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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.