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Journal articles on the topic 'Ainu'
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Xiong, Xiaoli. "Origins of the Ainu Religious Conversion at Hokkaido in Japan." Communications in Humanities Research 5, no. 1 (September 14, 2023): 259–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.54254/2753-7064/5/20230264.
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The Ainus in Japan were the indigenous people who lived in Northern Japan and Russia. Before the Russian and Japanese arrived in Japan, the Ainu people had their own culture, rituals and values. In their culture, natural spirits exist everywhere. This view is often referred to as Kamui. However, recent studies have shown that the majority of the Ainu community nowadays do not believe in their native religion. Instead, they are mostly believers of Shintoism and Buddhism. This paper traces the origin of the Ainu religion and how the primary religion of the Ainu community has changed to todays situation. The study relies mainly on existing literature. By analyzing interviews, journal articles, and books, the paper seeks to provide a new perspective in understanding the Ainu religion and the influence of religion among indigenous people.
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Dossova, A., and K. M. Ilyassova. "Study of Ains in Japan by John Batcheler." BULLETIN of the L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University.Political Science. Regional Studies. Oriental Studies. Turkology Series. 142, no. 1 (2023): 271–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.32523/2616-6887/2023-142-1-271-280.
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This article represents the everyday life and work of the British missionary John Batchelor, the founder of Ainu studies. In his mature years, John Batchelor (1854-1944) moved to Japan, where he studied the origins, traditions, religious beliefs, and culture of the Ainu. Born in England, Batchelor professes Christianity, so he decides to go to the Hakodate Anglican Church in Hokkaido, Japan. Having started his missionary activity in this country, John masters the local Japanese and Ainu languages. Thus, a missionary settled in Hokkaido studied the daily life of the Ainu assimilated by the Japanese. As a result, he opens the Airui-Gakkou school for the Ainu, and is working on the book «Japan’s Ainu». As a result, the Hokkaido Government Office publishes the Ainu-English-Japanese Dictionary at its own expense. Then a translation of the New Testament is published. In his book In the Footsteps of the Ainu, John says that the Ainu language has fallen into disuse and has become obsolete as the Japanese have replaced it. He also collects interesting materials and describes different stories from the everyday history life of the Ainu in his work «The Life and Education of the Ainu», published in English. Returning to England, D. Batchelor completes his fourth edition of the Aino-English-Japanese Dictionary. When Japan- United Kingdom relations began to escalate, John decided to leave Japan. Thus, his missionary activity smoothly flows into research. He spends his whole life in Japan, fighting for the rights and freedom of the Ainu people. In addition, the article discusses the circumstances that prompted Batchelor to study the Ainu. Later, his «English-Ainu» dictionary becomes an indispensable basis for many Japanese and foreign linguists. An important role in the fate of the Ainu was played by the book «Ainu and Folklore». As a result, the problem of the Ainu became known to the whole world, the people were taken under the care of the UN. The article also included direct statements by D. Batchelor, a critic of the linguist-anthropologist Chiri Mashiho.
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Fujie, Linda, Kazuyuki Tanimoto, and Jean-Jacques Nattiez. "Ainu Songs Japan/Chants des Ainou Japon." Ethnomusicology 29, no. 1 (1985): 132. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/852337.
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Maruyama, Hiroshi. "Japan's post-war Ainu policy. Why the Japanese Government has not recognised Ainu indigenous rights?" Polar Record 49, no. 2 (September 17, 2012): 204–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s003224741200040x.
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ABSTRACTIn 1946, the Ainu Association of Hokkaido was established by the Ainu to reclaim their lands. The 1970s and 80s saw that the association successfully put pressure on the Hokkaido Prefectural Government to take social welfare measures for the improvement of their life and make a new law counter to the Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act. In 1997 the Japanese Government enacted the so-called New Ainu Law. However, it is totally different from the original draft made by the Ainu. The law does not designate the Ainu as indigenous people. Further, it is outstripped by the decision of Nibutani Dam Case that, for the first time in Japanese history, recognised Ainu right to culture and indigenousness in Japanese territory. In 2008 the Japanese Government finally recognised the Ainu as indigenous people in the wake of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, the Ainu do not yet have any indigenous rights. This note chronologically outlines Japan's post-war Ainu policy, and moreover explores who and what has influenced Ainu policy and the law.
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Tamura, Yurika. "Rehumanizing Ainu." Meridians 23, no. 1 (April 1, 2024): 210–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/15366936-10926952.
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Abstract This article argues that many contemporary female Ainu performance-activists from the Ainu community of Japan, including a performance scene led by Ainu huci (female elders) at an Ainu cultural education center in Sapporo, Japan, engage in performance of desubjectification, which emphasizes the sameness of their humanity with the dominant Japanese rather than arguing for Ainu ethnic difference or their colonial history. At first glance, their performance and iterations seem detached from the discourse of Indigenous resistance. However, this article demonstrates how such iteration of singularity—sameness—derives from a particular Ainu colonial history and argues that their performance critically eschews colonial and imperial ideas of authenticity, ethnic difference, and the universal human. In doing so, the Ainu performance scene in this article presents itself as a theoretical performance activism against the Western (and Japanese imperial) notion of Indigenous peoples as less-than-human. By using bodies, sound, and sensations, these performers define Ainu Indigeneity in their own terms, and achieve an Ainu Indigenous critique of the “human,” the concept that is built on exclusion and marginalization of ethnic minorities and colonized subjects.
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Uzawa, Kanako. "What does Ainu cultural revitalisation mean to Ainu and Wajin youth in the 21st century? Case study of Urespa as a place to learn Ainu culture in the city of Sapporo, Japan." AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 15, no. 2 (June 2019): 168–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1177180119846665.
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This article illustrates living experiences of Ainu cultural practices by the students of Urespa. Urespa is a self-motivated, non-profit social initiative or association founded in 2010 by Professor Honda Yuko at Sapporo University with the aim of bringing Ainu and Wajin students together in a curriculum-based environment to co-learn the Ainu language and Ainu cultural practices. In the Ainu language, urespa means “growing together”. The article draws on the author’s fieldwork with Urespa in Sapporo, Hokkaido, in 2016 in focusing on a new way of practising Ainu culture in an urban setting in the 21st century. The article, therefore, focuses on Ainu cultural revitalisation, everyday cultural practices, and on how it plays out within Urespa in a context of decolonisation and self-determination in Japan.
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Maruyama, Hiroshi. "Revitalisation of Ainu Culture and Protection of their Right to Culture: Learning from Norwegian Sami Experiences." Yearbook of Polar Law Online 5, no. 1 (2013): 547–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22116427-91000136.
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Abstract The Ainu people in Japan have been deprived of their land, culture and language in the wake of the ruthless assimilation policy of Japan and their forcible relocation of them from the Kurile Islands and Sakhalin to Hokkaido. In June 2008, the Ainu were ultimately recognized as indigenous people by the Japanese Government, but their right to culture is not protected by the Japanese legal system. In fact, the Ainu still suffer from the losses of their traditional culture and moreover, are excluded from the decision making process in matters affecting them. Nevertheless, the Ainu have been trying to revitalise their culture as a right belonging to them – a right recognized by international human rights law. This paper examines Ainu traditional knowledge and the current situation of grain cultivation that was prevalent among the Ainu living in the Saru River Basin and its surroundings in Hokkaido before the assimilation policy. Further, the paper explores Ainu right to culture, both from a human rights standpoint and an environmental rights point of view using international treaties and the relevant instruments. In addressing this question, the paper aims to compare the Ainu perspective with that of Norwegian Sami.
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Laksmita Sari, Ida Ayu. "Antara Teks dan Praktik: Ritual Iomante pada Cerita Rakyat Ainu Jepang." Mudra Jurnal Seni Budaya 34, no. 2 (May 22, 2019): 205–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.31091/mudra.v34i2.702.
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Masyarakat Ainu, penduduk asli Jepang yang selama ratusan tahun sempat termaginalkan, kaya akan budaya yang terus dilestarikan antara lain melalui aktivitas ritual dan cerita rakyat. Salah satu ritual penting yang muncul berulang dalam cerita rakyat Ainu adalah iomante (iyomante), ritual pengembalian arwah beruang ke alam dewa. Makalah ini menganalisis hubungan antara praktik ritual dengan teks cerita tentang iomante. Analisis difokuskan pada bagaimana ritual iomante dilukiskan dalam cerita rakyat, mengapa iomante muncul berulang dalam cerita-cerita rakyat Ainu, dan apa hubungan antara cerita rakyat iomante dengan praktik ritual iomante yang digelar masyarakat Ainu dewasa ini. Objek dari penelitian ini diambil dari cerita rakyat yang terkumpul dalam buku antologi cerita rakyat Ainu Ainu Mukashi Banashi: Hitotsubu no Satciporo dengan editor Kayano Shigeru (1993). Data dikaji dengan teori sosiologi sastra dan teori semiotika. Teori sosiologi sastra menganalisis cerita sebagai refleksi kehidupan sosial budaya masyarakat, sedangkan teori semiotika digunakan untuk mengkaji simbol-simbol dalam cerita rakyat secara denotatif, konotatif dan mitos atau ideologi. Makalah ini menyimpulkan bahwa pelukisan ritual iomante dalam cerita rakyat Ainu menjadi wadah bagi masyarakat untuk ideologisasi tradisi budaya, sementara praktik ritual iomante dewasa ini mengalami penambahan fungsi dari sebatas fungsi spiritual dengan fungsi festival, khususnya ketika ritual dipromosikan sebagai daya tarik pariwisata etnik yang dikembangkan masyarakat Ainu.
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Izutsu, Katsunobu. "Moving event and moving participant in aspectual conceptions." Lege Artis 1, no. 1 (June 1, 2016): 116–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/lart-2016-0003.
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Abstract This study advances an analysis of the event conception of aspectual forms in four East Asian languages: Ainu, Japanese, Korean, and Ryukyuan. As earlier studies point out, event conceptions can be divided into two major types: the moving-event type and the moving-participant type, respectively. All aspectual forms in Ainu and Korean, and most forms in Japanese and Ryukyuan are based on that type of event conception. Moving-participant oriented Ainu and movingevent oriented Japanese occupy two extremes, between which Korean and Ryukyuan stand. Notwithstanding the geographical relationships among the four languages, Ryukyuan is closer to Ainu than to Korean, whereas Korean is closer to Ainu than to Japanese.
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Klimova, O. V. "The interpreters of Ainu language in the lands of Ezo in the 17<sup>th</sup> – 18<sup>th</sup> centuries (based on Japanese archive materials)." Japanese Studies in Russia, no. 4 (January 18, 2024): 53–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.55105/2500-2872-2023-4-53-64.
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This article, based on Japanese sources, discusses the question of how the Ainu language interpreters’ guild was formed, what functions translators performed, and how their status changed in the period from the 17th to the 18th centuries. During this time, Japan pursued the policy of self-isolation, and all contacts with the outside world were closely controlled by the government. However, in the places where contact with foreign culture did occur, interpreters were needed. So, there were interpreters of Chinese, Korean, and Dutch languages. In the island of Hokkaido, where trade with the local Ainu took place, the interpreters of Ainu language were needed. In this article, the history of Ainu language interpreters and their first appearance is researched based on Japanese archive materials. The research also focuses on the functions the interpreters performed and their status in Japanese society at the time. There was a separate category of interpreters of the Ainu language in Matsumae, who were involved exclusively in important official events of the Matsumae clan. Their functions and positions in society, as well as the first mentions of Ainu language experts who succeeded in their profession, are also examined in detail. Particular attention is paid to the status and functions of the interpreters of the Ainu language in Ezo at the beginning of the 18th century, when a new basho trading system was introduced in Japan. The subject of the Ezo interpreters’ level of command of the Ainu language is also in the focus of the research. The study mentions the attempts to compile the first dictionaries of the Ainu language and the difficulties that came with it. The author concludes that the functions of interpreters of the Ainu language have undergone tremendous changes. In the 17th century, the services of interpreters were used only for the occasions of trade, as well as ceremonies of welcoming or escorting a ship. By the end of the 18th century, they stood at the forefront of the Japanese control of the Ainu. Their rights and obligations were so extensive that, in fact, they, as representatives of local authorities, completely controlled the Ainu people.
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Chernetskaia, Polina I. "Iyomante: The Ainu Bear Festival in Hokkaido and Sakhalin." Oriental Courier, no. 2 (2023): 134. http://dx.doi.org/10.18254/s268684310026736-7.
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The Ainu are a folk whose history, origin, way of life, traditions and beliefs have been attracting close attention of scientists for more than a century. From an ethnographic and historical point of view, the Ainu have a very difficult and sometimes dramatic fate. Nevertheless, despite all the colossal difficulties, unfavorable geographical and political conditions, the Ainu manage to survive as an ethnic group. One of the main conditions for their survival is the maintenance of traditional rituals. One of the ancient customs, which the Ainu still revere, is the famous Bear Festival. The striking distinguishing features of this cult were the cultivation of an animal in captivity and its subsequent slaughter. Although the Iyomante rite of the Ainu was also applied to other animals, the bear occupied the most important place in their life. Despite numerous ethnographic and historical studies concerning the Ainu, the tradition of the Bear Festival is recorded in detail only by two scientists — Bronislaw Pilsudski and John Batchelor, who lived among the Ainu for a long time, studying their life, history, culture, and religious beliefs from the inside. In this regard, the features of the Bear Festival of the Sakhalin Ainu are viewed here based on the views of Bronisław Piłsudski and the specifics of the Hokkaido Ainu Bear Festival is based on the research by John Batchelor. Overall, the specific features of the ceremonial events turned out to be quite stable, despite the geographical and political division, the harsh climate, and the lack of writing system. In addition, the tradition of the bear cult (widespread among many peoples) in the form of a Bear Festival helped the Ainu people to survive as an ethnic group to this day.
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Chekunkova, Ekaterina S. "Ainu in modern Japanese society: the problem of returning the remains of ancestors." RUDN Journal of World History 13, no. 1 (December 15, 2021): 96–113. http://dx.doi.org/10.22363/2312-8127-2021-13-1-96-113.
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The article is devoted to the issue of repatriation of Ainu ancestral remains, collected by Japanese researchers in the second half of the 19th - 20th centuries. It is the most crucial current issue for many Ainu people who are trying to regain the language, the distinct culture, and identity. The article analyzes the positions of the Japanese Government, the Hokkaido Ainu Association and Ainu rights activist groups and movements. The article examines the contradictions that arose in Japanese society concerning the process of repatriation. Discussions in Japanese society during this problem were analyzed, and its significance for the Ainu communities is revealed. It was found that the discussions mainly arise in connection with the idea of transferring the remains to the memorial hall located in Symbolic Spaces for Ethnic Harmony, which was opened in July 2020. Research also showed that the problem under study is largely related to limitations in ethnic policy implementation and realization of indigenous peoples rights in Japan. In addition, the process of repatriation of Ainu ancestral remains is compounded by the lack of unity of the Ainu as a community. Therefore, reaching agreement between the government, the academic community, and critical Ainu rights activist groups proved extremely difficult. However, it was concluded that there is a potential to resolve the issue and consensus could be reached in the near future.
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Teeter, Jennifer, and Takayuki Okazaki. "Ainu as a Heritage Language of Japan: History, Current State and Future of Ainu Language Policy and Education." Heritage Language Journal 8, no. 2 (June 30, 2011): 251–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.46538/hlj.8.2.5.
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Ainu is the heritage language of the indigenous people of present-day southern Sakhalin, the Kurile Islands, present-day Hokkaidō, and northeastern Honshū (mainland Japan). The UNESCO Interactive Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (2009) considered the Ainu language critically endangered with only 15 speakers remaining. This article scrutinizes UNESCO’s assessment and analyzes the historical and current situation of the Ainu language and its transmission, particularly evaluating government policies related to the transmission of the Ainu language. Analysis in this article will draw upon our field observations and interviews conducted in Hokkaidō. Numerous formal and informal discussions were conducted with Ainu teachers, politicians, community members, and activists. Our findings indicate that the grassroots language revitalization efforts have been made and a growing number of youth speak Ainu, although their proficiency levels vary. While policymakers recognize the government’s responsibility in reversing language shift, they have yet to articulate adequate policies. The authors conclude with a discussion of the state’s positive responsibility to realize the rights ensured by the United Nations of Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This realization will facilitate the transmission of Ainu language and culture, and ensure its vitality in the future.
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Centeno Martín, Marcos P. "The fight for self-representation." Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, no. 13 (July 20, 2017): 69–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.33178/alpha.13.04.
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Film representation of the Ainu people is as old as cinema but it has not remained stable over time. From the origins of cinema, Ainu people were an object of interest for Japanese and foreign explorers who portrayed them as an Other, savage and isolated from the modern world. The notion of “otherness” was slightly modified during wartime, as the Ainu were represented as Japanese subjects within the “imperial family”, and at the end of the fifties when entertainment cinema presented the Ainu according to the codes of the Hollywood Western on the one hand; and Mikio Naruse proposed a new portrayal focusing on the Ainu as a long-discriminated social collective rather than as an ethnic group, on the other. However, Tadayoshi Himeda’s series of seven documentaries following the Ainu leader Shigeru Kayano’s activities marked a significant shift in Ainu iconography. Himeda challenged both the postwar institutional discourse on the inexistence of minorities in Japan, and the touristic and ahistorical image that concealed the Ainu’s cultural assimilation to Japanese culture. The proposed films do not try to show an exotic people but a conventional people struggling to recover their collective past.
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Yukliaevskikh (Chekunkova), E. S. "Ainu Policy Promotion Act: The Problem of Compliance With International Standards on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples." Russian Japanology Review 6, no. 2 (January 12, 2024): 61–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.55105/2658-6444-2023-2-61-82.
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This article is devoted to the analysis of the Act on Promoting Measures to Realize a Society in Which the Pride of the Ainu People Is Respected (Act No. 16 of 2019). The problem of compliance of Japan’s Ainu policy with international standards in the sphere of protection of indigenous peoples’ human rights is actively discussed today by foreign researchers. However, it is hardly studied in the Russian historiography. The article discusses the main provisions of the new legislation and reveals the point of view of the Ainu representatives about the measures taken by the government. It has been found out that Japan’s Ainu policy is greatly influenced by the position of international community towards the rights of indigenous peoples. International law has become the main lever of influence on the government for the Ainu people. It has been proven that the mechanisms for promotion and protection of the rights of the Ainu in Japan are imperfect and do not fully comply with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The main issues facing the Ainu are discrimination, collective rights, indigenous representation in the government, development of ethnic education, etc.
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Pietersma, Edwin. "From Crafts to Agency: The Legacy of Colonial Discourses in Exhibiting the Ainu in the Tokyo National Museum and National Museum of Ethnology at Osaka between 1977 and 2017." Museum and Society 21, no. 3 (2023): 22–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.29311/mas.v21i3.4324.
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The Ainu are indigenous groups of people found in Hokkaido and northeast Honshu, Japan. During the nineteenth century, their land was integrated into the Japanese empire and the people redefined and assimilated. While intended to erase the Ainu as distinct groups, policies and discourses also showed that Ainu communities were not accepted as belonging to the category of ‘Japanese’, with the notions that they lacked Japanese ingenuity and civilization, were stuck in a prehistoric past, and lived in terra nullius. These discourses influenced the formation of museums’ collections in Japan, such as the Tokyo National Museum (TNM) and the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka (Minpaku). By offering a reading of exhibitions on the Ainu and their accompanying catalogues between 1977 and 2017, this research sheds light on how colonial legacies continue to be shaped and challenged in representing Ainu communities in museums. The TNM seems unable to challenge tropes of this colonial discourse due to their intricate connection with the government, their notion of political neutrality, and their focus on art that tends to exclude the Ainu from the museum. Minpaku, on the other hand, has tried to introduce notions of cultural relativism and centre cooperation with Ainu communities to facilitate best practices.
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Bugaeva, Anna, and Tomomi Satō. "A Kuril Ainu Glossary by Captain V. M. Golovnin (1811)." International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics 3, no. 2 (December 21, 2021): 171–216. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/25898833-00320002.
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Abstract This paper presents a newly discovered glossary (230 items) of Northern and Southern Kuril Ainu recorded by the captain Vasily Mikhaylovich Golovnin in 1811 and stored at the Russian National Archive of the Navy in St. Petersburg. Based on this new document we argue that Southern Kuril has a much closer lexical resemblance to Northeastern Hokkaido Ainu than Northern Kuril. On the other hand, we reaffirm that both Southern and Northern Kuril Ainu constitute a really separate Kuril group because they show a number of lexical, phonological and grammatical features, which are different from Hokkaido Ainu.
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Nakamura, Naohiro. "Realising Ainu indigenous rights: a commentary on Hiroshi Maruyama's ‘Japan's post-war Ainu policy. Why the Japanese Government has not recognised Ainu indigenous rights?’." Polar Record 50, no. 2 (June 20, 2013): 209–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247413000417.
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ABSTRACTThis commentary reviews Maruyama's article ‘Japan's post-war Ainu policy: why the Japanese Government has not recognised Ainu indigenous rights?’ (Maruyama 2013a), published in this journal. Maruyama criticises the government for its reluctance to enact a new Ainu law to guarantee indigenous rights, even after Japan's ratification of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). However, in actuality, the government is searching for the foundation of new Ainu policies in the existing legal frameworks and trying to guarantee some elements of indigenous rights. Japan's case suggests the possibility of realising indigenous rights without the enactment of a specific law.
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Yuklyaevskikh, E. S. "Unknown pages of history of the Ainu. Review of the book <i>Ainu Through the Eyes of Japanese: An Unknown Collection by A.V. Grigoriev</i> by Vasily V. Shchepkin." Japanese Studies in Russia, no. 3 (October 13, 2023): 112–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.55105/2500-2872-2023-3-112-119.
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The article reviews the book by Vasily Shchepkin Ainu Through the Eyes of Japanese: An Unknown Collection by A.V. Grigoriev (2022). The book is based on 18th and 19th-century Japanese manuscript materials and blockprints about the Ainu people, which for a long time remained without proper attention from the research community. It presents not only translations of the manuscripts, but also analyzes the history of their creation and examines the evolution of the image of the Ainu in Japanese society. Particular attention is paid to the personality of Alexander V. Grigoriev, who assembled the Ainu collection of rare materials in 1879–1880.
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Hansen, Annette Skovsted. "Re-vitalizing an indigenous language: Dictionaries of Ainu languages in Japan, 1625–2013." Lexicographica 30, no. 1 (October 10, 2014): 547–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/lexi-2014-0017.
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AbstractThe re-vitalization of indigenous languages depends on political and legal support and the implementation of language rights depends on knowledge of vocabulary and grammar structures of the individual languages. Throughout the nineteenth century world, compilers of dictionaries adapted indigenous languages to match standards defined in nation-building and, thereby, enabled latent possibilities for indigenous populations to re-vitalize their languages in connection with the United Nations Year for Indigenous Peoples in 1993, and the first United Nations Decade for Indigenous Peoples, 1995-2004. This article focuses on dictionaries of the languages of the Ainu populations in the borderlands between the nation-states Japan and Russia. The main argument is that the Ainu Cultural Promotion Act promulgated in 1997 had a significant impact on the production and purpose of Ainu dictionaries. The dictionaries prior to 1997 functioned, predominantly, as records, which contributed to the increased visibility of Ainu populations inside and outside Japan in the immediate national interests of Japan, whereas the dictionaries published after 1997 are intended to enable the active use of Ainu language today. An important sub-point is that the post-1997 Ainu dictionaries rely heavily on dictionaries, word lists, and grammar books compiled before 1997, which have therefore come to support efforts to re-vitalize Ainu languages in the twenty-first century.
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Matsuki, Keiko. "Harukor: An Ainu Woman's Tale:Harukor: An Ainu Woman's Tale." Transforming Anthropology 10, no. 2 (July 2001): 47–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/tran.2001.10.2.47.
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Tashi and AMM Sharif Ullah. "Symmetrical Patterns of Ainu Heritage and Their Virtual and Physical Prototyping." Symmetry 11, no. 8 (August 2, 2019): 985. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/sym11080985.
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This article addresses virtual and physical prototyping of some symmetrical patterns collected from the Ainu cultural heritage. The indigenous people living in the northern part of Japan (e.g., Hokkaido), known as Ainu, often decorate their houses, clothing, ornaments, utensils, and spiritual goods using some unique patterns. The patterns carry their identity as well as their sense of aesthetics. Nowadays, different kinds of souvenirs and cultural artifacts crafted with Ainu patterns are cherished by many individuals in Japan and abroad. Thus, the Ainu patterns carry both cultural and commercial significance. A great deal of craftsmanship is needed to produce the Ainu patterns precisely. There is a lack of human resources having such craftsmanship. It will remain the same in the foreseeable future. Thus, there is a pressing need to preserve such craftsmanship. Digital manufacturing technology can be used to preserve the Ainu pattern-making craftsmanship. From this perspective, this article presents a methodology to create both virtual and physical prototypes of Ainu patterns using digital manufacturing technology. In particular, a point cloud-based approach was adopted to model the patterns. A point cloud representing a pattern was then used to create a virtual prototype of the pattern in the form of a solid CAD model. The triangulation data of each solid CAD model were then used to run a 3D printer to produce a physical prototype (replica of the pattern). The virtual and physical prototypes of both basic (Hokkaido) Ainu motifs and some synthesized patterns were reproduced using the presented methodology. The findings of this study will help those who want to digitize the craftsmanship of culturally significant artifacts without using a 3D scanner or image processing.
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Kimura, Takeshi. "Bearing the 'Bare Facts' of Ritual. A Critique Of Jonathan Z. Smith's Study of the Bear Ceremony Based On a Study of the Ainu Iyomante." Numen 46, no. 1 (1999): 88–114. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1568527991526086.
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AbstractA few years ago, Benjamin Ray criticized Jonathan Z. Smith's study of the bear hunting ritual. In this article, I further examine and develop a criticism of Smith's theory of ritual. Since he presents the Ainu bear ceremony as the exemplar case and bases his theory of ritual on his interpretation of it, I review and examine the available ethnographies of the Ainu bear ceremony Iyomante . My reading of them calls into question both Smith's presentation of the ethnography of the bear ceremony and his interpretation of its meaning. Smith's focus on the ritual killing as the core of the Ainu bear ceremony as the perfect hunt to resolve incongruity between the mythical ideology and the hunting practice is based upon his not taking into consideration the Ainu religious world of meanings. From my study of the Ainu bear ceremony, I maintain that the ritual dismemberment of the bear and the ritual decoration of the bear's skull constitute the core of the meaning of the ritual. To interpret the religious meaning of this ritual, I point out the necessity for considering the Ainu view of personhood and ontological understanding of the "bear." In my interpretation of this core part of the bear ceremony, the material form, that is the bear, of the Ainu deity is ritually transformed into its spiritual mode and then sent back to the mountain whence from it originally came.
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Bukh, Alexander. "Ainu Identity and Japan's Identity: The Struggle for Subjectivity." Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies 28, no. 2 (January 31, 2012): 35–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v28i2.3428.
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This paper seeks to contribute to the academic debate on the contemporary identity of the Ainu. Ainu, the indigenous people of what today constitutes part of northern Japan, as well as the Russian Kurile Islands and parts of the island of Sakhalin, became the first subjects of modernizing Japan's expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century. In general, the Ainu's history, culture, and the struggle for recognition as indigenous people as well as against discrimination in Japan have been subjected to intense academic scrutiny in both English and Japanese. This article, however, aims to shed a different light on the construction of Ainu identity, by locating it within the broader contemporary discourse on Japan's national identity. It argues that the emergence of Ainu subjectivity in the public discourse in the 1970s can be partially attributed to the domestic struggle between the conservative and the progressive camps over the definition of Japan's identity. The paper analyzes both sides of the discourse and examines the role of the Ainu 'other' within this construction. It proceeds further to examine the challenge that the emergence of Ainu subjectivity has posed to Japan's politics, mainly in the context of the 'Northern Territories' dispute. The concluding part briefly examines the policy responses aimed at addressing these challenges.
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Mamcheva, N. A. "Ainu percussion instruments." Languages and Folklore of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia, no. 41 (2021): 32–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.25205/10.25205/2312-6337-2021-1-32-46.
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Ainu people are the indigenous inhabitants of Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and Hokkaido. This work aimed to study Russian and Japanese museum funds, analyze musical transcripts performed by the author, and review Russian and Japanese academic literature. The article deals with the percussion musical and sound instruments of the Ainu – idiophones and membranophones. The term “sound instrument” refers to archaic sound instruments that were not usually perceived as musical. They were considered as such only at the moment of their sounding. The author pays special attention to poorly studied instruments, such as a sonic log, sticks, a board, a lacquered barrel lid, rattles, bells, a shaman tambourine, and a beater. The article analyzes the etymology of the names of instruments, structure, material of manufacture, techniques of playing. Most of the Ainu tools were made of wood and had a simple design. Percussion instruments are multifunctional. On the one hand, they performed a musical function – they rhythmically organized a song or recitation. They sounded during the performance of epic legends, various songs. On the other hand, instruments were sacred objects. The author traces their close connection with the worldview, mythological ideas of the ancient people. All of them were associated with the ritual practice: they were used in shamanic rituals, bear holidays, magic actions. Their sounding was thought to provide communication with the spirit world.
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HARADA, Kikue. "On Being Ainu." TRENDS IN THE SCIENCES 16, no. 9 (2011): 88–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.5363/tits.16.9_88.
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MARUKO, Mikiko. "On Being Ainu." TRENDS IN THE SCIENCES 16, no. 9 (2011): 92–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.5363/tits.16.9_92.
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Lim, S. C. "On Sacred Girdles and Matrilineal Descent in Ainu Society." Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 48, no. 3 (October 4, 2020): 117–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.17746/1563-0110.2020.48.3.117-123.
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This study examines a mysterious item of the Ainu women’s undergarment—the upsor kut, or chakh chanki, which, in ethnographic collections and scholarly texts, is described as a “belt of modesty”. A comparative and historical analysis of Ainu women’s girdles from Hokkaido and Sakhalin was carried out. They are displayed in very small numbers at museums of Russia, Japan, and the UK. These artifacts are rare, as women had to preserve their upsor kut (chakhchanki) from being seen by strangers, especially males. They became a part of late 19th to early 20th century ethnographic collections, because scholars, such as B.O. Piłsudski and N.G. Munro, became trusted by the natives. In the past, Japan’s hard-line policy of assimilation for indigenous peoples, the banning of the Ainu language and traditional culture, and the introduction of schooling and public health service resulted in an even greater secrecy of Ainu women and the gradual decline of the tradition of wearing secret girdles, precluding the carrying out of fi eld studies. The analysis of Ainu linguistic and folkloric materials analyzed by Japanese and European researchers sheds light on the function and meaning of these items of the women’s undergarment. In essence, they had two important functions: determining the maternal lineage and protecting the family and the clan. This suggests that remnants of matrilineal exogamy existed in Ainu patriarchal society, which eventually disappeared at the turn of the 20th century.
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Kim, Misook. "Ainu’s Hunting and Animism." Korean Society of Culture and Convergence 45, no. 12 (December 31, 2023): 999–1007. http://dx.doi.org/10.33645/cnc.2023.12.45.12.999.
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This study examines the relationship between the belief system (natural view) and the perception and gaze of wildlife, focusing on examining traditional hunting forms and rituals in the Animistic natural view of Ainu, a Hokkaido indigenous people. First, the background of animism and wildlife was briefly explained. The natural view of Hokkaido Ainu and the animistic appearance of the hunting process and rituals were considered. Ainu recognized all objects, including animals and plants, as gifts God gave for people and a medium connecting the human and divine worlds. Based on this, hunting procedures, consumption patterns, and rituals have also connected the world of God and the human world to create various stories and traditional cultures. This will help to understand not only the belief system of the animals of Ainu but also their life and cultural styles, and it will further cultivate ideological knowledge for symbiosis between humans and wildlife.
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Nakamura, Naohiro. "Cultural affiliation is not enough: the repatriation of Ainu human remains." Polar Record 53, no. 2 (February 14, 2017): 220–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247416000905.
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ABSTRACTThe challenges faced by indigenous peoples in repatriation negotiations vary across the globe. In 2012, three Ainu individuals launched a legal case against Hokkaido University, demanding the return of the human remains of nine individuals and a formal apology for having conducted intentional excavations of Ainu graveyards, stolen the remains and infringed upon their rights to perform ceremonies of worship. This action marked the first of such legal cases in Japan. The Ainu experienced both legal and ethical challenges during negotiations with the university; for example, while the claimants applied the Ainu concept kotan as a legal argument for collective ownership of the remains, Hokkaido University claimed the lack of assumption of rights relating to worship under the Civil Code of Japan. There has been significant progress recently on repatriation, mainly due to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in the US, and several meaningful recommendations have been made to ease the repatriation process. However, such recommendations are often case specific and variations in the experiences of indigenous peoples from country to country have not been widely documented. This article discusses the challenges faced by the Ainu in repatriation negotiations in Japan, with a particular focus on the difficulties of applying indigenous customs and philosophies within legal frameworks.
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Yamada, Takako. "The Ainu Bear Ceremony and the Logic behind Hunting the Deified Bear." Journal of Northern Studies 12, no. 1 (August 16, 2018): 35–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.36368/jns.v12i1.898.
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All nations have their own view of the world in which they live, of nature, of society, and of the human self. The Hokkaido Ainu’s world view, for example, is deeply connected with their way of life, backed by man–nature relationships, and what this relationship symbolizes is always part of their rituals. The Ainu are known as one of the peoples, like the Sami, the Khanty, and the Nivkh, who perform a bear festival, although they deify the bear and refer to it using the term kamui [‘deity’ or ‘spirit’]. Moreover, the Ainu and the Nivkh perform the bear ceremony for a bear cub reared by them, although the meaning of the ceremonies differ between them. This paper aims to reveal the Ainu conception of the bear and bear ceremony, which enables them to hunt the deified bear, in terms of the Ainu bear ceremonial, their conception of kamui, and human-kamui relationships. The study reveals that the Ainu logic for hunting the bear, or kamui, is encapsulated in an idea about the necessity of maintaining the complementary and reciprocal relationship between humans and the kamui and, as such, the bear ceremony is a symbolic representation of this relationship.
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Maruyama, Hiroshi. "Exploring Japan's Ainu policy in the light of human rights law: a reply to the commentary on my papers from Dr. Naohiro Nakamura." Polar Record 50, no. 2 (June 27, 2013): 211–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247413000430.
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ABSTRACTIn order to explore further Japan's Ainu policy, this reply firstly outlines the differences in opinions that between Dr. Nakamura and myself, and secondly addresses some of the main points of my paper published in this journal. Dr. Nakamura takes into consideration domestic circumstances instead of international human rights law, while I emphasise that Japan's international obligations lies in its adherence to international human rights law and that domestic law must conform to international obligations for the Ainu. My paper chronologically summarises Japan's post-war Ainu policy and investigates who and what has influenced this policy and the law.
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Spiker, Christina M. "Food as Contact Zone: Navigating the Ainu–Wajin Encounter in Golden Kamuy (2014–)." Verge: Studies in Global Asias 9, no. 2 (September 2023): 245–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/vrg.2023.a903029.
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Abstract: This paper analyzes the role and representation of food in the Japanese manga and anime series Golden Kamuy (Gōruden Kamui, 2014-present) by Satoru Noda. While ostensibly an action-packed narrative about the hunt for indigenous Ainu gold, Golden Kamuy has earned a reputation among fans as a gurume , or gourmet, manga and anime. Cooking scenes of both Ainu and Wajin food feature prominently throughout the series. This paper analyzes the rhetorical role of food in the fictional narrative and its connection to official and unofficial ideologies about ethnic harmony between Ainu and Wajin communities in Japan.
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Hirano, Katsuya. "Ainu Spirits Singing: The Living World of Chiri Yukie’s Ainu Shin’yoshu." Asian Studies Review 37, no. 3 (September 2013): 397–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2013.823841.
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Shchepkin, V. V. "Kuril Ainu in Russo-Japanese Relations in the Second Half of 18th Century: Communication Aspect." Bulletin of Irkutsk State University. Series History 46 (2023): 73–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.26516/2222-9124.2023.46.73.
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The article examines one aspect of the role of the Kuril Ainu in the establishment of Russian-Japanese relations in the second half of the 18th century, namely their role in maintaining communication between the Russian and Japanese authorities and reporting about significant events. The aim of the study is to establish how information about internal events of the two countries could penetrate into Russia and Japan in the absence of direct bilateral relations, and to confirm the assumption that the Kuril Ainu played a key role in this process. The sources of the study are the journals of Russian expeditions to the southern Kuril Islands and Hokkaido in 1768–1769, 1778–1779 and 1792–1793, other documents related to their organization and preparation, as well as notes by Japanese officials on expeditions to the southern Kuril Islands in 1785–1791. The introduction briefly characterizes the Kuril Ainu, who were not a single sub-ethnic group but two communities – the North Kuril Ainu, who inhabited the northern and middle Kuril Islands, and the South Kuril Ainu, who lived in the southern Kurils and northeastern Hokkaido. Urup Island served as a place of meetings, trade contacts and information exchange between them. The main part of the article consists of two paragraphs. The first one is devoted to the rebellion of the Ainu on Kunashir Island and northeast Hokkaido in 1789, the penetration of information about it into Russia, as well as the process of clarification of the circumstances of the rebellion by the Russian side. The second paragraph describes an episode with the penetration into Japan of information about the impending return of shipwrecked Japanese by a Russian expedition in 1792. These two examples show how the exchange of information between Russia and Japan could have taken place in the absence of direct bilateral relations: it is confirmed that it took place through contacts between two groups of Kuril Ainu on the island of Urup.
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Osipova, M. V. "Visual image of the ainu in paintings and engravings of the 16th - early 19th centuries: historical and ethnographic source or artist’s imagination?" Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, no. 3 (June 15, 2023): 187–205. http://dx.doi.org/10.31857/s0869541523030107.
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The article examines the main visual sources of the 16th - early 19th centuries, in which the images of the Ainu were introduced. The silk and paper scrolls, engravings in the books always attracted attention to the Ainu theme. Many issues in the ethnic history and physical anthropological type of the people, as well as the origins of their ornaments and tattoos remain debatable. The portraits of the Ainu that appeared during the Edo period, made by Japanese, Russian, and European artists and engravers, contributed to the spread of knowledge about this people. However, these visual images often reflected the artist’s subjective, often politically biased, views of the object. Despite this fact, one can get a certain idea of the Ainu appearance and the features of their material and spiritual culture by studying these canvases, engravings and illustrations. The purpose of this article is to consider the possibility of using pieces of art as a historical and ethnographic source.
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Shchepkin, V. V. "Russian settlement on the island of Urup (1795–1805) and its influence on Japan’s policy towards Ainu from southern Kurils." Japanese Studies in Russia, no. 4 (January 5, 2023): 38–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.55105/2500-2872-2022-4-38-55.
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Based on comparative study of published Russian and Japanese sources, the article describes the history of the Russian settlement on the island of Urup in 1795–1805. First, it clarifies the goals of the foundation of the settlement and the reasons for its liquidation. Founded at the initiative of the Siberian merchant Grigorii Shelekhov, the Russian settlement played an important role both in Russo-Japanese relations and in the policy of the Japanese government towards the Ainu and their lands, especially in the southern Kuril Islands, at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Russians founded the settlement in the view of future trade opportunities with Japan, since, a few years earlier, the Russian envoy Adam Laxman had received a permission to enter the port of Nagasaki to continue negotiations. In the beginning, Russians managed to start exchange of Japanese goods and supplies with the Ainu. After Japanese governmental expedition reached Iturup in 1798, however, information about relations between the Russians and the Ainu led to the transfer of the northeast Hokkaido, Kunashir, and Iturup under the direct control of the bakufu, as well as influenced the nature of Japanese policy towards the local population, the Ainu. The desire to expel the Russians from Urup and thereby stop their relations with the Ainu of the southern Kuril Islands led to the decision of the Japanese government to turn Iturup into a natural fortress and forbid the locals to leave the island, and the Russians and Ainu of the northern and middle Kuril Islands to come there. At the same time, the long stay of Russian settlers on Urup prevented the spread of Japanese influence north of Iturup.
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Nowakowski, Karol, Michal Ptaszynski, Fumito Masui, and Yoshio Momouchi. "Improving Basic Natural Language Processing Tools for the Ainu Language." Information 10, no. 11 (October 24, 2019): 329. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/info10110329.
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Ainu is a critically endangered language spoken by the native inhabitants of northern Japan. This paper describes our research aimed at the development of technology for automatic processing of text in Ainu. In particular, we improved the existing tools for normalizing old transcriptions, word segmentation, and part-of-speech tagging. In the experiments we applied two Ainu language dictionaries from different domains (literary and colloquial) and created a new data set by combining them. The experiments revealed that expanding the lexicon had a positive impact on the overall performance of our tools, especially with test data unrelated to any of the training sets used.
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Hasegawa, Ko. "Integration of the Ainu Minority in Japan: Enlightened Localism Combined with Universalism." Comparative Sociology 9, no. 5 (2010): 663–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156913210x12548913482474.
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AbstractI examine the significance of enlightened localism for problems associated with the social integration of minorities, with special reference to the Ainu people in Japan. From the standpoint of multicultural coexistence in a liberal spirit, I show how the Ainu might be better integrated into mainstream Japanese society by taking into account the perspective of enlightened localism. I propose the idea of polymorphic integration as a golden mean between group rights and individual rights. It offers a pragmatic way toward a cultural respect and concern for the Ainu based on a right to cultural integrity and embedded in the basically liberal yet inadequately race-sensitive legal system in Japan today.
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Rahwati, Wawat, Budi Mulyadi, and Andres Suhendrawan. "Historical Memory of Ainu through Material Culture in Japanese Literary Text: An Analyses of Tsushima Yuko’s Work." IZUMI 10, no. 1 (May 2, 2021): 109–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.14710/izumi.10.1.109-118.
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This research discusses the elements of material culture in the literary text of Jakka Dofuni Umi no Kioku no Monogatari by Tsushima Yuko in presenting historical memories of the Ainu as one of the indigenous people in Japan. Material culture is a study carried out through objects (artefacts) to see social markers, historical traces, social knowledge, and the identity of a particular nation or society. This research aims to reveal the history and identity of the Ainu as shown through material cultural objects and how the characters in the text interpret these objects. Qualitative approaches and narrative structures as research methods are used to analyze this literary text. Besides, memory theory is also used to reveal collective memories related to Ainu history and identity. The results show that the Jakka Dofuni museum with various artefacts presents historical memory and Ainu identity through the narrator's discussion and figures in narratives text. The spirit consolation monument (ireihi), which was built in the area of the Jakka Dofuni museum, is an object of memory of remembrance for local people from the Ainu and Uilta tribes who were victims of war during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1945). The collection of cultural artefacts and the life history of Gendanu as the owner of the museum with the identity problems he experienced can be interpreted as a form of markers that confirm Ainu's identity.
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Park, Joohyun Jade. "MISSING LINK FOUND, 1880: THE RHETORIC OF COLONIAL PROGRESS IN ISABELLA BIRD’SUNBEATEN TRACKS IN JAPAN." Victorian Literature and Culture 43, no. 2 (February 25, 2015): 371–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1060150314000606.
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InUnbeaten Tracks in Japan(1880), Isabella Bird, one of the most celebrated travel writers of her time and the first female member of the Royal Geographical Society, asserts that she has found “the ‘MISSING LINK’” in the deep interior of Japan, on the island of Hokkaido (270). According to Bird, a wizened individual barely resembling man sits “crouched” in front of a disheveled hut, showing no “signs of intelligence” (270). In fact, this “missing link” Bird purports to have discovered was one of the Ainu, the native people of Hokkaido, who suffered the consequences of Japanese developmental schemes. Bird's identification of the forlorn figure as the “missing link,” an anachronistic being that lacks history and culture, is puzzling, as she encounters this haggard man after having already spent several days with the Ainu in Biratory, a small village in Hokkaido. During her stay, the Ainu villagers constantly speak of the strained relationship between themselves and the Japanese, as well as their discontent at Japanese prohibitions on Ainu traditions. In other words, they divulge the oppressiveness of Japan's so-called “modernizing” regulations and policies, and they attempt to inform their visitor of the history between the two conflicting peoples. However, their efforts seem to be lost on Bird. Rather than interpret the Ainu individual's ruined body as a corporeal text on which the history of colonial violence and exclusion is imprinted, Bird judges the man's beastly existence to be the evidence of his people's inferiority.
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Sjöberg, Katarina V. "Ainu Culture Not Dying." Anthropology News 28, no. 8 (November 1987): 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/an.1987.28.8.2.4.
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Cheung, S. C. H. "Ainu culture in transition." Futures 35, no. 9 (November 2003): 951–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0016-3287(03)00051-x.
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Niessen, Sandra A. "Representing the Ainu Reconsidered." Museum Anthropology 20, no. 3 (December 1996): 132–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/mua.1996.20.3.132.
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Bugaeva, Anna. "Ditransitive constructions in Ainu." Language Typology and Universals 64, no. 3 (September 2011): 237–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1524/stuf.2011.0017.
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Maruyama, Hiroshi. "Ainu Landowners’ Struggle for Justice and the Illegitimacy of the Nibutani Dam Project in Hokkaido Japan." International Community Law Review 14, no. 1 (2012): 63–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187197312x617692.
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Abstract In 2008 the Ainu were officially recognized as an indigenous people by the Japanese Government. The recognition arose from the 1997 court’s decision on the Nibutani Dam case which concluded, for the first time in Japanese history, that the Ainu people have the right to enjoy their own culture and that they fit the definition of indigenous people. The plaintiffs were Ainu landowners from the Nibutani Community who claimed the revocation of the expropriation decision. However, the Nibutani Dam was completed before the court’s decision, with the court acknowledging the completion as fait accompli on the grounds that the revocation of the expropriation decision would not be in the public’s interest. This article reveals the flawed legal system in the decision making process for public works as well as a brief history and some cultural background of the Ainu through those plaintiffs’ struggle for justice. Further, the illegitimacy of the Nibutani Dam project is discussed in light of publicness based on the complaint of those plaintiffs, and lastly, publicness of public works is explored in the context of studies on publicness in Japan.
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Dal Corso, Elia. "Polysemy and Apparent Polyfunctionality of the Sakhalin Ainu Prefixes e- and ko-." International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics 3, no. 2 (December 21, 2021): 217–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/25898833-00320003.
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Abstract The present study focuses on the polysemous verbal prefixes e- and ko- of Sakhalin Ainu and proposes their analysis as markers of high transitivity. The author takes a compositional approach to argument structure and event structure in order to account for the main use of e- and ko- as applicative markers as well as for their less common use as markers of resultative-completive and intensive aspect. Ultimately, the analysis shows that the apparent polyfunctionality of e- and ko- arises from two separate applications at the syntax-semantics level of one same underlying function of the prefixes. The author also comments on how the Sakhalin Ainu case fits in with other cases of valence-aspect conceptual overlapping cross-linguistically and on the implications of his findings for Ainu studies specifically.
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Janhunen, Juha A. "Ainu Internal Reconstruction: on the Origin and Typological Context of the Affiliative Form." International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics 2, no. 2 (December 1, 2020): 181–209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/25898833-12340031.
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Abstract This paper discusses the history and prehistory of the so-called affiliative form in Ainu, also known as the “possessive” or “concrete” form of nominals. In earlier research, this form has been understood as belonging to the sphere of suffixal morphology, complicated by the impact of vowel harmony and/or nominal classes. This paper shows, however, that the marking of the affiliative form actually involves a trace of the original stem-final vowel otherwise lost in the language, followed by a recently grammaticalized separate particle. This means that Ainu must have undergone a general process of final vowel loss, which has substantially changed its morpheme structure and ultimately caused the morphophonological alternations connected with the affiliative form. This conclusion potentially opens up the way towards a more comprehensive internal reconstruction of Ainu.
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Battipaglia, Sabrina. "La tradizione religiosa degli Ainu e la rivitalizzazione di antichi rituali." RAPHISA. Revista de Antropología y Filosofía de lo Sagrado 6, no. 2 (April 1, 2022): 51–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.24310/raphisa.2022.v7i2.14554.
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The Ainu are a group of populations settled on the Kamchatka Peninsula, on the island of Sakhalin, in the Kurils and in Hokkaidō. I will examine the Ainu of the island of Hokkaidō. During the Tokugawa (1603-1868) and Meiji (1868-1912) periods, the Japanese imposed reforms and forced assimilation, depriving them of their cultural heritage. Initially labeled as "last", over time the Ainu have been invited to folklore along with a slow restitution of their cultural tradition, albeit with some compromise. In this way, tourist centers have most likely become the main gateways to a universe still pervaded by mystery. This article explores the changes in religious tradition, starting with the cosmogonic world, passing through ceremonies in their most traditional form, to examining how such ceremonials have been transformed for tourism purposes.
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Klimov, V. Yu. "A Brief List of Japanese Writings About the Ainu Lands and Russia Until 1799." Russian Japanology Review 6, no. 1 (July 30, 2023): 88–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.55105/2658-6444-2023-1-88-100.
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In 1799, the Russian-American Company (RAC) was founded in Saint Petersburg for the development by Russian merchants and hunters of the Northern Pacific lands. In the same year, Japan’s government made a strategic decision to include the eastern Ainu lands (higashi ezochi), and subsequently the western and northern Ainu lands (nishi ezochi, kita ezochi), into its direct control and to start their economic development. By this year, the Japanese had collected enough information about the Ainu and their lands, about the advance of Russians along the Kuril Islands in the southern direction, about the history of Russia, its emperors, and the Russian language. This article describes Japanese authors and their writings on the mentioned topics, which could not but influence the political decision-making of Japan’s military government (bakufu).