cloth Mittens 
Ainu-e. A Historical Review 
9.1 79 Pictorial Biography of Prince Sbotoku 
9.2 80 Seisuiji En'gi (History of Seisui Temple 
9.3 81 Illustrated Gazetteer of Ezo 
9.4 82 Hunting 
389 
9.5 82 Iyomante 16.7 129 Ainu Exhibitions Begin 23.4 178 Antique-Store Lacquerware 
9.6 8 3 Tobu 16.8 129 Ainu Dwelling Display 23.5 179 Kurile Box 
9.7 84 Catching an Eagle 16.9 130 Tokunai Mogami 23.6 179 Sakhalin Necklace 
9.8 85 Iyomante 16.10 13 1 Ainu Objects in European 23.7 180 Neil Munro's Nibutani Home 
Museum Collections 23,8 181 Tobacco Box and Pipe Holder 
Trading Brokers and Partners with China, 23.9 182 Lacquerware Tuki and Ikupasuy 
Russia, and Japan The St. Petersburg Ainu Collections 
10.1 86 Ainu Maritime Traders 17.1 133 Kurile Robe The Ainu Museum Foundation 
10.2 86 Amur Santan Trade 17.2 134 Kurile Boat Model 24.1 183 The Ainu Museum in Shiraoi 
10.3 87 Cultural Impact of Trade 17.3 1 34 Coiled-Grass Basket 24.2 184 Ainu Exhibits 
10.4 89 Wealthy Sakhalin Ainu 17.4 1 35 Sakhalin Hospitality 24.3 184 Iyomante Ceremony 
10.5 90 Necklace with Flowered Medallion 24.4, 24.5 185 Ainu Dance and Ceremony 
10.6 91 Young Girl Wearing Necklace Ainu Collections in North America: Documentation 24.6 186 Sun Visor 
10.7 91 Necklace with Figure Medallion Projects and the Frederick Starr Collections 24.7 186 Masahiro Nomoto Begins the 
18 1 138 Smoking Kit Smithsonian Ship Model 
Tourism, Assimilation, and Ainu Survival Today 18.2 139 Beaded Necklace 
11.1, 11.2 92 Bear Carving 18.3 140 Starr's Ainu Group m Tokyo The Ainu in Ethnographic Films 
11.3 A, B, C 93 Towel Hanger 18.4 140 The Ainu Group in St. Louis 25.1 187 Beautiful Japan, Take One 
11.4 94 Japanese Clogs 18.5 141 Comparing Notes 25.2 188 Beautiful Japan, Take Two 
11.5 94 "Museum Ainu" 18.6 141 A Live-in Exposition 
11,6 95 "Ainus Ride Usually Without Saddle" 18.7 142 Goodwill Ambassadors IV. AinuMosir: Land Spirit and Culture 
18.8 143 Starr's Legacy 
Kamuy. Gods You Can Argue With 
The Ainu and the Early Modern 18.9 144—45 Ainu Robe 
Iapanese State, 1600-1868 
26.0 192 Shimochi, Grand Chieftain of Atsukishi 
12.1 96 Ainu Man with Bow and Sword Romyn Hitchcock and the Smithsonian Ainu 
26.1 193 Itiate: Messengers to the Gods 
12.2 97 Sword and Hanger Collection 
26.2 193 fitaiD-Carving Tool 
12.3 98 Defeat and Oppression 19.IA.B 148 Ainu Man and Woman of Urap 
26.3, 26.4 194 Carving Inate 
12.4 99 Lacquerware Container 19.2 149 Two Ainu Men 
26.5 195 Ikupasuy 
12.5 100 "Treasure" 19.3 149 "Mr. Ikupasuy" 26.6 196 Ikupasuy Stories 
12.6 101 "A Couple of the Chief" 19.4, 19.5 150 Cherry-bark and Wooden Bowls 
26.7 197 Exorcising Illness 
19.6A B, 19.7 151 Raw Materials 
Foreign Contagions, Ainu Medical Culture, 19.8, 19.9 152 Attush Robe and Leggings 
1 HE AINU tCOSYSTEM 
and Conquest 19.10a,b 154 Ainu Exhibits 27.1 198 Village Economy 
I3.i 102 Exorcising Illness 19.1 1 153 Carved Plates 27.2 198 Ainu Kotan 
13.2 103 Spmy-Blowfish Amulet 27.3 199 Changing Lands, Changing Media 
13.3 104 Influenza Amulet Batchelor, Starr, and Culin: The Brooklyn Museum 27.4 199 Ainu Ecosystem 
13.4 105 Smallpox Amulet of Art Collection 27.5 200 River-Fishing Expedition 
13.5 105 Prayer Stick 20,1, 20.2 155 Culin and the Ainu 27.6 201 Ice Fishing 
13.6 106 Caring for a Corpse 20.3, 20.4 156 Snowshoes and Deer Hunter 
13.7 106 Burning the House of the Deceased 20.5 157 Fishskin Boots Foods of Choice 
13.8 107 Ritual Sword 20.6 158 Beaded Necklace 
28.1 202 June: Gathering Seaweed 
20.7 159 Ikupasuy 
28.2, 28.3 203 Stripping Grain 
From Assimilation to Indigenous Rights: Ainu 20.8A.B 161-62 Retarpe 
28.4 203 Ainu Foods 
Resistance Since i 869 28.5 204 Fish Roe Masher 
14.1 108 Protest March An Enthusiastic Quest: Hiram Hiller and Jenichiro 28.6-28.8 204 Cooking Utensils 
14.2 110 Chikabumi Ainu Protestors Oyabe in Hokkaido, 1901 
28.9 205 Serving Ladles 
14.3 1 1 1 Portrait of Ichitaro Sunazawa 21.1, 21.2 162 Hiller and Oyabe 
28.10 206 Kurile Spoons 
14.4 1 12 Sakhalin Ainu in Tsuishikari, Hokkaido 21.3 163 Hiller and Oyabes Hokkaido Travels 
28.11—28.13 206 Bowls and Platter 
14.5 113 Ainu Organizational Meeting, 1973 21.4, 21.5 164 Old-Style Headgear 
28.14 207 Brewing Rice Wine 
14.6 114 Ainu Flag 21.6 165 Benkai's Family at Nusa 
28.15 207 Storehouse 
21.7 166 Spouted Pot 
Ainu and Northwest Coast Peoples: A Comparison 21.8 167 Tasbiro with Eagle Beak 
Technology, Settlement, and Hunting Ritual 
15.1 116 Ainu Totem Pole 29.1 208 Family of Hunters 
15.2 119 Named Ainu Groups in Hokkaido From Snowshoe to "Corn Mortars": 
29.2 209 Hunter in Mountain Clothes 
15.3 121 Skidegate Village Early Ainu Collections at the American 29.3 209 Deer Call 
15.4 122 Chosama, Chief of Uraashibetsu Museum of Natural History 29.4, 28.5 210 Deer Hunting 
22.1 168 Shiraoi Amu 29.6, 28.8 212 Hunting the Bear 
22.2 169 Bashford Dean 29.7 212 Spring Bow Trap 
22.3 170 Crescent Carving 29.9-28 11 213 Salmon Fishing 
III. Ainu Discovery: Collectors, 22.4 171 It’s an Ikupasuy! 29.12, 29.13 214 Toggling Harpoons 
Museums and the Public 22.5 170 Ikupasuy 29.14 214 Sea-hunting Expedition 
The European Image of the Ainu as Reflected 22.6 172—73 Sakhalin Retarpe 29.15 215 Dogsled Travel 
in Museum Collections 22.7 174 Tobacco Pouch 29.16 215 Sealskin Mitts 
16.0 124 Mautaroke, Grand Chieftain of 22.8 174 Carved Pipe 29.17, 29.18 216 Preparation of Poison for Hunting 
Uraashibetsu 22.9, 22.10 175 Strike-a-Light Kit 29.19 216 Makiri 
16.1, 16.2 125 Early European Views 29.20 217 Quiver with Hunting Bag and Arrows 
16.3 126 Philipp Franz von Siebold Japanese Ainu Collections 29.21 217 Mountain Knife 
16.4 126 Heinrich von Siebold 23.1 176 Wood Tray 29.22 218 Snowshoes 
16.5 126 Erwin Baelz 23.2 177 Attush Sample Kit 29.23 218 Hunter on Skis 
16.6 127 Bear Ceremony 23.3 177 Modern Ainu Bags 29.24 220 Salmon-skin Boots with Fishscale Tread 
390 
29.25 220 Nonskid Boots 
29.26 221 Grapevine Sandals 
The Ainu on Whales and Whaling 
30.1 222 Launching a Boat 
30.2 223 Stranded-Whale Dance 
30.3 223 Whalebone Knife 
30.4 224 Ikupasuy Carvings 
30.5, 30.6 225 Killer Whale Marks 
30.7 226 Humpback Whale 
Home and Settlement: Chise and Kotan 
31.1 227 Amu Mosir, Kamuy Mosir 
31.2 228 Ainu Village in Winter 
31.3 228 At Ikorek's House 
31.4 228 Shell Lamp 
31.5, 31.6 229 Floor Plan 
31.7 229 Inaw 
31.8 229 Makiri for Carving Inaw 
3 1 9A-D 230- -31 Ainu House Construction 
31.10 232 Woman's Ritual Belt 
31.11 233 Traditional Ainu House 
VlLLACE WORK: GENDER ROLES AND SEASONAL WORK 
32.1 234 February: Hunting in the Mountains 
32.2 234 Quiver and Arrows 
32.3 235 blunting Croup with Dog 
32.4-32.6 236 Men's Knives 
32.7 237 Pillow Box 
32.8 237 Gathering Maple Syrup 
32.9, 32.10 238 Wild Harvest 
32.1 1, 32.12 239 Making Rice Cakes 
32.13 238 April: Twisting Thread 
32.14 239 Carden Hoe 
Ainu Sociality 
33.1 240 Festival Scene 
33.2 241 Greeting Demonstration 
33.3 241 Greeting Ritual 
33.4, 33.5 242 Sakhalin Ainu Iyomante 
33.6, 33.7 243 Corporal Punishment 
33.8 244 Tobacco Pouch 
33.9 244 Praying with Inaw 
33.10 245 Pipe with Carved Decoration 
33.11 245 Pipe with Burl Bowl 
Ainu Children's Play 
34 l 246 Girls Playing Cat’s Cradle 
34.2-34.4 246 "Galloping Clams" and Other Toys 
34.5 A-D 247 Games 
34.6 247 Teaching Sewing Skills 
Spirit-Sending Ceremonies 
35.1 248 Kamuy-nomi: Praying to the Gods 
35.2 248- -49 Exercising the Bear 
35.3-34.5 250 Care and Feeding 
35.6, 35.7 251 Iyomante 
35.8 251 Flower Arrows 
35.9 252 Ikupasuy 
35.10—35 12 253 Nusa and Benkai's Bear Skull 
35.13 254 Fox Sending 
35.14 254 Nusa 
35.15, 35.16 255 Inaw for the Great Owl 
The Archaeology of Iyomante 
36.1 256 Iyomante The Bear-Sending Ceremony 
36.2 256 Nusa at Yurap Village 
36.3 257 Dancing Before the Nusa 
36.4 258 Sending Ceremony for Broken Tools 
36.5 259 Destroyed House 
36.6 259 Fox-Sending Site 
36.7 259 Bear Ceremonialism 
Ainu Shamanism 
37.1 261 Shamanic Seance 
37.2 262 Amulet String 
37.3 263 Ritual Sacrifice of Dogs 
37.4, 37.5 263 Nipopo Dolls 
37.6 264 Shaman Belt 
37.7 267 Marching to Ward Off Evil Spirits 
Life and Death 
38.1 268- -69 Offering Condolences to the 
Chieftain 
38.2 269 Grave of an Ainu Chief in Sakhalin 
38.3-38 5 270 Mourning and Burial 
38.6 270 Spirit Guardian 
38.7, 38.8 271 Spirit Figures 
38.9 272 Grave Markers 
38.10 272 Grave Posts and Burial Articles 
38.11 272 Crave Posts from West Ezo 
38.12 272- -73 Ritual Sword 
38.13 272 Ritual Quiver 
38.14 273 Bear Fetish 
38.15 273 Entrance to the Other World 
Mythology and Animal Tales 
39.1 274 Goddess of the Cave 
Yukar Epics of Heroes 
40.1 278 Man Reciting Yukar 
40.2 280 Contemporary Presentations of Yukar 
To Live Is to Sing 
41.1 282 Crane Dance 
41.2, 41.3 283 Playing the Mukkuri 
41 4 284 Playing the Tonkori 
41.5, 41.6 284 Tonkori 
41.7 285 Sword Dance 
41.8 285 Dancing Continues 
V. Even Without A Word 
For Art 
Ainu Art: The Beginnings of Tradition 
42.0 286 Chieftain of Heshikai, Poloya 
42.1 287 Ainu Fashion 
42.2 288 Child's Salmon-Skin Coat 
42.3 289 Attusb Robe 
42.4 290 Retarpe Robe 
42.5 291 Learning Designs 
42.6 291 Embroidered Fishskin Boots 
42.7 292 Woman’s Tattooed Arm 
42.8 293 Knife and Sheath 
42.9 293 Bone Carving 
42.10 294 Ikupasuy 
42.1 I 294 Three Inaw 
42.12 295 Ceremonial Headdress 
42.13 295 Flower Arrow 
42.14 296 Sword Holder 
42.15 297 Smoking Kit 
42.16, 42.17 298 Platter and Spatula 
42.18 299 Bowl 
42.19 299 Plate 
42.20 299 Eating Lltensil 
42.21 300 Needlecase 
Saran/p and Tenki-. Ainu Basketry and 
North Pacific Affinities 
43.1 301 Twined Basket 
43.2, 43.3 302 Saranip 
43.4 303 Ainu Folk Crafts 
43.5 303 Archival Documentation 
43.6 304 Coiled-Crass Basket 
43.7 305 Decorated Tenki 
43.8 305 Twined Yup’ik Basket 
43.9 307 Modern Yup'ik Basket 
A Personal Rebirth through Traditional Ainu Basketry 
44 l 309 Making a Basket 
44.2 310 Ikupasuy with Swordfish 
44.3 310 Female Spirit Guardian 
44 4 311 Woven Basket 
44.5 312 Basketry Technique 
44.6 312 Plaited Basket 
44.7 312 Weaving with a Loom 
Clothing and Ornamentation 
45.1 313 A Variety of Fashions 
45.2-45 4 314 Preparing Obyo 
45.5A-E 315 From Fiber to Fabric 
45.6 316 Duckskin Robe 
45.7 317 Attusb Robe 
45.8 318 Ainu Robe and Japanese Kimono 
45.9 318 Cbikarkarpe Robe 
45.10 318 Chijiri Robe 
45.1 1 318 Ruunpe Robe 
45.12 319 Ruunpe Robe 
45 1 3 319 Kaparamip Robe 
45.14 319 Retarpe Robe 
45 15 319 Spearing Octopus 
45.16 319 Women of Piratori 
45.17 320 Sealskin Robe 
45.18 320 Design School 
45 19 321 Ainu Design Motifs 
45.20 321 Embroidery Stitches 
45.21 321 Needlecase 
45.22 322 Embroidered Headband 
45.23 322 Choker 
45.24 323 Attusb Apron 
45.25, 45.26 323 Rosette Mold and Choker 
45,27 324 Beaded Necklace 
45 28, 45.29 324 Necklaces with Medallion 
45.30, 45.31 325 Beaded Earrings 
45.32 326 Tattoo Knife 
45.33 326 Arm Tattoos 
45.34 326 Sword and Sword Holder 
Ikupasuy: It’s Not a Mustache Lifter! 
46.1 327 Ikupasuy 
46.2 327 Ritual Use of the Ikupasuy 
46.3 328 Offertory Ware 
46.4 328 Neil Munro and Patient 
46.5 328 Tuki and Ikupasuy 
46.6, 46.7 329 Prayers to Fuchi 
46.8 329 Offering Prayers 
46.9 A-C 330 Bear-Sending Ceremony 
46 10 331 Inaw and Kike-Ikupasuy 
46.1 1 331 Parts of the Ikupasuy 
46.12 332 Orca Symbols 
46.13 332 Orca Sbirosbi 
46.14 332 Lacquered Ikupasuy 
46.15 333 Ikupasuy with Tuki Image 
46.16 333 Three Ikupasuy 
46.17 334 Fantastic Ikupasuy 
46.18 334 Three Ikupasuy 
39* 
Ainu Journey: From Tourist Art to Fine Arts 
47.1 335 Chopstick Case and Cigarette Holder 
47.2, 47.3 336 New Spoons and Figurines 
47.4-47.6 337 Fetish to Fashion 
47.7, 47.8 338 Miniature Totem Poles 
47.9 339 Kuma (Bear), 1993 
47.10 339 Winter (Hibernation), 1980 
47.11 340 Eagle Sculpture, 1978 
47.12 340 Life-sized Wooden Figures, 1991-93 
47.13 340 Fucbi, 1993 
47.14 341 Necklace, 1968 
47.15A.B 341 Ki-men (Wooden Masks), 1975 
47.16 342 Bear and Hunter (Ekashi), 1973 
47.17 342 Totem Pole, 1979 
47.18 343 Kami no sbila (Tongue of God), 1980 
47.19 344 Jnka (Wooden Flower), 1989 
47.20 344 Totem Pole at Kispiox 
47,21 345 Images of British Columbia, 1983 
47.22 345 Gozen sanji no gangu (Toys at 3.00 A.M.J, 
1987 
47.23 346 Praying to the Gods 
47.24 346 Kaze ni kiku (Listening to the Wind), 
1986/1988 
47.25 347 Yodsii no kaze (Four Winds), 1986 
47.26 348 Kani (Crab), 1987 
47.27 348 Nitne-kamuy (Evil God), 1988 
47,28 348 Untitled, ca. 1960s 
47.29 349 Ryo (Force or Spirit), 1989 
47.30 350 Hokkaido no sink: Aki mon'yo (Four 
Seasons in Hokkaido. Autumn Patterns), 1990 
47.31 350 Hokkaido no sbiki (fuyu): Fttkuro no 
sumu mori (Four Seasons in Hokkaido, 
W'iitfer: The Forest Where Owls Live), 1991 
47.32 350 Mokurei (Wooden Spirit), 1991 
47.33 351 A Daughter's Happiness, 1991 
47.34 352 Yin, 1998 
47.35 353 Yang, 1997 
47.36 352 Untitled, 1992 
47.37 353 Sad Fox, 1991 
VI. Ainu Present and Future 
Shishirimuka: A Saru River Tale 
48.0 354 Inikari, Chieftain of Barasanmo 
48.1 355 Tadashi Kaizawa 
48.2 356 Toroshino Kaizawa (1889-1982) with 
Radishes 
48,3 356 Nibutani Dam 
48.4 357 Chip-Sanke Ceremony 
48.5 358 Old Man and Child 
Ainu in the International Arena 
49.1 359 Giichi Nomura, Former Executive 
Director of Utari Kyukai (Ainu 
Association of Hokkaido)Addressing 
the United Nations General 
Assembly, 10 December, 1992 
49.2 361 Ainu Demonstration in Tokyo, 1992 
49.3 362 Toroshino Kaizawa (1889-1982) 
49.4 363 Oki Kano, Ainu Musician 
49.5 364 Think Globally, Act Locally 
49.6 365 Masahiro Nomoto 
The Ainu Shinpo: A New Beginning 
50.1 366 Tokyo, 1992 
50.2 367 Ainu Lands and Resources 
50.3 368 Continuity and Change 
Beyond the Ainu Shinpo: An Ainu View 
51.1 369 Schools and Culture 
51.2 370 The Ainu Rally in Sapporo 
Ainu Language: Present and Future 
52.1 371 Language Education in Nibutani, May 
1993 
52.2 373 Declining Use of Ainu Language in 
the Home 
Itaomachip: Reviving a Boat-Building and 
Tradinc Tradition 
53.1 374 Ainu Boats Sail Again 
53.2 375 Early Maritime Vessel 
53.3 376 Building an Itaomachip 
The Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum 
54.1 377 Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum 
54.2 378 Ainu Culture Exhibitions 
The HeartOuchi Conveyed 
55.1 379 Tomoko Keira Listening to a Story 
from Suteno-/ttcfci 
55.2 379 Suteno-/ncfei Holding Tuki 
55.3 380 Peramonkoro Sunazawa with a 
Sculpture by Her Son 
55.4 381 HaruTorao, 1903-1991 
55.5 381 Into the Future 
392 
Bibliography 
(Compiled by Chisato Dubreuil, 
Igor Krupnik, Megumi Lincoln, 
and Elisabeth Ward) 
Abe, Masami (ed.) 
1984 "Ainu sosetsu” (A study of the Ainu). In Ainu 
shiryoshu (Resources on the Ainu). 2nd series, vol. 
5. Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Senta. 
Adachi, Buntaro 
1937 "Das Ohrenschmalz als Rassenmerkmal und der 
Rassengeruch ('Achselgeruch') nebst Rassen- 
unterschied der Schweissdrusen" (Earwax as 
racial characteristic, and racial smell 
["Achselgeruch"] juxtaposed with racial 
differences in sweat glands). Zeitscbriftfiir 
Rassenkunde und ihre Nachbargebiete—Stuttgart 6: 
273-307. 
Aiga, Tetsuo (ed.) 
1985 Iyomante: Kamikawa-chiho no kumaokuri no kiroku 
(Iyomante: Documents on the bear-sending 
ceremony in Kamikawa district). Tokyo: 
Shogakukan. 
Aikens, C. Melvin, and Don E. Dumond 
1986 "Convergence and Common Heritage: Some 
Parallels in Archaeology of Japan and Western 
North America." In Windows on the Japanese Past. 
Studies in Archaeology and Prehistory, ed. Richard J. 
Pearson, 163-78. Ann Arbor: Center for 
Japanese Studies, University of Michigan. 
Aikens, C. Melvin, and Takayasu Higuchi 
1982 Prehistory of Japan. New York: Academic Press. 
Ainu Bunka Hozon Taisaku Kyogikai 
1969 Ainu minzokushi (Ethnology of the Ainu). 2 vols. 
Tokyo: Daiichi Hoki Shuppan 
Ainu Bunka Shinko Kenkyu Suishin Kiko (ed.) 
1998 Ainu kogei ten: Saharin Ainu no seikatsu bunka 
(The world of Ainu craftsmanship: The lifestyle 
of the Sakhalin Ainu). Sapporo: Ainu Bunka 
Shinko Kenkyu Suishin Kiko 
Ainu Minzoku Hakubutsukan 
1985 Kikitori shiryo (Oral history). Shiraoi: Ainu 
Minzoku Hakubutsukan. 
1989 Kodama shiiyo mokuroku I (The Kodama collection 
catalogue, vol. I). Shiraoi: Ainu Minzoku 
Hakubutsukan. 
1991 Kodama shiiyo mokuroku II (The Kodama collection 
catalogue, vol. 2). Shiraoi: Ainu Minzoku 
Hakubutsukan. 
1993 Ainu bunka no kisochishiki (Principles of Ainu 
culture). Shiraoi: Sofukan 
Akimichi, Tornoya 
1984 Kujira to hito to sono setsuwa (Whales, men, and 
their stories). Tokyo: Tokyo University Press. 
1994 Kujira to hito no minzokushi (Ethnography of whales 
and men). Tokyo: Tokyo University Press. 
Alekseev, Alexandr I. 
1977 Il'ya Gavrilovich Voznesenskii. Moscow: Nauka. 
Amino, Yoshihiko 
1990 Nihonkai to hokkoku bunka (The Japan sea and 
northern culture). Umi to retto bunka (Sea and 
island culture, vol. 1). Tokyo: Shogakkan. 
Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. 
1991 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and 
Spread of Nationalism. 2nd ed. London and New 
York: Verso. 
Anuchin, Dmitrii N. 
1 876 "Plemia Ainov: materialy po antropologii 
Vostochnoi Azii" (Ainu tribe: Materials on 
the anthropology of East Asia). Trudy 
Antropologicheskogo Otdela Obsbestva Lubitelei 
Estestvoznaniia, Antropologii i Etnografii 20, no. 2: 79-204. 
Aoki, Nobehiro 
1990 "Yoichi Ainu no minshu 'kamuyrini’ ni tsuite" 
(About the Yoichi Ainu's folk custom, 
"kamuyrini"). In Hokkaido no bunka (Cultures of 
Hokkaido), no. 61. Sapporo: Hokkaido 
Bunkazai Hogo Kyokai. 
Aoyagi, Nobukatsu 
1984 "Shisha o megutte" (Upon his death). In Kono 
Hiromichi Hakusbi botsugo 20-shunen kinen ronbunshu 
(Collected papers in commemoration of the 
twentieth anniversary of the death of Dr. 
Hiromichi Kono), ed. Nobukatsu Aoyagi, 105— 
20. Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Senta. 
1997 "The Kono Collection and Its Collectors." In 
A Comparative Study of Euro-American Ainu Collections 
(in Japanese), ed. Yoshinobu Kotani. Nagoya: 
Nagoya Daigaku. 
Arai, Genjiro 
1984 Ainu no sakebi (The cry of the Ainu). Sapporo: 
Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Senta. 
1990 Zoku Ainu no sakebi (The cry of the Ainu, 
continued). Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan 
Kikaku Senta. 
1992 Ainu jinbutsuden (Ainu biographies). Ed. Kato 
Yoshio. Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku 
Senta. 
Asaji, T., T. Miyatake, and K. Nakama 
1993 Kindai Nihon to Ainu minzoku (Modern Japan and 
the Ainu). Osaka: Osaka Jinken Rekishi 
Shiryokan. 
Atuy, Masanori Toyooka 
1997 "Coexistence with Nature and the Third 
Philosophy': Learning from the Spirit of the 
Ainu." In Circumpolar Animism and Shamanism, ed. 
Takako Yamada and Takashi Irimoto, 3-8. 
Sapporo: Hokkaido Daigaku. 
Baba, Osamu 
1939 "The Northern Kurile Islands as Seen from 
Archaeology." Reprinted in Archaeology and 
Ethnology of Sakhalin and the Kuriles (Dr. O. Baba's 
Collected Papers, vol. 3) (in Japanese), 9-162. 
Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Senta, 1979. 
1971 "Ainu Folk Materials and I." In A Catalogue of a 
Sakhalin Ainu Exhibition: The Baba Collection in 
Hakodate City Museum (in Japanese). Hakodate: 
Shiritsu Hakodate Hakubutsukan. 
1979 A Journey of the Northern People (in Japanese). Sapporo. 
Baelz, Erwin von 
1883 "Die Korperlichen Eigenschaften der Japaner" 
(The physical attributes of the Japanese). 
Mitteilungen der Deutscben Gesellscbaft fiir Natur- und 
Volkerkunde Ostasiens 3: 330-59. 
1900 "Uber die Rassenelemente in Ostasien, speciell 
in Japan" (On racial elements in East Asia, 
particularly Japan). Mitteilungen der Deutscben 
Gesellscbaft fiir Natur- und Volkerkunde Ostasiens 8, 
no. 2: 227-35 
Batchelor, John 
1887 "Grammar of the Ainu Language." In The 
Language, Mythology, and Geographical Nomenclature 
of Japan Viewed in the Light of Ainu Studies, ed. Basil 
Hall Chamberlain. Tokyo: Imperial University 
Liberal Arts School. 
1889 An Ainu-Englisb-Japanese Dictionary and Grammar. 
Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. 
1892 The Ainu of Japan. London: The Religious Tract 
Society. 
1901 The Ainu and Their Folklore. London: The Religious 
Tract Society. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
393 
1902 The Ainu of Japan: The Religion, Superstitions, and 
General History of the Hairy Aborigines of Japan- 
New York: Fleming H. Revel Co. 
1905 An Ainu-English-Japanese Dictionary. 2nd ed. 
Tokyo: Methodist Publishing House. 
1924 (ed. and trans.) "Pakoro Kamuy chikappo 
oaishpe" (About the little bird of smallpox). In 
Uepekere (Ainu fireside stories). Tokyo: Kyobunkan. 
1925 Ainujin to sono setsuwa (The Ainu people and 
their folktales). Sapporo: Tokido Shobo. 
1926 Ainu Eiwa jiten (Ainu-English-Japanese 
dictionary). 3rd ed. (with grammar, English- 
Ainu vocabulary). Tokyo: Kyobunkan. 
1927 Ainu Life and Lore: Echoes of a Departing Race. 
Tokyo: Kyobunkan. Reprint, New York: 
Johnson Reprint Corp., 1971. 
1938 Ainu Eiwa jiten (Ainu-English-Japanese 
Dictionary.) 4th ed. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 
Batchelor, John, and Kingo Miyabe 
1893 Ainu Economic Plants. Transactions of the Asiatic 
Society of Japan, vol. 21. Yokohama: Asiatic 
Society of Japan. 
Befu, Harumi, and Chester S. Chard 
1964 "A Prehistoric Maritime Culture of Okhotsk 
Sea." American Antiquity 30, no. 1: 1-19. 
Bickmore, Albert S. 
1868 The Ainos, or Hairy Men of Yesso. The Ainos, 
or Hairy Men of Saghalin and the Kurile 
Islands. The American Journal of Science and Arts 
45: 353-361,- 361-377. 
Bird, Isabella 
1881 Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. New York: G. P. 
Putnam's Sons. Reprint, Rutland, Vt., and 
Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc., 1973. 
Black, Lydia 
1973 "The Nivkh (Cilyak) of Sakhalin and the Lower 
Amur." Arctic Anthropology 10, no. L 1-110. 
Boas, Franz 
1894 "Chinook Texts." In Bureau of American Ethnology 
Bulletin 20. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian 
Institution. 
1903 "The Jesup North Pacific Expedition." American 
Museum Journal 3, no. 5: 72-119. 
1905 "The Jesup North Pacific Expedition." 
Proceedings of the International Congress of 
Americanists (New York, 1902): 91-100. 
Brace, C. Loring, and K. D. Hunt 
1990 "A Nonracial Craniofacial Perspective on 
Human Variation: A(ustralia) to Z(uni)." American 
Journal of Physical Anthropology 82: 341-60. 
Brauns, David 
1883 "Ainos of Japan." Science 2, no. 26: 134. 
Breitbart, Eric 
1997 A World on Display: Photographs from the St. Louis 
World's Fair, 1904. Albuquerque: University of 
New Mexico Press. 
Brooks, Charles Wolcott 
1876 "Report of Japanese Vessels Wrecked in the 
North Pacific Ocean, from Earliest Records to 
the Present Time." Proceedings of the California 
Academy of Sciences 6. 
Broughton, William Robert 
1804 A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean . . . 
in the Years 1795, 1796, 1797, 1798. London: T. 
Cadell and S. W. Davies. 
Capron, Horace 
1875 Reports and Official Letters to the Kaitakushi 
[Hokkaido Colonial Office], [Tokyo]: 
Kaitakushi 
1985 Kapuron nisshi: Ezo to Edo (Journal of Horace 
Capron: Expedition to Japan 1871-1875). 
Trans. Teruo Nishijima. Sapporo: Hokkaido 
Shinbunsha. 
Chamberlain, Basil Hall 
1887a "An Aino Bear Hunt.” Transactions of the Royal 
Asiatic Society of Japan 15: 12-130. 
1 887b (ed.) The Language, Mythology and Geographical 
Nomenclature of Japan Viewed in the Light of Aino 
Studies. Memoirs of the Literature College, 
Tokyo Imperial University, series 1. Tokyo: 
Imperial University Liberal Arts School. 
1887c "A Catalogue of Books Relating to Yezo and 
the Ainos." In The Language, Mythology, and 
Geographical Nomenclature of Japan Viewed in the 
Light of Aino Studies, ed. Basil Hall Chamberlain, 
137-74. Memoirs of the Literature College, 
Tokyo Imperial University, series I. Tokyo: 
Imperial University Liberal Arts School 
1888 Ainu Folktales London: Folklore Society. 
Chard, Chester S. 
1974 Northeast Asia in Prehistory. Madison: University of 
Wisconsin. 
Chaussonnet, Valerie 
1995 Crossroads Alaska. Native Cultures of Alaska and 
Siberia. Washington, DC: Arctic Studies 
Center, National Museum of Natural History, 
Smithsonian Institution. Russian edition ed, and 
trans. Igor Krupnik, 1996. 
Cheboksarov, Nikolai Nikolaevich 
1947 "Osnovnye napravleniia rasovoi differentsiatsii v 
Vostochnoi Azii" (The main directions of racial 
differentiation in East Asia). Trudy Instituta 
Etnografii Akademiia Nauk SSSR 2. 
1951 "Osnovnye prinzipy antropologicheskikh 
klassifikatsii" (The main directions of 
anthropological classification). Proiskhozhdenie 
Cheloveka i Drawer Rasselenie Chelovechestva, 
Trudy Instituta Etnografii Akademiia Nauk SSSR 16: 
291-322. 
Chikap, Mieko 
1989 "Long, Cold Winter: An Ainu Childhood 
Recalled." Japan-Asia Quarterly Review (AA4PO) 
20, no. 4,- 21, no. 1. 
Chiri, Mashiho 
1942 Ainu goho kenkyit: Karafuto hogen o cbusbintosbite 
(Research on Ainu grammar: With reference to 
Sakhalin dialect). Tokyo: Gengensha. 
1953 Btinrui Ainugo jiten (Classified dictionary of the 
Ainu). 3 vols. Tokyo: Nihon Jomin Bunka Kenkyu. 
1954 "Yukara no hitobito to sono seikatsu 2" 
(People of yukar and their lives, no. 2). 
Historians 3: 33-61. 
1955 Ainu bungaku (Ainu literature). Tokyo: 
Gengensha. 
1957 "Ainugo no tokushugo ni tsuite" (Special words 
in the Ainu language). Hoppo Bunka Kenkyu 
Hokoku 12. 
1960 Ainu ni densho sareru kabu shikyoku ni kansuru chosa 
kenkyu (Study of traditional song, dance, and music 
of the Ainu). Hokkaido: Bunkazai Hogo linkai 
1964 "Ainugo to Nihongo no kankei" (Relations 
between Ainu and Japanese). In The World 
Encyclopedia. Tokyo: Heibonsha. 
1973a Chiri Mashiho chosakushu: Setsuwa to shin'yo hen 
(Collected works of Mashiho Chiri: Narratives 
and mythologies). Vol. I. Reprint, Tokyo: 
Heibonsha. 
1973b Chiri Mashiho chosakushu: Setsuwa to shin'yo hen 
(Collected works of Mashiho Chin: Narratives and 
mythologies). Vol. 2. Reprint, Tokyo: Heibonsha. 
1973c Chiri Mashiho chosakushu. Seikatsushi to minzokushi 
(Collected works of Mashiho Chiri: Ethnology 
and ethnography). Vol. 3. Reprint, Tokyo: 
Heibonsha. 
I973d"jushi to kawauso" (Magicians and otters). 
In Chiri Mashiho chosakushu . Setsuwa to shin'yo hen 
(Collected works of Mashiho Chirr Narratives and 
mythologies). Vol. 2. Reprint, Tokyo: Heibonsha. 
1974a Chiri Mashiho chosakushu. Ainugo kenkyuhen 
(Collected works of Mashiho Chiri: Ainu 
language study). Vol. 4. Reprint, Tokyo: 
Heibonsha. 
1974b Chiri Mashiho chosakushu: Btinrui Ainugo jiten, ningen 
hen (Collected works of Mashiho Chiri: Classi¬ 
fied dictionary of the Ainu language [Supple¬ 
ment volume II: Human beings]). Reprint, 
Tokyo: Heibonsha. 
1976 Chiri Mashiho chosakushu. Btinrui Ainugo jiten, 
shokubutsu to dobutsu hen (Collected works of 
Mashiho Chiri: Classified dictionary of the Ainu 
language [Supplement volume 1: Plants and 
animals.]). Reprint, Tokyo: Heibonsha. 
1986 Wajin wa fune o kit (Wajin eat boats). Sapporo: 
Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Senta. 
Chiri, Mashiho, and Kunio Oda 
1956 Yukara kansho (Appreciation of the yukar). 
Tokyo: Gengensha. 
Chiri, Mutsumi, and Takao Yokoyama (eds.) 
1995 Ainu minzoku shashin to kaiga shusei: Geijutsu (Ainu 
photography and painting: Ainu art). Vol. 5. 
Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Senta. 
Chiri, Yukie 
1928 Ainu shin'yoshu (Epic poetry of the Ainu). Tokyo: 
Iwanami Shoten. 
Chiyo, Hajime 
1984a Zoku Jomon bunka (Jomon culture, vol. 2). Tokyo: 
Nyu Saiensu Sha. 
1984b Zofen Jomon jidai no seikatsu yoshiki (Jomon lifestyle, 
vol. 2). Tokyo: Nyu Saiensu Sha. 
Chubarova, Rimma V. 
1957 "K istorii drevneishego naseleniia o-va 
Sakhalina" (About the history of the most 
ancient population of Sakhalin Island). Sovetskaia 
Elnografiia 4: 60-75. 
Cole, Fay-Cooper 
1934 "Frederick Starr." American Anthropologist 36: 271. 
Cornell, James B. 
1964 "Ainu Assimilation and Cultural Extinction: 
Acculturation Policy in Hokkaido." Ethnology 3, 
no. 3: 287-304. 
Crawford, Gary W. 
1992 "The Transition to Agriculture in Japan." In 
Transitions to Agriculture in Prehistory, ed. Anne 
Birgitte Gebauer and T. Douglas Price, 117-32. 
Madison, Wis.: Prehistory Press. 
Crawford, Gary W., and Masakazu Yoshizaki 
1987 "Ainu Ancestors and Prehistoric Asian Agri¬ 
culture." Journal of Archaeological Science 14: 201-13. 
Crawford, Gary W., and Hiroto Takamiya 
1990 "The Origins and Implications of Late 
Prehistoric Plant Husbandry in Northern Japan." 
Antiejuity 64: 889-91 1. 
Crosby, Alfred 
1986 Ecological Imperialism. The Biological Expansion of 
Europe, 900-1900. Cambridge and New York: 
Cambridge University Press. 
394 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
Crowell, Aron L. 
1988 "Prehistory of Alaska's Pacific Coast In 
Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska, 
ed. William W, Fitzhugh and Aron L. Crowell, 
130-40. Washington, D C.: Smithsonian 
Institution Press. 
Culin, Stewart 
1909 "Report on a collecting trip in China and Japan 
(June 1909 to March 1910). Washington, D C., 
Llkiah, Tokyo,- Yokohama; Sendai, Nikko,- 
Shanghai, FJong Kong,- Canton, London, 
Porno." Culin Archive Collection Manuscript. 
Brooklyn Museum of Art Archives, 
1912 "Report on a collecting trip in Japan, including a 
visit to the Kurile Islands and FJokkaido (May 
1912-January 1913). Yokohama, Tokyo, Shana, 
Sapporo,- Sendai, Shiraoi, Kyoto, Victoria, 
Ukiah, Los Angeles,- Chicago, Ainu, Porno." 
Culin Archive Collection Manuscript. Brooklyn 
Museum of Art Archives. 
Dalby, Liza C. 
1993 Kimono Fashioning Culture. New Haven, Conn : 
Yale LIniversity Press. 
Dali, William Healy 
1878 On the Remains of Later Pre-bistoric Man Obtained from 
Caves in the Catherina Archipelago, Alaska Territory, 
and Especially from the Caves of the Aleutian Islands, 
318. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 
vol. 22, art. 6. Washington, DC.: Smithsonian 
Institution. 
Damas, David 
1984 Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 5. Arctic 
Washington, D C. Smithsonian Institution 
Danilov, Victor J. 
1990 America's Science Museums. New York: Greenwood 
Press. 
Davis, Bernhard J. 
1870 "Description of the Skeleton of an Ainu Woman 
and Three Skulls of the Same Race." In Memoirs 
Read before the Anthropological Society of London, vol. 
3, 21-40. London: Trubner and Co. 
Dean, Bashford 
1901 "Catalogue of Amo Collection." Manuscript 
American Museum of Natural History. 
New York. 
Debets, Georgii F. 
1935 "Retsenziia na: E. F. Eickstedt, Rassenkunde und 
Rassengeschichte der Menschheil" (Review of Human 
Ethnology and Culture by E. F. Eickstedt). 
Antropologicheskii Zhumal, no. 1. 
1951 "Antropologicheskie issledovaniia v 
Kamchatskoi Oblasti" (Anthropological 
research in Kamchatka province). Trudy Instituta 
Etnografii Akademiia Nauk SSSR 17. 
Derevianko, Anatoli P., and Vitalii E. Medvedev 
1993 Issledovanie Poseleniia Gasia (Investigations at the 
Gasia site). Novosibirsk: Institut Istorii, 
Literaturi, u Kulturii Akadenna Nauk 
Deriha, Koji 
1991 (ed.) An Exhibition of Materials on Northern Peoples 
Stored in the Historical Museum of Hokkaido (in 
Japanese). Sapporo: Hokkaido Kaitaku 
Kinenkan 
1995 "Ainu Culture: Hunting, Trade, and Religion In 
The Ainu People of Today. Art and Life of the Ainu, ed 
Philip H. R. Stepny, 17-22. Edmonton: The 
Provincial Museum of Alberta. 
1997 "Notes on Changes in Ainu Society in Modern 
Japan Based on Comparisons of U.S.-Japan Ainu 
Collections." In A Comparative Study of Euro- 
American Ainu Collections, ed. Yoshinobu Kotani. 
Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku. 
Dettmer, Hans A. 
1989 Ainu Grammatik (Ainu grammar). 2 vols 
-97 Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 
1993 "Einige Bemerkungen zur Grammatik der Ainu: 
Zu den Anfangen der wissenschaftlichen 
Beschaftigung mit der Ainu Sprache" (Notes on 
Ainu grammar: The beginnings of the scholarly 
pursuit of the Ainu language). In European Studies 
on Ainu Language and Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 
81-90. Monographien 6 aus dem Deutschen 
Institut fur Japanstudien der Philipp-Franz-von- 
Siebold-Stiftung. Munich: ludicium-Verlag. 
Diamond, Jared 
1998 "Japanese Roots." Discover Online 19, no. 6 1-13. 
Dikov, Nikolai Nikolaevich 
1968 "The Discovery of the Paleolithic in Kamchatka 
and the Problem of the Initial Occupation of 
America." Arctic Anthropology 5, no. 1 191-203. 
1993 Aziia po styke s Amerikoi v Drevnosti (Asia at the 
juncture with America in antiquity). St. 
Petersburg: Nauka Reprint in English, trans. 
R L. Bland, Anchorage: National Park Service, 
Beringia Program, 1997. 
Dikova, Tamara M 
1983 Arkbeologiya Yuzbnoi Kamchatki v Svyazi s Problemoi 
Rasseleniya Ainov (Archaeology of Southern 
Kamchatka with regard to the issue of the early 
settlement of the Ainu). Moscow: Nauka. 
Dobrotvorskii, Mikhail M 
1873 "O Russkoi narodnoi meditsine sravnitel'no s 
narodnoi meditsinoi Sakhahnskih Ainov" 
(Comparison of Russian folk medicine with 
the folk medicine of the Sakhalin Ainu). Zapiski 
vracheig Kazani (Writings on Kazan), Kazan: 
Universitetskaia Tipografiia. 
1 875 Ainsko-Russkii Slovar (Ainu-Russian dictionary). 
Kazan Llniversitetskaia Tipografiia. 
Dodo, Yukio, and Hajime Ishida 
1990 "Population History of Japan as Viewed from 
Cranial Nonmetric Variation" (in Japanese). 
Jinruigaku Zasshi 98: 269-87. 
Dubreuil, Chisato O 
1995 "The Life and Art of Bikky Sunazawa: A 
Contemporary Ainu Sculptor" Master's thesis, 
LIniversity of Washington. 
Dybowski, Benedykt 
1892 (comp.) Sloumik narzecza Ainou) zamieszkujacych 
wyspe Szumszu (Dictionary of the Ainu language). 
Ed. Ignacy Radlinski. Slowniki narzecza Ludow 
Kamczackich (Dictionaries of the Kamchatkan 
People's Language, vol. 1). Krakow: Rozprawy 
Akademu Umejetnosci, Wydzial Filologiczny. 
Echizen, Toshiya 
1988 "Ki no sakka o tazunete" (Visiting the wood 
sculptor). Hyoka 19, no. 6. 
1992 "Dohoku no bijutsu IF Sunazawa Bikky no Nitne- 
kamuy" (Art of northern Hokkaido IF Bikky 
Sunazawa's Nitne-kamuy). Hyoka 30, no. 4-5. 
1993a "Dohoku no bijutsu 11 Sunazawa Bikky no Nitne- 
kamuy'1 (Art of northern Hokkaido IF Bikky 
Sunazawa's Nitne-kamuy). Hyoka 31, no. 4—5. 
1993b "Sunazawa Bikky: Sono zenki no katsudo ni 
tsuite" (Bikky Sunazawa: His early artistic activity). 
Hok-kaido Art Museum Studies Qune): 29-35. 
Eganti, Nantio (ed.) 
1982 Sbinpojiumu: Ainu to kodai Nihon (Symposium: The 
Ainu and ancient Japan). Tokyo: Shogakukan. 
Eickstedt, Egon, Freiherr von 
1934 Rassenkunde und Rassengeschichte der Menscbbeit 
(Human ethnology and culture). Stuttgart: 
F. Enke. 
Eldridge, Stuart 
1876 "On the Arrow Poison in Use among the Ainos 
of Yezo." Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of 
Japan 4. 
Eliade, Mircea 
1964 Shamanism: Archaic Technigues of Ecstasy. Trans. 
Willard R. Trask. Bollingen Series 76. New York: 
Bollingen Foundation, dist. Pantheon Books. 
Emori, Susumu 
1987 Aimt no rekishi: Hokkaido no hitobito 2 (A history of 
the Ainu: The people of Hokkaido, vol. 2). 
Tokyo: Sanseido 
Evans, Nancy L. 
1991 "Frederick Starr." In International Dictionary of 
Anthropologists, 664-65. New York: Garland 
Publishing. 
Fagan, Brian M 
1990 The Journey From Eden: The Peopling of Our World. 
New York: Thames and Hudson. 
Fane, Diana, Ira Jacknis, and Lise M. Breen (eds.) 
1991 Objects of Myth and Memory American Indian Art at the 
Brooklyn Museum Brooklyn: The Brooklyn 
Museum in association with the University of 
Washington Press. 
Fitzhugh, William W. 
1988 "Comparative Art of the North Pacific Rim." In 
Crossroads of Continents. Cultures of Siberia and Alaska, 
ed. William W. Fitzhugh and Aron L Crowell, 
294-312. Washington, D C.: Smithsonian 
Institution Press. 
1993 "Art and Iconography in the Hunting Ritual of 
North Pacific Peoples." In Proceedings of the 7th 
International Abasbiri Symposium, 1-13. Abashirt 
Hokkaidoritsu Hoppo Minzoku Hakubutsukan 
Fitzhugh, William W., and Valerie Chaussonnet (eds.) 
1994 Anthropology of the North Pacific Rim. Washington, 
D C : Smithsonian Institution Press 
Fitzhugh, William W., and Aron L. Crowell (eds.) 
1988 Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska. 
Washington, D C Smithsonian Institution 
Press. 
Forrer, Matthi 
1996 "The Leiden Collections of Philipp Franz von 
Siebold " In Die Japansammlungen Philipp Franz und 
Heinrich von Siebold zum Katalog der Siebold Ausstellung 
1966 (The Japanese collection of Philipp Franz and 
Heinrich von Siebold from the Siebold catalogue, 
1966). Tokyo Deutschen Institut fur Japanstudien 
der Philipp-Franz-von-Siebold-Stiftung, 
Friese, Eberhard 
1984 "Das Deutsche Japanbild 1944 Bemerkungen 
zum Problem der auswartigen Kulturpolitik 
wahrend des Nationalsozialismus" (The German 
view of Japan in 1944: Observations on the 
problem of foreign cultural politics during 
National Socialism). In Deutschland, Japan 
Historiscbe Kontakte (Germany, Japan: Foreign 
contact), ed. Josef Kreiner. Studium Universale 
3. Bonn: Bouvier. 
Fujimoto, Tsuyoshi 
1979 Hokuben no iseki (Northern archaeological sites). 
Tokyo: Kyoikusha. 
Fujimura, Hisakazu 
1976 Hokkaidoshi kenkyu (A study of Hokkaido history). 
Sapporo: Hokkaidoshi Kenkyukai. 
1977 "Minzoku chosa noto: Shiraoichiho no kanshu" 
(Ethnological research, no. 4: The customs in the 
Shiraoi region). Hokkaidoshi Kenkyu 12: 89-91. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
395 
1982 Ainu no rei no sekai (The spirit world of the Ainu). 
Tokyo: Shogakukan. 
1985a "Ainu kogei no kami to kokoro" (The gods and the soul 
of Ainu arts and crafts). Menomin, no. 104: 17-24. 
1985b Amu Kami-gami to tomo ni ikirtt bitobito (Ainu 
People with the gods). Tokyo: Fukutake Shoten. 
Fukao, Katsuko, and Katsuaki Kitayama 
1986 "Mokuyo puraza: 'shiki' o horu" (Thursday 
Plaza: Carving 'Four Seasons'). Hokkaido Sbimbiin, 
23 January. 
Fukuyama, Jun'ichi 
1943 Hogeikai no senkakusha Gomi Shinbei (The pioneer of 
whale hunting, Gomi Shinbei). Osaka: Nippon 
Shuppansha. 
Furuhata, Tanemoto 
1962 Ketsuekigata no hanashi (Blood-group polymor¬ 
phisms). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. 
Ciddings, J. Louis 
1964 The Archaeology of Cape Denbigh Providence, R I 
Brown University Press. 
Gjerdman, Olaf 
1959 "The Ainu Language: A Contribution." In Origins 
of the Ainu Language: The Ainu—Indo-European 
Controversy, vol. 3. Ed Kirsten Refsing. 
Richmond, England: Curzon Press, Oxford 
Llniversity Press, 1998. 
Cleeson, Paul, and Gerald Grosso 
1976 "Ozette " In The Excavation of Water-Saturated 
Archaeological Sites, Wet Sites, on the Northwest Coast 
of North America, ed. Dale R Croes, 13-44. 
National Museum of Man Mercury Series, 
Archaeological Survey of Canada, no. 50. 
Ottawa: National Museum of Man. 
Golder, Frank Alfred 
1914 Russian Expansion on the Pacific, 1641-1850. . . 
Cleveland: Arthur FL Clark Co. 
Gonai, Mitsuru, and Masaru Wakabayashi 
1972 Asbita ni mukatte (Toward the future). Tokyo: 
Maki Shoten 
Graburn, Nelson H. H. (ed.) 
1976 Ethnic and Tourist Arts Cultural Expressions from the 
Fourth World. Berkeley: University of California 
Press. 
Griffis, William Elliot 
1 876 The Mikado's Empire. New York: Harper. 
Habara, Yukichi 
1939 Ainu shakai keizaishi (Ainu social-economic history). 
Tokyo: Hakuyosha. 
Haguenauer, Charles 
1956 Origines de la civilisation Japonaise: Introduction a 
I'e'tude de la prehistoire du Japon (Origins of the 
Japanese civilization: Introduction to the study 
of the prehistory of Japan). Paris: Impr. 
nationale. 
Hallowell, A Irving 
1926 "Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern 
Hemisphere." American Anthropologist 28. 1-173. 
Hanihara, Kazuro 
1964 "On the Ainu Study" (in Japanese). Bulletin of 
Hokkaido Local Studies L 1-4. 
1970 "Mongoloid Dental Complex in the Deciduous 
Dentition with Special Reference to the 
Dentition of the Ainu ." Jinruigaku Zasshi 78: 3—17. 
1979 "Dental Traits in Ainu, Australian Aborigines, 
and New World Populations." In The First 
Americans, Origins, Affinities, and Adaptations, ed. 
William S. Laughlin and Albert B. Harper, 125— 
34. New York: G. Fischer 
1991 "Dual Structure Model for the Population History 
of the Japanese." Japan Review 2. 1-33. 
396 
Hanstein, Otfried von 
1921 Von Tokyo zti den Waldmenscken von Yezo (From 
Tokyo to the forest-dwellers of Yezo). 
Reiserzahlungen aus dem Fernen Osten 5 
(Travel tales from the Far East 5). Leipzig: Fock. 
Harrison, John A 
1954 "The Saghalien Trade: A Contribution to Ainu 
Studies." Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 10: 
278-93. 
Hariu, Ichiro et al. 
1989 SunaZawa Bikky sakuhinshu (Bikky Sunazawa's 
artworks). Tokyo: Yobisha. 
Hasebe, Kazuhiro 
1977 "Hokkaido Settlement Mission and Specimens: 
Genealogy of Artifacts of Northern People 
Housed in Hakodate City Museum." In A 
Catalogue of a Special Exhibition: The Meiji Restoration 
in Hakodate (in Japanese). Hakodate: Hakodate 
Shiritsu Hakubutsukan 
1992 "A Study of the Baba Collection: On the 
Ethnological Materials" (in Japanese). Kiko 
Shiritsu Hakodate Hakubutsukan 2. 
Hasebe, Kotondo 
1949 Gensbijidai Nihon minzokti no seiritsu (The origins 
of the Japanese). Tokyo: Chuokoronsha. 
Hattori, Shiro 
1955 "Ainugo to Nihongo no kankei" (Linguistic 
relationships between the Ainu and Japanese 
languages). Asabi Sbimbun Reprint, Hokkaido 
Shimbun, 3 February 1961. 
1957 "Ainugo no kenkyu ni tsuite" (About Ainu 
language studies). Kokoro no Hana 700. 
1959 Nihongo no keito (Affinity of Ainu language). 
Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. 
1960 "A lexicostatistical study of Ainu dialects." The 
Japan [sic] Journal of Ethnology 24, no. 4: 31-66. 
1964 Ainugo bogenjiten (Ainu dialect dictionary). 
Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. 
Hauge, Victor, and Takako Hauge 
1978 Folk Traditions in Japanese Art. Tokyo and New York: 
Kodansha International in association with the 
International Exhibitions Foundation and the 
Japan Foundation, dist. Harper and Row. 
Hayashi, Yoshishige 
1975 Aim no noko bttnka (Agriculture of the Ainu). 
Tokyo: Keiyusha. 
Higuchi, Kenji 
1987 "Kamera man nikki: Kita no daichi o horitsu- 
zukeru, Sunazawa Bikky-san" (A Diary of the 
photographer: Mr. Bikky Sunazawa digs northern 
land). Gekkan Shakaito (December): 192-99. 
Hilger, M. Inez 
1967 "Japan’s 'Sky People' The Vanishing Ainu." 
National Geographic 131, no. 2: 268-96. 
1971 Together with the Ainu: A Vanishing People. Norman: 
University of Oklahoma Press. 
Hiller, Hiram M. 
1895-Journals, correspondence, and manuscript on 
1907 the Ainu. Furness, Harrison, Hiller Expeditions. 
University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives. 
Hiramura, Yukio 
1930 "Ainu to shite ikiru ka, mata Shamo ni doka 
suru ka" (Do we live as Ainu or assimilate to 
Japanese?). Ezo no Hikari, no. 1. 
Hitchcock, Romyn 
1890 "A Queer People: They Live in the Kuriles 
and Northern Japan." Evening Star (Washington, 
D C.), 15 March. 
1891a “The Ancient Pit-dwellers of Yezo." In United 
States National Museum Annual Report for 1889-1890, 
417-27. Washington, D C. U S. Government 
Printing Office. 
189lb "The Ainos of Yezo, Japan." In United States 
National Museum Annual Report for 1889-1890, 428- 
502. Washington, D C.: U S. Government 
Printing Office. 
Hoffeker, John F., Roger W. Power, and Ted Goebel 
1993 "The Colonization of Beringia and the New 
World." Science 259. 46-53. 
Hokkaido 
1975 Shin Hokkaido-shi (The history of Hokkaido, vol. 
6). Sapporo: Dokyodo Kikakutai. 
Hokkaido-cho 
1934 Hokkaido Kyudojin Hogo Ho enkaku shi (The history 
of the Hokkaido Former Natives Protection 
Act). Sapporo: Hokkaido-cho. 
Hokkaido Kyoiku linkai 
1968 Ainu minzoku bunkazai chosa bokokusbo (Report on 
the research of Ainu cultural artifacts). Sapporo: 
Hokkaido Kyoiku linkai. Updated eds. 1992, 
1995. 
Hokkaido Maizo Bunkazai Senta 
1994 Isekiga kataru Hokkaido no rekishi (The history of 
Hokkaido based on the findings from 
archaeological sites). Sapporo: Hokkaido 
Maizo Bunkazai Senta. 
Hokkaido Minseibu 
1972, 1979, 1986 Hokkaido Utari jittai chosa hokokusho 
(Report of the survey of socioeconomic 
conditions of the Ainu). Sapporo: Hokkaido 
Minseibu. 
Hokkaido Seikatsu Fukushibu 
1993 Hokkaido Utari jittai chosa hokokusho (Report of the 
survey of socioeconomic conditions of the 
Ainu). Sapporo: Hokkaido Seikatsu Fukushibu. 
Hokkaido Utari Kyokai 
1994a Pirika noka (Traditional patterns: The heart of 
the Ainu culture). Sapporo: Hokkaido Utari 
Kyokai. 
1994b Akor itak: Ainugo tekisuto (Our language: Ainu 
language text, vol. 1). Sapporo: Kuruzu. 
Honda, Mitsugu 
1995 Hokkaido chimei kanjikai (Dictionary of Hokkaido 
place-names). Sapporo: Hokkaido Shinbunsha. 
Horai, S., R. Kondo, K. Murayama, S. Hayashi, 
H. Koike, and N. Nakai 
1991 "Phylogenetic Affiliation of Ancient and 
Contemporary Humans Inferred from 
Mitochondrial DNA." Philosophical Transactions of 
the Royal Society of London (Series B, Biological 
Sciences) 333: 409-17. 
Hough, Walter 
1923 "Racial Groups and Figures in the Natural 
History Building of the United States National 
Museum.” In Smithsonian Institution Annual Report 
for 1920, 61 1 — 14, 655-56; pi. 86. Washington, 
D C.: U S. Government Printing Office. 
Howell, David L. 
1994 "Ainu Ethnicity and the Boundaries of the Early 
Modem Japanese State." Past and Present, no. 142. 
1995 Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society and the State 
in a Japanese Fishery. Berkeley: University of 
California Press. 
1997 "The Meiji State and the Logic of Ainu 
'Protection.'" In New Directions in the Study of Meiji 
Japan, ed. Helen Hardacre with Adam L. Kern, 
815-47. Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill. 
Howells, William White 
1959 Mankind in the Making: The Story of Human Evolution. 
New York: Doubleday. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
Huber, Gerhard 
1964 Die Ainu. Ein Volk im Untergang (The Ainu: An 
oppressed people). Fulda: Druckerei Kloster 
Frauenberg. 
Hyatt, Marshall 
1990 Franz Boas, Social Activist. The Dynamics of Ethnicity. 
New York: Greenwood Press. 
Iboshi, Hokuto 
1930 Kotan. Iboshi Hokuto iko (Kotan: The writings of 
Hokuto Iboshi). Tokyo: Kibosha. Reprint, Tokyo: 
Sofukan, 1984. 
libe, Noriaki 
1995 Ainu no gunzo-. Minzoku no hokori ni ikiru (Portrayal 
of the Ainu: The proud race). Tokyo: 
Ochanomizu Shobo. 
Ikeya, Kazunobu 
1997 "Bear Rituals of the Matagi and the Ainu in 
Northeastern Japan." In Circumpolar Animism and 
Shamanism, ed. Takako Yamada and Takashi 
Irimoto, 55-63. Sapporo: Hokkaido Daigaku. 
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 
(1CCPR) 
1980, 1987, 1991, 1997 The Initial, Second, Third, and 
Fourth Periodic Reports of Japan under Article 40 
Paragraph i(h) of the InternationalCovenant on Civil 
and Political Rights New York: United Nations. 
Inukai, Tetsuo 
1970 "Jujutsu, fujutsu" (Magic and shamanism). In 
Ainu minzokushi (Ethnology of the Ainu, vol. 2), 
ed. Ainu Bunka Hozon Taisaku Kyogikai, 61 3- 
33. Tokyo: Daiichi Hoki Shuppan. 
Inukai, Tetsuo, and Takemitsu Natori 
1969 “Shuryo" (Hunting and fishing). In Ainu 
minzokushi (Ethnology of the Ainu, vol. 1), ed. 
Ainu Bunka Hozon Taisaku Kyogikai, 321-66. 
Tokyo: Daiichi Hoki Shuppan 
Irimoto, Takashi 
1992a "Ainu Territoriality" (in Japanese). Hoppo Bunka 
Kenkyu 21: 67-81. 
1992b Ainu Bibliography. Sapporo: Hokkaido Daigaku. 
1993 "Religion, Ecology, and Behavioral Strategy: A 
Comparison of Ainu and Northern Athapaskan." 
In Circumpolar Religion and Ecology. An Anthropology 
of the North, ed. Takashi Irimoto and Takako 
Yamada, 317-40. Tokyo: University of Tokyo 
Press. 
1997 "Ainu Shamanism: Oral Tradition, Healing, and 
Dramas." In Circumpolar Animism and Shamanism, 
ed. Takako Yamada and Takashi Irimoto, 21-46. 
Sapporo: Hokkaido Daigaku 
Ishijinia, Shinobu 
1979 Mokucboguma (Bear woodcarvings). Sapporo: 
Sapporo Kogeihin Kyokai. 
1980a "Asahikawa chiho no miyagehin danposhi" 
(The history of souvenirs in the Asahikawa 
area). Flokkaido Mokucho Kogei Kyokai Kaiho, 1-6. 
1980b "Hokkaido miyage no sanposhi" (The history of 
Hokkaido souvenirs). In Hokkaido kanko miyage 
(Hokkaido souvenirs), 3-6. Sapporo: Hokkaido 
Kanko Miyage Kyokai. 
198 1 Asahikawa no kibori guma no hanashi (The story of 
bear woodcarvings in Asahikawa). Sapporo: 
Hokkaido Kogei Kyokai. 
Ishikawa, Motosuke 
1957 "Ainu no torikabuto sidoku ni tsuite: Sono biryo 
kagakuteki kenkyu" (On the aconite poison for 
Ainu arrows: Microchemical studies). Jinruigaku 
Zasshi 66: 16-27. 
1962 "Ainu ga shuryo gyogyo ni shiyo si ta dokubutsu 
ni tsuite" (Poisons used by the Ainu for hunting 
and fishing). Jinruigaku Zasshi 69. 41-52. 
lwasaki, Naoko 
1998 Nihon kinsei no Ainu shakai (Ainu society in modern 
Japan). Tokyo: Azekura Shobo. 
Izumi, Seiichi 
1951 "Saru Ainu no chien shudan ni okeru iwor" (The 
iuror and the territorial group of the Saru Ainu). 
Minzokugaku Kenkyu 16, no. 3-4: 29-45. 
Jochelson, Waldemar 
1908 The Koryak Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural 
History, vol. 10. Leiden: E. J. Brill, New York: G. E. 
Stechert. Reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1975. 
Joest, Wilhelm 
1882 "Die Ainos auf der Insel Yesso." (The Ainu on the 
island of Yezo). ZeitschriftfiirEthnologic 14: 180-92. 
Kaiho, Mineo 
1979 Kinsei no Hokkaido (Early-modern Hokkaido). 
Tokyo: Kyoikusha. 
1985 “Ezochi no Koeki" (Bartering in Ezo). Menomin, 
no. 104: 25-29. 
1987 Chusei no Ezochi (Ezo of the Medieval period). 
Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan. 
Kaiho, Yoko 
1992 Kindai hopposhi. Ainu minzoku to josei to (Modern 
northern history. The Ainu and their women). 
Tokyo: San'ichi Shobo 
Kamigaki, Iwao 
1988 Kindai seiji kankeisba nenpyo soran Senzen-hen 
(Chronological biographies of modern political 
figures, vol. 3: Prewar section). Tokyo: Yumani 
Shobo. 
Kannari, Matsu, and Kyosuke Kindaichi (eds.) 
1961 Ainu jojishi: Yukaraushu (Ainu epics: Yukara). 9 vols. 
Tokyo: Sanseido. 
Kato, Kyuzo 
1993 "Dawn of Russian Ethnology: Researchers and 
Convicts around Bronislaw Pilsudski ' In European 
Studies on Ainu Language and Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 
105-126. Monographien 6 aus dem Deutschen 
Institut fiir Japanstudien der Philipp-Franz-von- 
Siebold-Stiftung. Munich: Iudicium-Verlag. 
Kato, Kyuzo, and Yoshinobu Kotani (eds.) 
1987 "Bronislaw Pilsudski's Materials on Northern 
Peoples and Cultures." In Bulletin of the National 
Museum of Ethnology, Special Issue 5 (in Japanese). 
Osaka: Kokuritsu Minzokugaku Hakubutsukan. 
Kato, Shinpei 
1985 Shiberia no senshi bunka to Nihon (Siberian pre-historic 
culture and Japan). Tokyo: Rokko Shuppan. 
Kayano, Shigeru 
1975 Ore no Nibutani (My Nibutani). Tokyo: Suzusawa 
Shoten 
1978 Ainu no mingu (Ainu folk crafts). Tokyo: Suzusawa 
Shoten. 
1985 Kuma no katni no hanashi: Ainu no minwa (The romance 
of the bear god: Ainu folktales). Tokyo: Taishukan 
Shoten 
1987 Ainu no sato Nibutani ni ikite (The heartland of 
Ainu: My life in Nibutani). Sapporo: Hokkaido 
Shinbunsha. 
1988 Kamuy yukar to mukashi banashi/Kamuy yukar tura 
uepekere (Kamuy yukar and uepekere). Tokyo: 
Shogakkan. 
1994 Our Land Was a Forest An Ainu Memoir Trans. 
Kyoku Selden and Lili Selden. Boulder, Colo.: 
Westview Press. 
1996 Kayano Shigeru no Ainugo jiten (Shigeru Kayano's 
Ainu-language dictionary). Tokyo: Sanseido. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
Kendall, Laurel 
1988 "Young Laufer on the Amur." In Crossroads of 
Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska, ed. William 
W. Fitzhugh and Aron L. Crowell, 104. 
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. 
"Constructing Cultures Then and Now: 
Celebrating Franz Boas and the Centennial of 
the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, 1897-1902. 
Vol 1: Historical Perspectives." Anthropological 
Papers of the American Museum of Natural History. 
New York, forthcoming. 
Kikuchi, Isao 
1994 Ainu minzoku to Nihonjin (Ainu and the Japanese). 
Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha. 
Kikuchi, Tetsuo 
1984 Hoppo kokogaku no kenkyu (Northern archaeol¬ 
ogy). Tokyo: Rokko Shuppan. 
Kikuchi, Tetsuo, and Toyohiko Fukuda 
1989 "Kita no chusei: Tsugaru/Hokkaido" (The medieval 
period in the north: Tsugaru/ Hokkaido). In 
Yomigaeru chusei (The revival of the medieval 
period, vol. 4), ed. Yoshihiko Amino, Susumu lshii, 
and Toyohiko Fukuda. Tokyo: Heibonsha. 
Kikuchi, Toshihiko 
1986 "Continental Culture and Hokkaido." In 
Windows on the Japanese Past. Studies in Archaeology 
and Prehistory, ed. Richard J. Pearson, 149-162. 
Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 
University of Michigan. 
1988 "Ainu shi to Satsumon bunka" (Ainu history and 
Satsumon culture). In Kita kara no Nihon shi: 
Hokkaido shinpojumu (A northern view of Japanese 
history), ed. Hokkaido Tohokushi Kenkyukai, 
261-78. Tokyo; Sanseido. 
1995 Hokuto Ajia kodai bunka no kenkyu (The study of 
ancient cultures in northeast Asia). Sapporo: 
Hokkaido Daigaku. 
Kimura, Hideaki 
1997 Shiberia no kyusekki bunka (Siberian culture in the 
Paleolithic era). Sapporo: Hokkaido Daigaku. 
Kimura, Kenji 
1983 Hokko nichiroku, 1793 (Diary of northern travels, 
1793). Ed. Eisaku Yamazaki. Towada: Daiichi 
Insatsu. 
Kimura, Kunihiko 
1962 "Ainu no shimon oyobi tenohiramon" (Finger- 
and palmprints of the Ainu). 2 Morph Anthrop 52: 
176-98. 
Kindaichi, Kyosuke 
1914 Kita Ezo koyo ihen (Epic poems of northern Ezo). 
Tokyo: Kyodo Kenkyusha. 
1925 Ainu no kenkyu (Study of the Ainu). Tokyo: 
Naigai Shobo 
1926 "Kyukon densetsu yori Hagoromo Miwayama 
densetsu e: Setsuwa ni ei jita Ainu dozoku no 
ichimen" (From a legend of a suitor to a legend 
of Hagoromo and Miwayama: An aspect of Ainu 
ethnology in their legends). Minzoku 1: 1-44. 
1927 "Gohojo kara mita Ainugo" (A linguistic study of 
the Ainu language). Jinruigaku Zasshi 42: 411-29, 
450-57 
1931 Yukara no kenkyu: Ainu jojishi (A study of yukar. 
The Ainu epics). Tokyo: Tokyo Bunko. 
1932 Thoughts on Northern Tohoku (in Japanese).N.p. 
1935 "Suji kara mita Ainu minzoku" (The Ainu and 
their numeral system). In Ainugo kenkyu (Ainu 
language study). N.p.: Nihon Bunkashi Ronsan. 
1937 "Kokugo to Ainugo no kankei" (Linguistic 
relationships between Japanese and Ainu 
languages). In Ainugo kenkyu (Ainu language 
study). N.p.: Nihon Bunkashi Ronsan. 
397 
1942 Ainu jojishi. Yukara gaisetsu (Ainu epics: Outlines of 
yukar). Tokyo: Seijisha. 
1943 Ainu no sinlen (Ainu myths). Tokyo: Yashima 
Shobo. 
1944 Ainu no kenkyu (Research on the Ainu). 3rd ed. 
Tokyo: Yashima Shobo. 
1961 Ainu bunkashi: Kindaichi Kyosuke zenshu II (Ainu 
cultural history: Selected papers of Kyosuke 
Kindaichi II). Tokyo: Sanseido. 
1993 Kindaicbi Kyosuke zensbu (Complete works of 
Kyosuke Kindaichi). 15 vols. Tokyo: Sanseido. 
Kindaichi, Kyosuke, and Sueo Sugiyanta 
1941 Ainugeijutsu: Fukuso ben (Ainu art: Clothing). 
Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Senta. 
1942 Ainugeijutsu: Mokko ben (Ainu art: Woodwork). 
Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Senta. 
1943 Ainu geijutsii: Kinko/sbikki ben (Ainu art: Metalwork 
and lacquerware). Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan 
Kikaku Senta. 
Kitagamae, Yasuo 
1983 1643-nen Ainu sbakai tanboki. Furisu Sentai kokai kiroku 
(The report of the Ainu in 1643: The voyage 
logs of Vries Fleet). Tokyo: Yuzankaku. 
1985 Ainu-jin to sono bunka: Meiji chuki no Ainu no mum 
kara (The Ainu and their culture: Ainu villages of 
the mid-Meiji period). Tokyo: Rokko Shuppan 
1991 Kodai Emishi no kenkyu (Studies on the ancient 
Fmishi.) Tokyo: Yuzankaku 
Kitagawa, Joseph M 
1961 "The Ainu bear festival: Iyomante." History of 
Religions 1, no. 1: 95-151. 
Kiyono, Kenji 
1946 Nihon minzoku seiseiron (Formation of Japanese 
ethnicity.) Tokyo: Nihon Hyoronsha. 
1949 Kodai jinkotsu no kenkyu ni motozuku Nihon jinshuron 
(Origins of the Japanese based on studies of 
ancient skeletal remains). Tokyo: Iwanami 
Shoten. 
1955 Nihon kokogaku jinruigakushi (History of Japanese 
archaeology and anthropology). Tokyo: Iwanami 
Shoten, 
Kodama, Mari 
1985 "Ainu mon'yo" (Ainu design motifs.) Menomin, no 
104: 30-35. 
1987 "Yosoou" (Dressing up). In Ainu bunka no kiso 
chisbiki (A fundamental knowledge of the Ainu 
culture), ed. Michiaki Okada et al., 68-87. 
Shiraoi: Ainu Minzoku Hakubutsukan. 
1989 "My Father and Ainu Materials" (in Japanese). 
In Kodama sbiryo mokuroku (A catalog of the 
Kodama Collection 1). Shiraoi: Ainu Minzoku 
Hakubutsukan. 
Kodama, Sakuzaemon 
1968 Ainu fukushoku no cbosa (A study of Ainu clothing) 
Sapporo: Hokkaido Kyoiku linkai. 
1969 "An Urgent Study on the Ainu" (in Japanese). 
Karada no Kagaku 26. 
1970a "Ikuji, meimei, kyoiku, seijin" (Childcare, 
naming, education, and becoming an adult). 
In Ainu minzokushi (Ethnology of the Ainu), ed. 
Ainu Bunka Hozon Taisaku Kyogikai, 466-75. 
Tokyo: Daiichi Hoki Shuppan. 
1970b "Ainu no bunshin" (Ainu tattoos). In Ainu 
minzokushi (Ethnology of the Ainu), ed. Ainu 
Bunka Hozon Taisaku Kyogikai, 131-39. Tokyo: 
Daiichi Hoki Shuppan. 
1970c Ainu Historical and Anthropological Studies Hokkaido 
University Medical Library Series, vol. 3. Sapporo: 
Hokkaido University School of Medicine. 
1970d"Ifuku no fuzokuhin" (Accessories to wear). In 
Ainu minzokushi (Ethnology of the Ainu), ed. 
Ainu Bunka Hozon Taisaku Kyogikai, 270-315. 
Tokyo: Daiichi Hoki Shuppan. 
I970e "Ainu kenkyushi" (History of Ainu studies). In 
Ainu minzokushi (Ethnology of the Ainu), ed. 
Ainu Bunka Hozon Taisaku Kyogikai, 26-34. 
Tokyo. Daiichi Hoki Shuppan. 
1971 "Kinkyu o yoshita Ainu kenkyu" (Urgent need 
for Ainu studies). Hokkaido no Bunka, no. 21. 
1972 “Ainu no bunpu to jinko” (The distribution and dem¬ 
ography of the Ainu). In Ainu minzokushi (Ethnology 
of the Ainu), ed. Ainu Bunka Hozon Taisaku 
Kyogikai, 3-35. Tokyo: Daiichi Hoki Shuppan 
Koganei, Yoshikiyo 
1893 "Beitrage zur physischen Anthropologie der 
Aino. I. Untersuchungen am Skelet" 
(Contributions to the physical anthropology of 
the Aino. I Investigations of the skeleton). 
Mittheil med Fakultet Universitat 2 1-249 
Kokuritsu Minzokugaku Hakubutsukan 
1991 Guide to the National Museum of Ethnology. Osaka: 
Kokuritsu Minzokugaku Hakubutsukan. 
1993 Minzogaku no senkakusha Torii Ryuzo no mita Ajia 
(Ethnological collections from east Asia 
gathered by Ryuzo Torii). Osaka: Kokuritsu 
Minzogaku Hakubutsukan. 
Kono, Hiromichi 
1933a "Ainu no kike usi-pasuy: Ainu no inaw kenkyu" 
(On kike-usi-pasuy, a mustache-lifter used by the 
Ainu). Jinruigaku Zasshi 49, no. 5: 365-75. 
1933b "Inaw gairon" (Introduction to inaw). Yagawa 
Shiryo, no. 18. 
1935 "Kaizuka jinkotsu no nazo to Ainu no 
iyomante" (The mystery of human skeletons 
from shell mounds in Japan and iyomante of the 
Ainu). Jinruigaku Zasshi 50, no. 4: 151-60. 
1958 Ainu nogeijutsu (Ainu art). Sapporo: N.p. 
Kono, Motomichi 
1978 Catalogue of the Asahikawa Museum VI. Asahikawa: 
Shiritsu Asahikawa Kyodo Hakubutsukan. 
1979 Hoppo no mingu (The material culture of the north). 
Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Senta. 
1980 Catalogue of the Asahikawa Museum VIII. 
Asahikawa: Shiritsu Asahikawa Kyodo 
Hakubutsukan. 
1985 "Ainu no kogei" (Ainu arts and crafts). Menomin 
no, 104: 10-16. 
1996 Ainu shigaisetsu (Outline of Ainu history). 
Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Senta. 
Kopernicki, Izydor 
1882 "O Koschiach 1 Czaszkach Ajnosow" (On 
bones and skulls of the Ainu). Pamietnik Akademii 
Umiejetnosci w Krakowie 1 2: 27-68. 
Koppers, Wilhelm 
1938 "Kunstlicher Zahnschliff am Baren im Altpalaolithi- 
kum und bei den Ainu auf Sachalin" (Artistic 
cutting of bear teeth in the old Paleolithic and 
amongst the Ainu on Sakhalin). Quartar 1: 97-103. 
Kotani, Yoshinobu 
1993a "Ainu Collections in North America: History 
and Interpretation." Paper presented at the 
annual meeting of the Association for Asian 
Studies, Boston, Mass., March 
1993b (ed.) Zaibei Ainu kankei shiryo no minzokugakuteki 
kenkyu (Ethnological study of Ainu materials in 
North American museums). Nagoya: Nagoya 
Daigaku 
1994 Ethnological study of Frederick Starr's Ainu collections 
(in Japanese). Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku. 
1997 (ed.) A Comparative study of Euro-American Ainu 
Collections. Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku. 
Kotani, Yoshinobu, and Josef Kreiner (eds.) 
1993 Ainu no kogei (Ainu arts and crafts) Tokyo: 
Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan. 
Koya, Yoshio 
1937 Rassenkunde der Ainu (The ethnology of the Ainu). 
Tokyo: Japanische Gesellschaft zur Forderung 
der Wissenschaftlichen Forschungen. 
Koyama, Shuzo 
1978 "Jomon subsistence and population" (in 
Japanese). Senri Ethnological Studies 2: 1-65. 
Kozintsev, Alexander G. 
1993 "Ainu Origins in the Light of Modern Physical 
Anthropology." Homo 44, no 2: 105-27. 
Kozyreva, Rimma Vasil'evna 
1967 Drevnii Sakhalin (Ancient Sakhalin). Leningrad: 
Nauka, Leningrad otd-nie. 
Krasheninnikov, Stepan Petrovich 
1776 Opisanie Zemli Kamchatki (Explorations of Kam¬ 
chatka). St. Petersburg: Academy of Sciences. 
Reprint, trans, E. A. P. Crownhart-Vaughan, 
Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1972. 
Krauss, Michael E. 
1988 "Many Tongues: Ancient Tales." In Crossroads 
of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska, ed. 
William W. Fitzhugh and Aron L. Crowell, 
144-50 Washington, DC: Smithsonian 
Institution Press. 
Kreiner, Josef 
1981 Japan-Sammlungen in Museeti Mitteleuropas: Geschichte, 
Aufbau und gegenwartige Probleme (Japanese 
collections in Middle European museums: 
History, development, and contemporary 
problems). Bonn: Forderverein Bonner 
Zeitschrift fiir Japanologie. 
1987 "History and Current State of Ainu Collections 
in European Museums." Bulletin of the National 
Museum of Ethnology 5:417-5 3 
1993 "European Images of Ainu and Ainu Studies in 
Europe." In European Studies on Ainu Language and 
Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 17-60. Monographien 
6 aus dem Deutschen Institut fiir Japanstudien 
der Philipp-Franz-von-Siebold-Stiftung. 
Munich: Iudicium-Verlag. 
1996 (ed.) Shiiboruto fusbi no mita Nihon/200 Jahre Siebold.- 
Die Japan-sammlungen Philipp Franz und Heinrich 
von Siebold (Two hundred years of Siebolds: 
The Japanese collections of Philipp Franz and 
Heinrich von Siebold). Tokyo: Deutsches 
Institut for Japanstudien. 
Kreiner, Josef, and Hans Dieter Olschleger 
1987 A mil: Jager, Fischer und Sammler in Japans Norden 
Ein Bestandskatalog der sammlung des Rautenslraucb- 
Joest-Museums (Ainu: Hunters, fishers, and 
gatherers in northern Japan A catalogue of the 
collection of the Rauten strauch-loest- 
Museums). Ethnologica, vol. 12. Cologne: 
Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum for Volkerkunde 
Kroeber, A. L. 
1939 "Cultural and Natural Areas of North America." 
University of California Publications in American 
Archaeology and Anthropology 38. 
Krupnik, Igor, and William W. Fitzhugh (eds.) 
Gateways to Jesup-2: The Archival Legacy of the Jesup 
North Pacific Expedition, \89l-\902 Seattle: 
University of Washington Press, forthcoming. 
Krusenstern, Adam Johann von 
1810 Reise um die Welt in den Jahren 1803, 1804, 1805 und 
1806 (Voyage around the world in the years 
1803, 1804, 1805, and 1806). 3 vols. St. 
Petersburg: Schnoorsche Buchdruckerey. 
398 B 1 BLIOGRAPHY 
Kubodera, Itsuhiko 
1977a Ainujojishi: Shinyo, seiden no kenkyu (Ainu epics: 
Studies of kamuy-yukar and oina). Tokyo: 
Iwanami Shoten. 
1977b Ainu no bungaku (Ainu literature). Tokyo: 
Iwanami Shoten. 
Kubodera, Itsuhiko, and Mashiho Chiri 
1940 "Ainu no hoso-gami pakoro kamuy ni tsuite" 
(About the smallpox god pakoro kamuy). 
Jinruigaku Zasshi 55, no. 3: 30—61. 
Kubota, Atsushi et al. (eds.) 
1997 "Kosho bungaku: Ainu bungaku" (Oral tradition, 
vol. 2: Ainu literature). In Iwanami koza Nihon 
bungakushi (History of Japanese literature), vol. 
17. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 
Kudo, Masaki 
1989 Josaku to Emishi (Castle fences and Emishi). Tokyo: 
Nyu Saiensu Sha. 
Landor, Arnold Henry Savage 
1 893 Alone with the Hairy Ainu Or, 3,800 Miles on a Pack 
Saddle in Yezo and a Cruise to the Kurile Islands. 
London: John Murray. Reprint, New York: 
Johnson Reprint Company, 1970. 
Langsdorff, Georg Heinrich von 
1812 Bemerkungen aus einer Reise um die Welt in den Jabren 
1803-1807 (Remarks on a voyage around the 
world in the years 1803-1807). Vol. 2 
Frankfurt: F. Wilmans. 
Lantis, Margaret 
1938 "The Alaska Whale Cult and its Affinities." 
American Anthropologist 40. 428-64. 
Latyshev, Vladislav M., and Mikhail M. Prokofiev 
1988 Katalog etnograficheskikh kollektsii B. P. Pilsudskogo v 
Sakhalinskom oblastnom kraevedcheskom muzee (Cata¬ 
logue of the Bronislaw Pilsudski collection at the 
Sakhalin Regional Museum). Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk 
Sakhalinskii obi. Kraevedcheskii niuzei 
Laufer, Berthold 
1902 The Decorative Art of the Amur Tribes. Publications of 
the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. 4, 
Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural 
History, vol. 7, Leiden/New York: N.p. Reprint, 
New York: AMS Press, 1975. 
Lavrov, Igor P. 
1949 "Obvizobrazitel'nom iskusstve nivkhov i ainoviz 
materialov Amuro-Sakhalinskoi ekspeditssii" 
(On decorative art of the Nivkh and the Ainu 
people: Based on the data collected by the 
Amur-Sakhaiin Expedition). Kratkie Soobshcheniia 
Instituta Etnograjii Akademiia Nauk SSSR 5: 32-39 
Lebedintsev, Alexandr 
1990 Early Coastal Cultures of Northwestern Primor'e (in 
Russian). Vladivostok Nauka 
1998 "Maritime Cultures of the North Coast of the 
Sea of Okhotsk." Arctic Anthropology 35, no. 1: 
296-320. 
Lee, Molly 
1995 "Types and Prototypes: Siberian Sources of 
Alaskan Eskimo Coiled Baskets." American Indian 
Art 20, no. 4: 56-69. 
Lee, Molly, and Nelson Graburn 
1997 "Was Diffusion to Colonial Anthropology 
What Transnationalism Is to Post-Colonial 
Anthropology? Theories of Change in the Context 
of Jesup I and Jesup II" Paper delivered at the Jesup 
Centenary Conference, American Museum of 
Natural History, New York, November. 
Levin, Maxim G. 
1949 "Amuro-sakhalinskaia antropologo- 
etnograficheskaia ekspeditsiia" (The Amur- 
Sakhalin anthropological and ethnographic 
expedition). Kratkie Soobshcheniia Instituta Etnograjii 
Akademia Nauk SSSR 5: 19-3 1. 
1958 "Etnicheskaia antropologiia i problemy 
etnogeneza narodov Dal'nego Vostoka." 
Trudy Instituta Etnograjii Akademia Nauk SSSR 36. 
English-language ed.: Ethnic Origins of the Peoples of 
Northeastern Asia Translations from Russian Sources 
3. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963. 
Lindner, Friedrich Ludwig 
1812 Neueste Kunde von Asien: 3. Slid- und Ost-Asien 
(Newest research from Asia and East Asia, vol. 
3) . Prague: Diesbachsche Buchhandlung. 
Lindquist, Ivar 
1960 Indo-European Features in the Ainu Language, with 
Reference to the Thesis of Pierre Naert. Lunds 
Universitets Aarsskrift 54, no. 1. Lund: C. W. K. 
Gleerup. 
Low, Setha M. 
1976 "Contemporary Ainu Wood- and Stone 
Carving." In Ethnic and Tourist Arts: Cultural 
Expressions from the Fourth World, ed. Nelson H H. 
Graburn, 21 1-26. Berkeley: University of 
California Press. 
MacDonald, George 
1983 "Prehistoric Art of the Northern Northwest 
Coast ." In Indian Art Traditions of the Northwest 
Coast, ed Roy L. Carlson, 99-121. Burnaby, 
British Columbia: Archaeology Press, Simon 
Fraser University 
Maeda, LIshio 
1987 Hoppo shuryomin no kokogaku (Archaeology of 
northern hunting people). Tokyo: Doseisha. 
Majewicz, Alfred F. 
1993 "On Poles Collecting Data Related to the 
Anthropology and Material Culture of the 
Ainu." In European Studies on Ainu Language and 
Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 127-36. Mono- 
graphien 6 aus dem Deutschen Institut fur 
Japanstudien der Philipp-Franz-von-Siebold- 
Stiftung. Munich: ludicium-Verlag. 
Mamiya, Rinzo 
1855 Kita Ezo zusetsu (Illustrations of northern Ezo, 4 
vols.). Edo [Tokyo]: Harimaya Katsugoro. 
Maraini, Fosco 
1942 Gli iku-bashui degli Ainu (Ikupasuy of the Ainu). 
Pubblicazioni del Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 
vol. 1. Tokyo: Istituto Italiano di Cultura. 
(English and Japanese summaries inserted in 
pocket inside back cover). 
1994 Ainu no ikupasuy (Ikupasuy of the Ainu). Shiraoi: 
Ainu Minzoku Hakubutsukan. 
Marsden, Brian G. 
1993 The Minor Planet Circulars (Minor Planet Center, 
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, 
Cambridge, Mass.), 1 September, 22509. 
Mason, Otis Tufton 
1970 Aboriginal American Basketry. Studies in a Textile Art 
without Machinery. Glorieta, N.M.: Rio Grande 
Press. Reprint of Smithsonian Institution 
Publication no. 128 (1904). 
Matsuda, Denjuro 
1944 “Hokuidan"(An account of the northern 
peoples). In Nihon shomin seikatsu shiryo shusei 
(Resources on everyday life of the Japanese, vol. 
4) , ed. Shin'ichiro Takakura. Tokyo: San'ichi 
Shobo (originally published in 1821). 
Matsuki, Akitomo 
1973 Hokkaido no ishi (History of medicine in 
Hokkaido). Hirosaki: Tsugaru Shobo. 
Matsumae, Tokuhiro 
1982 “Shotoku gonen Matsumae Shimanokami 
sashidashi sorokakitsuke" (Matsumae 
Shimanokami's report of the fifth year of 
Shotoku [1715]). In Saisenkai shiryo (Saisenkai 
data), ed Shin'ichiro Takakura. Sapporo: 
Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Senta 
Matsumoto, Hideo 
1987 "Characteristics of the Mongoloid and 
Neighboring Populations on the Basis of the 
Genetic Markers of Immunoglobulins" (in 
Japanese). Jinruigaku Zasshi 95. 291-304. 
Matsuura, Takeshiro 
1851 Sanko Ezo nisshi (Diary notes from new trip over 
Hokkaido). Edo [Tokyo]: N.p. Reprint, Tokyo: 
Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1970. 
1962 Shinpan Ezo Nisshi (New Ezo Diary, 2 vols.). 
Ed. Tsunekichi Yoshida Tokyo: Jiji Tsushinsha 
Reprint, 1984. 
1977a "Kinsei Ezo jinbutsushi" (Biographies of the 
modern Ainu). In Matsuura Takeshiro kikosbu 
(Matsuura Takeshiro travelogue), ed. Takezo 
Yoshida. Tokyo: Fuzanbo (originally published 
in 1858). 
1977b"Nosappu nisshi" (Nosappu diary). In Matsuura 
Takeshiro kikosbu (Matsuura Takeshiro 
travelogue), ed Takezo Yoshida. Tokyo: 
Fuzanbo (originally published in 1858). 
Mikami, Mariko 
1986 Ainu ifuku chosa bokokusho \ (Ainu clothing 
research report, 1). Hokkaido: Hokkaido 
Bunkazai Hogo Kyokai. 
Minagawa, Masao, and Takeru Akazawa 
1985 "Dietary Patterns of Japanese Jomon Hunter- 
Gatherers: Stable Nitrogen and Carbon 
Isotope Analysis of Human Bones." In Pacific 
Northeast Asia Prehistory, ed. C. Melvin Aikens 
and Song Nai Rhee, 59-67. Pullman: 
Washington State University Press. 
Misawa, Shogo, Y. Hayashida, K. Omoto, S. 
Harada, 
H Matsumoto, and M. Hirai 
1975 "Ainu no idenshigakuteki kosei" (Genetic 
composition of the Ainu). In Anthropological and 
Genetic Studies on the Japanese, ed. Saburo 
Watanabe, Shiro Kondo, and Ei Matsunaga. 
Japanese Committee for the International 
Biological Program Synthesis, vol. 2, Human 
Adaptability, vol. 2, 265-307 Tokyo: 
University of Tokyo Press. 
Mitsuoka, Shin'ichi 
1987 Ainu no sokuseki (The footsteps of the Ainu). 
8th ed. Shiraoi: Shiraoi Minzoku Bunka 
Hozon Zaidan. 
Miyabe, Kingo 
1902 "A Letter Regarding the Composition of Ainu 
Arrow Poison." Furness, Harrison, Hiller 
Expeditions. University of Pennsylvania 
Museum Archives. 
Miyake, Yonekichi 
1 884 "Ezogo to Nihongo no kankei ikani" (On a 
question of the linguistic relationship between 
Ainu and Japanese languages). Tokyo Gakugei 
Zasshi: 35-36. 
Miyazaki, Kiyoshi 
1985 Wara (Straw). Mono to ningen no bunkashi (The 
cultural history of people and materials), vol 
55. Tokyo: Hosei Daigaku. 
Mochanov, Yuri 
1980 "Early Migrations to America in light of the 
Dyuktai Paleolithic Culture in Northeast Asia." 
In Early Native Americans, ed. David L, Browman, 
119-33. The Hague: Mouton. 
Mochanov, Yuri, and Svetlana A. Fedoseeva 
1984 "Main Periods in the Ancient History of 
North-East Asia." In Beringia in the Cenozoic Era, 
ed. V. L. Kontrimavichus, 669-93. Rotterdam: 
A. A. Balkema. 
Mogami, Tokunai 
1790 Ezo soshi (Ezo tales). Reprint, Tokyo: Kokusho 
Kankokai, 1972. 
B! BL.IOCRAPHY 
399 
Montandon, George 
1927 Au pays des Aino Exploration anthropolgigue (In the 
land of the Ainu: Anthropological investiga¬ 
tions) Paris: Masson. 
1937 La civilisation a'inou et les cultures arctigues 
(Ainu civilization and arctic cultures). 
Bibliotheque scientifique. Pans: Payot. 
Morse, Edward Sylvester 
1879 "Traces of an Early Race in Japan." Popular Science 
Monthly, 257-66.Munro, Neil Gordon 
Munro, Neil Gordon 
1908 "On Korobbokuru." Jinruigaku Zasshi 23: 353-60. 
1930 lyomante—The Ainu Bear Festival About the Bear 
Ceremony among the Ainu of the Saru River Valley in 
Hokkaido (filmed by Munro). 
1962 Ainu Creed and Cult. Reprint, London: Greenwood 
Press, 1979, London and New York: K. Paul 
International, distributed by Columbia 
University Press, 1996. 
1994 Ainu Material Culture from the Notes of N G. Munro in 
the Archive of the Royal Anthropological Institute, ed. 
Birgit Ohlsen, intro. Brian Durrans. British 
Museum Occasional Paper 96. London: British 
Museum, Department of Ethnography. 
Murayama, Shichiro 
1968 "Ainu in Kamchatka." In Proceedings of the 8th 
International Congress of Anthropological and 
Ethnological Sciences, 84-86. Kyoto: Science 
Council of Japan. 
1992a Ainugo no kigen (The origin of the Ainu 
language). Tokyo: San'ichi Shobo. 
1992b "Word Parallels between Ainu and Other 
Languages," Le Monde Oriental, 20 
Naert, Pierre 
1958 La situation linguislicjue de I'Ainou. Ainou et 
Indoeuropeen. Lunds Universitets Aarsskrift 53, no. 
4 Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup 
Nagata, Hosei 
1891 Hokkaido elogo chimei kai (Interpretation of 
Hokkaido Ezo place-names). Sapporo: 
Hokkaidocho. Reprint, Tokyo: Sofukan, 1984. 
1911 "Kotoi, an Ancient Ainu Chief at Akkeshi, 
Hokkaido." Jinruigaku Zasshi 27: 488—92, 562—67. 
Nakagawa, Hiroshi 
1995 Ainugo Chitose hogen jiten (The Ainu-Japanese 
dictionary: Chitose dialect). Tokyo: Sofukan. 
1997a Ainu no monogatari sekai (Ainu world of narratives) 
Tokyo: Heibonsha. 
1997bEkusupuresu Ainugo (Express Ainu). Tokyo: 
Hakusuisha 
Nakamoto, Masachie 
1985 "Ainu to Ryukyu" (Ainu and Ryukyu). Gengo 14, 
no. 3: 94-95. 
Nakano, Takamasa, and Kunio Kobayashi 
1967 Nihon no shizen (Natural history of Japan). 
Iwanami Shinsho 346. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 
Nanba, Takuo 
1985 "Chishima Ainu no cho-hi-i m tsuite" (Bird- 
feather garments from the Kurile Islands). Milieu 
Mansurii 20, no. 1: 11-16. 
Narita, Tokuhei 
1972 "Ainu niondai ni omou" (Thoughts on the Ainu 
problem). Hoppo Bungei 5: 2. 
1984 "Discrimination against Ainus and the 
International Covenant on the Elimination of 
All Forms of Racial Discrimination." In The 
United Nations, Japan and Human Rights: To 
Commemorate the 35th Anniversary of the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights, ed. Buraku Kaiho 
Kenkyusho (in Japanese). Osaka: Kaiho 
Shuppansha. 
National Cyclopaedia of American Biography 
1926 "Hitchcock, Romyn." In The National Cyclopaedia 
of American Biography, vol. 19, 42. New York: 
James T, White Company. 
Natori, Takemitsu 
1974 Ainu to kokogaku (Ainu and archaeology). Natori 
Takemitsu chosaku shu II (Papers of Takemitsu 
Natori, vol. 2). Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan 
Kikaku Senta. 
1984 "Yuyoku sakebashi no shokeishiki to chiiki sei" 
(Types and regionality of winged offering 
sticks). In Kono Hiromichi hakushi botsugo nijunen 
kinen bunshu (Collected papers in commemora¬ 
tion of the twentieth anniversary of the death of 
Dr Kono Hiromichi). Sapporo. Hokkaido 
Shuppan Kikaku Senta. 
Nelson, Edward William 
1899 The Eskimo about Bering Strait. Smithsonian 
Institution Bureau of American Ethnology 
Annual Report, no. 18, 19-518. Washington, 
D C : Government Printing Office. 
Nihon Kokogaku Kyokai (ed.) 
1965 Ainu dento ongaku (Ainu traditional music). Tokyo: 
Nihon Hoso Shuppan Kyokai. 
1994 Kita Nihon no kokogaku: Minami to kita no chiikisei 
(Archaeology of northern Japan: Northern and 
southern characteristics). Tokyo: Yoshikawa 
Kobunkan. 
Nihon Mingu Gakkai 
1997 Nihon mingu jiten (Japanese folkcraft dictionary). 
Tokyo: Gyosei. 
Niimi, Michko 
1990 "Sea-Mammal Hunting of thejomon Culture in 
Hokkaido" (in Japanese with English summary). 
Bulletin of the Department of Archaeology, University of 
Tokyo 9 I 37-71. 
Nishimoto, Toyohiro 
1996 "Ainu Culture Formation Considered from an 
Animal Perspective" (in Japanese). In The Museum 
Forum.- Considerations on the Formation of Ainu Culture, 
15-22. Abashiri Hokkaido Hoppo Minzoku 
Hakubutsukan. 
Nishimoto, Toyohiro, and Takao Sato 
1991 "The Animal Bones from Otafuku Iwa Cave site" 
(in Japanese). In Otafuku Iwa Iseki (Otafuku Iwa 
Site), 247-64. Rausu: Rausu-cho Kyoiku linkai. 
Nishimura, Toyohiro 
1986 "The Transition of Hunting and Fishing 
Activities in Hokkaido" (in Japanese with 
English summary). Bulletin of the National Museum of 
Japanese History 6. 53-74. 
Nishizuru, Sadaka 
1942 Karafuto Ainu (Ainu of Sakhalin Island). 
Toyohara: Karafutocho. 
Oba, Toshio 
1955 "Moioro kaizuka no kokkakki" (Bone artifacts 
from shell middens of Moioro). Hoppo Bunka 
Kenkyu Hokoku 10. 
1956 "Moioro kaizuka shutsudo no Ohotsuku-shiki 
doki" (Okhotsk ceramics from shell middens of 
Moioro). Hoppo Bunka Kenkyu Hokoku 1 1. 
Obayashi, Taryo 
1997 "The Ainu Concept of the Soul." In Circumpolar 
Animism and Shamanism, ed. Takako Yamada and 
Takashi Irimoto, 9-20. Sapporo: Hokkaido 
Daigaku. 
Ogawa, M. 
1993 "The Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection 
. Act and Assimilatory Education." In Indigenous 
Minorities and EducationAustralian and Japanese 
Perspectives of their Indigenous Peoples, the Ainu, 
Aborigines and Torres Straits Islanders, ed. Noel Loos 
and Takeshi Osanai. Tokyo: San'yusha. 
Ogawa, Sanae 
1986 "Arigato Bikki" (Thank you, Bikky). Bijutsu 
Asahikawa 54: 7-9. 
Ogihara, Shinko 
1996 Hoppo shominzoku no sekaikan (Essays on ideas and 
beliefs among the northern peoples). Tokyo: 
Sofukan. 
Ogihara, Shinko, and Chuner M. Taksami (eds.) 
with Ainu Project Group 
1998 Catalogue: Ainu Collections of the Peter the Great 
Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Russian 
Academy of Sciences Tokyo: Sofukan. 
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko 
1969 "Sakhalin Ainu Folklore." Anthropological Studies, 
no. 2. 
1973a "Mashiho Chiri: Ainu Scholar of Ainu Culture 
and Professor of Linguistics." With Hideo 
Fujimoto. American Anthropologist 75: 868-76. 
1973b "The Shamanism of the Ainu of the Northwest 
Coast of Southern Sakhalin." Ethnology 12, no. 1: 
15-29. 
1974 The Ainu of the Northwest Coast of Southern Sakhalin. 
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Reprint, 
Prospect Heights, 111.: Waveland Press, 1984. 
1976a "Regional Variations in Ainu Culture." American 
Ethnologist 3, no. 2: 297-329. 
1976b "Shamanism and World View: Case of the Ainu 
of the Northwest Coast of Southern Sakhalin." 
In The Realm of the Extra-Human. Agents and 
Audiences, ed. Agehananda Bharati, 175-200. The 
Hague: Mouton, Chicago: Aldine. 
1980 "Shamans and Imu among Two Ainu Croups: 
Toward a Cross-Cultural Model of Interpreta¬ 
tion." Ethos 8, no. 3: 204-28. Reprinted in The 
Culture-Bound Syndromes. Folk Illnesses of Psychiatric 
and Anthropological Interest, ed. Ronald C. Simons 
and Charles C. Hughes, 91-110. Dordecht, 
Holland, and Boston: Reidel, 1985. 
1981 Illness and Healing among the Sakhalin Ainu: A 
Symbolic Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press. 
1984 Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan: An 
Anthropological View. Cambridge: Cambridge 
Llniversity Press. 
Ohtsuka, Kazuyoshi 
1982 "Ainu no kibori guma" (Ainu bear woodcarv- 
mgs). Gekkan Minpaku (April): 15-17. 
1993 (ed.) Ainu moshiri. Minzoku mon'yo kara mita Ainu no 
se kai (The world of the Ainu through their 
design motifs). Osaka: Kokuritsu Minzokugaku 
Hakubutsukan. 
Ohyi, Haruo 
1975 "The Okhotsk Culture, a Maritime Culture 
of the Southern Okhotsk Sea Region." 
In Prehistoric Maritime Adaptations of the Circumpolar 
Zone, ed. William W. Fitzhugh, 123-58. 
The Hague: Mouton. 
Okada, Hiroaki 
1998 "Maritime Adaptations in Northern Japan." Arctic 
Anthropology 35, no. 1: 335-39. 
Okada, Minoru (ed.) 
1988 Genshoku makino wa-kan yakuso daizukan (Illustrated 
Japanese and Chinese medicinal plants of the 
world in color). Tokyo: Hokuryukan. 
Okamura, Kichiemon 
1984 "Kogeishi kenkyu noto, IV" (Research notes on 
the history of arts and crafts, 4). Tamagawa 
Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyo 25: 157-76. 
Okladnikov, Alexei Pavlovich 
198 1 Ancient Rock Art of the Amur Region (in Russian). 
Leningrad: Aurora Press. 
400 B I BLIOGRAPHY 
1983 Drevnee Poselenie Kondon [Priamur'e] (The Ancient 
Kondon Site [Priamur'e]). Novosibirsk: Nauka 
Okuyama, Ryo 
1966 Ainu suiboshi (The history of the Ainu's decline 
and tall). Sapporo: Miyama Shobo. 
Olschleger, Hans Dieter 
1989 Llmwelt und Wirlschafi dtr Ainu: Bemerkungen zur 
Okologie enter Wildbeutergesellschaft (The environ¬ 
ment and economy of the Ainu: Observations 
on the ecology of a hunting society). Berlin: 
Reimer. 
1993 "John Batchelor's Contributions to Ainu 
Ethnography.” In European Studies on Ainu 
Language and Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 137-50. 
Monographien 6 aus dem Deutschen Institut 
fur Japanstudien der Phihpp-Franz-von-Siebold- 
Stiftung. Munich: ludicium-Verlag. 
Omoto, Keiichi 
1972 "Polymorphisms and Genetic Affinities of the 
Ainu of Hokkaido." Human Biology of Oceania 1: 
278-88. 
1995 "Genetic Diversity and the Origins of the 
'Mongoloid'" In The Origin and Past of Modern 
Humans as Viewed from DNA, ed. Sydney Brenner 
and Kazuo Hanihara, 92-109. Singapore: World 
Scientific Publishing 
Omoto, Keiichi, and Shogo Misawa 
1976 "The Genetic Relations of the Ainu In The 
Origin of the Australians, ed. A. I. Kirk and A. G. 
Thorne, 365-76. Canberra: Australian Institute 
of Aboriginal Studies 
Omoto, Keiichi, and N. Saito 
1997 "Genetic Origins of the Japanese: A Partial 
Support for the Dual Structure Hypothesis." 
American Journal of Physical Anthropology 102: 
437-46. 
Oni, Haruto 
1957 "Ainuigo, Nihongo oyobi Ryukyugo ni kyotsu 
suru tokushuon” (Special sounds common 
to Ainu, Japanese, and Ryukyu languages). 
Paper given at Nihon jinrui gakkai Nihon 
minzokugaku kyokai rengo taikai kiji (Proceed¬ 
ings of Joint Conference of Japan Anthropology 
Society and Japan Ethnology Association). 
Ono, Yugo 
1991 "Kita no rikkyo” (Northern land bridge) 
(includes English abstract). Dai 4-ki Kenkyu 29, 
no. 3: 183-92. 
1997 Hokkaido mori to kawa kara no dengon (Messages 
from nature in Hokkaido). Sapporo: Hokkaido 
Shinbunsha 
Ono, Yugo, and Y. Igarashi 
1992 Natural History of Hokkaido. Sapporo: Hokkaido 
Daigaku. 
Orekhov, Alexandr A. 
1998 "The Development of Maritime Adaptations 
Among the Early Populations of the Northwest 
Bering Sea Region," Arctic Anthropology 35, no. 1: 
263-80. 
Osaka Jinken Rekishi Shiryokan 
1994 Kindai Nihon to Ainu minzoku (Modern Japan and 
the Ainu). Osaka: Osaka Jinken Rekishi 
Shiryokan. 
Osborn, Henry Fairfield 
1929 "Bashford Dean." Natural History 29, no I: 
102-103. 
Ossenberg, Nancy S. 
1986 Isolate Conservatism and Hybridization in the 
Population History of Japan: The Evidence of 
Nonmetric Cranial Traits." In Prehistoric Hunter- 
Gatherers in Japan: New Research Methods, ed. Takeru 
Akazawa and C. Melvin Aikens, 199-215 
Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. 
Oswalt, Robert L 
1964 "A Comparative Study of Two Porno Lan¬ 
guages.” In Studies in California Linguistics, ed. 
William Bright. Berkeley: University of 
California Press. 
Oyabe, Jenichiro 
1 898 A Japanese Robinson Crusoe. Boston and Chicago: 
The Pilgrim Press. 
Patrie, James 
1982 The Genetic Relationship of the Ainu Language. 
Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii 
Philippi, Donald L 
1979 Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans. The Epic Tradition of 
the Ainu. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. 
Pilsudski, Bronislaw 
1906 "Karafuto Ainu no jotai" (The status of the 
Sakhalin Ainu). Sekai 26. 57-66, 27: 42-49. 
1907a "Kratkii ocherk ekonomicheskogo polozheniia 
ainov na o. Sakhalin” (Brief essay on the 
economic status of the Sakhalin Ainu). Zapiski po 
lzucheniiu Amurskogo Kraia 10: 89-1 16. 
1907b"Otchyoto komandirovke k ainam i orokam 
ostrova Sakhalina v 1903-1905” (Report on field 
trip to the Ainu and the Orok People of 
Sakhalin Island in the years 1903-1905). Izvestiia 
Russkogo Komiteta Dlia Izucheniia Srednei i Vostochnoi 
Azii v Istoricheskom, Arkbeologicheskom, 
Lingvisticheskom Otnosbeniiakb 7: 20-52. 
1909a "Der Schamanismus bei den Ajnu-Stammen von 
Sachalin" (Shamanism of the Sakhalin Ainu 
tribes). Globus 15: 261-74, 16: 1 17-32. 
Reprinted in English as "Shamanism of Sakhalin 
Ainu," Northern Culture Study Report 14 (1959). 
1909b"‘Tusu-kuru': ainskie shamany" (Tusu-kuru The 
Ainu shamans). Russkie Vedomosti 166: 3-4. 
1912 (ed.) Materials for the Study of the Ainu Language and 
Folklore. Krakow: Imperial Academy of Sciences. 
1915 "Na medvedzem prazknike ajnov o. Sachalina" 
(At the bear ceremony of the Sakhalin Ainu). 
Zhivaia Starina 23, no. 1—2: 67-162. 
1996 Dorogoi Lev Yakovlevich Pis'ma L. Y. Shternbergy 
1893—1917gg (Dear Lev Yakovlevich: Letters to 
L. Y. Shternberg 1893-1917). Yuzhno-Sakhalin 
Sakhalinskii Oblastnoi Kraevedcheskii Muzei. 
Pitul'ko, Vladimir V. 
1993 "An Early Holocene Site in the Siberian High 
Arctic." Arctic Anthropology 30, no. 1: 13-21. 
Ponomarenko, A. K. 
1985 Drevniaia Kul'tura Itel'menov Vostochnoi Kamchatki 
(The Old Itel’men Culture of Eastern 
Kamchatka). Moscow: Nauka. 
1993 "Novye Arkheologicheshie pamiatniki Yuzhnoi 
Kamchatki i Poluostrova Lopatka (K Voprosu 
ob Obitanii Ainov na Yuzhnoi Kamchatke) 
(New Archaeological Sites of Southern 
Kamchatka and the Lopatka Peninsula [On the 
Question of Habitation by the Ainu in 
Southern Kamchatka]). Kraevedcheskie Zapiski 8: 
3-136. 
Popov, Alexander A. 
1954 "Pletenie i tkachestvo u narodov Sibiri v XIX- 
pervoi chetverti XX stoletiia" (Weaving and 
wickerwork among the native people in Siberia, 
nineteenth to early twentieth century). Sbomik 
Muzeya Antropologii i Etnografii 16. 41-146. 
Prunner, Gernot 
1993 "The Ainu Scroll at the Museum of Ethnogra¬ 
phy, Hamburg." In European Studies on Ainu 
Language and Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 229-68. 
Monographien 6 aus dem Deutschen Institut fur 
Japanstudien der Philipp-Franz-von-Siebold- 
Stiftung. Munich: ludicium-Verlag. 
Quimby, George Irving 
1985 "Japanese Wrecks, Iron Tools, and Prehistoric 
Indians of the Northwest Coast." Arctic 
Anthropology 22, no. 2: 7-15. 
Radlinski, Ignacy 
1892 (ed.) Slournik narzecza Ainow zamieszkujacych wyspe 
Szumszu (Dictionary of the Ainu language) 
Krakow: Rozprawy Akademii Umejetnosci, 
Wydzial Filologiczny. 
Refsing, Kirsten 
1974 Ah annotated catalogue of Ainu materials in the East 
Asian Institute of Aarhus University Scandinavian 
Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series 20. 
Lund: Studentlitteratur. 
1986 The Ainu LanguageThe Morphology and Syntax of the 
Sbizunai Dialect. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. 
1993 "The Ainu Concept of Time as Expressed 
Through Language." In European Studies on Ainu 
Language and Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 91-101. 
Monographien 6 aus dem Deutschen Institut fur 
Japanstudien der Philipp-Franz-von-Siebold- 
Stiftung. Munich: ludicium-Verlag. 
1996 (ed.) The Ainu Library I. Early European Writings on 
the Ainu Language. 10 vols, Richmond, England: 
Curzon Press, Oxford University Press. 
1998 (ed.) The Ainu Library II: Origins of the Ainu 
Language.- The Ainu-Indo-European Controversy. 
5 vols. Richmond, England: Curzon Press, 
Oxford University Press. 
Reichert, Edward Tyson, M.D. 
1903 Ahho Noki, or Bushi: The Arrow Poison of the 
Ainus." University of Pennsylvania Medical Bulletin 
(April). 
Roche, Judith, and Meg Hutchinson (eds.) 
1998 First Salmon, First People. Salmon Tales of the North 
Pacific Rim. Seattle: University of Washington 
Press. 
Rosenstone, Robert A. 
1988 Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters with Meiji 
Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 
Rossbach, Ed 
1973 Baskets as Textile Art. New York: Van Nostrand 
Reinhold Co. 
Rousselot, Jean-Loup, William W. Fitzhugh, 
and Aron L. Crowell 
1988 "Maritime Economies of the North Pacific Rim." 
In Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and 
Alaska, ed. William W. Fitzhugh and Aron L. 
Crowell, 151-72. Washington, DC 
Smithsonian Institution Press. 
Saito, Kenji 
1979 "Hokkaido no kibori guma" (Bear woodcarvings 
in Hokkaido). Shiritsu Asahikaura Kyodo 
Hakubutsukan Kenkyu Hokoku, no. 38: 4. 
1980 "Ido-ten: 'Kato Kensei o Tazunete' o oete" 
(Finishing the traveling exhibition "Visiting 
Kensei Kato"), Shiritsu Asahikaura Kyodo 
Hakubutsukan Kenkyu Hokoku, no. 44: 3. 
Saito, Reiko 
1994 "Hoppo minzoku bunka kenkyu ni okeru kanko 
jinruigakuteki shiten: Edo-Taisho ki ni okeru 
Ainu no baai" (The study of tourist arts in 
ethnographic records: In reference to the Ainu 
from the Edo era to the Taisho era). Hokkaidoritsu 
Hoppo Minzaku Hakubutsukan Kenkyu Kiyo 3: 139— 
60. 
1995 "Taiheiyo eugan chiiki ni okeru shokubutsusei 
senihin ni tsuite no kosatsu: Orimono o chushin 
to suru busshitsu bunka kenkyu" (A perspective 
study on weaving plant fiber on the north 
Pacific Rim: Material culture in basketry). 
Hokkaidoritsu Hoppo Minzaku Hakubutsukan Kenkyu 
Kiyo 4: 11 3—34. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
401 
Sakakura, Genjiro 
1943 "Hokkai zuihitsu" (An essay on the Northern 
Sea)[ 1739], In Nihon shomin seikatsu shiryo shusei 
(The daily life of Japanese people), ed. Shini'chiro 
Takakura, vol. 4- Tokyo: San'ichi Shobo. 
Sala, G. C. 
1975 "Protest and the Ainu of Hokkaido." Japan 
Interpreter 10, no. 1: 44—65. 
Sanko Dosokei 
1980 Shimryo-shi: Dai-san koto chu gakko hachiju-nen shi 
(History of Shimryo. The eightieth anniversary 
of Dai-San High School). Kyoto: Sanko 
Dosokei 
Sansom, G. B , Sir 
1958 A History of Japan. 3 vol. Stanford Studies in the 
-63 Civilizations of Eastern Asia. Stanford: Stanford 
University Press. 
Sapporo Chiho Saibansho 
1997 "Nibutani Decision." In Chiho Saibansho (Sapporo) 
(Sapporo District Court) (March): 75-76. 
Sapporo Terebi Hoso Kabushiki Gaisha (ed.) 
1983 Ekasbi tofuchi (Ekashi and Juchi). Sapporo: 
Sapporo Terebi Hoso Kabushiki Gaisha 
Sarashina, Genzo 
1955 Kuma matsuri- lyomante (The bear festival: 
Iyomante). Tokyo: Nire Shobo. 
1968 Rekishi to minzoku Ainu (Ainu history and customs). 
Tokyo: Shakai Shisosha. 
1971a Ainu minwashu (Ainu tales). Sapporo: Kita Shobo. 
197lbAimt densetsusbu (Ainu legends). Sapporo: Kita 
Shobo 
Sasaki, Toshikazu 
1972 "Chuko chusei ni okeru Ezo no fuzoku ni tsuite" 
(Customs of Ezo in the 'middle ancient' and 
medieval ages). Hokkaido no Bunka 25. 8-36. 
1988 "On the Tokyo National Museum Material 
Collection: Part 2" (in Japanese). Hokkaidoritsu 
Ainu Minzoku Bunka Kenkyu Senta Kiyo 4. 
1990 "lyomante-ko: Shamo ni yoru Ainu bunka rikai 
no kosatsu (On the lyomante Thoughts on shamo 
understanding of Ainu culture). Rekisbigaku 
Kenkyu 613: 11 1-20. 
1992 Kodai no Emishi: Kita Nihon Jomonjin no matsuei 
(Ancient Emishi: Descendants of Jomon people 
in northern Japan). With Masaki Kudo. Tokyo: 
Kawade Shobo Shinsha. 
1993a "Ainu-e in European and American Museums." In 
Ethnological Study of Ainu Materials in North American 
Museums, ed. Yoshinobu Kotani, 32-51. Nagoya: 
Nagoya University. 
1993b "On Ainu-e. Pictorial Descriptions of Ainu Life 
and Customs." In European Studies on Ainu Language 
and Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 217-28. 
Monographien 6 aus dem Deutschen Institut fur 
Japanstudien der Philipp-Franz-von-Siebold- 
Stiftung. Munich: ludicium-Verlag. 
1995 Ainu no kogei (Ainu arts and crafts). Nihon no 
bijutsu, no. 354. Tokyo: Shibundo. 
Sato, Naotaro 
1961 "Ainu no shukyo to shakai seido" (Religion and 
social institutions of the Ainu). Kusbiro no Kodai 
Bunka 3: 5-8. 
Sayce, Roderick Llrwick 
1933 Primitive Arts and Crafts An Introduction to the Study 
of Material Culture. Cambridge, England: The 
University Press. 
Scheube, Botho 
1882 "Die Ainos" (The Ainu). Mitteilungen der Deutschen 
Gesellschaftfiir Natur- und Volkerkunde Ostasiens 3, 
no. 26: 220-58. 
Schildkrout, Enid, and Curtis A. Keim 
1990 African Reflections: Art from Northeastern Zaire 
Seattle: University of Washington Press, New 
York: American Museum of Natural History. 
Sekiba, Fujihiko 
1896 Ainu ijidan (An account of Ainu medicine). 
Tokyo: Tozai Shomoku Zohan. 
Shafranovskaia, Tamara K. 
1979 Muzei Antropologii i Etnografii Akademii Nauk SSSR 
(Academy of Sciences Museum of Anthropol¬ 
ogy and Ethnography). Leningrad: Nauka, 
Leningradotd-nie. 
Shapsnikoff, Anfesia, and Raymond Hudson 
1974 "Aleut Basketry." Anthopological Papers of the 
University of Alaska 16, no. 1: 41-69. 
Shinya, Gyo 
1977 Ainu minzoku teikoshi (The history of Ainu 
resistance). Tokyo: San'ichi Shobo. 
1979 Kotan ni ikiru bitobito (Life in the kotan). Tokyo: 
San’ichi Shobo. 
Shiratori, Kurakichi 
1909 "Nikkan Ainu san gengo no sushi ni tsuite 
(On Japanese, Korean, and Ainu numerals). 
Sbigaku Zasshi 20, no. 1—3. 
Shirayama, Tomomasa 
1971 Hokkaido Ainujinkoshi (History of the Ainu 
population change in Hokkaido). Sapporo: 
Hokkaido Keizaishi Kenkyujo. 
Shternberg, Leo (Lev lakovlovich) 
1925 "Divine Election in Primitive Religion." In XXI 
Congres International des Ame'ricanistes, Session de 
Goteborg, 1924, 472-512. Goteborg: Congres 
International de Americanistes. 
1929 "The Ainu Problem." Anthropos 24. 755-99 
1933 Gilyaki, Orochi, Goldi, Negidalsti, Aimi. Stull i 
materialy (Gilyaks, Orochs, Golds, Negidals, 
Ainu: Works and materials). Khabarovsk. 
Dalgiz. 
Shubin, Valerii O 
1994 "Aleut in the Kurile Islands 1820-1870." In 
Anthropology of the North Pacific Rim, ed. William 
W. Fitzhugh and Valerie Chaussonnet, 337-46. 
Washington, D C.: Smithsonian Institution 
Press. 
Siddle, Richard 
1993 "Academic Exploitation and Indigenous 
Resistance: The Case of the Ainu." In Indigenous 
Minorities and Education. Australian and Japanese 
Perspectives of their Indigenous Peoples, the Amu, 
Aborigines and Torres Straits Islanders, ed. Noel Loos 
and Takeshi Osanai. Tokyo: San'yusha. 
1996 Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan. London and 
New York: Routledge. 
Siebold, Philipp Franz von 
I 832 Nippon■ Archiv zur Bescbreibung von Japan und dessen 
Neben- und Schutzliindern . . (Nippon: Archive 
describing Japan and its neighbors and pro¬ 
tectorates . . .). Leiden: Philipp Franz von Siebold. 
2nd ed., Wurzburg and Leipzig: Leo Worl 
1 854 Puteshestvie po Japonii (Travel in Japan). St. 
Petersburg: Izd A. A. Pliushara. 
1881 "Ethnologische Studien uber die Ainos auf der 
Insel Yesso" (Ethnological studies of the Ainos 
on Yesso Island). Zeitschrift jiir Ethnologic 13: 
supplement 
Sjoberg, Katarina 
1993 The Return of the Ainu: Cultural Mobilization and the 
Practice of Ethnicity in Japan. Chur, Switzerland, 
and Langhorne, Pa.: Harwood Academic 
Publishers. 
Slawik, Alexander 
1982 "Die Probleme um die Enstehungsgeschichte des 
Japanischen und seine Ainuide Komponente" 
(Problems of the history of the origin of Japanese 
and its Ainu components). Japanforschungen 5. 
Sofue, Takao, Sue (Hara) Hiroko, and Yasuhara (Taiji) 
Murakami 
1976 "Cultural Anthropological Research on Cradles" 
(in Japanese). In Bunka to parsonaritei (Culture and 
personality), ed. Takao Sofue, 193-214. Tokyo: 
Kobundo. 
Song, Yaoliang 
1992 The Deified Human-Face Petroglyphs of Prehistoric China 
Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Company Ltd. 
1998 "Prehistoric Human-Face Petroglyphs of the 
North Pacific Region." Arctic Studies Center Newsletter 
Supplement (National Museum of Natural History, 
Washington, D C.) 6, no. I: 1-4. 
Sonohara, T. 
1997 "Toward a Genuine Redress for an Unjust Past: 
The Nibutani Dam Case." Murdoch University 
Electronic Journal of Law 4, no. 2. 
Spevakovski, Alexander B. 
1993 "Ainu Collections in the Museums of St. 
Petersburg." In European Studies on Ainu Language and 
Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 207-14. Monographien 6 
aus dem Deutschen Institut fur Japanstudien der 
Philipp-Franz-von-Siebold-Stiftung. Munich 
ludicium-Verlag 
Starr, Frederick 
1904 The Ainu Group at the Saint Louis Exposition Chicago: 
Open Court Publishing Co. 
1909 "Field notes." Frederick Starr Papers, Depart - 
-1 I ment of Special Collections, University of 
Chicago Library. 
Steller, Georg Wilhelm 
1774 Bescbreibung von dem Lande Kamtschatka, dessen 
Einwohner, deren Sitten, Namen, Lebensart und verscbiedenen 
Gewohnheiten (A description of Kamchatka, its 
occupants, their customs, names, lifestyle, and 
various habits). Frankfurt and Leipzig: J. G. 
Fleischer. Reprint, Bonn: Holos Verlag, 1996 
Stephan, John J. 
1971 Sakhalin: A History. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 
1974 The Kuril Islands Russo-Japanese Frontier in the Pacific. 
Oxford: Clarendon Press. 
Stepney, Philip H R 
1995 Art and Life of the Ainu Edmonton : The Provincial 
Museum of Alberta. 
Sudo, Takashi, Takao Imaizumi, and Kiyotari Tsuboi (eds.) 
1991 Kodai no Nihon: Tohoku/Hokkaido (Ancient Japan: 
Tohoku/Hokkaido). Vol. 9. Tokyo: Kadokawa 
Shoten. 
Sugawara, Kosuke 
1968 Gendai no Ainu. Minzoku ido no roman (Modem Ainu: The 
romance of tribal migration). Tokyo: Cenbunsha. 
Sugiyama, Sueo 
1926 Ainu mon’yo (Ainu design motifs) Tokyo: Kogei 
Bijutsu Kenkyusha. 
1934 Ainu no kogei (Ainu arts and crafts). Sapporo: 
Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Senta 
Sunazawa, Bikky 
1976 Aoi sakyu nite, 1964-1973 (In the blue sand dune, 
1964-1973). Sapporo: Bikky Arts 
1985 "Mokucho no kokoro" (Heart of wood). Nihon no 
Dento Kogei (March). 
1988 "Minzoku to geijutsu to shizen to" (With people, 
art, and nature). In Ashita o tsukuru Ainu minzoku 
(Ainu people build their future), ed. Ainu Minzoku 
no Genzai to Mirai o Kangaeru Kai. Tokyo: 
Miraisha. 
402 B I BLIOCRAPHY 
Suttles, Wayne P. (ed.) 
1990a Handbook ojNorth American Indians: Northwest Coast. Vol. 
7. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. 
1990b '‘Environment." In Handbook of North American 
Indians: Northwest Coast. Vol. 7. Washington, 
D C. Smithsonian Institution. 
Suzuki, Hisashi 
1969 "Microevolutionary Changes in the Japanese 
Population from the Prehistoric Age to the 
Present Day” (in Japanese). Journal of the Faculty of 
Sciroce, University of Tokyo, Section V (Anthropology) 
3: 279-309. 
Suzuki, Yasutami 
1996 "Kodai oken to koryu" (Sovereignty in the 
ancient age and cultural exchanges) In Kodai 
Enushi no sekai to koryu (Cultural exchanges of the 
ancient Enushi), ed Yasutami Suzuki. Tokyo: 
Shin Jinbutsu Oral Sha 
Takabeya, Fukuhei 
1939 "Ainu jukyo no kenkyu" (A study of Ainu 
dwellings). In Hoppo bunka kenkyu hokoku (Reports 
on northern culture studies). Hokkaido: 
Hokkaido Teikoku Daigaku 
Takabeya, Fukuhei, and Shin'ichiro Takakura 
1969 "Jukyo" (Dwellings). In Ainu minzokushi 
(Ethnology of the Ainu). Tokyo: Daiichi 
Hosoku Shuppan 
Takahashi, Osantu 
1993 "Faunal Remains from District-A at Bibi-8 Site" 
(in Japanese). Report of the Hokkaido Maizo Bunkazai 
Center 83, no. 1: 201-205. 
Takahashi, Taizo 
1988 "Kinsei Ezochi no shippei shi" (Elistory of 
diseases in modern Ezo). In Ezochi no iryo 
(Medical treatments in Ezo), ed Sapporo 
Ishigaku Kenkyukai Sapporo Hokkaido 
Shuppan Kikaku Senta 
Takahashi, Toniio 
1963 Ezo. Tokyo Yoshikawa Kobunkan 
Takakura, Shini’chiro 
1939 "Kinsei ni okeru Karafuto o chushin toshita 
Nichiman koeki" (Japanese-Manchurian trade in 
Sakhalin in modern-era Japan). Hoppo Bunka 
Kenkyu Hokoku I: 1-32. 
1940 "Ainu buraku-no hensen" (Changes in Ainu 
villages). Nempo Shakai Gaku 7. 
1942 Ainu seisakushi (History of policy toward the 
Ainu). Tokyo-. Nihon Hyoronsha, 
1943 Hokuhen, Kaitaku, Ainu. Tokyo: Takemura Shobo. 
1947 Hokkaido takushoku shi (History of Hokkaido 
colonization). Sapporo: Hakyo Shoin. 
1949 Hokkaido no rekishi (History of Hokkaido). 
Sapporo: Sapporo Kodansha 
1953 "Ezo fuzokuga ni tsuite" (On ethnographic 
drawings of Ezo). In Kyodo kenkyu sbiryo 
(Collaborative research report). Sapporo: 
Hokkaido Kyodo Kenkyukai 
1955 "Chishima Karafuto no kaihatsu to doiin" 
(The development of the Kuriles and Sakhalin 
and its effect on the aborigines). Hoppo Bunka 
Kenkyu Hokoku 10: 55—81. 
1957 "Meiji-izen no Hokkaido ni okeru nobokugyo" 
(Agriculture in Hokkaido before the Meiji 
period). Hoppo Bunka Kenkyu Hokoku 12: 13-41. 
1960 The Ainu of Northern Japan: A Study in Conquest and 
Acculturation. Transactions of the American 
Philosophical Society vol. 50, no. 4. Philadel¬ 
phia: American Philosophical Society 
1969 Kayani kenchikuni tomonaugirei. Chise nomi (House¬ 
building ceremonies). Tokyo: Daiichi Hoki 
Shuppan 
1970a "lnaw." In Aimi minzoku-shi (Ethnology of the 
Ainu), ed. Ainu Bunka Hozon Taisaku Kyogikai, 
634-45. Tokyo: Daiichi Hoki Shuppan. 
1970b "Shakai keitai” (The social structure). In Ainu 
minzoku-shi (Ethnology of the Ainu), ed. Ainu 
Bunka Hozon Taisaku Kyogikai, 159—76, Tokyo: 
Daiichi Hoki Shuppan. 
1972 Ainu seisakushi: Shimpan (History of policy toward 
the Ainu: New edition). Tokyo: San’ichi Shobo. 
1973 Ainu-e shusei (A collection of Ainu-e pictures). 
Tokyo: Bancho Shobo. 
Taksami, Chuner M. 
1969 "Materialy MAE po etnografii ainov Yuzhnogo 
Sakhalina: 19-nachalo 20v" (MAE ethnographic 
collections on the Ainu people of southern 
Sakhalin Island, 1800 to early 1900s). Sbornik 
Muzeya Antropologii i Elhnografii 25: 337-62. 
Tamura, Suzuko 
1996 Ainugo jitein Saru bogen (Ainu-lapanese dictionary: 
Saru dialect). Tokyo: Sofukan. 
Tanda, Hitoshi 
1996 "Ezochi no shippei shoshi: Baidoku" (Reports on 
disease in Ezo: Syphilis) In Hokkaido no iryo Sono 
ayumi (Medicine in Hokkaido: Its history), ed. 
Nihon Ishigaku Kenkyukai. Sapporo: Hokkaido 
Iryo Shinbunsha. 
Tanisawa, Shoichi, and Toshikazu Sasaki (eds.) 
1982 Hata Mocbimaro no "Ezo-shima kikan" (Curious 
sights of Ezo Island). Tokyo: University of 
Tokyo Press (originally published 1799). 
Tarenetzky, A I 
1890 "Beitrage zur Craniologie der Aino auf Sachalin" 
(Contributions to the craniology of the Ainu). 
Memoires de l Acadamie des Sciences de St. Petersburg 7, 
no. I 3. 
Teague, Ken 
1993 "The Amu Collection at the Horniman Museum 
and Library, London." In European Studies on Ainu 
Language and Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 167-80. 
Monographien 6 aus dem Deutschen lnstitut fur 
Japanstudien der Philipp-Franz-von-Siebold- 
Stiftung. Munich: ludicium-Verlag. 
Tezuka, Kaoru 
1995 "History of Japanese Policy towards the Ainu " 
In Art and Life of the Ainu, ed Philip H. R. Stepney, 
13—16. Edmonton: The Provincial Museum of 
Alberta. 
1998 "Long-Distance Trade Networks and Shipping 
in the Ezo Region." Arctic Anthropology 35, no. 1: 
350-60. 
Thiele, Peter 
1993 "Ainu Collections at the Linden Museum, 
Stuttgart." In European Studies on Ainu Language 
and Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 181-92. 
Monographien 6 aus dem Deutschen lnstitut fur 
Japanstudien der Philipp-Franz-von-Siebold- 
Stiftung. Munich ludicium-Verlag. 
Todd, David P. 
1 888 Preliminary Report of the Total Solar Eclipse of 1887. 
American Eclipse Expedition to Japan. Amherst, 
Mass.: The L.awrence Observatory at Amherst 
College 
Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan 
1992 Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan Zuhan moktiroku Ainu 
minzoku shiryo hen (Illustrated Catalogue of the 
Tokyo National Museum: Ainu materials). 
Tokyo: Tokyo Kokuritsu Hokubutsukan. 
1993 Ainu kogei (Ainu crafts). Tokyo: Tokyo Kokuritsu 
Hokubutsukan. 
Torii, Ryuzo 
1901 "Who Were the Occupants of Stone Age Sites 
in the Kurile Islands?" (in Japanese). Journal of the 
Anthropological Society of Tokyo 17: 5-21. 
1903 Chishima Ainu (Ainu in the Kurile Islands). 
Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan. 
1919 Etudes arcbeologigues et ethnologipues: Les Ainou des 
lies Kouriles. Tokyo Daigaku, Rigakubu, Journal 
of the College of Science, Imperial LIniversity of 
Tokyo, vol. 42. Tokyo: University of Tokyo. 
1926 Taishi edencku no Ainu jimbutsu-zu (Pictures of 
Ainu in pictorial bibliographies ofPrince 
Shotoku). Kyokuto minzoku 1: 104-29.. 
1976 Chishima Ainu (Ainu in the Kurile Islands). 
Torii Ryuzo zenshu (Collected works of Ryuzo 
Torii, vol. 7). Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha. 
Trofimova, Tatyana A. 
1932 "Kainskoi probleme" (About the Ainu issue). 
Antropologicheskii Zhurnal 2: 89-103. 
Tsuboi, Kiyotari (ed.) 
1986 Zusetsu hakkutsu ga kataru Nihon shi: Hokkaido/ 
Tohoku (An illustrated history of Japan based 
on archaeological findings, vol. L Hokkaido/ 
Tohoku). Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Orai Sha. 
Tsuboi, Shogoro 
1887 "Koropok-guru Hokkaido ni sumishinar 
ubeshi" (The Koropok-guru seem to have 
inhabited Hokkaido). Jinruigaku Zasshi 2: 
93-97. 
Tsuda, FHarumi 
1988 "Ainu no yakuso" (Medicinal plants of the 
Ainu). In Ezochi no iryo (Medical treatment in 
Ezo), ed. Sapporo Ishigaku Kenkyukai 
Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Senta. 
Tsunano, Yoshihiko (ed.) 
1990 Umi to retto bunka. Nibonkai to kitaguni bunka 
(Ocean and island culture, vol. 1: The Sea of 
Japan and northern cultures). Tokyo: 
Shogakukan. 
Turner, Christy C. II 
1976 "Dental Evidence on the Origins of the Ainu 
and Japanese." Science 193: 911 — 13. 
1979 Dental Anthropological indications of 
Agriculture among the Jomon People of 
Central Japan. American Journal of Physical 
Anthropology 51 (4): 619-635. 
1989 "Teeth and Prehistory in Asia." Scientific 
American 260 70-77. 
Ueniura, Hideki 
1997 "Nibutani Damu Hanketsu to Ainu bunka 
shinkoho" (The Nibutani Decision and the 
Law for the Promotion of Ainu Culture). 
Sekai (June). 
Llmehara, Takeshi, and Kazuo Hanihara 
1982 Ainu wa Gennihonjin ka (Are the Ainu proto- 
Japanese?). Tokyo: Shogakukan. 
United States National Museum 
1891 United States National Museum Annual Report for 
1889-90. Washington, D C. U S. Govern¬ 
ment Printing Office. 
LItagawa, Hiroshi 
1977 Hokkaido no kokogaku (Archaeology of 
Hokkaido). Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan 
Kikaku Senta. 
1980a Aimi kokogaku (Archaeology of the Ainu). 
Tokyo: Kyoiku Sha. 
1980b Aimi bunka seiritsushi (History of the 
development of Ainu culture). Sapporo: 
Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Senta. Reprint, 
1988 
1989 lyomante no kokogaku (Archaeology of 
iyomante). Tokyo: Tokyo University Press. 
1992 "The 'Sending Back' Rite in Ainu Culture." 
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 19, no. 2-3: 
225-70 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
403 
Vallois, Henri V. 
1967 Les races humaims. 7th ed. Paris: Presses 
universitaires de France. 
VanStone, James W. 
1993 "The Ainu group at the Louisiana Purchase Expe¬ 
dition, 1904." Arctic Anthropology 30, no. 2: 77-91 
Varenius, Bernhardus 
1649 Dcscriptio retjni Iaponiae: cum cjuibusdam affirms 
materiae, ex variis auctoribus collecta et in ordinarum 
redacta. Amsterdam; Ludovicum Elzevirium. 
Vasil'evskii, Ruslan Sergeevich 
1998 "Fishing as an Early Form of Maritime 
Adaptation on the Pacific Coast of Northeast 
Asia." Arctic Anthropology 35, no. 1: 281-95. 
Virchow, Rudolf 
1880 "Bemerkungen zu: Georg Schlesinger, 
Fundbericht uber die Ausgrabung eines 
Ainoschadels auf Yezo" (Remarks on Georg 
Schlesinger, report on the excavation of an Ainu 
skull on Yezo). Zeitscbrftfiir Ethnologie 12: 207-209. 
Vivien, L. de Saint Martin 
1872 "Les Ainou" (The Ainu). In Lanneegeograpbigue, 
revue anneulle des voyages de terre et mer. Vol. 9 and 10. 
Paris: Librairie Hachette et cie. 
Voss, Fritz 
1993 "Philipp Franz von Siebold and the Ainu 
Language." In European Studies on Ainu Language and 
Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 63-80. Monographien 
6 aus dem Deutschen Institut fiir Japanstudien 
der Philipp-Franz-von-Siebold-Stiftung. 
Munich: ludicium-Verlag. 
Wada, Kan 
1959 "Karafuto Ainu no guzo" (The religious figurines 
of the Sakhalin Ainu). Hoppo Bunka Kenkyu 
Hokoku 14. 
1965 "lmu ni kansuru jakkan no mondai" (Some 
problems concerning imu). Minzokugaku Kenkyu 
29, no. 3: 263-71. 
1996 "Some Shamanistic Features of Ainu Religion." 
In Shamanism and Northern Ecology, ed. Juha 
Pentikaeinen, 305-1 I. Berlin and New York: 
Mouton de Gruyter. 
Walker, Brett L 
1996 "Reappraising the Sakoku Paradigm: The Ezo 
Trade and the Extension of Tokugawa Political 
Space into Hokkaido." Journal of Asian History 30, 
no. 2; 169. 
1997 Matsumae Domain and the Conquest of Ainu Lands: 
Ecology and Culture in Tokugawa Expansionism, 
1593-1799. Ph D. dissertation, Department of 
History, University of Oregon. 
Warthol, Walter 
1993 "Ainu Collections at the Museum of Ethnology 
(Museum fiir Volkerkunde, Wien)." In European 
Studies on Ainu Language and Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 
193-206. Monographien 6 aus dem Deutschen 
Institut fur Japanstudien der Philipp-Franz-von- 
Siebold-Stiftung. Munich: ludicium-Verlag. 
Watanabe, Hitoshi 
1963 "Ainu no nawabari toshiteno sake no 
sanrankuiki" (Spawning grounds of dog salmon 
and the Ainu local group territories). In 
Minzokugaku nolo. Oka Masao Kyoju kanreki kitten 
ronbunshu (Writing on anthropology: Professor 
Oka Masao papers published on his 60th 
birthday), 278-98. Tokyo: Heibonsha. 
1964a "Ainu no seitai to honpo senshigaku mondai" 
(Ecology of the Ainu and problems in prehistory 
in Japan). Jinruigaku Zasshi 72, no. 1: 9-23. 
1964b "Ainu no kumamatsuri no shakaiteki kino 
narabini sono hatten ni kansuru seitaiteki yoin" 
(Social functions of the Ainu bear ceremony and 
ecological factors for its development). 
Minzokugaku Kenkyu 29, no. 3: 206-17. 
1968 "Subsistence and Ecology of Northern Food 
Gatherers with Special Reference to the Ainu." 
In Man the Hunter, ed. Richard B. Lee and Irven 
DeVore, 69-77. Chicago: Aldine. 
1972 "The Source of Ainu Culture: Especially its 
Relationship with the Okhotsk Culture" (in 
Japanese). Kokogaku Zasshi 60, no. 1: 72-82. 
1973 The Ainu Ecosystem: Environment and Group Structure. 
Seattle: University of Washington Press. 
1980 "Okunai seikatsu kukan no sei/zoku (otoko/ 
onna) nibunseia: Hokkaido senshi bunka to Ainu 
bunnka no kankei ni tsuiteno dozoku- 
kokogakuteki mondaiten" (Spiritual/secular: Man/ 
woman division system of indoor living space: 
Folklore and archaeological problems concerning 
the relationship between Hokkaido prehistoric 
and Ainu cultures). In Raitokoro-gawa Iseki 
(Raitokoro remains), ed. Tokyo Daigaku Bunga- 
kubu, 85-97. Tokyo: Tokyo University Press. 
1983 "Occupational Differentiation and Social 
Stratification: The Case of Northern Pacific 
Maritime Food-Gathering." Current Anthropology 
24, no, 2: 217-19. 
1986 "Implementation of Primitive Agriculture: 
Community Habitation and Food Gathering in 
Prehistoric Japan." In Windows on the Japanese Past: 
Studies in Archaeology and Prehistory, ed. Richard J. 
Pearson, 229-54. Ann Arbor: Center for 
Japanese Studies, University of Michigan. 
1990a "Hoppo shuryosaishumin no seizan shinko: Ainu 
o chushin tosuru kinoteki gaikan" (Hunter- 
gatherers’ belief in sacred mountains and its 
ritual function among the Ainu). Hoppo sbobunka 
ni kansuru bikaku kenkyu (A comparative study of 
northern cultures), ed. Yoshinobu Kotani, 237- 
79. Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku Kyoyobu. 
1990b Jomon-shiki kaisoka shakai (jomon stratified 
society). Tokyo: Rokko Shuppan. 
1992 "Hokuyo engan bunkken: Shuryo-saishu min 
bunnka no kyotsusei to sono kaishaku mondai" 
(Northern sea-coastal cultural zone: Common 
elements of hunter-gatherer cultures and 
problems in interpretation). In Kitano gengo 
Ruikei to rekishi (Languages of the North. 
Classification and history), ed. Hakuto 
Miyaoka, 67-107. Tokyo: Sanseido. 
Watanabe, Yu 
1992 "Ainu no kaijyu shuryo" (Sea-mammal hunting 
by the Ainu). Hokkaidoritsu Hokuho Minzoku 
Hakubutsukan Kenkyu Kiyo, no. 1. 
West, Frederick Hadleigh (ed.) 
1996 American Beginnings: The Prehistory and Palaeoecology of 
Beringia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
White, Richard 
1983 The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and 
Social Change among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and 
Navajos. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 
Wilkinson, Jane 
1993 "A Scottish Doctor's Vocation: Gordon Munro 
and the Ainu Collections at the National 
Museums of Scotland." In European Studies on Ainu 
Language and Culture, ed. Josef Kreiner, 153-66. 
Monographien 6 aus dem Deutschen Institut fur 
Japanstudien der Philipp-Franz-von-Siebold- 
Stiftung. Munich: ludicium-Verlag. 
Yamada, Hidezo 
1983 Ainugo cbimei no kenkyu (Study of Ainu place-names). 
Yamada Hidezo chosakttshu 4 (Collected works of 
Hidezo Yamada, vol. 4). Tokyo: Sofukan. 
1984 Hokkaido no cbimei (Place-names in Hokkaido). 
Sapporo: Hokkaido Shinbunsha. 
Yamada, Takako, and Takashi Irimoto (eds.) 
1997 Circumpolar Animism and Shamanism. Sapporo: 
Hokkaido Daigaku. 
Yamagishi, Norifumi 
1996 "Ezochi yakubutsu shi" (History of drugs in 
Ezo). In Hokkaido no iryo. Sono ayumi (Medical 
treatment in Hokkaido: Its history), ed Nihon 
Ishigaku Kenkyukai, 82-85. Sapporo: Hokkaido 
Ishigaku Kenkyukai. 
Yamaguchi, Bin 
1962 "On the Ainu" (in Japanese). Bulletin of the Kushiro 
Museum 130: 71. 
1967 A Comparative Osteological Study of the Ainu and the 
Australian Aborigines. Human Biology series, no. 2, 
Australian Aboriginal Studies, no. 10. Canberra: 
Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. 
1973 "Ainu oyobi Nihonjin zugaino ganmen heitando 
keisoku” (Facial flatness and measurements of 
Ainu and Japanese crania). Bulletin of the National 
Science Museum 16: 161-71. 
1981 "Hokkaido no kojinkotsu" (Human skeletal 
remains in Hokkaido). In Nihonjin (The 
Japanese, vol. 1), ed. Tamotsu Ogata, 137-56. 
Junruigaku koza. Tokyo. Yuzankaku. 
Yamaguchi, Bin, Hajime Ishida, and H. Matsumura 
1993 "On the Skeletal Remains of Kurile Ainu 
Collected by the Late Kingo Hayashi." Memoirs 
of the National Science Museum 26: 151-69. 
Yamakawa, Tsutomu 
1980 Ainu minzoku bunkasbi eno shiron (An essay on Ainu 
cultural history) Tokyo: Miraisha. 
1988 Ash o tsukuru Ainu minzoku (The Ainu and their 
future). Tokyo: Miraisha. 
Yamamoto, Yuko 
1943 Karafuto Ainu nojukyo (Dwellings of the 
Sakhalin Ainu). Kenchiku shinsho 10. 
Tokyo: Sagami Shobo. 
1944 Karafuto shizen minzoku no seikatsu (Aboriginal life 
of Sakhalin Island). Tokyo: Sagami Shobo. 
Yamaura, Kiyoshi 
1980 "On the Relationships of the Toggle Harpoon 
Heads Discovered on the Northwestern Shore 
of the Pacific." Material Culture 35: 1-19. 
1993 "Harpoon Heads of the Circum-Okhotsk Sea." 
Hokkaido Archaeology 29: 9-20. 
1998 "Sea-Mammal Hunting Cultures of the Okhotsk 
Sea with Special Reference to Hokkaido 
Prehistory." Arctic Anthropology 35, no. 1 321-34. 
Yasumoto, Biten 
1972 "Nihongo no tanjo" (The birth of the Japanese 
language). Sun Kagaku (February-October). 
1985 Nihongo no kigen o saguru (Searching for the origin 
of the Japanese language). Tokyo: PHP 
Institute. 
Yokoyama, Eisuke 
1990 Satsumon bunka (Satsumon culture). Tokyo: Nyu 
Saiensu Sha. 
Yoneda, Hideki (ed.) 
1993 Gendai no Ainu mokucbo bunkaten 1993 (The 
Contemporary Ainu Woodcarving Exhibition, 
1993). Piratori: Nibutani Ainu Bunka 
Hakubutsukan. 
Yotsuji, Ichiro 
1981 Ainu no mon'yo (Ainu design motifs).Tokyo: 
Kasakura Shuppansha. 
Yuki, Shoji 
1980 Ainu sengen (The Ainu manifesto). Tokyo: 
San'ichi Shobo. 
Zelenin, Dmitrii K. 
1936 "Kult ongonov v Sibiri: perezhitki totemizma v 
ideologii sibirskikh narodov" (The cult of the 
ongons in Siberia: Survivals of totemism in 
ideology of the native Siberians). Trudy Institute/ 
Antropologii, Arkbeologii i Etnografii 14, no. 3. 
404 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
Credits Object Ownership Ownership or custodial authority for objects and materials illustrated in 
this book is indicated, where appropriate, in 
parentheses at the end of each caption entry. 
Abbreviations used in this book are listed here 
in alphabetical order: ACM, Asahikawa City 
Museum, AMMCA, Ainu Memorial Museum at 
Chikabumi, Asahikawa,- AMNH, American 
Museum of Natural History, AMS, Ainu 
Museum at Shiraoi; BMA, Brooklyn Museum of 
Art, BMS, Buffalo Museum of Science,- BMV, 
Berlin Museum fiir Volkerkunde,- FMC, Field 
Museum of Natural History, HACRC, 
Hokkaido Ainu Culture Research Center,- 
HACRIC, Hokkaido Archaeological and 
Cultural Remains Investigation Center, 
Sapporo,- HAMA, Hokkaido Asahikawa 
Museum of Art,- HSKC, Hokkaido Shuppan 
Kikaku Center HMCAS, Hokkaido Museum of 
Contemporary Art, Sapporo,- HMH, Historical 
Museum of Hokkaido, HML, Hakodate 
Municipal Library, HMM, Hakodate Municipal 
Museum, HOVO, Hokkaido Otoineppu Village 
Office,- HPGBE, Hokkaido Prefectural 
Government Board of Education, Sapporo,- 
HUL Hokkaido Llniversity Library, Sapporo, 
KM, Kitanihon Mingeisha Company, Ltd., 
Sapporo,- MIHPP, Museum of the Institute of 
History, Philosophy, and Philology, Novosibirsk, 
MKB, Museum der Kulturen, Basel,- MPM 
Milwaukee Public Museum,- NACM, Nibutani 
Amu Culture Museum, NME, National Museum 
of Ethnology, Osaka, NMNH, National 
Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian 
Institution, NPS/LNHS, National Park Service, 
Longfellow National Historic Site, Cambridge, 
Massachusetts, PEM, Peabody Essex Museum, 
PMC, Peabody Museum of Harvard Llniver¬ 
sity, ROM, Royal Ontario Museum UML, 
University of Massachusetts W. E. B. DuBois 
Library,- SOTD, Sapporo Otani Tanki 
Daigaku, UA/UAFM, Llniversity of Alaska 
Museum, Fairbanks,- L1PM, Llniversity of 
Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and 
Anthropology, RTBE, Rausu Town Board of 
Education, SC, Sankyo Company,- SKRM, 
Sakhalin Regional Museum, Yuzhno- 
Sakhalinsk, SM, Shin Mouri,- TNM, Tokyo 
National Museum, UMA, University of 
Massachusetts Archive,- WMCR Whyte 
Museum of the Canadian Rockies. 
Maps and graphics: Maps and graphics were 
produced or adapted by Marcia Bakry of the 
Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural 
History from authors' drafts, originals, or 
published materials. 
Reprints: We thank Princeton Llniversity Press 
for permission to reprint the excerpt (p. 28 1) 
from Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans by Donald 
Philippi (1979). 
Object Photographs Llnless otherwise 
credited, photographs of objects from the 
American Museum of Natural History, New 
York (AMNH), the Brooklyn Museum of Art 
(BMA), Buffalo Museum of Science (BMS), and 
the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) were 
taken by Susan Einstein,- photographs of 
objects from the Field Museum of Natural 
History, Chicago (FMC) and the National 
Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. 
(NMNH) were taken by Dana Levy. Photo¬ 
graphs of objects from all remaining North 
American institutions were taken by their 
respective photographic departments: 
American Museum of Natural History by Jackie 
Beckett,- Harvard University Peabody Museum 
by Hillel Burger,- Peabody Essex Museum by 
Mark Sexton and Jeffrey Dykes,- Llniversity of 
Pennsylvania Museum by Charles S. Kline,- and 
Royal Ontario Museum. Except as noted below, 
all photographs of objects from Japanese 
institutions and collections were taken by the 
respective organizations and/or individuals. 
Ethnographic Photographs: Unless otherwise 
noted, ethnographic field photographs are from 
the Bronislaw Pilsudski (1902-05), Romyn 
Hitchcock (1888), Carleton Coon (containing 
Jesse Tarbox Beals photographs of Ainu at the 
St. Louis Exposition in 1904), and Sister Inez 
Hilger (1965) collections in the National 
Anthropological Archives (NMNH), 
Smithsonian Institution 
Ainu-e Illustrations: Photographs of all Ainu-e 
illustrations except those owned by the National 
Museum of Natural History and the Peabody 
Essex Museum were taken by Susumu Tameoka 
of the Historical Museum of Hokkaido. 
Other Credits: Credits to individuals or 
organizations for photographs taken, materials 
produced or provided, and other courtesies 
proffered in the production of this book are 
listed below alphabetically with pertinent 
figure numbers: 
Ainu Association of Hokkaido: 7.3 (Shizunai 
Branch), 14.1,49.2, 50.1, 51.2 
Ainu Museum at Shiraoi: 1.31, 24.1-6,- 30.2, 
31.1-2, 31.5, 31.7, 31.10-1 1, 35.6, 35.11-12, 
35.14, 37.7, 38.3, 38.6, 38.9, 38.15, 41.7, 
44.3, - see also Kodama AMS illustrations. 
American Museum of Natural History Archives: 
15.3, 22.1-2 (courtesy of Ann Wright Parsons) 
Asahikawa City Museum: 23.1, 23.5-6, 23.8-9, 
47.4-6 
Ted Banks III, Museum der Kulturen, Basel, 
Carl Schuster Archive, courtesy of Edmund 
Carpenter: 26.1,35.1 
Jesse Tarbox Beals: 1.16, 18.4-7, 44.1 
Felice Beato, courtesy of Fong Chow: 27.2 
Berlin Museum fiir Volkerkunde: 43.4 
Brooklyn Museum of Art Archives: 9.5, 20.1-2 
Anatoli Derevianko: 4.7 
Koji Deriha: 23.2-4, 23.7 
Harold Dougherty, SI Photographic Services: 
405 
David Dubreuil: 15.1, 47.17, 47.21, 47.28, 49.4 
Brian Fagan: 5.2 
William W Fitzhugh: 1.2, 1.8, 1.23, 1.26, 6.2, 
1 1.5, 24.7 
Mie Haginaka: 14.3 
Hakodate Municipal Library: for providing 
many Ainu-e illustrations 
Hakodate Municipal Museum: 9.4 
Harold Dougherty, Carl Hansen, Don 
Hurlbert, and Laurie Penland (SI Photo¬ 
graphic Services), courtesy of Valerie Shubin 
and Olga A. Shubina of SK.RM: 4.3-4, 4.10 
Sister Inez HiIger (note: Hilger Collection 
photographs were largely taken by photogra¬ 
phers who accompanied Sister Hilger during 
her travels in Hokkaido, including some who 
worked for National Geographic magazine and 
Japanese photographers,- attributions for 
specific photographs are not given in the 
Hilger papers in the NAA): 1 1.1, 26.7, 41.8, 
48.2, 48.5, 49.3, 50.2-3, 51 I, 52.2, 55.5 
kumo Hirashima: 55.2 
Historical Museum of Hokkaido: in addition to 
Ainu-e photographed by Susumu Tameoka, 
HMH archaeological objects were photo¬ 
graphed by Susumu Tameoka (Chapters 3,4) 
and ethnographic photographs were made by 
Koji Deriha (23.2-4, 23.7),- 32.1, 36.3, 42.1 
Hokkaido Ainu Culture Research Center: 28.4 
Hokkaido Asahikawa Museum of Art: 47.27 
Hokkaido Shuppan Kikaku Center: 47.33, 
47.37, 47.36 
Hokkaido Shinbun; 14.5—6,47.23 
Hokkaido University Library, Sapporo: 8.2, 41.4 
Human Studies Film Archive, NAA, NMNH/ 
SI: 25.1-2 
Hajime Ishida: 5.5 
Cenichiro Kakegawa: 55.1 
Adria Katz: 21.3 
Noriko Kawamura: 47.29-32 
Shigeru Kayano-. 43.4 
Isao Kikuchi: 8.1 
Toshihiko Kikuchi: 4.2 
Masako Kinoshita: 55.3 
Dai Kitagawa: 48.1, 48.3-4, 52.1 
Tetsuo Kitaichi: 31.1 
Yoshikazu and Michi Kitao: 1 19, 2.10, 9.36, 
15.4, 42.14, 45.29 
Motomichi Kono: 15.2 
Josef Kreiner: 16.1-5, 16.7-10 
Kyoryokukai: The Corporation in Aid of the 
Tokyo National Museum Management: 43.4 
Kodanta Collection, Ainu Museum at Shiraoi: 
6.6, 10.3, 13.2, 32.5, 34.6, 38.6, 45.3, 45.5d, 
45.8, 45.9-1 1,45.13-15, 45.19-20, 45.28, 
45.34 
Library of Congress, Kimbei photograph, Lot 
12548: 27.5 
Stephen Loring: 49.6 
Yonu Makino, courtesy of Fosco Maraini 46.14 
Fosco Maraini: 1.1 3, 46.2, 46.48, 46.10-12, 
46.14 
Kitamhon Mingeisha: 47.3, 47.10, 47.14, 
47.16, 47.26 
Shin Mouri: 11.4 
Miyuki Muraki: 34.6 
Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, St. 
Petersburg, Russia: 1.23, 1.26, 17.1-3 
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sapporo: 47.18, 
47.24-25 
National Museum of Natural History 
(Smithsonian) Botany Library: 29.17 
National Park Service, Henry Wadsworth 
Longfellow National Historic Site: 8.3, 10.6, 
29.2 
Masahiro Nomoto: 55.4 
Kazuyoshi Ohtsuka: 1.18, 11.2, 11.3,53.1—3 
Yugo Ono: 2.1-3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6-7, 2.9, 2.11,2.12 
Otoineppu Village Office, Hokkaido: 1.19, 
47.15, 47.19, 47.22 
P. Pantzer: 16.7 
Princeton University Press: 40.2, courtesy of 
the Kubodera family 
Royal Ontario Museum: 1.20 
Douglas Sanders: 47.20 
Sankyo Company: 47.34-35 
Shiro Sasaki: 10.1-2 
Mary Schaffer: 45.16 
Richard Siddle: 7.5, 7.6, 7.7 
Frederick Starr: 18.3 (courtesy of Y. Kotani 
and University of Oregon Library) 
Sekiguchi Tadashi: 16.4 
Suzuko Tamura: 6 1,6.4 
Kazunon Tarumi: 47.1 3 
Hiroshi Tateno: 1.30, 30.7, 47.9, 47.11,47.12 
Tokyo National Museum: 9.1-3, 9.6, 43.5 
Hiroaki Tsuda: 42.14 
Nobuko Tsuda: 44.5, 44.7 
Christy G. Turner IF 5.3, 5.4 
Llmted Nations (UN/DPI) photo 182264 by 
E Debebe: 49.1 
Llniversity of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, 
courtesy of Molly Lee: 43.8 
Llniversity of Massachusetts, Special Collec¬ 
tions and Archives, W. E. B. DuBois Library, 
Benjamin Smith Lyman Papers: 14.4, 27.1-2 
Llniversity of Oregon Library Archives, 
courtesy of Y. Kotani: 18.3 
Llniversity of Pennsylvania Museum of 
Archaeology and Anthropology Archives: 
21.1-2, 21.5-7, 31.3, 31.10, 45.12, 45.16 
Hitoshi Watanabe: 27.4 
Hideki Yoneda: 49.5, 54.1-2 
Washington Evening Star: 114 
(The assistance of Keith Ward in compiling 
this list is much appreciated.) 
406 
Acknowledgments Exhibitions, like human lives, have special meaning and special histories. They are born of dreams, take inspiration from their surroundings, and in the process of becoming what they will 
be, they develop new voices and goals, sometimes surprising their parents and sponsors. Aitnt: 
Spirit of a Northern People is no exception. The exhibition and this catalogue are as different from its 
original concept as a butterfly from its pupa. As tempting as it is to provide a project history, that 
shall have to await another venue. Here we must be limited to a roll call of thanks to the many 
organizations and individuals whose efforts and assistance made this project possible. 
At the outset we wish to thank those who contributed in many ways, large and small: the 
many Ainu people who provided hospitality, assistance, and ideas to Chisato and David Dubreuil 
in their several planning trips to Hokkaido,- to Japanese and American scholars who participated 
in exchange visits to Japan and the United States in the mid-1990s,- to those organizations that 
supported the Japanese Ainu Collection Documentation Project (ACDP) Teams research 
programs in Europe, North America, and Russia,- Smithsonian employees who provided logistic 
and administrative support throughout this venture,- and many others too numerous to name 
As reported elsewhere in this volume, this project grew out of discussions between 
Yoshinobu Kotani and William Fitzhugh in 1991 when the Japanese ACDP was conducting an 
inventory of Ainu collections in North American museums, expanding upon previous research of 
the Smithsonian's collections conducted by Kazuyoshi Ohtsuka and Chang-su Houchins a few 
years earlier. The idea of drawing together these little-known North American Ainu resources was 
further developed by Kotani and members of the ACDP team with Amy Poster (Brooklyn 
Museum of Art), Laurel Kendall (American Museum of Natural History), Stephen Loring (Arctic 
Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution), and Adria Katz (University of Pennsylvania Museum). 
Major progress was made in 1992 when Kotani invited Fitzhugh to Japan to inspect collections at 
Tokyo National Museum, Historical Museum of Hokkaido, and other institutions. Further 
progress came with Fitzhugh's visit to Abashin in the fall of 1992, with Koji Deriha's studies at the 
Smithsonian Institution, American Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and 
University of Pennsylvania Museum in 1993 and 1994, and with Ainu Collection Documentation 
Project meetings and seminars that took place in Washington, New York, and Philadelphia in 
1994 and 1995. Throughout our planning, the staffs of these four museums bore the burden of 
hosting our work and later provided staff time for the processing, conservation, and photography 
of ethnographic objects. Other North American museums who participated in this project include 
Buffalo Museum of Science, Field Museum of Natural History, Milwaukee Public Museum, 
Peabody Essex Museum, and Peabody Museum of Harvard University. We thank these institutions 
and their staffs for their great contributions to the project, foremost being their generous object 
and archival loans. We also thank the Ainu and Japanese museums and private collectors from 
Japan for their most valuable contributions, without their objects and archival materials the "Ainu 
story" would not be complete. They include Asahikawa City Museum, Ainu Museum at Shiraoi, 
Hokkaido Ainu Cultural Research Center, Hokkaido Archaeological and Cultural Remains 
Investigation Center in Sapporo, Hokkaido Asahikawa Museum of Art, Hokkaido Shuppan 
Kikaku Center, Hokkaido Museum of Contemporary Art in Sapporo, Historical Museum of 
Hokkaido, Hakodate Municipal Library in Sapporo, Hakodate Municipal Museum, Hokkaido 
Otoineppu Village Office, Hokkaido Prefectural Government Board of Education in Sapporo, 
Hokkaido University Library in Sapporo, Kitanihon Mingeisha Company, Ltd., of Sapporo, 
Noriko Kawamura, Yoshikazu and Michi Kitao, National Museum of Ethnology, Mr. Shm Mouri, 
Nibutani Amu Culture Museum, Rausu Town Board of Education, Sankyo Company, Sapporo 
Otani Tanki Daigaku, Chinita Sunazawa, and Tokyo National Museum. Other international 
museums and institutions that provided collections, archival materials, or information include 
Berlin Museum fur Volkerkunde, Museum of History, Philosophy, and Philology in Novosibirsk, 
Museum der Kulturen in Basel, Longfellow National Historic Site (Cambridge, Massachusetts) of 
the United States National Park Service, University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, Sakhalin 
Regional Museum in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. 
In addition to support provided to our Japanese colleagues by grants from the Monbusho 
and other organizations and by our early Smithsonian sponsor, the Special Exhibition Fund (with 
special thanks to Barbara Schneider), our primary project support came from The Nippon 
Foundation in Tokyo. To Ms. Ayako Sono, Executive Director, and Mr. Yohei Sasakawa, 
President, and Mr.Takashi Ito and Mr. Yasunobu Ishii of the Nippon Foundation we owe a great 
debt of gratitude for their early recognition of the worth of our efforts. Tyane C. Benson was 
instrumental in helping us to gain initial access to the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Washington, 
D C., a subsidiary of The Nippon Foundation in Tokyo. Important project support was also 
provided by The Japan Foundation through the assistance of Hayato Ogo, Councilor, Triennale 
Planning Office, Arts Department., Tokyo office in the Foundation's New York office, Natsuo 
Amemiya, Former Director, Masaya Usuda, Director General,- Michiko Hirano, Assistant 
Director,- and Christopher A. Watanabe, Program Assistant. From Nippon Express Co., Ltd., we 
thank Kazuyoshi Takahashi, Advisor, Fine Arts Groups, and Satoru Ishii, Manager, Sapporo Fine 
Arts Center. We received generous transportation support from All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd. 
(ANA). From the ANA staff we thank Takeshi Muto, Deputy General Manager, Sapporo Sales 
Office,- Yoshiyuki Fukumuro, Senior Manager, Cargo and Mail Sales, Sapporo Sales Office,- and 
407 
Shigeyuki Takemura, Manager, Passenger Sales, Washington, D.C. office. We also thank British 
Airways, as well as Ralph Samuelson, Director, and Sarah Bradley, Associate Director, of the Asian 
Cultural Council in New York for their assistance in bringing Masahiro Nomoto to the 
Smithsonian for exhibition production and curatorial assistance. 
Valuable services were also provided to the exhibition and the publication by Karoku Miwa, 
Former Councilor on Cultural Properties, Cultural Properties Protection Department, Akio 
Oshima, Investigator for Cultural Properties, Cultural Properties Protection Department, Tatsuo 
Kishi, Coordinator for International Cooperation for Cultural Properties, Cultural Properties 
Protection Office,- and Kiyohito Ueno, Specialist on Cultural Properties, Cultural Properties 
Protection Department of the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan (Bunka-cho). We also thank 
Satoru Shirano, Naotoshi Kimura, and Yoshihito Oda from the Cultural Division, Board of 
Education of Hokkaido Prefectural Government, as well as Jiro Sasamura, Executive Director, 
Takeshi Toyama, Secretary General, Yukio Sato, Deputy Secretary General, and the staff of Utari 
Kyokai, The Ainu Association of Hokkaido. Kazuyuki Tanimoto, Director, and the staff of the 
Ainu Culture Research Center in Hokkaido, provided assistance in Ainu culture research and 
object loans of contemporary fine art. Equally important was the staff of the Historical Museum of 
Hokkaido: Kazuo Yoshida, Director, Norio Mino, Director of the Curatorial Department, Hiroshi 
Ushiro, Hideshi Seki, and Susumu Tameoka. Hiroko Tani, Director, Cultural Promotion Depart¬ 
ment, City of Sapporo,- Tekeshi Asaji, Head of Curatorial Section, Osaka Human Rights Museum,- 
Giichi Nomura, Executive Director, and Tadashi Takahashi, The Association for the Transmission 
and Maintenance of Ainu Intangible Culture,- Minoru Mark Furuyama, General Manager, Sasakawa 
Peace Foundation USA, and Mark J. Davidson, former Director, Sapporo American Center, United 
States Information Services. 
Special thanks are due to Dr. Eric J. Gangloff, Executive Director, and Margaret P. Mihori, 
Program Officer of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission,- The Nippon Foundation,- and 
The Japan Foundation for financial assistance specifically devoted to the production of this 
catalogue. Special thanks also go to Mr. Kazuyuki Yamamaru, The Ainu Museum, Shiraoi, 
Hokkaido, for his extremely valuable support which enabled Masahiro Nomoto to come to 
Washington, D.C. to work on the exhibition at the Smithsonian's Office of Exhibits Central. The 
staff of the Office of Exhibits Central, under the direction of Michael Headley, are an incredibly 
talented group of artists who produced the exhibition's fine chise (dwelling), iyomank (bear 
ceremony), and itaomachip (boat) re-creations with the assistance of Masahiro Nomoto, Jonathan 
Zastrow, Carolyn Thome, Lora Collins, Carol Reuter, Danny Fielding, John Siske, Paul Rhymer, 
Tim Smith, Robert Patterson, Rob Wilcox, Victor Augustine, Hugh Bennett, Sarah Strachan, Pat 
Chirichella, David Clements, Robert Perantoni, William Walton, James Carr, and Harry Adams. 
Our heartfelt thanks go to the authors who contributed essays to this catalogue. We wish 
especially to thank Nobuhiro Kishigami, Shinko Ogihara, Kazuo Okada, Hiroshi Ushiro, and 
Kiyoshi Yamaura. In addition, we want to recognize the very valuable assistance of the Ainu 
people, who were extremely helpful, including G iichi Nomura, Jiro Sasamura, Shigeru Kayano, 
Shiro Kayano, Kenichi Kawanuira, Mitsuru Sugimura, Fusa Sugimura, Akira Toko, Emi Toko, 
Fukiko Toko, Midori Toko, Kazuo Sunazawa, Toyojiro Shitaku, Kiyoshi Hikawa, Kenji Matsuda, 
Koichi Kaizawa, Mamoru Kaizawa, Maki Kaizawa, Kaoru Kaizawa, Katsue Kaizawa, Soshichi 
Kawanano, Kyoko Kosaka, Machiko Kato, Sanae Ogawa, Hitomi Yokoyama, Mutsumi Chiri, 
Nuburi Toko, Imakichi Akibe, Susumu Sawai, Shigeko Teshi, Akira Toko, Masao Nishida, 
Torakichi Shimizu, Ichiro Sasamura, Noboru Ozeki, Tsuda Ozeki, Tomeno Sawai, Hiroaki Honda, 
Tomoko Oda, Tadashi Hiroo, Morio Senke, Mutsuko Nakamoto, Tokuhei Akibe, Takakichi 
Ogawa, Aku Sawai, Susumu Sawai, Harumitsu Sawai, Yoshizi Ishii, Haruzo Akita, Oki Kano, and 
Mitsunori and Tomoko Keira, and special recognition to the Ainu artists who loaned their artwork: 
Takeki Fujito, Kazuo Sunazawa, Noriko Kawamura, and Chinita Sunazawa. We must also mention 
Makoto Kawakami from Otoineppu, Hokkaido, who helped us obtain the loan of most of Bikky 
Sunazawa's artworks,- Katsumi Yazaki, Motoko and Si Spiegel,- Fong Chow,- Jim Shea of the 
National Park Service's Longfellow National Historic Site,- Yoshiko Tanigaki and the Japanese 
Group in Buffalo,- Hideki Yoneda of the Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum,- Yuichi Uchida, Associate 
Curator at the Obihiro Centennial City Museum,- Yutaka Watanabe, Curator, and Reiko Saito, 
Assistant Curator, of the Hokkaido Museum of Northern Peoples, Tsukasa Ejiri and Yosuke Kosaka 
of Hokkaido Shimbun,- Makoto and Itsuko Ishihara of Sapporo-do Shoten,- Liz Hill, publicist,- Verna 
Curtis, Curator of Photography, Library of Congress,- Shigehiro and Keiko Takano,- Takao 
Yokoyama,- Yasuhiro Murai,- Motomichi Kono,- Shinobu Ishijima,- Miwako Kaizawa,- and Masayuki 
and Chieko Inoue. 
Marc Pachter and Smithsonian Secretary Michael Heyman provided crucial assistance at 
several stages in our negotiations with Japanese authorities. Above all, we thank the Smithsonian's 
coordinator in Tokyo, Hanako Matano, for her role as "mother hen" to the Japanese side of our 
project, Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People could not have been "hatched" without her deft touch. It was 
through her efforts that we were able to work so effectively with Mr. Karoku Miwa, former councilor 
for Cultural Properties at the Bunka-cho,- Mr. Kazuyoshi Takahashi and Mr. Satoru Ishii at Nippon 
Express,- and Dr. Makoto Sahara of the Japanese Museum of History, Sakura. 
Many aspects of this book were facilitated by the team that produced the exhibition, 
408 
including Robert M. Malootian and Leslie Geer of tire Douglas/Gallagher design firm, writer Sue 
Voss, registrar Deborah A. Wood, and conservator Edith Dietz. Support from the National 
Museum of Natural History collection and administration programs came from Deborah Hull - 
Walski, Greta Hansen, Dennis Stanford, Carolyn Rose, Carole Lee Kin, Joyce Somers, Kim 
Waters, and Zaborian Payne. Jodi Pettibone provided financial accountability for our funds 
David Dubreuil, John Homiak, Paula Fleming, Gayle Yiotis, and Ruth Selig helped us obtain 
photographs from the National Anthropological Archives, and Mark White and Daisy Njokti 
helped us acquire archival footage. Maggie Dittemore and Carole Slatick provided library 
support, and the Applied Data Processing Office—Richard Freeman, Kurt Luginbyhl, Kurt 
Bruwelheide, and Robert Milo—solved frequent computer crises. Arctic Studies staff members 
were everywhere heaving on the Ainu "windlass": Stephen Loring, Igor Krupnik, Carla Lovett, 
and Daniel Odess, but no one more than Elisabeth Ward, who oversaw much of the archival 
photograph selection and production for the exhibition, performed miracles with computer 
support and bibliographic compilation, and generally held the ASC together during this period 
The two films for the exhibition were produced by Jennifer Gruber and Tod Hopkins of 
Hillmann & Carr, Inc., and Ted Timreck Productions. Those who contributed film and music for 
the productions include Toei Video Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Hokkaido Broadcasting, Co., Ltd., 
Sapporo, Yay Yukar no Mori, Sapporo, and NMNH, Smithsonian Institution. Music was 
provided by Oki Kano and Katayama Institute of Linguistic and Cultural Research, and still 
photographs were provided by David H Dubreuil 
Curatorial assistance was provided by the many scholars already mentioned, but especially 
by Adria Katz, Laurel Kendall, and Amy Poster, who were our principal museum partners and 
advisors in the early stage of the project, along with Josef Kreiner, Yoshinobu Kotani, and 
Toshikazu Sasaki Entiko Ohnuki-Tierney provided ethnological advice in early conceptual 
development,- David Dubreuil, David Howell, Richard Siddle, and Kelly Dietz advised on 
historical matters,- Christy Turner, Douglas Llbelaker, and David Hunt helped with issues of 
biological relationships, Igor Krupnik performed valuable editorial and bibliographical work, 
and Sergei Arutiunov provided depth in anthropological history We would like to recognize 
Chang-su Houchins for her unofficial role as project "godmother" in providing nearly continu¬ 
ous scholarly support, advice, and good humor as we ventured into unfamiliar terrain outside our 
respective fields in arctic anthropology and native art history We thank her and the other 
project scholars who generously and expeditiously provided manuscripts, comments, text 
reviews, and consolation on short notice, including James VanStone To Laurel Kendall and 
Adria Katz we also owe a major debt for their assistance with the development of an early 
version of the exhibition plan 
Book production services included translations provided by Shue Sei, Chisato Dubreuil, 
Ritsuko Howson, and Tetsuro Komatsu, editors Tish O'Connor and Sherri Schottlaender, assisted 
by Brenda Johnson-Grau, brought consistency and stylish grace to this multifaceted manuscript. 
Theresa Valasquez and Darlene Hamilton executed Dana Levy's typography. The bibliography 
was compiled by Chisato Dubreuil, Igor Krupnik, Megumi Lincoln, and Elisabeth Ward, and 
edited by Sherri Schottlaender. Many of the illustrations were drawn or adapted by Marcia Bakry. 
Object photographs were made by Dana Levy and Susan Einstein and by photographers of various 
lenders (see Credit List). Photographic support came from the OPPS/NMNH photo staff: Carl 
Hansen, Victor Krantz, John Steiner, Don Hurlbert, and Harold Dougherty. Felicia Page kept the 
photo files in good order. Sandy Thomas-Belamy negotiated our editorial and design team 
contract,- Karen Goldman helped with the marketing sales contract, and Norma Ryan handled 
Smithsonian sales shop merchandising 
Our final comments are reserved for a group of people so central to the success of the Ainu 
project that they will forever be etched into the walls of our mental "Ainu Project Hall of Fame": 
Marjory Stoller and Joe Madeira, our delightful exhibit production partners, who maintained faith 
in our prospects through thick and thin, Letitia Burns O'Connor and Dana Levy of Perpetua Press, 
Los Angeles, who edited and designed a book so beautiful that it took us all by surprise,- and David 
Dubreuil, a "can-do" guy who during the course of the project, performed nearly every function 
imaginable, from curator to project manager, fund-raiser to popularist, photographer to proofer, 
strategist to catechist, and also posed as one of our exhibition mannequin figures. Another 
mannequin model was Masahiro Nornoto, who with the assistance of Smithsonian's Office of 
Special Exhibits, was the model builder of the itaomachip (seagoing boat), cbise (the full-sized Ainu 
house), a scene from an iyomante (the bear-sending ceremony), and the maw maker. Without his 
artistry, the exhibition would have had much different look. 
Two other people need mentioning: Lynne Fitzhugh, whose tolerance of her husband's 
domestic absence was counterbalanced by her commitment to hospitality and support for our 
overworked Ainu team, and again, David Dubreuil, who left his career to join his wife on her 
vision quest to bring the Ainu to the attention of millions of museum visitors and readers of this 
volume. To everyone: thank you 
409 
Index 
Figures are identified in boldface type by 
page number. 
Only when necessary for identification 
are figure numbers also given 
Figures may be additionally notated as 
"m" for map, and "t" for table. 
Figure captions are included as part of the 
text. 
When both text and figures refer to 
a topic, they are listed separately 
A 
Activism. See Indigenous rights movement 
Adoption, 272 
Agriculture. See Farming, Horticulture 
Ainu-e (Japanese paintings of the Ainu), 1 3, 67, 79-85, at 
Ainu Museum in Shiraoi, 185-186, featured, 79, 80, 
82, 247(34.6), 253(35.12), 302(43.3), 375. Set also 
by artist (Arai, Hakuseki, Chitei, Hata no, Hirasawa, 
Byozan, Kakizaki, Hakyo; Kodama, Teiryo,- Mamiya, 
Rinzo, Murakami, Shimanojo,- Nishikawa, Hokuyo, and 
others) 
Ainu ethnicity, 9-12, 19-21, 136,• "enigma" of, 13-16,- as 
a Northern people (ethnological comparisons), 23—24, 
47-51, 116-123. See also Ainu origins, Linguistic 
origins 
Ainu history. See History of the Ainu 
Ainu Kyokai, 73, 109, 111. See also Utari Kyokai 
Amu language. See Language 
Ainu Liberation League (Ainu Kaiho Domei), 1 13 
Ainu Manners and Customs (Nishikawa), I 56(20.4), 
207(28.13), 210, 237(32.8), 238(32.9-10), 
250(35.4) 
Amu mosir (homeland), 67, 69,72,92, 110, 114-115,227, 
369, land claims to, 367. See also Hokkaido, Kurile 
Islands, Sakhalin Island 
Ainu Museum in Shiraoi, 26, 94, 183, 183-186, 223,233 
Ainu origins: biological data, 52, craniological studies, 
31, dental studies, 31,53-54, 54, 55; genetic and 
morphological data, 52-54, 55-56, 56 
-theories and models, 17-18, 29-31, 39, the Ainu 
"race" theory, 52-53, Caucasoid hypothesis, 14-15, 
15, 29-30, 53, 56, 61, 127, 137-138, 168, dual 
structure model, 29, 55,- Jomon-Ainu relation, 30-31, 
35-36, 53-56, Mongoloid cluster model, 53—55, 
northern origins view, 47-51, 53-55 (Sec also 
Northwest Coast peoples),- proto-Australoid 
hypothesis, 31, race and evolution prevailing views 
affecting, 52-53, 127,- southern origins view, 30. See 
also Biological data on Ainu origins, Geographical 
distribution and migrations, Hokkaido archaeology, 
Linguistic origins,- Maps 
Ainu people: as a northern people, 23-24, 47-51, 53-55, 
ethnic groups, 29, 110, 1 19m, 120, 148, 213, 227, 
337-338, 355, 377,- perceptions of, 125-127, 153-154 
(See also Ainu-e; Photographs of Ainu), physical traits, 
14, 17,51,53,77,125, I 40. See also Archaeological 
cultures,- Emishi, Ezo, Hokkaido Ainu, Kurile Ainu, 
Sakhalin Ainu 
Ainurakkur myth, 275-276 
Ainu Shinpo Act of 1997, 10, 25-26, 59, 73, 300, 373,- 
indigenous rights movement for, 115, 361, 366-368, 
370 
Akino, Shigeki, 183-186, 248-255 
Altar (misa), 164, 165, 199, 230, 256—260, 264 
American Indians, 15, 16, 1 16-123, 279 
American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) Ainu 
collection, 168-175 
Amulets, 104, 105, 262, 270, 270(38.6), 310(44.3) 
Amur River, and region, 22-23, 39, 43, 46, 47-51,86, 86 
Amur-Sakhalin expedition, 133 
Ancestors, 268, 275, ancestral grave rights, 1 15 
Ancient Manners and Customs of Ezo, 278 
Animals: in epic stories (yukar), 276-277; stylized images 
of, 12, 224, 332(46.1 2-1 3), paleolithic, 24m, 
sacrifice, 25-26, 241-242, 249, 251,253, 263(37.3), 
spirits of, 21, 24, 36, 39, 43(3.1 1), 93, 187, 199, 200, 
201, 202, 224, 353(47.37) 252 See also hy individual 
species 
Anutari Ainu (We Human Beings), 113 
Aoyagi, Nobukatsu, 175-182 
Arai, Hakuseki, Ezo-shi (Illustrated Gazetteer of Ezo), 79, 80, 
81,82. See also Ainu-e 
Archaeological artifacts, 32, 39, 40, 41, 42-44, 46, 
microlithic, 40, 48, neolithic arrows, 48, 49; tool 
artifacts,48, 49, 51, shell-mound excavations, 52, 18, 
126, 222, silver ornaments, 49, skeletons/skulls, 126, 
165, 257-260, 264 See also Arrows/arrowheads. See also 
Archaeological cultures 
Archaeological cultures, 17, 32-35, 39-46, 302, in 
Hokkaido, 33(2.7)m, 35-36, 39-46, 40(3.2), 48-49, 
150-151, 165, 198, Jomon culture, 17, 18, 33, 40-42, 
46, 123, 222, 303, Kurile Islands, 43-44, Okhotsk 
culture, 18, 23, 43-44, 222, Sakhalin, 40(3.2), 46, 47, 
49, Satsumon culture, 7, 18, 44—45, 205, Yayoi culture, 
1 7(1.1 7), 42-44. See also Ice Age , Paleolithic land 
bridges 
Architecture, domestic. See Chise (house) 
Archival collections. See Museum Ainu Collections 
Arrows/arrowheads: flower arrows (heper-ay), 251(35.8), 
295(42.1 3), 297-298, neolithic, 48, 49, poison 
arrows, 78, 209, 21 1-21 3, 2 I 6(29.1 7-1 8). See also 
Bows,- Quivers 
Arts, 21-23, 181, 287, 299-300, incorporating foreign 
elements ("making them Ainu"), 7, 19, 19-21, 
322(45.23). See also Design elements, Performance 
arts, Textile arts, Woodcamng 
Arts, modern, 227, 339, 352-353, including taboo 
images, 24 See also Fujito, Takeki, Kawamura, Noriko, 
Sunazawa, Bikky, Sunazawa, Chimta 
Arutiunov, Sergei A., 29-31, 132 
Aryan hypothesis. See Caucasoid hypothesis 
Asahikawa, 25, 110, 163m, 190, 337-338 
Assimilation: Ainu early efforts, 73, 109-112, 
government policies, 10, 14,70-73,74, 108, 140-141, 
149, 184, 203. See also Japanese-Ainu relations 
Attush (bark cloth), 16, 133, 152, 289, 317, 323(45.23) 
Austronesian origin theory (linguistic), 64 
Ayus (design motif), 14(1.12), 331(46.10) 
B 
Baba, Osamu Ainu collection, 179-180 
Baelz, Erwin E., 29, 55, 126, 127 
Baskets: archival record, 301-303, 303, basketry 
techniques, 309-310, 311-312, 3 1 2, coiled (tenki), 23, 
134(17.3), 304, 305, 305(43.7), 308, Japanese 
influence on, 306, Kamchadal basketry, 303, 308; 
North Pacific parallels in, I 16, 123, 301, 307-308, 
twined (saramp), 16, 301, 302, 303-305, 305(43.8), 
307-308, 310-31 1, 31 1 
Batchelor, John, 15,29,61, 136(t), 142, 156, Ainu-English- 
Japanese Dictionary, 59, 265, 266, 327, 328, on Ainu 
notions of disease, 103-104, missionary work with 
Ainu, 109, 1 39—140 
Beaded ornaments, 21, 22, 1 39, 158,1 79, 324, 325, 
325 
Beals, Jesse Tarbox, 16, 140, photographs of Ainu, 141, 
142, 241, 309 
Bear (kuma): care of cubs, 248-249, 250, 250,- carvings 
of, 93-94, 273(38.14), 337, 337-339, 339(47.9),- 
deity (kimun-kamuy), 21, 36, 43(3.1 1), 93, 1 87, 199, 
201, 224, 248-250 
Bear hunting, 36(2.8), 200, 201, 209-210, 219 
Bear-sending ceremony. See Iyomante 
Beautiful Japan (film), 187, 188, 188 
Belief system, 228, 235, 328, 380-381, language and, 58, 
North Coast parallels, 123. See also Ceremonies,- 
Religion,- Shamanism; Social structure, Kamuy (spirit 
deities) 
Birdbone artifacts, 46 
Bird, Isabella, 14, 333-334, 336 
Birds: eagle, 266, 340(47.1 I),- owl, 21, 38, 42, 252, 
255; seabird eggs, 213 
Birdskin robe, 3 I 6 
Birth rites, 267-270 
Blood taboos, 244 
Boat building, 235, 374-376 
Boat-launching ceremony (chip-sanke), 356, 357, 362 
Boat (itaomachip), 186(24.7), 374, 375, 376 
Boas, Franz, 1 16, 138, 169-170 
Bone carvings: birdbone, 46, ivory, I 70(22.3), 
293(42.9); whalebone, 224 
Bonn, University of, 128 
Bows, 210(29.4), 212(29) 
410 
Brooklyn Museum of Art (BMA) Ainu collection, 155-161 
Burial customs, 106, 158-159, 269, 272 
c 
Caucasoid hypothesis of Amu origins, 14-15, 15, 29-30, 
53,56,61, 127, 137-138, 168, political uses, 130-131 
Ceramics and pottery, artifacts, 40, 42, 43, 49, 53 
Ceremonial clothing, 239, 319(45.1 6), 322(45.22), 
women's ritual belt, 232, 264-265 
Ceremonial cups (tuki), 21, 77, 178, 182,328(46.3, 
46.5), 329-330 
Ceremonial headdress, men's (sapaunpe), 178, 
295(42.12), 297-298, 323, 325-326 
Ceremonies: and belief system, 194-197, 201, 231, 297, 
blessing ritual, 9(1.2),- chip-sanke (boat launching), 356, 
357, 362,- first salmon ceremony, 24, 36, 36, 118, 119, 
200, 219, 221, 253,- harvest ceremonies, 237, hunting 
rites, 219-220, sake drinking, 21, 135, 77, 178, 182, 
264, 297, 328. See also Festivals,- Sending ceremonies, 
Kamuy (spirit deities) 
Chamberlain, Basil Hall, 62, 65, 142 
Chieftains, 9, 83-84, 287: Ainu-e portraits of (Kakizaki), 
8, 18, 28, 28, 37, 66, 83, 122, 124, 192, 286, 354 
Chikabumi, 163m, 338 
Chikap, Mieko, 1 15 
Childhood, 64, 246-247, 271,288, children's clothing, 
142, 288, 320 
Chinese-Ainu contacts, 68, 75, 87-91,86(10.2),- Qing 
Dynasty, 86-88. See also Santan trade 
Cbip-sanke (boat-launching ceremony), 356, 357, 362 
Chiri, Mashiho: Classified Dictionary of the Ainu, 60, 202,- on 
shamanism, 264-265, 266-267, linguistic studies, 27, 
30, 58, 59, 1 I 1,264,- 
Chin, Yukie: Ainu Sbinyosbu (Collected Songs of Ainu 
Gods), 109 
Cte (house), 7, 129(16.8), 198(27.2), 227-233, 
228, 23 3, directional orientation, 199, 228, modern, 
140, 233 
Chitei, Hata no, Pictorial Biography of Prince Shotoku, 79, 
79-80 
Chitose: archaeological sites, 17, 18, 39, 42, geology of, 
40 
Chokers, 232, 322(45.23), 323(45.25026) 
Clothing, 21, 3 1 3, 313-326, apron, 323(45.24), 323, 
ceremonial, 239, 319(45.1 6), 322(45.22), children's, 
288, 320, leggings, 1 53(19.9), sandals and shoes, 
218(29.22), 221(29.26), sun visor (Sakhalin), 
1 86(24.6), tar (strap), 239, women's ritual belt, 232, 
264-265 See also Headgear,- Ornamentation 
-robes, 3 1 8-3 19, attush (bark cloth), 133,1 52, 
289, 3 1 7, birdskin, 3 1 6, cotton, 1 44-1 45, duckskin, 
3 I 6, Japanese similarity in, 3 1 8(45.8), retarpe (nettle 
fiber), 160-161, 1 72-1 73, 290, sealskin, 320(45.1 7) 
Collections. Sff Museum Ainu collections 
Conflict resolution, 245 
Constructing Cullures Then and Now conference, 1 16 
Crossroads of Continents exhibition, 115, 116 
Culin, Stewart, 136(t), 155, 155-162 
Cultural exchange, 184-185 
Cultural identity, 24-26, 73-73, 95, 109, 287, 372, 380- 
381, preservation of language, 59, 370-373, 373, 
presetvation of culture, 183-186, 285, 381, traditional 
practices and, 26, 69-70, 226, 309. See also Indigenous 
rights movement 
Culture, Ainu, 46, 243-44, 260, decline in (real or 
perceived), 14, 15-16,24,71-73, 101, 140-141,336, 
373,- revitalization of, 25-26, 352-353, 370, 376. See 
also Arts, Belief system, Economy, Language, Life 
cycle,- Social structure, Traditional practices 
Culture hero (oina-kamuy), 261, 265, 275-276, 280 
Curious Sights of Ezo Island (Murakami), 20, 6 1, 77(8.6), 
84,96, 102(13.1), 106(13.7), 194(26.3), 199, 
202(28.3), 207(28.14), 214(29.14), 230-231, 
241(33.3), 243, 250(35.5), 251(35.7), 258, 
272(38.10), 274, 313, 314(45.4), 326(45.33), 330, 
326(45.33), 330. See also Ainu-e 
Dam, Saru River, 37-38, 355-358, 356, 377. See also 
Nibutani 
Dancing, 184-185, 185, 188,281,282, 284-285,- for 
animal spirits, 257, 282, 283-284,- stranded whale 
dance, 223, 223(30.2), 226,- sword dance, 285(41.7) 
Dead spirits, 193-194, 196-197. See also Death,- Kamuy 
(spirit deities) 
Dean, Bashford, 139, 169, 169-174, photographs of 
Ainu, 1 68 
Death: burial customs, 106, 158-159, 269, 272, funeral 
ceremonies, 268-269, 272-273,- spirit at, 193, 196— 
197. See also Dead spirits, Reincarnation 
Death mask, 42 
Deer hunting, 37, 156(20.4), 200, 209(29.3), 210 
Deer-sending ceremonies, 253-254 
Deforestation, 37, 38m, 356 
Deities. See Spirit deities 
Demographic factors. See Population 
Deriha, Koji, 176-182 
Design elements: 13, 143, 118, 153(19.1) 195, 239, 
244(33.8),- 320-321, 321 (45.1 9-20), abstract 
symbols (shiroshi), 332(46.12-1 3), bird images (ayus), 
14(1.12), 331 (46.10); "Escher-like" positive-negative 
image shifting, 23, 318-319, image taboos, 24, 292, 
297, meanings of, 292, 292-293, 293, 294, 295; 
morew or "flaming borders" (spiral designs), 1 7, 22, 
22(1.23, 1.25), 23 See also Textile arts,- Woodcarving 
Diet, early Ainu, 7, 36, 203-207, 222, 224 
Dietz, Kelly L., 359-365 
Dettmer, Hans, linguistic studies, 27, 60 
Discrimination or prejudice, 9, 16, 24, 73, 225, 233, 274, 
341, 369, 372 
Disease and epidemics, 19,71, 102-107; medicinal 
shamanism, 26, 104-105, 102, 104, 105(13.4), 197, 
197, 241, 242 
Disease spirits (payoka kamuy), 103, 104-107, 196 
Doda Anthropological Study, 177 
Dog, 275, deity, 252-253,- dog-sending ceremony, 253, 
263(37.3),- dogsled travel, 215 
Drift vessels, 116-117 
Drum, shaman's (kaco), 262, 264 
Dubreuil, Chisato O., 9, 12, 287-300, 333, 335-353 
Duckskin robe, 3 I 6 
E 
Eagle, 266, 340(47.1 1) 
Early modern period, 96-101. See a Iso Japanese early 
modern state 
Earrings, 325, 325 
Economy: annual subsistence cycle, 199-200, 235-238, 
economic conditions, 98, 359,- market forces, 19. See 
also Fishing, Food gathering, Horticulture; Hunting, 
Trade 
Ecosystem, 40-41, 198-201, 199(27.1), 208, 219, 
compared with Northwest Coast, 117-1 18, 122; 
Hokkaido, 1 1, 32—38, iwor (resource zone), 1 99(27.4), 
218-219, 227. See also Forest ecology and traditions,- 
Marine habitat and traditions, Natural resources 
Ecosystem, The Ainu (Watanabe), 198-201 
Edo period, 74, 80, 82, 96-101, 227, 232 
Education, 369, 371, 371-373 
1899 Protection Act. See Hokkaido Former Aborigines 
Protection Act 
Ekashi (male elder), 183, 244, 340, 380. See also Chieftains 
Elders: 244, 340(47.12-1 3), ekashi (male elder), 183, 
244, 340, 380, fuchi (female elder), 183, 218, 248, 309- 
3 12, 379-381, leading elder (kotan-kor-kur), 232 
Emishi (early term for Ainu), 46, 68, 75-76 
Emush (swords), 97, 107, 296, 325-326 326(45.34), 
331, ritual sword (pons emush), 107, 272-273, sword 
dance, 285(41.7) 
Epidemics. See Disease and epidemics 
Epi-Jomon. See Jomon culture 
Eskimos: ethnological comparisons with Ainu, 22(1.26), 
23, 47-51, linguistic comparisons with Ainu, 65, Yup'ik 
basketry, 301, 305(43.8), 307, 307-308 
Ethnic Culture Film Research Institute, 191 
Ethnic identity. See Cultural identity 
Ethnicity. See Ainu ethnicity 
Ethnographic films, 187-191 
Ethnological collections. See Museum Ainu collections 
European Ainu collections, 127, 127-131, 128(t), 129, 
1 3 1 m, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology 
(MAE), 128, 132(t), 132-135, 133 
Europoid theory. See Caucasoid hypothesis of Ainu 
origins 
Evolutionist school, 127 
Exhibitions, 93, 129, 153, 154, 164, live "exhibits," 16, 
16, 1 30-131, 142, 142, St Louis Exposition, 140-142, 
155, 159, 309 
Expeditions, 125, 133, 136, 140, I63ni, 167,-Jesup North 
Pacific Expedition, 63, 116, 138, 169, 170 
Exports, 93, 93-94 
Expositions. See Exhibitions 
Ezo (early Japanese name for Hokkaido and its people, 
the Ainu), 60, 68, 74-75, 79-81, 92, 96. See also Ainu 
people, Hokkaido 
Ezo-shi (Arai), 79, 80, 81, 82. See also Ainu-e 
F 
Family, 232, 272,- marriage, 296, 359,- maternal traditions, 
231, 232, patrilineage, 230, 231-232. See also Gender 
roles 
Farming, 108. See also Horticulture 
Fauna. See Animals 
Female principle, 243-244 
Festivals, 94-95, 240, 249-250, 284-285, 356 
Films, ethnographic, 187-191 
Finnish Saami-Ainu exchange program, 184-185 
Fire goddess (Fuchi), 199, 228, 229, 241, 243, 248, 270, 
329(46.6-7), 
Fire pits, archaeological, 165 
Fireplace, 199, 228, 229 
First-salmon ceremony, 24, 36, 36, 1 18, 119, 200, 219, 
221, 253. See also Fishing 
Fisheries (Japanese-run), 98-100 
Fishing, 36(2.9), 42-43, 44(3.13-3.14), 200, 201, 
210-211,213; government prohibitions against, 36, 
37-38 
Fish-roe masher, 204 
Fishskin products, I 5 1(19.6a,b), 1 57, 220(29.25), 288, 
291,312 
Fish spirits, 201, 310(44.2). See also Kamuy (spirit deities) 
Fitzhugh, William W., 9-28, 60, 116-123, 136 
Flag, 114 
Flora. See Plants 
Flower arrows (heper-ay), 249, 25 1 (35.8), 295(42.1 3), 
297-298 
Food: early Ainu diet, 7, 36, 203-207, 222, 224, food 
gathering, 202, 208, 213, 235, 236-237; food 
preservation, 202-204, 235, 239; lily root (turep), 
203(28.4), 204, 236-237, 238(32.9-10), maple 
syrup, 237(32.8). See also Horticulture, Hunting 
Forest ecology and traditions, 24, 40, broadleaf forests, 
35-36. See also Deforestation, Hunting 
Fox deity, 21, 353(47.37), fox dance, 284, fox hunting, 
210; sending ceremonies for, 252, 259(36.6) 
Frois, Louis, 125, 327 
Fuchi (respected female elder), 183, 218, 248, 309-312, 
379-381 
Fuchi (fire goddess), 199, 228, 229, 241,243, 248, 270, 
329(46.6-7) 
Fujimura, Hisakazu: Kamuy, 193-197,- 268-273 
Fujito, Takeki (Ainu artist): Fuchi, 340(47.1 3); Kuma 
(Bear), 339(47.9); life-sized figures of elders, 
340(47.1 2), Sea Otter, 24, Winter (Hibernation), 
339(47.10) 
Funeral ceremonies, 268-269, 273. See also Burial 
customs 
Funerary objects, 158-159 
Fuzoku (customs/appearances), 97 
G 
Games, childhood, 246-247, 247 
Gender roles, 193, 200, 213, 246-247,- men's work, 234- 
235, 236, 295,- men's work (See also Woodcarving, Boat 
building,- Ceremonies, Hunting; Fishing); shamanism 
and, 242-243, 262-264, social status and, 107, 244- 
245, women's work (See also Textile arts, Food 
gathering; Family), 235-237, 287, 313, 379-381 
Gentan, Tani, 75(22.10), 244(33.9), 255(35 1 6), 268- 
269, 282, 283(41.3), 291(42.4), 292 
Geographic distribution and migrations, 10-11, 10m, 
12(I.7)m, 17(1.7), 19, 47, 67-68. See also Population 
Girel, Constant, Beautiful Japan (film), 187-188 
Global network of indigenous peoples, 25, 1 14, 359- 
360, 364-365. See also United Nations (UN) 
Gods: cave goddess, 274, crow goddess, 28 1, Fuchi (fire 
goddess), 199, 228, 229, 241, 243, 248, 270, 
329(46.6-7), God Ruling the Upper Heavens, 281, 
Kotan-kor-kamuy (creator), 274-275, midwife goddess, 
270, possessing god, 194, 270, 271, sun goddess, 276. 
See also Kamuy (spirit deities) 
Graburn, Nelson H , 301-308 
Grain stripping, (28.2-3) 
Graves, 49-40, 269, 272, rights to ancestral, 1 15 
H 
Hakodate, 155, 1 63m 179-180 
Hanihara, Kazuro, 53, 55 
Harpoons, 44(3.12-14), 123, 2 I 1,2 1 4(29.1 2-1 3), 222 
Hashimoto, Ryutaro, Prime Minister, 368 
Hata no Chitei, Pictorial Biography of Prince Shotoku, 79, 
79-80 
Hattori, Shiro, 27, 59, 62-63, 371-372 
Hayokpe (belief that spirits are disguised), 200, 249 
Headgear, men's: 164, 322(45.22); ceremonial, 
295(42.12), 178, 297-298, 323, 325-326 
Hearth, 199, 228, 229 
Heper-ay (flower arrows), 249, 25 1 (35.8), 295(42.1 3), 
297-298 
Heros (oina-kamuy), 261, 265, 275-276, 280 
Hidaka, 355 
Hilger, M. Inez, Together with the Ainu, 27, 92, 356, 
photographs of Ainu, 92, 197, 285, 358 
Hiller, Hiram M_, 36, 136(t), 1 62(2 1.1), 162-167, 
1 63m, 1 68; photographs of Ainu, 92, 163, 164, 165, 
197, 228, 285, 358, 369, 381 
Hirasawa, Byozan, 84-85, 85, 201,202, 212(29.8), 
21 3(29.9), 240, 256(36.1), 257 
History of the Ainu, 10-1 1, 27, 45-46, 67-73, 71 m, 
74m, 79-85, Koshamain uprising, 46, 68, 78, 
Kunashiri-Menashi battle, 19, 96, missionary 
workers, 139-140, political changes, 51, 68, 69, 
1 12-1 I 3, 232-233,- post-war Occupation, 1 11- 
1 12, recent history, 24-26, 72m, 364; Russian 
colonial activities, 11, 70, 71-73, 101, 240, 302,• 
relocation and expulsion, 11, 108, 112, 121, 
Shakushain's War, 19, 69, 70, 97-98, 369. See also 
Indigenous rights movement, Japanese early 
modern state, Trade 
Hitchcock, Romyn: "Ainos of Yezo, Japan," 154, 
archaeological expeditions, 18, 136(t), 139, 
ethnography of Ainu, 9, 15-16, 64, 327-328, 
photographs of Ainu, 9(1.1), 10(1.4), 29, 153, 148, 
149, 259(36.5), Smithsonian collection, 148-153, 154 
Hokkaido, 9, 27, 71-73, 119m, 143, 1 63m, 218, 
archaeological cultures, 3 3(2.7)m, 35-36, 39-46, 
40(3.2), 48-49, 150-151, 165, 198, ethnological 
collections from, 129(16.7), 149-159, 162-167, 171, 
landscape and ecosystem, 11, 36-37, 67, 275,• recent 
history, 24-26, 72m, 364; relocation and expulsion, 
108, 112, 121. See also History, Ainu, and by region 
Hokkaido Ainu: ethnic groups, 10-11,29, 119m, 120, 
227, 337, 338, 355, 377, ethnological traits, 59, 240, 
250, 305, 306, paleolithic cultures, 33(2.7)m, 35-36, 
39-44, 40(3.2), 48-49, 150-151, 165, 198, 
shamanistic features, 242, 245, 262-264. See also Ainu 
people 
Hokkaido Ainu Association (Utari Kyokai), 59, 73, 109, 
111-114, 369-370 
Hokkaido Ainu Cultural Research Center, 372 
Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act, 25-26, 72, 
363, 369, movement against, 108, 108-110, 366 
Hokkaido Land Expropriation Committee, 357-358 
Hokkaido Takushokukan collection, 178 
Homeland (Ainu mosir), 67, 69, 72, 92, 110, 1 14-115, 
369, land claims to, 367. See also Hokkaido, Kurile 
Islands,- Sakhalin Island 
Honshu, 9, 10, 40, 42, 44, 46, 302, Tohoku, 10m, 43, 45, 
61 
Horticulture, 7, 204-205, 21 3-215, garden hoe, 
239(32.14) 
Houchins, Chang-su, 148-153 
House (chise), 7, 198(27.2), 227-233, 228, 233, 
directional orientation, 199, 228; modern, 140, 233 
House construction, 228, 229, 230-23 1,230 
Howell, David L, 96-101 
Human figurines (nipopo), 22, 24, 50(4.6, 4.7), 262, 
263(37.4-5), 271(38.7-8) 
Hunting: 208, 209(29.2), 218(29.23), 218-219, 234, 
235, bear, 36(2.8), 200-201, 209-210, 219, bows, 
210(29.4), 212(29), deer, 37, I 56(20.4), 200, 
209(29.3), 2 10, fox, 210, limitations or prohibitions 
on, 221. See also Arrows/Arrowheads 
-marine, harpoons used, 44(3.12-14), 123, 211, 
21 4(29.12-1 3), 222; of sea mammals, 1 1 (1.5), 
44(3.12), 51(4.10), 21 I, 214(29.14), whaling, 222, 
224-225 
Hunting rites, 219-221 
Iboshi, Hokuto: Kotan (Village), 109 
Ice Age, East Asian impacts, 17; glacial period, 32-33, 
32(2.1)m, 32(2.2), 17; land bridges, 33-35, 
33(2.3)m, 33(2.4)m, 47. See also Archaeological 
cultures 
Identity, cultural, 25-26, 73-73, 95, 109, 287, 372, 380- 
381, preservation of language, 59, 370-373, 373; 
preservation of culture, 183-186, 285, 381, traditional 
practices and, 26, 69-70, 226, 309. See also Indigenous 
rights movement 
Ikupasuy (prayer stick), 21, 42, 125, 150, 180, 224, 234- 
235, 296, 3 10(44.2), images and themes on, 14, 105, 
143, 149, 159, 170(22.5), 171 195, 252, 
294(42.10), 334 196, 333(46.16); lacquered, 
332(46.1 4), mistaken for mustache lifter, 12, 14, 327- 
328, parts of, 33 1, 331-334, ritual uses of, 327, 327- 
330, 328(46.5); types of, 330-331 
Illustrated Gazetteer of Ezo (Arai), 79, 80, 81, 82. See also 
Ainu-e 
Illustrations of Ezo Livelihood (Murakami), 84, 207(29.1 5), 
375, 376. See also Ainu-e 
Illustrations of Northern Ezo (Mamiya), 106( 1 3.6), 
212(29.7), 215(29.15), 218(29.23), 235, 269(38.2) 
Image taboos, 24, 292, 297 
Inaw (sacred shaved stick): 21, 60, 78, 193, 199,299, 
231(31.7), 244(33.9), 294(42.1 l); carvings, 296- 
297 
Indians, North American, 15, 16, 1 16-123, 279 
Indigenous rights movement: activism, 67, 72-73, I 12- 
115, 113, 114, 369-370, 370, 377, against Hokkaido 
Protection Act, 108, 108-110, 366, against Nibutani 
dam, 355-358, 367-368, for Ainu Shinpo Act, 1 15, 
361, 366-368, 370, early leftist activism, 112-115, 
international arena, 25, I 14, 359-360, 364-365; 
Japanese-Ainu relations and, 361-364, 366-368 
Inheritance, 232 
Institute of Japanese Studies, 128 
International Bill of Human Rights, 360 
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 
(ICCPR), 360, 361, 367 
International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention on 
Indigenous Peoples, 360, 367 
Iron tool artifacts, 49 
Ishida, Hajime, 52-56 
Itaomachip (boat), 186(24.7), 374, 375, 376 
Ivory bone carvings, 1 70(22.3), 293(42.9) 
Iumkte (sending spirits of inanimate objects), 254-255 
Iwasaki-Goodman, Masami, 222-226 
Iwor (resource zone), 199(27.4), 218-219, 227, 234 
Iyomante (bear-sending ceremony), 25-26, 44-45, 184, 
201, 283, 284, archaeological record, 21, 256-260, 
defining ethnological trait, 14(1.1 1), 14, 82(9.5), 256, 
257, 260, films documenting, 190, government 
prohibition against, 69-70, link to Northwest Coast 
traditions, 118, 119,-museum performances, 184, 184— 
185, ritual features, 240-244, 242, 248-251, 
251(35.7), 277 
J 
James, Arthur Curtiss, 168-174 
Japanese Ainu museum collections, 128, 175-182 
Japanese-Ainu relations, 19, 61,71-73, 75-78, 96-101, 
240, the "Ainu problem," 112-114, assimilationist 
policies, 10, 14, 70-73,74, 108, 140-141, 149, 184, 
203, indigenous rights issues (current), 361-364, 366- 
368, Kunashiri-Menashi battle, 19, Shakushain's War, 
19, 69, 70, 97-98, 369. See also Japanese early modern 
state, Japanese laws and court decisions,- Trade 
Japanese early modern state, 74—78, 96-101, Koshamain 
uprising, 46, 68, 78, Matsumae clan, 9, 69, 88, 91,97- 
98, Meiji restoration, 9, 14, 26, 117, 233, 369, 
Tokugawa Shogunate, 13, 19,71,78,88-89, 96, 101, 
336, 374, Wajin-Ainu conflict, 68-71, 282-283 
Japanese laws and court decisions: Ainu Shinpo Act of 
1997, 10, 25-26, 59, 73, 300, 373,- Hokkaido Former 
Aborigines Protection Act, 25-26, 363, 369, Land 
Regulation Ordinance (1872), 72; New Law for the 
Ainu People (proposed), 115, Nibutani Decision, 25, 
115, 357-358, 362-363,367-368 
Japanese Committee for the International Biological 
Program, 55 
Japanese influences, 60, 76-78, 121-122, in basketry, 
306,- language elements, 62-63, religious, 262-263,- 
similarity in robes, 3 1 8(45.8), woodcarving and, 331 — 
332. See also Trade goods 
Japanese paintings of the Ainu. See Ainu-e 
Jesup, Morris K., North Pacific Expedition, 63, 116, 138, 
169, 170 
Joest, Wilhem, 129 
Jomon-Ainu relation, 30-31, 35-36, 53-56 
Jomon culture, 17, 18, 33, 40-42, 44, 46, 123, 222, 303 
K 
Kaizawa, Koichi, 355-358 
Kaizawa, Tadashi, 355, 357-358, 377 
Kaizawa, Toroshino, 356, 362 
Kakizaki, Hakyo: Ainu-e artist, 9, I 8, 83-84: Portraits of 
Ezo Chieftains, 8, 18,28,37,66,83, 122, 124, 192, 
286, 354 
Kamchatka, 10m, 10, 58, 62, 303, 308 
Kamuy-puyar (god window), 199,229 
Kamuyrini (religious object), 226 
Kamuy (spirit deities), 24, 169, 198, 256, 273, belief that 
they are disguised (hayokpe), 200, 249, dead spirits, 193— 
194, 196-197, disease spirits (payoka kamuy), 103-107, 196, 
evil spirits, 194, 252,270, 271,275,276, 348(47.27); 
human-spirit relationship, 22, 270, 194-197,- image taboos 
related to, 24, 292, 297, inanimate objects as, 254-255, 
living spirits, 193, 194, 197; word spirits, 196 
-animal spirits, 24, 39, 200, 202, 276-277,- bear 
deity (kimun-kamuy), 21, 36, 43(3.1 1), 93, 187, 199, 
201, 224, 248-250,- fox, 353(47.37); owl, 21,252 
412 
-gods: cave goddess, 274,- crow goddess, 281, Fuchi 
(fire goddess), 199, 228, 229, 241, 243, 248, 270, 
329(46.6-7), God Ruling the Upper Heavens, 281, , 
Kotan-kor-kamuy (creator), 274-275, midwife goddess, 
270, possessing god, 194, 270, 271; sun goddess, 276 
Kamuy-nomi (prayer), 21,201,248, 328—329, 329, 346, 
implements used with, 193, 199,231(31.7), 
244(3 3.9), 294, 294(42.1 I), 296. See also Ikupasuy, haw 
Kamuy-yukar (tales of the gods), 274, 276-277, 281, 283 
Kano, Oki, 363 
Karafuto, 1, 70, 111, dialect, 59, 60 
Katz, Adria H , 162-167 
Kawamura, Noriko: 349-351, 350(47.32), Hokkaido no 
shiki (Four seasons in Hokkaido), 350—351(47.30), 350— 
351, Ryo (Force or spirit), 349, 350, Spirit of the Ainu, back 
cover 
Kawamura, Kaneto, 110, 190, 319, 349-350 
Kawamura, Saburo, I I 1 
Kayano, Shigeru, 7, 25, 27, 30, 60, 105, 300, 334, 377,■ 
Ainu no mincfo (Ainu folk crafts), 60, 303,- filmmaking, 
191, opposition to Saru dam, 37-38, 1 15,- Our Land 
Was a Forest, 27 
Keira, Mit'sunori and Tomoko, 234-239 
Keira, Tomoko, 379-381 
Kendall, Laurel, 168-175 
Kikuchi, Isao, 74-78 
Kikuchi, Toshihiko, 47-51 
Killer whale (orca), 4 1,225(30.5), 226, symbols of, 
332(46.12-1 3) 
Kimbai, Kasukabe, 200, 200 
Ki-men (wooden masks), 25, 34 I (47.1 5a, b), 343 
Kindaichi, Kyosuke, linguistic studies, 21, 27, 30, 59, 60, 
65, 264 
Kita-ichi, Tetsuo, AinuMosir, Kamuy Mosir, 227 
Knife (makiri): carved, 21, 167, 215, 216(29.19), 
231(31.8), 235, 236, 293(42.8),-carving tool, 295- 
296,- whalebone, 223(30.3) 
Kodama collection, 179-180, 185 
Kodama, Mari, 27, 313-326 
Kodama, Sakuzaemon, 27, 80, 147, 180, 185, 270, 320 
Kodama, Teiryo: Ainu-e artist, 82-83, 87, Ezo Customs and 
Manners, Scenes from Ezo Island, 14(1.1 I), 67(7.1), 
3 1 8(45.45) 
Kohara, Toshihiro , 202-207 
Kono, Motomichi, 1 16-123 
Kono family collection, 178-179,181, 182 
Koshamain uprising, 46, 68, 78 
Kotan-kor-kamuy (creator), 274-275 
Kotani, Yoshinobu, 11, 136-147, 181 
Kotan (village): 198(27.1), 198,216-217, 227, 
228(3 1.2), directional orientation, 199,■ iwor 
(surrounding territory), I 99(27.4), 2 18, 227, 234 , 
storehouses, 207(28.1 4) 
Kozintsev, Alexander G., 31 
Krashemnnikov, Stepan, 29, 308 
Kreiner, Josef, 27, 125-131, 136 
Krupnik, Igor, 261-265, 309 
Kuma (bear): care of cubs, 248-249, 250, 250, carvings 
of, 93-94, 273(38.1 4), 337, 337-339, 339(47.9), 
deities, 21, 36, 43(3.1 1), 93, 187, 199, 201, 224, 248- 
250, hunting, 36(2.8), 200, 201,209-210, 219. See also 
lyomante 
Kunashiri-Menashi battle, 19, 96 
Kurile Ainu: 10, 1 1, I 15, 120, 133-135, 134, 179(23.5), 
21 1, 213, 217, 303, 306, 308 
Kurile Islands: archaeological cultures, 43-44, ethnologi¬ 
cal expeditions and traits, 133-1 34, 1 36(t), 156-159, 
history, 10, 59,- pithouses, 10, 44, 228, 256, 259 
Kushiro, 158 
L 
Lacquerware, 99, 100, 141, ceremonial cups (tuki), 21, 77, 
1 78, I 82, 328(46.3, 46.5), 329-330,- comb, 50, 50 
Land bridges, paleolithic, 33-35, 33(2.3)m, 33(2.4)m, 47 
Land reform, I 11-1 12 
Land Regulation Ordinance (1872), 72 
Language, 57m, 57-60, 63, 120, origins of, 17, 30, 58- 
59, 61-65; place names, 60-62 135, 222, preservation 
of, 59, 370-373, 373; studies and compilations of, 59- 
60, 62, 371-372 
Laws and court decisions: Ainu Shinpo 1997, 10, 25-26, 
59, 73, 300, 373; Hokkaido Former Aborigines 
Protection Act (1899), 25-26, 363, 369, Land 
Regulation Ordinance (1872), 72, New Law for the 
Ainu People (proposed), 115, Nibutani Decision, 25, 
1 15, 357-358, 362-363, 367-368 
Leadership, 232, 245 
Lee, Molly, 301-308 
Life cycle: birth, 267-270, childhood, 246-247, 271, 
288, cycle of subsistence activities, 199-200, 235— 
238, marriage, 296, 359; yearly cycle of subsistence, 
199-200, 235-238. See also Death, Elders,- Gender roles 
Life of the Shiraoi Ainu (film), 189 
Lineage (family), 272-273, maternal traditions, 231, 
232, patrilineage, 230, 231-232 
Linguistic origins, 17, 30, 58-59, 61-65 
Lip tattoos, 14,91(10.6), 148, 154,325, 380. See also 
Tattoos, womens 
M 
Makiri (knife): carved, 21 1 67, 215, 2 I 6(29.1 9), 
231(31.8), 235, 236, 293(42.8); earning tool, 295- 
296; whalebone, 223(30.3) 
Mamiya, Rinzo: Ainu-e artist, 304, Illustrations of Northern 
Ezo, 106(13.6), 212(29.7), 215(29.15), 218(29.23), 
235, 269(38.2) 
Maps: archaeological, 33(2.7)m, 48-49m, environmen¬ 
tal 38m, explorations, 163m, geographic distribution 
and migrations, 10m, 12(1.7)m, 119m; historical, 
71m, 74m, Hokkaido region, 3 3(2.7)m, 72m, 
linguistic, 57m, maritime trade, 86m, museum 
collections, 131m 
Maraini, Fosco, 147, 327-334, photographs of Ainu, I 5, 
327, 328, 329 
Marimo festival, 94 
Marine habitat and traditions, II, II, 24, 5 1(4.10), 121, 
123, 134(17.2), 199(27.3); boat building, 235, 374- 
375, 376,- boat (itaomachip), 1 86(24.7), 374, 375, 376, 
carved paddle, 1 7; chip-sanke (boat-launching 
ceremony, 356, 357, 362, stranded-whale dance, 223, 
223(30.2), 226. See also Fishing 
Marine mammals: sea otter, 24, 46, whales, 4 1, 222-223, 
225(30.5), 226, 332(46.12-13) 
Marine-mammal products, 23, 215(29.16), 320(29.24), 
320(45.17) 
Maritime hunting, 10, 1 1(1.6), 43, 44(3.1 2), 5 1 (4.10), 
211,21 4(29.1 4), harpoons used in, 44(3.1 2-1 4), 
123, 21 1,214(29.12-1 3), whaling, 222, 224-225 
Maritime trade, 86m, 86-91, 120, 336, Santan trade, 46, 
81,86,241. See also Japanese-Ainu relations, Trade 
Marriage, 296, 359 
Masks, 25, 42, 122 
Maternal traditions, 231,232 
Matsuda, Denjuro, 88 
Matsui, Umetaro, 337(47.6), 338 
Matsumae clan, 9, 69, 88, 89, 91,97-98 
Meiji restoration, 9-10, 14, 26, 117, 233, 369. See also 
Japanese early modern state 
Microlithic culture sites, 40, 48 
Mining, 369 
Modern arts, 227, 339, 352-353, including taboo 
images, 24. See also Fujito, Takeki, Kawamura, Noriko, 
Sunazawa, Bikky 
Mogami, Tokunai, 29, 88, 128,1 30( 16.9), 282 
Montandon, George, 30, 304-308 
Morew (spiral designs or "flaming borders"), I 7, 22, 22 
(1.25), 23 
Mori, 1 63m, 165 
Morse, Edward S , 18, 126, 136(t), 139, 185 
"Mustache lifter," ikupasuy mistaken for, 12, 14, 327-328 
See also Ikupasuy 
Munro, Neil G , 104, 105, 147, 180, 180-181, 266, 
328(46.4), Ainu Creed and Cult, 328, ethnographic films, 
190 
Murakami, Shimanojo, Ainu-e artist, 84, 303-304,- Curious 
Sights of Ezo Island (ethnographic illustrations), 20, 61, 
84, 77(8.6), 96, 98, 102(13.1), 106(13.7), 
1 94(26.3), I 99, 202(28.3), 207(28.1 4), 
214(29.14), 230-231,241(33.3), 243, 250(35.5), 
251(35.7), 258, 272(38.10), 274, 313, 314(45.4), 
326(45.33), 330, 326(45.33), 330,- Illustrations of Ezo 
Livelihood, 84, 207(29.1 5), 375, 376 
Muraki, Miyuki, 246-247 
Murakami, Teisuki, 84 
Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology (MAE), 128, 
132(t), 132-135, 1 33 
Museum Ainu collections, 13, 16, 27,- Ainu Museum in 
Shiraoi, 26, 94, 183, 183-186, 223, 233; inventory 
projects, 146-147,- Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum, 
377-378 
-European, 127, 127-131, 128(t), 129(t), 129, 
1 3 I m, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology 
(MAE), 128, 132(t), 132-135, 133 
-Japanese, 128, 176-177, 181-182, Baba Collection, 
179-180, Hokkaido Takushokukan Collection, 178, 
Kodama Collection, 179-180, 185, Kono Family 
Collection, 178-179,-Tokugawa Collection, 177-178 
-North American, 136(t), 136-139, 137(t), 140, 
146-147, American Museum of Natural History, 168— 
174, Brooklyn Museum of Art, 155-161,- Smithsonian 
Institution, 136, 148-153, 154, University of 
Pennsylvania, 162-167, 167 
Music, 363; musical instruments—mukkuri, 247, 283, 
shaman's drum (kaco), 262, 264, tonkori, 284. See also 
Performance arts, Songs 
Myth(s): Ainurakkur myth, 275-276,- of creation, 274- 
275; mythical lands, 279, on origins of shamanism, 
265-267,- Samaikur myth, 261, 265-266,- tree of life in, 
266, trickster in, 279. See also Yukar (epic stories) 
N 
Nagata, Hosei, 60, 282 
Nakagawa, Hiroshi, 371-373 
Naming/names, 270-271 
Nationalism, 67, Ainu, I 1 4,1 14-1 15 
National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian) Ainu 
collection, 136, 148, 154, 188. See also Hitchcock, 
Romyn 
Natori, Takemitsu, 27, 224-225 
Natural history of Ainu homelands, 32-38 
Natural resources: deforestation, 37, 38m, 356,- 
exploitation of, 9-10, 36-37, 39, logging, 356, mining, 
369,- water pollution, 356-358 
Natsui, Umetaro, 338 
Necklaces (tamasay), 323-324, beaded necklaces, 21,22, 
139, 158, 1 79, 324(45.27-28), chokers, 232, 
322(45.23), 323(45.25-26) 
Needlecases, 23, 46, 47, 159, 222, 299, 300, 
321(45.21) 
Nemuro, 146, 163m, 222 
Nibutani, 181, Ainu Culture Museum, 377-378, 378, 
decision on Nibutani dam, 25, 1 15, 357-358, 362- 
363, 367-368 
Niewan, 1 63m, 165 
Nipopo (human figurines), 22, 24, 50(4.6, 4.7), 262, 
263(37.4-5), 271(38.7-8) 
Nishikawa, Hokuyo, Ainu Manners and Customs, 156(20.4), 
207(28.13), 210, 237(32.8), 238(32.9-10), 
250(35.4) 
Nomadism, 7, 20, 217, 240 
Nomoto, Masahiro, 9(1.2), 222-226, 227-233, 365, 379 
Nomura, Ciichi, 359, 362 
North American Ainu collections, 136(t), 136-139, 
1 37(t), 140, 146-147, American Museum of Natural 
History, 175, Brooklyn Museum of Art, 155-161, 
Smithsonian Institution, 136, 148-153, 154, 
University of Pennsylvania, 162-167, 167 
North American Ainu Documentation Project, 136 
413 
North American Indians, 15-16, 24, 116-123, 279, 245 
Northwest Asian cultures, Ainu ties to, 47-51 
Northwest Coast peoples: archaeological cultures of 
North Pacific rim, 12m, 52-56; ethnological 
comparisons with Ainu, 24, 47-51,49, 116-123, 
ecosystem compared with Ainu, 117-118, 122, parallel 
traditions, 62, 1 16, 1 18-1 19, 123, 301, 307-308. See 
also Eskimos,- Siberian cultures 
Nusa (altar), 164, 165, 199, 230, 256-260, 264 
o 
Ocean habitat. See Marine habitat and traditions 
Olschleger, Hans Dieter, 27, 208-221 
Ogihara, Shinko, 132-135, 274-277 
Oginaka, Mie, 278-281 
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko.l 18, 240-245 
Ohtsuka, Kazuyoshi, 92-95, 374-376 
Ohyo (bark-fiber thread), 16, 1 51 (1 9.7), 235-236, 3 1 4, 
314-316, 315 
Oina-kamuy (culture hero), 261,265, 275-276, 280, tales 
of (oina), 274 
Okada, Kazuo, 187-191 
Okhotsk culture, 18, 23, 43-44, 50-51, 222. Sec also 
Siberian cultures 
Omori shell mound, 126 
Onkami (worship), 21 
Ono, Yugo, 32—38, photographs by, 36, 38(2.12) 
Opunire (spirit-sending ceremonies), 14(1.1 1), 14, 25-26, 
44, 202, 248, 251-254, 257; dances accompanying, 
257, deer sending, 253-254,- dog sending, 253,- fox 
sending, 252, 259(36.6), owl sending, 252, 255, 
whale sending, 224-225. See also Iyomante, Iwakte 
Oral traditions, 19, 183, 271, 274-277,- animals in epic 
stories (yukar), 276-277,- studies and collections of, 27, 
59, yukar (epic stories), 2 1, 24, 248, 278, 278-281, 
280 
Orca whale, 41,225(30.5), 226, symbols of, 
332(46.12-13) 
Origin theories. See Ainu origins—theories 
Orita, Suteno, 379, 379 
Ornamentation: amulets, 270,270(38.6), 310(44.3), 
beaded necklaces, 21, 22, 139, 158, 179, 323-324, 
324(45.27-28), chokers, 232, 322(45.23), 
323(45.25, 45.26),- earrings, 325, 325, womens 
tattoos, 292, 294, 325, 326(45.32-33). See also 
Ceremonial clothing,- Ceremonial headdress 
Oshamanbe, 163m, 213 
Owl, 38, 42,- deity, 21, 252, sending ceremony, 252, 255 
Oyabe, Jenichiro, 1 36(t), 142, 162(21.2), 162-167, 163m 
P 
Paleo-Asian flora and fauna, 34-35, 34(2.5)m, 34(2.6)m, 
35(2.7) 
Paleolithic and prehistoric period. See Archaeological 
cultures 
Paleolithic land bridges, 33-35, 33(2.3)m, 33(2.4)m, 47 
Patrilineage, 230, 231-232 
Payoka kamuy (disease spirits), 103-107, 196 
Performance arts: songs, 127,- throat singing, 285,- whale 
songs, 223, 226; yukar (epic stories), 21, 24, 248, 278, 
278-281,280. See also Dancing, Music 
Perry, Matthew, 14, 29 
Peter the Great Museum Ainu collection, 128, 132(t), 
132-135, 1 33 
Philippi, Donald L., Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans, 77 
Phographs of Ainu, 60, 9 1 (l0.6), 95, 101, 140, 168, 
200, 208, 239(32.1 I), 248, 251(35.6), 263(37.3), 
267, 270, 271, 280, 312(44.7), 357, 368, 371, 
373, 377, 379. See also by ethnographer (Pilsudski, 
Bronislaw,- Hilger, M. Inez, Hiller, Hiram M., and 
others) 
Pictorial Biography of Prince Shotoku (Chitei), 79, 79-80 
Pilsudski, Bronislaw: ethnological work with Sakhalin 
Ainu, 27, 30, 135, 254, 265,- photographs of Ainu, 30, 
47, 51, 89, 104, 105, 135, 194, 242, 246, 
254(35.13), 255, 259(36.6), 261, 315, on 
shamanism, 104, 265-266,- sound recordings, 59, 136 
Pipe (kiseri), 245, 298, curved, 174-175(22.8). See also 
Smoking kits and implements 
Piraton, 143, 155, 163m, 377 
Pithouses, archaeological, 10, 44, 228, 259 
Place names, 60-61,62 135,222 
Plants, 235, lily root {turep), 203(28.4), 204, 238(32.9- 
10); vegetation history, 35, 35m, 202-204 
Plant spirits, 200, 202. See also Kamuy (spirit deities) 
Play, childrens', 246-247 
Population decline of, 106-107, early Ainu, 11, 
historical migration model, I 7(1.1 7); modern Ainu, 9, 
26. See also Geographic distribution and migrations 
Portraits of Ezo Chieftains (Kakizaki), 8, 18, 28, 28, 37, 66, 
83, 122, 124, 192, 286, 354 
Poster, Amy, 155-161 
Prayer {kamuy-nomi), 21,201, 248, 328-329, 329, 346, 
implements used with, 193, 199,231(31.7), 
244(3 3.9), 294, 294(42.1 1), 296. See also Ikupasuy, Inaw 
Prayer stick. See Ikupasuy 
Prehistoric period. See Archaeological artifacts,- 
Archaeological cultures 
Prejudice or discrimination, 9, 16, 24, 73, 225, 233, 274, 
341, 369, 372 
"Proto-Ainu" culture, 260 
Proto-Australoid theory, 31 
Putnam, Frederick W., 168-174 
Qing Dynasty, 86-88. See also Maritime trade 
"Queer People, A," 15, 153 
Quivers, 164-165, 21 7(29.20), 235(32.2), 273(38.1 3) 
R 
Racial origins. See Ainu origins—theories 
Raitokoro Kawaguchi site, 257-258 
Refsing, Kirsten, 27, 61, 371 
Reincarnation, 193, 197, 268, 270, 273 
Religion: altar (nusa), 164, 165, 199, 230, 256-260,264, 
belief system, 228, 235, 328, 380-381, burial customs, 
106, 158-159, 268-269, 272, onkami (worship), 21; 
transmigration of spirits, 193, 197, 268,270, 273. See 
also Ceremonies,- Shamanism, Kamuy (spirit deities); 
Kamuy nomi, Ikupasuy, Inaw 
Religious objects: kamuyrini, 226, nipopo (human 
figurines), 22, 24, 50(4.6, 4.7), 262, 263(37.4-5), 
271 (38.7-8),- women's ritual belt, 232, 264-265. See 
also Nusa (altar), Ikupasuy (prayer stick),- Inaw (sacred 
shaved stick) 
Relocation of Ainu, 11, 108, 112, 121 
Resource zone (iwor), 199(27.4), 218-219, 227, 234 
Retarpe (nettle-fiber) garments, 160-161, 172-173,290 
Rice cakes, 239(32.1 1-12) 
Ritual. See Opunire, Iyomante, Religion, Shamanism 
Rivers and waterways, 36, 1 99, 200 227, words for, 60, 
62. See also Amur river,- Saru river 
River pollution, 356-358 
Robes, 3 1 8-3 1 9,- attush (bark cloth), 133, 152,289, 
3 I 7, birdskin, 3 1 6; cotton, 1 44-145, duckskin, 3 I 6, 
Japanese similarity in, 3 1 8(45.8),- retarpe (nettle fiber), 
160-161, 172-173, 290, sealskin, 320(45.17) 
Russia: colonial activities, 1 I, 70, 71-73, 92, 101,240, 
302, ethnography, 30, 59, trade with Ainu, 10, 86-91 
Ryukyuan culture, 31, 56 
s 
Sacred shaved stick. See Inaw 
Sacrifice, 241-242, 249, 253, 263(37.3) 
St. Petersburg collection, Museum of Anthropology and 
Ethnology (MAE), 128, 132(t), 132-135, 133 
Sake drinking, 21, 135, 77, 178, 182, 264, 297, 328,- 
ceremonial lacquerware cups (tuki), 21, 77, 178, 182, 
328(46.3, 46.5), 329-330,- making sake, 283 
Sakhalin Ainu, 10(1.4), 11(1.5), 112, 1 94, ethnological 
traits, I 1(1.6), 24, 30, 135, 135, 172-173, 179(23.6), 
I 86(24.6), 209, 211,213, 216, 221, 240-245, 278, 
283, 319-320,- prayer sticks, 330-331,- shamanistic 
features, 242, 262, 266, trade actvities, 86-87, 88 
Sakhalin Island, 51,69, 70, 374, archaeological cultures, 
40(3.2), 46, 47, 49 (See also Okhotsk culture),- artifact 
collection expeditions in, 27, 30, 125, 133, 135, 170- 
171, 266, history, 10 m, 10-11, I 1 (1.5), 24, 87-91, 
120-121, 108, 1 1 2, 205,- trade, 86-89. See also 
Karafuto 
Salmon, 201, 203(28.4),- first-salmon ceremony, 24, 36, 
36, I 18-1 19, 200, 219, 221, 253,- salmon run, 199-200 
Salmon fishing: 36(2.9), 44(3.13-3.14), 200, 201, 
210-211, 213 
Salmon-skin products, 1 51(1 9.6a,b), 157,220(29.25), 
288, 291, 312 
Samaikur myth, 261,265-266 
Sapporo, 1 63m, 170, 355-357, district court decision, 
25, 357-358, 362-363, 367-368 
Saranip (twined baskets), 16, 301,302, 303-305, 
305(43.8), 307-308, 310-311, 31 1 
Saru River, and region, 136(t), 155, 355-358 
Sasaki, Shiro, 86-91 
Sasaki, Toshikazu, 27, 79-85 
Sasamura, Jiro, 369-370 
Satsumon culture, 7, 18, 44-45, 205 
Schools, 369, 371, 371-373 
Sealskin robe, 320(45.1 7) 
Sea otter, 24, 46. See also Marine mammals 
Seaweed, 202 
Seisuiji En'gi, 80, 81 
Sending ceremonies: 14(1.1 1), 14, 25-26, 44, 202, 248, 
dances accompanying, 257,- deer sending, 253-254, 
dog sending, 253, fox sending, 252, 259(36.6), iwakte, 
254-255, 257,- opunire, 251-254, 257, owl sending, 252, 
255, whale sending, 224-225. See also Iyomante (bear¬ 
sending ceremony) 
Settlement. See Village (kotan) 
Sewing kits, 123. See also Needlecases 
Sewing thread, 31 3, of bark-fiber thread (ohyo), 
1 51(19.7), 235-236, 314, 314-316, 3 I 5, thread 
twisting, 238, 238(32.1 8) 
Shakai-ketai (social structure), 227, 244-245, family, 
232, 272, maternal traditions, 231,232, patrilineage, 
230, 231-232; social status, 244-245. See also Elders; 
Gender roles 
Shakushain's War, 19, 69, 70, 97-98, 369 
Shamanism, 243-244, 266, initiation (bubyou), 266-267, 
medicinal, 26, 102, 104-105, 102, 104, 105(13.4), 
196-197, 1 97, 241-242, seance, 26 1, 262, shaman's 
drum (kaco), 262, 264, shamans consulted in war, 243; 
Siberian parallels, 261,262, 265, 267. See also Religious 
objects 
Shaved stick. See Inaw 
Shell lamp, 228(3 1.4) 
Shell-mound excavations, 52, 18, 126 
Shinto ritual, 21 
Shiraoi, 99, 143, 163m, 164, 168, 168, 188,227; Ainu 
Museum in, 26, 94, 183, 183—186, 223, 233 
Shternberg, Leo, 30, 63, 265 
Siberian cultures: ethnological comparisons with Ainu, 
1 1, 47-51, 48m, 51(4.8); parallel shamanistic 
traditions, 261, 262, 265, 267, parelleis in basketry, 
307, 308 
Siddle, Richard, 67-73, 108-115 
Siebold, Heinrich von, 126(16.4), 127; shell-mound 
excavations, 18, 126 
Siebold, Philipp Franz von, 14, 18, 126, 126 
Silver artifacts, 50 
Skulls: archaeological deposits, 52, 257-260, 264, bear, 
253, 256, owl, 255 
Smallpox, 102-103, 105(13.4) 
Smithsonian, 136, 148-153, 1 54, 188 
414 
Smoking kits and implements, 19, 298, 334,■ curved pipe, 
! 74-1 75(22.8); pipe holder, 181,298,- pipe (kiseri), 
245, 298, smoking kits, 138, 175(22.9), 286, 297, 
334; tobacco box, 19, 181, 298,■ tobacco pouch, 
174(22.17), 244(33.8) 
Snowshoes, 156(20.3), 157 
Social factors: alcoholism, 73; discrimination or 
prejudice, 9, 16, 24, 73, 225, 233, 274, 341, 369, 372,- 
economic conditions, 98, 359, education, 369, 371, 
371-373,- infant mortality, 270 
Social structure (shakai-ketai), 227, 244-245, family, 232, 
272, maternal traditions, 231,232, patrilineage, 230, 
231-232, social status, 244-245. See also Eiders,- Gender 
roles 
Songs, 127, throat singing, 285; whale songs, 223, 226 
See also Music 
Spear (marek), 211, 235 
Spiral designs (morew), 17, 22, 22(1.23, 1.25), 23 
Spirit deities. See Kamuy 
Spirit-sending ceremonies (opunire), 14(1.11), 14, 25- 
26, 44, 202, 248, 25 1-254, 257,- dances accompany¬ 
ing, 257, deer sending, 253-254,- dog sending, 253,- 
fox sending, 252, 259(36.6),- owl sending, 252, 
255, whale sending, 224-225. See also Iwakte: 
Iyomante 
Starr, Frederick: "Ainu Notes,” 146,- escorting Ainu to St. 
Louis Exposition, 140-142, 155, 159, 309, ethnologi¬ 
cal work with Ainu, 16, 136(t), 140, 141, collections, 
142-146, 155-156, 159, 166,-photographs of Ainu, 
16, 140(18.3) 
Stick, sacred shaved. See Inaw 
Stone age. See Archaeological cultures, Paleolithic land 
bridges 
Stone tools, 48, 51 
Stone vessels, 166 
Straits. See Land bridges 
Stranded whales, 222, 225,- dance to, 223, 223(30.2), 226 
Sunazawa, Chinita, 351-352,- A Daughter's Happiness, 
351(47.31), 351,- Yang, 353(47.35),- Yin, 352(47.34) 
Sunazawa, Bikky (Hisano): activist and artist, 25, 1 10, 
110, 113, 117, 341, 341-349, 346(47.23),- Ekashi (Bear 
and Hunter), 342(47.1 6),- Gozen sanji nogantju (Toys at 
3.00 AM.), 345(47.22), 347-348,- Juka (Wooden Flower), 
344(47.9), 344-345,- Kami no shita (Tongue of God), 
343(47.1 8), 344,- Kaze ni kiku (Listening to the Wind), 
346(47.24), 347,- Ki-men (Wooden Masks), 25, 
341 (47.1 5a, b), 343, Nitne-kamuy (Evil God), 
348(47.27),-Totem poles, 342(47.17), 344(47.20); 
Yottsu no kaze (Four Winds), 346, 347(47.25) 
Sunazawa, Ichitaro, 110, 110-111 
Sunazawa, Kazuo, 111: Portrait of Ichitaro Sunazawa, 1 1 1 
Sunazawa, Peramonkoro, 1 10, 110, 349, 380(55.3), 381 
Suwa, Tadaka, Suwa Daimyojin ekotoba, 80-81 
Swords (emush), 97, 107, 296, 325-326 326(45.34), 
331, ritual sword (pons emush), 107, 272-273,- sword 
dance, 285(41.7) 
T 
Taboos or prohibitions: blood taboos, 244, image taboos, 
24, 292, 297,- taboo words, 58 
Takakura, Shin'ichiro, 19, 27, 30, 67, 241 
Takakuma, Tokusaburo: Ainu Monagatari (Ainu tales), 109 
Tamura, Suzuko, 57-65 
Tanimoto, Kazuyuki, 282-285 
Tatar Strait, 47 
Takusa (grass or bamboo for burning), 248 
Tattoos, women's, 292, 294, 325, 326(45.32-33),- 
lip tattoos, 14, 91(10.6), 148, 154, 380 
Technologies. See Arts, Fishing, House (chise), Hunting 
Teufel (coiled baskets), 23, 134(17.3), 304, 305, 
305(43.7), 308 
Terashima, Ryoan, Wakan Sansai zue, 8 1, 81-82 
Territorial disputes, Ainu relocation, I I, 108, 112, 121 
Territory around village (iwor), 1 99(27.4), 218-2 19, 
227, 234 
Textile arts, 159, 190-191, 215, 237, 287-292, design 
techniques, 1 77(23.2),- embroidery, 144-145,239, 
287, 293, 317-318, 320,- learning skills and designs, 
246-247, 247(34.6), 291-292, 309-312, 312, 
320(45.1 8), 379, 379-381, loom, 215-216, 
3 1 2(44.7), making bark-fiber thread (ohyo), 
1 51(19.7), 235-236, 3 14, 314-316, 3 1 5,-mat 
making, 237, thread twisting, 238, 238(32.1 8). See 
also Baskets,- Clothing,- Design elements, Ornamen¬ 
tation 
-fabrics: animal hides, 313; attush (bark cloth), 16, 
133, 152, 289, 317, 323(45.23); birdskin, 313, 316, 
cotton, 1 44-1 45; fishskin products, 151(1 9.6a,b), 
157, 220(29.25), 288, 291, 312, imported cotton, 
316-319; nettle plant (retarpe), 160-161, 172-173, 
290 
Thread, 31 3; bark-fiber thread (ohyo), i 5 1(19.7), 235— 
236, 314, 314-316, 3 1 5 
Thread twisting, 238, 238(32.1 8) 
Tobacco box, 181 298. See also Smoking kits and 
implements 
Tobacco pouch, 174(22.7), 244(33.8). See also Smoking 
kits and implements 
Together with the Ainu (Hilger), 27, 356 
Tohoku, 10m, 43, 45, 61 
Tokoro, 257-258 
Tokugawa collection, 177-178 
Tokugawa Shogunate, 9, 13, 19,71,78,88-89,96, 101, 
336, 374. See also Japanese early modern state 
Tomakomai region geology, 40 
Tombs. See Graves 
Torao, Haru, 379, 380(55.4) 
Torii, Ryuzo, 27, 80 
Totem poles, 1 16, 122, 342(47.17), 344(47.20), 
tourism and, 3 38 
Tourism, 73, 95, 101, and ethnic identity, 95, tourist 
areas, 25, 94 
Tourist art, 335, 335-337, 336, 337, 338, 342-343 
Toys, 246, 246-247 
Trade: early Ainu, 10, 66-67, 68-71, 232, 240, 302, 374; 
fur trade, 23, 86-87, maritime, 86m, 86-91, 120, 336, 
restrictions on, 97,- Sakhalin Island and, 86-87, 88; 
Santan trade, 46, 81, 86, 241 
Trade goods, 20, 60, 78, 87, 98, 241, incorporated into 
crafts ("making them Ainu"), 7, 19, 19, 90, 91, 
322(45.23), swords, 97, 107. See also Lacquerware 
Traditional practices, 197-198, Ainu identity and, 26, 
69-70,- commercialized, 24-25, limitations or 
prohibitions on, 221, 225-226. Sec also Arts, 
Ceremonies 
Transmigration of spirits, 193, 197, 268, 270, 273 
Trickster (in myths), 279 
Tsuda, Nobuko, 309-312 
Tsugaru Strait, 34, 67-68. See also Paleolithic land bridges 
Tsunemoto, Teruki, 366-368 
Tuki (ceremonial cups), 21,77, 178, 182,328(46.3, 
46.5), 329-330 
Turep (lily root), 203(28.4), 204, 238(32.9-10) 
Tusu/tusu aynu (holy man), 264-265 
u 
Uimam (audience), 67, 82, 98, 98, 99-100 
United Nations (UN), 25, 1 14, 359, 359, 362, 370, 
Working Group on Indigenous Populations, 115, 360, 
363, 372, World Health Organization, 365,- World 
Women's Conference (Beijing), 380 
University of Pennsylvania Ainu collection, 162-167, 167 
Ushiro, Hiroshi, 39-46 
Utagawa, Hiroshi, 21, 39, 256-260 
Utari Kyokai, 59, 111-112, 113, 114 
V 
Vegetation history, 35, 35m, 202-204. See also Plants 
Village (kotan): 198(27.1), 198,216-217,227, 
228(31.2), 234, directional orientation, 199, iwor 
(resource area), 199(27.4), 218, 227, 234 , 
storehouses, 207(28.1 4) 
Volcano Bay, 125, 136(t), 140, 163m, 164, 165 
w 
Wada, Kan, 261-267 
Wajin-Ainu conflict, 68-71, 282-283 
Walker, Brett L., 102-107 
Watanabe, Hitoshi, 21,27, 30, 118, 198-201 
Watarito people, 77-78 
Whale (humpe), 4 1, 222-223,- Ainu whale songs, 223, 226,- 
killer whale, 41,225(30.5), orca (killer whale), 41, 
225(30.5), 226, orca-whale symbols, 3 32(46.12-1 3), 
spirit deity, 223, 224-225,- whalebone carvings, 224 
Whaling, 222-226 
Window, sacred (kamuy-puyar), 199, 229 
Woodcarving, 21,22-23, 94(1 1.4), 167, 235-237, 295,- 
bowls, 1 50, 205, 206, 299(42.1 8), box, 1 79, 
237(32.8), cuived pipe, 1 74-1 75(22.8), Japanese 
influence, 331-332,- mortar and pestle, 171,239(32.1 1- 
12), paddle, 1 7, plates and platters, 13, 153(19.1), 206, 
298(42.16), 299(42.20); tobacco box, 19, utensils, 205, 
206, 298(42.1 7), 298-299. See also Design elements, 
Modern arts, Ikupasuy (prayer stick),- Inaw (sacred shaved 
stick), Makiri (knife); Tourist art 
Word spirits, 196 
Work. See Gender roles 
World War II, 110, 134 
Y 
Yada, Saburo, Life of the Shiraoi Ainu (film), 189 
Yae, Seijiro, 374 
Yamada, Hidezo, linguistic studies, 60-61 
Yamaura, Kiyoshi, 39-46 
Yamoto people, 74 
Yayoi culture, 1 7(1.1 7), 42-44 
Yezo people. See Ezo, Hokkaido 
Yoneda, Hideki, The Nibutani Amu Culture Museum, 377-378 
Yukar (epic stories), 21, 24, 248, 278, 278-281,280, animals 
in, 276—277, kamuy-yukar 274, 276—277, 283, oina, 274, 
studies and collections of, 27, 59. See also Myth(s) 
Yuki, Shoji, 113 
z 
Zoku-Jomon. See Jomon culture 
415 


r; V'V ’*>; 
»■ -j -ij 
••' T-"V ■!.»'.' 
•V - •■ ' "••' 
/ ’’ '■ i- - ' • '» •-'•.• 
■ ■ .. . .. 
V, ’ . ■ ’’ /*'r'’’,' r ,?'*’•'■ fr' •*' ' )/-. • ••'*’ I "-••rt >.•< Svt( V; >*, >, SSSkV. 
. 
:.. • ;•■:.^T"^;T .I;m: 
V'V-VV 
■ ■■, • 1 .M'.,:,. • ’ ..r,'... ..\ . •„. , '■ ••' •>-,“• ' ■■■'■.••«•»<* Si® 
. • •••,.■• i) ■•••,'■» • 
'.'• ■' -v .<•- ■•' .iWlW 
'* *ih* V' '••" •••’- '•■••.•'.- •<•:•■'-v‘vfty'V- fofa’itywM 
V'& 
.(... A, A,V. C ..V-V; 
."■ ■ •'■•. ’ M ‘ (Vi wiw t-'VWii*® 
• * ; • -V -r- • • iV,• ’ M'lfv^:??^r.'•. ?• 'w"vvy.^W'W,;•*■>• 
'"*• *r *v -•l*f*Y'.*• •• Vi*'iljt%*\ 
•/• * ’••-;'/■'•• ■***$.<,■•■ Wfyf*: - V vViVr-V^V' 
' * • •'■•••.v./f.*.:••;.-*» .-‘-v* , 
'■ \ ' . V,V"- ; ^'viw -y ' 
‘ 'Av . J ^ ■' •*:* '’’*»•••• ••/’?.• •’/* T»Wwy*H|^v 
. *••'••/.. y. ►.... .*.•• v, •• mU ♦<», ,V" Wf(.' •- iftlWl' *<V 
' V» I »•) WJHf'v-A** 
*!*•* - r -*t* • ~ 
ii^S 
'."v;>' i'>i 
: - .•., .;-V- > ;■ •;•-• vv ,» 
■ '■ 1 ■ ‘ ^ . -V. 'r- 
V'.' -V rf;#’:%%* 
1 ' 
wtnSSft v! BK)| • 
•jKVJ swale* w 
.'.'ii..« 
u K- ; < ••’ ■;' 
PW1 •tAflP'fll v ^ 
mmiWm 
k,i'N'( -/ •#!i •:!.• 
Vi*? 
- k.; -|| -. ■■ i ; 
iV rs: 
. •/ yu . 
|*TO .•V;%-.V-y-V* |'».<‘W. 
‘ f V V»i - • • 
sam:® 
BAHnP 
v Hni u.-Vff'r^ •<■ lii. "j 
, :=''WJ .. 
.Viy'^.i'.V-'.riVV 
R'ftitesW' af 
•js3' ' • ' 1 
.ms. 
:yy.tVj', . ... 
:Vv-' 
-r>ifHt.'wVtfv «»*->• V<‘<! 
■■ -yr^grri. ■^'v*v<.>^/v 
• ■, - •1 ••'■ ■.fl v v ?;.vVV. l&ysvs; • fei^.ViV.tvVvV-VVviv 
... I■' ■ \::,y,V '. 
. . V ' • f .' '! "• '• •»•".'}>!. .V'. 
■ ."■■ ■.. ■; V'.^- .•.,•>■'•■•■•■■■.■!-■•••-..-!> ’> 
; • .. ,vvf' * ''!■ 'VrvVr-.,r.£,#^‘‘r'vr**‘^'v?w.^.v^... 
•■,■'■‘•"VV,‘ '• ‘ivy 
v : vv 
; ..,V ., ....JM •• y-•■>■■•.-,,v,'K,WA..'.-.■-....• 
:■ViS^sfesSsss^^KsM 
&£IS; ■'. I T.‘ ' V ' ..f !.:>■ ^ * A 
,».*w*• :'..n.N..«vv-;/:w,^v.-AX-., ,-iV v 
<-r-'iV's . N<<W‘V' 4<f -Vh,.-/*- 1 '••» ‘i-v- * '» ^ 
±Mm«"'■■'' 
S1*V** r-‘* ' -MV- r>... ••>•"». VK ■Sir- \ -v <r V'--'•■>■■ • ■• ■. • ••* ■ ■■ •■"‘ .**’■)■ •'•; /* * ■ :•; 
■•. ;-.*i.. v -{,1c. .-'••.♦■*:» > Vo «•'■ 1 
! •v';.,iV4- .t.-v y ;•. ^K',i • , ■ ■ v\jV.,v; ' ,r <4^'. > S ',s-V- •-f ’’'V ■■'r' ''-' i'.I'M 
, 
iw;' ■’ • •■ '■-( .... -...vw v-■. 
..." .... ;, ) ' , 
' . vr • nvi^Vt 
. ... .... .y- . ■- 
4,»fl 
<:u. .!/•'•» ; |Vvh- v-r’ •.,» •• 
4'.-. r«w V<M#yr/.y * ' ' ’ ••• n ’ 
• A':*. >K\ y • 
x:Sw! '' *' 
>#v? 
'i 
* 
'll- -VT' - • < 
‘ *rHT "' 
• - 
.*W. y< ff. v -y-..' 
. '/.»’-•■ >y MVtiJW' 'Kw 
»^<y» -• 
1 • • , VJk. 
KyV'-V/ .<> ' •-; A^Jj4';.-i' fv-vV. 
• Ayf.fcfe'- 
lV* . '-^1 : ** • *V)WiyiV' ' *;V« 
• ‘ \ ’;. ■•; .• ••' / • '* 
. v M.l *. V • • • • : '• :ii • 
•>v ■•: .'•  ..  Hl/<\ : ; •'• i- • •• , 
• K •, f.v, i' v. y '•,•• /'• 
'• ■: V ■' •■;•:•.• •• ,v: 
; ■ . ' 
i-'.' ' 1 t. ' ' ' 
, ' . i1./ *'r, 
■ ■■■■, ' v-i ^ •. W.iK’.Vdw. 
■ ■ ■ ' >: •'• ■■ • ■ • . ' } . •' .->• ’l ; ,»t' v.»• 
■■: ■J. ..... 
■ 
.. 
Kf 
■' - V’’ ’•; \j ; 1 .yjvy.M,.1 ’■ 
l i*> * • > ' v>, '.4 A 
why 
';fU' 
S. .... .. ...."... ■ . 
,...i’1 ■ -nh ■ «>"i! ■ 
' »*,•»* •?•'■■•■’' ),'l‘ • .• -. .* • < •*»• •v:-1' •• ■' • 1 •* .'t. ,/ -r\' • *tr-" 
’< • -*b.u7'*' 7}.; -.,:... ,*,*/«•> fV V VA ^ Vr; . -4 
•., v-v 
■Wit ( '• ‘ «^;V ■ - • .- ■• • • • • '« ... •••» ‘M 
*< y-' X'r'i>’V< .•;• •••••- . >, -- i1-;. 
•{ ',r t , M { * Vi'fef i.vi ■ 
|1T/'V.f’'rV '-Vr'-rt/ir^-' V*c'-‘: /1 v‘/, tv , ^ 
W vV . V, . •» , 
aiwpra 
■-tuv. V.s^.4 
ri*r . :■ .'■'/ ■■ ■•.'• •' V..; 'I'.'-- v 
'.if- *.-, t-' ' 
Minify »■-•> ’A \ :»•'•' f.Ar-. r V 
*;Wt" 
imnNWM 
: •7J 
I ft: