This is a beautifully designed and laid out, quietly civilised exhibition about a tiny and little-known group of people and their culture, the Ainu people of northern Japan. It brings together over 200 objects, many never seen outside Japan before, and is structured around four themes: language, song and dance; woodcarving, textiles and food; environmental issue; and religion and belief.
Installation view of ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat
The Ainu
The Ainu are an indigenous people who have been living in northern Japan, especially Hokkaido, the northernmost prefecture of Japan, and the surrounding islands, since at least the 13th century (hence the map of Hokkaido in the stand in the photo above, and also printed on the floor).
Historically, they have suffered discrimination and marginalisation. According to Wikipedia:
During the era of Samurai in Japan, Ainus had to grovel and smear their face on soil when they met a Japanese soldier, or face immediate decapitation. Ainu were not allowed to hunt for food, speak Ainu, or obtain an education, being forcefully segregated in small villages.
Although most Ainu continue to live in Hokkaido some have migrated to other parts of Japan. Estimates vary but it is thought that the total Ainu population of Japan numbers in just the tens of thousands. At one point it seemed as if the Ainu language (which is distinct from Japanese) and culture would disappear entirely.
In recent years, however, Ainu culture has undergone a conscious revival. During the 1960s and 1970s Kayano Shigeru, who was born in 1926 in the small village of Nibutani in Hokkaido’s Biratori area, and was the first Ainu to sit in Japan’s parliament, inspired a movement to celebrate, sustain and develop this distinct and lesser known of the Japanese cultures. This movement continues to gather momentum today, in particular among younger members of the Ainu community in Nibutani.
Display of bark fabric clothes in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat
Biratori and Nibutani
Biratori is an area located in the Saru River basin in the south of Hokkaido. Nibutani is a rural community of just over 300 people within Biratori Town, a municipal area with a population of around 4,600. Of the 300 inhabitants of Nibutani some 70 to 80% are of Ainu descent. This makes it the place in Japan with the highest percentage of Ainu residents. So compared with Japan’s population of 126 million we are talking tiny, tiny numbers.
And this is why this exhibition focuses on this town, its Ainu people and rural surroundings. An important aspect of the exhibition is that it has been curated in collaboration with the people of Biratori. Simon Wright, Director of Programming for Japan House London, points out that: ‘Many, if not all, exhibitions of Ainu culture in museums have focused on the past. Displays are often made up of old ethnographic collections. This exhibition, with a range of materials made especially for this project, aims to be different. For this venture, at Japan House London we want to show how Ainu culture in the rural district of Biratori is expressed today.’
The emphasis is on the ongoing life and viability of the culture, as practiced by people alive now, who have made objects and been interviewed expressly for this exhibition.
Kaizawa Yukiko weaving bark-cloth for attus as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Ogawa Masaki
Twelve videos
The one-room gallery is lines by twelve large video screens, on which appear interviews with living practitioners of Ainu arts and crafts, language and religion. The interviews are interspersed with shot of the idyllic scenery of the Saru River region which makes it look stunningly beautiful. The rugged river and northern landscape and especially the many woodcarvings of wild bears catching salmon made me think of Canada (well, images of Canada I’ve seen on TV).
Wood carvings of wild bears catching salmon as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat
The topics of the videos are:
- Nibutani Ainu food culture (interviewee: Oikawa Naomi)
- Tourism and a new identity (Kaizawa Tōru)
- Ainu woodcarving (Hiramura Daiki)
- Teaching the next generation building techniques (Ozaki Tsuyoshi)
- Attus weaving (Kaizawa Yukiko)
- The importance of local knowledge (Nagano Tamaki)
- Singing as a part of everyday life (Harada Rino)
- Ainu spirituality (Monbetsu Atsushi)
- Ainu language (Sekine Kenji)
- A sustainable forest for the future (Kimura Misaki)
- Ainu culture matters (Kayano Kimihiro)
- Living off the land (Kaizawa Taichi)
In addition there are six smaller video screens dotted around the show with films concentrating on specific themes and topics.
Ainu language
Ainu language is distinct from Japanese. It has mostly been passed down orally with the result that versions of it vary by region. For most of its history it was never written down and only recently have adapted versions of the Japanese and Latin alphabets been used to record it.
The Ainu language is listed as critically endangered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This means that while it is not extinct, the last native speakers are dying out and only conscious efforts by the community and the authorities are going to keep it alive. The primary school in the featured town of Nibutani devotes more time to teaching its pupils Ainu than any other school in Japan.
The exhibition allows visitors to hear Ainu people speaking their own language and see some of the learning materials used to teach the language. In January there will be live in-person lessons from native Ainu speakers.
Pack of picture cards use to teach the Ainu language to children as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat
The environment
This section touches on topics of environmental conservation, contemporary agricultural practices, the largely unknown world of Ainu cuisine and the consultation with members of the Ainu community on major land construction projects such as the recently completed Biratori Dam.
Iwor is the Ainu term for the natural environment which sustains the Ainu way of life. Since 2008 the Iwor Restoration Project has been preserving or restoring habitats required for Ainu culture, such as the bullrushes used in traditional home building (cise), the creation of attus bark cloth, areas for the wild plants necessary for traditional medicine, and the cultivation of traditional crops such as millet and beans.
The cooking implements carved from wood are beautiful. There’s wall labels explaining the staples of Ainu cuisine, samples of spices and dried foods, and a video showing Ainu dishes being cooked. These include soups (ohaw) starting with wild onion and then including meat from salmon, deer or wild bear; Rataskep which are simmered and reduced dishes containing beans or potatoes; sito which are dumplings made from glutinous millet. It all looked rich and strange and mouth-watering.
Cooking implements and ingredients of Ainu cuisine, with one of the 12 videos in the background, as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat
I was touched to learn that one of the fundamental etiquettes of Ainu food culture is to only take what you need, thus, when harvesting mountain vegetables, to leave the roots intact.
Ainu textiles, song and dance
Videos show traditional Ainu dance with interviewees explaining their religious and community significance. The show features richly embroidered robes worn for certain ceremonies. I was staggered to learn that they make clothes not out of wool or cotton but out of peeled bark or attus which is painstakingly separated into individual fibres by hand to create ‘bark cloth’ before being woven into bright attractive costumes.
Woodcarving and tourism
Japanese domestic tourism in the 1960s and 1970s inspired the growth of the Ainu woodcarving industry in Nibutani, an area which was already famed for its delicately carved wooden trays, household utensils and hunting weapons. The exhibition includes Nibutani attus (woven bark textiles) along with Nibutani ita (carved trays). These latter are carved from walnut wood decorated with Ainu patters such as spirals (morew), thorns (ayus), eye shapes (sik) and fish scales (ram-ram).
Hand carved bowls and platters along with traditional carving tools as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat
Ainu religion
Ainu religious ceremonies evolved as ways of preserving order in the world. There are no priests in the Ainu belief system, instead rituals are carried out by representatives chosen from community leaders. Participants were Ainu robes and make offerings of inaw (hand-carved sticks with wood shavings) to various kamuy (Ainu spirit deities) who are called on for protection, food and good health. There are good, troublesome or indifferent kamuy but all demand respect.
Monbetsu Atsushi in traditional ceremonial dress as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House
The Ainu belief system is rooted in the notion that alongside the world of humans (aynu) there is another world where the kamuy live in human form. In the human world kamuy can exists as plants or animals. Certain ceremonies enable messages to be sent by humans to the kamuy.
When an animal that embodies a particular kamuy, such as a bear, salmon or owl, was caught, its spirit (or ramat) was sent home to the world of kamuy with a prescribed ceremony, leaving its physical form behind as a gift to the humans.
These kamuy sent back with ceremonial gifts to the world of the kamuy would then come back again to the world of humans. When living things die, ramat leaves them and can be found everywhere and indicates the ongoing interconnection between Ainu and the natural world.
Links with Britain
I associate British imperial activity with Africa, India and south-east Asia so I was surprised to discover that some of the key figures in the preservation and promotion of Ainu culture were British.
John Batchelor (1855 to 1944)
Missionary John Batchelor from East Sussex lived and worked with the Ainu community for many years during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He became a fierce advocate for their culture and way of life. Batchelor published the first texts about Ainu language in English, including the first Ainu-English dictionary in 1905.
Isabella Bird (1831 to 1904)
Bird was an English explorer, writer, photographer and naturalist. She was the first woman to be elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. The exhibition describes her travelogues whose northernmost point of travel within Japan was Biratori, where she stayed with the local community leader’s family and described their culture and practices.
Dr Neil Gordon Munro (1863 to 1942)
Dr Neil Gordon Munro was a Scottish physician and anthropologist. He lived in Japan for almost fifty years, from 1930 until his death living among the Ainu in Nibutani village in Hokkaido. He collected Ainu artifacts and authored many books including ‘Ainu Creed and Cult’ (with H Watanabe & B Z Seligman, 1962). But it was his faithful services as a physician to the Ainu people which earned him the love and respect of the Ainu population. According to the preface to his Ainu book:
‘He kept open house for all who came there to gossip, sing songs, tell legends and talk of past times. He was thus acquainted with a number of elders (ekashi) who became his regular informants, and to whom he referred as his elders and teachers.’
Film footage he took of the local people survives as well as the artifacts he sent back to the British Museum, National Museum of Scotland and Pitt Rivers Museum.
Events
The exhibition is complemented by an extensive programme of events covering Ainu dance, language, cuisine, policy and craft, ranging in format from talks and demonstrations to workshops and storytelling, which continue in the new year.
Charming carved figurines as featured in ‘Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River’ at Japan House. Photo by Jérémie Souteyrat
- 7 January: Festive Family Workshops
- 10 and 21 January: film screenings of Ainu: Indigenous People of Japan
- 12 to 16 January: Speaking Ainu: Language Event Series
The film
There are also free public screenings of an 80-minute long documentary film ‘Ainu – Indigenous People from Japan’ (2019) by director Mizoguchi Naomi. Filmed in Biratori, the film follows the everyday life of four elder members of the resident Ainu community: Kawanano Kazunobu, Kayano Reiko, Nabesawa Tamotsu and Kibata Sachiko.
All four were born in the 1930s and grew up as Ainu but were not taught the language by their parents and grandparents due to the suppression of Ainu identity at that time. After shifts in sensibility starting in the 1960s, they have been able to reconnect with their heritage and became active local leaders to help revitalise their language and culture.
After the first screening there was a panel discussion with contributions from the film director and members of the Ainu community of Biratori, which is available to watch online, link below.
Thoughts
Beautiful. Fascinating. Inspiring.
Related links
- Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River continues at Japan House until 21 April 2024
- Panel discussion on the making of the film ‘Ainu: Indigenous People of Japan’ by director Mizoguchi Naomi
- Ainu people Wikipedia article
Books & Boots 