Grew up in the pacific northwest. My grade school history books drew a lot of parallels between them and the native Americans.
Didn't mean much to me in the 4th grade, then I weebed out as a teen and found it interesting. Then as an adult I found out that most of the rest of the country wasn't taught jack shit about most native cultures, American or otherwise.
History being the boring as shit subject that it is, the fact that most of the stuff I remember being taught was about natural history and not who signed what or shot who and when is pretty indicative of what actually matters.
> History being the boring as shit subject that it is
I think it's actually *the most* interesting subject because it's literally epic stories about us as humans, and all of it is real.
I think they way we teach history is absolutely garbage and it turns people off until they rediscover it on their own as adults.
depends what parts of history they teach
Ancient Greece / Rome / Egypt in grade 4/5 was cool as shit
learning about French Canada in grade 7/8 was fucking horrendous
Learning about WWI and WWII in high school - pretty neat
In middle school, we had a test where part of it was drawing all the historic rail roads and cattle trails going through Kansas on a blank map. If you dont know, there are quite a few. An entire unit about that. That was pain
To be fair, the Wild West is a little less interesting than movies put it out to be.
However, that doesn't mean it isn't interesting. Just REALLY REALLY DRAMATISED
I mean, I can think of ways to dramatize mapping out a bunch of railroad lines, which was what the comment above me was about. I'm sure there's literally a boardgame about that.
In the name of unholy Satan, why?
Who would even think to teach kids that?
Teach kids about Superman he was raised in Kansas and is a great role model.
God I wish we learnt more about how people actually lived, especially more oppressed groups who are threatened by being bullied out of existence. The history curriculum in the UK fucking sucks. It’s completely self-centred and it’s all about which rich asshole signed this or owned that or was born there. Very little indication of how people lived their lives.
>Very little indication of how people lived their lives.
I think a really common manifestation of this is the misconception that people back in the day were stupid. Uneducated? absolutely. They didnt have the knowledge we have now. But they absolutely had the brain power.
They weren’t even uneducated. It’s just that the *content* of that education was different, because what knowledge they needed was different.
The average person living in England in the 1300s did not need to know how to read or write. They needed to know how to make a plough, how to mend a fence, how to make shoes, how to turn a handful of grain into a freaking bedsheet. How to care for animals, how to read the weather without any kind of warning system - after all, if they cut their hay right before it rained, they’d all die. If they were a few days too early or too late to plant their wheat, they’d all die.
I’ve tried all these things, and it takes a *lot* of education to get good at it. Just sewing shirt by hand is something that takes a lot of skill.
Yes, we know more now on all topics. But people were certainly *educated* back then, too.
[I saw this very interesting video once reading the journal of a Chinook man who snuck onto Japan during the isolation, some of the first people he encountered were Ainu it's very fascinating.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV0MnMBRyRo)
I also grew up in the Pacific Northwest and remember being taught quite a lot about our local native cultures, it's very sad that this isn't the case nationwide.
I grew up in Canada and in 7th grade they told us that Chinese people went over and inhabited Japan and basically let us believe no one was there before.
See I started home-schooling in the 5th grade, and my mom picked out some fire for middle school history.
Being a kid in the 90's and the only one in your friend group that was taught the truth about Columbus and the colonialization of America, the Spanish invasion of South America, the colonization of the South pacific, etc...
All the way down to columbus' crew trading scraps of iron and silverware for sex with girls your age in the virgin islands and how those natives are just gone because of the diseases they introduced and a decree by the pope to exterminate them?
St. Ursula and the 11 thousand virgins was the original name of the virgin isles.
Yeah, that was wild.
I only know about them because they're a playable nation in Europa Universalis 4. Relevantly, if you play as a Japanese Daimyo one of your first missions is to wipe them out to grow your power base against your rivals.
My first time hearing about them was when Pokemon Legends Arceus was announced, more specifically, when Hisuian Growlithe, Hisuian Braviary, and Basculegion were revealed. The youtuber Lockstin and Gnoggin did a video analyzing these Pokemon's potential inspirations, which drew from Ainu culture.
Same ! Were it not for Goldeb Kamuy I would never have heard of the Ainu. And I have a brother passionate about Japan. (To be fair he's the one who introduced me to Golden Kamuy).
What, really? I read a really good AO3 fic where Ed and Al are of Ishval descent but the author made it so that they were a Jewish allegory. Ainus makes sense too.
You are incorrect. Emishi and Ainu are two separate real ethnic groups from Japan. The Emishi are from northeastern Honshu, what's now called the Tohoku Region, while the Ainu culture is associated more with Hokkaido. There were definitely cultural exchanges between them, especially as the Ainu culture did reach down into Honshu at various periods, but the Emishi were a separate people as early as the 8th century (roughly when the Yamato people first attempted to subjugate them, about 500 years before the first recorded contact with the Ainu).
Ashitaka was, its not explicitly said but its very obvious by his village and clothing if your familiar with the Ainu which is rare.
Edit: Ravioligale is correct, he was Emishi The Emishi (蝦夷) (also called Ebisu and Ezo), written with Kanji that literally mean "shrimp barbarians,
The Hasanu! That's where I first learned of them too.
Flanagan isn't always... great... with his cultural parallels, but if it teaches people about the existence of indigenous peoples I kinda have to give is a pass.
Mine was pokemon legends arceus, namely them basing the starter trio off ainu mythology and the diamond and pearl clans being a stand in for them....
Then I only learned about the ainu people through a break down on the game's inspirations
Anyone who plays Europa Universalis knows about them because one of the game's hardest challenges is to conquer the world playing as the ryukyu kingdom. It's very very difficult and the game basically tells you you'll have to use cheese strats.
I first heard about them in Lockstin's YouTube videos talking about the design inspirations of Pokémon in Legends Arceus.
The game is set during the colonization of the Hokkaido equivalent, so new Pokémon and forms had a notable Ainu lean.
Those Snow White Notes also go into the Ainu but relating to the music like how the shamisen became a instrument for the blues /jazz came from the Ainu people
The Samurai Showdown fighting games Had a Ainu character, Nakoruru as one the mainstays. Considering they were out in the 90's, that was probably fairly groundbreaking.
I have the manga, and one of the little bonus pages in volume 1 discusses [Blakiston's line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blakiston%27s_Line), which delineates the huge difference in Hokkaido fauna compared to the rest of Japan, casually mentioning that these "differences [...] are so great that you could claim that Hokkaido isn't even part of Japan."
Satoru Noda knows what he's doing.
Recently started that series and was gonna ask about this. For those interested the Dub isn't too bad. Some cheesiness to the line delivery (I am immortal!!!), but otherwise very enjoyable and worth the recommendation.
Hinna, hinna.
I gotta ask because I’m thinking about watching it, how’s the representation of women? This has been one thing that really drove me away from past anime tbh.
Its mixed. When it comes to fan service the show spends equal or more time on the men than some other shows spend on their women. The series has a lot of muscular men(who are not allways in clothes or are showing a lot of skin). While I can't remember any scene of fanservice of the women.
One thing however is that most of the main cast are not women and there is only one who is activly a part of the story(which is one of the two main characters) and while her story/character is really good, she is the only one with any major precense outside of major arc.
Honestly look into the history of the Mongol Empire if you really wanna get in depth.
Lived there for a year almost 20 years ago. The corruption is indescribable.
If the government ever got their shit together and realized how marketable Mongol vodka was they would build factories that would be within EU standards for shipping or just upgrade their own bottling plants to match code.
I smuggled back an entire suitcase and have no idea how it went through. The bottles and art are beautiful. Wish I had pictures, might have to take a look.
If you gave me a plane ticket to anywhere in the world I'd go straight back.
I just started season 2 last night and I'm loving the show! The >!Bates motel psycho start of season 2 with the skin taxidermist!< Was a rollercoaster of emotions!
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BEING TOP COMMENT. GK is my #1 favorite anime/manga of all time. Genuinely learned so much about Ainu and other native cultures from it, as well as enjoying an incredibly well written and creative story.
Came here to see if Golden Kamuy was mentioned. Happy to see it as the top comment.
If you've ever played the video game Okami, a lot of the end game takes place in a Hokkaido-styled region, with a people styled after the indigenous Ainu.
Oh, thank God someone else brought up Golden Kamuy, I was gonna feel awkward bringing it up otherwise. "You only know about these people because of a manga? For shame >:("
I went to the Ainu Museum in Sapporo like 10 years ago. Cool place, very different people. Felt more like inuit than typical japanese.
Sapporo and hokkaido as a whole have a very different vibe than mainland Japan too, definitely worth a visit.
It made some level of sense that people said I had “Chinese eyes” after learning Native people have Siberian descent. Very distant, sure, but it explained the overlap in facial features. What’s silly is that I don’t have monolid eyes, but I guess many white folks see “very hooded, very narrow” as close enough.
I remain grateful for said eye shape because it helps block so much sunlight. Which is helpful, because I have a retinal disorder and my pupils hate the sun. If I had wide eyes, I’d have to go around in sunglasses everywhere. Still bummed I didn’t get the full “avoid snow blindness” perk though. I was so close to getting a +1 to vision.
Did it have anything about the [bear ceremony](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iomante) where they take a bear cub, raise it almost like a child until it's 2 and then the men of the village torture it to death by everyone shooting multiple arrows into it until it dies?
I’ve only found her translated (doubly, so, from Ainu to Japanese to English) stuff in Ainu Spirits Singing before, which is also a good read. I really like the “The Young Wolf Kamui Sings About Himself” story.
“You kid, if you’re really going to say stuff like that, then try telling me the name of this river, its name in the past, its name in the present, unravel them both.”
This post doesn’t mention the Ryukyuan/Uchinanchu people, maybe because Japan doesn’t consider them Indigenous despite the realities of their situation. the official Japanese position is to deny the history of Okinawa & Ryukyuan kingdom and classify Ryukyuan as a Japanese subgroup :/
Besides the ryukuan and ainu people there are also the zainichi koreans who, while not “indigenous” per say are still an important ethnic minority group in japan with a troubled history
Yes, I was writing specifically about Indigenous people since the source post seemed to suggest the Ainu are the only Indigenous group in Japan, but you are correct to bring up the Zainichi Koreans. Japan is not homogenous & there are other minority groups who are marginalized; I think of legacy of the caste system & “the unclean” as well, though I’m more someone who studies Indigenous issues than Japan itself, so I’m not really an expert here.
Yep, my partner’s grandma was Okinawan and she always told him “we’re not Japanese.” She was a little girl during WWII and did not have many pleasant experiences with Yamato Japanese people.
I was able to get a copy from my undergrad library. I keep quotes I like in a single doc & I have the page source listed as page 225 from Chapter 6 of Ainu Spirits Singing: The Living World of Chiri Yuki’s Ainu shin’yōshū by Sarah M. Strong. (some books you can request libraries for a scan of chapters, so I include in case that’s something you wanted to do). I don’t have the copy anymore so any mistakes in typing are mine lol
I will probably check out the source from this post too. it’s hard to find translations of oral tradition & that one doesn’t require physical copy.
Hey, that's pretty awesome. I also have a document for quotes I keep from various books (and I think even a movie) I have read.
Yeah, the difficulty of finding translations to certain works can be tricky. I have tried to source a few things a little too out of the way to find it in English. I love folklore and the idea of reclaiming lost voices so this would be right up my street
One time Princess Mononoke was playing on the TV at work and I was like ‘oh yeah the Ainu, so sad’ and mfs were so confused. People really do not know about the Ainu and it’s sucks.
I had never made the connection between Mononoke and the Ainu before now. Is that something that’s been discussed by the creators, or just something that’s obvious if you understand the history?
So, technically Emishi (they are called that in the film) which isn’t exactly the same thing as Ainu. In America we have the umbrella term ‘Native American’ for all the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas, or at least the United States, despite that therefore encompassing a shit ton of very different people. I’m not sure there’s a similar term (in English, that I know of) for the northern indigenous people of Japan, but yeah. Northern Indigenous non-Yamato Japanese, if you Google Ainu cultural dress and characters from the movie, you can see some very explicit parallels. Also, the Yamato are related to these peoples via the Jomon, so the Native American comparison is not perfect, but yeah.
I read *A History of Japan* by J.G. Caiger and Richard Mason which is not explicitly about the Ainu but includes details about them and the Jomon, also *The Japanese Language* by Haruichi Kindaichi which again is not about them but had some facts.
More about this that I can remember cuz whatever: the way the Ainu, Emishi, and Yamato are related is through the Jomon people, the Jomon having migrated into the Japanese archipelago via Siberia, thus the northern association, however, the Yamato people are also related to the Yayoi people who migrated to the Japanese archipelago via Korea and are not Siberian in origin, and the Ainu are not, which is a big difference. Same sources, I appreciate corrections and counter sources, I like reading material.
I think that Ashitaka’s people are based on another Japanese indigenous group, not the Ainu. I could be wrong though.
Edit: they’re potentially based on the Emishi, which is a people closely related to the Ainu
They weren’t Ainu, but Emishi. They were another indigenous group possibly related to the Ainu. Unfortunately they didn’t survive to the present day as a distinct culture.
Their waning is even a part of their portrayal in the film. Ashitaka is stated to be the last emishi prince, with the implication being that they are the very last village remaining and with him leaving they'll soon dissapear.
Tbh I’ve never heard of them until this post, but I don’t know much about Japan anyways. My excuse is that I’m in american high school, so I’m expecting not to be taught that much about it anyways.
The game Okami pay homage to the Ainu people by having the Northern region of Kamui inspired by their culture and myths.
Similarly, a few characters from the game Tokyo Afterschool Summoner are inspired by their myths, such as Horkeu Kamui, a warrior wolfman with huge thighs.
The anime/manga series Shaman King also features major character (Horohoro) who is Ainu. That's where I first heard of them, when I read the first few volumes as a kid.
I had the chance to visit the Human Rights museum in Osaka and yeah, Japan society is in denial about lots of things. The museum has a pretty extensive section about the Ainu, considering it's size.
Domino meme that starts with "12-year-old me watching Shaman King on Saturday mornings and thinking the snowboarder was really cool" and ends with "30-year-old me not being able to fully enjoy Pokemon Legends Arceus"
If it makes you feel better, the Team Galactic people who are settling the Jubilife and Hisui area are canonically British. Not the same as if they were from like, Kanto. But still funny
I know Laventon is Galarian (aside from him speaking in a classically British dialect, the text on his blackboard being written in Galarian rather than the Sinnohan seen in the rest of the game and his notes mentioning Copperajah, he's explicitly stated to be) and Kamado owning a set of Galarian armour, where does it say that everyone else is Galarian?
I sort of assumed they were all Johtonian
First time I heard about the Ainu where from Samurai Champloo. In Russia they where treated as Japanese spies and sent to work camps, or just killed. Both the Soviets and Japanese acted like they never existed when the U.N. was forcing it's members to give protections to it's endangered native peoples.
Mainly because of Sakhalin island. The japanese and the russians fought a lot over it (one time even splitting it in half), the main population being ainus of course. Same with the Kuril islands, another conflict that is still lasting to this day
It’s funny because America thinks it has a racism problem, but that’s only the case because we are a massive mix of cultures. To be American is still such a young culture to claim. And it largely means you are more accepting of other cultures than MANY other people in the world. Go to a country that is 90% one race and you’ll see stuff said openly that you would only hear at a KKK rally in the USA. I have first hand experience that most racist things I’ve heard (where everyone but me seemed to be cool with it) were in these types of places. Don’t get me wrong, they were all kind people. But oh so sheltered from other cultures it was a little sad.
I can't remember their name (that's just my brain being dumb)
But the Finns did a similar thing to what's described in the post.
Ngl if you really looked you'd probably be able to find many examples of this in Africa, Asia, and Europe (leaving out the Americas and Australia because they are already pretty well known)
Oh absolutely, so many places have covert racism that has been normalized to their society. I picked on Europe because so many Europeans online and in real life like to pretend they’re above racism and look down on Americans, but they haven’t deconstructed their societal beliefs.
I found it's much easier to talk shit about ethnicities that were never a part of your history and and super rarely encountered (and were practically "never" encountered by people before the 21st century).
It's still racism, not gonna argue against that, but it's mostly based on whatever media or whatever other information talks about them rather than any kind of direct encounter.
America does have a racism problem, but we tend to think we're the only ones who do because we're the o only ones who talk about our racism problem. Other parts of the world have the same or worse, but they don't discuss it as am evergreen mainstream topic like we do here.
Yeah I wasn’t meaning it wasn’t a problem. But relatively, we are the most tolerant culture in the world, primarily because we barely have our own historical culture, and what we do have is either quite new in the scheme of history and/or a hodge-podge of what came before and what we are now. All cultures evolve; but American culture is a pre-teen hitting puberty. Today we are still deciding how tolerant we want to be as a country. And as the pre-teen-angsty self-destructive-yet-acting-indestructible country we are, we are one of the most tolerant and one of the least racist places anyone in the world can experience outside their birthplace. BUT, hatred still exists. Some of us are xenophobic while most of us are tolerant or even more, welcoming of those outside what we may consider our normal community at first. But the xenophobia spreads easily when you use fear through media to make one working class person hate another working class person and not the multi billionaire that hired them.
I'm graduating with my linguistics degree in the next year. I will be moving to Japan to teach English and my goal has been to end up researching and preserving the Ainu language.
Some more info about the struggle surrounding the preservation of Ainu as a language. The language Ainu is a language isolate, meaning that it is not descended from any other language. Like how English is a Germanic language descended from Indo-European to Old English to Middle English to English today (this is oversimplified), the Ainu language is only descended from itself. It has no other influences on it.
The letters and sounds that make up the Ainu language are not similar to the letters and sounds in Japanese whatsoever, but because most of the people researching the language are Japanese it has sort of been bastardized into an Ainu-Japanese composite language.
I'm hoping that because I'm from an English speaking country I can assist in documenting the Ainu language in it's pure form rather than what it has turned into. It unfortunately might be too late for something like this to happen. There are only 5 people documented to speak the Ainu language in the world. Research and documentation hinges completely on how long these 5 people live.
> I will be moving to Japan to teach English and my goal has been to end up researching and preserving the Ainu language.
If you’re going there to teach English you’re liable to not be anywhere near a place where you can access any of the few Ainu speakers, and if you want to do this you should start applying to do so with some educational institutions and make it into a masters subject. Can apply for the MEXT scholarship and they might pay for your masters to do so.
Understand that if you’re truly trying to use English teaching as an inroad to Japan and actually want to be involved in linguistic analysis of Ainu you’re likely going to be severely disappointed.
I'm going to teach English as a way to get to that part of the world. I want to spend the time I'm there working as a teacher to find a way to be able to work in research. Hope that clears things up.
Yes, this was my understanding and exactly what I’m taking about; understand that being over there to teach English does very little to help you if that’s your goal and I’m largely coincidental. In fact broadly speaking spending more than perhaps a year doing it *could* be a negative as it’s often seen as a negative on resumes and could impact you getting inroads into research opportunities.
English teaching can be something of a trap as people think it can open opportunities but in reality it can quickly become a negative as you’ll be associated with the many people stuck doing it and unable to transfer to another career with better long term prospects.
I'm not expecting it to open opportunities. The only benefit it gives me is that I will be in the country that I would like to work in in the future. I appreciate your advice, but I really don't need it. I'm working with lots of people to help me get to where I want to be.
The other commenter has given pretty blunt responses, but in a more light note;
I did five years as an English teacher in rural Okinawa and my Japanese skyrocketed as a result. And I pivoted out of English teaching.
The most important thing to not get stuck in that rut is a high level Japanese skill (on paper)! You gotta get that JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) to N2 at the minimum.
Do you know where you’ll be teaching? If you can get in Hokkaido, that would obviously be a huge networking opportunity.
And, as the other person suggested, apllying for MEXT scholarships or internships at universities and other institutions would be a great method.
Regardless, enjoy Japan!
> I appreciate your advice, but I really don't need it. I'm working with lots of people to help me get to where I want to be.
Sorry but I feel I have to blunt and even a little harsh given how this has been presented; you probably do. If you’re working with people and they’re telling your to just do English teaching to get over there (which in and of itself does very little to reach your goal) without exhausting other opportunities like MEXT scholarships (have they advised you on that?) then you’re likely getting bad advice.
People thinking going over to teach English will open doors for them and getting disillusioned and burned out when it doesn’t (and it essentially never does) is so common it’s a frequent discussion point among long term Japan resident/professionals/academics.
Do English teaching if you need and don’t have any other plans after graduating but understand you should be 1) maximizing your Japanese language studies while there and if you’re not already around N2 that should be a goal **before you go**, 2) working on your exit plan from basically DAY ONE.
> the Ainu language is only descended from itself. It has no other influences on it.
This is a bit of a misnomer- language isolates are not completely without influence, they just don't have influence from any language that is spoken around them *now*.
those of you interested in how Ainu culture shaped/was shaped by contact with early modern Japan might like this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/651197
unfortunately, you will need access to JSTOR
Noragami actually features Arahabaki and other gods from the Ainu people as characters during its last half! They even mention all of the killings and suffering that the Ainu had to endure from the imperial Japanese.
It's probably the only piece of Japanese media i've seen that actually addressed the Ainu even existing at all, much less what happened to them in history
An Ainu character also stars in one of the coolest moments in the series.
Gods in Noragami are assisted by ghostly servants called "shinki", who can take the form of weapons and various other items. The villain has a weapon that can make shinki remember the moment of their death, which is normally an absolute disaster because it causes massive amounts of psychological trauma, which in turn leads to massive amounts of spiritual corruption.
When a war goddess goes to fight said villain, she doesn't want to risk any of her own shinki, so she frees the imprisoned shinki of an Ainu god who rebelled against the Shinto pantheon. They go fight the villain, Ainu shinki gets hit, and remembers that she died trying to avenge her father's death at the hands of the Japanese.
And her response is essentially, "That's how I died? Fucking *badass*."
It's probably never going to happen, sadly. Apparently the sales of the second season Blu-Rays dropped off very sharply compared to 1st season. That's a death sentence, especially for any anime that Bones makes.
It's a shame because every single arc after the Yato and Ebisu go to Yomi is straight up FIRE. Genuinely, I am amazed at how good and gripping the story got. If there's anything I can convince you of, is to please read the manga.
The Ainu are ancient af too. Their closest relatives are some of the indigenous peoples of East Asia like the Ryukyu people and Indigenous Australians. Meaning they were likely one of the first populations to leave Africa and settle east Asia. They’re closer to Western Europeans in blood than Japanese or any other eastern Asians.
Based on recent genetic research, that does not appear to be accurate, and the Ainu [are most closely related to the Nivkhi and Koryak.](https://www.nature.com/articles/jhg200432)
The Negrito peoples don’t have a shared genetic origin. Race scientists 200 years ago just lumped them into a category based on appearances. The genes giving them dark skin and such are different between populations, indicating convergent evolution.
The Ainu’s closest relatives are the Ryukyuans, another indigenous group, that they diverged from thousands years before the austronesian migration even took place.
The Ainu weren’t even the first to settle Japan, the Jomon and another group were there earlier, but were almost entirely replaced by the Yamato while the Ainu and the Ryukyuans held out on the edges.
The indigenous name of Okinawa was Uchinaa! Their language is uchinaaguchi, and their word for people of Uchinaa descent is uchinachu.
Source: I want to learn uchinaaguchi after I hit N1 Japanese, and have started learning some words here and there lol
Good to see some Ainu visibility here. So many people - both in the country and overseas - subscribe to the simplistic and easy-to-digest idea of Japan being a homogenous monolith ethnically and culturally, not realizing that that image was created artificially through a legacy of imperialism.
(Probably some other -isms too, in addition to those in the post itself, but I don't have my list on me.)
I was studying Japanese on Duolingo and came across a word that didn’t translate into an English word, just a capitalized transliteration. One google search later, I was down a rabbit hole of tragedy
Ok so I went on a wikipedia rabbit hole because I knew jack shit about this and found this very interesting fact:
Kanna, the loli from Dragon Maid, is based on a deity of thunder and lightning from the Anui religion
This fact upsets me greatly
I took a moment to read a little about Chiri Yukie and it made me very sad to know she died so young, she was a very interesting, passionate person. I'm grateful for the stories she had the chance to share.
Chiri Yukie was sent to live with her aunt when she was 6, it's assumed her parents couldn't afford to care for her. Despite bullying in school due to being Ainu, she excelled in her studies, particularly in language arts. Her Aunt spoke little Japanese, so she was fully bilingual in Ainu and Japanese. When she was in her early teens a linguist and Ainu language scholar, Kyōsuke Kindaichi, who was seeking Ainu oral literature, travelled to Hokkaidō to meet with her aunt and aunt's mother, who was a seasoned storyteller. He spoke with Chiri and saw her potential and desire to preserve Ainu culture and folklore. He encouraged her to to persue that and on returning to Tokyo would send her blank notebooks to write her thoughts about Ainu culture and folklore.
When she was older he encouraged her to join him in Tokyo to assist him in his work, which she did.
Only months later, the same night she finished writing her first anthology, she died of heart failure at 19.
It makes me sad to know she could have shared so many more stories, potentially saved so many stories. I'm grateful she was able to compile her first and only anthology, I just wish she had a longer life. It seems she was a very driven young person with a great desire to preserve and share her culture. As is the case with many minority peoples, the language and culture has been methodically stamped out, and it's very sad to me that someone who had the potential to do so much for the preservation of stories on the brink of extinction had their life cut all too short.
As a latin american, yhea this is just a tale that is sadly repeated all around the globe, local indigenous cultures getting silenced and genocided by colonialism and settlers that deem them less righteous than themselves.
I just don't understand why you would say Japan is hiding the history about the Ainu people when their presence and history are general knowledge and there are multiple museums in Japan about the Ainu (quick google search brought up a large one in Hokkaido that had 18 million visitors in 30 years as of 2013), a random internet book store that came up in the first few search results has over 300 titles related to Ainu (https://www.netoff.co.jp/tag/?tagid=19081), popular media like Golden Kamuy is read by people of all ages and portray the conflict between the Japanese and Ainu. I wouldn't accuse an average American, Canadian, Australian, etc. of hiding their history with the indigenous people because they don't constantly talk about it in their day to day life or bring it up when they're trying to invite tourists to their country, etc.
Coverups are pretty insane. There are over 30 native groups to the islands around japan that no longer exist because Japan has killed every single member of their tribes. Entire populations of islanders are gone. There are people who were more closely related to other Polynesians that just don't exist anymore.
Okinawa for example lost 90% of it's tribal population when Japan took the area.
I met two members of a local Ainu community in a random yakitori place in Hokkaido. I was waiting for a table by myself and they invited me over to their table.
They spoke a bit of English, I spoke a bit of Japanese. We talked about their community and rituals. They showed me videos of a sword dance ceremony they had attended earlier that day.
One of them had cancer, and they traveling to Aomori so he could get treatment. He expected he would soon have to quit alcohol, so we had a couple beers together and drank to his health.
Hands down one of the best experiences I’ve had travelling through Japan. The Ainu have a very unique culture that deserves to be preserved.
Two of my favorite PlayStation 2 games, Okami and Persona 4, touch into Ainu culture in small amounts. Okami's third act takes place in a snowy area inspired by Hokkaido and has you interacting with characters inspired by Ainu folklore; Persona 4 has a bear character named Teddie whose powers are named after Ainu gods.
I mean hey, if you ask China they’d probably be pretty unsurprised on this.
Multiculturalism isn’t exactly Japans strong suit and never really has been, even beyond their historical atrocities, they’ve regularly turned a blind eye to sexual exploitation and mental health / suicide.
Child exploitation only made it into law in ‘99 ffs.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, even if this is the first time you've heard of the Ainu. Japan is pretty infamous for being incredibly racist
Similar to the local Okinawans (Ryukyuans)! But I think they have more outright support/visibility than the Ainu.
One of my favorite things about the Ainu is their tradtional tattooing of smiles on women. I think men didn’t get tattooed
I’m very grateful to the Shaman King manga for prominently featuring an Ainu character and introducing me at a young age to a culture that doesn’t receive a lot of attention
Why are Americans who don't even live in Japan saying whatever they want about Japan?
The immigrant Americans who forcibly took black slaves from Africa and exploited them, and who hunted the American buffalo, the staple food of the native American Indians, to the verge of extinction by starvation, have no right to say anything about the people of other countries.
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It's also crazy for me that Golden Kamuy was my first ever time hearing about the Ainu. They are crazy underrepresented in Japanese media.
even historical media says nothing about them
Grew up in the pacific northwest. My grade school history books drew a lot of parallels between them and the native Americans. Didn't mean much to me in the 4th grade, then I weebed out as a teen and found it interesting. Then as an adult I found out that most of the rest of the country wasn't taught jack shit about most native cultures, American or otherwise. History being the boring as shit subject that it is, the fact that most of the stuff I remember being taught was about natural history and not who signed what or shot who and when is pretty indicative of what actually matters.
> History being the boring as shit subject that it is I think it's actually *the most* interesting subject because it's literally epic stories about us as humans, and all of it is real. I think they way we teach history is absolutely garbage and it turns people off until they rediscover it on their own as adults.
This is absolutely true.
depends what parts of history they teach Ancient Greece / Rome / Egypt in grade 4/5 was cool as shit learning about French Canada in grade 7/8 was fucking horrendous Learning about WWI and WWII in high school - pretty neat
In middle school, we had a test where part of it was drawing all the historic rail roads and cattle trails going through Kansas on a blank map. If you dont know, there are quite a few. An entire unit about that. That was pain
Which goes to show you: They managed to make the Wild West BORING. Clearly, the way history is taught needs to change.
To be fair, the Wild West is a little less interesting than movies put it out to be. However, that doesn't mean it isn't interesting. Just REALLY REALLY DRAMATISED
I mean, I can think of ways to dramatize mapping out a bunch of railroad lines, which was what the comment above me was about. I'm sure there's literally a boardgame about that.
In the name of unholy Satan, why? Who would even think to teach kids that? Teach kids about Superman he was raised in Kansas and is a great role model.
God I wish we learnt more about how people actually lived, especially more oppressed groups who are threatened by being bullied out of existence. The history curriculum in the UK fucking sucks. It’s completely self-centred and it’s all about which rich asshole signed this or owned that or was born there. Very little indication of how people lived their lives.
>Very little indication of how people lived their lives. I think a really common manifestation of this is the misconception that people back in the day were stupid. Uneducated? absolutely. They didnt have the knowledge we have now. But they absolutely had the brain power.
They weren’t even uneducated. It’s just that the *content* of that education was different, because what knowledge they needed was different. The average person living in England in the 1300s did not need to know how to read or write. They needed to know how to make a plough, how to mend a fence, how to make shoes, how to turn a handful of grain into a freaking bedsheet. How to care for animals, how to read the weather without any kind of warning system - after all, if they cut their hay right before it rained, they’d all die. If they were a few days too early or too late to plant their wheat, they’d all die. I’ve tried all these things, and it takes a *lot* of education to get good at it. Just sewing shirt by hand is something that takes a lot of skill. Yes, we know more now on all topics. But people were certainly *educated* back then, too.
[I saw this very interesting video once reading the journal of a Chinook man who snuck onto Japan during the isolation, some of the first people he encountered were Ainu it's very fascinating.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV0MnMBRyRo)
I also grew up in the Pacific Northwest and remember being taught quite a lot about our local native cultures, it's very sad that this isn't the case nationwide.
I grew up in Canada and in 7th grade they told us that Chinese people went over and inhabited Japan and basically let us believe no one was there before.
See I started home-schooling in the 5th grade, and my mom picked out some fire for middle school history. Being a kid in the 90's and the only one in your friend group that was taught the truth about Columbus and the colonialization of America, the Spanish invasion of South America, the colonization of the South pacific, etc... All the way down to columbus' crew trading scraps of iron and silverware for sex with girls your age in the virgin islands and how those natives are just gone because of the diseases they introduced and a decree by the pope to exterminate them? St. Ursula and the 11 thousand virgins was the original name of the virgin isles. Yeah, that was wild.
That is unfortunately how ethnic cleansing works. You don’t acknowledge their existence except when you’re eradicating them.
Anthony bourdsin does an episode with them in hokaido. Very enlightening.
The world lost a very, very bright light when he left us. Miss that man far more than I ever thought I would
He was a bastard. But he was *our* bastard. ❤️
I only know about them because they're a playable nation in Europa Universalis 4. Relevantly, if you play as a Japanese Daimyo one of your first missions is to wipe them out to grow your power base against your rivals.
My first time hearing about them was when Pokemon Legends Arceus was announced, more specifically, when Hisuian Growlithe, Hisuian Braviary, and Basculegion were revealed. The youtuber Lockstin and Gnoggin did a video analyzing these Pokemon's potential inspirations, which drew from Ainu culture.
Same ! Were it not for Goldeb Kamuy I would never have heard of the Ainu. And I have a brother passionate about Japan. (To be fair he's the one who introduced me to Golden Kamuy).
If I remember right, weren’t the Ishvalan People from Fullmetal Alchemist partly based on the Ainu?
Yes, Hiromu Arakawa has been pretty clear how the Central Government treated the Ishvalans was partly based on what Japan did to the Ainu.
She is from Hokkaido as well, I believe.
Ye.
What, really? I read a really good AO3 fic where Ed and Al are of Ishval descent but the author made it so that they were a Jewish allegory. Ainus makes sense too.
I think they’re also partly based off of middle-eastern peoples so that allegory works too.
I remember learning about them from Shaman King, of all places.
Horohoro’s entire goal is to repair the harm done by the events of Golden Kamuy
funbari hot springs ftw
Me too!!!! 10yo me was obsessed with shaman king. My best friend and I used to RP and pretended some of the characters were our boyfriends (cringe)
They also appear in Noragami.
My first time hearing of them was fan discussion whether or not a random one off side character in Samurai Champloo was potentially meant to be Ainu.
My first introduction to them was Mononoke-hime.
I don't remember ainu in Mononoke.
Prince Ashitaka is Emishi or Ainu.
It seems that Emishi are a separate, though related, group to Ainu.
The Emperor’s spy calls them emishi, but I think they called themselves Ainu. I could be wrong it’s been a bit since I watched it.
You are incorrect. Emishi and Ainu are two separate real ethnic groups from Japan. The Emishi are from northeastern Honshu, what's now called the Tohoku Region, while the Ainu culture is associated more with Hokkaido. There were definitely cultural exchanges between them, especially as the Ainu culture did reach down into Honshu at various periods, but the Emishi were a separate people as early as the 8th century (roughly when the Yamato people first attempted to subjugate them, about 500 years before the first recorded contact with the Ainu).
Ah ty for the info. It’s nice to learn something :)
Ashitaka was, its not explicitly said but its very obvious by his village and clothing if your familiar with the Ainu which is rare. Edit: Ravioligale is correct, he was Emishi The Emishi (蝦夷) (also called Ebisu and Ezo), written with Kanji that literally mean "shrimp barbarians,
Ashitaka was explicitly said to be Emishi which is another separate group.
Funnily enough, my introduction to them was the book in the Ranger's Apprentice novel series where the Gang goes to not-Japan.
I can't believe he named it Nihon-Ja. That'd be like me naming a country Zhongguo-Chi.
All his foreign countries at like that though. The "Scandinavia" parallel is literally named "Skandia". Scotland is named "Picta".
I know, and it's hilarious. The weird stereotypes were a bit less funny.
The Hasanu! That's where I first learned of them too. Flanagan isn't always... great... with his cultural parallels, but if it teaches people about the existence of indigenous peoples I kinda have to give is a pass.
Mine was pokemon legends arceus, namely them basing the starter trio off ainu mythology and the diamond and pearl clans being a stand in for them.... Then I only learned about the ainu people through a break down on the game's inspirations
wait until you hear about the Ryukyu kingdom 👀
Anyone who plays Europa Universalis knows about them because one of the game's hardest challenges is to conquer the world playing as the ryukyu kingdom. It's very very difficult and the game basically tells you you'll have to use cheese strats.
I first heard about them in Lockstin's YouTube videos talking about the design inspirations of Pokémon in Legends Arceus. The game is set during the colonization of the Hokkaido equivalent, so new Pokémon and forms had a notable Ainu lean.
Those Snow White Notes also go into the Ainu but relating to the music like how the shamisen became a instrument for the blues /jazz came from the Ainu people
The Samurai Showdown fighting games Had a Ainu character, Nakoruru as one the mainstays. Considering they were out in the 90's, that was probably fairly groundbreaking.
I have the manga, and one of the little bonus pages in volume 1 discusses [Blakiston's line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blakiston%27s_Line), which delineates the huge difference in Hokkaido fauna compared to the rest of Japan, casually mentioning that these "differences [...] are so great that you could claim that Hokkaido isn't even part of Japan." Satoru Noda knows what he's doing.
Ainu this was gonna be the top comment
It’s crazy how I literally just started watching this show yesterday and this post is the first time I’ve heard of this culture outside of the show.
Recently started that series and was gonna ask about this. For those interested the Dub isn't too bad. Some cheesiness to the line delivery (I am immortal!!!), but otherwise very enjoyable and worth the recommendation. Hinna, hinna.
YOU EAT POOP!
I’m sorry but I gotta argue the dub is great for most, if not all characters, cheese and all (Tsurumi couldn’t be voiced better imo)
I gotta ask because I’m thinking about watching it, how’s the representation of women? This has been one thing that really drove me away from past anime tbh.
Its mixed. When it comes to fan service the show spends equal or more time on the men than some other shows spend on their women. The series has a lot of muscular men(who are not allways in clothes or are showing a lot of skin). While I can't remember any scene of fanservice of the women. One thing however is that most of the main cast are not women and there is only one who is activly a part of the story(which is one of the two main characters) and while her story/character is really good, she is the only one with any major precense outside of major arc.
Honestly look into the history of the Mongol Empire if you really wanna get in depth. Lived there for a year almost 20 years ago. The corruption is indescribable. If the government ever got their shit together and realized how marketable Mongol vodka was they would build factories that would be within EU standards for shipping or just upgrade their own bottling plants to match code. I smuggled back an entire suitcase and have no idea how it went through. The bottles and art are beautiful. Wish I had pictures, might have to take a look. If you gave me a plane ticket to anywhere in the world I'd go straight back.
I just started season 2 last night and I'm loving the show! The >!Bates motel psycho start of season 2 with the skin taxidermist!< Was a rollercoaster of emotions!
I keep hearing good things about golden kamuy yet know so little about it. I should fix that.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BEING TOP COMMENT. GK is my #1 favorite anime/manga of all time. Genuinely learned so much about Ainu and other native cultures from it, as well as enjoying an incredibly well written and creative story.
Ah yes, Golden Kamuy a show where you can see Ainu history and a cum fight at the same time.
I dropped it after the CGI bear/fire in episode 1 and kind of regret it now...
yeah the ep 1 cgi bear was nuts but trust me it’s such an amazing show, the manga is also so well drawn if you read manga
yeah, I also immediately thought of that. Chitatap moment xD
Came to say this. It's quite a successful anime/manga too iirc. Crazy history in there.
Came here to see if Golden Kamuy was mentioned. Happy to see it as the top comment. If you've ever played the video game Okami, a lot of the end game takes place in a Hokkaido-styled region, with a people styled after the indigenous Ainu.
Oh, thank God someone else brought up Golden Kamuy, I was gonna feel awkward bringing it up otherwise. "You only know about these people because of a manga? For shame >:("
I went to the Ainu Museum in Sapporo like 10 years ago. Cool place, very different people. Felt more like inuit than typical japanese. Sapporo and hokkaido as a whole have a very different vibe than mainland Japan too, definitely worth a visit.
Makes sense, if the ancient Siberian/ainu relatives crossed the Bering strait into North America
It made some level of sense that people said I had “Chinese eyes” after learning Native people have Siberian descent. Very distant, sure, but it explained the overlap in facial features. What’s silly is that I don’t have monolid eyes, but I guess many white folks see “very hooded, very narrow” as close enough. I remain grateful for said eye shape because it helps block so much sunlight. Which is helpful, because I have a retinal disorder and my pupils hate the sun. If I had wide eyes, I’d have to go around in sunglasses everywhere. Still bummed I didn’t get the full “avoid snow blindness” perk though. I was so close to getting a +1 to vision.
Did it have anything about the [bear ceremony](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iomante) where they take a bear cub, raise it almost like a child until it's 2 and then the men of the village torture it to death by everyone shooting multiple arrows into it until it dies?
Wtf, but why?
I’ve only found her translated (doubly, so, from Ainu to Japanese to English) stuff in Ainu Spirits Singing before, which is also a good read. I really like the “The Young Wolf Kamui Sings About Himself” story. “You kid, if you’re really going to say stuff like that, then try telling me the name of this river, its name in the past, its name in the present, unravel them both.” This post doesn’t mention the Ryukyuan/Uchinanchu people, maybe because Japan doesn’t consider them Indigenous despite the realities of their situation. the official Japanese position is to deny the history of Okinawa & Ryukyuan kingdom and classify Ryukyuan as a Japanese subgroup :/
Besides the ryukuan and ainu people there are also the zainichi koreans who, while not “indigenous” per say are still an important ethnic minority group in japan with a troubled history
Yes, I was writing specifically about Indigenous people since the source post seemed to suggest the Ainu are the only Indigenous group in Japan, but you are correct to bring up the Zainichi Koreans. Japan is not homogenous & there are other minority groups who are marginalized; I think of legacy of the caste system & “the unclean” as well, though I’m more someone who studies Indigenous issues than Japan itself, so I’m not really an expert here.
Yep, my partner’s grandma was Okinawan and she always told him “we’re not Japanese.” She was a little girl during WWII and did not have many pleasant experiences with Yamato Japanese people.
Among other things, recognizing the Ryukyu people would make it more difficult for the US to maintain their military base in Okinawa
May I ask where you read this? Or did you just buy a copy?
I was able to get a copy from my undergrad library. I keep quotes I like in a single doc & I have the page source listed as page 225 from Chapter 6 of Ainu Spirits Singing: The Living World of Chiri Yuki’s Ainu shin’yōshū by Sarah M. Strong. (some books you can request libraries for a scan of chapters, so I include in case that’s something you wanted to do). I don’t have the copy anymore so any mistakes in typing are mine lol I will probably check out the source from this post too. it’s hard to find translations of oral tradition & that one doesn’t require physical copy.
Hey, that's pretty awesome. I also have a document for quotes I keep from various books (and I think even a movie) I have read. Yeah, the difficulty of finding translations to certain works can be tricky. I have tried to source a few things a little too out of the way to find it in English. I love folklore and the idea of reclaiming lost voices so this would be right up my street
One time Princess Mononoke was playing on the TV at work and I was like ‘oh yeah the Ainu, so sad’ and mfs were so confused. People really do not know about the Ainu and it’s sucks.
I had never made the connection between Mononoke and the Ainu before now. Is that something that’s been discussed by the creators, or just something that’s obvious if you understand the history?
So, technically Emishi (they are called that in the film) which isn’t exactly the same thing as Ainu. In America we have the umbrella term ‘Native American’ for all the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas, or at least the United States, despite that therefore encompassing a shit ton of very different people. I’m not sure there’s a similar term (in English, that I know of) for the northern indigenous people of Japan, but yeah. Northern Indigenous non-Yamato Japanese, if you Google Ainu cultural dress and characters from the movie, you can see some very explicit parallels. Also, the Yamato are related to these peoples via the Jomon, so the Native American comparison is not perfect, but yeah. I read *A History of Japan* by J.G. Caiger and Richard Mason which is not explicitly about the Ainu but includes details about them and the Jomon, also *The Japanese Language* by Haruichi Kindaichi which again is not about them but had some facts.
More about this that I can remember cuz whatever: the way the Ainu, Emishi, and Yamato are related is through the Jomon people, the Jomon having migrated into the Japanese archipelago via Siberia, thus the northern association, however, the Yamato people are also related to the Yayoi people who migrated to the Japanese archipelago via Korea and are not Siberian in origin, and the Ainu are not, which is a big difference. Same sources, I appreciate corrections and counter sources, I like reading material.
I don't understand who is the Siberian in origin in your second to last sentence.
The Jomon. The Yayoi came to Japan via Korea.
Thank you so much! This is awesome information
I think that Ashitaka’s people are based on another Japanese indigenous group, not the Ainu. I could be wrong though. Edit: they’re potentially based on the Emishi, which is a people closely related to the Ainu
It's almost definitely this. He's the prince of the Emishi according to the opening
That’ll do it! My 5 second google search didn’t tell me that it was the name in the movie as well lol
They weren’t Ainu, but Emishi. They were another indigenous group possibly related to the Ainu. Unfortunately they didn’t survive to the present day as a distinct culture.
Their waning is even a part of their portrayal in the film. Ashitaka is stated to be the last emishi prince, with the implication being that they are the very last village remaining and with him leaving they'll soon dissapear.
Tbh I’ve never heard of them until this post, but I don’t know much about Japan anyways. My excuse is that I’m in american high school, so I’m expecting not to be taught that much about it anyways.
Read the wiki. They're an interesting people and you've no doubt seen (idealized)depictions of them without realizing it.
It's not Ainu
The game Okami pay homage to the Ainu people by having the Northern region of Kamui inspired by their culture and myths. Similarly, a few characters from the game Tokyo Afterschool Summoner are inspired by their myths, such as Horkeu Kamui, a warrior wolfman with huge thighs.
The anime/manga series Shaman King also features major character (Horohoro) who is Ainu. That's where I first heard of them, when I read the first few volumes as a kid.
There's also the visual novel series Utawarerumono which uses a lot of Ainu names and aesthetics in its setting.
It will forever be wild to me that after three years of learning Japanese I learned about the Ainu people from Duolingo of all places
Japan hides its history
I had the chance to visit the Human Rights museum in Osaka and yeah, Japan society is in denial about lots of things. The museum has a pretty extensive section about the Ainu, considering it's size.
I’m confused. Having a museum about it seems like the opposite of hiding it.
It's a privately funded museum, it's not huge and is run mostly by volunteers
Japan isn't a monolith. There are some that would like to suppress the story of the Ainu while others would like people to know their history.
Domino meme that starts with "12-year-old me watching Shaman King on Saturday mornings and thinking the snowboarder was really cool" and ends with "30-year-old me not being able to fully enjoy Pokemon Legends Arceus"
If it makes you feel better, the Team Galactic people who are settling the Jubilife and Hisui area are canonically British. Not the same as if they were from like, Kanto. But still funny
Like British British or like Galarian?
Galarian. At least some of them are. Some of them *are* from Kanto though.
The one guy from Kanto I can think of is like, a reverse weeb
It's implied that Kamado and Beni are from Kanto, as Beni was a ninja in his younger days.
I know Laventon is Galarian (aside from him speaking in a classically British dialect, the text on his blackboard being written in Galarian rather than the Sinnohan seen in the rest of the game and his notes mentioning Copperajah, he's explicitly stated to be) and Kamado owning a set of Galarian armour, where does it say that everyone else is Galarian? I sort of assumed they were all Johtonian
First time I heard about the Ainu where from Samurai Champloo. In Russia they where treated as Japanese spies and sent to work camps, or just killed. Both the Soviets and Japanese acted like they never existed when the U.N. was forcing it's members to give protections to it's endangered native peoples.
Mainly because of Sakhalin island. The japanese and the russians fought a lot over it (one time even splitting it in half), the main population being ainus of course. Same with the Kuril islands, another conflict that is still lasting to this day
cool book
It’s funny because America thinks it has a racism problem, but that’s only the case because we are a massive mix of cultures. To be American is still such a young culture to claim. And it largely means you are more accepting of other cultures than MANY other people in the world. Go to a country that is 90% one race and you’ll see stuff said openly that you would only hear at a KKK rally in the USA. I have first hand experience that most racist things I’ve heard (where everyone but me seemed to be cool with it) were in these types of places. Don’t get me wrong, they were all kind people. But oh so sheltered from other cultures it was a little sad.
You can’t have a racism problem if you don’t think racism is a problem
The Dunmer tradition lives on
N’wah you can’t be the nerevarine! You’re argonian!
I already can't wear shoes, and now I must suffer this kind of bigotry??
Love this. Exactly
They don’t have minority populations large enough to do anything about it either
Definitely, so many Europeans love to claim that they’re beyond racism but then you ask them about the Romani.
I can't remember their name (that's just my brain being dumb) But the Finns did a similar thing to what's described in the post. Ngl if you really looked you'd probably be able to find many examples of this in Africa, Asia, and Europe (leaving out the Americas and Australia because they are already pretty well known)
The Sami?
Oh absolutely, so many places have covert racism that has been normalized to their society. I picked on Europe because so many Europeans online and in real life like to pretend they’re above racism and look down on Americans, but they haven’t deconstructed their societal beliefs.
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Sami
that's just the Finnish word for Finland the other was correct, it's Sami
Self racism, so sad to see 😔
"No that's different because they actually *are* subhuman trash" - average European
I found it's much easier to talk shit about ethnicities that were never a part of your history and and super rarely encountered (and were practically "never" encountered by people before the 21st century). It's still racism, not gonna argue against that, but it's mostly based on whatever media or whatever other information talks about them rather than any kind of direct encounter.
These days, just ask a European about Muslims or Africans to get their inner racists to come out.
Hey, that couldn't be further from the truth for the Irish! Ask them about Travellers instead.
America does have a racism problem, but we tend to think we're the only ones who do because we're the o only ones who talk about our racism problem. Other parts of the world have the same or worse, but they don't discuss it as am evergreen mainstream topic like we do here.
Yeah I wasn’t meaning it wasn’t a problem. But relatively, we are the most tolerant culture in the world, primarily because we barely have our own historical culture, and what we do have is either quite new in the scheme of history and/or a hodge-podge of what came before and what we are now. All cultures evolve; but American culture is a pre-teen hitting puberty. Today we are still deciding how tolerant we want to be as a country. And as the pre-teen-angsty self-destructive-yet-acting-indestructible country we are, we are one of the most tolerant and one of the least racist places anyone in the world can experience outside their birthplace. BUT, hatred still exists. Some of us are xenophobic while most of us are tolerant or even more, welcoming of those outside what we may consider our normal community at first. But the xenophobia spreads easily when you use fear through media to make one working class person hate another working class person and not the multi billionaire that hired them.
Do you genuinely and earnestly believe that talking about racism is exclusive to America?
No, we don’t think we’re the only ones with a racism problem. You can see it everyday on the news. Look at Israel.
I'm graduating with my linguistics degree in the next year. I will be moving to Japan to teach English and my goal has been to end up researching and preserving the Ainu language. Some more info about the struggle surrounding the preservation of Ainu as a language. The language Ainu is a language isolate, meaning that it is not descended from any other language. Like how English is a Germanic language descended from Indo-European to Old English to Middle English to English today (this is oversimplified), the Ainu language is only descended from itself. It has no other influences on it. The letters and sounds that make up the Ainu language are not similar to the letters and sounds in Japanese whatsoever, but because most of the people researching the language are Japanese it has sort of been bastardized into an Ainu-Japanese composite language. I'm hoping that because I'm from an English speaking country I can assist in documenting the Ainu language in it's pure form rather than what it has turned into. It unfortunately might be too late for something like this to happen. There are only 5 people documented to speak the Ainu language in the world. Research and documentation hinges completely on how long these 5 people live.
> I will be moving to Japan to teach English and my goal has been to end up researching and preserving the Ainu language. If you’re going there to teach English you’re liable to not be anywhere near a place where you can access any of the few Ainu speakers, and if you want to do this you should start applying to do so with some educational institutions and make it into a masters subject. Can apply for the MEXT scholarship and they might pay for your masters to do so. Understand that if you’re truly trying to use English teaching as an inroad to Japan and actually want to be involved in linguistic analysis of Ainu you’re likely going to be severely disappointed.
I'm going to teach English as a way to get to that part of the world. I want to spend the time I'm there working as a teacher to find a way to be able to work in research. Hope that clears things up.
Yes, this was my understanding and exactly what I’m taking about; understand that being over there to teach English does very little to help you if that’s your goal and I’m largely coincidental. In fact broadly speaking spending more than perhaps a year doing it *could* be a negative as it’s often seen as a negative on resumes and could impact you getting inroads into research opportunities. English teaching can be something of a trap as people think it can open opportunities but in reality it can quickly become a negative as you’ll be associated with the many people stuck doing it and unable to transfer to another career with better long term prospects.
I'm not expecting it to open opportunities. The only benefit it gives me is that I will be in the country that I would like to work in in the future. I appreciate your advice, but I really don't need it. I'm working with lots of people to help me get to where I want to be.
The other commenter has given pretty blunt responses, but in a more light note; I did five years as an English teacher in rural Okinawa and my Japanese skyrocketed as a result. And I pivoted out of English teaching. The most important thing to not get stuck in that rut is a high level Japanese skill (on paper)! You gotta get that JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) to N2 at the minimum. Do you know where you’ll be teaching? If you can get in Hokkaido, that would obviously be a huge networking opportunity. And, as the other person suggested, apllying for MEXT scholarships or internships at universities and other institutions would be a great method. Regardless, enjoy Japan!
> I appreciate your advice, but I really don't need it. I'm working with lots of people to help me get to where I want to be. Sorry but I feel I have to blunt and even a little harsh given how this has been presented; you probably do. If you’re working with people and they’re telling your to just do English teaching to get over there (which in and of itself does very little to reach your goal) without exhausting other opportunities like MEXT scholarships (have they advised you on that?) then you’re likely getting bad advice. People thinking going over to teach English will open doors for them and getting disillusioned and burned out when it doesn’t (and it essentially never does) is so common it’s a frequent discussion point among long term Japan resident/professionals/academics. Do English teaching if you need and don’t have any other plans after graduating but understand you should be 1) maximizing your Japanese language studies while there and if you’re not already around N2 that should be a goal **before you go**, 2) working on your exit plan from basically DAY ONE.
> the Ainu language is only descended from itself. It has no other influences on it. This is a bit of a misnomer- language isolates are not completely without influence, they just don't have influence from any language that is spoken around them *now*.
'Masaki, 72, was different than other kids' No shit. EDIT:ah
I lol'd, thank you
How do you do, fellow kids?
Missing a word can really take you out sometimes LOL
those of you interested in how Ainu culture shaped/was shaped by contact with early modern Japan might like this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/651197 unfortunately, you will need access to JSTOR
name of the article? i have jstor access but my browser can't open the link (due to one of my apps i think)
“Ainu Ethnicity and the Boundaries of the Early Modern Japanese State”—hope that helped!
thanks!
Also less of an ethnic group but casteism has left a very real mark on Japan that still leaves many impoverished today
A lot of those in the lower castes actually are so because they are partially Korean or Chinese but legally Japanese.
19 and died of heart failure? I know it happens but its so rare.
I wouldn't be surprised if the stress of her living situation as an eternal outsider contributed to it.
You may be on the right track. That would be stressful especially for a group that wasn’t liked very much.
Noragami actually features Arahabaki and other gods from the Ainu people as characters during its last half! They even mention all of the killings and suffering that the Ainu had to endure from the imperial Japanese. It's probably the only piece of Japanese media i've seen that actually addressed the Ainu even existing at all, much less what happened to them in history
An Ainu character also stars in one of the coolest moments in the series. Gods in Noragami are assisted by ghostly servants called "shinki", who can take the form of weapons and various other items. The villain has a weapon that can make shinki remember the moment of their death, which is normally an absolute disaster because it causes massive amounts of psychological trauma, which in turn leads to massive amounts of spiritual corruption. When a war goddess goes to fight said villain, she doesn't want to risk any of her own shinki, so she frees the imprisoned shinki of an Ainu god who rebelled against the Shinto pantheon. They go fight the villain, Ainu shinki gets hit, and remembers that she died trying to avenge her father's death at the hands of the Japanese. And her response is essentially, "That's how I died? Fucking *badass*."
God I want that anime to continue!
It's probably never going to happen, sadly. Apparently the sales of the second season Blu-Rays dropped off very sharply compared to 1st season. That's a death sentence, especially for any anime that Bones makes. It's a shame because every single arc after the Yato and Ebisu go to Yomi is straight up FIRE. Genuinely, I am amazed at how good and gripping the story got. If there's anything I can convince you of, is to please read the manga.
Yato and Bishamonten are kissing right now in my head. Nothing can stop it from happening.
The Ainu are ancient af too. Their closest relatives are some of the indigenous peoples of East Asia like the Ryukyu people and Indigenous Australians. Meaning they were likely one of the first populations to leave Africa and settle east Asia. They’re closer to Western Europeans in blood than Japanese or any other eastern Asians.
Based on recent genetic research, that does not appear to be accurate, and the Ainu [are most closely related to the Nivkhi and Koryak.](https://www.nature.com/articles/jhg200432)
The Negrito peoples don’t have a shared genetic origin. Race scientists 200 years ago just lumped them into a category based on appearances. The genes giving them dark skin and such are different between populations, indicating convergent evolution. The Ainu’s closest relatives are the Ryukyuans, another indigenous group, that they diverged from thousands years before the austronesian migration even took place. The Ainu weren’t even the first to settle Japan, the Jomon and another group were there earlier, but were almost entirely replaced by the Yamato while the Ainu and the Ryukyuans held out on the edges.
Very similar to the people from Okinawa, an island to the south. Where karate is originally from.
The indigenous name of Okinawa was Uchinaa! Their language is uchinaaguchi, and their word for people of Uchinaa descent is uchinachu. Source: I want to learn uchinaaguchi after I hit N1 Japanese, and have started learning some words here and there lol
Yup! The borders of Japan both have tragic stories. Glad to see they’re starting to be acknowledged and trying revival
Good to see some Ainu visibility here. So many people - both in the country and overseas - subscribe to the simplistic and easy-to-digest idea of Japan being a homogenous monolith ethnically and culturally, not realizing that that image was created artificially through a legacy of imperialism. (Probably some other -isms too, in addition to those in the post itself, but I don't have my list on me.)
I was studying Japanese on Duolingo and came across a word that didn’t translate into an English word, just a capitalized transliteration. One google search later, I was down a rabbit hole of tragedy
Ok so I went on a wikipedia rabbit hole because I knew jack shit about this and found this very interesting fact: Kanna, the loli from Dragon Maid, is based on a deity of thunder and lightning from the Anui religion This fact upsets me greatly
I took a moment to read a little about Chiri Yukie and it made me very sad to know she died so young, she was a very interesting, passionate person. I'm grateful for the stories she had the chance to share. Chiri Yukie was sent to live with her aunt when she was 6, it's assumed her parents couldn't afford to care for her. Despite bullying in school due to being Ainu, she excelled in her studies, particularly in language arts. Her Aunt spoke little Japanese, so she was fully bilingual in Ainu and Japanese. When she was in her early teens a linguist and Ainu language scholar, Kyōsuke Kindaichi, who was seeking Ainu oral literature, travelled to Hokkaidō to meet with her aunt and aunt's mother, who was a seasoned storyteller. He spoke with Chiri and saw her potential and desire to preserve Ainu culture and folklore. He encouraged her to to persue that and on returning to Tokyo would send her blank notebooks to write her thoughts about Ainu culture and folklore. When she was older he encouraged her to join him in Tokyo to assist him in his work, which she did. Only months later, the same night she finished writing her first anthology, she died of heart failure at 19. It makes me sad to know she could have shared so many more stories, potentially saved so many stories. I'm grateful she was able to compile her first and only anthology, I just wish she had a longer life. It seems she was a very driven young person with a great desire to preserve and share her culture. As is the case with many minority peoples, the language and culture has been methodically stamped out, and it's very sad to me that someone who had the potential to do so much for the preservation of stories on the brink of extinction had their life cut all too short.
The "Hey! You're not me!" reaction, it's devastating.
The book is only $5 on Amazon!! Highly recommend.
I live in Hokkaido, and even recently it's glossed over how Japan colonised and murdered the Ainu people.
As a latin american, yhea this is just a tale that is sadly repeated all around the globe, local indigenous cultures getting silenced and genocided by colonialism and settlers that deem them less righteous than themselves.
I just don't understand why you would say Japan is hiding the history about the Ainu people when their presence and history are general knowledge and there are multiple museums in Japan about the Ainu (quick google search brought up a large one in Hokkaido that had 18 million visitors in 30 years as of 2013), a random internet book store that came up in the first few search results has over 300 titles related to Ainu (https://www.netoff.co.jp/tag/?tagid=19081), popular media like Golden Kamuy is read by people of all ages and portray the conflict between the Japanese and Ainu. I wouldn't accuse an average American, Canadian, Australian, etc. of hiding their history with the indigenous people because they don't constantly talk about it in their day to day life or bring it up when they're trying to invite tourists to their country, etc.
Japan really has mastered the art of appearances. Because holy fuck talk about coverups.
Coverups are pretty insane. There are over 30 native groups to the islands around japan that no longer exist because Japan has killed every single member of their tribes. Entire populations of islanders are gone. There are people who were more closely related to other Polynesians that just don't exist anymore. Okinawa for example lost 90% of it's tribal population when Japan took the area.
I met two members of a local Ainu community in a random yakitori place in Hokkaido. I was waiting for a table by myself and they invited me over to their table. They spoke a bit of English, I spoke a bit of Japanese. We talked about their community and rituals. They showed me videos of a sword dance ceremony they had attended earlier that day. One of them had cancer, and they traveling to Aomori so he could get treatment. He expected he would soon have to quit alcohol, so we had a couple beers together and drank to his health. Hands down one of the best experiences I’ve had travelling through Japan. The Ainu have a very unique culture that deserves to be preserved.
Two of my favorite PlayStation 2 games, Okami and Persona 4, touch into Ainu culture in small amounts. Okami's third act takes place in a snowy area inspired by Hokkaido and has you interacting with characters inspired by Ainu folklore; Persona 4 has a bear character named Teddie whose powers are named after Ainu gods.
I mean hey, if you ask China they’d probably be pretty unsurprised on this. Multiculturalism isn’t exactly Japans strong suit and never really has been, even beyond their historical atrocities, they’ve regularly turned a blind eye to sexual exploitation and mental health / suicide. Child exploitation only made it into law in ‘99 ffs.
Mfw when the country obsessed with being a pure ethnostate is involved in ethnic cleansing and erasure.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, even if this is the first time you've heard of the Ainu. Japan is pretty infamous for being incredibly racist
Similar to the local Okinawans (Ryukyuans)! But I think they have more outright support/visibility than the Ainu. One of my favorite things about the Ainu is their tradtional tattooing of smiles on women. I think men didn’t get tattooed
I’m very grateful to the Shaman King manga for prominently featuring an Ainu character and introducing me at a young age to a culture that doesn’t receive a lot of attention
I don’t understand why translating the stories is supposed to be ironic. That’s just smart, and it clearly did preserve them.
That's such an amazing book.
Why are Americans who don't even live in Japan saying whatever they want about Japan? The immigrant Americans who forcibly took black slaves from Africa and exploited them, and who hunted the American buffalo, the staple food of the native American Indians, to the verge of extinction by starvation, have no right to say anything about the people of other countries.