Paper short abstract

This presentation analyzes Ainu Mosir (2020) through Lewallen’s notion of “Ainu becoming,” which conceives Ainu identity as an intentional, fluid process. The film demonstrates this framework by depicting how youth negotiate heritage and modernity, enacting indigeneity through lived practice.

Paper long abstract

This presentation examines Fukunaga’s film Ainu Mosir (2020) through the theoretical lens of Ann-Elise Lewallen’s concept of “Ainu becoming,” as articulated in The Fabric of Indigeneity (2016). Lewallen challenges the notion of an authentic, fixed Ainu identity, arguing instead that Ainu indigeneity is a dynamic process of intentional, ongoing making, a lived and negotiated practice shaped by descendants who continually craft what it means to be Ainu in contemporary Japan. Ainu Mosir offers a compelling exploration of this process, portraying indigeneity not as a static inheritance but as an evolving relationship between past, present, and future, made of conscious choices that come with challenges and tensions. Central to the film is Kanto, a teenager navigating the complexities of growing up as an Ainu in Hokkaido while simultaneously moving through Japanese mainstream society. His desire to fit in with his peers sits uneasily alongside the expectations of his community, who encourage him to embrace cultural practices and rituals. This tension does not function as a crisis of authenticity but instead dramatizes the very process Lewallen describes: the struggle of intentional becoming. Through Kanto’s conflicts, hesitations, and moments of connection, the film illustrates that indigeneity emerges through choice, practice, and embodied experience rather than through blood quantum, or strict adherence to inherited tradition. The narrative arc ultimately demonstrates that participating in multiple cultural worlds does not diminish Ainu identity; rather, it reflects the adaptive, relational nature of Ainu becoming. The film foregrounds how contemporary Ainu youth negotiate belonging in ways that challenge essentialist expectations – both external (from the Japanese state and society) and internal (from community pressures and ideals of proper Ainu-ness). By focusing on a young protagonist’s everyday struggles and desires, Ainu Mosir visualizes indigeneity as an unfolding process, continually shaped by those who live it. Through this analysis, the presentation positions Ainu Mosir as a crucial cinematic text that contributes to broader conversations in Indigenous studies, film studies, and anthropology. The film expands our understanding of Ainu identity not as a relic of the past, but as an active, intentional process of becoming – open, plural, and deeply human.

Paper short abstract

Discuss various displays of ainu culture throughout Hokkaido - paying attention to aspects of art and literature, questioning the absence of the Japanese administration (kaitakushi), examining critical attitudes towards Japanese nationalism, while highlighting affiliation with Northern People.

Paper long abstract

This research is an ongoing process, currently covered nearly thirty different venues with Ainu displays.

In my presentation I shall expand on the dilemma of how to display the Ainu trauma of annihilation vis-a-vis the Japanese kaitaku process, and how members of the Ainu community stive to maintain its specific cultural elements through their adaptation to modern times.

Surprisingly, most of the museums refrain from directly discussing or displaying the actual reasons for the disappearance of Ainu culture, and the annihilation of Ainu people as a group of people living in Hokkaidō. The only places that directly mentions the kaitakushi (開拓使) (The Administrative Office for Hokkaido’s Development) established by the Japanese Government in 1871, is the Asahikawa Municipal Museum, and it does so to highlight the Tondenhei (屯田兵), the farmer soldiers set up by the kaitakushi, who lived and work in the vicinity of Asahikawa. By so doing, the complex relationship between military, agriculture and conflicting interests surface through the exhibition.

The Kawamura Kaneto Memorial Ainu Museum, was established by an Ainu person, who was aware of the necessity to document the lives and objects lost to the Japanese occupation and modernization of the island, with an explicit mention of the motivation to collect and exhibit, during the deportation and the atrocities imposed by the Japanese. Following, the Hokkaidō Museum of Northen People, where the display of Ainu culture deliberately separates its heritage from Japan, positioning it as one of the Northern People cultures.

The final section refers to three museums and one exhibition that consider and display Ainu culture: while the Bear Park in Noboribetsu is a harsh example of how Japanese popular images associate the Ainu with bears, placing them in the context of the animal world, the Sunazawa Bikki Studio in Osashima displays his figures and mythological images in Ainu beliefs, along his magnificent abstract sculptures; Chiri Yukie Memorial House in Noboribetsu displays Chiri’s literary work, and her endless endeavors to keep and restore the Ainu language.

Paper short abstract

This study examines Ainu traditional ecological knowledge through archaeological plant remains that span over 1,000 years. The results presented speak to the ingenuity of the Ainu's subsistence system - a form of cultural heritage whose academic neglect is linked to the politics of colonization.

Paper long abstract

Despite the Ainu's long history of engagement with Hokkaido's rich forests, little is known about their traditional ecological knowledge pre-contact due to a lack of early ethnographic work on the topic. Many early depictions of the Ainu neglected the intricacies of traditional subsistence in favor of simplistic depictions as hunter-gatherers, serving Japan's territorial expansion.

In this setting, the research presented here attempts to shed light on the Ainu's plant TEK through an analysis of archaeological plant remains spanning over 1,000 years of subsistence data. Results indicate a progressive tendency towards woodland resource diversification - a practice that is often associated with risk-management in small-scale economies. This evidence is investigated in the historical context of Hokkaido's changing climate and the concurrent encroachment of the Japanese into the island in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Ainu's forest subsistence system forms a part of a larger body of TEK, a form of cultural heritage whose academic neglect is tied to the local political context, with telling implications for the present day.

Paper short abstract

Numerous royal treasures of the kingdom of Lūchū (Ryūkyū) were looted or destroyed in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa. In this presentation, I discuss four ugui royal portraits recovered in 2024, several of the treasures still missing, and the circumstances of their disappearance in 1945.

Paper long abstract

Numerous historical documents, paintings, lacquerware and porcelain items, textiles, musical instruments, ritual objects, and other priceless cultural artifacts went missing from Nakagusuku udun, the mansion of the former royal family of the Kingdom of Luchu (Ryukyu), in the aftermath of the Battle of Okinawa, a battle which saw the devastation of Okinawa Island and the deaths of perhaps as much as one-third of the island’s civilian population. While some were tragically destroyed in the battle, many of the missing royal treasures are believed to have survived only to be looted afterwards.

Among those lost were roughly twenty posthumous official portraits of the kings of Luchu, known as ugui. For decades, not a single ugui was known to survive; textual descriptions and black & white prewar photographs were all that was known to survive of them. In 2024, however, four of the missing ugui were recovered and returned to Okinawa. In this presentation, I discuss the recovered portraits, a number of treasures still yet to be recovered, and the circumstances of their disappearance in 1945.

The recovery of these paintings, along with sixteen other treasures from Nakagusuku udun, provides an invaluable opportunity for scholars to gain new insights into historical Luchu Kingdom court culture and court painting. It is also a profound symbolic and emotional event for many in the Okinawan community, the recovery of pieces of a past, a cultural heritage, that has been fragmented, of which so much has been lost. Alongside rebuilt and restored structures such as Sui gusuku (Shuri castle) and revived arts traditions, these original historical objects, made centuries ago, lost for decades, and now recovered, are powerful resources for Okinawan efforts to recover knowledge and pride in their history and cultural heritage, and to present that history and culture to the world.