'Japan illegally occupies the huge land called Hokkaido,
which consists of almost one-quarter of all Japanese territory,'' said Mr.
Kayano, a Member of Parliament from this town in Hokkaido, the northernmost
island of Japan. ''Japanese came to the island like an avalanche, and destroyed
nature while looting fish, coal and everything from the woods.''
Mr. Kayano is a member of the Ainu, an indigenous people
who were hunting and fishing in northern Japan for countless centuries before
other Japanese arrived. The Ainu today have even less voice in Japan than
American Indians do in the United States, but Mr. Kayano and his son have
helped spark a campaign to preserve Ainu culture.
''Compared to 13 years ago, when we began classes to teach
the Ainu language, the progress is as great as the distance from the ground to
the clouds,'' said Mr. Kayano's son, Shiro, who runs the local Ainu museum.
This village of Nibutani, nestled beside a river in the
jutting forests and mountains of Hokkaido, is a center for a renaissance of
Ainu culture. People are studying the Ainu language, which had almost died out,
as well as old traditions such as weaving bark cloth or making dugout canoes.
The Ainu lived in northern Japan for thousands of years
before the migration of other Japanese to Hokkaido in the 19th century. Indeed,
it is possible that the Ainu were the original inhabitants of central and
southern parts of Japan as well as here in the north.
Some studies suggest that the Ainu may be more closely
related than today's Japanese to the Jomon people who founded Japan's first
major civilization some 12,000 years ago. Moreover, Ainu words seem to have
formed the basis for place names throughout Japan -- even for Mount Fuji, the
symbol of the nation.
The question remains, however, whether the Ainu renaissance
has not happened a half-century too late.
''It is surely late, and it's true that the language is
almost lost,'' said Koichi Kaizawa, an Ainu farmer living on the outskirts of
Nibutani. ''But there's a lot of spirit still, so I don't think it's too late.
We've lost a lot, but if we want to get it back I think we can.''
One problem is numbers: across Japan, only 24,000 people
identify themselves as Ainu. And nearly all of these are of mixed race; fewer
than 200 Ainu are said to be of pure blood.
Mr. Kaizawa, for example, says that he has mixed blood on
both sides, and he himself married a non-Ainu Japanese woman. He says he does
not mind if his children marry regular Japanese.
Ironically, it is his wife, Miwako, who despite her lack of
Ainu blood is pressing the children to marry Ainu.
''I'm telling them to marry Ainu, because Ainu blood is
already too thin in this family,'' Mrs. Kaizawa said, laughing, as she sat in
her living room. ''But the kids won't listen to me.''
The mixed marriages are arguably the result of a measure of
acceptance in Japan toward the Ainu. In the 19th century, when American society
frowned on marriages between whites and Indians, Japanese were often marrying
Ainu.
Indeed, some scholars and social commentators say that one
reason why Japanese men tend to have more facial hair than Koreans or Chinese
is a history of intermarriage with Ainu. When Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone
was criticized a decade ago for insensitivity to the Ainu, he responded that
with his bushy eyebrows and heavy beard, he himself probably had a good bit of
Ainu blood.
Mr. Kaizawa argues that one of the main problems is that
the Government seems to do its best to ignore the existence of the Ainu.
''I don't think they want to admit that there's another
race in this country,'' Mr. Kaizawa said. ''I believe that America admits that
Indians were an indigenous people, and that funds are provided for Indian
culture, and that some Indian history is taught in the schools. American
Indians tell us we're 25 to 30 years behind them.''
Mr. Kaizawa added that he does not regard the United States
as a model for treatment of indigenous peoples. But he suggested that it would
be nice if Japanese school textbooks taught about the Ainu, instead of
virtually ignoring them as they do now.
One obstacle for the present cultural renaissance is that
the Ainu traditions are not particularly practical in daily life. Last year,
for example, a group of Ainu tried after a 120-year gap to revive the old
method of hunting deer, without guns or even bows and arrows.
That method was to capture a deer by driving it into a
river or over a cliff. Some hunters managed to spot and chase three deer, but
the quarry escaped. Still, a good time was had by all, except possibly the
deer.
One of those trying to promote Ainu traditions is Rumiko
Fujiya, who for 30 years has been weaving clothing out of bark in the
traditional way. She learned the practice from her mother, and now she
demonstrates the methods in an Ainu museum run by the Kayano family here in
Nibutani.
''I learned this from my mother,'' Mrs. Fujiya said, as she
carefully wove a rough but beautiful cloth from a cord made of bark. ''I have
daughters, but they won't do it. They see me do this work and they don't seem
attracted to it now.''
By Nicholas D. Kristof, Oct.5, 1996; reproduced from The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/05/world/japan-s-forgotten-people-try-to-make-voices-heard.html
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