(PDF) The Ainu of Northern Japan: Indigeneity, post-national politics, territoriality

THE AINU OF NORTHERN JAPAN: INDIGENEITY, POST-

NATIONAL POLITICS, TERRITORIALITY

BY

CHRISTOPHER DAVID LOY

BA, Colorado College, 1999

MA, Binghamton University, 2003

DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for

the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology

in the Graduate School of

Binghamton University

State University of New York

2010

UMI Number: 3423492

INFORMATION TO ALL USERS

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.

In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript

and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,

a note will indicate the deletion.

UMI 3423492

unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

ProQuest LLC

789 East Eisenhower Parkway

P.O. Box 1346

Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346

iii

Accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for

the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology

in the Graduate School of

Binghamton University

State University of New York

2010

July, 2010

Dr. Douglas Holmes, Chair and Faculty Advisor

Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University

Dr. Deborah Elliston, Member

Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University

Dr. Pamela Smart, Member

Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University

Dr. Herbert Bix, Member

Department of History, Binghamton University

Dr. Theodore Bestor, Outside Examiner

Department of Anthropology, Harvard University

iv

Abstract

This dissertation examines the ways in which Ainu indigenous identity is produced and

maintained in contemporary Japan and how this particular construction is implicated in

an ongoing symbolic and political territorial reorganization of parts of Northern Japan

and the disputed Northern Territories. Land claims based on indigenous identity derive

their political efficacy not solely from an association with a group's historically anterior

relation to the state, but also from a very specific late modern method of engagement with

states through supranational institutions like the United Nations and indigenous rights

NGOs. I trace the emergence of the bureaucratic methods of organization and expertise to

the historical development of regional civil society organizations that proliferated in

Japan in the 1920s and 1930s. This model of organizing tribal affairs eventually

engenders a pan-tribal Ainu identity and the technical capacity to link up with indigenous

groups at the regional and global levels. I find the increasing bureaucratization of Ainu

activities through these organizations central to the inter-generational effort to realize

long-term goals including official recognition of indigenous groups by national

governments, the reassertion of tribal sovereignty over ancestral territories, and the

elaboration of group rights which contravene the legal category of citizenship and

cultural notions of national belonging. While my informants relied on tropes of cultural

difference to assert an identity that is categorically distinct from contemporary Japanese

ethnicity, in order to remain effective both within the byzantine prefectural and national

bureaucracies in Japan and among the international forums where decisions regarding the

drafting of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples were being made, Ainu

representatives were also building a sense of communitas through metaphors of blood,

v

culture and historical connection. The reterritorialization of specific areas in Hokkaido

has been mediated through the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai’s complex involvement with the

United Nations, an association that has exerted steady pressure on the Japanese

government over the last three decades, and local activists who assert the importance of

place to tribal identities and economic development. I characterize these dynamics as a

partial post-nationalization of Japan, where the autochthonous local complicates the

ideology of nation-space through its claims, no less ideological, to “pre-modern” modes

of organization and occupation, and the distinctly late modern practice of ethnopolitical

organizing through supranational institutions.

vi

Acknowledgements

There have been many people directly involved with the intellectual work of developing

the concepts, narratives, and descriptions contained in this dissertation, and many more

whose generosity in patience, time, and wisdom granted me the opportunity to explore

more fully indigenous identity, contemporary modes of territoriality, and sentiments of

post-national belonging. Not least, there are a few individuals whose continuous moral,

emotional, and financial support, made this multi-year endeavor possible. I would like to

thank them here.

I started thinking critically about the emergent political dimensions of indigeneity

during my internship at the Institute for Development Anthropology in Binghamton, New

York. Michael Horowitz introduced me to the issues of territoriality in relation to large

state-sponsored infrastructure projects which regularly displaced people already

marginalized by the ongoing projects of nation-building. He and Charlie Cobb urged me

to develop my ideas and guided me through my master’s thesis on the subject. Douglas

Holmes, who expertly mentored me through the process of writing and defending this

dissertation, was key in helping me reframe many of my questions regarding the intensely

local nature of indigenous politics and encouraged me to include the supranational

institutions that have been responsible for generating new definitions of indigeneity and

putting pressure on states to make room for extant pre-state nations. My dissertation

committee, Deborah Elliston, Pamela Smart, Herbert Bix, and Theodore Bestor, provided

ongoing incisive and critical commentary that has been indispensible to this work. This

project was formulated in the always lively intellectual environment of Binghamton

University’s Department of Anthropology. I owe a debt of gratitude to Richard

vii

Antoun,Bill Isbell, Reinhard Bernbeck, Robin Barron, Carmen Ferradas, Mike Little,

Randy McGuire, Richard Moench, Al Dekin, Philip Rightmire, and Thomas Wilson – all

of whom have been critical interlocutors in moving this project forward. Michael Ryan

has been a steadfast friend throughout; without his good-natured prodding to take risks,

critical interventions, and engaging argumentation, this project would be far more limited

in its reach.

My work would not have been possible without the generous support and

accommodation of the Hokkaido Ainu Association. Kato Tadashi, Takeuchi Wataru,

Kaizawa Kazuaki, Tsuda Nobuko, Yamamizu Yuka, Funamizu Yuka were all very

helpful and indulged my cultural naiveté and over-inquisitiveness. I am especially

appreciative of Kawakami Tatsuya’s gracious hospitality and patience with my many

questions. The project would never have gotten off the ground if not for Sato Yukio’s

advocacy. His thoughtful guidance and constant friendship made my adjustment to life in

Japan much easier and his tireless promotion of my project within the Ainu Association,

and the Ainu community more generally, was crucial for whatever headway I have made

in my research and analysis of contemporary Ainu issues.

Finally, friends and family saw me through the extended solitary work of writing,

editing, and, at long last, finishing this dissertation. Their sacrifices for my quixotic

pursuits were the greatest and I owe them more than I can ever repay. Thanks to Richard

Loy, my father, who has always had an urgent curiosity about the world and faith that

answers can be found in it, even among the complexities of human behavior. My mother,

Francine Johnson, has always made it apparent that life must be lived with verve and

viewed with an artist’s eye. I am indebted to them both. My son Joshua has had to live

viii

with a father who, between extended time away from home and protracted periods

researching and writing, has been infrequently present these last five years. Despite this,

he has grown into a thoughtful, compassionate, and outstanding young man. As for my

wife, Lisa Izumi, there is no word in Ainu, Japanese, or English that can adequately

express my gratitude for your love and support over the years – this work is dedicated to

you.

ix

Table of Contents

List of Figures ……………………………………………………………...………x

A Note on Orthography, Transliteration, and Translation …………………......xi

Chapter One: Introduction ……………………………………………………......1

Chapter Two: Tracing a Past ……………………………………………………35

Chapter Three: Bureaus, Blood, and Bombs …………………………………...94

Chapter Four: On the Inside …………………………………………………...137

Chapter Five: Superceding the Nation-State ………………………………….184

Chapter Six: Ainu Spaces ………………………………………………………229

Chapter Seven: Indigeneity, Post-National Politics, Territoriality ………….298

End Notes ………………………………………………………………………..311

Glossary ………………………………………………………………………….338

Bibliography……...……………………………………………………………....343

x

List of Figures

Fig. 1 Map of Hokkaido …………………………………...……………….………….37

Fig 2. Bankoku sozu sekaijin keizu ………………………………………………..…52

Fig. 3 Nova et Accurata Iaponiae ………………………………………………….....55

Fig. 4 Tokugawa’s letter to Matsumae ………………………………………………56

Fig. 5 Compulsory assimilation ………………………………………………………67

Fig. 6 Shibetsu basho ……………………………………………………………….....75

Fig. 7 Ainu students in Tokyo ………………………………………………………...82

Fig. 8 Karafuto Ainu and the Kaitakushi ……………………………………………83

Fig. 9 Ainu exhibit ……………………………………………………………………..88

Fig. 10 Japan exhibit ...…………………………………………………………...……88

Fig. 11 Racial hierarchy ………………………………………………….……………89

Fig. 12 Ezo no Hikari and Ie no Hikari …………………………………………….108

Fig 13 Ainu meeting in Tokachi …………………………………………………….109

Fig 14 Ainu protest …………………………………………………………………..132

Fig. 15 Meishi ………………………………………………………………………...143

Fig. 16 Floor plan of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai ………………………………….155

Fig 17 Hokkaido University icharpa ………………………………………………..211

Fig. 18 Sapporo in 1873 ……………………………………………………………...261

Fig. 19 Geological survey map of Hokkaido ………………………………………..262

Fig. 20 The Nibutani Dam …………………………………………………………...267

Fig. 21 Nokamappu icharpa …………………………………………………………274

Fig. 22 Cape Nosappu ceremony …………………………………………………….275

Fig. 23 Shinto shrine and Tower of Peace …………………………………………..277

Fig. 24 Northern Territories Arch …………………………………………………..278

Fig. 25 Kunashiri Menashi marker ………………………………………………….278

xi

A Note on Orthography, Transliteration, and Translation

The Japanese writing system is composed of three primary scripts: kanji, hiragana and

katakana. Kanji is derived from Chinese ideograms and typically signifies nouns and the

stems of verbs and adjectives. Hiragana is a 46-character syllabary typically described as

Japanese cursive. Hiragana characters routinely accompany kanji in Japanese writing

representing particles of speech, modifying verbs and adjectives, and filling in where a

kanji is either too obscure or unknown. Finally, katakana is a syllabary that performs

many functions in Japanese writing, but primarily represents foreign words. This last

point is important as Ainu words, the pronunciations of which do not conform to the

Japanese syllabary, are often represented in a modified katakana. Throughout the text I

use these three scripts, often parenthetically, to clarify, for example, place names that I

have transliterated into the Latin alphabet. Typically the pronunciation of place-names in

Hokkaido could receive any number of articulations due to the fact that kanji, most of

which have at least two different pronunciations, were used uncharacteristically as a

syllabary to first convey a Japanese pronunciation of an Ainu word or phrase and

symbolically erase the word's foreign origin.

I use the Revised Hepburn system of romanization when transliterating Japanese

words into English. This involves the use of a macron to indicate long vowels. For

example, ローマ字 would be represented as “rōmaji” - note the long “ō” and “ji” as

opposed to “zi” as found in other transliteration methods. Exceptions include, common

romanized words that traditionally receive no diacritics like Tokyo, Hokkaido and

Junichiro – in these instances, I stick with tradition rather than orthographic precision

xii

Japanese and Ainu names are presented with the family name or surname first and the

given name second. This name order is maintained in the bibliography as well. So if one

is looking up the reference for Tahara Kaori, her works will be listed under her surname

“Tahara”. Additionally, most of my Ainu interlocutors either retain the Japanese

surnames their families were given at the end of the 19th century, or reflect the Wajin

families they have entered through marriage; I will note, where appropriate, who

identifies as Ainu and who self-identifies as Wajin.

Finally, I accept full responsibility for any and all translated passages, interviews, and

other modes of communication. While I often relied on the generosity and linguistic

expertise of others in an effort to represent the full contextualized meaning of written and

spoken Japanese and Ainu as faithfully as possible, the final translation, and any mistakes

it may contain, are my own.

1

Chapter One

Introduction

On November 21, 2005, the Prime Minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi, and Russian

President Vladimir Putin met to discuss the four Russian-held islands known in Japan as

the Northern Territories (the four southernmost islands of the Kuril Archipelago, several

of which are within eyesight off Hokkaido’s northeast coastline). According to the

Japanese, these islands were illegally occupied in the days after the cessation of hostilities

at the end of World War Two in a sudden land grab made by Soviet forces. The Japanese

inhabitants were evicted as the Soviets occupied the islands, the southernmost of which

are clearly visible from eastern Hokkaido (Japan’s northern frontier). Due to this illegal

seizure, Japan and Russia never signed a peace treaty and are technically still at war. The

November 2005 summit brought no closure to the episode, but it was of interest to the

press that the Ainu1 of Hokkaido were simultaneously asserting their claim to the islands.

The Executive Director of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai (the Ainu Association of

Hokkaido), the largest Ainu organization in Japan, issued a press statement that claimed,

according to historical occupation and international treaties, the islands belonged to

neither Russia nor Japan, but rather constituted part of the Ainu People’s inalienable

territory.

I was doing fieldwork at the head office of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai at the time,

assisting the staff with research and translation. The office is located in downtown

Sapporo, nestled amid a cluster of government buildings and a stone’s throw away from

2

the 19th century Colonization Headquarters, now more amicably renamed “Akarenga”

(lit. “red brick” for its characteristic exterior). The small staff of Ainu and Wajin (ethnic

Japanese) was anticipating the exclusion of Ainu leaders from the summit and drafting

official letters of protest to both the Japanese and Russian governments, writing press

releases, organizing meetings with officials from Hokkaido Prefecture, and researching

over 150 years of Japanese/Russian treaties concerning the four islands. In addition to

this, there were travel arrangements to make in Geneva for the upcoming Working Group

on the Draft Declaration of Rights for Indigenous Peoples and letters to write to the

IUCN concerning Ainu participation in the recent UNESCO designation of the Shiretoko

Peninsula. It seemed to me that the Ainu Association, which traditionally confined its

activities to raising the social status of the Ainu peoples in Japan (Ainu Association of

Hokkaido 2004), was far more involved with asserting Ainu rights, particularly land

rights, through global, rather than domestic, institutions.

I split my year in Hokkaido between three locations: Sapporo, Shibetsu, and Nemuro.

My objective was to investigate Ainu cultural politics in terms of the reassertion of

indigenous authority over different areas of the island. As the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai

was ideally positioned between the Ainu community itself, the Japanese government, and

the international organizations responsible for promoting indigenous politics worldwide, I

dedicated six months to working as a special intern with the organization. During this

time I spent between 40 and 50 hours a week at the office, working on translation

projects, assisting with arranging foreign travel for association members, interfacing with

the international media, and conducting ethnohistorical research with the organization’s

impressive collection of materials. Many contacts that I would interview later in the year

3

were made through Mr. Yamada at the office. For three months after my time at the

Kyōkai, my home base continued to be in Sapporo, although I was spending much more

time among the sizeable Ainu community in the area. I split the remaining three months

between the fishing villages of Nemuro and Shibetsu. Both locations gave me insight into

the different priorities toward Ainu political projects among Kyōkai members in the

hinterland.

My methods of data collection were qualitative and dependent on the context of

observation and the category of individual being interviewed. For example, when

traveling the island to various locations with members of the Utari Kyōkai, I would have

hours of travel time to speak with my co-workers informally, and, when their patience

allowed, a chance to get their ideas on matters more conceptual or controversial. On the

other hand, when arriving at an Utari Kyōkai field location, I could only speak with the

busy participants briefly. At these gatherings I relied on video or sound recorders to

capture the content and context of the event. When interviewing Northern Territory

bureaucrats, I relied on standardized questionnaires against which I could later compare

responses from different interviewees. I also video recorded long discussions with key

members of the Ainu community. These longer interviews were structured with a set of

questions, but often developed their own line of narrative. The six months I spent

working at the Kyōkai offices were opportunities for classic participant observation,

affording a glimpse into the negotiations and strategizations that went into the political

decision-making for the indigenous organization.

During my time at the Utari Kyōkai there were four projects geared toward

constructing some degree of Ainu territorial access or tenure. 1) The development of

4

iwor, specific sites in Hokkaido to be used for Ainu cultural activities, entailed the

coordination between many departments and ministries to grant Ainu special access to

natural resources. 2) The inclusion of the Ainu as indigenous to the Shiretoko Peninsula,

the newly designated UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site, required interventions by

international organizations such as the IUCN. This resulted in providing the Ainu

privileged access to the development and stewardship of the territory. 3) There is the

ongoing project of restoring integrity to the Ainu homeland which once consisted of

Hokkaido and the Kuril islands. 4) More generally, there was the work being done with

the UN working group for the Declaration of Indigenous Rights, the 2007 passage of

which entailed land rights and rights of self-determination for the world’s indigenous

peoples. At the time I was there, Ainu representatives were regularly meeting with Maori

from New Zealand and indigenous Taiwanese groups to work out the details of how the

Declaration would affect indigenous groups of the Pacific. After 25 years of negotiation,

the UN Human Rights Council approved the draft in June of 2006 and the Declaration

was ratified by the UN General Assembly in September of 2007.

Based on fieldwork conducted in 2005-2006 in Sapporo, Nemuro and Shibetsu (all

municipalities on the island of Hokkaido), this dissertation looks at the bureaucratic

practices of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai that are involved in enlarging the scope of Ainu

territorial rights in Japan. My primary interlocutors were Wajin and Ainu bureaucrats,

artisans and activists that sought to promote Ainu cultural, political and economic rights

through a variety of methods. The problematic that animates my project lies in the

following paradox: in a system of administration that tends to be adverse to change,

embedded in a society that is often characterized by the Japanese themselves as

5

conformist or at least non-confrontational, how does the Utari Kyōkai succeed in

achieving its territorial aims, which ultimately challenge current notions of Japanese

national sovereignty and citizenship? In unpacking this problem I look at both

technocratic interventions that utilize international legal norms to frame an argument for

increased rights alongside the efficacy of social networks in influencing both bureaucratic

processes and Ainu cultural practices. I consider the production of “semblances” as key

to understanding the successful articulation of Ainu political projects with multiple

regimes of rights that work to expand Ainu access to their ancestral territories.

I acknowledge the centrality of difference to Ainu projects of self-definition,

specifically the interrelated political projects of cultural revitalization and recuperating a

history disentangled from the tautologies of development, nation-building, and

assimilation. In addition to recording how differences are produced and maintained, I

focus closely on how “semblances” are deployed by my informants. I argue that Ainu

indigenous politics emerge in the second half of the twentieth century as a reaction to a

history of marginalization and racial discrimination, and, crucially, that the efficacy of

the movement is largely due to social isomorphisms that have been (and increasingly

continue to be) produced through contact between different indigenous populations and

global institutions. The success of the Ainu domestic agenda (e.g. recognition as an

indigenous group in Japan) was predicated on a sustained engagement with many of the

world’s indigenous populations at international forums and, importantly, with the

Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP). Such engagements have had an

impact on the Ainu community in Hokkaido as evidenced by emergent similarities in

6

cultural practices, political organization, and the development of strategies for asserting

indigenous identity at home and abroad.

I suggest that a focus on “semblances” highlights an analytical blind spot in

anthropology – one not adequately served by other concepts that are more commonly

used to address social processes resulting in identity between groups of people. A cursory

full text search of 51 anthropology journals finds keywords associated with sameness

return 46, 487 results while keywords associated with difference return 70,680 results—

an increase of 34%2. As anthropology is a discipline built on description, comparison,

and analysis, this basic keyword search suggests that our representations skew heavily in

favor of noticing and recording differences. But what are the “strange attractors” that

shape shared behavior, institutional organization, and cultural practice? Certainly creating

and maintaining difference is involved, but in a world increasingly populated with nodes

of interconnectivity, ignoring the production of semblances and the contexts that give rise

to these sociocultural reconfigurations only weaken our apprehension of the processes in

play within and between the social millieux we study (see Scott Lash’s (1990:11-20)

discussion of cultural de-differentiation in postmodernity). I use the term “semblances” to

indicate the multiple and diverse processes productive of similarities between groups,

institutions, and individuals – these may include identity, mimesis, communitas, social or

economic integration, the effects of ideologies, habitus, diffusion of technologies, etc. I

do claim, however, that semblances do not indicate a move toward homogenization or the

production of social replicas. For instance, even as institutions become open to external

linkages, differences are displaced, not annihilated. Further, the production of semblances

7

result from a mix of agency and new structural alignments that may exceed the efficacy

of agents.

In the most general terms this project is motivated by a desire to understand the varied

processes at work within states that are not completely bound within the prevailing

policies and narratives that constitute the nation, and, yet, are not self-evidently global in

nature. These processes constitute unruly sites that resist conventional scalar analytics

employed by social scientists (see Sassen 2005). For example, the Ainu who work on the

Shiretoko Peninsula insist on a profoundly localized connection to a particular landscape,

yet their status as “indigenous” to the area is only recognized within the institutional

framework of UNESCO - at the time of my work with the Utari Kyōkai the Japanese

Government had steadfastly resisted such recognition3. The Ainu at Shiretoko enable

certain denationalizing discourses and practices to take root, but only by way of their

particular history in the ongoing territorial reorganization of Japan as it articulates with

an emerging structure of rights promoted by a network of global institutions. The

Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai is an ideal location for observing the translations, negotiations,

deterritorializations and developments that occur in the interstices between the

indigenous peoples themselves, the Japanese Government and international

organizations.

Concepts that are central to this dissertation are by no means stable and have required

some reworking in specific instances. At a more abstract level I look at how the notion of

state sovereignty is being negotiated in post-national zones, geographical locations that

are taking on attributes that align them with other regimes of rights, other modes of

identity and other symbolic economies. These spaces constitute not only

8

deterritorializations within the nation-state, but, more productively, nascent zones

activated through connections between long suppressed populations and the rise of

international systems of juridical and ethical logics. Rather than a “return of the

repressed,” the production of post-national zones marks the articulation of diverse

interests and sensibilities—it is productive of novel modes of life, unexpected alliances

and new economic and cultural assemblages.

I view the Utari Kyōkai as such an assemblage - connecting diverse materials,

narratives and practices that enable a politics of reterritorialization. But the stakes are

high and the bureaucrats that I worked with proceeded not through assertions of

difference that characterized the period of cultural revitalization in the 1970s (a phase

that, for various reasons, could primarily be seen in terms of revolution), but through the

production of “semblances” - reorientations of discourse, identity and practice that make

one available to new legal frameworks, ethical regimes and subject positions. The Utari

Kyōkai constantly works to multiply its connections to Japanese state agencies, other

indigenous groups, international organizations, scholars and the Japanese themselves.

Paradoxically, becoming increasingly imperceptible via these multiple points of influence

seemingly served the Utari Kyōkai’s social and political programs far more than the

negations, or assertions of difference, that constitute conventional notions of identity.

Theoretical Considerations

The idea that tribal peoples4 would constitute a formidable political force in the 21st

century was unthinkable 50 years ago. The idea of “indigeneity” itself is such a recent

term that references were exceedingly rare prior to World War Two. Ronald Niezen

9

(2003) traces the current usage of the term “indigenous” to the 1957 International Labor

Organization’s convention “Concerning the Protection and Integration of Indigenous and

Other Tribal and Semi-Tribal Populations in Independent Countries” (ILO 107)5. The

political, historical and social dimensions of the concept did not gain the currency that

they have today until native peoples in the United States and Canada appropriated

“indigeneity” during the 1970s to define a bundle of issues shared across the globe by

native peoples living in settler states (Niezen 2003). Until the late 20th century, many

tribal populations like the Ainu of northern Japan and the Kuril Archipelago6 were

routinely regarded by state officials, tourists and academics as the detritus of a “pre-

modern” world, as a people that must inevitably, through intermarriage and cultural

assimilation, become integrated into the body of the nation-state. In Japan, as in other

settler states, indigenous people were thought to be “vanishing,” often evoking what

Renato Rosaldo describes as “imperialist nostalgia” (Rosaldo 1989)—a historical

teleology ending in oblivion, often expressed to efface the victims of modernity while

simultaneously eliciting regret for their passing. Of course, many indigenous populations

have been wiped out, assimilated into mainstream societies or have become imperceptible

as a people; however, the appearances are often productively deceptive. Many Japanese I

spoke with during my fieldwork were surprised to find that Ainu still existed in Japan.

This was not altogether unexpected as, in some areas, native peoples have become

imperceptible at home, often to avoid discrimination or worse; but within international

institutions in New York, Paris and Geneva, they appear in full tribal regalia or in

business suits, to press their case for special rights, enforcement of treaties, access to their

10

ancestral territories, protections for their intellectual and cultural innovations, among

other issues.

Since the 1980s a global indigenous presence has been gathering and finding a

collective voice through non-state mediators like the United Nations and a proliferating

number of smaller NGOs. Through these organizations tribal peoples have been able to

articulate a shared array of concerns vis-à-vis their national governments and,

increasingly, exercise a subtle power to impact domestic policies. As political activism

continues on the international level, many indigenous groups are developing the kinds of

competencies and organizational structures that serve to better integrate their tribes

within an ascendant regime of political power—suggesting a new set of enduring political

engagements that will compel states to contend with an emergent juridical ontology,

according to which certain groups of citizens obtain distinct sets of rights relative to the

rest of the nation. Not only are indigenes developing a more durable and effective

political organization, many native peoples are experiencing a demographic surge. Some

estimates suggest that the internationally indigenous peoples number upwards of 250

million across over 4000 separate groups7, a tiny minority globally to be sure, but in

many locales (e.g. Japan and certain regions in the U.S.) the non-indigenous population is

growing more slowly or, in some regions (e.g. South Dakota), decreasing as native

populations are on the rise (Shumway and Jackson 1995). Political and demographic

turnarounds such as these have firmly thrown into question the proposition that native

populations are dying out.

One version of historical trajectory of modernity is that it was to involve the extensive

political and economic development of the nation-state and, with more regularity in the

11

postwar period, the state’s global integration within a system of other states. Attending

this progressive vision is the idea that minority populations internal to the state would,

though time, attain social and economic parity—rendering the central problematic of “the

nation” as obsolete as that of “the state.” A central problem of the state has always been,

on the one hand, establishing equilibrium, to the extent that resources will permit,

between the internal governance of its population and the maintenance of its borders.

Ideally, the former is resolved through ideological, martial and juridical forces, the latter

through diplomatic and military means. On the other hand, the problem of the nation is

much more complex, yet not altogether inseparable from that of the state. “The nation,”

connotes “a people” with some degree of linguistic, ethnic, historical, and cultural

homogeneity8. In the postwar period, the progressive extension of social equality within

the nation has been the primary method of ensuring, if not homogeneity, then harmony

between the various classes, races, castes, sects, and cultures that compose national

populations. As global integration of the nation-state system has occurred largely along

economic lines, the attendant increases in internationally owned commercial enterprises,

in-migration and foreign media have made state populations even more diverse and the

national community more difficult to “imagine” (Anderson 1991; Appadurai 1996).

After World War Two the Japanese state began addressing the social problems faced

by minority populations increasingly through accommodation instead of assimilation.

This trend is often obscured by assertions of Japan's ethnic homogeneity that continue to

be made publically by politicians. Significantly, former Prime Minister Aso Taro

declared in 2005 (while he was Japan’s Foreign Minister) that Japan was the only county

in the world to possess "one culture, one civilization, one language, and one ethnic

12

group" (Reed 2005). However, public policy, court decisions, and legislation continue to

be advanced that ideologically create room for ethnic difference in Japan, and,

importantly, funnel state funds to museums, cultural organizations, and scholars to

research and recuperate histories, cultural tropes, and practices of minority populations.

For example, the 1969 "Special Measures Law for Assimilation Projects" provided

educational scholarships and funds to Burakumin communities (Karan 2005:181). A

similar law was passed to provide government funds to Ainu families in the 1970s. More

recently, in 1997 the Nibutani Dam Decision was handed down by the Sapporo District

Court affirming Ainu claims to indigeneity and the need for special protections for Ainu

lands. The same year the Diet passed the Cultural Promotion Act which would fund Ainu

cultural revitalization activities (Siddle 2003). In 2008, the Ainu were formally

recognized by the national government as an indigenous minority and in 2009 the

Council for Ainu Policy was created. This pattern of progressive accommodation of

minorities in Japan was recognized in 2010 by the UN Committee on the Elimination of

Racial Discrimination, although the committee found that racial discrimination in day to

day interactions continues to be a problem for many (CERD 2010). Thus, the Japanese

state appears today to be less threatened by the existence of minorities or indigenous

peoples within the nation. While I see this as a progressive trend in public policy, it is not

without moments of retrenchment - for example, reactionary policy against immigrants

(Masters 2009).The exact nature of the state's accommodation regarding the Ainu

comprises a significant thread of the analysis and critique presented here.

This dissertation situates the increased political activity of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai,

the oldest and largest organization representing the Ainu in Hokkaido, within this broader

13

milieu of forces impacting the late modern nation-state. While the exertion of global

forces exterior to the state problematize its capacity to regulate the flows of capital,

people and ideas that more and more render its borders and regulatory agencies

ineffectual, minority populations interior to the state have been trading on the currency of

human rights discourse to push for reparations, social and economic parity, and increased

political representation at regional and national levels. For indigenes, however, the issue

is often more complicated than social equality; they seek group rights that extend to them

certain absolutions from the juridical dictates of the state—in short, many indigenous

peoples are attempting to rewrite the social contract between the state and themselves

based on the fundamental inequality between settlers and those who occupied the land

prior to the arrival of a colonizing nation-state. Regarding this repositioning vis-à-vis the

state, I make three inter-related claims concerning Ainu strategies toward increased

access to their homeland and the development of indigenous autonomy and self-

determination in Japan.

First, “indigeneity” assumes the quality of a bad essentialism when approached

uncritically. The claims that some groups make to cultural or racial purity, fundamental

connections to land, or absolutist claims to sovereignty are no less odious than similar

declarations made by nation-states. Most indigenous groups involved in promoting rights

for tribal peoples are aware of the complexities of their own histories and approach policy

changes in their home countries with far more sophistication than simple nativists9. As a

category of social and historical experience productive of new subjectivities,

“indigeneity” remains open, and, as such, it has been hitched to a wide array of political

projects. This lack of closure has transferred to the language attached to indigenous

14

politics. In order to retain their currency while describing a wide variety of experience,

words like native, sovereignty and notions of authenticity have attained a high degree of

play within the global indigenous rights movement. However, the term typically

describes a historically anterior relationship with the state, evokes a sense of ethnic

belonging and mobilizes a politics of place for native peoples in situ, or, alternately, a

longing for a homeland for those in diaspora (Clifford 2007; Ota 2002). The term the

Ainu began using in the 1970s to describe themselves in this regard is senjūminzoku (先

住民族), which is often glossed as “tribal peoples” or “indigenous peoples,” but a more

literal, and clumsier, interpretation would be closer to “the first occupying nation.” This

indicates that “the people” are more than a regional conglomeration, that they claim a

shared ethnicity and consider themselves to be of one nation— a minzoku. Further, the

term specifies priority; sen means to hold a prior position, to come before. And finally, jū

means to dwell or reside someplace. For the Ainu, this place includes northern Japan,

Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Archipelago.

Second, I argue that since claims to indigeneity cannot easily be separated from claims

to land, and certainly this is the case for the Ainu, we are witnessing the emergence of

many different modes of territorialization within states, constituting spaces that defy easy

categorization as either statist or globalized spaces. Operators within the international

indigenous rights movement have been building a territorializing assemblage (composed

of native peoples, NGOs, political strategists, academics, entrepreneurs, lawyers and

bureaucrats) that operates locally through global institutions. In this way, indigenous

peoples are beginning to carve out spaces in the abstract national-statist cartography for

cultural, political and commercial productions that lie outside of the national imaginary

15

and, in some cases, beyond the state’s direct control. This process is based, in part, on the

extension of an international regime of human rights developed after World War Two

and expressed through the civil rights struggles in many countries in the 1950s and

1960s. It is also based on the legacy of material privations experienced by many native

peoples in settler states. Grounded in histories of territorial dispossession, political

disenfranchisement and social inequality, shortfalls in household income, employment

and education have hobbled many indigenous individuals’ abilities to engage the same

opportunities their fellow citizens presently enjoy in increasing numbers. Lacking fair

access to land, for example, their ancestral territories, or arable state allotments, the Ainu

were largely deprived of this most basic mode of production. Ainu efforts to reclaim

indigenous space in Hokkaido and beyond have taken many different forms since the

1980s, yet, they have only recently achieved a modicum of success. This is largely due to

their integration within the Hokkaido prefectural government and the working groups and

forums sponsored by the United Nations, which brings me to my last point.

Indigenous identity draws on the construction of semblances as much as it does on the

assertion of difference. There has been a methodological trend in sociocultural

anthropology to submit accounts detailing how groups resist cultural or political

assimilation, formulate subaltern subjectivities, or engage in identity politics through

representing themselves as different. This approach valorizes the efforts of our subjects to

resist the violence of the market and the state—clearly deserving elaboration and support.

It also reassures anthropologists that our discipline, predicated as it is on bringing the

exotic into view, will find viability in what some have forecasted as an increasingly

homogenous future (Marcus and Fischer 1999:133). But, our interlocutors have in some

16

cases resisted and in others sought out articulation with the same array of forces to which

the bulk of humanity responds. The “strange attractors” of the market; the social,

political, and ecological environments; and the global flows of media and information

beckon to us all—sometimes we resist, other times we find entertainment, opportunity, or

some kind of subjective resonance within these currents. Taking a cue from the

disciplinary compulsion to study the social elaboration of differences, and the analytic

blind spots this entails, I also bring out how my Ainu and Wajin informants cultivated

semblances. Without question, many of my Ainu informants were staunch in their

assertion of the ethnic, cultural, historical and linguistic differences that separated them

from their Wajin counterparts. But they also actively practiced characteristically Wajin

methods of organization, adopted representational and political strategies from other

indigenous groups and sought to develop the same kinds of commercial enterprises found

the world over. In particular, I chart how the early the development of a bureaucratic

organization (the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai) enabled ready integration into a centralizing

indigenous rights movement that quickly moved from tribal forums and into the

byzantine organizational structure of the United Nations. I will further argue that,

techniques of building identifications between Ainu and their Wajin coworkers at the

Utari Kyōkai is not simply a form of ideology, rather it promotes Ainu interests by

allowing them to remain in a position that is “close to the state”10. I find that state largess,

in a number of cases, allowed welfare funds to be redirected into cultural promotion

activities—allowing Ainu craftspeople to operate away from the restrictive demands of

the tourist market, both deepening regional specializations and promoting artistic

innovation. This leads me back to my first assertion, that indigenous identity is being

17

negotiated in a variety of ways and remains vital to the current dynamism of indigenous

political projects.

Indigeneity

As indicated above, “indigeneity” originates with twentieth century supranational

organizations attempting to frame native issues within states in terms of postwar human

rights discourse11--but not until its appropriation by native social movements did it

acquire its critical and, more recently, political force. It describes a range of cultural and

socioeconomic realities that may be seen as the general condition of indigenous

populations globally. Within settler states, the problems faced by native groups were

initially viewed as related to the kinds of inequalities that derived from their ethnic,

linguistic and cultural differences relative to the national population. In states like

Australia, the United States, and Japan, the approach to resolving the “native problem”

was to promote assimilation measures. In Japan these took the form of outlawing Ainu

subsistence strategies through proscribing hunting deer and fishing for salmon, as well as

cultural traditions and institutions. Ainu families were relocated onto farmland and,

through policies that would strip them of their plot if not cultivated, forced to become

agriculturalists. Ainu children were placed in “Ainu schools” to learn Japanese language,

culture and history. Ceremonies like iyomante, the bear sending ritual, that were central

to Ainu communal life and their spiritual and cultural identity were banned. For states,

the issue at stake was promoting equality through eliminating difference - how else could

national cohesion be established? To be precise, this was the goal of many indigenous

peoples. No alternative existed for addressing the social, economic, marital, and

18

educational discrimination that kept them in poverty and alienated from the national

majority.

The idea of social equality through assimilation was so clearly dominant in the

twentieth century that it strongly informed the approach of early ILO policymakers. The

1957 convention credited for bringing the issue of indigeneity into view, ILO 107,

focused on the integration of “populations that occupied a less advanced stage than the

average in their country” (ILO 107:1957) for solving the problems of tribal peoples

within states. The idea that states can contain multiple nations, regimes of rights and

modes of sovereignty has yet to be widely accepted, even though the denationalization of

states and the development of “post-national” zones are issues with which all late modern

polities have been dealing (Sassen 2006:305). Indigenous peoples began appropriating

the notion of indigeneity in the 1970s and thus started to move away from the “melting

pot” model, that is, the notion that progressive assimilation is the road to equality. Many

groups even rejected the multicultural model of the 1980s and 1990s that sought equality

through the celebration of difference (Hale 2005; Kymlicka 2001). Instead, native

peoples began to articulate the possibility of group rights, self-determination and tribal

sovereignties within states. It was not until 1989 that the ILO began to promote policy

based on the fundamental exceptionality of indigenous groups—a stance that seeks to

counteract the homogenizing tendencies of modernity and re-inscribe the radical

difference that exists between indigenous populations and settler populations within

states12.

This difference constitutes a space from which the assumptions of modernity can be

critiqued. The spread of Western culture, capitalist expansion, and democratic models of

19

governance are portrayed in their discomforting fullness by indigenous groups. They

counter neoliberal triumphalism with their own histories of violence, dispossession, and

social disintegration that, in many cases, constituted the foundation of many national

political economies13. Within this zone of critique, indigenous peoples tend to share many

of the same viewpoints and political aspirations of subaltern groups that are marked by

ethnicity, caste or the colonial encounter.

In Japan, Ainu activists found early inspiration in the organization and methods of

struggle of the Buraku Liberation League (Buraku Kaihō Dōmei), a radical group

promoting the rights of Japan’s Burakumin population14. At several of the Ainu

gatherings that I attended, I had a chance to speak with visiting Burakumin and

Okinawans, Japanese minorities with whom the Ainu have long developed solidarities

based on a shared sense of disconnection from the widely circulated narratives of a

homogeneous Japanese ethnicity, history, and nationality. Together, these groups

enunciate the demand for a more flexible notion of political and cultural rights in Japan.

Their collective positionings bring more force to the project of enlarging the notion of

what “the nation” means in Japan, its historical contingency, and its dependency on

colonized peoples and lands.

I distinguish, very broadly and not unproblematically, four eras during which Ainu

connections to the broader world impacted their political, economic, cultural systems in

very different ways. All four eras are described in terms of their relationship to

modernity, that is, the series of changes occurring, from roughly 1500 in Western Europe

and 1600 in Japan, in political organization, the means of capital accumulation, the

extension and intensification of trade networks, the emergence of colonial configurations

20

between peoples, and the adoption and spread of scientific epistemologies. A contentious

point of academic debate, modernity is experienced differently by different nations,

classes, and peoples (Mignolo 2000). It is part of my project here to indicate how the

Ainu participated in these changes, mediated their effects, and how some members of the

community have in fact assisted in defining “indigeneity” over the last thirty-years as an

increasingly specific and effective sociopolitical category.

Trade had been central to Ainu economic activity and cultural life for centuries prior

to the Edo Period beginning in 1603. Archaeologists note the move from earthen ware

vessels to metal and lacquerware obtained through trade as key to the transition from

Satsumon to Ainu cultural complexes in the 14th century. I often invoke the term “pre-

modern” to indicate a time when the Ainu inhabitants of Northern Japan were still

relatively unaffected by the political and cultural currents of pre-Edo Japan. Without

discounting the variability between Ainu tribes, this implies a certain degree of cultural

and linguistic insularity, particularly vis-à-vis the Wajin (ethnic Japanese) of mainland

Japan – a relative insularity which extends to the early 17th century. When referring to the

“early modern period,” I am indicating the Edo Period (1603-1868). During this time

many Ainu were becoming enmeshed within more dense and persistent trade and labor

arrangements with Wajin. I often refer to the modern period, especially in relation to

states and economies. In these instances I am indicating the political and economic

consolidations and extensions particular to nation-states as they arose in the late 18th and

19th centuries. In terms of Japan, it is generally accepted that the nation’s entry into

modernity accelerated suddenly beginning with the 1868 Meiji Restoration. In addition, I

avoid the using the term “postmodern” and instead use “late modern” to refer to an

21

emergent set of social and political unravelings and consolidations that have been

underway in the postwar era: central are indigeneity qua political movement and national

reconfigurations resulting from influential global institutions.

My position here regarding indigeneity retains the tension between an anti-essentialist

insistence on its status as a becoming (Deleuze and Guattari 1987), and a more

conventional position that regards it as a referent capturing a specific set of historical and

existential circumstances. As a social category, “indigeneity” has been consistently

accruing a surplus of code. The Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai assumed their position as a

representative organization of indigenous people in a variety of ways, especially since the

early 1960s. As late as the early 1980s, they were still partially engaged in a campaign to

rid themselves of signifiers that identified their pre-modern relation to the state. Within a

decade, this position underwent an about-face and the organization began embracing the

status of their constituents as senjūmin15. Indigenous identity necessitates practice,

performance, and maintenance; it is, in many respects, praxis, and as such remains an

open signifier16. We can, however, cite a series of historical engagements that indicate

from where many claims to indigeneity originate. Therefore, I take as a starting point a

process of dispossession: where land and the normative institutions that regulate what

may and may not occur on that land, systematically fall under the control of a people that

originate from beyond its borders. The centrality of land issues to the international

indigenous rights movement is made clear in the United Nations Declaration on the

Rights of Indigenous Peoples where they are addressed in nine of the 46 articles.

Reclaiming territory provides indigenous groups a place from which to rearticulate with

current political, economic and social forces.

22

Place and Space

Bringing into view the fundamental interconnection between people, culture, and

place, “indigeneity” invokes an ontology of belonging, dwelling, and autochthony –

where a people and a place are engaged in a process of mutual deterritorialization17 over

time, shaping one another in very specific ways. This elevates the priority of land issues

in debates over indigenous rights within states and often constitutes an obstacle to

discussions over repatriation of indigenous lands. At the heart of this impasse lies the

disjuncture between two primary modes of territoriality. The abstract territorializations of

the state are prototypically based on, for example, cartographic representations, survey

reports, demographic studies, natural resource charts and topographic maps; whereas

territorializations based on the specificity of dwelling derive from the particular features

of place as coded by repeated experience (markings on the landscape and the body, for

instance) and expressed through folklore, aphorism and ritual, all of which are considered

fundamental elements of culture.

Indigenous groups currently obtain legal traction in that the erasure of peoples and

places in the process of state-making has been classified as a transgression of the postwar

moral dictates of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The drive toward internal

homogeneity during the nation-building era is well documented: Australian aborigines

(Broome 2002), the Maori of New Zealand (Sinclair 2002), Native Americans in North

America (Deloria 1999) and the Ainu of Japan (Siddle 1996) all experienced widespread

efforts to assimilate their populations according to nationally determined standards of

kinship, education, hygiene, and housing—to make “useful citizens” of indigenous

23

people (Howell 2004). Perhaps equally egregious is the displacement of indigenous

peoples during the colonial period. If, as one traditional anthropological saw has it,

“culture sits in places” (e.g. Basso 1996; Escobar 2001), then relocating a people

transgresses not only their economic rights to the productive capacities of the land, but

cultural rights as well. The current conceptualization of indigeneity, its political

expediency, and its vulnerability to critique, is drawn from a particularly anthropological

understanding of culture as fundamentally emplaced.

The interdependencies between culture and place have constituted a primary trope in

anthropological investigations—and certainly the discipline assumes some culpability in

the existence of such a tight homology between the two. “Culture,” as conceptually

divorced from biology and the associated ethnocentric judgments of 19th century

anthropologists, is often traced to Franz Boas. Originally a geographer, his “historical

particularism” considered culture to be product of the physical environment and the

specific history of a people (Boas 1940). The Boasian tradition in anthropology displaces

the study of culture as an abstract social institution composed of an identifiable set of

dynamics with the notion of cultures, each identifiable with a particular “tribe” or “a

people” in a specific area (Stocking 1982:202). This marriage of culture to place

influenced a number of schools of thought in the early 20th century. In his classic study of

the Nuer, EE Evans-Pritchard (1940), a structural-functionalist, found the local climate

and landscape to be a vital component in his subjects’ unique kinship system. For cultural

ecologists like Julian Steward (1936), Leslie White (1949), and Marvin Harris (1979), the

distinguishing characteristics of culture are largely determined by its adaptability to the

environment. More recently, anthropologists intrigued by the existential and

24

phenomenological dimensions of landscape have constructed ethnographies that focus on

how the natural, built, and symbolic landscapes shape our experiences, perceptions, and

therefore the practices (cultural, political or bodily) in which we engage (Jackson 1996,

1998; Lovell 1998; Ingold 2000; Basso 1996). Finally, there is a body of literature that

documents how histories of connectedness to specific landscapes entail certain rights for

the groups that inhabit them (Collier 1994; Ramos 1998; Escobar 2001; Niezen 2003).

The issue of habitation constitutes a stumbling block for indigenous groups claiming

ancestral territories that they no longer occupy. As the era of the nation-state has

extended into the 21st century, many of these places have obtained a multivalency that

disrupts indigenous claims. Over time, the space of the state has become a patchwork of

places for a variety of local inhabitants (e.g. descendents of colonists, immigrants,

indigenous peoples, international corporations). The claims to an ancestral territory by an

indigenous group become suspect when the group currently lives elsewhere and must

compete with the descendents of colonists who have occupied a region for centuries. In

the marketplace of truth claims, difficult questions arise: How long does one have to

occupy an area to be indigenous? Is ethnicity a sufficient marker of indigeneity, or is

kinship a better indicator of which spaces one can lay claim? Can indigenous groups

composed primarily of “mixed-blood” individuals assert essentialist claims to territory

and special rights? Should cultural rights be extended to groups that have largely

assimilated national or global cultural practices? Essentialist claims can fall apart in these

situations as the complexities of late modern indigenous experience undermine some of

the most compelling narratives associated with current efforts at reterritorializing

indigenous space (e.g. racial, cultural, linguistic purity and continuity).

25

For cultural geographers Gillian Rose (1993) and Doreen Massey (1997, 2005), place

is performed through a constant negotiation between competing interests. In this situation

the signifiers of indigenous territorial claims are destabilized and place falls into play;

indigeneity becomes less a state of being and more an identity politics where signifiers of

the native or the tribal are deployed strategically. This is undoubtedly part of the story,

but a focus on the political machinations of the indigenous rights movement risks a

cynical reading of the affective attachments to place that motivate much of this activity—

sentiments of belonging, practices associated with dwelling in a specific place, fears of

cultural extinction and the ressentiments springing from lifetimes of social and economic

discrimination inform sensibilities that one would be hard pressed to call “inauthentic.”

This is not to deny the more materialist desires that move some individuals to act, rather

to simply point out that everything occurring under the signifier of “the indigenous”

cannot be reduced to a political stratagem.

“Sovereignty” is often invoked to describe the juridical and political suzerainty a

nation holds over the space within its borders. That it is ideally complete, evenly applied,

and unchallenged reflects the same conception of the nation as an extended culturally,

linguistically, and racially homogeneous family. The question of indigenous sovereignty

over ancestral territories is at the center of efforts toward reterritorializing indigenous

spaces; however, for these groups, the sovereignty they seek tends to be partial and

coexistent with the state. It does not hold the same meanings as the Westphalian

sovereignty of the nation-state, nor does it often acquire the same fervor and

extensiveness of post-colonial nationalisms. Roger Maaka and Augie Fleras (2008:108)

portray current conceptualizations of indigenous sovereignty as articulating with an

26

irrevocably complex late modernity in which “patterns of belonging…accentuate a

sovereignty without succession, involving models of relative yet relational autonomy in

non-coercive contexts.” Aihwa Ong (Ong) indicates the possibility of “graduated

sovereignties” that open within and between state and global structures. And, within

states, Thomas Biolsi (2005) illustrates four distinct forms of Native American claims to

tribal sovereignty in North America. At present, the notion of sovereignty has been

stretched to the point of losing any of its original specificity. I suggest that late modern

modes of indigenous place-making need to be viewed through a lens that accounts for the

non-teleological dynamism inherent to these processes as well as the variety of methods

employed to mark, inhabit and/or dwell within these spaces.

To that end, I use the dynamic of deterritorialization-reterritorialization to emphasize

the active, multiple and always incomplete nature of place-making. A focus on

territorialization retains the anti-essentialist argument for the negotiated nature of space,

while acknowledging that not all territorializations are ontologically equivalent. I draw an

axiomatic distinction between characteristically statist modes of territorialization and

indigenous modes of re-territorialization. While this distinction closely corresponds to the

difference between marking spaces and inhabiting places, the complexities of history and

the contingency of the present prevents reducing one to the other (i.e. indigenes have

adopted spatial practices that arose with the state and vise versa). My goal here is to bring

out the different methods the Ainu have been using to reterritorialize sections of northern

Japan; methods that, while not overtly threatening to the Japanese state, complicate the

nationalist discourse that equates the Japanese national space with an ethnically,

linguistically, and culturally homogeneous public. The pressure my informants have

27

brought to bear on the state is not wholly based on a local politics of belonging or

culturally specific notions of entitlement. Rather, the Ainu have been participating in the

construction of an international system of rights that challenges Westphalian assumptions

of state sovereignty and modern constitutional arrangements that prefigure the social

contract as structuring legal and political activity between the state and the individual

citizen. Instead, the Ainu pursue alternative arrangements of sovereignty in partnership

with state institutions and promote the adoption of group rights on basis of their

indigenous status. I detail several distinct of modes of territorialization by which the Ainu

challenge state spatial assemblages and political narratives while increasing their access

to their ancestral territories in Hokkaido and Kuril Archipelago.

Ainu Studies

This dissertation is a contribution to the anthropological study of Japan and

specifically the Ainu of northern Japan. Ruth Benedict’s 1946 landmark study of

Japanese behavior and social organization, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns

of Japanese Culture, continues to inform Western notions about Japan and the Japanese

(Benedict 1989). The book is credited with spawning a popular literary genre in Japan

itself called nihonjinron (theories of the Japanese) (Befu 2001; Mathews 2004).

Researched during World War Two at the behest of the U.S. Office of War Information,

Benedict’s work focuses on the differences between Japanese and Americans generally;

however, she often draws on second-hand accounts of Japanese men on the battlefield,

male prisoners of war or gathers information from Japanese-Americans working for the

Office of War Information (Lummis 2007).

28

Despite difficult research circumstances, Benedict develops the analytical language

with which subsequent researchers adopt, modify or resist. I use Benedict’s insights as a

foil for understanding differences within Japan, specifically the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai,

whose staff consists of both Wajin and Ainu working, at the very least, to create space

within Japan for one of its indigenous peoples—a practice that necessitates a delicate

weaving of differences and semblances within the bureaucratic heart of Hokkaido. This

study suggests that the animation of Ainu politics in Japan derive from a long active

domestic discourse concerning the desirability of national homogeneity and an emergent

set of global practices and narratives that question the assumptions of modernity and

valorize the struggles of minority populations.

For much of the 20th century, the Ainu have been described by travel writers and

ethnographers as “vanishing.” In 1893 A.H. Savage Landor wrote in his

travelogue/ethnography Alone with the Hairy Ainu, “The sadness which seems to oppress

the Ainu, and which we see depicted on the face of each individual, is nothing but the

outcome of the degeneration of the race. As a race the Ainu will soon be extinct”

(Landor 1893:297). Landor predicts that in no more than 50 years the Ainu would be

little more than a memory. He cites “the scourge of civilization” as cause of their future

demise. At about the same time, Dr. John Batchelor wrote,

They are decreasing somewhat rapidly, some dying off and others marrying

with the Japanese…they must soon be quite of the past. And they will depart

without having left any history or having made any perceptible mark in the

world. One feels very sorry for them, but the laws of nature are inexorable

and must take their course. (Batchelor 1940:5)

And in 1971 Mary Hilger wrote Together with the Ainu: A Vanishing People (Hilger

1971), an account of what was left of a “dying” culture. These, however, are not

29

exclusively the impressions of “Western” observers. There is today a general belief in

Japan of the Ainu as “a virtually vanished and vanquished people” (Lie 2001:46). This

sentiment was echoed fairly consistently by many of my Wajin informants.

Not until the 1990s did ethnographers begin to comment on the durability of the Ainu

community in northern Japan, its political efficacy, and its influence on an international

movement of indigenous people seeking enforceable supranational mechanisms to protect

indigenous interests within sovereign states. Katrina Sjoberg (1993) describes activities

within the Ainu community to both preserve and promote their cultural traditions in a

nation where cultural difference was routinely denied. Richard Siddle’s seminal Race,

Resistance and the Ainu of Japan (1996) focused on the historical processes whereby the

Ainu people became racialized, first by the Wajin and later by the Ainu themselves,

during the Meiji period (a time of high industrial growth and nation building beginning in

1868). He begins the work of highlighting how the Ainu community, primarily in

Hokkaido, had historically resisted the assimilation efforts of the Japanese Government.

There are more recent works by Japanese researchers that are beginning to reflect and

expand on this analysis (e.g. Tahara 2006).

Moving away from a narrative of resistance-thru-difference, I describe an indigenous

politics that seems to be moving beyond the state. Rather than reading the assertion of

difference as an act of resistance, I take account of how semblances (in addition to

difference) are articulated beyond the borders of the state in the effort to create a set of

global norms regarding indigenous populations. My focus is not identity politics bound to

acts of resistance per se, but instead a non-dialectical becoming based on a network

arising through global communications, supranational organizations, and international

30

forums organized by the world’s indigenous people. Instead of a series of rearguard

actions against the state, my informants have been articulating a politics of the possible;

that is, the Ainu are now beginning to set the terms of how the state will regard them—

and this occurs, in part, through the memes of partnership, bridge-building, and alliance.

Outline of the dissertation

The dissertation is divided into four thematic sections dealing with historical

configurations, Ainu political organization, cultural and political geographies, and the

complexities of Ainu self-determination in what I consider to be denationalized zones in

northern Japan. Throughout I attempt to understand how global notions of indigenous

identity and rights (esp. rights relating to new modes of group autonomy and indigenous

sovereignty), citizenship, and ethnicity are reworked through culturally specific logics of

the Japanese and Ainu nations. As the Ainu nation as such does not yet exist in terms of

territorial sovereignty, I record the intermediate, the virtual or emergent elements of this

entity which currently reside in the negotiations between institutions and actors within

and outside the Ainu community in Hokkaido — negotiations that question or put into

play notions of sovereignty (tōchiken), citizenship (shiminken), rights (kenri), and

ethnicity (minzokusei). Specifically, I call attention to how the production and

proliferation of semblances are central to the politics of developing geographic regions in

Japan’s statist cartography that, via linkages with pre-national populations and

supranational political structures, render them characteristically “post-national”

(Appadurai 1996; Featherstone 2002; Hardt and Negri 2004)

31

Chapter 2 focuses on the historical processes that increasingly brought Ainu villages

and cultural and economic practices under the suzerainty of the shogunate during the Edo

era (1603-1867). Beginning in the late Edo period, intensifying throughout the Meiji era

(1868-1912), and into the prewar period, the Ainu became the objects of aggressive

assimilation measures — processes which bring some Ainu into contact with state organs

that regulate Ainu practices and dispense welfare funds to Ainu communities.

Assimilation was urged at home, but abroad, the Japanese state preferred the Ainu to play

the part of the savage in need of education and social development. I argue that the

nascent Japanese nation required the Ainu as colonial subjects in order to first define

itself as an emerging power on par with Western imperial nations, and then to explore the

dynamics of colonialism (i.e. how to subjugate and then assimilate others into the nation

— strategies that would be expanded and intensified in the prewar period as Japan began

colonizing many regions of East Asia). For the Ainu to be proper colonial subjects, their

difference from ethnic Japanese was emphasized in arenas like the international

expositions that took place at the beginning of the 20th century.

In Chapter 3, I examine the notion of race, ethnicity, citizenship and indigeneity in

Japan. The Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai is born through the bureaucratization of the so-called

Ainu problem (Ainu mondai), and in this milieu a few Ainu adopted the procedures and

aesthetics of bureaucratic culture. I document the exhuming of Ainu-ness beginning in

the mid-1970s and how the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai became involved in promoting a

broader notion of “indigeneity”—an idea that involves not only autochthonous people,

but the state, bureaucrats and the international organizations that developed the concept

in the postwar period. It is during this time period that the Kyōkai moves beyond its

32

official role as primarily a welfare bureau and becomes the center of a social movement

based on post-colonial and, later, indigenous political sensibilities. The capacities

developed through the bureaucratization of the Ainu problem were easily adapted to the

procedural and aesthetic norms of the nascent international indigenous rights community

at the United Nations.

Chapter 4 describes life at the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai. I chart the temporal and spatial

organization of the office and discuss how it operates in coordinating its many field

offices across Hokkaido. This chapter develops a schematic of official and extra-official

operations of the Kyōkai and, more generally, a theory of bureaucratic practice in Japan. I

investigate the negotiations between the department and the Ainu community on the one

hand, and, on the other, the national bureaucracy and global agencies with whom it

interacts daily. Developing a perspective on multicultural negotiations in Japan, I borrow

from foundational studies in Japanese social organization and indicate how specifically

Japanese notions of belonging, blood, goal-orientation and teamwork are deployed to

create semblances between individuals of different racial and cultural backgrounds.

Chapter 5 looks at rights discourse in Japan and the increasing impact of an

international regime of rights as developed through the United Nations. It focuses on

Ainu involvement in international social movements of indigenous people. More

specifically, I consider how the Ainu Association articulates Ainu interests in the

international arena of human rights. Much of this involvement during my fieldwork dealt

with developing the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (particularly

issues of self-determination and land rights). Finally, I examine the processes involved in

becoming an object of international policies.

33

Chapter 6 works to articulate different modes of territoriality with the exigencies of

new forms of sovereignty and rights that are developing in the interstices between

culturally specific sensibilities and changing international juridical norms. I analytically

define two different modes of territoriality: a statist mode, informed by a bureaucratic

epistemology, creates abstract spatializations through social and material cartographies

derived from grids and surveys, rendering governable landscapes. This kind of mapping

(and there are many kinds) forms the basis of political projection into actual spaces: in

Hokkaido this would include the annexation and then organization of immense swaths of

land without the knowledge or permission of local inhabitants. The other form, Ainu

geographies, imbued with a cosmology that emphasizes the immanent and ethno-spiritual

connections to place, transcends the spatial schemes of modern polities by recovering

pre-colonial meanings and modes of dwelling in places. These reterritorializations

provide a clearing for a less restricted articulation with late modern present, be it cultural,

political or commercial. I situate this re-emergence of Ainu cultural geographies within

what I perceive to be a general unravelling of many of the social contradictions that have

been, until the late 20th century, held in place by a strong state.

The fact that a reanimated cultural geography based on historical occupation patterns

and traditional Ainu cosmology has been effectively revitalized, disseminated, and

legitimized through bureaucratic means makes the intersection of different modes of

territoriality all the more interesting. Throughout this study, I attempt to maintain the

tension between Ainu who assert pre-modern cultural practices and sensibilities as

justifications for reclaiming Ainu places on the one hand, and those who recognize the

need for a fully late modern, post-national approach to indigenous politics. While the

34

coexistence of positions has made neat analytical categories impossible, identifying

current territorial practices and trends in indigenous territoriality as formulated through

supranational organizations and working groups is not. Because of organizations like the

Utari Kyōkai, there are informants and collections of texts that map quite clearly the

balancing act of configuring a global indigenous rights policy while acknowledging that

indigeneity is elaborated in vastly different circumstances and among very different

peoples. But before getting to present, it is necessary to understand the complex history

lived by Ainu and Wajin on a group of islands that formed first a boundary predicated on

language and ethnicity, then a frontier of an expanding state, and, finally, a disputed zone

between two archipelago nations.

35

Chapter Two

Tracing a Past

This chapter is a tracing of the historical movements of people, policies, and politico-

cultural boundaries that ultimately resulted in the genesis of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai

— an appendix to the bureaucratic organs that constitute the elaborate administrative and

civil service sector of the Hokkaido Prefectural Government. The establishment of this

organization in 1930 foreshadowed the Ainu peoples’ position as a vanguard element

involved with changing rights discourse in Japan. More generally, the factors that led to

its existence raise questions about Japan’s specific engagement with the forces that have

come to characterize modernity, including entry into circuits established by capitalist

enterprise, nation-building, and the extension of scientific rationality into everyday life

(see Foucault 1998). Instead of the threat of Matthew Perry’s “black ships” in 1853 as the

catalyst precipitating Japan’s entry into modernity (e.g. Ivy 1995:6), I argue that, by the

17th century, processes internal to the early Japanese state resulted in policies and

practices that, in Western countries, are considered typical of early modernity. These

processes include the management of a diverse internal population, the need for resource

extraction in foreign lands, and colonial ambitions to the North. Furthermore, the

management of the Ainu population in Hokkaido and Chishima18 played a significant role

Japan’s distinctive development as a modern nation-state.

The first section of this chapter is an examination of the early period of colonization of

Ainu lands that began in southern Ezo (Hokkaido)19 and subsequently expanded north

36

into Karafuto and the Chishima20 Islands. Wajin21 political organization during this time

period (the years 1604 to 1868 are referred to as the Tokugawa or Edo period) was

changing from what has been characterized as a feudalistic lord-vassal-serf relationship

based on unequal power relations to a progressively more routinized array of proto-legal

procedures formulated through decree or precedent and disseminated through a

burgeoning bureaucracy (Hall 1974; Ooms 1975). At this time, as the Ainu were

becoming the focus of policies penned by the Tokugawa bakufu (i.e. the administrative

office of the shogun) , trade networks were being formalized between various Ainu

territories and Wajin traders connected to the Matsumae daimyo in southern Ezo. As a

result of more brutal forms of Wajin domination in the hinterlands, this era of

mercantilist-driven territorialization came to a crisis in eastern Hokkaido with the Ainu

revolt of 1789 referred to as the Kunashiri Menashi (Kunashiri Rebellion).

37

Fig. 1 Map of Hokkaido, Chishima (Kuril) Archipelago and Karafuto. Mainland Japan

(Honshu) and the rest of the Japanese Archipelago lies directly to the south of Hokkaido.

Kunashiri, Etorofu, Shikotan, and Habomai (not shown) are the four southernmost islands

of the Chishima Archipelago and are collectively know in Japan as the Northern

Territories (Hoppo Ryodo).

The second section is concerned with the era characterized by the disintermediation of

the Matsumae-han22 and the beginning of direct bakufu management of trade on Ezo and

the formulation of policies designed to mollify Ainu resistance (1799-1822). During this

period, there is an intensification of exploration and surveying not only of Ezo but also

the islands of the Chishima Archipelago to the north. The importance of the era of bakufu

direct control resides in its mode of territoriality23—no longer the vacillating search for

economic advantage of the trader or fisher, bakufu involvement, largely a response to

38

Russian encroachment from the north, sought to establish Ezo as a part of the sovereign

territory of Japan through the capture of Ainu ethnicity.

The final section of this chapter recounts the annexation of Ezo, Karafuto and the

islands of southern Chishima and the deployment of assimilation measures from the Meiji

era (1868-1912) until the 1930 establishment of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai.

Dispossessed of their land, language and culture, the Ainu become the objects of a variety

of assimilation, education and welfare policies intended to remake them as Japanese

citizens. Disbanded during World War Two, The Utari Kyōkai is re-established in 1946

to represent the Ainu people in policy circles and to promote the social standing of the

Ainu in Hokkaido. Since its postwar rebirth, the organization has increased its geographic

purview and broadened its mandate through a complex dance between cooptation by

business and governmental interests and working to progressively redefine the Ainu

peoples’ relation to the Japanese nation-state as an indigenous group requiring extra-

constitutional considerations24.

Geography

The approximately three thousand islands that constitute the Japanese Archipelago arc

1,300 miles from the sub-arctic north to the subtropical south. Starting at the north, the

four main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. With nearly 18,500 miles

of coastline surrounding a combined area of less than 150,000 square miles (roughly the

same area as the state of Montana), there is no point in Japan that is more than 80 miles

from the ocean. About two-thirds of the total area is classified as mountainous and the

remaining third consists of plateaus and lowland alluvial plains. The nation’s population

39

centers are clustered on these plains and vie for space with the farming communities that

have cultivated these areas for centuries.

The Japanese islands lie along the western edge of the “Pacific Ring of Fire”—a series

of tectonic subduction zones that periodically generate violent seismic and volcanic

activity. In fact the islands themselves are result of the volcanism due to the subduction

of the Pacific Plate under the Eurasian Plate. The archipelago consists of five volcanic

arcs: (from the north) the Kuril arc which is the progenitor of Hokkaido and the

Chishima Islands, the northeast Honshu and the Izu-Bonin arcs form northern and central

Honshu, while the Southwest and Ryūkyū arcs form southwestern Honshu and the

remainder of the archipelago. The importance of these distinctions lies in the use of

geology in the political geography of the Northern Territories25. Advocates for the return

of the Northern Territories to Japan often use the argument that the four islands are part

of the same submerged landmass as Hokkaido and are thus part of the Japanese nation.

While the geology might be technically correct26, one could just as easily conclude the

reverse—that Hokkaido is a natural extension of Russia. The cultural history of the island

suggests exactly this.

Japan is typically considered to have four seasons including a monsoon season between

June and July on the islands south of Hokkaido. The seasons are marked by the blooming

of cherry trees in the spring and the falling of the cherry leaves in the fall. In the spring,

the news media track daily the northward advance of the cherry blossoms. The flowering

up and down the archipelago, called sakura senzen, begins in January in Okinawa,

reaches Tokyo in late March and Hokkaido in April and May. The spectacle suggests not

only a unified national aesthetic, but a collective annual observance of the varied

40

territories of Japan. On one hand, the Japanese are aware of this as a distinctly cultural

obsession within Japan—suggestive of an array of culturally specific metaphors. On the

other hand the yearly repetition of this ritual unifies the widely diverse geographic and

cultural variation of the state through the constant juxtaposition of many different local

scenes with the cherry blossom—which acts, perhaps more than the flag27, as a metonym

for the nation.

Hokkaido, the northernmost island of the Japanese state, is the nation’s second largest

and most resource dense island (Totman 1989). Its climate and geology are distinctly

different than the rest of Japan. Hokkaido lies to the north of the monsoon zone that

yearly affects the rest of Japan and is commonly thought to define Japanese attitudes and

cultural practices. The winters are so severe that the northern border of Hokkaido

becomes locked in sea ice for many months; the island averages approximately 5 meters

of snowfall per year. Tokyo in central Honshu rarely sees snow. The architectural

elements that characterized typical Japanese homes are thought to be designed to

accommodate hot and humid summers and relatively mild winters28 (Watsuji

1988[1935]). Adjustments to homes in Hokkaido include roofs either steeply slanted to

better slough off accumulated snow or reinforced to bear the considerable weight.

The differences between a culture that arose in the southern climes of Nara, Kyoto and

Tokyo and traditional Ainu culture frame a pervasive understanding of Hokkaido as a

national and cultural frontier—a trope that receives perennial re-animation from JTB’s

(Japan Travel Bureau) promotion of Hokkaido’s colonial past and key role in the

development of Japan. In addition to the climatological and cultural differences that have

traditionally marked the northern island, new research on the biological origins of the

41

Japanese, the Okinawans, and the Ainu is currently attracting a lot of attention from

Wajin and Ainu alike.

Origins

The biological and geographical origins of the Japanese people has been a contentious

issue in anthropological circles and, due to numerous NHK documentaries, many

nonacademic Japanese seem to be fully conversant in the particulars of the developing

debate. Despite the lively discussions about physical origins, the cultural schematic

handed out at natural history museums has apparently not changed since at least the

1970s. The archipelago was populated from Hokkaido to Okinawa by the hunting-

gathering Jomon29 people from northeast Asia from approximately 12,000 BP to 2,300

BP. At 2,300 BP there was a large scale migration of people from the Korean Peninsula

called the Yayoi who practiced rice cultivation (Sugiita 1998). While there are several

more cultural phases in later years, the real debate turns on whether or not the Japanese

people are primarily descendents of the Northeast Asian Jomon, the Yayoi culture from

Korea or a hybrid of the two.

The stakes for the Japanese seem to be based on either a sense of ownership of the

archipelago based on autochthony, if they are in fact Jomon descendants, or, if they are

descended from the Yayoi, a sense of cultural pride in that their ancestors were able to

dominate and replace the existing population of the Japanese islands. Current genetic

research has fueled interest in origins among the Japanese. Three theories have

predominated in recent debates on genetic origins: replacement, transformation, and dual

origin. Replacement of the Jomon by a more warlike Yayoi has become the common

42

explanation for the ostensible erasure of Jomon cultural artifacts in the archaeological

record. C. Loring Brace’s (1989) study of the craniometric data on populations in

Japanese history suggests that while the Jomon were largely replaced by people from

present day Korea, the remnants of the Jomon became what are today known as Ainu.

Masatoshi Nei (1995), supporting the transformation theory, suggests that, due to lack of

significant genetic variation between the Jomon and modern Japanese, they are

biologically related. More recently, scholars have suggested that, due to the distribution

of chromosomal traits in Japan and East Asia, the Japanese generally exhibit a close

biological relationship to people on the Korean Peninsula, while the Ainu to the north and

Okinawans to the south share genetic traits typical of Jomon populations, suggesting that

Ainu and Okinawans share Jomon ancestry and could be considered the descendents of

the first peoples of the Japanese Archipelago (Hammer 1995 and 2006; Omoto and Saitō

1997; Atsushi et al 2004). A recent NHK documentary series (NHK 2001) and popular

discourse30 indicate that these last studies are having an impact in Japan.

Narratives of difference based on place of origin, blood, and ancestry have generally

informed the Japanese state’s politics of repression, assimilation, and dependency vis-à-

vis marginal populations. The link between the political apparatus of the modern

Japanese nation and the Japanese people was considered to be the divine blood of the

Emperor, a mythopolitical narrative developed during the Meiji Restoration of the 19th

century. In 1888, twenty years into Japan’s experiment of international engagement,

Naitō Chisō, a professor at Tokyo University, wrote an influential treatise on the defining

features of the new Japanese nation. In it he connects blood, land and divine right to

establish the sovereignty of the Emperor and “the people” (jin’in or dōjin) over the

43

landscape of Japan (Naitō 1888:2-4). Despite discrediting of the practice of emperor

worship after World War Two, the identity of the Japanese people with the land that

comprises the nation has created a de facto sense of autochthony among most Japanese

citizens.

The people of prehistoric Hokkaido, existing on the margins of the developing Japanese

polity, had minimal contact with Wajin from the island of Honshu until about 700 BP. At

this point the influence of trade from Honshu, China, and northeastern Asia becomes

more evident. Archaeologically, Ainu culture is born of this confluence of cultural flows

and marked at the point where the practice of earthenware production is dropped in favor

of ironware pots, ceramics and laquerware vessels obtained through trade; however,

many Ainu believe their biological origins reach as far back as the Neolithic period at

10,000 BP. Current Ainu notions of indigeneity tend to be predicated on the scientific

research that supports these claims.

Yet, the cultural origins of the Ainu are thought to be the result of trade networks with

Wajin from, presumably, Honshu; this begs the question of whether the historical

differences between Wajin and Ainu are as deep as many would like to think (Howell

2005). To be sure, the connections between Ainu and Wajin are complex and have

endured since before the political consolidations which resulted in the Japanese nation.

The nature of these entanglements is explored in the following section.

Matsumae Han and the Extension of Tokugawa Political Organization

The Oshima Peninsula (渡島半島) of southern Ezo (Hokkaido) looks south across the

Tsugaru Strait (津軽海峡) to the northern tip of Honshu, the political and cultural center

44

of Japan. By the 15th century there were trading posts established along the southern coast

of Oshima, facilitating the development of regular trade between Ezo and Honshu. The

Ainu had abandoned the earthenware production of the Satsumon period and traded

konbu (seaweed), salmon, hawks, bear and sea otter pelts for iron goods, laquerware and

textiles from Honshu (Uemura 1990). At this time there was considerable conflict

between Wajin and Ainu warriors and in 1457 friction between the two erupted into open

warfare in an event now labeled the Koshamain War. The result of this conflict was that

the Wajin were driven en masse out of Ezochi and the next one hundred years was

characterized by hostile relations between the two groups. It was not until 1551 that the

Kakizaki Clan was able to come to an agreement with the Ainu chieftains Hashitain and

Chikomotain, stipulating that profits from trade and taxation between the Ainu suppliers

and Honshu merchants would be shared with Ainu clans. In return, the Kakizaki Clan

was granted suzerainty over all trade between the two islands. Although total Wajin

landholdings had been reduced by one-third since the Koshamain War, this pact was

significant in that it gave Kakizaki exclusive control over the territory between

Kaminokuni and Shiriuchi at the southern tip of the Oshima Peninsula. By 1591 Ainu

warriors were accompanying Kakizaki delegations to the capital Kyoto (Tahara 2006:49).

Mainland Japan was itself undergoing a profound political transformation at this time.

The project of national unification is thought to have begun in earnest in the mid to late

16th century by Oda Nobunaga, who, primarily through military conquest, brought

twenty-two provinces in central Honshu under his control. His successor, Toyotomi

Hideyoshi, conquered the rest of Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku by the year 1590.

Through a series of intrigues and battles that ensued after Hideyoshi’s death in 1598, the

45

mantle of shogun was bestowed upon Tokugawa Ieyasu by the Emperor in 160331. Like

prior shoguns, the Tokugawa Clan assumed the responsibility of supervising the warrior

class and preserving a degree of social tranquility; however, beginning with Ieyasu and

his immediate successors, the office of the shogun asserted its right to proclaim laws,

levy taxes, and arbitrate disputes. This move into the realm of policymaking and the

promulgation of law is evidence of a change in register for the office—from the

militaristic obligations and duties of the warlord to the bureaucratic codification and

administration of law.

Tokugawa Law and Social Stratification

Prior to the 17th century, much Japanese law was based on customary legal standards

that were local formulations of imperial decree, shogunal dictates and rules imposed by

the regional daimyo (Berry 1986:238; Grossberg 1981:9; Ishii 1960:201)32. Many

historians relate the ascendancy of the Tokugawa regime to the further consolidation of

military might and the simultaneous weakening of Imperial and Buddhist influences on

the politics of the emerging nation through shogunal edicts. These two vectors of power,

military and legal, came to a head in 1614-15 when the bakufu laid siege to Osaka castle,

eventually defeating 100,000 Toyotomi loyalists, and issuing twin edicts, one to the

imperial court at Kyoto and the other to the warrior families. The siege of Osaka castle

was a spectacle in terms of its degree of bloodshed: the repeated theater of beheadings,

the public display of the heads of Toyotomi officials and finally in the ritual suicide of

young Toyotomi Hideyori (heir to Hideyoshi’s claim to the title of shogun). It was also a

46

highly visible deterrent meant to restrain ambitious daimyo from vying for political

advantage.

More enduring was the issuance of the edicts of 1615 to the court in Kyoto, including

the Heavenly Sovereign, entitled Kinchū Narabi ni Kuge Shohatto 禁中並公家諸法度

(Regulations concerning the Royal Court and Nobility)33. According to Butler (1994),

Tokugawa Ieyasu went to great pains to gather materials and research historical precedent

in the affairs of the court, and over the course of 18 months he employed dozens of

calligraphers and scholars to develop an idealistic vision of how courtly life should be

conducted. While much of the document addresses courtly behavior and dress, the first of

the 17 articles is directed at the Heavenly Sovereign himself and begins: The emperor is

to be engaged in the arts, the foremost of which is scholarship. Also significant are the

restrictions placed on the distribution of courtly titles to the heads of the military families

(article 7). The Kuge Shohatto thus effectively limited the political influence of the court

while reconfiguring the semiotics of power in early 17th century Japan.

The Buke Shohatto 武家諸法度 (Regulations concerning the Military Households)

was similar to the Kuge Shohatto and perhaps more germane to the project of securing a

stable central government based around the Tokugawa regime. Article five of the Buke

Shohatto states: Henceforth no social intercourse is to be permitted outside of one's own

domain, with the people of another domain. This bound the gentry and commoners of a

given domain to a specific geographical region—inhibiting the formation of

confederacies and political intrigue. In a similar vein Article 8 prohibits politically

motivated marriages between houses. In addition, each Daimyo was limited to owning a

single castle, the size and structure of which was prescribed by the edict31.

47

The result of the edicts of 1615 was to strictly limit the symbolic display and practical

exercise of power by both the emperor and the domain lord. In addition, they constrained

the movement of the population to within the domain itself—a trend that finds its

ultimate expression in the Sakoku policy of 1641 that sealed Japan off from most foreign

influences34. Perhaps most important was the denial of private redress. First issued by

Hideyoshi in 1587 and promulgated on a national level by Tokugawa in 1615, the

directive forbade commoners and daimyo alike from employing violence for their own

ends. The bakufu (shogunate) itself would adjudicate disputes and mete out punishments.

In the absence of a national police force, the bakufu was able to survey the application of

its laws by sending informers and inspectors to the various domains35. Through these

measures - the geographic compartmentalization of the populace, adopting jurisdictional

supremacy, and the monopolization of the use of violence - the bakufu effectively limited

daimyo autonomy to affairs within the domain itself.

Beyond the national and regional territorializations, the cities themselves were

organized into zones based on class divisions36 that were inherited from the medieval era

and further reified due to the adoption of neoconfucian ideology in the Tokugawa period.

The spatial organization of Edo (Tokyo) followed these principles closely and the social

classes were arrayed around Edo castle, headquarters of the bakufu, according to Chinese

cosmology (Coaldrake 1981:246). In addition, edicts were issued that prescribed the

dimensions and materials used in the construction of daimyo, samurai and commoner

housing. The basic inequality in the spatial allocations among the classes in Edo caused

the commoners, the majority of the city’s population, to be tightly packed into their

48

district. This is given as a primary reason for the vast fire that engulfed 80% of Edo in

1666 (Coaldrake 1981:252).

The Eta 穢多 (lit. full of filth) were a group of artisans and laborers that worked

occupations considered unclean as they violated Buddhist and Shinto prohibitions against

killing. Eta typically worked in occupations (such as leatherworkers, butchers,

undertakers or executioners) that were socially indispensable but tainted with the act of

taking life. So inseparable from their ghettos, they became known as Burakumin 部落民

(hamlet people). Considered less than human, the Eta did not figure into the “four

divisions of society” (samurai, peasants, craftsmen and merchants) that was used by the

bakufu to categorize citizens and thus to determine their responsibilities to society.

The samurai were at the top of the social hierarchy. They were landed nobility in the

medieval period and, through legal injunctions beginning with Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the

late 16th century, were remade as a landless warrior class to be retained by regional

daimyo. Their station accorded them rights unavailable to the rest of feudal Japan

including the right to bear arms, the right to hold public office and a cultural superiority

engendered through the bakufu’s appeal that they undertake scholarly pursuits. Insofar as

they were essentially dispossessed of their land holdings, they became dependent on the

daimyo for their salaries. It is widely cited that because of the bakufu’s demand that they

adopt a spartan lifestyle, tensions grew among the relatively impoverished samurai as the

fortunes of lower classes increased through the economic prosperity that accompanied the

roughly 200 years of peace under the Tokugawa regime.

Below the samurai on the feudal hierarchy were the peasants. As the primary

producers in the feudal economy they were organized into villages from which taxes

49

were extracted in rice. Peasants were held in high esteem according to the neoconfucian

“four divisions” because it was recognized that they produced society’s wealth, whereas

the craftsman and merchant only transformed and distributed the raw materials procured

by the peasant. However, like the samurai, this level of prestige did not necessarily

translate into material or cultural capital. Due to factors such as population growth,

environmental deterioration, and tax increases, overall standards of living began to

decline by the 18th century (Totman 1986:469), precipitating a series of peasant revolts

(Bix 1986)37.

In terms of status, the two lower classes, craftsmen and merchants, are often grouped

together under the term chōnin 町人 (townspeople). Despite being of low status, some

chōnin became quite wealthy as cities grew and internal commerce accelerated during the

Tokugawa period. As the value of rice dropped and consumption of luxury items

increased during the first half of the era, it was not unusual for samurai and daimyo to

become indebted to the wealthier merchants38.

It was this disparity between the feudal class system and the actual distribution of

wealth within that system that prompted the bakufu to institute sumptuary regulations

(kenyakurei 倹約令) beginning in the mid-17th century. In 1719 a comprehensive list of

prohibited goods and styles was issued restricting servants from wearing silk, chōnin

from wearing wool capes, and entertainment or weddings from being overly elaborate

(Shively 1965:129). Sumptuary regulations were intended to make visible class

distinctions, especially in the cities where all levels of society came into daily contact;

however, the fact that many of the edicts governing dress, food, and style of housing were

reissued again and again as new shoguns came to power is indicative of their failure to

50

consistently shape social practice. Rather, these edicts reinforced a moral code that

framed all social interactions in terms of the feudal hierarchy.

Historians tend to disagree over the extent to which Tokugawa Japan became

economically, socially and ideologically integrated under the shogunal administration in

Edo, but most agree that the nation, through the development of a national bureaucracy, a

judiciary, a national system of taxation and a narrative of the nation based on common

origin, language and culture39, had developed the capacity to function as a modern state

by the 19th century40. National identity was forged during the Tokugawa period through

edict, myth, and shared traditions; yet, one could say that the mythos of the nation

overtook the bakufu just prior to the Meiji Restoration (1868) during which the Emperor,

as putative father of the nation, was restored to power. Despite the policy of national

seclusion, the conceptual contours of Japan as a geographic entity, and the people

(minzoku 民族) as coextensive with that entity, emerged for the Japanese through an

awareness of others on the frontiers of the nation.

Ethnic Differentiation

Perhaps because of the bakufu’s Sakoku policy, the latter 17th century was witness to a

proliferation of materials that sought to graphically portray the world beyond to those

within the closed borders of Japan. Bankoku Sōzu (Chart of the 10,000 Nations, see

Figure 2) were screens that depicted foreigners, often with exaggerated features to denote

racial differences. Ronald Toby (1994) asserts that the fascination with the other was a

result of the open trade Japan had with other European and Asian countries before the

closing of the country. The 1712 Wa-Kan Sansai Zue (Japanese-Chinese Encyclopedia)

51

illustrated and described many peoples and places, although as the subject-matter

increased in distance from Japan, so too did the degree of imagination involved in these

depictions. For instance, the more proximal Okinawans and Ainu were well-detailed in

these encyclopedias; conversely, Holland, the last nation before “the land of the

dragons,” was significantly less detailed. On the perimeter of the known world one would

also find regions of the pygmies, bird people or giants.

Tess Morris-Suzuki suggests that, more than unfamiliarity with the rest of the world,

early representations of foreignness were influenced by the ka/i conceptual dichotomy

that was, along with these compendia of knowledge, inherited from China. For the

Japanese, Ka indicated, at first, China, the civilized center of the world during the early

Tokugawa era. By the 18th century, due to the political fragmentation of China and an

emerging Japanese nationalist sentiment expressed in the literature and poetry of the

time, Japan itself came to occupy this position of centrality. The degrees of foreignness,

or “i,” radiated outward--ikoku were “foreign countries” populated by people who used

chopsticks and used Chinese characters, whereas gai-i were “outer barbarians,” people

who wrote horizontally and ate with their hands (Morris-Suzuki 1998:14-17).

Publications such as these began to move from simple descriptions that portrayed the

other as an exotic to more direct comparisons with the Japanese themselves. As the

influence of Kokugaku (often translated as “nativist” but literally “country studies”)

scholars spread in the 18th century, some Japanese began to see themselves as culturally,

historically and psychologically distinct from other East Asian regions, thus the discourse

of Japanese uniqueness was born (Harootunian 1988).

52

Fig.2 Bankoku Sōzu Sekaijin Keizu (The people of the world’s nations) [1652] from the

Kobe City Museum (reprinted in Takezawa 2004)

Within the ka/i framework, frontier peoples tended to occupy an ambiguous position

in this scheme—Ainu and Okinawans were not Japanese in terms of language or custom,

yet due to longstanding systems of trade with Matsumae-han in the north and Satsuma-

han to the south, these people, marginal to the emerging Japanese state, became

increasingly vital for the Japanese economy during the two centuries of national

seclusion. David Howell asserts that these populations also became crucial in defining the

boundaries of Japanese national identity by framing the degree of variation that could be

reasonably contained in the concept: “the Japanese” (1994:74)41.

To the south 250,000 Okinawans, subjects of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, maintained a

system of dual patronage (ryōzoku kankei) with both China and the Satsuma-han in

53

southern Kyūshū. In 1609, Satsuma-han sent a military expedition into the Ryūkyū

Kingdom and forced the king and his councilors to sign a series of trade agreements that

allowed Satsuma to monopolize trade with the island nation. In this way Japan could

discreetly trade with China via the Ryūkyūs despite the prohibitions set by the Ming

government in the mid-16th century. To effect this subterfuge, Satsuma arranged to ban

the use of Japanese language, dress, and hairstyle in the Ryūkyūs (Sakai 1964:392). In

addition, Ryūkyū tribute missions to Edo were prohibited from appearing in Japanese-

style dress and were instructed to wield only Chinese-styled weapons so as not to be

mistaken for Japanese42 (Kamiya 1990). By 1683 the Ming Dynasty in China had fallen

and Japan had entered into its era of seclusion, yet despite the political upheaval the

Ryūkyū Kingdom via Satsuma remained integral to Japanese trade with the wider world.

Throughout the late 17th and 18th centuries, economic and cultural integration with Japan

was increasingly promoted and the Ryūkyū Archipelago was annexed in 1879 (Furuki

2003).

The northern frontier was more problematic for the bakufu. Ezo was a vast island

populated by a people so different in appearance, custom and language that the idea of

assimilation with the rest of Japan was initially unthinkable. Oft-cited examples of ethnic

differences from Wajin included observations that Ainu men wore their beards and hair

long and Ainu women practiced piercing and wore tattoos around their mouths. In

addition, the men wore short swords and hunted with poison arrows. These observations

were often accompanied by the literally dehumanizing speculation that the Ainu were

somehow part animal. The northern island was itself a mystery as indicated by the maps

54

of Ezo which, notwithstanding their wild inaccuracy, were relatively blank until the 19th

century (Takagi 2003:49)43.

For Europeans, who were by the 16th century extensively involved in transoceanic

voyages and concerning themselves with matters diplomatic, cartographic, proselytic and

entrepreneurial, the area to the north of Honshu remained ill-defined. In 1565 the Jesuit

priest Father Aloisius Froes sent a report indicating that there was a great island 300

leagues to the north of Kyoto and inhabited by savages. A century later rumors of gold

brought explorers from the Dutch East India Company. Maartin Gerrits Vries’ 1640

expedition returned with fairly accurate information about Ezo; however, because of

misrepresentations and mistakes by the mapmaker J. Jansson, Ezo was depicted in 1650

as part of the continental mainland—a mistake that, according to George Kiss

(1947:109), bedeviled European maps of the region for the next one hundred years

(Figure 3).

55

Fig.3 Nova et Accurata Iaponiae by J. Jansson c.1650. (from Kiss 1947:108)44

The Ainu were themselves little understood by the ruling elites in Kyoto and Edo, and,

despite their proximity to Honshu, were considered barbarians (iteki 夷狄). In the

centuries prior to the Tokugawa era, Japanese paintings and accounts rendered the Ainu

as a demonic, flesh-eating people who knew nothing of the “five grains” and spoke

gibberish. Despite increasing contact between Wajin and Ainu, these depictions became

even more surreal as evidenced by paintings from the 16th century (Siddle 1996:30).

Aside from the monstrous portrayals that signified, for some artists, their most proximate

“other,” the Ainu began to take on a more important role in the emerging national

imaginary of Tokugawa Japan as exemplars of what was patently not Japanese.

56

Ethnic boundaries were policed by Wajin in Ezo for a variety of reasons. Perhaps

foremost is that the Matsumae-han garnered legitimacy from its role as sole arbiter of

commerce between Honshu merchants and the Ainu traders of Ezo. If the Ainu were to

assimilate Japanese language and customs, there would be no reason for the han to exist.

In addition, as long as the Ainu remained “barbarians” in the minds of Wajin, they could

continue to be exploited by commercial interests which intensified significantly between

the 17th and the end of the 18th century. Ethnic boundaries were reinforced through

various prohibitions and privations. Wajin hairstyle, for example, as one of the more

visible markers of social status in the Tokugawa era, was forbidden to the Ainu. Rather

than the shaven, cropped or bound hair of their Wajin counterparts, Ainu hair was to

reflect tribal tradition instead of the Wajin social order of the day. In addition, Ainu were

not allowed to wear Wajin-styled straw raincoats or sandals, nor learn Japanese.

Fig.4 Tokugawa Ieyasu’s black seal letter to Matsumae Yoshihiro in 1604 (Historical

Museum of Hokkaido )

57

In addition, spatial boundaries were maintained between Wajinchi, or “land of the

Wajin,” in southern Ezo and Ezochi (the remaining 90% of the island). Wajinchi

stretched from the southern tip of the Oshima Peninsula to just north of Kumaishi, the

southern 1/3rd of the peninsula. This division was initially established in 1604 when

Tokugawa Ieyasu sent the “black seal” missive to Matsumae Yoshihiro (Fig.4), entitling

Matsumae-han to monopolize trade between Wajin and Ainu:

People entering or leaving Ezo may not trade directly with the people of Ezo

(i.e. Ainu) without the intermediation of the guardians of Matsumae.

Merchants crossing the sea to settle or trade must by all means obtain the

permission of Matsumae-han. However, it is best not to limit where the

people of Ezo may go. This would be unreasonable. Those who disobey will

be severely punished (quoted in Tahashi 2000:74).

Japanese traders had, prior to this edict, been trading with Ainu at various locations along

the southern coast of Ezo; this practice came to an abrupt end as Honshu merchants

began conducting trade exclusively in and around Matsumae. Ainu traders, on the other

hand, were seen trading in Northern Honshu for the next 40 years; however, this practice,

dangerous and costly as it was, largely ended by 1644.

The centralized power structure developing in Edo in the early 17th century sought to

replace customary law within clan domains with edicts that would apply unilaterally

throughout the emerging Japanese polity. While this was not a novel development in the

history of the nation, the Emperor similarly sought to extend the power of his office prior

to the Tokugawa coup, the degree of compartmentalization of daimyo power, the

establishment of bureaucratic organization throughout the domains, and the extension of

systems of surveillance to ensure compliance were unprecedented in their efficacy. The

consequence of these developments significantly altered how Ainu conducted trade with

Wajin merchants as Matsumae-han now monopolized trade on the island of Ezo;

58

however, unlike other clans, trade was virtually the only method for Matsumae to

generate wealth—thus the basho contract system developed granting merchants

unprecedented access and control over regions of Ezo.

The Basho Contract System and the Kunashiri Menashi Rebellion

As the Matsumae-han successfully restricted Wajin-Ainu trade to its sphere of

administration, it was able to levy taxes on goods that came through its ports. However,

because rice, the primary commodity used in the remuneration for the services of

retainers, could not successfully be grown in Ezo, the rice derived from taxes on trade

was not sufficient for the han to maintain itself45. Consequently, it began to borrow from

merchants who had established trading houses in the area. To defray the cost of

maintaining the samurai and foot soldiers necessary for the defense of Matusmae, the han

also granted specified areas called akinaiba (商場) or basho (場所) in which the more

important of its vassals could establish trading posts outside of the Matsumae district.

Shortly thereafter, in order to reduce the debt it owed the trading houses, Matsumae-han

extended this arrangement to merchants as well. The trading houses would then pay for

permits (unjōkin) to trade directly with the Ainu.

At first, along the coastal areas near Matsumae and then expanding outward, Wajin

merchants would trade directly with Ainu in these basho and then conduct trade through

Matsumae with Honshu merchants. Removing the location of Wajin-Ainu trade to these

outlying areas enabled the increased exploitation of Ainu hunters and fishermen. The

standard method of payment, bundles of rice, soy sauce, and sake, began to come in

smaller and smaller units (Kaga 2001b:64). In addition, salmon, the primary staple of the

59

Ainu diet, was being fished out before they were able to spawn. In autumn the Ainu

would allow the fish to migrate from the oceans upriver to their spawning grounds,

catching them after spawning. This ensured an adequate catch in future years and

provided the Ainu communities (kotan) that clustered around these rivers to survive the

long winters in Ezo. However, the Japanese would position their nets at the mouths of the

rivers, ensuring a bonanza catch of salmon that were not overly deteriorated46. Besides

depriving upstream Ainu communities of their primary winter food source, this practice

caused salmon populations to plummet within a short period of time. This drew

increasing numbers of Ainu from the hinterland into the basho contract system along

Ezo’s coastlines, as now their very livelihoods depended on the exchange of goods for

their services in the fishing industry (Tahara 2006).

During the Tokugawa period, Ainu lived in small territorial units along river basins or

seashores called kotan. A standard kotan was patrilineal clan composed of six to ten

families who hunted, fished and foraged together within a broader hunting territory called

iwor--exclusive spaces connected to one or several related kotan. Members of outside

kotan were required to get permission to hunt or pass through the iwor of other kotan

(Izumi 1952:29-31). Houses, or chise, were made of grass and bark. Each typically had

two outhouses (men’s and women’s), a store house, a rack for drying fish, and, in some

cases, a wooden cage in which a young bear was kept for ceremonial purposes. Near the

entrance was the hearth, the left side of which was reserved for husband and wife, and the

right side for children or guests. Along one wall there was a raised platform on which

prestige items would be displayed. The chise typically had three windows, the east-facing

window was the portal through which spirits and ritual implements were passed. With the

60

advent of the basho contract system, men would leave the villages, at first willingly and

later under coercion, to work the Wajin fishing grounds. This outmigration was the cause

of social and economic hardship in the kotan as the payments for labor decreased along

with the yearly salmon catch over time (Tahara 2006:51).

According to David Howell (1994), the marked differentiation of Wajin and Ainu

ethnicity was a necessity of the emerging Tokugawa polity, and in particular the

Matsumae-han of southern Ezo, to secure a labor force that could participate in the

extraction of the island’s considerable natural resources. He presents a compelling

argument for the idea that Ainu rituals were co-opted by Wajin traders to insinuate and

later reinforce a social hierarchy between Ainu and Wajin. For example the Ainu ritual,

uimam, thought to be a mispronunciation of the Japanese omemie, or “audience,” was a

hospitable event that the Ainu would extend to their trade partners. Early accounts of this

custom describe Wajin and Ainu headmen in positions of equal status; however, by the

19th century the meeting had become a mandated arrangement by Matsumae and the Ainu

involved were placed in a distinctively subordinate position47. Similarly, the umsa, less

formal than the uimam, was a local event that was based on greeting acquaintances after a

long absence. In addition, these meetings became staged by local Wajin labor contractors

to gather Ainu in order to convey the edicts of the shogun. Through time these traditions

become less an expression of Ainu cultural norms and more an element of Wajin

bureaucratic protocol (Howell 1994:81-5; 2005:121-123; Takakura 1943).

The tensions caused by rising poverty in Ainu villages and competition between

villages for decreasing resources reached a peak in 1669 when Ainu, under the leadership

of the chieftain Shakushain, began attacking Wajin traders and miners. Amassing Ainu

61

fighters from many communities in the Hidaka area of southern Ezo, Shakushain

advanced toward Matsumae in what has been characterized as all out war on Wajin in

Ezo (Walker 2002). Upon hearing of the outbreak of violence in Ezo, the bakufu ordered

Tsugaru and Nanbu Daimyos in northern Honshu to send troops and equipment to

supplement Matsumae-han’s meager forces. In the ensuing battle the Ainu were defeated

and Shakushain was assassinated during peace negotiations. While not the last Ainu

uprising, the Shakushain rebellion is generally considered by historians to be the last

significant armed resistance by Ainu in Ezo (Siddle 1996:34-36).

By the 18th century there were approximately 70 basho throughout Ezo, most of which

had come under control of Honshu merchants. The eastern coastal area of Ezo was one of

the last to submit due to the tenacity and strength of the Ainu in that region. A member of

Hidaya, a powerful lumber contractor from Edo, traveled to Matsumae in 1702 to gain

access to the plentiful supply of Ezomatsu (Ezo spruce). By 1775, Hidaya had moved into

the fishing industry and taken over several basho in eastern Ezochi including Akkeshi,

Muroran and Soya. Matsumae-han had fallen into debt with the family and ceded the

Kunashiri Menashi area (the eastern coast of Ezo and Kunashiri Island) in lieu of

payment. However, Hidaya’s reputation for severe exploitation and cruelty had spread

among the Ainu. The Ainu chieftain Tsukinoe, a powerful figure among the Ainu of the

Kunashiri Menashi and Etorofu, would not let Hidaya ships establish outposts in the area.

On one occasion, a group of Ainu under his command took the ship’s cargo and sent it

back empty. In retaliation for this outrage, Matsumae-han established a trade embargo

against Etorofu and Kunashiri Islands. In 1782, after six years of privations, Tsukinoe

62

consented to allow Hidaya to set up operations in the Menashi region (Kawakami 2005;

Nemuro Rekishi Kenkyū-kai 1992).

Hidaya Kyūbei began commercial operations in the area in 1782. By 1785 the

situation had deteriorated between Wajin and Ainu to the point that Matsumae guards had

to suppress an uprising. In the record of the investigation it was noted that Hidaya’s men

maintained a high degree of brutality against the Ainu. Labor was coerced and Ainu who

resisted were threatened, beaten and, if they repeatedly disobeyed, poisoned. Ainu

women were routinely raped by Hidaya guards and managers. In May of 1789, Yankichi,

an Ainu chief from Kunashiri, was purportedly given poisoned liquor by an official at a

guardhouse. Yankichi’s brother, Mamekiri, was supported in his call for an uprising

against the Wajin in area by Tsukinoe’s son, Setsuhaya. Forty-one Ainu attacked a guard

outpost in Tonari, killing 22. The violence spread from Kunashiri to the entire Menashi

region. In total 71 Wajin were killed. The uprising was eventually quelled by Ainu elders

who convinced the leaders of the revolt to stop. The subjugation force from Matsumae

executed thirty-seven alleged members of the revolt on a hill near Nemuro called

Nokammappu. The heads of the victims were then preserved in salt and taken back to

Matsumae for display (Nemuro Symposium 1990).

In addition to the scale of the battle and the number of dead, the fact that Ainu in the

Menashi region were at the time seeking trade relations with Russians to the north

unsettled the shogunate in Edo48, hence the bakufu sent Tokunai Mogami to investigate

the causes of the rebellion. Mogami, an explorer of the islands to the north of Honshu,

had, two years prior to the Kunashiri Menashi Rebellion, severely criticized Matsumae-

han for its treatment of the Ainu. In Mogumi’s 1786 Ezochi no Fūsoku Shūkan (Habits

63

and Customs of Ezochi) he criticizes Matsumae-han for (1) ignoring the bakufu’s black

seal missive which ordered Ezochi left to the Ainu, (2) prohibiting Ainu from speaking

the Japanese language and using Japanese dress, and (3) treating Ainu like animals and

slaves (Nihon Shomin Seikatsu Shiryō 1972:625). Upon completing the investigation of

the rebellion, he cites, in addition to the generally poor leadership of the Matsumae-han,

unscrupulous merchants and illegal Wajin workers in the lawless basho regions as

primary causes for the uprising. It was thus due to the perceived ineptitude of Matsumae

in maintaining social order within Ezochi, in addition to the inadequate coastal defenses

that were to repel the imagined Russian advance that, in 1799, the bakufu began directly

managing Ezo.

The Era of Bakufu Control in Ezo (1799-1822)

The bakufu considered the dire conditions in the basho to be motivation enough for

Ainu groups to warm to Russian trade offers. As the Ainu were still a significant source

of labor in the procurement of wealth in Ezo, developing trade networks between Ainu

and Russians would certainly adversely affect Matsumae-han and this in turn would

impact the shogunate itself. Furthermore, should Russia advance into Ezo, it could pose

an immediate threat to Honshu. To avoid these eventualities the bakufu forced Michihiro

Matsumae to step down and took direct control of Wajinchi and temporary control of

Ezochi. The aims of the bakufu were to institute a fairer trade regime with the Ainu,

develop industrial capacities in Ezo and establish patrols around the perimeter of the

island. To better understand the newly claimed territory, the entirety of Ezo was surveyed

and mapped by Tadataka Inō and Kondo Jūzō in 1800. In addition, expeditions were sent

64

north and east of Ezo to Etorofu and Kunashiri islands. On Etorofu a marker was erected

claiming the island for “Great Japan.” Whereas before Ezo acted as a geopolitical buffer

for Honshu, now the southern Chishima islands, islands populated with local Ainu in

addition to largely seasonal Wajin and Russian fishermen, would constitute outposts from

which Japan would protect the shogun’s extension of what was becoming a national

frontier.

Wajin exploitation of Ainu laborers under the basho contract system was seen by the

bakufu as the source of Ainu impoverishment and resentment. As Edo undertook the

administration and development of Ezo, the Matsumae basho contract system was

abolished. In its place the fishing grounds of Ezo would come under the direct

supervision of the bakufu; Ainu headmen were to make annual tribute missions to the

administrative centers in Matsumae and Hakodate49. While Ainu chiefs undoubtedly

viewed these tribute missions as an opportunity to negotiate with Wajin leaders or barter

for items unavailable in the interior, bakufu administrators used these tribute meetings to

secure alliances and present shogunal edicts which could then be disseminated to Ainu

communities.

In concert with geographical territorializations, the bakufu issued the Hakodate Edict

(Hakodate Hōkō 箱館奉公) in 1802 that promoted the policy of wafūka 和風化,

assimilation measures encouraging the Ainu to adopt Japanese language and customs.

This move toward promoting Ainu assimilation of Japanese culture, as opposed to the

prohibitions enforced by Matusmae-han, was considered to be, on the one hand, an

attempt to mollify Ainu resentment and, on the other, to recast the Ainu as Japanese

commoners. The bakufu established legal guidelines for the Ainu which defined the

65

consequences of their actions and offered legal recourse to adjudicate wrongs committed

against them. It is important to note that bakufu magistrates decided cases not only

between Ainu and Wajin, but within Ainu society as well. Suddenly, the evaluation of

legality in the adjudication of cases would, in theory, be measured against Japanese

standards of justice. However, it is more likely that, at first, the methods for resolving

conflicts within the kotan remained by and large based on customary forms of

jurisprudence.

In 1804, the bakufu established three temples: the Kokutaiji in Akkeshi, the Tōjuin of

Samani and the Zenkoji of Usu. These Buddhist outposts were built and supported solely

by the bakufu and charged with protecting Wajin workers and administrators from the

pernicious influence of Christianity from the North. In addition, the temples were

established to encourage the Ainu to embrace Buddhism. Attempts at the latter were

generally unsuccessful, but, more so than other temples in Japan, these outposts became

important points in the system of administration and communication being constructed

between Ezo and Edo (Tahara 2006:54).

By 1807, the bakufu claimed permanent suzerainty over all of Ezo. The mission to

“civilize” the Ainu through cultural assimilation was an effort to once and for all resolve

the ambiguous social space that the Ainu occupied. Neither (Caucasoid) Russian nor of

direct Japanese decent, though they bore racial and cultural characteristics typical of both

groups, the Ainu were a point of anxiety for the bakufu. As potential Russian allies, they

were regarded as a possible threat; as a significant portion of the population of Ezo, in an

era when most commoners were restricted from moving outside of their feudal territory,

the Ainu remained an indispensable source of labor for Ezo-based industries. Thus

66

assimilation seemed to resolve the issue insofar as it would clarify their identity as Wajin-

-and it would follow that, as Wajin, the Ainu and their land would fall under the authority

of the bakufu. Becoming Wajin entailed that the Ainu embrace Buddhism, learn

Japanese, shave their beards, desist from tattooing or piercing their bodies, gain

knowledge of agriculture and the “five grains” and, like all civilized people, tie their

atush on the right-hand side (Morris-Suzuki 1998).

Some Ainu enthusiastically embraced the reforms. One 19th century chronicler of Ezo,

Matsuura Takeshirō, documented the case of an Ainu youth who adapted Japanese

customs and studiously learned the language. The young man, whose name was

Ekashihashiyoi (his adopted Japanese name was Ichitsuke) begged Matsuura to take him

to Edo. Matsuura responded that there were prohibitions against Ainu crossing over to

Honshu and that it would be impossible; however, in the event that restrictions were

eased, Matsuura would send for the boy, which in fact he did years later (Matsuura

2002:258-9). Ainu who endeavored to learn Japanese customs and language tended to be

the children of mixed parentage or Ainu elites that became closely connected to Wajin

labor recruiters.

The most contentious point of the new assimilation measures was shaving and cutting

hair. The missionary John Batchelor writes at length about the dread accompanying

shaving or cutting one’s hair in Ainu society. According to Batchelor, the Ainu believed

that misfortune could be generated through the act of cutting one’s hair either through the

work of a human malefactor, who would use the cast off clippings to employ sympathetic

magic against the newly shorn, or via the gods who would punish Ainu if they cut their

hair while not in mourning (Batchelor 2002 [1898]:166-68). Whatever the case, records

67

from the early 19th century suggest that the Ainu were most resistant upon this point.

When the edict was issued, the chiefs of many Ainu tribes came together and presented

their case for forbearance concerning the shaving of beards and the cropping of hair. In

Sōya, Ainu elders plied bakufu officials with gifts, but to no avail. Instead the officials

rounded up 20 Ainu workers and began to have them forcibly shaved. Realizing what

was happening, the Ainu workers fled, risking punishment over submission. In the end,

officials were able to entice relatively few Ainu with rice, sake, tobacco and clothes to

get them to comply (Howell 2005:146).

Fig.5 Compulsory assimilation in action: Matsuura Takeshirō’s representation of Ainu

being forcibly shaven under the supervision of samurai officials (reprinted from Morris-

Suzuki 1998).

The bakufu wanted to remake the Ainu as Japanese commoners, but it gradually

became obvious that the kind of effort and resources required to enforce the edict was not

68

at the disposal of Ezo officials; thus, the drive to assimilate and civilize became

increasingly less of a legal compulsion. Only in the most sensitive areas, that is

shogunate-controlled areas that abutted Russian-held territories in the Chishima Islands,

were these rules enforced with any rigor. For instance, on Etorofu, Ainu workers were

forcibly shaven and made to wear cotton Japanese jackets and straw sandals. Their

villages were rebuilt to resemble Japanese villages, complete with temples and shrines

(Morris-Suzuki 1998:22).

Despite the uneven effectiveness of the assimilation program, conditions were

improving in the basho as shogunate officials came into direct control of these areas. The

Ainu were able to obtain comparatively reasonable remuneration for their toil, and

bakufu law, as unforgiving as it could be, tended to be more just than the relative

lawlessness of the basho contract era. Better employment circumstances notwithstanding,

increased migration from Honshu brought the spread of disease to Ainu communities and

the population of Wajin in Ezo surpassed that of Ainu for the first time in the early 19th

century50. Immigrant seasonal workers from the south called dekaseki began to make up

for the declining Ainu population. They worked the fishing grounds around Ezo and,

despite their low status, made considerably more than their Ainu counterparts. It is

thought that their presence in increasing numbers in the basho was a primary cause for

the spread of smallpox and venereal diseases among the Ainu.

Matsumae-han Resumes Control of Ezo 1822-1856

With a thaw in Japanese-Russian relations coupled with the incredible financial

burden of patrolling, fortifying and developing Ezo, the bakufu returned control of the

69

island to the Matsumae-han in 1822. Because of the bakufu’s intervention, the

administrative infrastructure was in place for Matsumae-han to supervise conditions at

the basho. The han initially strengthened basho regulations. Vassals of the han were paid

in rice, thus the high level of exploitation that drove the Ainu to rebel in 1789 was

replaced with a more evenly applied remuneration protocol governed by centrally

controlled administrators. Inspections of the basho were regularly made and contractors

were taxed to care for Ainu who were elderly or unable to work due to disease. In

addition, perhaps to the relief of the Ainu workforce, prohibitions against using Japanese

language and customs were reinstated (Matsuura 2002:34-6).

In spite of the improvements enforced by the bakufu and initially by the Matsumae-

han, the next 30 years of Matsumae control was a period of decline for the Ainu of Ezo

and Chishima. The cost of direct control of the basho soon became too much of a burden

for Matsumae and the han began opening up basho control to the highest bidder. Bidding

for basho contracts drove up the expense of operations and merchants once again began

exploiting their workforce of Ainu and, to a lesser extent, the dekaseki. To the detriment

of upriver Ainu communities that relied on the yearly salmon migration to get through the

winter, the use of fixed shore nets became the prevalent method of catching salmon

during the 18th century. In order to offset the high price of contracts, merchants resorted

to setting up vast net traps at the mouths of the rivers to maximize the salmon catch.

These traps required three fishing ships and a crew of 25 to operate; the practice caused a

dramatic plunge in salmon populations and further impoverishment of Ainu

communities—many of which were now forced to relocate into the basho itself. It was

this process of unintentional deprivation that finally brought many Ainu communities, not

70

just the men who would travel far to work in the basho, out from their traditional

territories along the rivers of Ezo and into Wajin controlled administrative areas along the

coasts51.

Beginning with the arrival of Commodore Perry in Edo Bay, Japan opened specific

ports to foreign trade under the 1854 Treaty of Kanagawa. The port of Hakodate in Ezo

was opened to America, Britain and the Netherlands—all of whom began to conduct

trade in with China via this port. The northern border of Japan was formally established

with the “Treaty of Shimoda” which was negotiated with Russia in 1855. Through the

treaty, Japan would control Ezo, the southern portion of Karafuto (Sakhalin) and the

southern Chishima Islands (Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and Habomai); Russia would

take northern Karafuto and the Chishima archipelago north of Etorofu. In this way Japan

came into possession of Ainu lands within the emerging relational framework of

internationally recognized nation-states. Acknowledging its responsibility as the central

authority of the more concretely defined Japanese nation and its direct responsibility in

the defense of its borders, in 1856 the bakufu once again resumed direct control of Ezo

and southern Chishima.

Kaga Denzō

It is important to keep in mind that during this period, many Ainu were adapting to the

new ecological, political and economic developments on Ezo to the best of their ability.

This observation is often obscured due to the scanty documentation that exists concerning

Ainu populations during the mid-19th century. One exception is the collected materials of

Kaga Denzō which illustrate the ways by which some Ainu were actively participating in

71

the development of Ezo, not for the benefit of basho contractors, Matsumae-han or the

bakufu, rather their efforts were exerted to procure new sources of food for their tribes.

Denzō’s recollections reveal tribal people “becoming modern” in much the same way

Wajin peasants were adapting to new political economic circumstances of early modern

Japan: by adopting new modes of production.

In 1804 Kaga Denzō was born in the town of Hachimori on the west coast of Honshu,

Japan’s main island. He crossed to Ezo as a young man in 1818 and worked as a

Japanese/Ainu-language translator along the east coast of the island until his death in

1874. For much of this time he lived between the towns Bekkai and Shibetsu working

with the local Ainu. His notes from this time indicate the major political shifts in the

region, but more importantly, he records a fairly fine-grained portrayal of life in the

basho.

As a translator he was routinely asked to relay official statements to the local Ainu

workers. For example, from one such notice written by an outgoing basho contractor in

1864, there is a note of embarrassment, “the contract for the Shibestu area has lapsed this

year as there have been few fish and profits are very low. It has been difficult to maintain

such a large basho and it has not been well taken care of. The next contractor will

somehow have to do better” (Kaga 2002a:24). Due to overexploitation of the fishing

grounds, stocks were rapidly deteriorating by the mid-19th century. This may also

partially explain why Shibetsu Ainu were turning to agriculture at this time.

Kaga Denzō would regularly jot down personal reflections about the cultural

incongruities between the hunter-gatherer impulses in Ainu society and the agricultural

ethos of basho officials. He writes, “these days the dogs have proliferated and they snap

72

at the ponies and claves. From time to time they are eaten by the dogs. The dogs are

important for the Ainu, but they are hard on the cows and horses. Consequently, as soon

as dogs are seen biting at the cows and horses they are killed. When this happens, the

Ainu workers watch severely, holding back harsh words” (Kaga 2002a:62). Here the

unequal relations in the basho are laid bare, as it is certainly the threat of violence that

keeps the Ainu from protesting.

In other writings, general observations are made registering the changes occurring

along the frontier, “All of Ezo has come under bakufu control--because of the improved

conditions, the Ainu now work vigorously in the fishing grounds, and occasionally they

even plow the fields…The government official, basho manager, translator and guards’ do

not hesitate to make their pronouncements…If something is unreasonable, petitions are

made to the magistrate’s office. The officials will then investigate…We are told that we

should not become Christian” (Kaga 2002a:56). The 1854 resumption of bakufu control

in Ezo was, again, in response declining living conditions in Matsumae-managed Ezo and

to renewed Russian interest in the area. The issue of the Ainu or the settlers around the

basho adopting Christianity was an attempt to head off the soft imperialism of

missionaries coming from foreign lands to a country emerging from 200 years of relative

seclusion. When Kaga mentions Ainu plowing fields, he is referring to the efforts of local

Ainu headman Chauemon and his attempt to learn how to cultivate a number of varieties

of grain and vegetables during Ezo’s remarkably short growing season.

Although the bulk of Ainu nutrition was commonly gleaned from forests, rivers and

the sea, they typically cultivated small gardens to supplement what food they gathered.

The Japanese who settled in Ezo also tended small gardens in and around Matsumae in

73

the southwest of the island. Records from 1588 indicate small-scale vegetable gardening,

as do a number of 18th century travel books. However, up through the first half of the 19th

century even small-scale gardening was not found in the industrial fishing areas along

Ezo’s eastern seaboard. As the bakufu took control of Ezo for the first time in 1800, it

issued the “Ezo Maintenance Policy” (Ezo Buiku Hōshin) which encouraged the

expansion of cultivation, especially around the contracted fishing areas. The policy

mentions that in Ezo “grain is more precious than meat” and therefore agricultural

production should be encouraged. Furthermore, the bakufu thought that agricultural

experimentation around the existing basho would ultimately provide a template for

widespread cultivation in Ezo. This suggests that they were taking the Russian threat

seriously and considering a more direct and permanent approach than commercial

contracts to occupying the island. Actual colonization was stalled in the early 19th

century and abandoned altogether as the Matsumae-han was again appointed to manage

basho contracts in 1822. However, as the bakufu stepped in again in 1854, it redoubled its

efforts toward compulsory assimilation. In addition, Edo lifted the travel restrictions

between Honshu and Ezo, encouraging Japanese to emigrate to Ezo and settle. The new

administrative center of the island, located in Hakodate, began building roads across the

island and clearing the interior. Government officials began conducting inspections of

basho to ensure adequate living conditions and that recommendations were being

followed. To further entice the Ainu into adopting agriculture, hoes and other gardening

tools were given out (Mōshi Watashi 1858). However, as mentioned above, the Ainu

worked year- round in the fishing industry and free time was rare.

74

It is difficult to explain exactly why the Ainu headman Chauemon decided to start

digging up fields in Shibetsu (Chashikotsu) and having Kaga Denzo order quantities of

seed from Honshu. But according to observers, he went at it with a single-minded

devotion, enlisting the help of many other Ainu in the region (Matsuura 2002). It could

be that he sensed that the change in government was something more permanent this time

and he was eager to adapt to the new social and political conditions—he had adopted

kanji to express his name and began cutting his hair in the manner of a Japanese

commoner. It might also have to do with the fact the fishing grounds at this time had

severely decreased in productivity—freeing up Ainu workers to engage in other pursuits.

It is also likely that agricultural production in the area would have been be a hedge

against the starvation that would certainly follow plunging salmon and herring

populations. What is known is that Chauemon was the first to show that agriculture was

possible in east Ezo, an area with the shortest growing season in Japan. The soil was so

poor in the area that earth had to be carried in from the uplands down to the coastal area

where fields were dug around the wayhouses and guard stations the first year. With a

successful first harvest, the fields were expanded and new fields cleared on the outskirts

of the basho (Kaga 2002b:98).

By the mid-19th century, Ainu tribal practices had long been a syncretic amalgam of

traditional Ainu culture and the adopted customs of Japanese fishermen and now farmers.

In some cases, like in the Japanese fishing grounds along the Kuril Archipelago, cultural

assimilation measures were compulsory and the Ainu in those locations were changed

into Japanese commoners to better define under which polity these peripheral islands

belonged (Morris-Suzuki 1998). However, in Ezo, identities were more fluid, even under

75

bakufu regulations. Kaga Denzo records many examples that indicate the durability of

traditional Ainu culture throughout his career in Ezo. And Matsuura Takeshirou

illustrates Ainu ambivalence about cultural norms under bakufu policies (Matsuura

2002:169-72). It is clear that the Ainu at this time were largely picking and choosing

among multiple cultural traditions and doing their best to adapt to changing

environmental, political economic and social circumstances. That the Ainu population

has at the very least tripled since the mid-19th century and continues to thrive in Japan is a

testament to the cultural acumen of this indigenous people.

Fig. 6 A section of a series of screens from 1864 depicting Ainu laborers in Shibetsu

basho. Baskets of herring are being carried from the boats to curing sheds as Ainu stitch

together sails on the opposite bank. Basho officials observe at center-left. (From Pogawa

Museum, Shibetsu, Hokkaido)

76

The bakufu sought to promote agriculture in Ezo to make the colonization of Ainu

lands a reality and thus better extend its suzerainty over its periphery. The Ainu in east

Ezo were perched on another kind of borderland, between tradition and modernity. While

Chauemon’s cultural negotiations saddens Matsuura Takeshirou (2002:172), many

commentators look to this kind of culture change and evaluate it as symptomatic of either

assimilation or societal collapse, I regard it as the emergence of a subjectivity

characteristic of modernity: profoundly local, yet caught within far-reaching circuits of

imperialist projects and capitalist expansion. And we see Chauemon juggling tradition,

political expediency and base necessity as he adopts some Japanese customs and

agriculture, yet he keeps his beard, his language and many of his cultural practices. This

hybridity was typical of many peoples across the globe that came into contact with

imperialist powers. Therefore, this period of cultural change was not indicative of the

collapse of Ainu society (e.g. Kawakami 1986; Irimoto 2000), in fact these kinds of

analyses feed the notion that modern Ainu are vanishing, biologically impure or

culturally inauthentic (Hilger 1967; Etter 1949); rather the mid-19th century was the

beginning of a novel, and if survival as a people is any measure of success, a successful

articulation with the forces of modernity on Japan’s new northern frontier.

The era of over 250 years of bakufu control of Japan and, intermittently, Ezo, began

with the Ainu acting as equal trading partners with a high degree of sovereignty and, per

Hideyoshi’s edict of 1604, mobility to move about as they pleased between Ezo and

Honshu. Gradually, as trade became restricted in the latter half of the 17th century, Ainu

were forced to trade exclusively through Matsumae-han in Southern Ezo. In the 18th

century, trading became restricted further to trading-posts and fishing grounds or basho.

77

In the basho, the Ainu could only work through contractor intermediaries; consequently,

they were further removed from the normative juridical mechanisms of the daimyo,

allowing for decreasing remuneration and a hitherto unseen level of brutality at the hands

of basho contractors. By the time of the Kunishiri Rebellion, Ainu were coerced to work

like slaves in the fishing grounds of Eastern Ezo. To stave off further insurrections and

possible Ainu-Russian alliances, the bakufu took direct control of the basho in Ezo,

bringing the Ainu some relief from the grinding poverty of the merchant contract era. In

addition, the Tokugawa polity came to view them as both a means toward a northward

territorialization of Ezo and Chishima and as something of social problem insofar as it

was thought that they could be uplifted through the civilizing influences of Japanese

language and custom—both projects were undertaken through the enforcement of the

bakufu’s first Ainu assimilation policy.

The mid-19th century interval of a reconstituted Matsumae reign only further disrupted

traditional modes of Ainu existence as communities moved near the Wajin controlled

basho—Ainu men and children worked the fishing grounds and Ainu women were often

taken as mistresses by Wajin contractors and guards (Matsuura 2002:55-62). Tahara

Kaori suggests that theories concerning the purity, or impurity, of the Ainu race were

rooted in this period (2006:57)52. As the bakufu once again assumed control of Ezo in the

mid-19th century, it redoubled its efforts toward compulsory assimilation. In addition,

Edo lifted the travel restrictions between Honshu and Ezo, encouraging Wajin to

emigrate to Ezo. As the Ainu decreased in proportion to the number of Wajin immigrants

entering Ezo, they ceased to be a labor supply problem and became, instead, because of

endemic poverty and the spread of disease among the Ainu, a social problem for the

78

bakufu. This reassessment of the place of the Ainu in Japanese society was well

underway when the Tokugawa bakufu was unseated in 1868 during the restoration to

power of the Meiji Emperor.

The Ainu during the Meiji Period (1868-1912)

As Japan emerged as a modern nation-state after the Meiji Restoration, Ezo, renamed

Hokkaido (often translated as “north sea route”) in 1869, and its inhabitants became the

focus of a much more complex system of policies and laws. Hokkaido was seen by the

new government as a vast region of natural resources that would fuel Japan’s leap into an

industrial modernity. In 1869 the Hokkaido Colonization Commission (Hokkaido

Kaitakushi 北海道開拓使) was created to guide the process of surveying, clearing and

establishing areas for Wajin colonists and industrial interests53. Interestingly, Ainu were

routinely employed on survey teams as guides and laborers. The vast majority of place-

names in Hokkaido are of Ainu origin and it was only during the Meiji era that these

names were assigned Chinese characters, or kanji, a move that at once infused these

places with an air of Japanese-ness, yet also produced confusing meanings completely

divorced from what they were purportedly describing54. Assimilation measures, aimed at

turning the Ainu into productive and localizable Japanese citizens, were enacted

piecemeal in the first thirty years of the Meiji era, culminating in the comprehensive 1899

Former Aborigines Act which aggressively sought to alleviate the suffering of Ainu

communities in Hokkaido through a mixture of assimilation and welfare policies.

The Meiji period (1868-1912) was founded on the idea, long suppressed during the

265 years of shogunate rule, that the Emperor of Japan was the divine political leader of

79

the nation. From the outset the feudal han system was dismantled and the land divided

into prefectures which functioned through the bureaucratic structures originally

developed by the daimyo. The notion of kokutai or “national essence” was an ideological

construction that connected the Emperor and by extension his subjects to the nation’s

mystical origins—a move that placed previously feudal domains firmly under the

suzerainty of the Emporer. Tokyo University’s Naitō Chisō’s55 Kokutai Hakki is

representative of a genre of political works that emphasized the distinctiveness and, in

fact, divinity, of the Japanese people: “Concerning the Japanese race, every citizen is the

descendent of the gods. In the Family Registry, the grandchildren of heaven and the

Empire may differ in name, but all are the seed of gods” (Naitō 1889:2). If the state was

to be modeled after the family with the Emperor at the lead, there was no room for

Ryūkyūans or Ainu, people who were by history, custom, and language not related to the

Yamato Japanese. This distance from the mythical ethnogenesis of the Japanese people

needed to be overcome if the narrative of the divine national family was to successfully

unite an expanding nation recently fractured by the Boshin War (i.e. the war between the

shogun’s forces and those loyal to Emporer Meiji).

To remake the native population of Hokkaido into Japanese citizens the government

employed two not unrelated approaches. Assimilation measures, doka seisaku 同化政策,

that sought to redefine the Ainu as Japanese citizens were the first to be deployed. The

second approach, the one that was turned to in earnest only after the failure of the first,

was welfare (hogo 保護 or buiku 撫育). These two policies were linked insofar as

welfare measures were organized around the idea that by giving the Ainu the productive

means (i.e. land, seed and tools) and knowledge, they would naturally switch to

80

agriculture as a means of subsistence and participate in the broader economy developing

in the north. With this in mind, the Kaitakushi focused first on changing Ainu

employment patterns in Hokkaido which had been for centuries based on seasonal

industries such as fishing or logging.

The basho contract system was banned in 1869. By this time many generations of

Ainu had lived and died working the fishing grounds under the old system. The Ainu had

incorporated rice, which did not grow in Ezo, and sake into their diets and ritual

observances for centuries. Furthermore, many Ainu relied on their wages to supplement

the food obtained from hunting and fishing; so, in spite of the poor conditions found in

the basho, there were several tribes of Ainu that protested the disbanding of the old

system and the attendant welfare measures that distributed food to the elderly and infirm

in the basho. Furthermore, as fish and deer populations had been in decline for years, the

government instituted a series of fishing and hunting restrictions beginning in 1876.

Deprived of their traditional methods of subsistence, famines began to sweep Ainu

villages. In 1884 government officials were sent to Nemuro and Sapporo prefectures to

alleviate famines that were beyond the abilities of local administrators to handle.

Like the bakufu before them, the Meiji era Kaitakushi pursued an aggressive

assimilation program to bring the “benefits of civilization” to the Ainu. In 1871, the Ainu

were included into the Family Registry (koseki 戸籍)—they were listed with other

Japanese as commoners (heimin 平民), but also marked as “former natives” (kyūdojin 旧

土人). They were given Japanese names, often with their Ainu names transcribed in

katakana next to the kanji. Due to a need for expediency in the early years, or a lack of

imagination, there were entire villages whose members were all assigned the same

81

surname. In the same year, the traditional customs of tattooing the mouth and hands of

Ainu women, ear piercings on men and the funerary ritual involving burning the house of

the deceased were banned. In 1872, thirty-six Ainu men and women were sent to Tokyo,

apparently against their will, to learn Japanese, arithmetic and agriculture (Fig.6). The

conditions were squalid and four Ainu died in the experiment; the rest returned home

within one year (Hokkaido Kaitaku Kinenkai 2000:44).

There were a series of land reforms that first dispossessed Ainu of their customary

lands and later tried to redistribute the land in such a way as to commit the Ainu to

agriculture, a mode of subsistence entirely foreign to most Ainu and who had, until the

Meiji era, sustained themselves variously on hunting and gathering, limited gardening,

trading and seasonal wage labor. Article Seven of the Land Regulations of 1872 stated

that native lands would be divided into separate units and owned privately or collectively.

In the same year, Article 16 of the Hokkaido Land Act stipulated that all Ainu lands were

to be nationalized. A nominal fee was paid to Ainu tribes in the process of appropriating

their land (Hokkaido Kaitaku Kinenkai 2000:44-5).

82

Fig. 7 Ainu studying abroad at the school in Tokyo 1872-1873 (Northern Peoples

Collection, HokkaidoUniversity)

Some limited attempts were made by the Kaitakushi to redistribute land in set amounts

per Ainu household. In 1877 small plots, often less that 0.5 hectare were given to Ainu

households in a variety of locations (see the 1877 Ordinance to Distribute Land in

Hokkaido). The Kaitakushi transformed in 1882 into three separate bureaucratic domains

in charge of the administration of the three Hokkaido prefectures: Sapporo, Hakodate and

Nemuro. Between 1883-1885 seed and agricultural tools were more widely distributed

along with small plots to Ainu in the Sapporo and Nemuro prefectures in the hopes that

the Ainu might adopt agriculture. Many of these plots were in areas that were not well-

suited to agricultural production. As for the Ainu, they knew nothing about farming;

consequently, many continued to hunt and fish, often running afoul of the law, for their

subsistence. This program was discontinued by 1890 (Peng 1974:732).

83

During this period of agricultural expansion, despite the government’s efforts toward

assimilation, the Ainu were often grouped together and moved into separate Ainu

villages. The villages themselves were relocated depending on the needs of the new

waves of Wajin immigrants or the prefectural governments. For example, in 1875,

because of a new treaty with Russia, Karafuto was exchanged in its totality for the

Chishima Archipelago. Initially given the freedom to choose their nationality as either

Japanese or Russian, 841 Karafuto Ainu were brought to the town of Soya in northern

Hokkaido. One year later they were forced to migrate to Tsuishikari where officials

sought to teach them farming and cottage industries; however, the land was poor and the

Ainu resisted the officials’ efforts to teach them agriculture. Half of the original group of

Karafuto Ainu died in the cholera and smallpox outbreaks of 1886-7, most of those who

remained returned to Karafuto by the time the Japanese had reacquired the southern

portion of the island after the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 (Siddle 1996:64).

.

Fig. 8 Karafuto Ainu and the Kaitakushi Officials during the forced migration of 1876

(Northern Peoples Collection, Hokkaido University)

84

A similar policy designed to promote self-sufficiency and education was launched in

Nemuro Prefecture in 1884. In one case, four kotan in the mountains in the Ashoro

district of southeast Hokkaido were targeted for implementation of the policy. Prefectural

officials uprooted three of the kotan and had the households merge into a single village

that was in a more favorable location for agricultural production. However, the nearby

river had few salmon and the surrounding hills no longer had deer due to harsh winters

and Wajin hunters. The lack of enthusiasm the Ainu held for agriculture was reflected in

the fact that officials found it difficult to keep able-bodied men from traveling to work for

wages; thus, very little land actually went into cultivation. In addition, institutional

support for these programs was spotty and tended to phase out long before their

completion date. These obstacles to transforming the Ainu into Japanese farmers were

systemic in the colonization and subsequent development of Hokkaido. Ainu men

preferred a combination of survival strategies: seasonal wage labor in the fisheries in

summer and early autumn and hunting and gathering from late autumn through spring—

modes of subsistence which had served them relatively well over the course of the last

century. Due to the harsh winters and short growing seasons, this mode of subsistence

would in general better serve the Ainu than it would smallholding farmers (Howell

2005:181-4).

By the end of the century, in an effort to establish some kind of general policy that

would give the Ainu a means for economic development in the modern Japanese state,

the government passed the 1899 Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act (Hokkaido

Kyūdojin Hogohō 北海道旧土人保護法). To encourage agricultural development, the

85

law granted up to five hectares of land per Ainu household that would remain tax-free for

30-years. Once granted, the land could only be passed on to an heir and could not be

mortgaged. In addition, the land had to be cultivated within 15 years or it would revert to

state control. Schools and hospitals would be built in Ainu communities and welfare

assistance for tuition, medical care and agricultural tools would be provided. While the

intention of policymakers was undoubtedly to safeguard the Ainu from destitution, the

result was that most Ainu households would lose their land within two generations.

The policy largely failed for a number of reasons, but the primary reason was that it

did not value Ainu land-use patterns at the time. In addition to this oversight, many of the

land grant plots had not been surveyed and were simply impossible to fully cultivate.

Despite the 5 hectare plot size prescribed in the law, the average plot granted was 2.7

hectares and quite often up to 20% of that land was uncultivable. Typically, half of the

cultivated land was rented out to tenant farmers, thus leaving less than 1 hectare of land

per Ainu household. This arrangement recalled traditional Ainu subsistence patterns in

which a small plot was cultivated by the women while the men traveled for seasonal

wage labor or hunted, and this continued to be the case. Furthermore, it is estimated that

about 30% of Hokkaido Ainu received no land as they tended to migrate from forest to

village and village to island (Takakura 1943; Peng 1974:733).

The Meiji Era assimilation measures forced on the Ainu were indicative of broader

social and political changes occurring in Japan. Japan underwent its miraculous

transformation from an agrarian feudal economy to an industrialized nation with the

military might to defeat China and Russia while extending its political influence

throughout East Asia56. At this time, Japanese citizens were experiencing the social and

86

economic upheavals concomitant with this transition. However, as Naofume Nakamura

(2000:187) argues, the provinces were motivated by an emerging sense of nationalism to

embrace industrial development—a sentiment expressed in the Meiji Era slogan “national

prosperity, strong military!” (fukoku kyōhei 富国強兵)57. The political structure had

shifted from a feudal hierarchy of classes in which the individual obtained legal

definition through the context of their social position as commoner, merchant, samurai,

geographical position and the predilections of the local daimyo. Now a putative

constitutional monarchy wherein the individual had a direct relationship with the state,

the horizon of the “common good” was no longer limited to class or fiefdom, but

expanded to include projects framed by the discourse of the national family.

Understandably, Ainu enthusiasm for and direct participation in Meiji Era jingoism was

limited; yet, their image as a colonized people was invaluable to Japan’s reputation as an

imperial power. The Ainu, considered by 19th century Wajin administrators as marginally

assimilated constituents of the nascent national-state (as Nihonjin instead of Wajin), were

once used as an ethnic marker that defined the frontier of the Tokugawa polity vis-à-vis

Russia, yet abroad the Ainu-as-savage image was used to portray Japan as a modern

colonial power in international expositions.

The Ainu in the 20th Century: the beginning of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai

As Japan established itself as an economic and military power in East Asia, the

government began displaying itself internationally as a modern imperial state. The Ainu

played a significant part in this spectacle. No longer the focus of half-hearted assimilation

measures, the Ainu-as-exotic had become a point of reference by which Japan could

87

portray itself as a regional power through interpolating itself within a regional racial

hierarchy and valorizing modern notions of social and technological progress (see

Fig.11). This is most clearly seen in Japan’s involvement with international expositions at

the turn of the century. Hong Kal (2005) illustrates the spatial and visual organization of

the Japanese section of international exposition was manipulated to “orientalize” Japan’s

imperial subjects (e.g. Ainu, Okinawans, Koreans, Taiwanese) by exaggerating the

differences between colonized and colonizer. The Ainu were featured at the 1903 Osaka

Industrial Exposition along with Okinawans and Taiwanese and again in the 1904 St.

Louis Exposition. In St. Louis the Ainu were billed as the “Gentle Savages of Japan” and

differences in housing, dress, language, custom and body were emphasized (Starr 1904).

The Japanese worked with an American anthropologist in arranging their exhibit of

“eight fine [Ainu] specimens.” The result was that the “primitive” Ainu acted as a

backdrop for the “civilized” Japanese exhibit in much the same way the United States

positioned itself among its Native American and Filipino exhibits. Images of the Ainu

wearing traditional clothing in front of a grass hut contrasted sharply with the intricate

architecture and painstaking design of Japanese houses and gardens that comprised most

of the 7-acre display58 (Fig. 9). Japan, like many of the Western nations represented,

exhibited itself as the pinnacle of progress in its region.

88

Fig. 9 The Ainu exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair (Starr 1904).

89

Fig. 10 A Japanese house in the 1904 World’s Fair: the women in traditional dress pose

with the men in a mix of Japanese/Western attire that was fashionable at the turn of the

century (courtesy of the St. Louis Public Library).

Fig.11 A representation of the “racial hierarchy” from a fair pamphlet originally entitled

“Types and Development of Man.” The white European/America occupies pride of place

at top right, the Japanese place third and the Ainu rank third from the bottom (from Buel

1904, reprinted in Christ 2000:691).

90

The participation in international expositions could be considered the first incitement

to produce cultural theater the Ainu experienced in the modern period. This compulsion

would later be felt as many Ainu families presented themselves in traditional

performances for tourists, anthropologists and other voyeurs eager to experience the

“exotic northern barbarians.” In the early 20th century, the Japanese Government reversed

its ban on iyomante (bear sending ceremony), the ritual slaughter of a young bear, and

pressured Ainu to perform the rite for tourists. It was quite a draw; a film from the 1920s

shows hundreds of Japanese spectators viewing the ceremony in one Ainu village.

Consequently, some Ainu found an economic niche wherein the nuances of traditional

cultural practice could be reiterated and retained; however, it can be assumed that, for

much of the audience, it was the titillating magnetism of danger and blood that drew them

to witness the spectacle.

Despite some remunerative activities associated with tourism, the Ainu of Hokkaido

were still relatively uneducated and underemployed in the early 20th century. In 1930 the

Hokkaido Ainu Association was established as a government organization that would

help the Ainu successfully assimilate into Japanese society through a variety of social

measures, eventually advocating for a repeal of the “Former Aborigines Act of 1899.” It

was thought that the Ainu could not become full Japanese citizens until the stigma

associated with the term “Former Aborigine” (Kyūdojin ) was erased. In spite of its

assimilationist goals, the organization established a network through which Ainu from all

over Hokkaido could meet and discuss the shared experience of being Ainu. The

Japanese had generally considered the Ainu a single people despite obvious differences in

geographic location, language and custom, yet until the founding of the Ainu

91

Association, the Ainu had never considered themselves as having such an explicitly

shared identity. The meetings and journals that came from this government sponsored

interaction laid the groundwork for a trans-local identity that would later provide grist for

the indigenous rights movement in the later half of the twentieth century.

Conclusion

This chapter begins with current debates about the origin of the Japanese people and

how the Ainu are implicated as both autochthonous to the archipelago and, at least

genetically, bound up within the modern national body. There are racial, cultural and

spatial dimensions to this narrative that play themselves out in the scientific and popular

literature on the migration of genetic substances throughout the 3000 mile Japanese

Archipelago—a narrative that has consequences for a hitherto comfortable sense of

belonging many Japanese feel toward their national geography. Just as scientific research

has recently raised questions about the genetic origins and geographic distribution of so-

called Yamato Japanese, the history of Wajin incursions into, and subsequent

colonization of, Ezo (and Okinawa) point to a two distinct methods of territoriality

employed by Wajin commercial and state interests. For the basho contractors, Ainu

ethnicity, distinct as it was from that of the Wajin, gave them license to treat the Ainu in a

manner that would have run the contractors afoul of the law in domains other than

Matsumae. This difference in ethnicity was reinforced by prohibitions against the Ainu

affecting Wajin cultural practices (dress, language, hair style). Many basho were found in

coastal areas well outside of Wajinchi and thus well beyond even the area within which

Matsumae could conceivably enforce bakufu edicts. It is no coincidence that the bloody

92

Kunashiri Uprising corresponded to period of particularly intense exploitative practices

employed by a regional contractor working weeks away from the nearest daimyo. The

emerging Japanese state, on the other hand, required the Ainu to begin to adopt Japanese

styles of dress, language and other customs in order to ethnically mark as Wajin a

northern frontier that it was otherwise incapable of patrolling or occupying.

The Meiji government cleared up any ambiguity concerning the northern island

through its 1869 annexation and renaming it “Hokkaido.” While colonization efforts had

been employed in the past, the Meiji government, bent as it was on becoming a modern

nation-state after the recently coalesced nation-states of Europe, organized the

Colonization Commission or Kaitakushi to implement the central government’s plan to

populate and develop its fecund northern acquisitions (including portions of the Kuril

Archipelago and Karafuto). Now living in communities within an established nation-

state, and increasingly within the emerging cities of Hokkaido, Ainu ethnicity ceases to

be a geographical issue (i.e. bound up with marking national territory) and becomes

instead a social and a political problem for the Meiji government—or to put it another

way, the Ainu were at one time seen as a solution to a territorial problem that had been

vexing the Japanese nation, yet, beginning with the Meiji Era, they become a social

problem for the state.

As the nature of the so-called “Ainu problem” (Ainu mondai) changes through time,

the ambivalence over their ethnicity intensifies. While at home the Japanese government

promotes cultural and linguistic assimilation, records Ainu individuals in the national

family registry (koseki), and encourages the adoption of Japanese surnames; yet at world

expositions abroad Ainu “specimens” are required to dress in traditional garb, sing in

93

their native language and pretend to live in huts. The new government required them to

perform both roles: citizen and colonial subject. These two trajectories, turning the Ainu

people into “ethnic Japanese” and thus citizens of the new nation-state, and encouraging

some Ainu to perform their cultural traditions, take on new valences early in the 20th

century. The adoption of Wajin bureaucratic methods of organizing dovetails with the

“incitement to culture” promoted by the state and concerned Ainu, culminating in

establishment of the Hokkaido Ainu Kyōkai. This becomes a watershed moment in the

history of the Ainu people. Gathering Ainu from every region of Hokkaido, the new

organization created a mode of sociality without precedent in Japan. It promoted a forum

through which experiences were shared, opinions debated, and the future of a people

would be negotiated. More significant to my thesis, was the Hokkaido Ainu Kyōkai’s

linkability to both organs of the Japanese state and emerging international organizations

in the postwar era. The following chapter details these developments and their impact on

a sense of collectivity and place for many Ainu - a sense that was partially predicated on

an emerging international political movement.

94

Chapter Three

Bureaus, Blood and Bombs: Ainu Political Organization in the 20th Century

The Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai (北海道ウタリ協会) was established in 1930 as the

Hokkaido Ainu Association59 to distribute welfare to the Ainu in Hokkaido and to find

remedies for perceived social problems (e.g. poverty, education, hygiene, and

assimilation) faced by many Ainu throughout the prefecture. As a component of the state

bureaucracy during Japan’s fascist period60, the association during the 1930s and early

1940s has been largely overlooked in terms of its contribution to the development of

contemporary Ainu social organization, identity, and politics. The political environment

of 1930s Showa Japan made was not, perhaps, conducive to the establishment of an

organization that was founded on the reality of ethnic heterogeneity. An eagerness to

insert political slogans within essays written by Ainu constituents is witnessed throughout

the first issue of the new organization’s newsletter.

There is no agreement as to the precise nature of Japanese political culture during

1930s and early 1940s, so one must proceed with caution when portraying it as “fascist.”

While acknowledging the disagreement among postwar Japanese intellectuals over the

concept’s validity in describing Japan during the Second World War, Miles Fletcher

argues that the concept of fascism was very meaningful to intellectuals and policymakers

of the period. He asserts that the government-supported New Order Movement (shintaisei

undō) was in many respects a fascist movement modeled on similar movements in

Germany and Italy. The New Order Movement sought to eliminate market capitalism and

95

opposition parties in Japan – binding the citizen to the state in the process (Fletcher

1979:61). Peter Duus and Daniel Okimoto critique Fletcher’s analysis by indicting that

political and ideological fragmentation was much more pronounced in Japan during the

1930s and 1940s than generally acknowledged (Duus and Okimoto 1979). Harry

Harootunian finds interwar Japan as a country wrestling with the cultural and political

impacts, and uneven spread, of modernity in Japan. The reaction to these relatively

sudden changes culminated in many Japanese adopting preferences toward gemeinschaft

capitalism, a strong state, militarism, corporatism and authoritarianism, and concerns for

recuperating national culture (Harootunian 2000:xiii). Similar to Harootunian, I am

employing “fascism” to indicate less an explicit political program, and more of a set of

practices rooted in the mythos of national homogeneity and deployed to resist the effects

of modernity (i.e. spread of liberal democracy and market capitalism). The political and

cultural affects of these tendencies, felt throughout the industrialized world, and certainly

in Japan, placed limits on how the Ainu could represent themselves through public

forums like their publication Ezo no Hikari.

Historical circumstances aligned in such a way as to position the organization at once

near to the heart of northern Japan’s political economic development, that is, the bureau

maintained deep ties to various ministries concerned with natural resource management

and social welfare in Hokkaido, and at a distance from the national family increasingly

defined as the Yamato Japanese lineage that was thought to link emperor and citizen. The

existence of an organization that embodied racial, cultural, and linguistic differences was

disruptive to not only narratives of nationhood, but to the constitutional laws that both

96

precluded the possibility of ethnic heterogeneity in Japan and regulated the relationship

between the state and its citizens.

In the bureau’s second incarnation, beginning in 1946, but especially during the

ascendancy of indigenous politics in the late 20th century, the Utari Kyōkai also became

ensconced within the international network of organizations that promote international

law and the exceptional status of indigenous peoples the world over. These dual

commitments, to the governmental agencies that regulate the resources of the Utari

Kyōkai and its members and to the international organizations that seek to transform the

nation-state into a more pluralist and less bounded entity, have largely shaped the means

by which the organization pursues its goals, and, by extension, the political possibilities

of the Ainu nation itself.

Embedded within the history of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai is the central problematic

of reconciling difference, whether construed as race, cultural tradition or indigeneity,

between Ainu and Wajin communities. There have been a number of approaches used by

the association to address the issues that difference posed for the Ainu community. In

each case, semblances were produced (e.g. with Japanese nationalism, cultural

revitalization efforts by other indigenous groups, and, more broadly, with the global

indigenous rights movement), however incomplete, to bridge the rupture in the normative

regime in question. Whenever the domestic political or international environments

changed, new differences emerged and semblances were often deployed to help constitute

a new political identity. It is exactly this process that has driven the bureau toward its

accomplishments and, arguably, perpetuates its relevance.

97

In the 1930s the Hokkaido Ainu Association sought to overcome discrimination and

its attendant social problems by advocating a repeal of the stigmatizing Former

Aborigines Act of 1899 and promoting assimilation with broader Japanese society. In the

1960s and 1970s, the rechristened Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai eschewed assimilation and

embraced cultural and linguistic revivalism. In the last two decades of the 20th century,

the organization proliferated its connections to the international movement for indigenous

rights. Today, the technocrats of the Utari Kyōkai are making progress towards increased

access to natural resources, adding Ainu history to Japanese textbooks and shaping policy

stemming from the Japanese Government’s recent recognition of the Ainu as the

indigenous people of Japan.

For many of the Ainu I spoke with, there is a marked ambivalence concerning the

Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai. As a bureau that is currently working toward the spatial and

ideational redefinition of Hokkaido and the Northern Territories, a move which

constitutes a subtle dismantling of the lynchpins of the modern Japanese state,

peoplehood, territorial integrity (already a tall order on an 1000 mile archipelago) and

individual rights, there is an impatience with the association’s slow, almost glacial, speed

of progress. This propensity toward ostensibly endless negotiation and cautious agenda is

often misconstrued as conservatism61. In order to retain the impression of control over the

political and social agenda of the Ainu community62, the bureau often finds itself having

to “catch up” with more progressive Ainu NGOs when circumstances demand action.

Perpetually caught within conservative social networks such as the prefectural ministries

and other agencies that are integral to its daily operations and the more progressive bent

of many of its members, the Utari Kyōkai must, in the words of one informant, “proceed

98

with a delicate balance” to remain relevant while achieving its aims. It has been doing

this for some 60 years since its most recent incarnation; the bureaucrats central to its

operation have accrued valuable experience in performing this balancing act of

subsuming and managing diverse interests.

From the body to the global, the Utari Kyōkai has been central in translating and

transforming the aspirations of many in the Ainu community across different social

fields. In this chapter I begin with foray into the social theory of bureaucracy and how

various commentators have approached this particular mode of social organization. Next,

I present a brief history of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai while considering the broader

social changes that provided context for the modifications in name, agenda and function

of the association through time. I then look at how the political organization of the Ainu

in the 20th century has followed changing notions of national consanguinity in Japan and

the different ways that blood has been deployed as a spatial metaphor and a conveyor of

nationality, including the myriad social and metaphysical characteristics that have

become associated with it. In some cases, the reverse process can be observed where

bureaucrats and leftist radicals with no Ainu ancestry have come to identify with and

attach political significance to the indigenous imaginary. Finally, I chart the process by

which the discourse of indigeneity was embraced by the Utari Kyōkai in the late 1970s

and how the Ainu came to reconfigure their relationship to the state in terms of increasing

autonomy based on their particular history in Hokkaido and the Northern Territories—in

short, how they became indigenous.

99

Bureaus: The Many Uses of Weber’s Iron Cage

The Franco-Grecian etymology of the word “bureaucracy” derives from the French

word “bureau,” meaning desk or office, and the anglicized Greek suffix “cracy” (kratia),

which means to rule (Barnhart 1988). The word dates from late 18th century France to

describe the proliferation of governmental offices that took up increasingly specialized

functions involved in the maintenance and control of society. Typically viewed as a

technocratic means of state administration, and indeed it and the modern state are coeval

entities, the bureau ideally works to communicate authority, collect taxes and/or

distribute aid over vast distances, usually through a network of local offices. Insofar as

the interests of the state and the interests of the public do not always overlap,

bureaucracies tend to be regarded as integral to the functioning of state power; however,

as an institutional means of recording and disseminating information, the process is

widely used by non- or anti-state actors (e.g. commercial enterprises, NGOs, non-profits,

even militants).

Until recently analyses of bureaucratic modes of social organization began and ended

with Max Weber’s dystopic, mechanistic vision of bureaus. Like Marx’s simultaneous

appreciation and dread of the productive capacity of industrial capitalism, Weber was

beguiled and saddened by the extreme efficiency and potential for dehumanization of the

bureaucratic organization.

No machinery in the world functions so precisely as this apparatus of men

and, moreover, so cheaply…Rational calculation reduces every worker to a

cog in this bureaucratic machine and, seeing himself in this light, he will

merely ask how to transform himself into a somewhat bigger cog…The

passion for bureaucratization drives us to despair (Weber 1968:iii).

100

Interestingly, the popular critique of the bureaucratic organization is based precisely on

its inefficiency relative to the people that require its services. The word “kafkaesque” is

routinely employed as a shorthand for the dead-ends and catch-22s typically encountered

in labyrinthine official domains by a despairing public. As Weber recognized,

bureaucracies are inflexible when encountering the specific dilemmas of the individual;

however, as a method of internal administration (i.e. disseminating ordinances, policies

and procedural provisos) over a widely dispersed area, it is a method of social

organization par excellence.

As bureaucracies were staffed by the church, state or development agencies that, for

better or worse, impacted the lives of their subjects, anthropologists have habitually

approached officialdom with a dose of skepticism if not outright scorn. The boundary

between the technological rationality of centralized modes of administration and the

symbolic/emotive universes inhabited by their informants has been frequently reified in

the literature (e.g. Nader 1991; Herzfeld 1993; Escobar 1995; Wilson 2001; Mosse 2005).

Rarely has the authority and functioning of bureaucracies been examined with the same

ethnographic rigor as the more esoteric practices performed at the typical field site. And

there are reasons for this. As Ann Elise Riles (2006) points out, academics are well

habituated to the functioning of bureaucratic modes of existence. The meetings,

committees and structural hierarchies of the typical bureau are evident within any given

academic department; therefore, the impulse to study the other, however conceived, that

energizes one to undertake anthropological training would presumably not lead one to

study the system that underlies one’s own professional context.

101

There is, however, a small number of works in which anthropologists have taken

bureaucracy as their analytical object. In these studies bureaucratic practices are framed

in terms of structural inequality, power, self-interest or indifference - all of which are

elemental phenomena associated with any complex social organ. To the extent that these

analyses develop a critique of bureaucratic practice, they obscure the agency of

individuals connected with these offices to ameliorate or subvert the structural

pathologies associated with their jobs (e.g. alienation, ennui, excessive reliance on

instrumental rationality or other forms of asociality). In addition, the extra-official

functions of bureaus are generally under-appreciated in the literature. For example, the

sociality that inheres in their daily operation multiplies over time the connections

between different organizations, which can in turn have the effect of expanding or

shifting the bureau’s mandate beyond its officially sanctioned niche within the broader

system.

Michael Herzfeld’s The Social Production of Indifference (1993) renders a critical

analysis of the role of state bureaucracies in Greece. He suggests that, contra the

Weberian thesis which posits a strict demarcation between the inhuman rational and the

human irrational (or symbolic/emotive), bureaucratic rationality is itself a cultural

construction of the West. He finds the values embedded in the Mediterranean tradition of

hospitality toward strangers as organizing principles for practices of inclusion and

exclusion that operate within bureaucratic patron/client relations. Interestingly, his

project begins with a move to illustrate the cultural contingency of bureaucratic practice,

but in the end he recuperates Weber by reinscribing rationality, albeit one with Greek

origins, as the modus operandi of Western bureaucracies. What is being occluded here is

102

that, despite its persistence in narratives of western civilization, “the West” is far too

complex an entity into which one could collapse such a widespread mode of social

organization to Mediterranean custom. Furthermore, the bureaucracies of China and

Japan, certainly not artifacts of the “Western tradition,” in many respects mirror Western

bureaucratic functions and practices.

Josiah Heyman (1995) addresses the paradox of US immigration policy that at once

demands restrictions on the movements of non-citizens while recognizing the need for a

constant influx of cheap migrant labor. Eschewing Herzfeld’s reliance on the symbolic in

the persistence and intractability of bureaucratic power in the West, Heyman emphasizes

the structure of intentionality in the thought-work of bureaucrats while embedding his

insights within a broader political economic analysis of INS practice at the Mexico-

United States border. Heyman ultimately presents a top-down hierarchy of power

relations, the upper reaches of which structure outcomes through both policy and,

importantly, expectations of extra-official results (e.g. a semi-porous southern border).

Here, bureaucratic work is characterized as operating within a complex worldview that

nonetheless carries out the desires of social elites. While Heyman brings ethnographic

description to the resistances that erupt at certain points in his schema, the bureaucratic

apparatus is as ponderous and over-determined as the one that drove Weber to despair.

Moving into non-Western cultures, Annelise Riles’ The Network Inside Out (2000)

applies the ethnographic aesthetic to epistemological practices found in Fijian NGOs. Her

focus on the productions of the bureaucracy, e.g. reports, charts and graphic designs,

enables an analysis of form over content. The thought-work that goes into perfecting the

form of these artifacts takes on fetishistic quality and, to the extent that the performance

103

of the bureaucrat is magnified, the goal for which these artifacts were created is more and

more obscured. Interesting in its choice of subject matter and method of presentation, The

Network Inside Out echoes the Weberian notions that, as bureaucracies become

established, the procedures and aesthetics of officialdom become an end in and of

themselves, and that the self-interest of the bureaucrat will seek the perpetuation of the

network over its purported end of serving a community of interests beyond the office.

As a social feature that has become emblematic of the mode of collective organization

found within Japan, bureaucracies have received considerable scholarly attention63.

Japan, in the years between 1931-1945, has been broadly construed as either a nation

experiencing a systematic lapse in the project of progressive modernization, a period of

reactionary irrationality and nationalist excess (Reischauer 1970:184; Hosoya 1971), or,

as was characteristic of many nations at that time, as an intensely rational period in which

many social actors maintained a naïve faith in the outcomes of social or industrial policy

based on scientific rationality (e.g. eugenics, ergonomics, demographics, scientific

management, household engineering) (Fletcher 1982; Johnson 1982; Garon 1998; Partner

2001). Following the Frankfurt School’s insight that fascism was embedded within the

intellectual strands of modernity (esp. Horkheimer and Adorno 2001 [1944]; Marcuse

2006 [1964]), this latter view holds that the proliferation of bureaucracies in charge of the

perceived well-being of the nation was instrumental in disseminating new policies

concerned with social control at a variety of levels, culminating in a hyper-rationality64

that is characteristic of fascist regimes65. It was within the context of virulent Japanese

nationalism and the widespread organization of social forces for the war effort that the

Ainu Association was first established.

104

The well-documented development and spread of the institutions of civil society such

as political parties, intellectual associations, and unions during the relatively progressive

decade of the 1920s did not rule out some degree of collusion between these groups and

the Japanese state. As Sheldon Garon (1994) illustrates, the bureaucratic elite of the Meiji

Era (1868-1912) were initially drawn from the feudal ranks of either samurai or

aristocratic households; however, during the Taisho period (1912-1926), the selection for

state officials became increasingly based on the acquisition of new forms of knowledge

and the ability to pass state exams--and less on family background. Garon argues that

there was in the 1920s a convergence between the now middle-class dominated state

bureaucracies and the middle-class organs of civil society that agitated for modernization

and Westernization. Socially progressive campaigns sought to improve the daily lives

(seikatsu) of the poor through the promotion of modern methods of domestic science and

personal hygiene. As the interwar recession dragged on through the 1920s, the focus of

these groups was to encourage the rationalization of daily life through disseminating

scientifically informed ideas about health, nutrition, savings and budgeting monthly

expenditures. In a similar fashion, the government, after failing to motivate the public to

improve the domestic economy through appeals to traditional Confucian values of

frugality and family responsibility, began to couch its agenda in terms of scientific

rationality and progressive modernization. In the early 1930s, social rationalization and

modernization projects were employed to promote wartime austerity measures while the

progressive tropes of social improvement were replaced with allegiance to Emperor and

nation (Garon 1994:355-357).

105

By articulating the study of bureaucracies with anthropological motifs like cultural

semiotics, thick description, and recovery of the artifact as object of contemporary socio-

cultural analysis, these commentators deploy Weber’s “iron cage” in a variety of

innovative ways. There is no disputing the fact that hierarchical relations of assertion or

deferment through which social power is exercised exists within modern bureaucracies.

In addition, the anxiety over the perpetuation of the bureau may, at times, come into

conflict with the putative ends to which it is to serve. These tendencies are well

documented in the literature and often frame anthropological analyses of these kinds of

organizations; however, I am interested in the lateral effects of bureaucratic organizations

that are often sidelined in these studies. For instance, how does a bureau function as an

affective space, i.e. what modes of collegiality operate and what are their effects? How

do these institutions constitute points of convergence for a variety of social actors and

how in turn does the bureau’s mandate change to subsume new objectives demanded by

its patrons? In addition, as a system with a globally recognized schema and set of

practices, how does the office function to translate multiple policy agendas between its

non-local interlocutors? At a more intimate level of analysis, what are the positional

struggles of the bureaucrats who work through these changes? How does bureau-work

invest their lives with significance and what do they bring to the institution? To begin to

address some of these question in regard to the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai, it is necessary to

track some of the historical metamorphoses through which the organization has come.

106

Blood: Prewar Models of Assimilation and Ainu Responses

The dovetailing of progressive civic associations with conservative state bureaucracies

was facilitated in part though a shared commitment to the ideals of modernity: scientific

rationality, technological progress and a strong state. Although a marginalized people,

the Ainu were not immune to the seductiveness of this discourse. In 1930, at the height

of Showa nationalism66, the Ainu Association of Hokkaido was created in conjunction

with the Hokkaido prefectural administration for the purpose of addressing the problems

of poverty and social integration. The organization published Ezo no Hikari (蝦夷の光),

The Light of Ezo, a periodical containing information about Ainu history and social

policy along with essays by association members. Many of the essays, informed by the

rhetoric of temperance movements, moral suasion campaigns and a discourse

characterized by a pernicious social Darwinism that had gained currency by the 1930s,

were often severely self-critical. While a shared history of privation and dislocation is

often acknowledged in the essays, many writers found blood to be the reason behind the

poverty, alcoholism and low educational attainment in the Ainu community. For some

contributors the solution was simple: the Ainu should assimilate with “the glorious

Japanese race” (idai naru nihon minzoku 偉大なる日本民族) as quickly as possible.

The cover of the inaugural issue depicts a sketch of a barely clothed man holding a

long stick amid mountains and trees. Nothing about the man is stereotypically Ainu

except possibly for the hair on his arms and legs. At the top, in calligraphic kanji, is the

title of the periodical and, below, the name of the publisher: Hokkaido Ainu Kyōkai. The

word “Ezo” in the title could indicate the name of Hokkaido prior to the annexation of the

island by Japan (out of use for some 60 years by 1930), or the figure of the savage, who,

107

living in a state of nature is beyond the cultural reach of Japan67. This ambiguity leaves

one wondering if the “light” or “blaze” emanates from the place, the people or both. In

any case, by using a feudal-era term for the Ainu or Hokkaido, the title evokes nostalgia

for a time and innocence that had been complicated by first colonization and then Japan’s

meteoric rise as a modern nation-state.

In addition, the title of the publication appears to be a take on the widely circulated Ie

no Hikari 家の光, The Light of Home, that was first published in 1925 as a lifestyle

improvement magazine intended to raise living conditions in the countryside. In the early

1930s, it later came under the direction of the Japanese Army and rallied popular support

for Japan’s military expansion into Manchuria (Wilson 1998). When comparing two

covers from the same time period, the resemblance, particularly in the stylized kanji of

the title, is striking (see Fig.12). It is not unlikely that these similarities are indicative of

the shared “moral suasion” agenda of both organizations—to promote hygiene, nutrition,

rational domestic budgeting and education among their respective marginalized

audiences. While the patriotic jingoism of Ie no Hikari is easily traced to its association

with the ascendant military regime of 1930s Japan, the reason behind the nationalist

imagery and commentary in Ezo no Hikari is less clear. The Ainu Association leadership

was then, as now, headed by individuals who identified as Ainu, and certainly the

membership was entirely Ainu. The assumption would be that a recently colonized

people would be less supportive of the Japanese military expansion overseas; yet, the

only full photograph in the first issue is of the 1930 Tokachi town hall meeting of the

Ainu Association with a military banner68 prominently displayed in the foreground

108

between the speaker at the podium and the audience (see Fig.13). At a number of points

the articles indicate a full embrace of Japanese nationality and citizenship.

In the introduction to the first issue, the author outlines the history of injustice that had

been visited upon the Ainu during the feudal era; however, for him, the tragedy of history

lies not in the appropriation of Ainu lands or the legacy of coerced labor, rather it exists

in the anti-assimilation measures enforced by the Matsumae-han in the 17th and 18th

centuries. He especially regrets the fact that, because of the 1899 Former Aborigines

Fig. 12 The cover of the first edition of Ezo no Hikari and a roughly contemporaneous

cover of Ie no Hikari.

109

Fig.13 A meeting of Ainu in Tokachi sub-prefecture with the Imperial Japanese banner in

the foreground.

Protection Act, the Ainu have been negatively labeled hogojin (保護人) or “welfare

people.” In fine oratory fashion he exhorts his audience to become loyal subjects of the

Japanese empire.

Look! In all areas of modern life disturbing things arise—murder, robbery,

infidelity and the proliferation of leftist groups. According to many people,

the Ainu have a special monopoly on drunkenness and stupidity—and this is

regrettable. Who can really believe that all Ainu habitually drink and are dim-

witted? The Ainu people, rather than joining leftist groups, are becoming one

with the Japanese nation. From a single family a beggar’s voice is heard; yet,

we can be proud of the great progress we have made toward unity [with the

Japanese]. Trapped by feelings of the past, the new spirit of the modern Ainu

is hidden from most of society. In point of fact, for many the word “Ainu”

suggests “savageness” and “inability”—these old sentiments only do harm to

us. In reality, the word “Ainu” originated [quoting from unknown source]

‘among the ancient people of Ezo, a heroic person was given this word as an

honorific title; after much time passed the people of Ezo as a whole took on

this name.’ People’s negative viewpoints come from old ideas; we must

work to remove these prejudices. Of course, we should exert our efforts with

sincerity, but first we must make society aware of the actual conditions of our

people and our real values must be demonstrated in public. This journal is

110

published for this very reason …We hope that we might become loyal

subjects and contributing members of society—we can begin by repaying the

benevolent policies of the past. (Hokkaido Ainu Association 1930:1-2)

Facing a wave of rightwing nationalism, the move to portray the Ainu as a member,

albeit a poor one, within the larger “family” of Japan can be read as an attempt fall in and

appear as innocuous as possible. At this time, so-called leftist groups were routinely

rounded up by the military police, so it is entirely plausible that this first large-scale

organization of Ainu would find itself under the scrutiny of any number of militant

organizations. The author’s repeated attempts to distance the new association from leftist

groups indicate an anxiety about the political climate of the day.

According to the author, the Ainu were not fundamentally lacking by dint of their

perceived race as many Japanese and even Ainu believed at the time. While recognizing

that social ills afflict Ainu communities, he provides the insight that “social problems

afflict people from every nation.” More at issue here is the idea that differences in

education, economics and relative social status could be addressed through their own

efforts, rather than through the paternalist legislation of 1899 which branded all

Hokkaido Ainu as “former aborigines.” This attitude, an odd mixture of ethnic pride and

the desire to assimilate into Japanese society, can be understood in light of one peculiar

form of multiculturalist discourse that gained currency in the early Showa era (1925-

1989).

The venerated historian Kita Sadakichi (1871-1939) wrote against the valorization of

the purity of the Yamato race during a time of exuberant emperor worship69. In 1910,

while editing state textbooks at the Ministry of Education, Kita committed heresy by

openly recognizing that during the 14th century two imperial thrones existed, a northern

111

court and a southern court. While his observation was historically correct, he exposed a

contradiction in a national mythos that was predicated on an unbroken line of imperial

succession that reached back to the divine birth of Emperor Jimmu in 660 BCE. Kita was

forced into retirement and began re-writing Japanese history as a story of multicultural

integration. His oeuvre, including titles like The Common Origins of the Japanese and

Korean Nations, The Formation of the Japanese Nation and the periodical Nation and

History can be read as an argument against the “one race, one culture, one nation” thesis

that was prevalent at the time (and lingers today). His work certainly problematizes the

idea of purity that informed and energized the nationalist zealotry of the day and

ultimately sought to reduce the discriminatory practices against non-Yamato Japanese.

However, the idea of a Japanese Empire of many different peoples became useful to the

state at a time when Japan had already colonized Taiwan (1895-1945), Korea (1910-

1945) and was preparing to invade Manchuria (1931-1945). While acknowledging the

multiethnic roots of the modern nation of Japan, Kita’s suggestion to minorities old and

new was to assimilate as quickly as possible so as to avoid the difficulties of

discrimination.

Kita recognized the fact that the Ainu had historically lived on mainland Japan

(Honshu). Their influence can be seen in the names of various places, especially in

northern Honshu. In addition, Kita establishes an account of the cultural and military

contributions that the Ainu made to Japanese society. He highlights their craftsmanship

and chivalrous spirit (bushido); the latter was especially evident the in the battles of

Zenkunen and Gosannen in the 11th century. Kita observes that many Ainu had already

assimilated into Japanese society, and that the rest were of mixed blood and practically

112

indistinguishable from Yamato Japanese. As such, it only remained to teach them the

language and customs of the Japanese and their assimilation would be complete.

Although Kita sought to uncover the multiethnic roots of the Japanese nation, in his final

analyses, it was invariably incumbent upon the minority or the colonized to annihilate

their particular identity, construed as cultural difference, and become a part of the

Japanese Empire (Oguma 2002:95-109).

In the first issue of Ezo no Hikari (1930), a more extreme idea was expressed by the

Ainu delegate from the Hidaka region, Tairamura Yukio. Citing the social Darwinist

nature of society, Tairamura argues that the Ainu should assimilate through intermarriage

and the adoption of Japanese language and customs. The title of the essay is, “Will the

Ainu Endure or shall we Assimilate with the Shamo?70 Our People at a Crossroads.”

Beginning with the lines of a popular song of the time, Tairamura writes:

‘From the hamanashi red shores to the flowering valleys, the Ainu fade away

and I think of old Ezo.’ As the young people sing this line, it echoes in my

ears and I become heavy of heart. When considering these lyrics, one major

fact is revealed. In the evolution debate, the so-called “survival of the fittest”

indicates the cruel law of the natural world. Is this not the situation of our

race? Is this not a fight we are losing? The troublesome logic is that the Ainu

are falling into ruin. One issue remains for us: our fate. With steady

resolution we must make proper arrangements. In other words, do the Ainu

have a place in the future? Or, should we assimilate with the Wajin? We must

choose one of the two alternatives; I think we should consider the latter…

Modern Ainu should not think of retaining the old race… As there is no

future for us, a proper conclusion would be to merge with the Wajin. It is the

proper time to assimilate—we have done something that our ancestors could

not do. We were created as Ainu but our lives have become meaningful as

members of the great nation of Japan (Tairamura 1930:14-15).

Aside from demonstrating the general concern, illustrated time and again in Ezo no

Hikari, over where the Ainu stand as a people within the empire, Tairamura, by framing

113

his argument in eugenic terms, goes so far as to suggest a kind of cultural and racial

absorption into the emerging Japanese corporate polity.

The essays included in the inaugural issue of Ezo no Hikari indicate that there was a

willingness to, if not assimilate, then work to repeal the legislation that marked the Ainu

as dependent on the Japanese, while at the same time reforming Ainu communities to the

extent that they could participate more fully in Japanese society. The suggestion that the

Ainu could become full members of the empire can be understood as a part of a broader

dialogue within the nation concerning the place of internally and externally colonized

minorities in Imperial Japan. One side of this dialogue consisted of the multinational

origins argument supported by Kita and others interested in bringing recently colonized

people within the fold of the Japanese Empire. This form of assimilation, called

Japanization (nihonka 日本化), included teaching colonial subjects the Japanese

language, changing their native names into Japanese names, encouraging intermarriage

and conscription into military service. Barack Kushner (2010) illustrates the efficacy of

assimilation measures in colonial Taiwan and the difficulties involved in untangling the

complex of identities based on ethnicity, Chinese nationality, and allegiance to Japan in

the postwar era71. However, the opposing argument, derived from eugenicist anxiety over

the racial hygiene of the nation, sought to preserve racial divisions by strictly regulating

the mixing of blood between Yamato Japanese and their colonial subjects.

According to Jennifer Roberts (2002), the modern familial state of Japan was

primarily understood through the scientific and folk notions that were embodied in the

eugenic proscriptions for a healthy and hygienic national polity. Blood (chi or ketsu 血)

takes on two divergent valences in the late 19th century. The first, based on Buddhist and

114

Shinto notions of ritual impurity and contamination, imparted a clearly negative

connotation to the substance itself and the bodies that emitted it (e.g. through menses,

wounds and the blood of mammals). The second was a distinctly modern scientific view

that saw blood as a conduit of genetic material. Implicit in this latter view was that,

through selective breeding, preferable characteristics could be encouraged throughout the

Japanese population, while undesirable traits could, through time, be purged, thus

improving the national body (kokutai 国体) through the improvement of its citizens

(kokumin 国民). By 1900 this utopian vision of improving the racial hygiene of Japan

was fully embraced by nearly all prominent educational institutions and organs of civil

society; however, the means for achieving this were hotly debated.

There were some commentators who advocated for a mixed blood approach to both

the problems of genetic vitality and integrating colonized peoples into the Japanese

nation. Those who argued for a mixed-blood eugenics program tended to hold the

position that the benefits of racial mixing would devolve to the colonized subjects as they

became more Japanese through time; the implication was that the Japanese could,

through intermarriage, enrich the colonized periphery without the main islands of Japan

(naichi 内地) becoming tainted with foreign blood. For example, in 1939, political

theorist Ichiji Susumu wrote that the Japanese should, in a controlled fashion, infuse the

“inferior blood” of the Manchurian colonies with Japanese blood, thereby producing

stronger hybrid citizens that would make excellent political leaders (Robertson

2002:198). Similarly, in 1943, anarchist, poet, and historian Takamure Itsue (1894-

1964), citing the mytho-historical multi-racial origins of the Japanese nation, considered

the Japanese Empire to be unique in that it has, since its inception, sought to gather “the

115

world under one roof.72” She argued that intermarriage between the Japanese and their

colonial subjects would be a first step toward unifying the world under the suzerainty of

the Emperor. In an interesting departure from the narrative of superior/inferior blood,

Kita Noriaki, the head of the Aboriginal Office in the Hokkaido, indicated the history of

racial mixing in Japan. Noting the strength and valor of Ainu warriors during Japan’s

medieval period, he suggested that intermixing Ainu blood into the already multiracial

Yamato people could only improve the race and the nation (Oguma 2002:215).

Yet, by far the most pervasive eugenicist narrative advocated for the racial purity of

the family-state. Since the Meiji Restoration, the impression that a single race was

coextensive with the political and geographic boundaries of the Japanese state was

carefully nurtured and widely disseminated. Mozume Takami wrote in his 1919 A New

Theory on the National Body (Kokutai Shinron) that, because Japan was a single race

nation, there was an ethno-specific essence that connected the Japanese people and the

Emperor; therefore, the goals of the political establishment and the people were naturally

aligned (Mozume 1919). This left open the question of integrating colonial peoples into

the national body. In response to the proposition that intermarriage should be encouraged

in the colonies, Tōgō Minoru, a colonial administrator in Taiwan, rejected that notion that

colonial subjects could become Japanese through the mixing of blood. He maintained that

reckless miscegenation would distort and dissolve the superior spirit of the pure Japanese

race and national body (Tōgō 1925). This conflation of essences, spirits, nationality, and

blood produced the general fear that the nation could be weakened through its very

efforts to bring all of East Asia under Japanese political control.

116

Beginning in the 1920s, there was a proliferation of eugenics associations and

periodicals. The Japanese Racial Hygiene Association was established the same year as

the Ainu Association. One of the more aggressive groups, the association advocated for

eugenic marriages and the compulsory sterilization of so-called inferior individuals. In its

publication, “Racial Hygiene” (Minzoku Eisei), Nazi eugenics policies were praised for

their effectiveness in improving Germany. By 1939 important members of the association

were moving on to posts in the government. Most notably, the vice president Furuya

Yoshio, an outspoken proponent of Nazi racial policies, took a post in the newly created

Ministry of Health and Welfare where he was instrumental in the development of the

National Eugenics Act (Oguma 2002:216-218).

It was in this climate of imperial expansion, fervent nationalism and anxiety over the

intermingling of essences that the Ainu Association was established. These same themes

are approached in the pages of Ezo no Hikari, but with a sense of immediacy that

highlights the precarious situation of the Ainu. Suffering from poverty, widespread

alcoholism and discrimination based on their racial identity, many Ainu, unlike

Taiwanese and Korean colonials on the periphery of the state, were seen as potential

contaminants within Japan proper73. The ambiguity expressed over how Ainu should

respond, collectively or individually, to social pressures to become good Japanese

citizens is one reason that the current incarnation of the association, the Hokkaido Utari

Kyōkai, distances itself from its origins in the 1930s74.

The Ainu Association persevered until disbanding in 1944. In the interim before its re-

incorporation in 1946, an opportunity of historical significance is rumored to have taken

place—an event that heightens the differences between the prewar Ainu Association and

117

its post-war doppelganger. In 194575 Major General Josef Swing of SCAP purportedly

asked Ainu leader Shiiku Kenichi if the Ainu desired independence from Japan. Shiiku

said that the Ainu only desired to be good Japanese citizens (Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai

1990:925-931)76. It is thought that the Americans wanted to form a partnership with the

Ainu in Hokkaido, thereby securing a northern post in a preemptive move against

possible Russian aggression; however, instead of being granted sovereign lands, the Land

Reform Ordinance of 1948 appropriated a full one-third of the arable land held by Ainu

in Hokkaido—stripping 1,271 Ainu farmers of their lands (Koshiro 1999:110). At this

point, the newly re-incorporated Ainu Association fell into disarray and limped along

with a mere 180 members between 1948 and 1960.

Bombs: Ainu Radicalism

In 1960, due to the interest of some remaining members, the Ainu Association of

Hokkaido was re-christened the Hokkaido Utari Association (Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai 北

海道ウタリ協会). Replacing “Ainu” with “utari,” the Ainu word for comrade or

compatriot, was significant on several levels. First, as the word “Ainu” had long been

saddled with derogatory connotations, members thought that the association thought they

would encounter less resistance in official circles with a name change. Second, using an

Ainu word was an intentional gesture toward the recuperative role that the association

was beginning to play in representing the Ainu as something other than reformed or

“Japanized” savages. Finally, the word “utari” indicates that one is part of a larger

community, of a nation, whereas “Ainu” was thought to be a specious designation

applied by Japanese administrators to a large and diverse group of peoples that

118

historically inhabited Hokkaido and the Kuril Islands77. This new phase of the

organization included many of the same pro-assimilation members that tended to

dominate the agenda during the Pacific War; however, at this time a number of younger

members became involved. Arguing against assimilation, they began advocating for

special land, civil, and cultural rights.

At the age of 22 Yuki Shoji participated in the 1960 reorganization meeting. It is

thought that he was among the supporters of the name change, although later in life he

advocated for the appellation “Ainu” over “utari.” He was appointed director of the

organization in 1968 and remained until 1976. In the intervening years he became

radicalized and participated in direct action against scholars and publications that

promoted inaccurate or discriminatory representations of the Ainu people. In 1972 he

organized the Ainu Liberation League (Ainu Kaihō Dōmei アイヌ解放同盟) which

functioned as a cultural and political organization which sought to recover Ainu

traditions, language and, most importantly, dignity. Rather than asking how they might

overcome the social problems endemic to the Ainu community78 through assimilation,

this new generation of Ainu sought to combat discrimination in all of its social and

economic dimensions by valorizing their shared history and culture. Yuki Shoji and

others recognized that a deep sense of shame had haunted Ainu communities since at

least the 19th century. This produced a general malaise that contributed to the social

degradation of Ainu households and communities; thus, the efforts of this generation of

Ainu leaders were directed towards confronting discriminatory practices while

rehabilitating their cultural heritage.

119

In an effort to re-appropriate the memes woven into a generally accepted historical

narrative that represented the Ainu as beneficiaries of a munificent colonization program,

a group of fifty Ainu students sought to end the town of Shizunai’s annual

commemoration of the Ainu warrior Shakushain in 1962. While unsuccessful that year,

the Utari Kyōkai negotiated with the town’s tourist board to discontinue the festival the

next year. Ainu from all over Hokkaido began donating money to erect a statue in honor

of Shakushain. The statue was built in Shizunai in 1970 and an annual festival, sponsored

in part by the Utari Kyōkai, has been held annually in subsequent years (Siddle

1996:162). Yuki Shoji, however, was unsatisfied with the inscription on the base of the

statue which included the name of the governor of Hokkaido. He considered it

inappropriate to engrave the name of a Wajin invader onto a statue commemorating the

legendary Ainu warrior who resisted Wajin encroachment in the 17th century and was

treacherously murdered during peace negotiations. In 1972 he removed the name of the

governor, an act for which he was arrested in 1974.

As the leader of the Ainu Liberation League, Yuki Shoji’s methods of direct action

were utilized to provoke public dialogue on the still extant structures of discrimination

that were widespread in Japanese society. Shortly after the formation of the group in

1972, Yuki and supporters forced their way onto the stage at the 26th annual

Anthropology and Ethnology Conference where he read a series of criticisms against

scholars and their unethical treatment of the Ainu. He invited responses from the

audience of shocked academics; yet, none were forthcoming. In a similar act of open

confrontation, Yuki denounced the discriminatory lectures of Professor Hayashi at

Hokkaido University in 1977. These kinds of activities could not be conducted under the

120

auspices of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai, a formal institution that interacted regularly with

government agencies and depended on a broad network of personal connections to secure

programs that would benefit the Ainu--accordingly Yuki’s involvement in organizations

that promoted more direct forms of protest had to remain separate from the Utari Kyōkai

itself (Yuki 1997).

During this period Yuki was involved with organizing the Nokamappu Icharpa, a

commemorative event to mark the 1789 massacre of Ainu after the Kunashiri Menashi

battle. While this event is now considered a sacred and authentic expression of reverence

for Ainu ancestors, the Wajin fisherman on whose land the event now takes place

remembers the lengthy and divisive negotiations that took place concerning the

appropriate form of the ritual and its myriad details. “When they first began in 1974, they

had no idea how to perform an icharpa or kamuinomi. So, they brought down the old

Ainu shamans from Lake Akan to teach them how to conduct the ceremony, but the

elders didn’t agree either!” This recuperated tradition is highly significant in that it is

founded on a generative act that casts the relationship between Wajin and Ainu in fairly

stark terms. Rather than fatalism of social Darwinist accounts that had gained purchase in

the 20th century describing the inevitable disappearance of the Ainu, this event represents

the Ainu as both victors, which they were before the full force of the shogunate was

directed toward them, and victims of subsequent heavy-handed Japanese oppression. This

originary violence, reinterpreted as resistance against an unjust regime, functions to

produce and reiterate, through annual observations of the ritual, a narrative of not only

solidarity and struggle, but of the expansive territory once inhabited exclusively by Ainu

tribes79.

121

Ainu national-space was recuperated through the creation of new rituals and narratives

designed by Wajin and Ainu activists. Ōta Ryū, a Wajin Trotskyist and early influence on

Yuki Shoji, promoted an “Ainu revolution” which would include the return to a primitive

communist state called Yukara Sekai (Yukar World). Yukar, an Ainu term for their epic

poetry, signified Ōta’s desire to recapture an essentialized relation he thought the Ainu

had to the natural, pre-modern world. If Yukur Sekai was the poetic vision of what such a

return would be, the term Ainu Moshir (land of the Ainu), designated where such a

revolution would occur: Hokkaido and the Chishima Archipelago (Ota 1973). While the

Ōta’s radicalism did not translate completely to Ainu activist groups, this notion of an

exclusive Ainu territory where they might engage the forces of modernity on their own

terms was clearly seductive for many Ainu. The term “Ainu Moshir” gained wide

currency in the 1970s as an oblique spatial designation that refers to their prior claim to

lands now occupied by Wajin and Russian interlopers. It is a term currently invoked as a

marker of difference and underscores the claims of indigeneity being made in reference

to these lands80.

This new reading of Ainu history as a struggle against an expanding empire was a

compelling narrative for some members of Japan’s New Left movement who sought to

purge the nation of the conservative remnants of Emperor worship, ecological

degradation or capitalist expansion. Promoting Ainu liberation, Wajin radicals bombed a

statue in Asahikawa on October 23, 1973. Events that followed included attempted arson

at the Hokkaido Shrine in Sapporo and a tourist company in Shiraoi that operated a

tourist “Ainu Village.” The most severe incident of protest in the name of Hokkaido’s

Ainu was the bombing of the Meiji-era government building (Douchou). The bombing

122

occurred on March 2, 1976 to mark the enforcement of the 1899 Hokkaido Former

Aborigines Protection Act. This legislation was protested by the Ainu Association in the

1930s because its special welfare measures implied that Ainu were not fully Japanese; by

the 1970s, however, it was objected to on the grounds that it implied the Ainu were not

fully aboriginal. Two people were killed and over ninety were injured in the blast. The

bombing was determined to have been committed by the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed

Front. Arrests were subsequently made and the leader, Daidouji Masahi, a Wajin from

Kushiro, was sentenced to death. He had reportedly developed a misguided empathy for

the Ainu cause as a child while attending school with Ainu children (Siddle 1996:166).

Ainu activists, amid the turbulence caused by violent acts committed in their name,

were resolute in their insistence that social change could be achieved by non-violent

means. The Ainu Liberation League’s tactics of public denouncement of discriminatory

acts, direct confrontation and criticism of writers and academics and the occasional

defacement of public art depicting an unproblematic vision of the colonization of

Hokkaido were never violent. Instead they worked primarily through institutional

channels to achieve tangible social progress for the Ainu community. Yuki Shoji became

a central figure in the Ainu social movement in that he used both extra-institutional

tactics to raise awareness while pursuing more traditional means to combat

institutionalized forms of discrimination as a director of the Utari Kyōkai. Despite Ainu

adherence to nonviolent action, these events put the issues surrounding the “Ainu

Problem” (Ainu mondai) on the front pages during the mid-1970s and did much to

politicize many in the Ainu community. In addition, the bombings were a heavy-handed

demonstration that there were Wajin sympathizers who thought the Ainu peoples’

123

history, reconceived as a political struggle, was responsible for the social and economic

challenges suffered by many Ainu.

The Utari Kyōkai weathered these difficulties by organizing Ainu events and

facilitating communication between the many Ainu communities throughout Hokkaido.

The bureau maintained some thirty field offices around the island and kept rural members

apprised of the new dimensions the appellation “Ainu” was acquiring in broader Japanese

society. In spite of its reach, the Utari Kyōkai could not contain the scope of political

positions active at the time. Many smaller groups formed to enunciate various

configurations of cultural, racial, political, regional, gendered or generational concerns.

The Asahikawa Ainu Conference (Asahikawa Ainu Kyougikai) formed in 1972 to stake

out a position on the maintenance of the Former Aborigines Act of 1899 that, contrary to

the Utari Kyōkai’s stance, sought to abolish the legislation on the grounds that Ainu

dignity could not be recovered as long as they required what amounted to special state

subsidies (Monbetsu 1973:1-2)81. The Ainu living in the Kanto region, excluded from

the government programs intended to assuage the social and economic inequalities faced

by Hokkaido Ainu, formed the Tokyo Utari Kyōkai in 1972 to contend with a different

set of circumstances. Ainu students, attuned to the political currents of the day, formed

the Young Ainu Society (Puere Utari no Kai) in 1965. The Yai Yukara Ainu Research

Institute (Yai Yukara Ainu Minzoku Gakkai) formed in 1972 to study Ainu culture and

history from an emic perspective. The same year the Ainu author and folklorist Kayano

Shigeru opened the renowned Nibutani Ainu Cultural Museum. In June of 1973 the Ainu

newspaper Anutari Ainu was launched to track emerging issues of interest to the

community of activists involved in Ainu cultural and political revitalization. This level of

124

activity was historically unprecedented and uncontainable by the Utari Kyōkai. However,

the geographic dispersion and degree of radicalism found within some of these groups

strengthened the Utari Kyōkai’s position as the one legitimate intermediary between the

government and this diverse community of social and political interests.

The Utari Kyōkai remained conservative enough to stay safely ensconced within the

network of national and prefectural ministries, yet, due to many of the younger members’

leftist politics, the bureau sought to shake the critique that it was simply an Ainu-staffed

arm of the state. Thus, in 1974 it moved out of the colonial era Douchou and into an

independent office. Despite this change in location, it remained largely supported by

government largess and, in the same year of the move, acquired additional

responsibilities in distributing the economic aid prescribed by the new Hokkaido Ainu

Welfare Countermeasures (Hokkaido Utari Fukushi Taisaku). Both the resurgence of

Ainu activism and the public funds being made available to individuals and families of

Ainu descent led to a dramatic increase in the membership rolls of the Utari Kyōkai

during the 1970s (Siddle 1996:168).

There were at this time two distinguishable fronts emerging out of this welter of Ainu

activism. The first included a set of organizations that advocated for strictly political and

social issues (e.g. anti-discrimination efforts, concerns related to economic equality and

the construction of alternative histories). The second coalesced around cultural

recuperation efforts that sought to restore regional Ainu cultural traditions and languages.

The cultural revitalization movement82 ran parallel to the more politically charged

liberation movement, consequently many Ainu tended to operate in both arenas. Kayano

Shigeru was a key figure in the movement for cultural revitalization. His museum in

125

Nibutani was filled with artifacts collected from many different Ainu groups during the

1950s and 1960s. In addition, he recorded interviews, stories and Ainu sagas (Yukar)

from elderly Ainu who were still fluent with their regional dialects—recordings that

currently inform Ainu language classes that have sprung up all over Hokkaido since the

1990s. The establishment of community centers (seikatsukan 生活管) throughout

Hokkaido in the 1960s provided a place where Ainu could meet in large groups and

practice traditional craft, ritual and language in spaces that were separated from dictates

of the tourist economy. The political and cultural movements became more tightly

intertwined in terms of their institutional organization and funding as Ainu began to

interact with participants in the burgeoning international indigenous rights movement of

the late 1970s.

Becoming Indigenous

The movement to politicize Ainu history was, in part, an attempt to re-think the

relation between minority groups and the state. Within Japan, activists took cues from

organizations like the Buraku Kaihō Dōmei (The Buraku Liberation League) that were

engaged in confronting discriminatory practices. Representing the feudal era eta caste,

the goal of Buraku activists was to achieve social and economic parity with the majority

Japanese. To this end they fought discrimination through their highly public and

occasionally violent denunciation sessions, a technique later borrowed by Ainu activists.

In fact, the Japanese Government began to treat the two groups similarly in terms of the

kinds of welfare packages assembled to alleviate poverty endemic to Ainu and Buraku

areas. The 1974 Hokkaido Utari Welfare Countermeasures is a scaled down replica of the

126

1969 Dōwa Countermeasures extended to the Burakumin. As far as the state was

concerned, both were historically disadvantaged segments of the general population of

Japan, but due to the pervasive sense of ethnic homogeneity in the postwar period, neither

the Ainu nor the Burakumin were considered a minority group (Befu 2001)—a

designation that would have entitle them to special protections under domestic and

international law83.

By the 1970s, assimilation as a Japanese minority was no longer a desirable outcome

for many Ainu. The leaders of the Utari Kyōkai, drawing on sojourns abroad to meet with

indigenous groups in North America and Taiwan, began to reframe their experiences at

home not as a minority group struggling for social equality, but as an indigenous group

seeking a degree of legal and even physical separation from the Japanese Government

and the majority Yamato Japanese—relationships increasingly viewed from a

postcolonial sensibility. This new trajectory was largely influenced by the Utari Kyōkai’s

involvement with international organizations that promoted indigenous rights throughout

the world such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

(UNESCO) and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

Indigenous rights discourse was gaining some currency internationally by the mid-

1970s, but the recognition of indigeneity as a specific social problematic, separate from

that of minority populations within the nation-state, was not nearly as well developed as

it is presently. Early examples of international activity include the first conference of the

World Council of Indigenous Peoples, which was held in British Columbia in 1975; the

1977 U.N. International NGO Conference on Discrimination against Indigenous

Populations in the Americas; and the influential Working Group on Indigenous

127

Populations, which initially convened in 1982 under the auspices of the United Nations

Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. To be sure,

indigeneity is not simply a social construction, as it refers to a specific set of social and

historical circumstances shared by many peoples the world over; however, as a social and

legal category that has gained a degree of political expediency in some countries, it is

very much the product of national and international bureaucracies. It is not enough to

simply “be indigenous,” in the process of negotiating myriad social, political and legal

obstacles, a group must be able to communicate its claims in the terms and forms of

discourse that state technocrats readily understand. It is worth pointing out that only

through the mechanisms of modernity (esp. national laws and bureaucracies) were

indigenous people construed as objects comprehensible to state governments. Insofar as

there is yet no agreed upon legal definition of “indigenous peoples,” thus their existence

is a becoming in the fullest sense of the word84.

A contributing factor to the gradual proliferation of organizations and conferences

dealing with indigenous issues was the United Nations passage of the International

Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The ICCPR was opened for ratification

by the U.N. General Assembly in 1966 and came into force in 1976. It was ratified by

Japan in 1979. While making no explicit reference to indigenous peoples, the covenant

refers to the autonomy and self-determination of all peoples and emphasizes that

provisions must be made so that groups within nations can enjoy their political,

economic, social and cultural rights. The covenant also introduces the legal category of

group rights which has since problematized the legal relationship between the state and

its indigenous populations.

128

Many constitutional democracies frame rights discourse in terms of one citizen vis-à-

vis another, or, alternatively, between the state and the citizen—in any case, all citizens,

by dint of their membership in the national body, are putatively equally endowed with the

same series of rights. For example within the U.S. constitution and its close cousin the

Constitution of Japan, there are no provisions for group rights—in fact, both documents

explicitly reject the possibility85. Under the ICCPR, “Indigenous People,” a category

created to encompass the particular set of problems faced by autochthonous groups

marginalized and dispossessed in the course of nation-building, suddenly had a legal

means to oppose the individuating forces of modernity that would further erode their

ability to exist as a group with unique social, linguistic and cultural traditions. The cause

was subsequently picked up by the United Nations. Since the early 1980s indigenous

peoples have had, through various UN organs, some form of representation vis-à-vis their

respective state governments within these international forums.

Indigeneity poses different problems for governments and international bodies

concerned with protecting the human rights of indigenous peoples. For governments there

can be both ideological and material costs to recognizing indigenous groups within the

nation-state. Benedict Anderson’s definition of the nation as an “imagined community”

acknowledges an ideological aspect of nationality that promotes the notion that “it is

imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation

that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal

comradeship” (Anderson 1991:6). This sentiment of deep equivalency between citizens,

often expressed in familial terms, is disrupted when certain groups are permitted more or

less autonomy than others, or are granted special rights and protections not extended to

129

all citizens. More significant is the surrender of the complete sovereignty over the entire

physical space of the nation-state. Indigenous groups, in order to practice their culture in

a meaningful way that is in accordance with their history, tend to require a space where

customary or tribal laws organize the rights and responsibilities of group members. Yet,

too many lacunae in the scope of national laws and the geographical continuity of the

nation-state weaken the narratives that stress the pre-modern semblances between

citizen—narratives which serve to produce a naturalized, visceral unity that legitimizes

the modern state. In addition, the material costs incurred by governments range from tax

exemptions and administrative costs to land grants and monetary reparations for

historical misdeeds.

For some indigenous groups, like the Maori in New Zealand, the Navajo in the United

States, and the Thao of Taiwan, official state recognition has been achieved. In these

cases the precise definition of what constitutes an indigenous group is resolved between

the indigenes themselves, the state, and the international organizations that handle

indigenous issues. However, for groups like the Ainu who lacked state recognition before

June of 2008, the full implementation of the rights and protections ensured through the

ICCPR, and extended through the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of

Indigenous Peoples, can only be obtained through the courts on a case by case basis.

Organizations that promote indigenous issues internationally face the dilemma of

defining the object of their efforts. Ronald Niezen sumarizes the issue this way,

The clearest expression of human diversity can thus be found in a category

now widely referred to as ‘indigenous peoples;’ yet the very creation of this

category involves a common origin, is predicated on some global sameness

of experience, and is expressed through the mechanisms of law and

bureaucracy, the culprits most commonly associated with steady gains in

cultural uniformity” (Niezen 2003:2).

130

The organizations that undertake the responsibility for promoting human diversity and

the rights inherent to peoples in pursuit of alternative modernities are themselves, in the

process of legal codification and making indigenes visible to their respective

governments through the bureaucratization of indigeneity, unavoidably reiterate the

mistake of colonial governments and anthropologists: eliding difference in the pursuit of

political (or analytical) efficacy. Despite its many field offices that work to represent the

interests of regional Ainu groups, the Utari Kyōkai faces the same issues of

homogenization in its representation of its constituents as a single ethnic group.

Nomura Giichi was a key figure involved in transforming the functions of the Utari

Kyōkai from a bureaucracy that was primarily responsible for distributing the benefits of

Ainu welfare programs, and, for many Ainu, uncomfortably close to the state, into an

organization that sought to acquire for all Ainu the kinds of rights and protections that

were being accorded indigenous populations in other countries. He was one of the first

leaders of the Utari Kyōkai to embrace what could be called “bureaucratic indigenism,” a

marriage of cultural revitalization activities with organizational techniques typical of

bureaucratic systems that seek to obtain ultimately some degree of sovereignty from the

nation-state. Becoming indigenous appears to be as much about positing a specific kind

of legal, political, and cultural relationship to the state as it is about uncovering or

perpetuating certain cultural practices over others. As indigenes, as opposed to minorities,

the Ainu could demand not welfare for their members, but reparations. Rather than the

unfortunate subjects of social discrimination, they could reframe the relative disparities in

their income and social prospects as a legacy of the systematic manipulations of their

bodies, their culture, and their land since at least the 18th century. In an effort to better

131

understand the methods and challenges of other indigenous groups, Nomura and other

leaders of the Utari Kyōkai developed connections in the mid-1970s with the nascent

international indigenous rights movement and began reorganizing the efforts of the

association toward reproducing Ainu-ness via the articulation of a specific cluster of

historical, territorial, cultural, and linguistic differences.

According to anthropologist Richard Siddle, the awareness of the broader political

implications of indigeneity, as it was being configured internationally, began during the

first dialogue between Ainu leaders and North American indigenous groups. This event

occurred in 1977 during a meeting between Ainu author and folklorist Kayano Shigeru

and two Inupiats from Barrow, Alaska who came to Kayano’s village of Nibutani. The

next year Nomura Giichi led a delegation of Ainu to Alaska, which was followed up by

Narita Tokuhei’s86 visit with several Native American groups in Canada and the United

States. In 1981, Narita also attended the third World Council of Indigenous Peoples in

Canberra, Australia (Siddle 1996:177). It became apparent to leaders of the Utari Kyōkai

that international covenants and conventions that sought to guarantee the rights of

indigenous peoples could be effective in pressing the Japanese government to grant the

Ainu some degree of sovereignty as an indigenous group.

To pursue issues pertinent to socioeconomic equality and tribal autonomy, the Utari

Kyōkai began assembling the “Ainu New Law” (Ainu Shinpō) that would both replace

the outdated and increasingly imprecise 1899 Former Aborigines Protection Law and the

Ainu welfare countermeasures that were set to expire--this in spite of the nominal

progress toward social and economic parity that had been achieved since their enactment

in 1974. The Ainu New Law, as it was adopted by the 1984 Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai

132

General Meeting, focused on human rights (Section 1), political representation (Section

2), the promotion of education and culture (Section 3), increased access to the natural

resources of Hokkaido (Section 4) and the creation of a self-reliance fund (Section 5)

which would be managed exclusively by the Ainu people, presumably through the Utari

Kyōkai. Significantly, this legislation sought governmental recognition of the “ethnic

autonomy” (minzoku toshite no jishusei) of the Ainu people in the face of aggressive

assimilation policies of the preceding two centuries (Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai 1984:4-6).

Such a concession by the government would ensure constitutional protections which

would amount to group rights for the Ainu people. Additionally, official recognition of

the Ainu as an ethnic minority would represent an intermediate step on the way toward

acquiring the status of an indigenous minority.

Fig. 14 An Ainu protest urging the government to repeal the 1899 Former Aborigines

Protection Act and adopt the Ainu New Law in Sapporo in 1989. The signs read “We are

not Former Natives, We are Ainu!” and “Discriminatory Law, The Former Aborigines

Protection Law!” (Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai 1990)

133

At the same time the Utari Kyōkai was pursuing special access to the Northern

Territories on the basis of Ainu indigeneity along the Chishima Archipelago. In part an

attempt to address the erasure that had occurred in the government’s portrayal of the

Northern Territories as inherently Japanese, and, in part, an effort to secure entry to

ancestral lands, the Utari Kyōkai published The Indigenous Ainu of the Chishima

Archipelago (Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai 1983), a collection of materials relating to the Ainu

occupation of the islands before the forced relocations by first the Japanese, and then the

Russians, during the 19th and 20th centuries. This publication marked the beginning of a

sustained effort by some prominent figures in the organization, specifically those with

ancestry or economic interests in the Russian-held islands (most notable include major

figures such as Narita Tokuhei and Masanori Toyooka), to re-establish territorial rights

for the Ainu nation along the uncertain region between Japan and Russia. This move

angered the characteristically nationalist organizations that were established to maintain

public interest in the recovery of the four islands.

In addition to advocating passage of the “New Law,” from the mid-1980s onward, the

Utari Kyōkai increasingly occupied itself with securing for the Ainu similar social,

economic and territorial rights as those claimed by indigenous populations in other

countries. The organization pursued this tack through international collaborations with

international groups like the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations (UNWGIP)

and, later, with the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII).

While I was working with the Utari Kyōkai the organization was occupied with

developing and promoting the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

(subsequently passed by the UN General Assembly in 2007). The fact that the Utari

134

Kyōkai had existed as a bureau since the 1930s meant that they possessed the

organizational structure, methods and aesthetic capacity of officialdom that readily linked

up with the norms and procedures of myriad smaller NGOs as well as vast supranational

organizations like the United Nations. Always treading carefully to promote Ainu

interests without jeopardizing its ties to bureaus and ministries within the national and

prefectural governments, the organization tends to vacillate in its claims: openly

considering independence from Japan in international circles (which, incidentally,

appeases its more radical critics at home), while employing more mollifying statements

when interacting with government officials.

Conclusion

The Utari Kyōkai, through a sustained dialogue with its members and the bureau’s

own internal negotiations, has continually reconfigured its relationship to the state. It has

transformed from little more than a branch of the Hokkaido Welfare Department into an

organization involved in creating international legal norms regarding indigenous peoples’

rights and openly opposing the state on a variety of issues. Proceeding in the only way

effective social movements can in the present, the Utari Kyōkai has continued, since the

1970s, to work at a distance from the state. Alain Badiou makes the point that real

politics (in this case, a most extreme form of ethnopolitics87) operate only through their

disentanglement from the immanence of state power--that by forging an oppositional

stance vis-à-vis the state, a political movement transfigures the state from a hidden

omnipresence, or, in Michael Taussig’s (1999) estimation, a public secret, into something

that, precisely through its exercise of control, can be measured and responded to (Badiou

135

2005:145; see also Deleuze 1992). Due to the sociality inherent in the day to day

operations between the Utari Kyōkai and government agencies, the organization has, with

varying degrees of precision, been able to anticipate government reaction to their

initiatives.

Disengagement with the state has always been partial. As much of Utari Kyōkai’s

funding still comes from state coffers, complete independence has never been feasible for

the bureau. In the process of distancing itself from the state, the organization adopted

strategies of other domestic civil rights groups claiming the rights and protection of state

minorities, primarily the liberation organizations associated with the Burakumin. The

desire for minority rights was transformed into an effort to attain the status of an ethnic

minority after several key figures in the Utari Kyōkai’s leadership visited Taiwan in the

early 1970s. Finally, the overriding issue, since the repeal of the 1899 Hokkaido

Aborigines Protection Act and the passage of the 1997 Act for the Promotion of Ainu

Culture, the Dissemination of Knowledge of Ainu Traditions, and an Education

Campaign (Law 52, 1997)88, has been securing for the Ainu rights of self-determination

and some form of territorial sovereignty as framed by the emerging international

discourse, increasingly promoted by the United Nations, regarding the rights of

indigenous peoples.

The bureaucratization of the movement for increasing the sphere of autonomy for the

Ainu people has brought about a series of lateral effects that are not easily conveyed

through historical overview and, alternatively, require an ethnographic purview to capture

how an organization, its members, and leadership interpret and engage the contemporary

political landscape both at home and internationally. These effects include 1) emergent

136

conceptualizations of the spatial and ethnic dimensions of indigenous nationhood; 2)

employing shamanism and the body to (re-) capture the highly striated spaces between

nations; 3) how the incitement to cultural performance has impacted Ainu identity; and 4)

how “difference” is maintained only through the circulation of semblances. The

following chapter looks at the headquarters of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai which, for the

first six months, constituted the site of my field research. I introduce many of the key

people who guided me through the bureaucracy of the Japanese state and assisted me in

my attempt to become a “salaryman” at a bureau representing Japan’s only officially

recognized indigenous minority.

137

Chapter Four

On the Inside: Negotiating Difference at the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai

This chapter follows the linkages between the actors, spaces, discourses, practices,

points of signification and dislocation of meaning that, taken together, begin to make

sense of how difference is produced and elided at the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai. I trace this

play of signification initially through the lenses of several foundational models of

Japanese social organization, all of which continue to circulate as meta-narratives and

profoundly impact investigations of social behavior in Japan. While acknowledging the

conceptual frameworks developed by scholars such as Ruth Benedict, Nakane Chie, and

Doi Takeo, I introduce ethnographic data that, at the very least, indicate some degree of

play within these models. The Utari Kyōkai itself exceeds the scope of most analyses of

Japanese social organization, many of which presuppose, as do many Wajin, a monolithic

notion of national and ethnic membership in Japan89. The administrative office of the

Utari Kyōkai employs both Ainu and Wajin, a mix of ethnic memberships that compels

staff members to create bridges and build semblances which discursively deploy either

ontological connections, often conveyed through metaphors of flesh and blood or

displace perceived racial divisions through shared commitments to collectively defined

goals.

In response to a perceived over-emphasis on the social divisions and

compartmentalization of Japanese society, I borrow Murakami Yasusuke’s (1979)

notions of “kin-tract-ship” and discuss its historical role the negotiation of differences in

clan membership to produce corporate organizations or “ie” in the service of vast, labor-

138

intensive goals. I indicate how this pragmatic mode of organization is evident in day-to-

day operations at the Utari Kyōkai. I introduce one method of clarifying goals and

building consensus across different interest groups, in this case Wajin and Ainu

bureaucrats, referred to as nemawashi. Finally, and crucially, I indicate how blood

circulates and connects racially diverse Kyōkai members in culturally significant ways.

However, I should make clear from the outset that concepts like kin-tract-ship,

nemawashi, and blood-as-metaphor produce semblances among socially disparate

peoples, these productions are always incomplete and remain in play with narratives of

racial difference.

I begin by situating myself in the geographical and semiotic landscape of the

sprawling northern metropolis of Sapporo, and then in the institutional organization of

the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai. There is, in the city and the office, a series of strata, each of

which include lines of movement, points of significance where the circulation of

meanings slow and stabilize or speed up and proliferate through multiple re-significations

and moments of a-signification. Bordered by ocean, mountains and rivers, the area that

became Sapporo is marked by Ainu settlements and footpaths which were overlain with

early Wajin trading posts and, later, permanent settlements. These in turn were marked

with a grid pattern imported by an American city planner hired by the Meiji government

to remake Sapporo into a modern city in the fashion of frontier cities in the United States.

Many of the disarticulations that mark the landscape of Sapporo, points that evoke

competing histories and are today inscribed with multiple re-territorializations (e.g.

through naming, building of monuments and Ainu rituals of re-appropriation), emerge

139

within the Utari Kyōkai as staff members negotiate the cultural, organizational and ethnic

divisions that cross-cut the association.

Arriving

How to arrive? That was the question that preoccupied my travel-weary mind as I flew

into the Chitose airport in southern Hokkaido. Anthropologists are remembered for their

heroic entries: Chagnon staring down the drawn arrows of wildly hallucinating

Yanomamo warriors; Malinowski, alone with his gear on the beach, watching the boat

sail away; the Geertzes’ initial bout with malaria and Balinese indifference. What would

be my “threshold experience,” my culture shock, my exotic disease and how could I

artfully weave the incident into a future ethnography? As anthropologists, our

engagement with the mythos of our discipline - often found in the genre-bending travel-

writing that hovers around “serious” ethnographic descriptions - not only colors our

narratives, but qualifies us as professionals - something every graduate student urgently

desires.

As it turns out, I arrived late. One day to be precise. Emails, sent with increasing

frequency between Mr. Yamada, a ranking member of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai head

office, and myself, indicated that he would meet me at the airport on the 20th of June;

however, due to the time difference, I arrived on the 20th of June, New York time, which

was June 21st in Japan. Other than many small slippages like this throughout my

fieldwork, arriving in Japan was not unlike arriving at any airport in the United States. In

fact, the persistence of similarity, between Japan and the United States, the Japanese and

the Ainu, myself and my subjects, came to haunt the entire project.

140

Mr. Yamada, a Japanese man in his mid-fifties dressed neatly in suit and tie, met me at

the gate. We bowed and shook hands. I was relieved to find that he spoke fair English

and was eager to use it. I was also anxious to use my halting Japanese, so we boarded the

train for Sapporo speaking in a unique pidgin that would characterize most of our

conversations. He told me that he had set up a desk at the Utari Kyōkai office in

downtown Sapporo at which I could work. It was never specified exactly what kind work

I would be doing and how much of it would be my own as opposed to office work. These

ambiguities turned out to be productive for both of us as I came to inhabit a strange

position at the office that combined elements of an unpaid intern and a professional (also

unpaid) researcher. When not required to do translation work, I was left alone to do my

own research on historical documents (of which the Utari Kyōkai has an abundance),

transcribing interviews or pestering my office-mates for explanations. Yet, it was

important for me not to be seen as a perpetual outsider or as yet another opportunistic

American, so I came to the office dressed in “salaryman” attire (suit and tie) at 8:30 in the

morning and left around 6:00 in the evening for the first 6 months of my stay in Japan.

The monotony of the routine was broken up by periodic fieldtrips around the island and

after-hours carousing in the Susukino district with my fellow office mates.

On my first evening in Sapporo, I was dropped off at a small hotel run by a Christian

association that was conveniently located several blocks from Sapporo Station—the main

terminal for this sprawling city of nearly 2 million—and served as an inexpensive source

of lodging for clients visiting the Utari Kyōkai. Several days later I was dodging bicycles

and jostling with the morning crush of salarymen and office ladies, working my way

through the government district near Akarenga, the old red brick headquarters of

141

Hokkaido’s colonial administration, past the modernist concrete block that is the

Hokkaido Government Building, and on toward Kaderu 2.7—a relatively new ten story

office building which housed the prefecture’s welfare agencies, and, on the seventh floor,

a small Ainu museum, the Association for the Transmission and Maintenance of Ainu

Intangible Culture and the management office of the island-wide system of field offices

that constituted the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai.

I came bearing wrapped chocolates for each of the seven permanent staff in the main

office. The ritual of gift-giving in Japan is well known outside the country, but the

particular rules regarding the number of items given, the wrapping used, the phrases

associated with the activity and the various methods of tying the ribbon during such an

exchange are less well known. For example, giving an odd number of items as a gift is

considered both aesthetically pleasing and auspicious. Even-numbered gifts are

inauspicious because, rather than forming one unit, they can easily be divided. In

addition, giving items in groups of four is especially significant because the name for

“four” and “death” are pronounced the same (shi). In Japanese, it is common for words

that carry a negative meaning to contaminate other similarly pronounced words.

Accordingly, the single odd-numbered gift that is best avoided is the set of “nine,” which

carries the same articulation as “pain” (ku). Thus, the rules of gift-giving in Japan are

complex, as every element carries with it a range of culturally specific symbols (Rupp

2003)90. The reasons for gift giving are equally complex and range from simple altruism

to gifts given for purely selfish reasons (e.g. career advancement). The reason I handed

out chocolates on that first morning was that I hoped to be accepted, or at least tolerated,

during my six-month stay at the office. Following Marcel Mauss (2000:14), I think my

142

desire for connection and a sense of social solidarity, in addition to acknowledging the

many spoken and unspoken social obligations and expectations involved in my

arrangement with the Kyōkai, is what precipitated my fairly frequent participation in gift-

exchange while I was in Japan.

As I handed out chocolates and a more or less coherent explanation for my presence, I

was given a stack of meishi (business cards) that reflected my new social position as a

member of the Utari Kyōkai staff. In fact, my title was tokubetsu kenshūsei (special

intern), a moniker that indicated fairly well my marginal position in relation to the rest of

the office staff. It is fortunate that I established just such an institutional connection early

in my fieldwork, as, I discovered later, it is difficult to do much of anything in Japan,

from opening a bank account to renting a cell phone or an apartment, without some kind

of company or institutional affiliation. In addition to providing a legitimizing function via

establishing one’s corporate identity, the meishi lists your contact information and,

perhaps most importantly, your title. The Japanese language is sensitive to the relative

social distance between people—an ostensible holdover from the feudal era where one’s

caste identity was reflected in everything from one’s hair and clothes to one’s method of

addressing others. Depending on the other’s job title, degree of familiarity and/or social

context, one would use completely different words (e.g. verbs and honorific prefixes)

when speaking to those of higher or lower status. “Polite speech,” or keigo, is divided

into sonkeigo (honorific speech) which is spoken to one’s superiors and kenjōgo (humble

speech) which is used to refer to oneself or one’s family or company. For example, the

verb “to go,” iku, becomes more polite as ikimasu, and honorific as irassharu. The

exchange of meishi, then, gives instant clues about social identity, specifically one’s

143

position in the social hierarchy, which indicates the linguistic mode one is expected to

employ.

Fig. 15 A typical meishi with one’s institutional affiliation at top, job title, personal name

and contact information at the bottom. The social importance of these markers is reflected

in the order presented on the card (company, title, surname, etc.).

For the first two weeks I stayed at various pensions while scouring the city for a

conveniently located apartment. My Utari Kyōkai meishi was key in the search for more

permanent lodgings. As a foreigner in Japan, you must show evidence of both wealth and

broader social connections in the area to rent an apartment. Five months rent is standard

up front (first and last month, damage deposit, non-refundable “key money” and the

fudousan, i.e. real estate broker, commission). In addition, it greatly helps your case to

have some kind of institutional affiliation (e.g. university or company) and you must have

a Japanese citizen sign as your guarantor. After a week and a half of meetings, paper

signings and nearly $2000 USD I hauled my bags up seven floors to my small apartment

in kita-ku (North Ward) near Hokkaido University.

144

Neighborhood Sapporo

Sapporo is located on the Ishikari plain and contained largely between the Ishikari

River to the north, the Sea of Japan to the northwest and mountains to the South and West

(the peaks of Maruyama, Moiwa, Teine and the pyramidal Sankaku frame the

southwestern border of the city). The city is famous for its relatively dry, mild summers

and long, harsh winters. Its proximity to forests, lakes and mountains make it a popular

tourist destination for Japanese seeking to escape the hot and humid summers of the

southern islands. In the winter, Sapporo draws millions of tourists who shiver amid the

towering snow and ice sculptures during its winter Snow Festival. The flatlands to the

north and east are largely agricultural, but the many smaller municipalities in this region

have grown into bedroom communities for the legions of workers who do not wish to live

in a high rise and cannot afford to buy a home in Sapporo. The city is divided into ten

wards. Much of my time was spent walking a north-south route between kita-ku where I

lived, chuo-ku (Central Ward) where I worked and the entertainment district, Susukino,

not technically a ward, where I often went with co-workers or friends to eat, drink or

warble into karaoke machines.

As the fifth largest city in Japan, and the capital of Hokkaido Prefecture, Sapporo is

something of an oddity. The name is a Japanese version of an Ainu phrase that the

indigenous inhabitants used to describe the area. The Ainu called it “sat poro pet,”

meaning “a large river running through a plain.” The kanji used to signify the city are “札

幌,” these characters are individually pronounced “satsu” and “horo;” but, unlike the

kanji for Tokyo (東京) which mean “eastern capital” and aptly describes the city, the

combination of kanji representing Sapporo is meaningless91. This is one of many

145

examples in Hokkaido and elsewhere where Ainu place names, instead of being

represented phonetically using the katakana syllabary, are re-invented as Japanese

through the use of kanji characters that reflect a certain phonetic pronunciation but, as

signifiers, are meaningless. The fact that the Japanese have a separate writing system for

foreign words indicates, among other things, that there is some sensitivity about word

origins. Yet, that Ainu place names are so often represented with kanji indicates an

erasure, an incomplete one at that, under which Ainu provenance is obscured through a

Japanese rewriting--albeit one that is haunted by nonsensical signifieds92.

The city was constructed as the new capital of Hokkaido during the Meiji Restoration.

In 1870, Horace Capron, the Secretary of Agriculture under Ulysses S. Grant, came to

Sapporo to assist with the planning of the city. As a consequence, unlike any other city in

Japan, Sapporo has relatively wide streets that run at right angles from the central Odori

Park, forming a grid pattern characteristic of many western American cities. In addition,

many of Sapporo’s large buildings from that time period are renowned for their unique

blending of Eastern and Western architectural motifs (examples include the colonization

building Akarenga, the town clock and several Hokkaido University buildings). On

account of its particular history, emerging as is did from an era characterized by the

seemingly generous spirit of cooperation between Japan and the United States (motivated

in part by America’s so-called “gunboat diplomacy”); the structure of the city is in fact

more akin to Denver, Colorado than to any other large Japanese city.

Sapporoites generally consider themselves, in relation to Japanese from other regions,

a bit rough around the edges yet easy-going and receptive to outsiders. As a city that was

born at the beginning of Japan’s modern era, Sapporo does not have a history of Japanese

146

aristocracy or court life that marks Kyoto or Tokyo, nor does it have the industry of

Osaka. Sapporo informants typically characterized Tokyo Japanese as fast-talking,

stressed and too busy to be very friendly. Kyoto Japanese are seen as snobbish, too

preoccupied with family genealogies and the finer points of etiquette. On the other hand,

Osaka Japanese speak in a strange dialect and are too ostentatious in their behavior and

dress. While these stereotypes are as inaccurate as they are oft-repeated, Sapporo

Japanese see themselves as unique, and historically speaking, they are. Hokkaido, as a

product of Japanese modernity, is largely unencumbered by the provincialism of the

feudal era, where subjects tended to live out their entire lives within a single domain.

Excluding the Ainu, it is an island of immigrants. Many of the first were jobless samurai

who defended the Shogun during the Boshin War against the ascendant Emperor Meiji

and became tonden-hei (samurai-farmers) of modern Hokkaido. My Japanese informants

were cognizant of their relatively short roots in the area and, despite the fact that they

were third or fourth generation Sapporoites, would often refer to their family’s home

prefecture in Honshu or some other island as the geographic locus of their family’s

identity.

My neighborhood in kita-ku, referred to as the Hokkaido University area, was seven

blocks north of the behemoth Sapporo Station—a rail hub and shopping complex of

staggering proportions—which constituted the northern frontier of the Sapporo business

district. Immediately around my building the old and new Sapporo were coexisting

peaceably enough. There were small family-owned restaurants, barber shops, a Buddhist

temple and wooden Taisho Era homes amid the new high-rises, chain izakaya (taverns

that serve food) and the ubiquitous konbini (convenience stores). Walking to the office

147

took about 30 minutes. My route brought me past the gated and tree-lined campus of

Hokkaido University, past the seizure-inducing flashing neon and noise of the Kobayashi

Kamera department store and into skyscraper lined streets of the business and shopping

district. Merging into the stream of salarymen in their somber, dark suites and the

fashionably dressed office ladies, I was swept along toward the picturesque duck pond

and garden around the old red brick Hokkaido Government Building (now a museum),

past the new modernist, no nonsense Hokkaido Government Building and one block west

to Kaderu 2.7—my Sapporo field site for much of the next year.

At Home in the Office: Uchi and Amae

The visages of grim determination found on many of the faces I passed each morning

on the way to the Utari Kyōkai were no doubt transformed, as were the countenances of

most of my colleagues, upon returning to their offices. In Japanese the word for home

(both place and family members) and the word for the office (both place and office

mates) is the same: uchi. Depending on the context, uchi can denote the physical structure

of a house, the feeling associated with “home,” the spatial dimension of a business or the

more abstract idea of a corporation with branches scattered globally. In many situations,

the word is used as a marker for the in-group—be it a family, an office staff or the entire

membership of an association. The kanji for uchi is 家 and has various pronunciations:

“ie,” means home or house; “ka,” as in kazoku (家族), means family; or, it can represent

the suffix “ke,” as in Suzuki-ke (the Suzuki family). The kanji’s etymological roots lie in

the ideogram’s reference to the hearth and extend to the physical space of the home.

Some of the overlap in meaning (that is, uchi/ie as both “home” and “company”) can be

148

attributed to the fact that, for much of Japan’s history, one’s household was often also the

center of one’s business, be it a family farm, store or cottage industry.

Nakane Chie finds the conceptual basis for uchi and ie rooted in the centrality of the

corporate group and the concomitant marginality of the individual and indifference to

consanguine kin relations in Japan. Blood relations are subordinated in many cases to

relationships that are functionally integral to the household. For example, one’s daughter-

in-law who marries into the family is said to carry more significance for the family than

the daughter who will marry out93. Similarly, in a family without a male heir, one can be

married into the family through marriage to a daughter, assume the family name and

become head of the household (a fairly common process called mukoyoshi)94. These

examples are often invoked to indicate the difference between Japanese and Western

notions of kinship—the former based on collective enterprise, the latter consanguine

descent. Nakane challenged Japanese commentators who decried Japan’s engagement

with the forces of modernity and the disintegration of the traditional Japanese household.

Her analysis reveals that the ie was never exclusively concerned with consanguine kin

relations; rather, the change in social organization from an agrarian society to an

industrial society caused the locus of the ie, seen here as an economic enterprise rather

than a kin group, to slip from the household to the company (Nakane 1998:8).

It is important to note that the argument that blood relations are insignificant relative

to their importance in the West is often overstated. Generally speaking, blood relations

and their attendant obligations and responsibilities remain with the individual throughout

their lifetime. Japanese parents are typically very tolerant with their children, often

supporting them well into their 20s and 30s. Yamada Masahiro has chronicled the

149

emergence of the “parasite single” in Japan which is embodied by the live-at-home

daughter who works, pays little, if any, rent, travels the world and buys Louis Vuitton

handbags at outrageous prices (the moral indignation in these kinds of analyses may stem

from the fact that the daughter will only repay this indulgence by marrying out of the

household) (Yamada 1999). In addition, Japanese adults, often at great expense, return to

their family’s hometown for the annual mid-summer Obon festival to pay homage to their

ancestors. Clearly consanguine kin relations remain important despite the increasing

separation of business activity from the home; yet, the broader observation that

institutional group relations (esp. school and company) remain salient facets of Japanese

self-identity is difficult to refute.

Dorinne Kondo presses this point home, writing that the corporate group constitutes

an existential starting point for the Japanese.

As the zero-point of discourse, uchi locates selves, providing a place from

which to encounter the world. And because it is the zero-point of discourse, it

is virtually impossible to create an utterance without somehow taking into

account the in-group/out-group distinction. We see, then, how language

locates utterances within a social field. By speaking, one inevitably speaks as

a person embedded within a particular uchi. One is never an isolated

individual. (Kondo 1990:147)

Linguistically, the Japanese are often portrayed as omitting subjects within their

utterances. Instead, speakers rely on context or verb construction to supply the

indexicality that typically evades and frustrates non-native speakers. Speaking in the

context of the workplace, Kondo’s primary field site, many utterances may in fact

originate from the viewpoint of the in-group or uchi. That said, there are many different

and concrete ways to indicate the views, assertions and subjective feelings of the

individual; for example, watashi or watakushi are standard first-person indicators95.

150

Kondo overemphasizes uchi as the locus from which most Japanese speak and thereby

supports the caricature that the Japanese are somehow deficient in subjective awareness,

understanding themselves primarily in terms of group membership.

Doi Takeo finds emotional linkages forged during childhood responsible for the mode

of cohesion and sense of belonging particular to the Japanese. According to Doi the

notion of amae, roughly translated as “dependency,” governs Japanese interpersonal

relationships that are characterized by notions of indulgence and obligation. Amae, often

described as the emotion-laden feeling of dependency a child might have for its mother,

is transposed to different social contexts and structures including the dyadic

master/student or superior/subordinate (oyabun/kobun) association that typifies Japanese

interpersonal relationships (Benedict 1989; Kondo 1990; Nakane 1998).

Doi arranges Japanese relationships into three groups of increasing social distance and

decreasing emotional attachment. The first group is one’s inner circle or in-group within

which feelings of amae are strong and where one can expect some degree of indulgence.

The terms miuchi (relatives) and nakamauchi (colleagues) refer to variants of this first

group in which different levels of amae and giri (obligation) mix, but there is a noted

lack of enryo (sense of reserve or restraint). The second group is composed of out-group

members with whom one is connected and with whom a sense of enryo must be

maintained. In this group, feelings of amae are deemed inappropriate; a sense of decorum

and obligation characterizes these relationships. The last group, tanin or strangers,

involve no amae, giri or enryo. Thus, according to Doi, Japanese interpersonal behavior

is largely determined by social distance (Doi 2001:41-43).

151

Social distance, however, is not judged by clear demarcations. In the office, I

encountered, at different times, many gradations of Doi’s three groups. The workplace

reflected elements of the first and second groups in that indulgence and restraint were

often deployed in combinations to minimize intra-group conflict. The core staff was

fairly relaxed around one another, yet ties of obligation keep them from straying too far

from the task at hand. There is also a semblance of decorum as the subordinates call their

superiors by their titles rather than their names and official requests by superiors are

promptly addressed. When attending events and interacting with members of the different

branch offices, the Kyōkai staff employed a high degree of enryo—bowing was measured

and keigo (polite speech) was used. In contrast, tourists or unannounced visitors to the

office were practically ignored by the staff. Branded tokubetsu kenshūsei (special intern),

I found myself treated with increasing familiarity and warmth as I came in day after day

and became committed to some of the projects promoted by the office.

I tended to arrive early to the Utari Kyōkai, yet in every instance Ms. Kawai was there

earlier, straightening the kitchen area, brewing tea and coffee for rest of the staff who

would soon arrive. We exchanged greetings, ohaiyou gozaimasu (good morning), and

small talk about the weather as I plugged in my computer and began setting up for the

day. Soon afterward Mr. Kawabata would come in sharply dressed, usually chatting with

Mr. Akimatsu. After engaging in small talk for a time, they would go to their desks and

begin scanning the newspaper for mentions of the Kyōkai or Ainu in general. The rest of

the staff would follow, chatting amicably about the previous night’s Fighter’s (Sapporo’s

baseball team) game or Mr. Akimatsu’s latest trip to record and archive an Ainu event,

often on the other side of the island. Mr. Ikegami, the youngest member of the staff,

152

worked at the desk next to mine. His laptop screensaver was a slideshow of his son and

his newborn daughter. He, along with Mr. Yamada, kept me tuned into the latest news

concerning the Ainu community, in particular upcoming events that they thought I should

attend. Then Ms. Hanada would rush in and with hurried greetings begin setting up her

workstation. Shortly before 9:00 AM, the resident researcher and curator of the small

Ainu museum that adjoined the main office, Mrs. Fujino, would arrive to begin her

research—usually something connected with Ainu textiles (the subject of her graduate

work). Finally, just at 9:00, the office head, Mr. Nozaki, would enter, hang up his jacket

and greet the staff, who in turn greeted him back in near unison-- ohaiyou gozaimasu! At

this point newspapers were returned to the bin, chatting stopped and the workday began

in earnest.

But it was not only an office. As the staff filed in, they hung their blazers or coats in

lockers near the door. Some of them kept their “office shoes” in their lockers and would

change into them upon arrival; others had a pair of slippers that poked out from under

their desks. Some desk chairs had embroidered seat cushions from home and desktops

held small omiage (souvenirs) brought back from vacation destinations visited by other

office members. Beverages and snacks were served at regular times throughout the day.

There was a television that was turned on from 12:00 – 1:00 while the staff ate lunch

together—some at their desks and others on the sofas in the greeting area, where they

could more easily watch the news, sumo match or baseball game. Conversations during

the lunch hour were informal and there was often laughter. Things wound down around

1:00 as the television was turned off and work resumed. Ms. Kawai served tea and coffee

153

directly after lunch to stave off the after-meal sluggishness that would otherwise affect

afternoon productivity.

The staff typically left the office after 6:00 in the evening. There was the pressure to

leave, if not last, then with the final departing group of staff-members. The implication

was that by leaving later, one was more dedicated to the work of the office, although

serious work generally tapered off just after 5:00 PM. In addition, it was considered bad

form to leave before the office head, Mr. Nozaki, who would gather his jacket, briefcase

and umbrella and saunter off around 5:30, thanking us for our work during the day. When

leaving the office, the salutation is fairly formulaic. When departing before others, one

says, “Osaki ni shitsurei shimasu” which means “sorry for leaving before you.” Those

still at work will generally say, “otsukaresama deshita” (that was tough, you must be

tired) or “gokurōsama deshita” (thank you for your efforts)96. The implication in these

scripted farewells is that one is apologetic for leaving the group and the work at hand,

while the group reassures the departing party that their contribution was sufficient and

that it is fine for them to leave.

The layout of our office was not atypical judging by the appearance of the other

offices I had the opportunity to visit. Unlike the American preoccupation with privacy

and individual space, Japanese offices tend to be cubical-less and open—a design reputed

to promote a spirit of teamwork; however, it also imposed a panopticon effect where

everyone was potentially under direct supervision of their superiors. As one would enter

our office, there was a row of lockers to the right and, to the left, a kitchenette. Then, a

double row of desks, positioned face to face, led away from the door and toward the

window at the opposite end of the room. The two desks closest to the door are reserved

154

for the “office lady” or OL (pronounced “oh eru”) (on the left and closest to the

kitchenette) and the most junior member of the staff. In our case it was a part-timer’s

desk that alternated between two seniors (in their later 60s) who continued to work a few

days a week despite the mandatory retirement age of sixty (see Yoshida 2004).

The person nearest the door is expected to greet new arrivals and direct them to whom

they wish to speak. One exception was the lunch cart woman, who entered pushing her

cart stacked with obento while bidding the staff a cheerful “ohaiyo gozaimasu” every

morning around 10:00, and, more times than not, was ignored until she left. Also, tourists

who managed to find their way into the office from the small museum two doors down

were also generally ignored until they beckoned for attention (sumimasen!). In the event

of a visit from someone on the other end of the social scale, for example one of the

Kyōkai board members with an appointment or a surprise visit from a government

official, someone closer to the window (thus, higher in status) would jump up with

enthusiastic greetings and guide the honorable guest to the meeting room where he would

be served tea and some kind of snack.

The desks closer to the window belonged to the senior staff. At this end of the row

was Mr. Yamada’s desk, which faced down the middle of the double row and allowed

him to observe all junior members of the staff. Finally, Mr. Nozaki, the office head, sat

behind Mr. Yamada and nearest the window. The lines of sight enabled by such an

arrangement prevent anyone from appearing to not be diligently working. As one was

facing one row of officemates, in addition to the overall supervision of Mr. Yamada,

working on non- Kyōkai business (e.g. making doctor appointments for oneself or one’s

family, responding to personal emails, etc.), was difficult if not impossible. In addition,

155

conversations between junior staff and visitors were conducted in the visiting area which

was a mere ten feet from the desk row. These conversations, even if conducted

“privately” in the visiting area, were open to comment from the staff once the visitor had

left the office. The degree of privacy accorded to a visitor seemed to have less to do with

the visitor and more to do with whom the visitor had come to see. Meetings involving

junior staff were thus indirectly monitored by senior staff, while meetings with senior

staff were held in a separate meeting room97. Yet, in nearly all cases, visitors with

appointments were accorded all the courtesies of a visitor to a Japanese home. They were

offered something to eat, brought tea or coffee, made comfortable and spoken to with

some degree of deference.

Fig.16 Floor plan of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai’s administrative office.

156

The office in Japan constitutes a social field where meaningful relationships are

articulated and sustained over periods of time now uncommon in many Western

countries. Despite the economic slump of the 1990s, companies and state bureaucracies

still expect long-term commitments from their employees. The feeling is largely

reciprocal. Mr. Ikegami, a man in his mid-20s and the youngest member of the office

staff, told me that he intended to remain at the Kyōkai until he retired. “Yari kara hakaba

made” or “cradle to grave” employment continues to be a highly sought-after

arrangement for educated Japanese despite the economic restructuring many corporations

have undergone, making these kinds of jobs less abundant than they once were. In

contrast, many of the Ainu that I met in other parts of Hokkaido (often Utari Kyōkai

members) were often marginally employed. One Ainu woman in her thirties referred to

herself as a “freeter” (furiitaa) which I later learned was portmanteau of the English word

“free” and the German word “arbeiter” (a loanword, pronounced arubaito in Japanese,

which means part-time worker). Freeters, Japanese who by choice or circumstances end

up working a series of temporary or part time jobs, have been growing in number in the

post-bubble period (Smith, in prep.). Yet, those hired into state or corporate bureaucracies

typically follow career paths that involve spending decades working with many of the

same people. It is this persistence of social relationships, conceivably perpetuated via the

same schema of power-relations that contributed to the functioning of the household-

based businesses of the past, which lends the office its domestic atmosphere.

157

Hierarchy at the Office: Above, Below and Between

The staff at the Kyōkai worked hard during the day, and sometimes into the night.

Despite the amount of time spent at the office (or, perhaps, because of it), there was a

consistently high degree of comfort and casualness at the Kyōkai. My officemates did not

seem to mind the long days and appeared quite relaxed at work. This fact strangely

coexisted with their careful observance of the hierarchical arrangement of the office staff

which was organized spatially according to rank. Junior members called the senior

members by their titles: “jichō” (Deputy General Manager), “jimusōchō” (Secretary

General) or “rijichō” (Chief Director). The junior members were called by their

surnames, “Ikegami-san” (Mr. Ikegami) or “Kawai-san” (Ms. Kawai). This mirrors the

use of kinship terms in the family where seniors tend to refer to juniors by their proper

names and juniors refer to seniors using kinship terminology. Difference in rank was

also reflected in the language used—polite language was generally employed by juniors

when speaking to senior members, while a more casual language was used by seniors

addressing juniors. This involved the use of different sets of verbs and, sometimes when

speaking to superiors, the addition of honorifics to nouns. Rank was embodied as well.

When bowing, juniors normally would bow deeper and at the waist, while a senior staff

member would quickly bob his head in response. On more than one occasion, Mr.

Yamada asked one of the junior staff to bring him a document and the junior staff

member would, with arms straight to the sides, back stiff, body slightly bent forward, run

across the room to the appropriate file cabinet, grab the document and run back. The need

for quickness was not, in any of the cases I observed, evident, but the “office hustle” (as I

158

came to call it) seemed to be an outward display of both obedience and efficiency. That

my coworkers never appeared to chaff under the kind of obeisance that they displayed

daily was remarkable to me98.

The Japanese penchant toward careful observance of social ranking is well-known and

reproduced in virtually any anthropological or sociological study of the nation. Ruth

Benedict points to the long history of social castes in Japan which contributed to a

modern embrace of hierarchy that is seemingly specific to the Japanese. Perhaps

overstating the case she writes,

The Japanese…when they put their trust in ‘proper station’ were turning to

rules of life which had been ingrained in them by their own social experience.

Inequality has been for centuries the rule of their organized life at just those

points where it is most predictable and accepted. Behavior that recognizes

hierarchy is as natural to them as breathing. (Benedict 1989:47)

According to Benedict, the Tokugawa Shogunate achieved an end to centuries of

bloodshed and social instability through its instantiation of a “meticulously plotted

hierarchy,” which was in turn associated by the Japanese people with the predictability

and constancy of peacetime (Benedict 1989:70). The apex of society shifted in the latter

half of the 19th century when the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, was deposed by

Emperor Meiji who regained political control of the country and dismantled the feudal-

era caste system. Social orientations shifted too during this process as the Japanese

became members of the kokutai—the extended family of the Emperor. Benedict realized

that at the time she was writing The Chrysanthemum and the Sword that the Occupation

Authority could use Japanese anxiety over the lack of a social map to their advantage. By

creating a new social apex it was thought that Japan might achieve a peaceful transition

from an Emperor-worshipping, fascist state to a functioning democracy. It could be

159

assumed that, after the experience of the war, the Japanese had little use for national

politics and, as state and corporate bureaucracies proliferated in the postwar period, many

of the mannerisms that acknowledged power differentials in the home and in the national

body more broadly were transferred into the company99.

Nakane Chie’s seminal Japanese Society (1998) details this transfer of hierarchical

arrangements from the feudal household to the office and finds that the individual

understanding of one’s locus in society as either above, equal to or below any other

individual is a fundamental social fact that structures vertically the whole of Japanese

society. Nakane writes, “[a] Japanese finds his world clearly divided into three

categories, senpai (seniors), kōhai (juniors) and dōryō (colleague)” (Nakane 1998:26).

She goes on to say that dōryō is a category that tends to further divide into either

senior/junior relationships or equals who compete with one another (for the esteem of

their shared senpai). These terms, used in institutional settings, beginning in school and

again in the workplace, structure the in-group into a fairly simple ranking system that

involves sustained contact between participants. Nakane asserts that the dependence on

this vertical system of interpersonal relationships limits the size of working units that

once again reflect the size of a typical feudal household and the constellation of

relationships that were typically found therein.

[T]he functionally effective core is fairly small, usually one or two dozen

members, a size which enables each member to have direct contact with all

the others, who can be organized on two or three levels, including the leader

on the top level; thus, members on the lowest level do not stand too far from

the leader. (Nakane 1998:51)

She contends that the Japanese penchant for bureaucratic organization (i.e. larger

organizations broken up into smaller bureaus performing limited functions) stems from

160

this schematic understanding of oneself via a restricted set of social coordinates. One’s

social position as either higher or lower status vis-à-vis an other is exemplified in the

senpai/kohai (senior/junior) dynamic and framed more broadly in the oyabun/kobun

(parent/child) relationship. Both relationships are based on the assumption that seniority

entails a degree of respect and obedience. The oyabun/kobun relationship, that of a

mentor and disciple, exemplifies this kind of vertical relationship and may be maintained

over a lifetime.

Participation in a vertically segmented society leads to both a pragmatism and a

fatalism that is often said to characterize Japanese sensibilities toward social mobility. As

one informant explained, “In Japan there is always someone above you, what can you do

(shō ga nai)?” The implications deriving from this statement were that he could only do

so much to advance his agenda at work. Rather than appeal to rhetorical strategies or the

force of rational argumentation to generate consensus, he was stymied by his superior’s

seeming indifference to launch a new initiative. On another occasion the same informant

quipped that since his senpai was only a few years older than him, there would be only a

slim chance that he would one day ascend to a leadership position in the office. Six

months later his senpai quit the office, suddenly elevating this informant to a senior

position; however, the suddenness of the reorganization, and the conditions under which

his senpai departed, made him physically ill. This leads me to another dimension of

sociality in the Japanese workplace that tends to become obscured in the structuralist-

inspired social/psychological analyses of Japanese behavior.

For my ill informant, his distress was not caused exclusively by the sudden

assumption of a higher post, nor was it caused by the budgetary difficulties that he would

161

inherit. Rather, his reaction stemmed from the sudden rupture of an important

relationship. Friendship (yūjō) has been largely neglected in the social science literature,

and continues to constitute a lacuna in the anthropology of Japan (a significant exception

includes Bell and Coleman 1999). At the Utari Kyōkai, I daily observed the various

enactments, including spatial organization, language use, subtle gestures and overtures of

respect, through which the office hierarchy was reproduced. Crisscrossing these

boundaries between people both within and outside the organization were expressions of

friendship, camaraderie and romance (both unrequited and reciprocated) as well as more

negative dispositions such as antipathy, resentment and ambivalence. Nakane, who

introduced the idea of Japan as a vertical society in the starkest terms, writes several

pages describing the importance of friendship within and between institutions (Nakane

1998:120-123). Contrary to her thesis, friendships both transcend and temper the

intrusiveness of social hierarchy and the divisions between institutions. At the Kyōkai,

senpai/kohai relationships were opportunities for friendship and, challenging Nakane’s

assertion, dōryō tended to be quite close.

Without discounting the cultural significance of so-called vertical relationships in

Japan, horizontal linkages formed by friendships, often cultivated in childhood, at school

or through other organizations, require further investigation to account for the complex

nature of Japanese social organization. These often long-distance relationships are

maintained in a variety of ways, but one’s dense network of friends and acquaintances is

ritually acknowledged at least once a year with the sending and receiving of nengajō

(New Year’s cards). Since it is not uncommon for one to send out well over 100 such

cards, they are short and fairly formulaic with a new years greeting and a stamp of the

162

new zodiac animal. The sending of nengajō is a particularly celebratory activity, bound

up with the cuisine, games and observance of Shinto rituals, and is repeated annually

unless there has been a death in the family. As Mr. Yamada’s mother had passed the

same year I arrived, his family sent out short notices to all of their friends asking them to

not send nengajō in respect of their family’s mourning. It is not usual to call on an

acquaintance after a long period of receiving nothing more than nengajō. In fact, it was

one of Mr. Nozaki’s childhood friends living on the other side of the island who enabled

me to relocate to Nemuro for a crucial stage of my fieldwork.

Boundaries: In-group vs. Out-group

The office in Japan is a complex and highly valuated space. Entering or leaving is

charged with conventions that govern movement, speech and self-representation,

reflecting subtle shifts in one’s social identity as the threshold into the office is crossed.

For the office worker, coming to work in the morning is an act of homecoming insofar as

one enters into a web of enduring relationships, obligations and expectations that remain

fairly stable over a long period of time. Historically, men enter a company or government

office just out of college and work there until the compulsory retirement at age of

sixty100. Due to a pay scale that tends to value seniority over merit or experience, most

Japanese are reluctant to switch jobs except under the most dire of circumstances. Thus

career employment in Japan entails spending much of one’s life with one’s office cohort.

This situation requires that intra-office friction be minimized and consensus, or the

appearance of consensus, maintained (on “consensus ideology” in Japan see Goodman

1992; Mcveigh 2000; Befu 2001).

163

When visiting an office, there is a complex array of decorum and obligation to which

visitor and guest are attuned. Not unlike the traditional Japanese house, where one knocks

on the sliding front door, enters the vestibule and waits for someone to invite them in,

visitors to a Japanese office will knock, enter just beyond the door, announce themselves

and bow. Overcoats are removed just before entering, as it is thought that they pick up

contaminants (dust, rain, etc) from the outside and will in some way defile the office or

staff. Once received, the visitor is escorted to the waiting area where they are served

coffee or tea and perhaps some small snack. As the visitor is often an outsider (i.e. not

associated with the office), there is palpable tension between parties as meishi are

exchanged. The anxiety is most noticeable in the audible inhalations (often described by

the uninitiated as “hissing”) from individuals appreciably concerned whether the other is

being met with the appropriate degree of respect (which would be reflected, for example,

in the depth of the bow and in the kind of language used). Once relative rank is sorted

out, questions about seating arrangements, who sets the agenda and the tempo and mode

of the meeting finally becomes clear (to the relief of all concerned).

The Utari Kyōkai received visitors daily and Mssrs. Nozaki and Yamada were often

sequestered in the meeting room with functionaries from other branches of the Kyōkai or,

alternatively, bureaucrats from the prefectural government. Early in my fieldwork, I

noticed the high level of anxiety that was provoked when our office heads met with some

ranking members of the Hokkaido Prefectural Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and

Fisheries. The parties had not previously met and consequently there were many sharp

inhalations, unsure bowing, mumbled introductions and fumbling for meishi in the

waiting area. The meeting itself, though closed to the rest of the office staff, turned out to

164

be crucial to the elimination of the yearly fishing licenses that had to be obtained by Ainu

groups all over Hokkaido to catch migrating salmon, a traditional food staple and a

central component for a number of Ainu rituals. Upon witnessing this scene on a number

of subsequent occasions, it became apparent that the importance of the meeting was not

the reason for these initial few minutes of stressed reaction to a group of visitors, rather it

was the fact that the visiting group’s relative rank was unknown, making the degree of

enryo to be employed unknown as well.

It was odd to see Mr. Yamada so flustered. Having been at the Kyōkai since the

1970s, he maintained a commanding presence, tempered with a sense of humor, in the

office. He often had to call Kyōkai members who were in danger of defaulting on their

low-interest loans. When the lender was cooperative, Mr. Yamada would remain very

accommodating; however, occasionally the other party became recalcitrant in their

refusal to repay. Then Mr. Yamada’s voice would drop an octave and increase in volume,

“Well, see here…” (Ano desu ne…); after a stern lecture, the other party would either

hang up (Mr. Yamada would suddenly stop, hang up the phone and shrug) or become

more obliging. Watching him work with such a high degree of expertise on a daily basis,

it was shocking to watch him muddle through introductions with a group of bureaucrats.

So, what is responsible for the anxiety, and occasional animosity, that characterizes

meetings with out-group members?

Kyōkai members were generally very sociable towards one another, but there are

long-standing rifts between some of the branches of the organization. For example, the

Asahikawa branch, the founding location for the original Ainu Association in the 1930s,

has often been at odds with the rest of the association on decisive issues such as the Ainu

165

New Law adopted by the Utari Kyōkai in1984. In addition, the regional differences

between the locations of the over 30 branches has led to arguments in the past. At the

2006 Utari Kyōkai General Meeting, there were several members from Nemuro and

Rausu who were highly critical of the organization once again sidelining the Northern

Territories issue which is of central importance for Ainu fishermen on the east coast of

Hokkaido. In spite of intra-organizational differences, at functions where there was food

and drink and the atmosphere more casual, there was a good deal of mingling between

the different factions within the organization. However, the conviviality exhibited at

these functions was not apparent when the organization met with its counterpart, The

Foundation for the Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture or FRPAC (Zaidan Houjin

Ainu Bunka Shinkou Kenkyū Suishin Kikkou). FRPAC was created in 1997 by the

Japanese Government to support research into Ainu culture and to encourage traditional

cultural activities conducted by Ainu artists and craftspeople. The sister organization is

located across the street from the administrative office of the Utari Kyōkai in Sapporo.

Despite this proximity, encounters between the two organizations could be characterized

as cool at their best. During the 2005 budgetary meeting, the level of tension in the room,

filled primarily with Utari Kyōkai members and branch heads, rose considerably when

the FRPAC contingent arrived. During their summary of the year’s expenditures, a few

rude comments were made by some of the Ainu present. The FRPAC members, visibly

affronted, finished quickly and filed out.

The friction between the two sides has several causes. The complaint I heard most

often lodged against FRPAC was that there are only a few Ainu who work for the

organization, most of the staff consists of Wajin appointed by the Hokkaido Government.

166

Unlike the Utari Kyōkai, which is partially member-supported and open to democratic

participation; FRPAC, on the other hand, is wholly supported by the prefectural and

national governments and led by a mandate which over-determines the kinds of activities

it can support. Since it has a fairly narrow view of what constitutes Ainu culture,

generous endowments notwithstanding, FRPAC offers very little in terms of economic

support to the Ainu community. These facts help explain the cool reception FRPAC

received during the budgetary meeting from the large Ainu contingent in the conference

room, but they do not address the uneasiness that was evident between the heads of the

administrative office of the Kyōkai and FRPAC. Both groups are primarily Wajin and

both groups work with other ministries and governmental functionaries on a daily basis;

yet, when I accompanied Yamada-san across the street to the FRPAC offices early in my

fieldwork, conversations between Yamada-san and the various FRPAC members

appeared to be highly strained. When I asked Yamada-san if the two organizations got

along well together, he assured me that they were sister organizations and proceeded to

hand me pamphlets explaining the history and mandate of FRPAC. His unusual

avoidance of the question, and subsequent meetings between the two groups, confirmed

that some the stiff formality between the organizations is in fact competitiveness derived

from the similarity of their work. As Nakane emphasizes, “because competition takes

place between parallel groups of the same kind, the enemy is always to be found among

those in the same category” (Nakane 1998:87). In the next section I discuss how

competition and friction is minimized with the same group.

167

Root-binding: Building Consensus and Cohesion in the Office

In terms of structure, the homology between the array of obligations and social norms

associated with kinship roles in a traditional Japanese household and the functional work

relations in a typical Japanese office is striking. The office chief (Mr. Nozaki) is accorded

all the respect and honor of a patriarch. He represents the office in an official capacity,

ultimately making decisions that affect the staff’s day to day routine and, more broadly,

has great influence on the bureau’s overall agenda. The chief’s second-in-command plays

the role of the first son, the heir apparent to the family business. In our office Mr.

Yamada was second-in-command and most involved with organizing the staff and

making sure the office met its objectives and obligations as established by the chief. The

rest of the staff (Mssrs. Akimatsu, Kawabata, Ikegami and Ms. Hanada) worked at

specific tasks, much the same way sons, daughters and family retainers might have in the

pre-modern Japanese ie. In addition, the position of office lady, lowest in the office

hierarchy because of the revolving nature of her position, is not unlike the daughter of the

traditional Japanese family who ranks low due to her inevitable marriage out of the

family (only to be replaced by first son’s wife). One of the paradoxes of the office lady’s

position is that while employed as a permanent member of the staff, she is expected to

marry within a few years and become a housewife, vacating the position for another

“shokuba no hana” (office flower) (Ogasawara 1998)101. Perhaps this draws the analogy

to the point of caricature, but it is difficult to ignore not only the lexical similarities, but

also how the home and the office contain comparable power arrangements that tend to

168

reflect culturally specific values regarding age and gender (cf. Kondo 1990; Murakami

1984; Nakane 1998; Rohlen 1974).

How can the particular kind of social cohesiveness typical of the Japanese office be

understood? There is at first glance a familial feel among the members of the Utari

Kyōkai staff: for example, the hierarchical organization of the work area; the home-like

spatial distribution of the office, complete with kitchen, “living-room” (the TV/sofa

visitors’ area adjacent the desk-row); and, depending on context, either a loose

conviviality or a strict observance of rank among the staff. As mentioned above, Nakane

finds that enduring relationships in Japan are corporate in nature and characterized by

common cause rather than kinship. Inspired by Nakane’s analysis, Murakami Yasusuke

expands the concept of ie beyond the family and the corporation; rather, he uses its

organizational principles to characterize Japanese civilization in its entirety.

In his influential Bunmei to shite no Ie Shakai (Ie Society as Civilization) (1979),

Murakami advances the thesis that ie-styled organization appeared in eastern Japan

between the 12th and 16th centuries, displacing the stratified clan as the mode of social

organization that responded best to Japan’s unique blend of agricultural, climatic and

social challenges. To summarize: due to a favorable climatic cycle of several centuries,

eastern Japan prospered during the decline of Imperial rule, putting pressure on outlying

lands previously undeveloped for rice cultivation. Kaihotsu ryōshu (developer-lords

drawn from the samurai class) began organizing groups for the purpose of land

reclamation and irrigation. Insofar as such large-scale projects could not be undertaken

by single families, members were drawn from all social strata from the surrounding area.

These groups performed two functions: first, as laborers to reclaim land and develop new

169

rice paddies, and second, to protect the newly developed land from other kaihotsu ryōshu

102. Murakami cites an expansive notion of kinship and contractual obligation as forming

the basis of ie group membership. He coins the term “kin-tract-ship” to describe the loose

assemblage of identity and obligation that characterized these ties. Each ie maintained a

form of ancestor worship that solidified group membership despite the fact that most

members were not related to the progenitor (usually the founding kaihotsu ryōshu) except

through fictive kinship connections that were produced only through participation in the

ie. In addition, once a retainer decided to join an ie, participation in the organization was

a lifelong commitment—thus the contractual nature of the relationship.

The ie itself is ordered through a ranking system that was initially closely tied to the

social hierarchy of medieval Japan. Although, unlike caste systems that use professions to

define social strata, all segments of the ie are oriented toward the same objective—similar

to military or bureaucratic organizations103. The result is a tightly bound, vertical

assemblage with a high degree of insularity that is thought to be characteristic of modern

Japanese organizations—that is, a certain degree of friction, if not outright animosity,

tends to manifest between bureaus, thus making horizontal integration between groups

difficult. Murakami links this aspect of ie formation and maintenance in the 12th century

to the next 400 years of turbulence as local lords vied for control over larger territories.

From approximately 1500 onward, to greatly oversimplify Murakami’s rewriting of

Japanese history, the ie form of social organization remained the core organizational

principal in Japanese society even as domain leadership was systematically abstracted

from the local village (from daimyo to shogun to emperor to prime minister and diet—

170

and one might surmise, if the current trend continues, that supranational organizations

would eventually displace even national authority).

From Murakami’s analysis we can suggest that “family-feel” of the office comes not

from transcribing kin relationships onto non-kin outside the household, rather, both office

and home represent two separate social fields structured by a single mode of organization

that is informed by an epistemology of priority, progress and purpose embedded in the

cultural history of Japan. Both office and home are characterized by similar hierarchical

relationships, the importance of collective projects (e.g. cultivating successful

children/co-workers, amassing wealth and perpetuating the family/company name) and

are informed by an array of values that, to the extent that this is evident for any

analytically defined group, sublimate the desires of the individual to the putative goals of

the group104.

Beyond the formation of fictive kin ties and contractual obligations to the ie,

Murakami cites intra-group ethnic homogeneity and flexible opportunity structures for

social advancement and inclusion (e.g. the widespread practice of adoption) as

contributing factors to the persistence of ie-styled organization in Japan. As demonstrated

in previous chapters, once Japanese trading organizations came into contact with Ainu

populations, the Ainu suffered systematic exploitation because of their ethnicity (e.g. the

shrinking ezotawara rice bales Japanese merchants used in trade with Ainu clans while

maintaining rates of exchange based on the same number of shrinking bales). The notion

that, in spite of everything, the Japanese people will work cooperatively because they

share the same identity as “one race, one culture, one language, and one nation” is a

pervasive narrative that is openly perpetuated by conservative politicians. This sense of

171

unity or collectivity, in spite of the careful observance of social rank in broader Japanese

society, was never more apparent than during the Hurricane Katrina coverage that our

office staff watched daily during our lunch hour. Reports of African Americans looting

stores and houses (the only identifier attached to those breaking into boarded up stores for

survival or personal gain) in the aftermath of the storm shocked my officemates. Mr.

Ikegami said, “This is really terrible…I don’t think this [looting] would happen in

Japan.” His interpretation of events in New Orleans was that social cleavages resulting

from differences in culture and race in American society, rather than the exigencies

resulting from the calamity, were to blame for the social disintegration after the storm.

This is not so different from the point of view taken by Prime Minister Nakasone in the

1980s when he remarked that Japan’s economic success was due to the lack of minorities

in Japan—a remark that drew outspoken criticism from Japan’s own Burakumin, Ainu

and Korean populations.

As most of my coworkers intended to work at the office until retirement, an obligation

of decades for many of them, the less friction at the workplace the better. Considering the

time commitment and the degree of awareness of social rank (as reflected in language,

job titles and bodily comportment in the presence of others) the potential for personal

slights and mounting resentments at the typical Japanese office is great. At the Utari

Kyōkai, in-group harmony was promoted through a variety of strategies that have

become common practice in Japan. Early in my fieldwork I was included in an office

meeting that outlined an upcoming trip to the 2005 Nibutani Forum—an international

meeting of indigenous people in the small Ainu town of Nibutani. We all gathered

together around a table in the visitors area. Mr. Yamada went into detail about travel

172

arrangements, setting up the conference room in the Nibutani Ainu Museum, the order of

Utari Kyōkai speakers and local accommodations. Then Mr. Akimatsu discussed the trip

to Chitose Airport to pick up a Maori activist who would be a guest-speaker at the forum

(I was to accompany him). Finally, Ms. Hanada related the details of the icharpa (a ritual

commemorating Ainu ancestors) to be held the morning of the forum at the charnel house

on the University of Hokkaido campus. It was to be a very busy day and all the details

were planned out and then discussed among the staff. The discussion itself was very short

and, I was to learn later, mostly symbolic.

The process of decision-making in the office is called nemawashi, which literally

means “root binding.” It is a method in Japanese gardening that is used in transplanting.

According to Western business manuals, impressed with the efficacy of Japanese-styled

managerial methods, nemawashi is meant to provide an opportunity for horizontal

communication105 between junior and senior staff, where junior staff can contribute and

thus invigorate the decision-making process (e.g. Jackson and Tomioka 2003; Keeley

2001; Masciarelli 2000); however, in my experience, junior staff rarely voiced opinions

that would challenge senior staff. Rather than generate a robust debate about means and

ends, the experience fostered a spirit of teamwork and unified purpose between all staff

members—this appears to be the point of the “office huddle” at the Kyōkai. I would

hesitate to call it “mystification,” where junior staff members are deluded to think that

they are invested, even momentarily, with an equivalency that puts them on par with

senior staff. Instead, nemawashi involves a consolidation of purpose and an implicit

acknowledgment of the interdependency between all parts involved in the undertaking at

hand.

173

In some instances, consultation with Kyōkai heads resulted in sudden shifts of

opinion. In one case, Mr. Yamada was committed to putting the Northern Territories

issue on the agenda for the following year. He spoke at length about the necessity for the

Ainu to reclaim the right to their ancestral waters and lands in spite of the now

international implications of such a move (i.e. these lands are currently divided by the

Russo-Japanese border). During a trip with one of the directors of the Utari Kyōkai, Mr.

Yamada was completely swayed to prioritize the less confrontational Iwor land

reclamation issue. He explained, “I spent the evening talking with our director. He really

has the right idea, you know. It is better to pursue the Iwor initiative in Shiraoi for

now…We will make progress through small steps, not great leaps.” From that point

forward, Mr. Yamada poured his energy into the Iwor initiative, seemingly without a

second thought about the Northern Territories issue.

Other institutions of Japanese office life are meant to gather together the energies of

the staff, to promote sentiments of belonging and shared purpose. These include: after-

hours dinners or nomikai (lit. drinking-meetings); outings to karaoke bars; weekend trips

to onsen or, in the instance of the Kyōkai, to Chitose to play softball. Shortly after I

arrived and began working at the office, we collectively went out on a Thursday night to

a favorite restaurant in the neighborhood. Sitting on cushions in relaxed poses around a

table laden first with appetizers and then elaborate entrees, the men were drinking soba

shōchū (a mix of strong spirits and warm water in which soba noodles have been boiled)

while the women tended toward cocktails if drinking at all. It was an opportunity for me

to speak informally to my new colleagues, explain my research and get to know them.

Afterwards they collectively paid for my dinner (“only this time,” explained a slightly

174

anxious Mr. Akimatsu) and we went our separate ways. The next morning at the office

some of the awkwardness was gone and I found my new officemates much more

approachable.

On another occasion we took an ex-Utari Kyōkai office member out to a karaoke club

owned by Mr. Ikegami’s sister. Having worked for many years at the Kyōkai, Mr.

Teshima became active in the emerging global indigenous rights movement in the early

1980s. He was back in town for a conference on indigenous issues (his considered the

rights and semi-autonomy of Native Americans as a starting point for Ainu-state

negotiations) and appeared happy for a chance to wander again through the Susukino

district. Almost everyone was in a celebratory mood, but as the microphone orbited the

table again and again, it became apparent that several of our staff were there out of

obligation. Mr. Yamada, however, insisted that these outings helped to make everyone

feel at ease with one another at the office. It is true some things could be said in a semi-

inebriated state that could not be said at the office. Parsing each other’s feeling in an

informal, noisy setting may in fact promote group cohesion at work, where the open

design of the office makes private conversations impossible and work titles (used in the

place of names) serve only to underscore the unequal footing between junior and senior

staff. These after-hours outings seemed therapeutic for some, but for others it became

apparent that they were a drain on personal resources, both financial (nomikai and

karaoke tabs were typically split evenly between all present) and vital (it is difficult to

maintain the pace of work expected with four hours sleep and a hangover).

Finally, out of town trips usually took place over a weekend or holiday. When we left

en masse for the Nibutani Forum, I was told that I would finally get a taste of real Ainu

175

food. Nibutani itself is a small community along the Saru River in southern Hokkaido. It

is famous for the relatively large Ainu population that lives there and, more recently, the

Ainu opposition to a dam that was built on the Saru in 1997. We stayed at a minshuku

owned by Mr. Kawabata’s parents. On our first evening we went to the local onsen to

soak in volcanically warmed mineral water. As we sat in the steaming water, small towels

folded on our heads, conversations ranged over members’ previous experiences in the

area, personal anecdotes and stories about the people served by the Kyōkai. The onsen

aesthetic of trickling water, steam, lack of clothing and the natural landscape

(meticulously arranged to appear undisturbed) serves to extricate the subject from the

forces of routine. Going to an onsen is an act of defamiliarization where one can be with

a coworker in a completely different environment—one without the signifiers of rank or

privilege that otherwise characterize the encounter between coworkers. For my

colleagues, the flow of conversation became more relaxed and, for a time, social

conventions appeared to be loosened.

All of these forays, whether to the neighborhood soba shop or to an onsen halfway

across the island, constitute sites of nemawashi or root-binding. They involve both

sweetness and power by invoking feelings of amae that are brought back to the

workplace which then serve to downplay the intradepartmental cleavages that divide

junior and senior staff. They are sites of inclusion that foster a sense of interdependence

among the group members that lends to the Japanese office a family feel. At the same

time this desire for inclusion, for the kind of dependence that characterizes amae, stifles

dissension in the ranks. The sense of belonging that is cultivated through nemawashi can

be comforting and appears to be necessary considering the long-term obligations that are

176

part of the “kin-tract-ship” characterizing ie organizations. In the following section I

describe how the office staff attempts to solidify this bond through the creation of

semblances that were deployed to transcend perceived ethnic differences between the

Ainu and Wajin staff.

Traversing the Interstices: Race in the Office

There is an added dimension to this particular office that is typically absent from other

Japanese offices. The kokutai discourse, so prevalent through the Second World War,

represented the Japanese national polity as one large family with the emperor as the

father. “One blood, one language, one culture, one nation” is still heard from high-

ranking politicians, emphasizing the ethnic homogeneity of Japan. Most Japanese take it

for granted that race and country are co-extensive and most workplaces are staffed

exclusively by Wajin; yet, at the Kyōkai main office, just over half of the full-time staff

identify as Ainu or as Ainu descendants. The top three senior positions are filled by

ethnic Japanese, while three of the four junior positions (in addition to the museum

curator and greeter) are filled by Ainu. In addition, the top four positions are men, while

four of the five lower positions are women. This imbalance was recognized with some

embarrassment by Mr. Yamada who, as a Wajin, has long been a statistical minority in

the organization, as the membership and board of directors almost entirely identify as

Ainu. The issue of ethnic dissimilarity is dealt with differently by each of the Japanese

members of the office—often building semblances through hemocentric tropes such as

the blood and heart or through shared commitments, where ethnic differences are elided

in the building of teams.

177

Mr. Nozaki, the office head (jimu-kyokuchō) until the budget cuts of 2006 forced him

into early retirement, was rotated into his position by the Hokkaido prefectural

government in 2004. He was among a long line of Wajin bureaucrats who, armed with

little knowledge of the issues faced by Hokkaido Ainu, are periodically hired to head the

administrative staff at the main office. Despite the Kyōkai’s status as an NGO, the

prefectural government is deeply involved in the disbursement of the Utari Welfare

Measures through the association and thus exerts influence on the organization’s

administrative staff. Some commentators have been critical of this practice (e.g. Siddle

2003), but according to my informants at the office, it has been an asset having an office

head who is well integrated into the system of patronage that characterized the

prefecture’s bureaucracy. However central a part Mr. Nozaki played in broadening the

scope of Ainu rights in Japan, he and other Wajin bureaucrats, dressed in buttoned-down

salaryman attire, always appeared somewhat out of place at Kyōkai gatherings when

compared to Ainu staff members who grew out their beards, wore traditional Ainu garb

or participated in folk craft demonstrations.

Nevertheless attempts were made to forge connections or to find similarities between

themselves and the Ainu people with whom they worked and served. Mr. Nozaki, for

example, traces his connection to the Ainu people through blood type in his farewell

address entitled “About Myself, About Race,”

Blood type is used to interpret one’s personality—at this time I would like to

speak on this topic. My blood type is “B,” but according to a book on the

subject people with “B” blood type are “self-centered.” Looking back at my

childhood, I cannot avoid acknowledging that I went by the nickname

“Egotist” (egoisuto). When I was looking into a career, I discovered by

accident a book entitled “The History of Otaru City” (1939). In the book

there was information on the blood type of the Ainu people. I found that,

178

when compared to Wajin, more Ainu people have blood type “B.” One with

the corresponding personality of type B blood, it says, does not reflect on the

past nor think ahead, but enjoys only the immediate gratification of the

present. Supposedly a contributing factor in the decline of the Ainu can be

traced to blood type—it is always said that due to the so-called heroic blood

of the Wajin, the destruction of the Ainu race is not far off. When those of us

with B-type blood hear such a thing, we quickly become filled with anger.

Mr. Nozaki’s family traces their ancestry to mainland samurai who came to Hokkaido in

the aftermath of the Boshin War to farm (tondenhei). Mr. Nozaki cannot claim Ainu

ancestry, but he can draw connections to the Ainu through blood type and the

corresponding personality structure that blood confers upon the individual.

In a similar vein, Mr. Akimatsu, a senior Wajin staff-member at the Kyōkai, spends

much of his time traveling across Hokkaido documenting through film and photography

Ainu meetings, rituals, dances and other traditional expressions of Ainu culture. At the

2005 Nibutani Forum, a gathering of indigenous peoples from all over the Pacific region,

several of the Kyōkai staff met at a small house to unwind from the long drive through

rural Hokkaido. There were six of us sitting around a small table eating and drinking. Mr.

Akimatsu explained to me that, although he was not actually Ainu, he had an Ainu heart

(Ainu kokoro)—so much so that he married an “Ainu princess.” The idea conveyed in his

expression was that inside, at his physical and emotional core, he considered himself

Ainu. He suggested this in his outward appearance as well. While I never witnessed Mr.

Akimatsu wearing Ainu clothing, he was the only staff-member to wear facial hair year-

round (a marker of Ainu-ness cultivated by some of the Ainu staff members in

anticipation of significant Ainu gatherings).

The “phantom” Ainu population in Hokkaido is thought to be as high as 300,000106

(with only an estimated 25,000 openly identifying as Ainu) and according to Ainu I

179

spoke with, some 80% of Hokkaido Wajin are at least part Ainu. This pervasive sense

that Ainu blood circulates throughout northern Japan works to legitimize the connection

between some Wajin who head Kyōkai field offices in Hokkaido and the Ainu

populations they represent. Mr. Ueno, the field office head for Shibetsu, a small fishing

village in eastern Hokkaido, remarked that he often faces the criticism from Ainu that, as

a Wajin, he should step down and let the position go to an ethnic Ainu. He confided that

his grandmother was of Ainu descent and that anyone with deep family roots in the area

had Ainu blood. Then, rolling up his sleeves and displaying his bare arms he said smiling,

“See, no hair. I guess I am more Japanese than Ainu.” His counterpart, also Wajin by

birth, was adopted as a boy by an Ainu woman—a practice that is thought to have been

relatively widespread in the region at one time. Because of his family background and

connections with area Ainu, he was accepted almost unequivocally. In fact, when we

traveled together to Lake Akan, he was received as family by many of the Ainu with

whom we spoke.

Notwithstanding Mr. Ueno’s allusion to his Ainu ancestry, he maintains that it is not

blood but unity of purpose that bring the Wajin and Ainu of this region together. During

the salmon migrations, Mr. Ueno, with a crew of Ainu and Wajin, sets his nets to harvest

the salmon returning to the rivers of eastern Hokkaido to spawn. It is a dangerous job

working the nets hours before sunrise, so the crew has to work well together to prevent

injury or death. Mr. Ueno says that in his town, like on his boat, Wajin and Ainu work

together and there is little friction between the two populations. Mr. Ueno tends to

rhetorically gloss over the real historical, social and economic disparities that constitute

divisions between the populations of Wajin and Ainu in Hokkaido. These divisions may

180

be more obscure in Shibetsu as the work here is seasonal, dependant on the harvest of

scallops in the spring and salmon in the fall. Consequently, in summer and winter there is

little work and, during these periods, many of Shibestu’s residents are marginally

employed. Therefore, Mr. Ueno’s immediate experience of the local socioeconomic

divisions evident between Wajin and Ainu are not generally reflected in the aggregate.

Similar to Mr. Ueno’s assertion that ethnic differences are overcome through

teamwork, the Utari Kyōkai holds an annual softball game which functions to promote

teamwork among the different branch offices. On the softball field differences in race and

regional affiliation are momentarily eclipsed in the collective effort of sport. The yearly

game is a favorite of Mr. Yamada and, according to him, brings the association

together—temporarily dissipating the infighting and resentments that can otherwise sour

a Kyōkai get-together. The game, however, became an issue of contention in the 2006

General Meeting (sōkai). Ainu from the east coast of Hokkaido demanded to know why

scarce association resources were being spent on softball games when the Japanese

Government so blithely ignored Ainu demands for inclusion in the high-level talks

regarding the Northern Territories (islands claimed as ancestral territories by many Ainu

along the eastern coast). The annual game was defended as necessary for teambuilding,

and judging from the unsatisfied remarks made in my vicinity of the auditorium, the

controversy will undoubtedly continue if administrators attempt to fund another such

outing.

The concern over the annual outing was generated from the anxiety over budget

constraints, a suspicion held by some that association resources were being mismanaged

in supporting the Kyōkai bureaucracy and differences of opinion over the importance of

181

such “team-building” activities. Mr. Yamada’s steadfast refusal to sacrifice the outing to

appease his critics is an indication of his awareness that bridges need to be built between

21st century Wajin and Ainu even within the heart of the organization that promotes Ainu

interests in Japan and represents the group worldwide. Racial stereotypes are so pervasive

that on more than one occasion the Ainu’s current socioeconomic predicament was

explained to me by relying on negative generalizations of Ainu compulsions, lack of

discipline and focus. These explanations came from both Wajin and Ainu working within

the administrative structure of the Utari Kyōkai. Clearly, Mr. Yamada saw more to his

yearly inter-office baseball game than mere team-building, there was a perceived racial

divide within the Kyōkai that had to be addressed through intense collective effort in an

activity that was more immediately rewarding than the kind of group efforts found within

the office, where progress is slow and rewards few and far between.

Personal metaphors of blood and the heart are invoked to ameliorate the perceived

racial divide between Wajin and Ainu workers in the Utari Kyōkai. The embrace of

tropes that have been regularly invoked to inscribe differences between the two groups in

the twentieth century are reworked in novel ways to form culturally relevant connections

that ameliorate negative sentiments associated with intra-group divisions, foreignness and

racial prejudice. Root-binding and team-building activities generate the kind of focused

collective, almost familial, effort that is necessary to the Kyōkai’s functioning and is

highly regarded in idealizations of corporate behavior in Japan.

182

Conclusion

In this chapter I begin by situating myself within the spatial organization of the Utari

Kyōkai and the city of Sapporo more broadly while considering the multivalent nature of

these places. On the island of Hokkaido the unstable juxtaposition of Japanese and Ainu

inscriptions exposes the multiple meanings and histories of places, despite attempts by

early colonials to obscure, through Japanese re-inscriptions, the historical discontinuity

between a predominantly Ainu occupation of Hokkaido and subsequent Wajin

colonizations. The middle section of this chapter works through the canonical mediations

of Benedict, Doi, Nakane and Murakami, works that consider the culturally and

historically specific means by which subjectivities are constituted in Japan. Relying on an

arguably uncomplicated ethno-historical milieu upon which to construct their models of

Japanese subjectivities and behavior, I suggest that social scientists involved in the study

of Japan should pay critical attention to the means by which ethnos is discursively

deployed to presuppose the socius by scholars and our informants. I then offer two

examples of methods used by my informants to create sociality in spite of a perceived

ethnic difference. I suggest here, and will elaborate in subsequent chapters, that the

anthropologist’s dependence on the social production and maintenance of “differences”

has tended to obscure the contrapuntal and equally significant constructions of

semblances.

Assembling points of verisimilitude for Wajin Kyōkai administrators is an exercise in

producing a sense of connection, if not always solidarity, with their Ainu coworkers at

the administrative office and with the Ainu membership in general. Whether these points

183

consist of biological references, imparting an ontological quality to the relationship, or

activities that displace ethnic identities through teambuilding and collective goal

orientation, the activity itself suggests some degree of anxiety over ethnic dissimilarity in

what is purportedly an association of Utari (Ainu comrades). The cultural map of

corporate group organization, based on the ie model, is simply not equipped to bridge

ethnic divisions and thus ad hoc mediations are deployed to ameliorate or transform the

threat of difference.

In the next chapter I suggest that, in addition to the expertise accumulated from

participation in the Hokkaido prefectural bureaucracy, Kyōkai staffers’ experience,

nearly unique within Japan, working with state-minority issues in relation to the

constantly evolving assemblage of international standards regarding human rights has

enabled a minor appendix of the vast governmental bureaucracy in Japan to link up with

international institutions and is increasingly impacting how the state deals with its diverse

populations. Chapter 5 looks at rights discourse in Japan and the increasing impact of an

international regime of rights as developed through the United Nations. It focuses on

Ainu involvement in international social movements consisting of indigenous peoples.

More specifically, I consider how the Ainu Association articulates Ainu interests in the

international arena of human rights. Much of this involvement during my fieldwork dealt

with the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (particularly issues of

self-determination and land rights). Finally, I examine the various processes involved in

becoming an object of international policy.

184

Chapter Five

Superceding the Nation-State: The Utari Kyōkai and the International Indigenous

Rights Movement

Introduction

Against the backdrop of organizing narratives that have guided the analysis and

interpretation of social organization in Japan, the previous chapter highlighted the

complex ways by which practice intersects with the general prescriptions of normative

behavior. What I found interesting was how identity performance routinely exceeded the

explanatory range of the models developed by the foundational theorists of Japanese

anthropology and sociology. This is not to say that Doi’s amae, Benedict’s on/giri,

Murakami’s “ie society” and Nakane’s “vertical society” are not persuasive and, at times,

compelling lenses through which to view behavioral dynamics in Japan—in fact, many

Japanese are well acquainted with these theories and are apt to explain their own behavior

in precisely such terms. I find the exceptional context in which my Wajin and Ainu

informants find themselves—i.e. as actors who both champion and attempt to soften

ethnic differences in a nation that regularly presupposes ethnic commonality—as a

primary reason for their ad hoc methods of producing nodes around which they organize

feelings of solidarity.

More central to my project is considering how the social and the political are

maintained not exclusively through rallying around the thematic of difference, but also

through the construction of semblances. This observation supports the idea that sites at

185

which indigeneity is articulated are extraordinarily complex and rarely elaborated simply

through narratives of difference. From the local NGO to the United Nations, connections

based upon verisimilitude are continuously built and renewed between populations that

may otherwise share little in common. This chapter focuses on how a broader indigenous

rights movement is articulated in spite of the vast cultural, linguistic, and geographical

differences between constituent groups and the impact this effort has had on the

operations of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai.

For the Utari Kyōkai and its membership, the process by which Ainu moved from

“former natives” (kyūdojin) to “indigenous people” (senjūminzoku) developed out of the

tension between local ideas of blood, culture and nationhood and global discourse

regarding the role of autochthonous minority populations in relation to the bundle of

spatial, economic and political dislocations and transformations characteristic of

modernity. The sites at which indigeneity is produced today articulate diverse narratives,

desires, and practices, some of which are imported ethical or political stances elaborated

by global agencies like the UN or are adapted from other indigenous groups. Yet Ainu

political practices, despite their geographical origin, attain significance for the Ainu

community only when conjoined with the specificity of place, language and cultural

tradition. The problem for the Ainu has often been retaining the particularities of history

and tradition through which they embody “the Ainu Nation” (Ainu minzoku) in spite of a

more generalized indigenous rights discourse that only ever partially frames their

experiences or encompasses their concerns107. Thus, rather than the set of difficulties

associated with defining the group vis-à-vis the ontologizing identifications particular to

the nation-state (e.g. blood and citizenship), the question becomes how to reign in diffuse

186

or ambiguous definitions of indigeneity that would obscure the political potential of Ainu

affiliation by casting their claims in the light of a more general discourse of postcolonial

displacement108.

Regardless of the discursive, economic and logistical difficulties posed by the Utari

Kyōkai’s engagement with supranational organizations, their participation in

international forums and the subsequent development of new policy frameworks a propos

the rights of indigenous peoples have done more to consolidate a political agenda within

the Ainu community and advance Ainu issues at the level of the nation-state than any

other development in the last 30 years. Images from Ainu participation in the 1992

commencement ceremonies for the United Nations International Decade of the World’s

Indigenous Peoples were widely circulated in Japan and abroad. The 1997 Nibutani Dam

decision in favor of the Ainu plaintiffs was in part based on the rights accorded to them

pursuant to their identity as an indigenous people. The 2005 developments in land-

sharing arrangements were also based on a general, if not official, recognition of their

exceptional status an indigenous people. In addition, the opportunity for the Utari Kyōkai

staff to exchange information and discuss strategies with other indigenous activists has

presented alternative possibilities for working with the national government to increase

Ainu access to the lands and waters in and around Hokkaido. These arrangements work

to promote the immediate interests of the Ainu community while also serving to highlight

Ainu connections to the land—effecting a tracing of subtle fissures along the surface of

the nation-state through which Ainu history and culture can be understood as emplaced,

that is, derived from the specificity of the climate, flora and fauna of northern Japan, and

thus to some degree inalienable.

187

This putative ontogenic link between group and place frames the moral argument that

indigenes should have some kind of sovereignty over the places central to their culture—

a connection that is as potentially liberating as it is problematic for any indigenous group.

Mark Watson affirms the idea that place continues to function as a touchstone of identity

even for Ainu that live far from their ancestral lands. He indicates that tribal affiliations

based on specific places in Hokkaido continue to crosscut Tokyo Ainu organizations and

the broader “Ainu Nation” (Watson, 2006:12). In the field, this became apparent to me as

I would frequently meet Tokyo Ainu during gatherings in rural Hokkaido. Similar to my

Wajin informants tracing their heritage south, Tokyo Ainu routinely identified

themselves as, for example, living in Chiba-ken (a prefecture that forms a part of Tokyo),

but tracing their tribe’s origin to Asahikawa in central Hokkaido. As James Clifford

(2001) points out, indigenous people, more so than other populations within the state,

have experienced the spatial dislocations characteristic of modernity and often live far

from the place(s) through which their identity is routed. He suggests the notion of “rooted

cosmopolitans” as one way of thinking through the relationship between the demands of

place and the pull of desire and the global economy in the lives of people who identify as

indigenous. Yet, the ambiguity between being both “in place” and “out of place” can

potentially undercut the political leverage derived from claims of indigeneity. For many

of the Japanese I spoke with regarding the Ainu, the fact that Ainu could claim neither

purity of blood nor particular place constituted grounds for dismissing their claims

altogether.

The tension between being indigenous, a profound claim to authenticity that poses a

direct challenge to similar truth claims circulated by the nation-state, and becoming

188

indigenous, a complex existential position that allows for a more flexible and open

engagement with the political and symbolic economies of late modernity, drives much of

the agenda currently pursued by the Utari Kyōkai . For example, when Utari Kyōkai

leaders deal with the Japanese Government or the press, they tend to embed timelines in

their materials. These schematic chronologies connect the historical fact of Ainu

colonization and subsequent marginalization in Japan to the present socioeconomic

situation of the Ainu community. These documents present a potent argument for, at the

very least, a more pluralistic approach to governance in the north; however, the rhetorical

thrust of this line of reasoning quickly becomes problematic when claims to indigeneity

are contingent upon purity of blood and the maintenance of cultural and linguistic

practices of a century ago. On the other hand, the nuanced and evolving sensibilities

about what constitutes indigenous life in the 21st century tend to devolve from global

institutions where the legal nature of indigene-state articulations are currently being

worked out. Seen in this light, the category of indigeneity, despite often being understood

in terms of pre-colonial history, cannot be plied from what has been characterized as the

“global present” (Appadurai 1996; Harvey 2000; Ong 2005; Sassen 2006).

This chapter examines how the Utari Kyōkai addresses the contradictions involved in

reproducing the complex dimensions of place, identity and indigeneity within nation-

states (Japan and, provisionally, Russia) through global institutions. I discuss why the

Ainu have devoted, since the 1980s, significant resources to participate in multiple UN-

sponsored fora concerning indigenous issues as well as traveling internationally to confer

with indigenous groups from Alaska to South Africa to Taiwan. The time, money and

energy that are poured into these endeavors have, so far, procured minimal material

189

results; thus, the question arises how involvement with supranational organizations is

thought to be productive of new social and political arrangements vis-à-vis the nation-

state. As the process of reframing local issues to facilitate global networking cannot avoid

a retracing of political and rhetorical alignments at home, I inquire into how these

connections with institutions and groups outside Japan are productive of new zones of

inclusion/exclusion within the Ainu community itself. In addition, I explore how the

rhetoric of sovereignty, territoriality and self-determination deployed within the Ainu

community, Japanese Governmental bureaucracy and on the floor of the UN General

Assembly differ and consider what kinds of political constituencies these discourses

presuppose. Finally, I reflect on the cultural pragmatics constitutive of new juridical

forms arising from this historically unprecedented international collaboration between

indigenous minorities now involved in enunciating novel and disparate modes of

organizing both within and beyond states.

Indigenous Identity and National Disarticulations

Sitting at a crowded Izakaya in downtown Sapporo after a day at the offices of the

Utari Kyōkai, Mr. Yamada and I discussed an upcoming press event. The leaders of the

Kyōkai would be speaking to various national and international media concerning the

upcoming talks between Russian President Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi

who would be discussing, among other topics, the disputed Northern Territories. Mr.

Yamanda was anxious about the summit because the press would not only be reporting

on the comments of the Utari Kyōkai leadership, which would be carefully calibrated

through many meetings and statement papers, but also more radical individuals and

190

organizations. “There are many undereducated Ainu who do not understand the wider

implications of their actions. They have a lot of passion, but they don’t realize that rash

words can undo the progress we have already made. There are political risks when we try

to move ahead too quickly…The prefecture has been cutting budgets. If they cut back on

funding for cultural events, we will have to make painful sacrifices.” The other side of

this particular double-bind was that if the Kyōkai leadership did not voice the concerns of

its members adequately, then the association ran the risk of losing legitimacy and

possibly members.

The Putin/Koizumi summit was a period of intense concern for Mr. Yamada and Mr.

Nozaki, who supervised the administrative section of the association and advised the

appointed heads of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai: Mr. Watanabe and Mr. Kobayashi. By

asserting themselves as a separate interest group in the debate over the Russian-held

Northern Territories the Utari Kyōkai would not necessarily forward the Japanese

Government’s stance vis-à-vis the disputed islands and could potentially weaken the

state’s position. If the Russians recognized the Ainu as a legitimate partner in talks

regarding the Northern Territories, the fundamental position of the Japanese Government

that the islands are a natural extension of the Japanese archipelago would come under

scrutiny109. As it stands now, the Japanese Government seems to go out of its way to

ensure the erasure of any trace of Ainu presence on the islands. For example, in 130

pages of timelines and histories concerning the Northern Territories published by Japan’s

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there is no reference to the long history of Ainu inhabitation

on the islands, nor is there mention of the fact that the names of the islands themselves

(and virtually all place names on the islands) derive from the Ainu language (Gaimushou

191

2007a; 2007b). To counteract this nationalist urge to revise the complex history of the

region, the Utari Kyōkai published its own account of the Northern Territories in 1983

(Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai 1983) and has regularly submitted protests to the government

and the media during talks between Japan and Russia regarding the future of the four

islands. The Putin/Koizumi talks were no exception.

During this period of my fieldwork I was becoming more aware of how the state, far

from withering away like the Marxists predicted or being hollowed out like the capitalists

preferred, existed as force delimiting how the Utari Kyōkai’s indigenous political agenda

could be pursued. Most of the organization’s funding came from state coffers, and

without formal recognition from the state the Ainu had almost no hope of attaining any of

the hard political goals to which they aspired. This was the source of Mr. Yamada’s

anxiety concerning outside parties protesting too aggressively during the summit. For Mr.

Yamada, the subtle coercion that comes from a combination of having a sound argument

based on irrefutable facts and long-term social connections with state lawyers and

bureaucrats was preferable to the satisfaction and possible destructiveness of quick

outbursts of indignation. He knows that the only possibility of moving the Ainu agenda

forward is to ultimately work with the state.

Contrary to the compelling notion that the indigenous rights movement is largely a

global phenomenon, indigenous politics is often limited or advanced only through state

allowances. Anna Tsing suggests that the very meaning of indigeneity cannot be plied

from the history and political structure of the nation-state.

National variation in the meaning of “indigenous” is structured by the

exigencies of policies and politics. Nation-state policies have everywhere

created the conditions for indigenous lives. If the nation-state moves people

into reservations, then the fight must continue from the reservation. If the

192

nation-state requires assimilation, then debates will emerge from within the

apparatus of assimilation. The form of indigeneity in a particular place cannot

be divorced from these histories of national classification and management.

(Tsing 2007:39)

In Japan, the cultural activities of the Ainu have in fact been supported through

allocations from the Ainu Welfare Measures and currently receive support through the

Cultural Promotion Act of 1997, yet from the viewpoint of the government, the Ainu are

but one segment of cultural variation found within Japanese society. Subsequent to the

Cultural Promotion Act, the Diet passed a second act that would grant the same kinds of

opportunities to any citizen of Japan. Multiculturalism cuts both ways in this case: the

Ainu receive much needed support for activities that recuperate past cultural practices,

yet the political and economic consequences that flow from the foundational difference

from which those practices derive their meaning are deferred through the government’s

insistence that the Ainu, like Burakumin and Okinawans, are unexceptional as Japanese

nationals. It is through this “state of unexception” that multicultural legislation works

state power into the indigenous community (Hale 2005).

Much of the political work of the Utari Kyōkai revolves around creating the discursive

space from which Ainu activists can make their claims and suggest the means by which

indigenous nationhood could become sustainable in spite of the assimilationist premises

of national legislation promoting multiculturalism. The labor of clearing the conceptual

territory for a politics based on indigeneity was initially conducted by social movements

in the 1970s, most notably the American Indian Movement110. For the Ainu, the current

conception of “indigenous peoples” as a native people living under (post-) colonial

circumstances, has been translated as senjūminzoku 先住民族 (lit. first nation), this has

come to replace the more pejorative terms employed by the government in the years

193

between 1899 and 1997: kyūdojin 旧土人 (former natives) and dochakumin 土着民

(native or aboriginal). Teshima Takemasa discusses the problem of translating the word

“indigenous” into Japanese while working with the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai and the

United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP) in the 1980s, a time

when “indigeneity” was acquiring a new political and legal significance. He did not want

to use terms the government used in discriminatory legislation concerning the Ainu. Nor

did he want to use the more casual terms for native peoples: dojin 土人 (native) suggests

primitiveness and senjūmin 先住民 (former inhabitant) indicates a people already

replaced with a colonial population. He eventually decided on “senjūminzoku” 先住民族,

in which the character for people, 民 min, is paired with 族zoku (family or tribe),

becoming “a people” or “a nation.” The decision to use senjūminzoku to signify the word

“indigenous” was, for Teshima, a political act, as the term would now define the Ainu as

a “first nation,” indicating both pre-colonial and continued occupation, and unburden

them from words that connote “primitiveness,” or perhaps worse, “assimilation.”

While senjūminzoku is now a regularly used in the translation of “indigenous,”

Teshima criticizes the government’s refusal to adopt this new terminology when it refers

to the Ainu. Instead of Ainu minzoku アイヌ民族, the government tends to use Ainu no

hitobito アイヌの人々 (Ainu people). Hitobito is a generic term for the plural of hito

(person), indicating a collection of individuals. This usage is particularly conspicuous in

legislation regarding the Ainu.

The Japanese Government sent an Ainu culture representative to participate

in the UN Working Group for the first time in 1987. The delegation stated in

a speech “We do not claim that Japan is ‘an ethnically homogenous nation’

(tanitsu minzoku koku), nor do we deny the existence of the Ainu.” Judging

194

from these statements it would seem that the existence of the Ainu people is

not in dispute. Yet, they cleverly do not use the words “Ainu minzoku” (Ainu

nation). In the 1997 Cultural Promotion Act (CPA), the words “Ainu no

hitobito” appear three times, but “Ainu minzoku” does not appear at all. In the

title of the legislation, “Ainu tradition” naturally indicates that the Ainu are a

“group” (shūdan), but this is not the case. Concerning the indigenousness of

the “Ainu no hitobito,” as recognized in the content of the CPA, the House of

Councilors’ Cabinet Committee issued a special resolution; even in this brief

document “Ainu no hitobito” is used six times. What’s more, this legislation

entailed a report from the “Expert Roundtable on Utari Countermeasures”

which contains about 37 “Ainu no hitobito” references. (Teshima 2005:60)

This maneuver by the government to break down the Ainu nation into a collection of

individuals of Ainu descent is clearly to prevent the impression that the government

recognizes the Ainu as a separate ethnic group. In the government’s opinion, recognition

would open the door to issues of compensation and may include restoring to Ainu control

some of the territories in the north. But beyond the technocratic (and anthropological)

preoccupation with terminology, there is a general perception that referring to the Ainu as

minzoku would be discriminatory as it indicates the separation between Ainu and other

Japanese.

Teshima recounts an argument he had with a local TV station crew over their repeated

use of “Ainu no hitobito” during the rehearsal of a segment that was to appear on a

children’s show. He said that the use of “hitobito” meant simply a collection people,

while “minzoku” was more descriptive of the Ainu’s ethnic and cultural differences from

the Wajin majority. The reporter replied that “Ainu minzoku” constituted discriminatory

language and would not be fit for a children’s program (Teshima 2005:61). The issue

here, rather than official regulations or the language games of public relations personnel,

is that, generally speaking, there is a comfortable sense of unity among Japanese

nationals; thus, singling out an individual or group is considered to be in poor form. So,

195

for the reporter in this instance, and I would contend that for many Japanese, “Ainu

hitobito” is preferable to “Ainu minzoku” because the former holds out the possibility of

racial and cultural assimilation, while the latter is strong indication of a persisting

difference that disrupts the ethnonational sentiment that is central to the identities of

many Japanese people111. Both the result of the government’s refusal to consider the Ainu

as an indigenous minority within Japan and the public sentiment that such a designation

would itself be discriminatory leads to what Teshima calls the problem of “invisible

minorities” (minzoku kakushi) in Japan.

If the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai has taken up senjūminzoku, as opposed to the

government’s preferred terminology, to embody the range of historical, cultural and

political differences that have come to characterize the basis for indigenous identity, they

have not used different terms to indicate their key issues. Sovereignty (shuken), self-

determination (jiketsu), discrimination (sabetsu), recognition (shōnin), redress (shigen),

territory (ryoudo), possession (ryōyū), land and resource rights (tochi oyobi shigen no

kenri) are all familiar expressions within national and international juridical frameworks.

When representing the Ainu at international forums, leaders typically embed exactly this

kind of terminology in their speeches and written statements112. For example, at the 2005

Nibutani Forum113, the Utari Kyōkai leaders spoke to an overflowing conference room

about the challenges of self-determination and tribal land rights within the Japanese state.

A looming issue for many indigenous groups is how to reconcile the necessity of

collective rights which undergird the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

(abbreviated as the “Declaration” from this point) with state constitutions in which the

individual is the object of constitutional rights.

196

Ainu indigeneity, and what that designation might one day mean politically, is

formulated around these concepts, many of which are also foundational to the modern

nation-state. Two problems arise from this shared lexicon, the first is that states by and

large do not have constitutional frameworks that are capable of accommodating multiple

sovereignties, regimes of rights or national affiliations coexisting with in the same state.

Second, the language of sovereignty and rights is adopted from the colonial governments

themselves. It has been suggested by commentators that framing indigenous aspirations

in terms of this logic (i.e. the logic of exclusivity that underlies rights discourse and the

very idea of sovereignty) betrays a set of political values, such as egalitarianism,

communalism or decentralized democratic federalism, that are typically invoked to

differentiate tribal peoples from state actors (Alfred 2001; Brown 2007; Deleuze and

Guattari 1987; Young 2000). Taken together these problems place indigenous people in a

double bind where, in order to avoid the soft concessions implicit with the legislative

interventions of multiculturalism, they are compelled to adopt the political conventions of

the state which exposes them to the often more corrosive influences of national politics

and neoliberal seductions (Biolsi 2005; Hale 2005).

The first issue arises in articles 10 and 13 of Japan’s Constitution114. Article 10 states

that “The necessary conditions for Japanese citizenship (nihon kokumin) shall be

determined by law.” As Japan is a jus sanguinis nation, citizenship is determined by

blood rather than location of birth115, and since 98.5% of Japanese citizens claim

Japanese or Yamato ethnicity, there is the general impression among Japanese that all

citizens share the same ethnicity. For most of the Japanese I spoke with Japan was

recognized as a multiethnic nation only after I pressed them on the issue of Korean or

197

Chinese residents who adopt Japanese citizenship. When the Ainu were brought up,

Japanese tended to hold the view that Ainu would naturally be Japanese citizens as most

Ainu had Japanese blood. Technically this is correct. According to Japan’s nationality

law, one needs only one parent of Japanese citizenship to be considered a Japanese

national (Japan’s Ministry of Justice 2008); however, the Ainu are a special case. They

were compelled to adopt Japanese citizenship, language and surnames in the late 19th

century. In a very real sense, a state-sanctioned ethnicity, i.e. a modified Yamato

ethnicity, was conferred upon the Ainu early in Japan’s transition into a modern nation-

state, thus the effort to become indigenous has been bound up with finding space within

the technical definition of citizenship and the relationship to the state that designation

confers upon the individual. For the Ainu it appears the question becomes, not one of

separation or secession, rather how be at once a citizen of the Japanese state while also

belonging to another nation, a supplemental nation.

Article 13 of the Constitution complicates this possibility. It stipulates that “All people

will be regarded as individuals. Their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

will, to the extent that it does not interfere with public welfare, be the ultimate

consideration in legislation and in other governmental affairs.” The first phrase delimits

the contractual regime of rights and obligations extended by the state to the individual.

This limitation, on the one hand, prevents the creation of discriminatory legislation that

could otherwise be extended to certain groups within the state, yet on the other hand, it

also prohibits the creation of legislation that would recognize the broad historical, ethnic

and cultural differences that characterize minority groups within the state and might

otherwise mitigate de facto discriminatory practices that are known to socioeconomically

198

disadvantage state minorities. Here we see the extension of state sovereignty, which

consists, in part, of the rule of law--a contract both deriving from “the people” and

between “the people,” yet promulgated on an individual basis. The radical equality this

engenders is undermined when a group of people is marked as only partly belonging to

“the people.”

In the Nibutani Dam Decision of 1997, the first phrase of Article 13 was invoked by

the court to deny the possibility of group rights to the Ainu. The Sapporo District Court

suggested that infringements on minority rights could be handled on a case by case basis.

Paradoxically, the court also recognized the second portion of the same Article, the “right

to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” could form the basis of minority rights when

a minority group’s cultural practices are prohibited by the majority (Hasegawa

1998:89)116. The problem of constitutional feasibility hindered the official recognition of

the Ainu as an indigenous minority until 2008.

The second issue, that indigenous people are betraying their customary political and

juridical traditions by adopting the legal concepts of the colonial regime, is thought by

some to undermine some of the foundational differences upon which indigenous peoples

assert their identity. For example, tribal sovereignty, while cast in terms of “self-

determination” and “territorial rights” in the Declaration117, is something widely pursued

by indigenous peoples. Land claims based on indigenous anteriority constitute the locus

of culture, language and history that human rights policies seek to protect. In addition, the

recuperation of tribal lands is typically the starting point for the kinds of redress

advocated by both indigenous communities and international organizations (see Articles

26-28 in the Declaration). Unlike other indigenous groups in North America, the Ainu

199

signed no treaties with the colonial government and thus have never, in the view of the

modern Japanese state118, been in sovereign control of their traditional territories.

Hokkaido was annexed at the beginning of the Meiji Era (1869) at which point the Ainu

were incorporated into the Japanese family-state as commoners (heimin) in 1871. In 1872

the island was declared terra nullius by the government, effectively stripping the Ainu of

their customary lands. Through these three moves, the Meiji government would, through

the legal standards of the day, extend the boundaries of the state, assimilate the native

peoples into the nation and, finally, gain legal access to indigenous territories by

declaring them non-existent. These maneuvers of deterritorialization made it difficult in

the ensuing years for the Ainu to claim tribal sovereignty over their customary lands.

Ainu activists have since asserted the notion of an Ainu homeland, albeit one that is

burdened with historical inaccuracies and what Gayatri Spivak (1999) would call

“strategic essentialisms.” During the politicization of the Ainu community in the 1970s,

the term “Ainu Moshir” was resuscitated to capture the essence of an Ainu homeland

defined more by a shared language and culture than a central polity (Ōta 1973; Yuki

1997). Ainu Moshir has come to represent pre-colonial Hokkaido and Chishima where

ethnicity and territory purportedly shared the same limits. Needless to say that this

nostalgic vision has been greatly simplified as these borderlands between Japan, Russia

and Korea had for centuries served as home or trading post for many different peoples

over the centuries (Uemura 1990; Kawakami 2003). Today, Ainu Moshir constitutes an

entrée into the discursive space of state-indigene negotiation; a space in which some

degree of territorial integrity and sovereignty can be asserted.

200

In the Ainu New Law (Ainu Shinpō), proposed legislation adopted at the Hokkaido

Utari Kyōkai General Meeting in 1984, the provocative term “sovereignty” (tochiken) is

carefully avoided; however, the legal right to territorial control is embedded in the

preamble, section four which deals with Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and also

section five which mandates the creation of an Ainu Independence Fund (Hokkaido Utari

Kyōkai 2001:46-56). While the New Law was scrapped as a comprehensive piece of

legislation after the 1997 Cultural Promotion Act was passed into law (legislation that

addressed one of the six sections of the New Law), the Utari Kyōkai remains committed

to enacting piecemeal all sections of the New Law through current legislative efforts.

Beyond Hokkaido, Ainu groups have formed to press the issues of tribal sovereignty and

self-determination in the Northern Territories. Toyooka Masanori headed the Ainu

Council of the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin in the 1990s. This group sought to assert itself

in the negotiations between Japan and Russia over the Northern Territories, suggesting

that the two nations recognize the history of colonization and displacement that

dispossessed Chishima Ainu of their lands and work toward a tripartite solution for the

disputed islands. In 1992 Toyooka suggested that an autonomous zone within the

Northern Territories be created for Ainu who preferred a more permanent solution to

issues of assimilation and discrimination in Japanese society (Arasaki 2004:172).

The issue of tribal sovereignty is central to the political agendas for many indigenous

communities, but the term itself is rarely used—it is controversial to such an extent as to

be counterproductive in negotiations with settler states (Brown 2007). Yet the aspiration

to secure control over native lands and resources motivates indigenous activists and

forms the core principle around which the Declaration, over a decade in the making, was

201

written. Recently, some commentators have suggested that the idea of sovereignty should

be abandoned in favor of a more authentically indigenous concept of territoriality.

Indigenous scholars Taiaiake Alfred (2001) and Irene Watson (2002) both suggest that

the profound ethnocentrism that underlies the notion of European sovereignty is

anathema to indigenous sensibilities. Alfred suggests that the assimilative demands of

political sovereignty will take root in indigenous communities that adopt tribal

sovereignty as a goal in negotiations with the state.

A perspective that does not see the ongoing crisis fueled by continuing efforts

to keep indigenous people focused on a quest for power within a paradigm

bounded by the vocabulary, logic and institutions of “sovereignty” will be

blind to the reality of a persistent intent to maintain the colonial oppression of

indigenous nations. The next phase of scholarship and activism, then, will

need to transcend the mentality that supports the colonization of indigenous

nations, beginning with the rejection of the term and notion of indigenous

“sovereignty”… The great fear is that the post-colonial governments being

designed today will be simple replicas of non-indigenous systems for smaller

and racially-defined constituencies; oppression becoming self-inflicted and

more intense for its localization… (Alfred 2001:27)

Alfred’s contention, that indigenous people need to “de-think” the terms that

simultaneously constitute their political programs while circumscribing their power, is

compelling. He questions whether indigenous people are not losing more than they might

otherwise gain through these fables of unity. In place of sovereignty, Alfred suggests that

the ideals of mutual respect and civility that would lead to a more plurilocal society.

Thomas Biolsi (2005) argues that the nation-state does not hold blanket sovereignty

over its interior; rather the state is a patchwork of sovereignties amid some areas with

strong centralized control and other areas which constitute jurisdictional lacunae. He

employs Benedict Andersen’s notion of “modular sovereignty” to understand how the

idea of sovereignty, seductive for both imperialists and liberation movements, has spread

202

and been shaped by indigenous groups, resulting in the multiple modes of indigenous

sovereignty found in the United States. He identifies four such modes

(1) ‘tribal’ or indigenous-nation sovereignty on reservation homelands; (2)

co-management of off-reservation resources and sites shared between tribal,

federal, and state governments; (3) national indigenous space in which Indian

people exercise portable rights beyond reservations; and (4) hybrid political

space in which Indian people exercise dual citizenship and assert rights as

tribal citizens under treaty and other federal Indian law, as U.S. citizens under

the Constitution, and as social or cultural citizens within a multicultural U.S.

society (Biolsi 2005:239).

This view both augments and complicates Alfred’s argument. On the one hand, all four

modes of sovereignty outlined by Biolsi are means by which tribal rights are expanded

into areas beyond the reservation, even while submitting to settler state proscriptions.

Alfred would be suspicious of this kind of “patronizing faux altruism” (Alfred 2001:30).

On the other hand, Biolsi provides strong empirical evidence for the existence of multiple

sovereignties within the nation-state, a claim that undermines Alfred’s insistence on a

single hegemonic mode of sovereignty imported from Europe. Biolsi suggests that there

is flexibility in the system for indigenous peoples to expand their sphere of rights and

secure degrees of autonomy within the reservation and beyond. With current

developments at the international level, it is hoped that the state system will embrace a

higher degree of political plurality.

Indigenous groups acknowledge these contradictions. In using proximal language to

indicate their political goals (e.g. self-determination instead of sovereignty) or by leaving

these terms ambiguous in their broader implications, indigenous peoples have created

lines of flight that are changing the terms of the relationship between tribe and state

(Tsing 2007). If the nation-state ever was a homogenous ethno-political entity, it is

currently being reconfigured from both above and below. In fact the hyphenated coupling

203

increasingly appears to be in crisis. On the one hand, the state finds checks on its

sovereignty by corporate and trans-governmental entities that must figure into local

political calculations. On the other hand, as suggested by Michael Hardt and Antonio

Negri (2004), the ascendant “multitude” poses a direct challenge to the putative ethnic

and cultural homogeneity of the nation119. The nationalist response to the rise of ethno-

local configurations strains the nation-state in an opposing direction. The subsequent

reactionary fundamentalisms that conjoin national aspirations with integralist sensibilities

would render the state sclerotic, unable to assimilate the proliferation of differences

characteristic of many state populations in late modernity. To remain relevant in an era of

porous borders and disintegrating sovereignty the state has to allow for internal

disarticulations. The Ainu have been pressing for increased control over their customary

lands, resources and cultural productions since the 1970s and are only now seeing some

concessions, on the basis of their indigenous identity, from the Japanese state120.

As I have suggested above, indigenous identity, inasmuch as any other identity, is

both an existential position and an aspiration. There is no denying the different axes of

socioeconomic and political power that transfix and partially delimit one as a national

minority, nor can one ignore the gravity of sentiment, informed by actual and imagined

personal experiences, productive of the joy and ressentiment121 attached to national

belonging. Yet, indigeneity, that is, being indigenous, is always only ever partially

realized; it is a becoming for both the individual and the group. Part recuperative project,

part political activism, the indexical coordinates that prefigure how indigenous people are

to be comprehended as legal entities continues to shift. One reason for this is that

indigenous groups are intentionally leaving a fair degree of play in the terms that are

204

coming to define their political aspirations. This situation defies the semantic closure that

would allow the state to entomb its relations to indigenous groups in legislation; the other

side of predicament is that the state can use this same ambiguity to resist indigenous

peoples’ efforts to achieve the official recognition that would draw international

agreements into state-indigene relations. Another reason is that the primary counterparts

to indigenous groups (i.e. the nation-state and supra-national organizations) are

themselves undergoing profound transformations due, in part, to the transnational self-

organizing of indigenous groups, an effort that is currently changing the nature of their

relationship to the state.

It is an odd thing to find such a profound claim to locality, to the specificity of a

particular environment which grounds and shapes cultural expressions and practices to

the extent that the effects of place continue to impact contemporary identities. It is even

stranger to realize that this locality is partially reconstituted by global juridical

mechanisms (the underwriting institutions themselves constituted not by American or

European bureaucrats but incredibly diverse groups of peoples) that are more and more

mediating state-indigene relations; however, following Bruno Latour (2005) who

rightfully employs a healthy does of skepticism concerning general claims to the

significance of globalization, we have to ask where these so-called global articulations

occur and what are their particular effects? Certainly in the halls of well-established

international organizations in New York City, Paris and The Hague, but also at

gatherings in the towns and villages of the indigenous peoples themselves. These smaller

assemblies generate more intimate conversations about specific problems and strategies

for overcoming obstacles than do the large conferences at, for example, the United

205

Nations. Transcending linguistic and cultural barriers, they engender a broad sense of

solidarity among many different peoples. It is at these smaller fora that the international

indigenous rights movement takes on the cohesiveness of a more traditionally conceived

social movement through conversations, face-to-face encounters, sharing food and drink,

performing for and entertaining one another. As it turns out, for many in the indigenous

rights movement, the global character of the movement obtains its vitality in local

community centers, tribal assembly halls and museum courtyards.

The Nibutani Forum and the International Social Movement of Indigenous Peoples

In 1993 the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai guided the organization of an international

gathering of indigenous peoples that would meet in Nibutani, a village where the Ainu

constitute a majority of the population. The Nibutani Forum would accomplish three

goals, the first of which was to celebrate the International Year of the World’s Indigenous

People - an effort sponsored by the United Nations to strengthen international

cooperation for addressing the social, educational, environmental and economic issues

faced by the world’s indigenous peoples. The second goal was to use the gathering as a

chance to meet other indigenous groups and look for precedents concerning illegal

expropriations of indigenous peoples’ land for state-sponsored development. At the time,

two prominent Ainu leaders from Nibutani were suing the Japanese Government for

taking Ainu land to build a dam on the Saru River in Nibutani. The plaintiffs, Kayano

Shigeru and Kaizawa Koichi, were building a case against the Hokkaido Expropriation

Commission and needed examples in which indigenous peoples were able to use existing

international legal mechanisms to some effect against their governments. Finally, the

206

Forum was an opportunity to build a sense of unity among indigenous activists from

Lapland to Australia. Some 4000 indigenous people came to the Forum in the largest

display of international solidarity for indigenous issues in Japan’s history (see Nibutani

Fouramu Jikkō Iinkai 1994).

The Forum was such a success that another was planned for 2005 to mark the end of

what had become the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (1995-

2004). Shortly after I assumed my position at the Utari Kyōkai, the staff launched into

preparations for the second Nibutani Forum. Conference rooms needed to be arranged,

packets of information had to be printed and collated, rooms and meals required

reservations and someone had to entertain the star speaker: a Maori indigenous rights

activist by the name of Isaac122. The latter would be my contribution to the effort.

On the trip from the Chitose airport back to Sapporo I accompanied Isaac, a big

affable New Zealander whose tribal affinity was, at first sight, decipherable only by the

tattoos that poked out from the edges of his t-shirt. Clearly enjoying the open road and a

break from the office, Mr. Akimatsu drove the van through the Hokkaido countryside as

Isaac and I chatted on the way back. Having facilitated introductions between Mr.

Akimatsu and Isaac at the airport, I asked him how he would manage at the forum

without speaking the language. He said that did know a little Japanese, but fluency was

not necessary when speaking with other indigenous people—“we understand each other

more completely than we do our own countrymen. Our lives are similar…we celebrate

and mourn the same kinds of things. We often gather to connect with our ancestors and

celebrate our survival, and our hopes for the future. We always find ways to

communicate.” He continued to talk about instances at international gatherings of

207

indigenous people at his tribal village when there was little shared language and no

available translators, yet ceremonial participation and communion were not hindered at

all.

It turned out that he had been to Hokkaido once before to attend a conference and was

pleased to be back with a little more time to enjoy Sapporo; although, he suspected that

the Kyōkai would have his stay tightly scheduled. Acquainted by now with the Kyōkai’s

modus operandi, I told him with a laugh that he should not expect to have much time that

is unscheduled. He replied, “These Japanese and their fondness for schedules…well, by

crikey, I imagine things will loosen right up after we get to Nibutani.” I thought at the

time that it was interesting that he would immediately equate the Utari Kyōkai with an

urban, bureaucratic, Japanese-style organization - clearly differentiating the association

with the people that constitute it. In fact, his remark highlighted one of the more

outstanding contradictions in Ainu politics: a simultaneous pride in and disdain for the

bureaucratic nature of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai and a suspicion of its proximity to the

same state organs that have remained steadfast in their denial of Ainu cultural and natural

resource rights. This dynamic would become more apparent to me during the Forum

itself.

The following day Isaac and I attended a meeting with Sawai Aku, an Ainu leader

who would also be speaking at the forum, Mr. Akimatsu and Mr. Yamada. Sitting around

a low table with a piece of Ainu embroidery in the center, we drank coffee and tea. Mr.

Sawai questioned Isaac on the focus of his presentation. As a major theme of the event

would be the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (a document which

seemed at the time to be in its final stages of completion), he was looking for some kind

208

of continuity between the speakers. In particular, the articles relating to self-

determination (3), land rights (26) and restitution (27) were on Mr. Sawai’s mind - he

wanted to get Isaac’s opinion on these points and, more importantly, he wanted to know

what kind of progress the Maori were making with these issues in New Zealand.

Isaac replied that indigenous people had to be careful in their dealings with national

governments. He warned that pushing too hard for tribal sovereignty could be detrimental

to land rights claims. He cited the recent example of the Marlborough Sounds dispute

where Maori, striving to implement strict autonomy in the region, were having their land

rights along the coast curtailed through the courts. Isaac then pointed to a more

productive arrangement in which the Maori have taken over stewardship responsibilities

in one of New Zealand’s largest national forests. In this case, land rights and territorial

sovereignty issues were deferred in favor of an arrangement that grants Maori more

administrative control, financial backing and employment opportunities in an area that is

historically and culturally significant to Maori populations. At this Mr. Sawai smiled

broadly and suggested to Mr. Yamada that the Ainu might pursue this route in the

Shiretoko Peninsula - an area in northern Hokkaido that was pending approval as an

UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Hokkaido University Icharpa

The following day, en route to Nibutani, we attended an Ainu memorial service

(icharpa in the Ainu language) at the Ainu Charnel House (Ainu Nōkotsudō) on the

campus of Hokkaido University. The charnel was built in the 1980s to mitigate a growing

controversy over Ainu remains collected by the university’s Faculty of Medicine. Most of

209

the bones are from the notorious Kodama Collection. Despite the protests of local Ainu,

Kodama Sakuzaemon excavated over 1000 Ainu burial sites in and around Hokkaido

between the years of 1934 and 1956. The construction of the Charnel House appears to

have mollified most Ainu, yet delayed repatriation of unaccounted for grave goods (e.g.

textiles, jewelry, swords and lacquerware) continues to stir suspicions in the Ainu

community (Lewallen 2007). There is an icharpa held at this location every August.

At the beginning of this formal service I began to experience quite clearly some of the

divisions that crosscut the Ainu community. The mix of people attending included Utari

Kyōkai bureaucrats and directors, activists, Hokkaido University leadership, researchers

and a fair number of Ainu who traveled from points around Hokkaido to attend. Many of

the latter opted to picnic a fair distance from the main tent, under which officials gave

speeches concerning the lamentable history of scholarly research of Ainu communities

and expressing hope for a closer partnership with educational institutions like Hokkaido

University. As Isaac and I circulated prior to the event, we saw some of these same Ainu

were cooking lunch next to a large motor home in the parking lot. They encouraged us to

chat and offered us a thick white drink that was stored in large sake bottles corked with

folded paper. An older Ainu woman said that it was a traditional Ainu beverage and was

quick to pour us a second and third cup. It was oddly refreshing on a hot August day—

only a short while later did we feel its not unpleasant effects. This particular drink was a

fixture at many of the Ainu gatherings I attended all over Hokkaido123.

Under the tent, there were men and women, some in suits and others in traditional

Ainu attush, who listened to the speakers. After the speeches, the audience queued up to a

table stacked with white chrysanthemums. The Utari Kyōkai Executive Director was first

210

to take one of the flowers and lay it as an offering on the center table that was adorned

with a sumptuous flower arrangement, large bottles of expensive sake, fruit and an

assortment of wrapped gifts, near the entrance of the charnel house. The rest of us

followed suit and each person was given an opportunity to walk through the entrance,

around the Ainu-styled hearth, and into the main room of the charnel. I was surprised to

see a series of metal shelves upon which were boxed crania and long bones. The interior

was dimly lit, humidity controlled and had the feel of a museum storeroom. There were

no ceremonial decorations, just rows of white boxes. After everyone had filed back out,

the main segment of the icharpa began124.

Straw mats were brought into the antechamber and laid on either side of the hearth.

Some two-dozen men dressed in traditional robes (attush) and headdresses sat cross-

legged in double rows on the mats while shamans chanted, dipped their prayer sticks

(ikupasuy) into lacquerware bowls (tuki) of sake and sprinkled the now sacralized rice

wine onto carved willow sticks (inaw) that were hung above the hearth and around the

room. A heady mix of cedar chips, dried scallions and assorted herbs were tossed onto

the embers in the hearth, transporting their prayers to the heavens. Midway through the

ritual that would carry us well into the afternoon, the chanting stopped and food was

conveyed through the east-facing window out into a small yard where there was a line of

larger inaw. At the base of these, the food was laid and more sake was sprinkled in

between prayers, a rite called kamuinomi or “libations to the gods.” The back and forth

between chanting around the hearth and delivering food and sake to the inaw outside

occurred two more times. The ritual came to a close as the lead shaman threw a sake

soaked inaw into the hearth. As it ignited, the women, who had gathered under a tent to

211

the side of the charnel house, began to sing and dance, drawing participants and observers

into exuberant folk songs and dances that counterbalanced the ritual solemnity of the

icharpa.

Fig.17 An icharpa at the Hokkaido University Ainu Charnel House (photograph:

Kawakami Tatsuya)

I would become more familiar with the icharpa and kamuinomi rituals as I traveled to

Ainu gatherings around Hokkaido, often in connection with the Utari Kyōkai. There were

variations in terms of the length, organization and the inclusion of women in the icharpa

itself, but the fundamental spatial organization and use of sacred objects (i.e. the interior

hearth, the exterior inaw, chanting in the Ainu language, the use of tuki, ikupasuy, and

212

sake) remained the same. These events are opportunities for Ainu from many different

regions to gather and engage in cultural practices that, perhaps more than perceived racial

difference or a shared history of marginalization, bind them together and generate the

commonalities that make possible the emergence of an “Ainu community” (Ainu

komyunitei); that is, an identification not unlike minzoku or utari that presupposes a

broader regionalism, subsuming much of what had historically constituted tribal

divisions. While the Hokkaido University icharpa was attended by adults exclusively,

other icharpa involve children who either observe or, in some cases, assist community

elders in carrying out the ritual. It therefore functions to transcend the spatial divisions

that culminate in tribalisms and temporal divisions between elder Ainu activists that

became committed to a more authentic125 relation to their cultural traditions in the 1970s

and the younger generation that often appears ambivalent to ethnic identifications. This

transcendence is, however, always partial as inter-tribal disagreements are not

uncommon, nor is the syncretic impulse that drives young Ainu to take the trappings of

tradition and, by hitching them to pop culture genres, create new artistic forms126. In

addition, the marginalization of women shamans in conducting these significant and

publically visible rituals has fostered resentments within the Ainu community. Ainu

women have been very much responsible for many Ainu cultural revitalization activities

during the last 40 years. Their involvement in shamanic activities, their expertise in

spoken Ainu and their presence in educational outreach has made their exclusion more

and more untenable (e.g. Lewallen 2006; Tanaka 2003).

The icharpa held around Hokkaido either as an event in itself or part of a larger

festival are key to situating the Ainu in place through performing and reiterating cultural

213

memories. The items used in the ceremony, the food and drink served before and after,

the clothes worn and the language spoken all indicate not only a cultural divide that

separates Ainu from Wajin Japanese, but an ecological context that functions as an

ontogenic root from which other differences originate. For example, the sacred inaw are

carved from the Salix pet-susu127, a willow that is native to Hokkaido. Likewise the meals

served at icharpa are intimately tied to the ecology of Hokkaido. They often include a

variety of root vegetables, seeds, millet and smoked or boiled salmon, all of which are

typical Ainu fare found in Hokkaido (many items obtained only through foraging) with

no counterpart in Japanese cuisine. This concentration of signifiers of “otherness,”

especially on the campus of the prestigious Hokkaido University, implies a sense of

rupture with the quotidian “Japanese” mis-en-scene as generally experienced by most

Ainu—such moments are central to Ainu identity maintenance and transmission.

The ritual itself generates a sense of unity among Ainu participants, and, for a while,

the differences within the group that provoke disagreement and resentment appear to be

temporarily surmounted. Coming from a structuralist sensibility, Victor Turner’s

“communitas” comes close to describing the sentiment that pervades the icharpa. For

Turner, communitas was experienced during a period of liminality for a group of people

going through a social transition (Turner 1975:202). While he refers to the attitude shared

among initiands enduring rituals attached to a change in social status within a shared

cultural context, it is not too much of a stretch to understand the reiterations of Ainu

rituals as dense metaphors, points of cultural reference, that inform the potentially

transformative processes of “becoming indigenous” or recuperating a sense nationhood,

identities that only make sense vis-à-vis settler-nations. According to Turner,“[W]hen

214

communitas operates within relatively wide structural limits it becomes, for the groups

and individuals within structured systems, a means of binding diversities together and

overcoming cleavages” (Turner 1975:206)128. If the Hokkaido University icharpa is one

point where the regional, gendered and class affiliations are temporarily blurred as Ainu

commune with their ancestors, the Nibutani Forum worked through ritualized

bureaucratic practices to bring indigenous people from multiple backgrounds together in

a single global social movement.

The Nibutani Forum

That the Ainu community contains a variety of internal divisions cannot be disputed.

Beyond the expected social segments based on tribal, gender or occupational differences,

the Utari Kyōkai reifies spatial distinctions through its system of field offices that are in

charge of, among other things, community outreach, cultural festivals, economic

development and dispensing welfare funds. The directors of the field offices often travel

to Sapporo for meetings at the Utari Kyōkai main office and participate in making

decisions regarding organizational goals and financial distribution. This bureaucratic

dimension can, following Nakane’s analysis (1998), lead to intra-organizational friction

that defies tribal boundaries; yet, as divisive as the Utari Kyōkai’s bureaucratic

organization can be within the Ainu community, it has been a crucial element in

connecting with similar mechanisms integral to other indigenous peoples’ NGOs as well

as with institutions with a more global purview. The hierarchical and horizontal

organization of the Utari Kyōkai, its methods of relaying information, the bureaucratic

expertise of its staff all enable a rather effortless linking up with other similarly run

215

organizations. Their portion of the Nibutani Forum, a panel sponsored by the Kyōkai’s

technocratic leadership, Ainu cultural leaders, indigenous activists and Iscaac, a Maori

emissary whose presence underscored the multicultural dimension of the Forum, lent a

legitimizing, if not altogether uncontested, aura to the forum.

For two of the Utari Kyōkai’s staff, Mr. Ikegami and Mr. Kawabata, Nibutani was

home. After we arrived, Mr. Ikegami stayed with his family and reconnected with friends

while not working at the Forum. The rest of us lodged at Mr. Kawabata’s parents’

minshuku. Normally during the summer months the modest bed and breakfast would be

booked with tourists, bikers or freeters making their way into the vast Hokkaido

wilderness by way of the tiny Ainu village on the western slope of the Hidaka Mountains.

Mr. Yamada explained to me that the Kyōkai strove to support member businesses

whenever possible. As we removed our shoes in the foyer Mr. Kawabata’s mother, happy

to see her son, greeted us enthusiastically. We were then ushered down the hall to be

introduced to Mr. Kawabata’s father. Mr. Akimatsu, clearly on friendly terms with the

elderly man, walked into his study exclaiming “Irankarapte! Eiwanke ya?” (an Ainu

greeting). The old man, smiling, waved this aside “Ah, enough of all that!” Mr. Akimatsu

and the elder Kawabata then began discussing preparations for the Forum and what the

staff would be doing until then. It was decided that we would all visit the local onsen that

evening. Shortly after we stowed our bags in our respective rooms, towels were procured

and we set off.

I initially viewed the excursion to Nibutani as something like shain ryokō, trips that

companies periodically take in order to create a sense of domestic familiarity, casual

collegiality and obligation between the various levels of the workplace hierarchy. But as

216

Mr. Akimatsu guided Isaac and I, both onsen neophytes, through the necessary and

lengthy ablutions before entering the onsen proper, I realized that the volcanically heated

mineral water soak was, for Mr. Akimatsu, more shigoto (work) than relaxation. As I had

only just joined the Utari Kyōkai and Isaac was a guest, we had both become objects of

hospitality. Attending to our needs, in particular our cultural and linguistic shortcomings,

was part of the requisite labor that creates both a luxuriant experience for the guest and an

uneasy sense that, while entering into a relation of obligation, there may be no possibility

of proper reciprocation. As we sat in the steaming water with our towels neatly folded

and resting on our heads, we chatted about Mr. Akimatsu’s many trips to the region and

the next day’s activities. Profoundly relaxed, clean and not a little lightheaded from the

length of time in the hot bath, we were brought back to the minshuku for a round of

drinks and outdoor cooking.

The weekend was characterized by the staff juggling work and pleasure, but the

primary reason for the trip was to see that the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai’s keynote panel

exhibited all the markers of professionalism and rigorous attention to detail that was

expected from the largest and oldest Ainu association in Japan. This was reflected in the

distinct difference in dress, comportment and performance of the Kyōkai staff from many

of the indigenous participants at the forum. Early the next day we filed out of the

minshuku and walked up the main road to the opening ceremony. As we gathered in a

park near the Nibutani Ainu Museum, there were hundreds of people milling around,

many dressed in the distinctive traditions of their people: South Asians in colorful saris,

Taiwanese indigenes in beaded vests, Ainu wearing light cotton attush imprinted with the

distinctive patterns of their regional affiliation, yet other participants dressed more

217

informally in street clothes while the Kyōkai staff endured the heat in button-up shirts

and ties. And it was a remarkably hot day. I loosened my tie as I envied the light and

breathable fabrics worn by many of the indigenous peoples in attendance. Mr. Yamada

facilitated many introductions between myself and the heads of other Kyōkai field

offices. Indeed, this event presaged the extent to which I would travel in circuits created

more by an assemblage of bureaucratic organizations than by their constituents—a

circumstance that facilitated my project of studying the Ainu politics of place more than I

could have appreciated that first day of the Forum.

In addition to the Ainu, there were indigenous representatives from many regions

including Taiwan, South Asia, Canada, Malaysia and New Zealand. The opening

ceremony itself was a tangle of translations as indigenous representatives spoke of their

particular people, of the obstacles they faced in their home countries and of their

confidence that international gatherings such as the Nibutani Forum would only

strengthen the resolve of indigenous peoples to continue to press for rights at home. The

narratives produced by indigenous representatives for these events tended toward

empathic communion with the other participants. The sequence of introductory

statements tended toward this form: 1) the introduction of the speaker, 2) their indigenous

affiliation, 3) their particular struggle, 4) how that struggle relates to the situation faced

by other indigenous groups, and 5) optimism in the power of the global indigenous

community to overcome these challenges. While formulaic in structure, the process of

bearing witness to injustice and situating it in a broader context is crucial to the

development of the kinds of broad solidarities that are capable of transcending the

218

narratives of culture, place and sovereignty that tend to otherwise permeate indigenous

politics.

Once the formal introductions were completed, the group broke and lined up to get

into the air conditioned conference room where the Utari Kyōkai’s panel would be held. I

assisted the staff with handing out information packets that outlined the recent progress

of the association and how their future goals aligned with the global indigenous rights

movement. Inside the conference hall, the directors of the association spoke about the

work being done on the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and, more

specific to their national situation, the political opportunities and obstacles inherent to the

Japanese Constitution. A number of presenters expressed the optimistic viewpoint that

the international movement would, through its commitments to economic, ecological and

human rights, achieve its goal in promoting indigenous rights globally. In several of the

presentations there was a more complicated thematic mingling of hope and cynicism:

hope that the Draft Declaration would finally come to the floor of the United Nations

General Assembly for ratification and its passage would portend significant gains for

indigenous communities worldwide, yet, acknowledgement that the Declaration would

have to be fortified with some kind of enforcement mechanism for it to guarantee that

improvements would manifest at the national level. According to one of the directors of

the Utari Kyōkai,

The Japanese constitution is fine for promoting the self-determination of

nationals. But “indigenous rights” indicate group rights, something our

constitution cannot easily accommodate. The Draft Declaration is an

important first step, but without the legal possibility of indigenous self-

determination we cannot meet our goals as a people.

A similar sentiment was expressed by a Chinese indigenous rights activist,

219

There are many ways to respond to our current lack of control over our

cultural and economic destinies. We talked about the Draft Declaration and

the role of our governments in the protection of indigenous people. For

example, in Formosa they are facing these same kinds of things...they are

coming up with their own strategies to address this situation. The government

[in Taiwan] in the end recognized their struggle, but there is a law that says

that all natural resources belong solely to the nation. The declaration is great,

recognition is great, but it is just a piece of paper. What we need are laws that

restore the rights to indigenous peoples.

These comments indicate skepticism toward the notion that the much anticipated

completion of the Draft Declaration would be a panacea to the plight of indigenous

groups. This critical stance underlay the general discourse concerning land rights and

self-determination during the panel.

Isaac’s portion of the panel involved comparing Maori notions of home and modes of

tribal land tenure with the structure of the traditional Maori communal hall. For him, the

issue of land rights, while important for securing the capacities of indigenous groups to

reproduce themselves culturally and economically in situ, becomes necessarily

diminished for indigenous persons who increasingly travel to global metropoles for

education and employment. This idea appeared to resonate with the audience, many of

whom lived far from the tribal areas with which they affiliate themselves. The lived

reality of diaspora for many indigenous persons places pressure on the very category that

lends political potency to their situation That is, the notion of indigeneity cannot easily be

divorced from a commitment to specific places, and when it is, the issue of authenticity (a

relative valuation that is nonetheless central to indigenous claims) comes into question

(see Pratt 2007:401). But the anxiety for my informants is that without the institutional

coordination that draws Ainu from Tokyo to Shibetsu to participate in pan-tribal

gatherings, Ainu identity, let alone language and cultural traditions, will disappear. The

220

appealing aspect of Isaac’s presentation was offering the possibility that the centrifugal

pull of global forces would not necessarily result in assimilation.

Overall, the Utari Kyōkai portion of the Forum went quite smoothly. Most of the

discussions were oriented toward pushing the indigenous community past the passage of

the Draft Declaration. It was a session that was by and large a conversation about

political, economic and legal issues, although a few commentators continued the

optimistic themes of unity more characteristic of the opening ceremony. In the question

and answer section, several of the Ainu in attendance asked what was being done to

alleviate the economic, employment and educational inequalities experienced by many

Ainu families. For the constituents of the Utari Kyōkai, cultural and linguistic concerns

often paled in importance when compared to issues of material consequence, often

framed in terms of the legacy of discrimination experienced by Ainu communities over

the years.

The first day of the Nibutani Forum ended with a bunka-kai (cultural festival) at a

nearby community center. Onstage, Ainu hosts showcased traditional dances and songs to

an appreciative audience. There were several Ainu song and dance troupes with various

tribal affiliations and also a number of mukkuri demonstrations. The mukkuri, a bamboo

mouth harp that sounds a bit like a didgeridoo in the hands of an experienced player, has

become something of an emblem of Ainu heritage. Deceptively difficult to produce, the

Utari Kyōkai’s Mr. Kawabata would often don work overalls and chisel set to carve a

batch before festivals in Sapporo. Following the Ainu performances, their efforts were

reciprocated as their international guests then got up and performed for the largely local

Ainu and Wajin crowd. This bunka-kai, like the opening ceremony, strengthens solidarity

221

between these disparate groups by highlighting cultural difference that appears to have

survived the homogenizing effects of modernity. This celebration of multiplicity that

thrives in spite of mechanisms of state capture (e.g. economic and cultural integration

either through prohibition of markers of difference or through the mobilization of desire

in the service of national identity) is an event more akin to the “postmodern” than the

signifiers of premodern tradition, as displayed throughout the festival, might otherwise

suggest.

Creating Semblances in the Indigenous Post-nation

The sentiments produced by these gatherings are something that technocratic

organizations like the Utari Kyōkai require for their continued operation, but cannot by

themselves generate. Sentiments of solidarity, revolutionary fervor and narratives of

social justice are, in the context of the international movement for indigenous rights,

constitutive of a particular kind of global subject that resists readymade narrative

interpolations that would make sense of their history in terms of the nation-state. One

narrative, recently deployed by Ainu cultural historian and community leader Kayano

Shigeru suggests that Ainu history is better understood in terms of its regional

connections with circumpolar indigenous peoples rather than in terms of the Japanese

nation to the south (e.g. Kayano 1998; Nomoto 1998). This draws the focus away from a

history of colonization, where Ainu ethnicity, culture and history can only be understood

in terms of Wajin incursions and places it more squarely on what might be regarded as a

“transnational” history of Ainu interactions in the north.

222

Some Ainu have advanced the idea that they are a part of a larger circumpolar cultural

complex. I was informed early in my fieldwork that the Ainu were not just a small

indigenous population in Hokkaido, but part of a northern transatlantic culture based on

the yearly migration of salmon. My earliest contribution to the Utari Kyōkai was

translating a series of charts that recorded the number of permits given to Ainu groups in

Hokkaido to fish for salmon for ceremonial purposes. As salmon fishing is considered to

have been central to Ainu subsistence and culture, under article 13 of the Japanese

Constitution129 the state could not completely deny Ainu people the right to engage in this

activity. The chart was filed with both the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations

and with the Hokkaido Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and subsequently

resulted in a partial lifting of salmon fishing restrictions on interior waterways that had

been enforced since the 19th century.

This recent reconceptualization of the Ainu as fundamentally a paleo-siberian people

practicing a culture that was historically bound up with inter-island trade along the

Japanese and Kuril archipelagos and the annual salmon migrations, has the effect of

centering the territorial reach of Ainu cultural influence not exclusively within Hokkaido,

but also northward into Russia. I believe that it was this broader historically informed

conceptualization of Ainu spatial distribution that informed the IUCN’s 2005 decision to

name the Ainu as the people indigenous to the Shiretoko Peninsula, a new UNESCO

World Heritage Site, despite the current absence of Ainu in the area (IUCN 2005).

For Ainu fishermen along the Nemuro Strait, the issue of coastal salmon fishing as

well as salmon fishing in the Russian-held Northern Territories opens new opportunities

as the notion of Ainu territory expands beyond Hokkaido. One of my informants

223

recounted his run-in with Japanese authorities in the 1980s when he set his nets in

traditional Ainu fishing waters that happened to be in Russian-held territory. He

maintained that as an indigenous person, he had the right to access his ancestors’ fishing

grounds and challenged the Japanese Government on the issue. Faced with fines that

would reduce him and his family to poverty, he finally capitulated—but the result of the

encounter moved the conversation about Ainu territorial rights away from Hokkaido and

into international zones like the Northern Territories and the broader Kuril Archipelago.

There are a few Ainu who maintain connections with indigenous peoples in the Russian-

held islands north of Hokkaido. They nurture hopes of reinvigorating circuits of cultural

and economic exchange between these groups. Because of the international situation

between Japan and Russia, reterritorializations are currently limited to ceremonial

performances, but with the recent passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of

Indigenous Peoples, it is thought that transnational territorial rights will eventually be

extended to the Ainu.

The Ainu’s ambiguous national and ethnic affiliation over the centuries has been a

point of anxiety for Japan (Howell 1994; Morris-Suzuki 1998; Kawakami 2003), and

now this play of social signifiers is reemerging through the effort to expand territorial

access into international regions through the deployment of what I am calling

“semblances.” While this practice has the effect of blurring the lines of how Ainu-ness is

defined in relation to other peoples in the region, it enhances their ability to establish

transnational connections across a closed border and allows them to avail themselves of

multiple regimes of rights: customary, national and international.

224

The idea of constructing a “semblance,” or series of semblances, as a conditional

identification with another group or organization has been helpful for my understanding

of the proliferation of Ainu connections into unlikely areas such as Okinawa, Russia and

as far a field as North America. This process of identification has put into motion a series

of events that have encouraged further interactions that require building a shared field of

communication—which offers, in turn, the possibility of political action beyond the state.

For one of my informants that field was woodcarving with the Kwakiutl in British

Columbia, for another it was through salmon fishing in Sakhalin, and for many others it

was sharing songs, dances and histories of oppression in Okinawa. Semblances are

generated out of a desire to connect, and through that desire cross-cultural homologies

tend to emerge.

There are well known transnational processes that elicit semblances: economic

systems, mediascapes and religious movements, to name a few. These assemblages

cannot be disassociated from colonial legacies, economic inequalities and other power

differentials, but when identifications do occur, they are not always involuntary or

inauthentic choices—often they are strategic calculations, resulting from shared

valuations or grounded in desires that are not motivated by nefarious agencies (capitalists

or politicians acting in bad faith, for example). The Ainu I met were deploying

semblances based on a general anthropological discourse about blood and cultural

ecology that broadened the scope of their territorial claims. One visible result of this

effort to generate commonalities between themselves and other indigenous groups was

encountering Okinawan and Russian guests attending Ainu festivals and soirees. The

meaning of these commonalities varies from individual to individual, but tropes of

225

verisimilitude eventually become inscribed in a broader political movement. These

narratives often receive their force from below as demands for new political projects

often come from the members of the Utari Kyōkai rather than the leadership. This could

be seen at the 2006 Ainu Association of Hokkaido General Meeting when many members

stood up and demanded that the leadership direct more time and resources toward

reclaiming ancestral lands in the Russian Northern Territories.

It could be said that the construction of semblance and difference are two sides of the

same coin, but as I began my fieldwork, I found the idea of difference as elemental in the

establishment of a minority or indigenous identity vis-à-vis a majority distracting at best.

The Ainu were reframing their indigeneity through the deployment of semblances that

included excavating an alternative history detailing regional affiliation and connection.

This is a different kind of identity politics that obtains its force not from territorial

delineation and a sense of racial and cultural exclusion, rather the potency of these

narratives of inclusion derive from truth claims that cross national, cultural and linguistic

boundaries.

The political and legal formations that evolve from these unities challenge the

relatively stabilized geographies and categories of inclusion/exclusion that render the

nation-state coherent. Constructing semblances is also hazardous. Ainu connections to

Russian populations to the north are one reason why the Japanese colonized Hokkaido in

the 19th century. Presently, the anxiety over the northern border is exacerbated over the

fishing and energy resources found between the two nations. While cultural revitalization

projects are relatively benign activities, often supported financially by the Japanese

Government, economic, cultural and political development between Ainu and Russians

226

has been met with strident governmental opposition and risks other political goals such as

obtaining land easements in Hokkaido, or increased access to natural resources central to

Ainu cultural productions. Such political uncertainty requires identities that function as

legal foundations for land rights, and the thornier issue of the right to self determination,

to be flexible enough to cover multiple eventualities. The mobilization of “semblances”

engenders this flexibility and functions to draw together groups of people that might not

otherwise find common cause.

Conclusion

This chapter moves through three sections that serve to illustrate how the production

of commonalities lie at the heart of many activities that might otherwise be interpreted as

reinscribing ethnic difference. This focus on semblances does more than reinforce a sense

of pan-tribal unity among Ainu. It makes both negations with state agencies possible

while also connecting the Ainu to the global indigenous peoples’ community. At the

Hokkaido University icharpa, regional tribal differences within the Ainu community are

subsumed in a ritual of historical reflection while building new bridges between diverse

institutions and peoples. The Nibutani Forum is held precisely for the purpose of

connecting Ainu activists and community members with diverse groups of indigenous

peoples. At such events, trial identities are celebrated, but also calibrated to reflect shared

experiences, similarity in cultural productions and a sense of peoplehood shaped by a

particular engagement with modernity. The final section looks as how semblances are

deployed to emphasize a distinctly separate cultural complex that finds its antecedents in

227

the salmon cultures of the circumpolar north. Such a portrayal acts to counter histories

that center Ainu cultural and economic systems within the ambit of Wajin influence.

Ferreting out and exposing the mechanisms that manufacture, emplace and police

difference is a process that has become anthropological orthodoxy. The erasure of

differences is something that is thought to threaten the future of the discipline. However,

my research suggests that while the Ainu community in Hokkaido put forth considerable

effort to maintain their cultural, linguistic and economic distinctiveness in Japan, their

method of organizing through well established bureaucratic organizations like the

Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai has created the formal mechanisms through which differences

within the Ainu community itself, between the Ainu and other indigenous peoples, and

between Ainu leaders and the state bureaucrats can be constructively blurred in the

service of broader social and political aspirations. In fact, the examination of sites where

ethnic, social or political similarities are produced to articulate with other assemblages

can be a fruitful line of research where “politics by other means” are pursued. For Ainu

activists involved in the global indigenous rights movement, a movement of which they

have been apart almost since its inception, the particular dimensions of their history and

culture are less important than the broad outlines of their experience and how their

experience parallels those of other groups world wide (e.g. the colonial encounter,

assimilation efforts, discrimination, socioeconomic inequality, etc.).

Organizations such as Ainu language schools, Ainu singing and dancing groups, the

codification of a distinctive Ainu cuisine, the celebration of an Ainu history, the

construction of Ainu museums, many of which have antecedents going as far back as the

1960s, have become necessary components of indigenous life in the 21st century. Many

228

of these efforts took shape through involvement with other indigenous groups during the

UNESCO sponsored programs in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In forums such as these,

Ainu activists learned how to be indigenous, that is, what was involved in preserving

their culture and creating the nodes around which a people, in all of its social, cultural

and political dimensions, could be reproduced. Becoming indigenous therefore involves

more than positing and policing ethnic, historical, linguistic and cultural differences, it

involves becoming something that can be taken up as indigenous. This recognition comes

from the successful deployment of semblances with an evolving constellation of ideas

that are being formulated through international organizations about what constitutes

indigeneity. The next chapter looks at how an internationally produced notion of

indigeneity is capable of modifying the cultural geographies in specific localities within

the nation-state and beyond.

229

Chapter Six

Ainu Spaces: Cultural Geographies in Ainu Moshir

This chapter addresses the question “How are national spaces re-territorialized by

populations claiming to be anterior to, and thus outside, the lines of power that structure

the modern nation-state?” The possibilities of carving out “indigenous spaces” within

nation-states without preexisting treaties are beginning to emerge from the global

indigenous rights movement. I outline five modes of reterritorialization that I encountered

during my fieldwork, all of which challenge the statist mode of territoriality that has

prevailed along the Japanese Archipelago since the nineteenth century. I first discuss the

epistemic differences and convergences between Ainu shamans, on the one hand, and

bureaucrats steeped in the epistemological culture of the Japanese state, on the other, and

how each view the landscape of Hokkaido. Second, I examine the juridical mode of

reterritorialization employed in the challenge to the Hokkaido Development Agency’s

expropriation of Ainu private property and culturally significant, albeit publically owned,

land. Third, I consider the role of ritual and repetition in the fairly recent tradition of

conducting an Ainu memorial service (icharpa) at Cape Nosappu, a tourist destination

which conveys an unusually intense nationalist sentiment due to its proximity to the

Northern Territories. Fourth, I look at the elaboration of modern iwor, sites established by

the state that attempt to recreate traditional hunting and gathering spaces at various

locations in Hokkaido. Finally, I explore the negotiations that took place through global

organizations that recognized the Shiretoko Peninsula as a World Heritage Site and the

Ainu as the indigenous people of the region. The point I make with reference to these five

230

modes of place-making is that the means of indigenous reterritorialization are

proliferating along very different lines - sometimes in tandem with state overtures and at

other time through international organizations that press states into compliance.

As has been suggested previously, in spite of the mobile and dispersed nature of many

late modern populations, indigenous groups in particular find it difficult to jettison the

notion of a homeland. Without a putative place of origin, the cultural specificity that

backs their claims to indigeneity becomes suspect. The Ainu have since the 1970s

claimed “Ainu Moshir” as their homeland—a region understood as encompassing the

Chishima (Kuril) Archipelago and the island of Hokkaido, a space that would ideally be

recovered. More pragmatically minded activists, however, are looking to create

partnerships with the state in which the Ainu would achieve both formal recognition and

special group rights, extending their access to the productive capacities of the lands and

waters in Ainu Moshir. Activists are thus looking beyond the horizon of the unities that

characterize the nation-state and are themselves transfiguring the cogency of narratives

concerning ethnic, linguistic and cultural homogeneity into a more plurivocal national

polity. The idea of a “multicultural nation” does not require as much imagination as it

once did in Japan. There are plenty of examples of nations that work toward the ideal of

the multiethnic democracy, but a multipolar state or plurisovereign nation has yet to be

realized in any country. Unlike the ethnically diverse nation-state, the conditions for this

new configuration are only now beginning to emerge as indigenous minorities become

more engaged with creating and imposing international norms regarding indigene-state

relations (Niezen 2003; Sassen 2006).

231

Some might argue that countries such as the United States and New Zealand most

closely approximate states in which a multiple polities successfully operate within the

same nation-space. In the United States, however, there has been a demonstrable

deterioration of native tribal sovereignty over the last 120 years (Prygoski 1997; Wunder

1999), and in New Zealand Maori sovereignty has become more restricted in many cases

since the Treaty of Waitangi (Pocock 2000). A recent example of curtailed tribal

sovereignty can be found in the Seabed and Foreshore Act, passed by New Zealand’s

Parliament in 2004, which prevented the Maori from asserting their customary rights over

the country’s coastal areas. As this move to assert tribal sovereignty over the shoreline

was supported by a number of legal precedents, the Maori were surprised to find the state

so recalcitrant over the issue. Thousands of Maori and sympathetic Pakeha participated in

a protest march over the legislation in May of 2004 (Isaac Bishara, personal

communication 2005). As of this writing, the restrictions over the foreshore and seabeds

around New Zealand still stand.

Others contend that due to the creative destruction of global capitalism, the porosity of

borders, and the hegemony of capital markets within the international system, there is no

country with complete sovereignty within its borders (cf. Friedman 1999, 2005; Harvey

1990; Westbrook 2004). These arguments tend to address the economic conditions of late

modernity and chronicle the disintegration of nation-states, or at least the inability of

states to significantly control their economies, yet they do not take into account that the

exercise of power (political, juridical and disciplinary) has never been more pervasive

and intensive within states. Whether through the building of barriers, the deployment of

unprecedented numbers of public monitoring devices or the technological capacity to

232

compile information about individuals or entire segments of society, the degree of control

over internal populations has significantly increased according to many commentators

(Deleuze 1992; Haggerty 2006; Newburn and Haymen 2002). One could say that the

political-economic environment has undoubtedly changed, but the political and the

economic appear to follow opposite trajectories in regard to nation-states, perhaps

working in some kind of synergistic relation, perhaps not.

The continued viability of the nation-state aside, indigenous groups like the Ainu are

looking to form enduring political partnerships with the state in such a way that, within

certain areas, they are accorded a separate set of rights, an independent judiciary and

unfettered access to their ancestral territories. To understand how this happening and

what kinds of process are involved, we have to pay attention to the way national spaces

are being reterritorialized by indigenous populations. Theorizing place and space within

the social sciences has become de rigueur in the last 15 years for a variety of reasons, not

least of which include the expansion and intensification of global capitalism and the

dramatic increase of refugee and internally displaced people in recent years (Clifford

1997; Harvey 1990; Ong 2005; UNHCR 2008). These deterritorializing forces are rapidly

reshaping the social and economic characteristics of anthropological field sites and thus

problematizing the epistemological underpinnings of the discipline that have situated

cultures and people in specific places (Gupta and Ferguson 2001). This state of affairs

has put into question the veracity of anthropological knowledge due, in part, to the

diminishing shelf-life of place-based studies. Consequently this crisis has precipitated a

new focus on anthropological method that would take into account the centrifugal forces

that increasingly transcend the boundaries of place, drawing capital and populations into

233

transnational flows (Appadurai 1996; Clifford 2007; Hannerz 2003; Holmes and Marcus

2005; Marcus 1995).

The vocabulary used to capture the dynamism and instability created by transnational

forces has gradually replaced anthropological standbys such as “structure,” exchange,”

and “hierarchy,” tropes that have been traded for terms like “assemblage,” “flow,” and

“network” or “rhizome”— idioms that attempt to denote the complexity and contingency

of nearly all social phenomena. Moving from historical particularism to historical

materialism, early studies of global political economy functioned to critique the tendency

of anthropologists to treat cultures as territorially isolated by highlighting the ways in

which local modes of production evolved in conjunction with global capitalism (e.g. Cole

and Wolf 1974; Kearney 1986; Meillassoux 1981; Wolf 1982). Responding to the period

of self-critique in the 1980s, many commentators jettisoned the impression of stasis

created by the “ethnographic present” (see Fox and Starn 1991) while others, employing

more synchronic analyses, started to move away from the historical determinism of the

Marxist tradition and began tracing the circulation of contemporary cultures, economies,

knowledge, media and peoples caught up in the global present (Appadurai 1996; Castells

2000; Hannerz 1996; Ong 1998; Ong and Collier 2005).

One of the critiques leveled against these kinds of broad scalar analyses is that, while

they provide much needed attention to transnational forces that are shaping and being

shaped by people in particular places, the spatial specificity of these critical interactions

is elided in favor of translocal processes. Arif Dirlik (2000) contends that analyses that

take global processes as their object of study tend to find agency, territoriality, capital and

history at the transnational level while the local is characterized as the vessel of tradition,

234

labor, reactionary politics and powerlessness. To address this shortcoming, Arturo

Escobar (2001) argues for a refocusing of scholarly attention on place-making, not only

on how global currents of capital, power and politics are reconfigured in ways

meaningful to particular peoples in particular places, but also how observers might

rethink the global from the perspective of multiple places (2001:142). The effort to

reinscribe place, as either a point of mediation between the individual and global or as

something produced at the intersection of local practice and national or transnational

movements, has emerged as a fruitful tack for anthropological inquiry (see Amith 2005;

Elliston 2000; Favero 2003; Masquelier 2004).

Pushing the development of local/global scalar analytics one step further, Deborah

Elliston (2000) suggests that local practices are implicated in the production of not only

place but space as well, specifically national space. In her analysis of the gendered

dimension of Tahitian nationalism, she locates the difference in nationalist sentiments

between men and women in their culturally mediated spatial practices. Young men tend

to travel extensively both within and between islands. Following circuits of kinship and

employment, they rarely stay in the same location for more than a few months. This

situation places men in a tenuous relation to the locus of familial wealth and power: their

natal household. Consequently, their comparatively extensive experience of national

space combined with their marginalization to household resources leads to young men’s

characteristic zeal for nationalist projects in Tahiti.

The case of Polynesian nationalism demonstrates that the work of producing

a persuasive vision of the nation, around which people may rally in

nationalist struggles, lies not only in the symbolics of nation making, the

development of a common ground for nationalist identification. If the project

of nation making is to be persuasive, it must also draw into itself and

235

articulate the practices of everyday life that lend these symbolics whatever

persuasiveness they come to hold. I have argued that the generalized place

nationalists use to forge their movement is more persuasive for young men

than women because they practice different modes of belonging to places

(Elliston 2000:197).

Elliston connects practice with spatial frames, drawing a distinction between different

“modes of belonging” as experienced by men and women, indicating that places and

spaces are always being produced through culturally informed practices and differential

power relations. In her analysis, there is a subversion of the conventional association

between local practice and place and suggests that these practices also produce space.

A distinction must be made here between place and space. Conventionally “place” has

been regarded as space that has been invested with local or specific (vs. abstract)

meaning—it denotes a lived space that is, in Henri Lefebvre’s words, secreted through

social practice (Lefebvre 1991:42). Space on the other hand is represented as abstract—

something that exists in the head or heart, but not directly experienced. Territories, states

and global regions might evoke strong emotional attachments and occasionally

precipitate mass dislocations (wars, refugee settlements, economic migrations), but they

tend to lack the phenomenological intimacy of one’s household or community—areas

emplaced by one’s own experiences (Casey 1998); yet, the boundedness of place is

always contested as partial reterritorializations abound (Massey 1994; 2005).

Recognizing this does not prevent the deterritorializing effects of spatial flows, but it

does allow for the possibility that localized practices can be implicated in the production

of space. Arturo Escobar asserts,

It is important to keep in mind the power of place even in studies of

placelessness (and vise versa). To make this assertion does not mean that

place is “the other” of space—place as pure and local and in opposition to a

236

dominating and global space—since place is certainly connected to, and to a

significant extent produced by, spatial logics. It is to assert, on the contrary,

that place-based dynamics might be equally important for the production of

space… (Escobar 2001:147, italics added)

The contention in this chapter is that my informants are actively involved in extending

localized practices and cultural idioms onto an indigenous national canvas in a

recuperative effort to reterritorialize Hokkaido and the Chishima Archipelago. This is an

effort that sometimes emerges in opposition to the Japanese state and at other times

allows for a productive juxtaposition where the modern state and the postmodern

indigenous nation can work in tandem for the ostensible benefit of all involved. This

effort is occurring piecemeal and in disparate places, sometimes orchestrated in

conjunction with the Utari Kyōkai, sometimes through smaller activist organizations and

individual agency. I argue that nationalisms, i.e. ideologies and practices that, among

other things, police, create or exhume spaces wherein nations can be imagined, are

produced from the welter of local practices and aspirations that have traditionally been

invoked as productive of place. Drawing from insights developed in Elliston’s analysis, I

illustrate how different modes of territoriality are being deployed by Ainu activists and

Utari Kyōkai bureaucrats in spite of Japan’s history of recalcitrance regarding the

indigenous standing of the Ainu. In addition, rather than doing away with place/space

dichotomy altogether130, I want to retain the complex interplay between the two and

suggest that place-making and space-making manifest through different generalized

practices: the production of place necessarily involves the proliferation of differences

while the creation of spaces works through positing semblances, often within the same

geographic parameters (see Massey 2005)131. The next section looks at different spatial

epistemologies involved in the production of “Ainu space” in Hokkaido and Chishima,

237

beginning with the distinction between the kinds of valuations formed in bureaucratic

organizations and among participants in the Ainu shamanic tradition.

The Salaryman and the Shaman

The issue of shamanism in the Ainu community (and especially in the Ainu studies

community) is one rife with contention. That the Ainu are a people who have

traditionally held an animistic worldview is not in dispute, nor is the idea that the Ainu

participate in a broader cultural complex involving some form of shamanic mediated bear

worship, a practice that stretches from Nivkh populations in the Amur River basin in

eastern Siberia and Sakhalin Island to Koryak communities in Kamchatka to the north

(Balzar 2003; Grant 1995; Irimoto 1994). There is, however, much debate over who is

and who is not a shaman, and whether or not “shamanism” is even a justified description

of Ainu spiritual practitioners132. Recent ethnographies point out that among Ainu,

women tend to practice spiritual interventions to heal or foresee the future, often in their

homes and for individual clients; men, on the other hand, work as community leaders and

lead publicly attended rites. The term “shaman” has been appropriated by both men and

women, but Ainu men continue to predominate in ceremonies such as icharpa,

kamuinomi, and iyomante—gatherings that are both highly visible and central to Ainu

social and cultural cohesion across Hokkaido. Ainu women, especially elders who have a

great deal of experience with Ainu traditional practices and language, have been

asserting themselves more and more in these rituals—sometimes, as in the Nokammappu

gathering of 2005, breaking up the ceremony with seemingly spontaneous singing and

dancing. There is a legendary split in the town of Nibutani between a man who is a highly

238

visible Ainu folklorist and politician and a woman who is a self-proclaimed shaman. The

folklorist maintains that women cannot become shamans—an assertion that is made with

reference to various ethnographic writings on Nibutani area Ainu. The female shaman,

however, continues to practice openly and, to the chagrin of many local Ainu, holds an

annual festival that attracts seekers from the world over.

There are several very good studies that look at the gendered division of labor in Ainu

spiritual practices. The general consensus is that historically there were fewer differences

between the roles of male and female Ainu spiritual mediums and shamanic practices

necessitated the involvement of both (Chiri 1973:19; Kindaichi 1961:45; Ohnuki-Tierney

1980). More recently, perhaps due to the historical influence of Wajin gender hierarchy

(cf. Tanaka 2000), there has been an explicit division of labor in public rituals in which

women are marginalized during ritual activity until the end when they lead rounds of

song and dance. This compartmentalization of the gendered dimensions of spiritual

practice has lead some commentators to suggest that male domination of public ritual is a

political activity rather than a spiritual one, and that Ainu women who work as spiritual

mediums, healers and midwives are in fact preserving a more authentic version of Ainu

shamanism (Ohnuki-Tierney 1980; Tanaka 2003)133.

My research suggests that the Ainu have a more complex spiritual tradition than many

social scientists give them credit for. We make the mistake of attributing any magico-

religious practice to the shamanic tradition, when, under scrutiny, that tradition breaks

down into many diverse practices that associate with the some form of the divine. For

example, male leaders of Ainu ritual enter into an ecstatic relation to Kamuy Moshir,

speak on behalf of Ainu ancestors and do this through an induced trance-like state—but,

239

certainly today, this practice also fulfills a political role by connecting the individual and

the Ainu community as a whole to its history as a tribal people with a cultural, linguistic

and political tradition distinct from that of the majority Wajin Japanese. Women who

engage in more private ecstatic spiritual practices through their roles as healers, mediums

and midwives are also maintaining a set of specific cultural traditions (ueinkarkur, tuskur

and ikoinkarkur respectively) that involve interactions with the spirit world.

The term “shaman” has therefore become appropriated by both male and female Ainu

spiritual practitioners. This appropriation does two things: first, it communicates a

complicated, culturally specific tradition to outsiders in easily understood terminology;

second, the term itself carries a semantic load that connects to valences indicative of a

people anterior to the interventions characteristic of modernity, colonialism and a

culturally homogenizing global system. When considered in situ, the use of the term

invokes a deterritorialization of northern Japan by displacing the well-documented

history of Buddhist and Shinto incursions into Ainu lands in the 17th century, prefiguring

the colonizing project that was to follow (Hokkaido Jinja Chōchō: 2002). At the same

time, my informants were quick to point out the similarities in their spiritual traditions

with those of indigenous people throughout the subarctic Atlantic.

In anthropology, despite the centrality of the term in the discipline, there is also no

agreed upon definition to denote precisely what a shaman is (de Heusch 1981; Eliade

1964; Lewis 2003). Peter Vitebsky provides a list of characteristics that are often used to

define shamanistic epistemologies cross-culturally, they include:

1) A layered cosmology involving shamanic journeying to interact with

spirits in order to affect circumstances in the human realm.

2) A spatial epistemology that lends itself to the inter-realm travel,

knowledge of the location of game and the whereabouts of abducted souls.

240

3) Knowing how and where cosmic space merges experientially in the space

of everyday living through the features, such as graves and sacred sites, of a

specific landscape.

4) A holistic knowledge of the universe derived from experiences in the

landscapes that characterize different realms.

5) Shamans are often politically dissident or anti-centrist in contrast to non-

ecstatic priests or elders who perform more sober, routine rituals.

(paraphrased from Vitebsky 2003:279)

The two Ainu spiritual practitioners I interviewed broadly conform to this list of

definitions. They both possessed a detailed knowledge, conceptual and corporeal, of the

lands and waters that constitute Ainu Moshir. They participated in dialogues with spirits,

both human and nonhuman, that populated Kamuy Moshir134. For both of these men there

are specific places in Hokkaido and Chishima that are powerful sites at which one can

better commune with the souls of ancestors. However, in terms of their political roles,

Mr. Takahashi is a marginal figure in the Ainu community. I only saw him at one other

gathering after the Nemuro icharpa and, in conversation with Ainu in Sapporo, few had

heard of him. Mr. Nakajima, on the other hand, is something of an Ainu celebrity—a

wealthy businessman and an outspoken proponent of what could be called Ainu

nationalism. While he has notoriety in the Ainu community, his irascibility and often

politically inconvenient actions have kept him from central decision-making positions in

the Ainu bureaucratic structure.

Ainu Moshir, as discussed previously, is in part a political construct derived in

response to the exigencies of late modernity. It, not unlike the term “Ainu” itself, has

subsumed the collective histories, identities and aspirations of many groups of people that

assert some kind of connection to Hokkaido and parts of the Chishima Archipelago that

predates widespread Japanese colonization of these islands. It has come to represent the

indigenous homeland; a territory that, for many Utari Kyōkai members, would ideally

241

one day be recovered. Depending on who one asks, what a late modern Ainu homeland

would look like varies. For the purpose of categorizing responses to the question “How

would the Japanese Government best make amends to the Ainu community for their part

in the colonization of Ainu Moshir?” I received three general statements from people in

the Ainu community. 1) For about a third of respondents, the reterritorialization of Ainu

Moshir is achieved through the official recognition of the indigenous history of Hokkaido

and Chishima, including the Ainu experience of disease, displacement and domination

that characterized the colonization (kaitaku) of these northern islands. Those who

expressed this sentiment were most concerned with Ainu hokori, Ainu pride. Recognition

from the Japanese Government would go far in assuaging their grievances by alleviating

the shame they find in a history of discrimination and/or in the begrudging denial of their

ethnic identity to avoid discrimination. 2) Yet, the majority of Ainu with whom I spoke

wanted something more substantial from the Japanese Government than recognition and

an apology. These people wanted a different set of laws for people of Ainu descent that

would open the lands and waters of Ainu Moshir to economic development for their

families and communities. In the words of one of the directors of the Utari Kyōkai, “We

cannot begin to speak of indigenous rights without also speaking of reestablishing Ainu

access to their lands and natural resources.” These more politically active Ainu are highly

critical of concessions from the Japanese Government that they viewed as largely

cosmetic (e.g. the brief inclusion of Ainu history in some school textbooks, the

establishment of iwor in Hokkaido and the revision of some public signs to acknowledge

the Ainu origin of many place-names). 3) Finally, there is a small minority of Ainu who

demand nothing less than economic and political sovereignty for the Ainu Nation

242

(broadly conceived as a partnership between the Japanese Government and an established

Ainu polity).

It is worth noting that one informant who expressed recognition as a primary concern

later confided that, in reference to a particular outspoken proponent of Ainu sovereignty,

“Few Ainu speak like Nakajima-san, but we all feel that way.” In the history of the Ainu

indigenous movement, desire has often been tempered by the recognition that if too

radical demands were made of the Japanese Government, the subsequent retrenchment on

the part of the government would ultimately be counter-productive to the more immediate

goals of the Ainu community.

Ainu who are active members of “the community,” i.e. those who attend gatherings

and festivals around Hokkaido, Utari Kyōkai meetings, practice traditional crafts or are

engaged in revitalizing the language, tend to attribute somewhat romanticized ideals in

differentiating themselves from their Wajin counterparts. For instance, in the words of

one informant, “True Ainu look like foreigners (gaijin mitai), the men can grow beards

and we have respect for nature.” The last point is particularly pervasive in the Ainu

community and among Wajin as well. For example, traditional Ainu salmon fishermen

would only catch the deteriorating creatures after they spawned, unlike Wajin Japanese

who nearly wiped out the salmon population in Hokkaido by catching them, still full of

eggs, at the mouths of the rivers and streams. Also, it is said that an Ainu would only

keep one out of every three fish he caught. One went to the gods, one to his family and

one was thrown back to ensure a plentiful catch in the future. Ainu are traditionally

animists and, according to their cosmology, do not see themselves as terribly exceptional

entities among their milieu of spirits and gods135. This sense of being integral to the land-

243

and spirit-scape of the northern islands is further animated by the current moral caché of

environmentalist discourse. Caricature or not, many of the Ainu activists I encountered

believe that, since their bodies, language and culture are, in part, products of the

particular ecology of Ainu Moshir, they posses a more organic connection to the

landscape of their homeland.

Beyond a general sentiment that blends the tropes of tribal indigeneity with those of

environmentalism, Ainu shamans hold spatial epistemologies, both geographical and

cosmological, that involve an intimate relationship with the flora, fauna and topography

of both Ainu Moshir and Kamuy Moshir (land of the spirits). According to Mr.

Takahashi, a shaman I spoke with after an icharpa (a ritual to honor and commune with

ancestors) near the town of Nemuro, “The Ainu shaman knows the land of Hokkaido

through his body. When I walk along the coast here, the Ainu words come into my mind

[describing the landscape], and I know where I am. I cannot get lost here…Ainu did not

posses maps in the old days, so we knew the land through our bodies.” Another shaman,

Mr. Nakajima, spoke of the necessity of shamanic interventions in communicating with,

and in some cases directing, spirits to do things that might benefit the Ainu. This

individual had been involved with performing iyomante, a once banned ritual performed

to send a bear spirit back to Kamuy Moshir and spread good tidings about the Ainu to

entities that might one day act on the behalf of the community. Both of these individuals

are male and participated in three of the rituals and ceremonies I witnessed while in

Hokkaido. While the former explained that he was “a broken man” and clearly was

experiencing some personal difficulties, the latter was both a wealthy businessman and a

well-respected, occasionally feared, leader in the Ainu community. Both men

244

demonstrated a high degree of knowledge about the landscape of Hokkaido, its history

and relevance to the Ainu people. Some of this knowledge was practical information: the

Ainu language names of particular features of the local landscape, the historic

significance of specific places (e.g. the locations of old Ainu kotan, the streams and rivers

that were fished for salmon in the old days and the hills upon which Ainu would use to

watch over the land-/sea-scape for possible trading partners). Other knowledge was of a

more esoteric nature and involved the connection some features of the land had to the

interactions of humans, gods and spirits that populate Ainu folklore. While both

informants dismissed Ainu folktales as entertaining stories, something not to be taken

seriously, they were more sober when it came to discussing their personal interactions

with spirits and the importance of shamanic mediation in Ainu ritual.

When describing their positions in the Ainu community, both informants used the

word “shaman” as opposed to the Ainu term “tuskur.” As noted above, this may have

been to avoid Ainu language terminology with which I was unfamiliar while, at the same

time, emphasizing a social role marked by ancient origins and, by extension, its link to

indigenous cultures more broadly. Whichever the case, my shaman informants thought

about Ainu Moshir in terms of its multiple articulations with Ainu society, “nature,” and

instantiations of the divine. Its boundaries are implicated in, even as they attempt to

transcend, national demarcations, cartographical representations, and neoliberal pressures

toward privatization.

For many in the Ainu community, Ainu lands are marked by zones of historical,

material and metaphysical significance—these areas are symbolically recaptured through

narratives circulated through a variety of media and at Ainu gatherings; the practice of

245

annual salmon fishing and shamanic ritual; and the performance of dances, storytelling

and music. Knowledge of the landscape is not abstract, but rather immanent in terms of

its specific capacity to produce the materials or evoke the history and symbolism

germane to Ainu identity: e.g. “The salmon return in September to this stream, there are

so many you can pick them up by hand.” “Our ancestors would wait on this hill to watch

for trading partners from Japan or Russia.” “This pine grove is a chinomishir, a place

where we come to worship.” This knowledge of place and the kinds of sentiments that

attach to these places conjoin to form a distinctive connection, a “mode of belonging”

(Elliston 2000:179), an ethno-epistemology of landscape that enables certain kinds of

agencies. For Nakajima and Takahashi, their status as Ainu shamans derived, from

among other things, knowing how to connect various elements of Hokkaido’s landscape

to Ainu history, methods of subsistence and, not least, kamuy moshir—the spirit world.

Ainu shamans produce place through their rituals, narratives, naming and, in terms of the

global indigenous rights movement, a viable political identity for their people.

The question at the center of this analysis is “how is the quality of space impacted by

emplaced knowledge,” or, “how is place-making, the ostensible negative vector to the

late modern movement toward political-economic spatialization of entire regions,

involved in reinscribing historical, cultural, economic or ethnic difference within

nationalized, or globalized, spaces?” (see Harvey 1990; Escobar 2001; Jameson 1991) As

indicated above, shamanic practice, broadly conceived, recuperates and imbues Ainu

places with the cultural valences of the extant Ainu community. Yet the politics of

indigeneity are never wholly absent from the cultural practices that reproduce the Ainu as

an indigenous people. The political program to open areas in Hokkaido to Ainu cultural

246

and economic activities has been driven largely by a bureaucratic assemblage of which

the Utari Kyōkai is only a part. In the process of drawing up the 1997 Ainu Cultural

Protection Act, the “Experts Meeting concerning Ainu Affairs,” a group that primarily

consisted of bureaucrats and scholars, convened to discuss how certain measures

promoting Ainu culture might be implemented. Among their suggestions was the (re-

)creation of iwor, lands that were traditionally central to Ainu culture and their particular

mode of social organization (Izumi 1952). This task was handed off in 2004 to the

“Committee for the Review of Ainu Cultural Transmission Policies including Iwor

Recreation,” an organization composed of representatives from the Hokkaido Bureau of

Development; the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport; the Agency for

Cultural Affairs; the Hokkaido Government; the Foundation for Research and Promotion

of Ainu Culture; and the Ainu Association of Hokkaido. In 2005 a site in Shiraoi was

designated to be the first reclaimed iwor for Hokkaido’s Ainu population. This move was

widely criticized in the Ainu community for a variety of reasons. First, the location was

suspect as it was established in one of the Utari Kyōkai’s director’s districts. Second, the

iwor in question, a tract of forest and coastal land, could only be used in the retrieval of

materials for traditional cultural activities; economic or commercial use of the land or its

resources is prohibited. And third, the legislature subverted perhaps the only real

progressive move associated with the iwor recreation, that of allocating special rights to

the Ainu as a group, when it subsequently passed identical legislation for all Japanese

who engaged in making traditional handicrafts. This situation falls in line with a general

line of critique against state bureaucratic organizations: rather than existing as institutions

247

to progressively ameliorate historical injustices or social inequalities, their efforts tend to

concretize conservative136 social and constitutional norms (Shaw 1992:387).

During my stay at the Utari Kyōkai there were several occasions when Mr. Yamada

would express resignation at the bureaucratic resistance to Ainu initiatives that would

otherwise broaden their sphere of rights. However, as a Japanese bureaucrat of some 30

years, he knew the pace of change among ministries and other governmental organs to be

glacial at best. John Schaar (1981) attributes the conservative bent of these kinds of

organizations to their particular valuation of what counts as actionable knowledge.

Bureaucratic epistemologies screen out the exceptional case and work the range of

objects of knowledge into relatively few actionable categories (including “exclusion from

consideration”). This winnowing of the field results in the kind of depersonalized

efficiency that, for Weber, was the burden of the modern individual.

The instrumental rationality that seemed to operate in the establishment of iwor spaces

was based on the recognition that there was a need to extend the proper resources to the

Ainu community in order to fulfill the directives of the 1997 Cultural Promotion Act -

that is, the Ainu needed to procure various natural materials for the production of

traditional handicrafts. In so doing the 2004 committee also had to align this concession

in a way as to reinforce the government’s policy regarding the non-exceptional status of

the Ainu in Japan. It did this by relegating activities to be conducted within the iwor to

the recreation of traditional culture.

In our conceptualization of the iwor, the areas should provide a supply of

natural materials necessary for enacting traditional practices, and should be

molded with the spaces of the natural environment as its foundation. Within

these areas, 1) the collection of natural materials necessary for transmission

of Ainu culture, shall be conducted freely within a framework of established

rules; in addition, 2) natural materials gathered within these areas shall be

248

used for cultural and transmission activities in connection with the realization

of artistic techniques rooted in Ainu people's worldview; and with the view

that these cultural experiences or exchange activities are conducted toward

the goal of reviving the wisdom of Ainu people who lived in a symbiotic

relationship with the natural environment. (Committee for the Review of

Ainu Cultural Transmission Policies including Iwor Recreation 2005:7)

The commission’s report makes clear that rather than a serious land concession to the

Ainu community, the iwor are to be set up to highlight the cultural traditions of a hunter-

gatherer society that has not existed for at least a century. These spaces, while a boon to

those who work in the handicraft and tourism industries, offer little more than an

opportunity to engage in a kind of historical recreation, one that represents the Ainu as a

pre-state population, thereby leaving the issue of national identity unchallenged.

For Mr. Yamada, the establishment of the first iwor in Shiraoi was, on many levels, a

pyrrhic victory. Instrumental rationality in the service of the state is precisely the kind of

logic that pervades both state bureaucracies and, as the Utari Kyōkai prefers to see itself,

NGOs. In fact, I often mistook Mr. Yamada’s cynicism for self-deprecation when, at each

ostensible victory, he would shake his head and tell me that it was of little consequence.

His career-long involvement in bureaucratic organizations jaded him to the point of being

suspicious that real progress could be made; yet, he worked 50+ hours per week pushing

for new Ainu policies, haranguing politicians for rhetorically painting Japan as a

culturally, ethically and linguistically homogenous nation, or writing optimistic speeches

for the association’s directors. In spite of his ethnic identity, Mr. Yamada was an integral

part of the cultural and socio-economic rehabilitation of the Ainu community. I found

that while the constant bureaucratic entanglements and false promises of the Japanese

Government had made him somewhat disdainful of the process, his adopted community

made the effort meaningful for him.

249

Some would argue that the technocrat’s zeal for his job would come from the kind of

subjectification associated with the modern mode of governmentality, that the rationality

functioning at the heart of the bureaucracy would necessarily become the primary factor

animating those who carry out its functions. Weber suggests as much when he writes,

“Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is ‘dehumanized,’ the more

completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely

personal, irrational and emotional elements which escape calculation. This is appraised as

its special virtue by capitalism” (Weber 1978:959). This idea is echoed by Foucault in his

adumbration of governmentality, where economic and political exigencies conjoin to

compel populations to conduct themselves in such a way as to further the ends of

government (Foucault 2006:136). For both, the historic effects of scientific knowledge as

applied to the arts of management and governance (e.g. ergonomics, demographics,

hygiene, fertility, longevity) have worked to disenchant life by expurgating the regional

particularities that constitute differences between populations within states. Some

commentators suggest that there is nothing exterior to this pervasive rationality that

serves the interests of the modern nation-state (Baker-Cristales 2008:358).

The closure characteristic of Weber’s description of modernity implies that modern

life is in many aspects impoverished, that the present suffers from the progressive

disenchantment of society. Social relations are ineluctably being reinscribed according to

the dictates of capital rather that of the earth, the priest or the despot - previous versions

of the socius that contained cultural significance deriving from the vagaries of historical

experience and environmental context. The historicism of Weber and Foucault portrays a

series of progressive phases through which society passes - a system of thought that

250

interestingly evokes even as it complicates a universal history. For Weber, past

arrangements, albeit with less influence than before, continue to cohere in present. In his

address, “Science as Vocation,” he recognizes the spiritual yearnings of his

contemporaries,

[Intellectual] integrity enjoins us to be mindful that for all those multitudes

today who are waiting for new prophets and saviors, the situation is the same

as we can hear from that beautiful song of the Edomite watchman during the

exile that was included in the book of Isaiah. ‘One calleth to me out of Seir,

Watchman, what of the night? What of the night? The Watchman said, Even

if the morning cometh, it is still night: if ye inquire already, ye will come

again and inquire once more.’ The people to whom this was said have

inquired and waited for much longer than two thousand years, and we are

familiar with its deeply distressing fate. From it we should draw the moral

that longing and waiting is not enough and that we must act differently. We

must go about our work and meet “the challenges of the day”—both in our

human relations and our vocation. But that moral is simple and

straightforward if each person finds and obeys the daemon that holds the

thread of his life. (Weber 2004:31)

This passage highlights Weber’s simultaneous recognition of the sway spiritual questions

still hold over the minds of this group of students at Munich University in 1918, and the

necessity of pushing on through life in spite of this longing - something that is simple

enough by obeying one’s inner daemon137. The suggestion is not that one extinguish the

irrational, but to learn to live in spite of it, or, more generously, to use it as a productive

force. Here one regime, that of religion, is displaced by another (i.e. rationality) rather

than finding itself eclipsed entirely. Foucault makes a similar point in terms of the

contemporaneity of systems of sovereignty, discipline and government in the modern era

(Foucault 2006:142). This assertion is that the interplay of social logics is immanent to

modernity and thus supplemental rather than subject to replacement.

The concurrence of enchanting and disenchanting forces inherent to the modern era is

illustrated in Douglas Holmes’ Cultural Disenchantments (1989). Holmes documents the

251

historical emergence of rational modes of social management and conduct in the Friuli

region of northeast Italy and their impact on local traditions. His analysis begins in the

medieval period where the character of social relations varied greatly from manor to

manor. “[W]hat animated the medieval social milieu was precisely the fact that human

beings learned to forge social ties more or less unhindered by abstract institutional

formulas. What guided social life was the immediate urgencies of production, protection,

devotion, and faith” (Holmes 1989:42). Subsequent developments tell the story of the

progressive disenchantment of Friuli as feudal social arrangements were replaced by

agrarian contracts, local magico-religious practices were curtailed by Catholic doctrine

and bureaucratic capitalism redefined the spatial, social and temporal dimensions of

production. Yet, Holmes accounts for the continuity of many pre-modern practices and

sentiments in contemporary Friulian society that form tensions and accommodations with

modern rationalizing processes - an arrangement he later calls “integralism” (Holmes

2000:3). Toward the end of this particular work he documents the emergence of the

Movimento Friuli, an organization that mobilizes the culturally specific array of Friulian

language, culture and ethnic heritage to constitute a political alternative to the

homogenizing projects that would sacrifice regional particularities for a common

European identity.

Pushing the trajectory of this analysis one step further, Michael Taussig turns Weber

on his head by arguing that “irrational,” pre-modern beliefs and practices do not simply

cohere in the present, but they in fact lie at the very core of the paragon of rationality and

expediency: the modern nation-state. For Taussig, the originary violence implicated in

the founding of the nation is transformed into political theology, replete with state

252

iconography (whose sacred force is fully realized through defacement) and spiritual

practitioners (both official and extra-official). Here the legitimacy of the state, based in

part on its vast bureaucracy and efficient executions of policy, receives reciprocal support

from a kind of anti-production from which cults siphon a surplus of legitimacy (what

Taussig, channeling Georges Bataille, refers to as the “accursed share”) and then return

into circulation culturally sanctified spirits and sacralized trappings of national identity

(Taussig 1997:124-5). So, for Taussig, the issue is not that the nation-state is a

rationalizing entity that must contend with the cultural peculiarities of the local, but that

the state itself requires a continual recycling of myth, faith and the spirit world of its

founders.

Mr. Yamada was driven by a variety of spectral forces that brought meaning to a job

that might otherwise drive one to hopeless cynicism, although he was not, strictly

speaking, religious. He continually joked with me on the night of New Year’s Eve when,

after watching the ringing of massive bells at many of Japan’s famous Buddhist temples

on his living room television, we went out to the local Shinto shrine to ask the kami for a

prosperous new year. He viewed the trappings of Shinto and Buddhism as comfortable

tradition, he kept both a butsudan and kamidana in his house, but did not attach much

value to the doctrines of either Buddhism or Shinto. Like many Japanese, religion simply

did not figure prominently in terms of his sense of self; however ki or “spirit” (ki in

Japanese signifies intangibles like energy, intention, feeling, state of mind) was very

important to how he applied himself to his work. In Japan, as in the West, notions of

one’s spirit, a conglomeration of emotional states, vital energy, will, intention, soul and

mind conceptually stand at a distance from one’s brute physicality; however, in Japan,

253

and unlike the West, there is more of a disjunctive relation between the two. As Ruth

Benedict points out, for the Japanese, spirit is not connected to one’s biochemical

materiality; rather, the spirit is gathered through willpower and strengthened through

discipline (Benedict 1989:26).

In one instance Mr.Yamada illustrated this to a small group of office personnel at an

izakaya not far from the Utari Kyōkai. He had become involved in an argument with a

long-time friend, an Ainu man who worked in a government agency, over the prospect of

the Ainu achieving some degree of sovereignty from the Japanese Government. Mr.

Yamada argued fiercely that by applying steady pressure on the government, by making

their contradictions plain for all to see, the Ainu would win recognition, group rights and

autonomy, eventually. His friend thought otherwise, that the Japanese would never cede

anything resembling sovereignty to the Ainu—in fact, he indicated that the Utari

Kyōkai’s political activities were completely ineffective. As the disagreement escalated,

the conversation hinted at unsavory racist sentiments held by Ainu and Wajin alike: the

untrustworthy and ineffectual Japanese bureaucrat and the hapless Ainu, unable to

summon the moral will to change his circumstances. Mr. Yamada insisted that an

unrelenting focus of energy, intellect and persistence that would win the day. To

demonstrate he went around and summarily beat all the men at the table at arm-wrestling.

Returning to his companion he reiterated, motioning with both hands moving from his

forehead to an imaginary spot at arms length: “you need to focus your energy to achieve

things.” By the end of the evening the two adversaries were reaffirming their friendship

by making certain no hard feelings would be harbored from the heated exchange.

254

If Mr. Yamada maintained a culturally specific sense of the energies available for his

endeavors, his impulse to do so came from a deeper commitment to the Ainu cause, one

that went beyond the stereotypical Japanese tendency to throw one’s all into one’s

work138. He attended Ainu gatherings, more often than not, as a representative of the

administrative arm of the Utari Kyōkai, but his long-time association with effort, and his

respect for the people he served, endeared him to many in the Ainu community. Unlike

some Wajin administrators, he never “dressed up” in Ainu robes or affected a sense of

indigeneity through playing the mukkuri or trading in Ainu phraseology. At the

Shakushain gathering in Shizunai I was introduced to a Wajin who was a former head of

one of the Kyōkai field offices. He was dressed in Ainu garb and introduced himself as a

Wajin, and then shouted “I am shamo!” (Ainu derogatory slang for Wajin). He told me

about the length of time he served the Utari Kyōkai and apparently felt some distress over

the fact that he was, by his ethnicity, a perpetual outsider in the Ainu community. Mr.

Yamada, in contrast, was at the same gathering in his salaryman outfit, light blue button

up, dark tie and blazer—always on the periphery of the group, smiling and making small

talk with old acquaintances.

The complex and immanent cosmology of Mr. Yamada’s Ainu interlocutors turned

out to be more central to his sense of self than I had initially realized. This became

evident at the annual icharpa held at Nokammuppu, the infamous hill overlooking the

choppy waters off the northern edge of the Nemuro Peninsula at which 37 Ainu were

executed participating in the Kunashiri rebellion. The ritual has become one of the most

important to the Ainu community, especially in East Hokkaido, and draws Ainu not only

from all over Hokkaido, but points south as well. After a long day of communion with the

255

ancestors, I enthusiastically circulated around the nomikai, an evening feast of eating and,

more importantly, drinking and talking, interviewing Ainu activists and community

members. Mr. Yamada told me that there would be a very important midnight gathering

on the hill (a cliff really, some 70 feet above the waves). It was misting lightly and our

hosts had laid out mats in front of the line of inau, where hours before food and drink had

been offered to the fallen, overlooking the ocean. A speech was given, reminding us what

took place on the hill some 220 years prior and that the Ainu still remained in Hokkaido

and were growing stronger. Then they shut off the electric lights and in the dark everyone

linked arms and were lead in the chilling Ainu shaman’s call to the spirits. In the dark,

just to my left, Mr. Yamada was swaying and howling more strenuously, more ardently,

than anyone else around me. Here, linked bodily with the community, in the dark where

visual markers of identity are indiscernible, and in a place of profound ritual significance,

he could experience a sense of communitas that he otherwise routinely denied himself.

That night it was difficult for me to understand the nature of the daemon that held the

fibers of Mr. Yamada’s life.

Up until the Nokammappu icharpa I had assumed that Mr. Yamada’s motivations

came from a culturally specific work ethos, but afterward I began to read his deep

knowledge of Ainu history, landscape and culture as more subtle category of communal

membership - perhaps, through his long experience of objective study and subjective

empathizing, his sentiment of belonging bears more similarity to the anthropologist’s

often conflicted sense of cross-cultural membership139. When he spoke of the geography

of Hokkaido and Chishima, there was always a Japanese version of history and an Ainu

version, and, like the shamans with whom I spoke, his connection to the landscape was

256

visceral, spiritual and, in the end, political. For the salaryman and the shaman, the

landscape of northern Japan and Chishima is shot through with valences could be

characterized as pre-modern: for the Ainu, there is a spiritual essence to everything in the

Ainu household and in nature--the two spheres communicate via the rorun puyara or

“spirit window;” for the Japanese, gods and ancestral spirits are worshiped in the home

and office via the kamidana and butsudan respectively, while powerful gods inhabit the

landscape, marked by the thousands of Shinto shrines around the nation.

Despite their pre-modern origins, these beliefs have historically been used in the

construction of modern states: the advance of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples into

new frontiers are still used to mark when an area came under the control of the Japanese

polity (this is especially true in contested areas like the Northern Territories). For the

Ainu, they trace their traditional culture and belief system to the natural landscape of

Hokkaido and Chishima through their language and folktales that derive, for example,

from a specific river valley, mountain or forest. This emplacement of language and

culture informs a very late modern, one might say postmodern, kind of social movement

that derives its political currency from its association with international institutions that

promote a human rights agenda that did not find broad circulation until the postwar era.

This mash up of temporalities, spatial practices, political discourses and cosmologies find

organization through the different modes of territoriality deployed by Ainu activists

seeking to reincorporate the spatiality of the Ainu nation.

Modes of Territoriality

257

The nation-state, whether imagined as a polity, as a community or as a juridical

construct (i.e. a circumscribed set of social relations mediated through founding

documents), has had to constantly negotiate the meaning of the terms on either side of the

hyphen since its inception. Depending on the demands of the day, it has been made to

continually reconfigure its relationship with the facts of its history, other political powers

within and beyond its borders and the peoples who sustain it (Butler and Spivak 2007;

Hardt and Negri 2005). As populations, economies and juridical standards are

increasingly routed through non-state entities, it appears that its adaptability, rather than

its exertions toward stasis, account for the nation-state’s persistence. I assert here that the

social contradictions embedded in the modern world system140 are finding new forms of

expression and lines of flight from the stratifications of modernity by way of new

institutions, political commitments, sentiments and valuations particular to this historical

moment. If the nation is an imagined community, then it is again reimagining itself. This

is particularly clear in Japan, a nation that is even today defined by its homogeneity in

terms of race, culture, language and, certainly within the postwar period, the domination

of a single political party. The historical and cultural origins of the unities in these areas

have been addressed in previous chapters (e.g. the attempted transformation of the Ainu

into Japanese citizens). In this section, I want to take up the issue of territoriality itself, its

centrality to the expansion of the Japanese state and how it has been problematized in

recent years by my informants at the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai and in the broader Ainu

community.

Territoriality refers to a set of intentions and behaviors that work to define and

maintain not only the boundaries of a given area, but also the internal consistency of

258

codes that define a space’s interior. The centrality of place and practices of place-making

in anthropology stem from the Boasian tradition which analytically divided the world into

discrete areas defined by a particular history and culture (Gooodenough 1981:48). In the

last few decades, anthropologists have used the concept of territoriality to understand

human-place relationships from an evolutionary perspective (Taylor 1988), from the

perspective of ethnicity and identity (Saltman 2002), from a (late modern) political-

economic perspective (Gupta and Ferguson 2001:42), and from a phenomenological

standpoint (Jackson 1998). Recently, the dynamic of deterritorialization-

reterritorialization, as outlined by Deleuze and Guattari (1987), has been usd by

anthropologists and human geographers who look to better understand the impact of

flows of people, cultures and capital that increasingly challenge the efficacy of national

and cultural spatial demarcations. I am using “territoriality” here to denote a particular

kind of place-making - one that seeks, through public demonstration, legal transgression

and appeals to an ascendant supranational juridical network, to complicate the national

imaginary and the codifications of the state--elements vital to the contemporary

functioning of the nation-sate. These disruptions exemplify a number of different

methods of territoriality, each working to decouple the naturalized homologies between

people and state (Malkki 2001).

Ainu efforts to reterritorialize portions of Hokkaido and Chishima have been central to

the general project of unwinding the social and political contradictions embedded within

the project of nation building. State territorializations are of a different order than both

pre-modern modes of territorialization and contemporary projects of land reclamation in

so-called postcolonial states141. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (echoing Paul Virilio)

259

assert that states advance through a geometric reason particularly suited for the kinds of

spatializing projects conducive to efficient governance.

[The state] imposes a geometrical or linear reason of the State including a

general outline of camps and fortifications, a universal art of making

boundaries by lines, a laying-out of territories, a substitution of space for

places and territorialities…State geometry, or rather the bond between the

State and geometry, manifests itself in the primacy of the theorem-element,

which substitutes fixed or ideal essences for supple morphological

formations, properties for affects…Geometry and arithmetic take on the

power of the scalpel. (Deleuze 1987:212, emphasis in original)

Employing demographers, surveyors, ethnographers, cartographers and natural resource

managers, states bring new domains of governance into view by overcoding existing

cultural, linguistic, legal and territorial arrangements (e.g. for the Ainu this would include

the localized kotan and the larger iwor). These domains are then rendered manageable

through methods of standardization, regulation and development of infrastructure. During

the Meiji period all Ainu communities were affected by kaitaku measures enforced to

incorporate Hokkaido and Chishima into the modern Japanese state.

In 1869 Hokkaido became Japan’s first colonial possession, exposing the new

government’s first inclinations toward empire-building. The kaitaku-shi (Colonial

Commission), established the same year, aggressively recruited technocrats from colonial

powers abroad to help them with bringing under governmental purview this vast and

largely undeveloped northern island. One of the first projects the commission undertook

was to establish an administrative seat for the island. Because of its proximity to a large

swath of prime agricultural land, the sea port of Otaru and the interior of the island, they

chose a site on the Ishikari Plain called “sat poro pet.” For the Ainu, this was a shorthand

description of the place, “a large plain with a river running through it”; it was

subsequently given a Japanese pronunciation, Sapporo, which has no sensible meaning in

260

the language of the colonizers (the kanji for Sapporo, 札幌, mean “bill” and “roof”

respectively, become placeholders for pronunciation rather than signification). This is

another example where the particular meanings, affects and narratives attached to place

becomes evacuated in the through the abstract territorializations of the state. Land-use

practices, customary tenure arrangements, and the routes that indigenous peoples have

traditionally traveled were all overlain with an organizational grid produced by Meiji

technocrats that, if not requiring their removal altogether, drastically altered their mode of

existence. For example, many Ainu were recruited, when not coerced, into the cash

economy of the state, employed as laborers, miners, foresters, farmers and fishermen -

occupations that served the spatial overcodings of the state. Sapporo was in fact the first

city planned according to dictates of western-styled state administrators. In figure 18, the

shape of Sapporo emerges from the forests and marshes of the Ishikari Plain in Meiji 6

(1874), an example of “state geometry” imposed to both rationalize administration and

movement in the new colony. Figure 19, a general geological survey of the island, is an

example of the same logic on a larger scale - a map of properties that, even in geological

terms, overcodes “local morphological formations.” The ultimate expression of the state’s

geometric mode of territoriality is the kaitaku-shi’s “Trigonometrical Survey of the Island

of Hokkaido” (Hokkaido Sokuryō Hōbun).

261

Fig. 18 An artistic representation of colonial Sapporo in 1873. The grid, a method of

territorial mapping particular to the modern state, and new for Japan at this time, can be

seen emerging from the Ishikari Plain.

262

Fig. 19 A Geological Survey Map of the Island of Yesso (Hokkaido), produced by the

Colonization Commission in Meiji 9 (1878)

In its drive toward efficient territorial administration, the annexed island experiences a

two-fold deterritorialization. The first is the abstraction of locality into generic

spatalizations that divide the colony into discrete zones conducive to various methods of

administration; it is here that we see the substitution of place for space, local specificity

for abstract categories. The second deterritorialization occurs “on the ground,” that is,

within certain localities. Ainu villages are relocated, or alternatively, laborers are

recruited from their village to work in the extractive industries that were promoted under

the Meiji government’s aggressive industrialization policy (shokusan kōgyō). In addition,

263

roads are built, shipping routes established and railroads work their way into the island’s

interior - massive infrastructure projects that channeled the flows of people, capital and

raw material into circuits that promote capital accumulation and the extraction of value

through tolls, tariffs and taxes, all of which enable the functioning of the state itself. Of

course these deterritorializations (the moving of people, materials and capital from one

place to another) are in service of the broader territorial imperatives of the state. They are

in fact methods of standardization and control that attempt to produce an internal

coherence between different zones within the borders of the state, no different than the

standardizations entailed in citizenship, currency and education. Thus forestlands become

subject to one administrative regime, fishing in rivers and in coastal waters become

subject to another, and municipal zoning to yet another. So, with the establishment of the

kaitaku-shi in the early Meiji period, we see a progressive deterritorialization of Ainu

Moshir as the Japanese state territorializes the entirety of the island, rendering it wholly

administrable.

Through the spatial manipulations that render the new territory first visible and then

useful to the state, indigenous people themselves become objects of administration and

endure the spatial, cultural and political dislocations associated with colonization. The

Ainu were, at first, essential labor power, many working to build roads, mines and cut

timber. As they proportionally declined relative to the sudden influx of Japanese colonists

(the population of Hokkaido was 120,000 people in 1869 and grew to nearly 300,000 by

1881), many Ainu found themselves second-class citizens in their own land, despite

policies of the Japanese Government to make them into citizens of the new nation - first

in 1871 as they were officially entered into the koseki (family registry) and then again in

264

1899 through the “Former Aborigines Protection Act” (Hokkaido Kyūdojin Hogohō). The

Ainu became, through the process of aggressive modernization in which they participated

(sometimes voluntarily and at other times suffering violent coercion), caught within what

Richard Siddle calls an “internal colony” (Siddle 1996). Through legislation enacted to

obscure their prior occupation of Hokkaido and Chishima they were molded into citizens

of a polity that confiscated their lands and made illegal their mode of subsistence, forcing

many Ainu into a century of poverty and servitude. Today the territorial overcodings of

the nation-state (e.g. its grids, raw materials, municipalities, provinces, places of

historical or sacred significance), its standardizations (e.g. citizenship, education and

currency), regulations (e.g. laws, tariffs and taxes) and spatial dislocations (e.g.

infrastructure projects) are meeting resistance from a reconstituted indigenous nation that

couples pre-modern sentiment, cultural practices and spatial attachments with late-

modern identity politics and a supranational legal and moral sensibility - all of which

threaten to change the internal consistency of the state by transforming its ethno-national

identifications, blanket constitutionality, and abstract mode of territoriality.

The following are examples from my fieldwork that illustrate how the contradictions

inherent to Japan’s modernization, specifically the colonization of Ainu Moshir, are

currently working themselves out. Departing from Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of

territoriality, I suggest that, when studied in their specificity, indigenous groups deploy

multiple modes of territoriality142 - some of which constitute complete

reterritorializations, dismantling state overcodings and reclaiming ancestral lands in their

totality, while others are partial and seek to work in conjunction with the state, yet other

265

modes work to disinter the cultural significance of Ainu places from the symbolic and

material overlays of one hundred and fifty years of state occupation.

The Nibutani Dam Case: Juridical Reterritorializations

In late 2005 I had the opportunity to meet with Kaizawa Koichi on the banks of the

Saru River. I had briefly met him at the 2005 Nibutani Forum, where he gave an

impressive speech to all assembled on the importance of solidarity among indigenous

peoples in creating the social, economic and, especially, legal conditions for their

longevity in the new millennium. I accompanied Mr. Yamada to Nibutani on other

Kyōkai business, taking a long circuitous route that lead us first south through Shiraoi,

stopping briefly at the Ainu Museum (a place that combines tourist kitsch with a top

notch museum and staff), and then north and west into the foothills of the Hidaka

Mountains. We pulled in late and waited in the dusk for Mr. Kaizawa, who arrived

minutes later in a pick up truck. He jumped out looking as he had when I met him at the

forum—chain smoking and dressed in denim and flannel. He walked us to the railing

near the large 32 meter high Nibutani Dam and began pointing out landmarks, now

submerged, that were once either private land holdings by families in this largely Ainu

community, or areas that were ceremonially significant to the community. Specific to the

lawsuit initiated by Ainu leader Kayano Shigeru and Mr. Kaizawa’s father, Tadaichi

Kaizawa, against the Hokkaido Expropriation Committee and the Japanese Government,

these areas included a sacred launch site for newly crafted boats (chipsanke), several

Ainu archaeological sites (chashi) and a number places that held sacred significance for

the Ainu community (chinomishir).

266

Mr. Kaizawa’s father had worked since the 1970s with Nibutani folklorist, author and

politician Shigeru Kayano in an effort to preserve the material and narrative artifacts of

traditional Ainu culture, a tradition which, from their point of view, was in decline as the

last native speakers of the language aged and died. Their preservation efforts coincided

with the advent of 1970s radicalism. Many sons and daughters of Ainu families began to

embrace their heritage at this time and, drawing from sources of extant indigenous

knowledge (museums, Ainu tourist displays, 19th century writers like Matsuura Takeshirō

and recordings of fluent Ainu speakers), began to piece together what an Ainu future

might look like. For many activists, the rehabilitation of the Ainu language was of

primary importance. In the 1990s their efforts resulted in the establishment of Hokkaido’s

14 Ainu language schools, the Ainu Taimuzu (an Ainu language newspaper) and an Ainu

language radio broadcast—all of which had been made possible, in part, through the

recordings made by Kayano in the 1960s and 1970s of Ainu native speakers. Beyond

issues of official recognition of Ainu indigeneity and cultural revitalization, the

possibility of reclaiming Ainu lands from the Japanese Government did not manifest in

any kind of concerted activity until the Hokkaido Development Agency attempted to

expropriate land adjacent to the Saru River in Nibutani for the building of the Nibutani

Dam.

267

Fig. 20 The Nibutani Dam

Kaizawa Tadashi and Kayano Shigeru each owned a portion of the area that was to be

affected by the dam construction. Their properties consisted of agricultural plots granted

to their families by the Hokkaido government in the effort to habituate Ainu hunters-

gatherers to farming—a process that involved coercive measures such as banning salmon

fishing and deer hunting, the primary staples of the Ainu diet. In fact, when Kayano was

a boy, his father was arrested and jailed for salmon poaching—a formative event he

records in his memoir (Kayano 1994:57). The government’s insistence that these plots be

flooded for a dam that was built to provide water for an industrial park at Tomakomai,

some 30 miles away on the southern coast of the island, prompted Kayano and Kaizawa

to challenge the land expropriation process. The matter was taken before the Hokkaido

Land Expropriation Commission and, despite a number of petitions to the central

government, the decision was made in December of 1986 to move forward with the

268

project authorization. This became the legal basis for the compulsory expropriation of

Kaizawa and Kayano’s properties along the banks of the Saru River in Nibutani (Levin

2001:452). They went through an appeals process that dragged on through the late 1980s

and into the early 1990s, while construction of the dam continued, until finally being

denied any further negotiations in April of 1993, at which time they filed a lawsuit

against the Hokkaido Expropriation Committee and the Japanese Government143.

The main contention in the lawsuit was that the expropriation of Ainu-held lands was

illegal according to article 10 of the Japanese constitution and article 27 of the United

Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Both of these

documents have provisions that protect minorities and their right to practice their culture.

In using the Japanese Constitution and the ICCPR, Kaizawa and Kayano represented

themselves as ambiguously situated among multiple subject positions. The first, on which

the trial is predicated, is that they identify themselves as Ainu, indigenous to Hokkaido

and with a prior claim to the physical and symbolic landscapes of the Nibutani Valley.

Second, they assert their Japanese citizenship which grants them crucial constitutional

protections. Third, through an appeal to the ICCPR, the plaintiffs indicate their position

within a global network of indigenous peoples seeking protections under international

agreements sponsored by supranational organization like the United Nations.

This emphasis on the multiple aspects of Ainu collective identity is a somewhat recent

phenomenon. In Katrina Sjoberg’s (1993) ethnography of the Ainu cultural revitalization

movement in the 1980s and early 1990s, she indicates that the Ainu had, at that time,

adopted a slightly caricatured representation to function as a moniker for the Ainu

community in Japan. This strategy emphasized the cultural, racial and linguistic

269

differences between Ainu and Japanese and sought to foster a sense of ethnic pride for

Ainu who, because of discriminatory practices, denied their ethnic heritage and attempted

to “pass” for Japanese. However, as indicated by opposition to the construction of the

Nibutani Dam, Kayano and Kaizawa moved away from single issue identity politics and

embraced a wider array of positions which led to a number of desired ends including land

tenure, forestry rights, human rights issues, the establishment racial and ethnic plurality

within the Japanese state and their active participation in the international indigenous

rights movement. These identifications entail a variety of political positions that lead to

destabilized and decentralized forms of political engagement that are becoming

characteristic of this particular historical moment (Haraway 1991; Edelman 2001). The

resulting ambiguity can be strategically important in that it frees the group from the

domination of their own past and makes them less easily targeted by totalizing

discourses, but adopting such an array of “strategic essentialisms” has the potential to

adversely affect their political potency in attaining concrete goals through prescribed

channels (Spivak 1990:109; Loy 2003).

In 1997, the Sapporo District Court found the expropriation process, as initiated by the

Hokkaido Development Agency, illegal insofar as the cultural significance of the Saru

River was not taken into consideration during the project planning phase—thus, violating

constitutional and international agreements concerning minority populations. Also, the

court emphasized the Ainu’s indigenous status in Hokkaido and the colonial encounter

that contributed to their so-called decline—this was significant in that it authorized the

recognition of a colonial past. By the time the court came to its decision four years had

270

passed, and by 1997 the dam had been completed. Dismantling it was ruled to be against

the public’s best interest (Levin 2001).

Strategies of Ainu self-representation have multiplied and reflect their contemporary

engagement with the global indigenous rights movement, NGOs concerned with

environmental issues, and characteristically post-national notions of Japanese citizenship.

Through these multiple engagements, the Ainu assume a certain ambiguity, and,

arguably, a political viability vis-à-vis the Japanese state. One dimension that informed

the court’s decision to discuss the Ainu in terms of their autochthonous relationship to

Hokkaido is their reference to the past through claiming the several chashi

(archaeological sites) as places of significance to modern Ainu. This facet of the case

establishes a territorial and existential continuity between contemporary Ainu and the

Ainu of pre-modern Hokkaido, rendering the Japanese annexation of the island

historically contingent and subject to further efforts by Ainu who are more interested in

issues regarding self-determination and material reparations.

This case was the first effort by Ainu to contest the fundamental sovereignty of the

Japanese state over the entirety of Hokkaido. Prior to the Nibutani Dam litigation, the

Utari Kyōkai sponsored the Ainu New Law (Ainu Shinpō) which was drafted to replace

the 1899 Former Aborigines Protection Act (Hokkaido Kyūdojin Hogohō) in the mid-

1980s; but the New Law made only oblique references to land management and did not

directly address land rights issues. The decision presaged a general reorientation of

awareness regarding the indigenous status of the Ainu. Several months later the Diet

signed into law the Cultural Promotion Act of 1997 which came close to granting the

Ainu group rights144, and in July 2008 the Ainu were officially recognized as an

271

indigenous people - although issues regarding Ainu sovereignty and group rights within

the state have yet to be worked out.

Nosappu Kamuinomi: Reterritorializing Northern Japan’s Nationalist Theme Park

through Ritual Performance

Cape Nosappu in northern Japan is home to an assemblage of monuments, museums

and commemorative markers that together evoke a semiotics of national yearning for the

return of four nearby islands that were forcibly expropriated by Russian forces at the end

of World War Two. Inscribed upon the markers and plaques that dot Nosappu Park is a

history of wrongful dispossession in this border region where nations still jostle for

territory and different cultural histories have at times mingled, overlapped or suffered

severe dislocations. One effect of this assemblage is the effacement of the originary

violence and deprivations that marked early encounters between Japanese colonists and

the Ainu, the indigenous inhabitants of both the peninsula and the four disputed islands.

To address this erasure, a small group of Ainu gathers annually at Nosappu to perform a

kamuinomi (a ritual of ancestor worship) at the base of one of the markers. The ritual

temporarily reinscribes their presence among the massive testaments to state indignation.

The performance invokes a transformation where the state once again becomes a colony

as the Ainu reassemble a new cultural geography informed by legend, anecdote and

current political commitments. I investigate the rupture of statist space through

indigenous performance and argue that performance facilitates emergent modes of life

and thought, in this case a late modern indigeneity, by imbuing space with an alternative

set of indexical coordinates.

272

In the days after World War II, during the formal cessation of hostilities between

Japan and the Allied powers, Soviet forces invaded four of Japan’s northernmost islands,

evicting the Japanese settlers and the indigenous population of Ainu. This last minute

land-grab has kept the two countries from signing a peace treaty, thus Japan and Russia

are still today technically at war. Many of the evacuees from the four islands

disembarked at the Port of Nemuro in Eastern Hokkaido and, with little money and few

possessions, made their home there on the peninsula. Due to this concentration of

dispossessed Japanese and the political humiliation due to Russian aggression, a

campaign for the return of the islands, now collectively known as the Northern

Territories, has been under way for much of the postwar period.

At the end of the Nemuro Peninsula, at a point called Cape Nosappu, there has been

an accretion of flags, monuments and markers commemorating the dispossession of the

Northern Territories and demanding their return. In fact, the four islands have become a

rallying point for conservatives in Japan to whip up nationalist sentiment and outrage

against foreign influence. For conservative groups, the location of this collection of

monumental architecture and sculpture is doubly significant as it is one of several points

along the eastern coast of Hokkaido from which several of the islands can be observed

from the shoreline. In addition, the cape is the easternmost point in Japan - a nation which

is still poetically invoked as “the land of the rising sun,” thus the point at which the sun

first rises along the archipelago is considered to be a sacred locus in the national

imaginary. Many Japanese visit the frozen cape on New Year’s morning to receive the

first rays of the New Year.

273

As important as the cape is to the nationalist project of defining Japan’s northern

border, little is made of the fact that the place-names of Nosappu, Nemuro and the names

of the four dispossessed islands are not Japanese or Russian; rather, they are derived from

the Ainu language. The Ainu historically occupied northern Japan and the Kuril

Archipelago of which the Northern Territories are the southernmost four islands. Ainu

history in the area becomes implicated in the nation-building projects of Japan and Russia

in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Ainu were sometimes contracted, sometimes coerced,

to work the extractive industries in what was becoming Japan’s northern frontier. The

final Ainu rebellion against Japanese excesses in an area that had degenerated into a

series of forced labor camps was quashed with the execution of 37 Ainu men in 1789,

several kilometers from Cape Nosappu.

Today, Ainu gather once a year to commemorate the rebellion and renew their

collective attachment to the place where it occurred by making offerings to their

ancestors and the spirits that inhabit the local hills and sea in a ritual called kamuinomi -

literally “libations to the gods.” This particular rite requires two days to perform and

involves making offerings of sake and food to carvings that represent ancestral spirits. It

begins at Nokamappu, the location of the execution of the 37 Ainu rebels, and moves on

the second day to Cape Nosappu. This second phase of the ritual takes place at the foot of

a marker that records the rebellion in which71 Japanese lost their lives--a marker that has

very different significance for Japanese and Ainu. The performance of the ritual at the

heart of what could be characterized as Cape Nosappu’s nationalist theme-park evinces

an array of contradictory signs that disrupts the sense of state resentment that pervades

the place.

274

Fig. 21 The first day of the Nokamappu icharpa and kamuinomi. The carved branches are

inau and represent the 37 Ainu who died in a mass execution after the Kunashiri Uprising

(Kunashiri Menashi).

275

Fig. 22 A somber, rainy second day of the Nokamappu Ceremony, held at the stone

marker commemorating the Kunashiri Uprising on Cape Nosappu.

The park blends structures that evoke traditional Japan, monumental architecture with

no ostensible national tradition and points of observation from which the Northern

Territories can be viewed. At the perimeter of the park a lone Shinto shrine contains the

local kami or spirit. It is of the Kotohira sect which spread throughout Japan along

shipping lines beginning in the 17th century. These shrines typically house a land-master

spirit (jinushigami) or a guardian spirit (chinjugami) that secures and protects the area

within its domain. There are also a number of traditional markers inscribed with the

slogan “Return the Northern Territories” that dot the park. Perhaps the most important

point in the park is the gravestone for the 71 Japanese who died in the Ainu rebellion of

276

1789. This marker is the traditional center of the park and the point that seems to attract

the attention of most visitors. The marker purportedly has mystical origins. In 1912 it was

found by a fisherman sticking out of the sand one morning in the town of Nemuro, some

20 kilometers down the coast from the Nosappu Cape. There is no record of the stone

being commissioned and its creator is unknown. The marker records the event in which

71 Japanese fishermen and samurai on the islands of Hokkaido and Kunashiri, one of the

Northern Territories, were killed by “murderous Ainu.” Why the marker was moved to

Cape Nosappu, some 60 kilometers south of the actual uprising is uncertain, but part of

the rationale was undoubtedly due to the implication of the marker’s text concerning

Japanese fishing operations that were based in the Northern Territories at the end of the

18th century, approximately 100 years before sustained Russian incursions into the area.

There is no mention on the monument, however, that Japanese fishing operations existed

only by locating in or near Ainu settlements that had been established in these areas for

hundreds of years prior to contact with Japanese commercial fishing interests. In fact

there is virtually no mention of Ainu habitation in area in either of the two museums in

the park.

277

Fig. 23 The Shinto Shrine which houses its guardian kami, protecting the cape and

projecting the Japanese state onto its easternmost frontier. The Tower of Peace watches

over Japan’s lost Northern Territories.

278

Fig. 24 Commemorative arch and eternal flame mark the end of the cape where on a clear

day the Russian-held Habomai Islands can be seen.

Fig. 25 The marker commemorating the 71 Wajin who died during the Kunashiri

Uprising. Ainu gather here once a year to mourn the event and make offerings to all who

perished in the bloody event.

279

In addition to traditional Japanese structures on the cape, there are stunning examples

of monumental architecture that were assembled to either facilitate the gaze of Japanese

observers of their dispossessed islands or to reflexively invite the gaze of the Russian

inhabitants of the Northern Territories within sight of the cape. While there are

observation decks all along the eastern wall of the Northern Territories Museum, one can

most dramatically view the lost islands from atop the 90 meter Tower of Peace. For a

mere $20USD one can ride the elevator to the top and get a panorama of the cape and the

Northern Territories. Conversely the immense arch and eternal flame were built to be

seen by inhabitants of the lost islands. For the citizens of Japan, many of whom live on

islands separated by distances so great that neighboring islands are not visible to the

naked eye, the fact that they can plainly see the Northern Territories from the shore of

Hokkaido, yet do not own these islands (nor can they visit them), strikes most Japanese

as absurd. Because the Northern Territories are visible from Cape Nosappu, it is argued

that they are a natural and inalienable part of the nation of Japan. This kind of nativist

sentiment is temporarily disrupted during the Ainu ritual of ancestor worship that takes

place every September at the foot of the gravestone commemorating the Japanese who

lost their lives in the Ainu rebellion.

Henri Lefebre argues that the social and economic contradictions of modernity are

imbricated or sedimented within spaces that, for all of their latency, continue to articulate

with present social practices. In this way, he portrays social space as being “secreted”

through social practices that articulate with the social, political and historical dimensions

of a given area (Lefebvre 1992:42). This approach differs from other models that see

space as either an inert substance, something onto which meaning is inscribed (Manuel

280

Castells 2000), or as overly determinate in shaping the material and symbolic practices of

those living within specific spaces (Heidegger 1977; Watsuji1988). I would like to take

Lefebvre’s notion of space as the interplay between the social relations embedded within

place and the performative present that evokes new meanings from the landscape and

couple it with Michael Taussig’s (1999) notion of defacement as a very specific kind of

performance that can affect how space is experienced. The Ainu’s ritual kamuinomi at the

foot of the tombstone on Cape Nosappu effects a kind of defacement which reveals the

public secret that all the monuments and markers along the cape conceal - that this

quintessentially Japanese space, this frontier that marks the hard line between Japan and

its Slavic neighbor to the north even while it seeks to reterritorialize the four islands off

its coast, was illegally expropriated from the Ainu inhabitants who continue to live

throughout Hokkaido.

The Nosappu kamuinomi itself typically involves three shamans in traditional Ainu

robes who lean carved wooden representations of the spirits with whom they wish to

communicate against the grave marker. Speaking in the Ainu language, they relay their

concerns to the spirit world while providing food for the spirits and sprinkling the

carvings with sake. During the ritual, Ainu observers tend to move from the marker and

the shamans to the overlook to see the Northern Territories for themselves, or in the

words of one participant, “the Ainu Territories” (Ainu ryoudo o miru).

The kamuinomi forces a shift in perspective in which the inequities of modernity are

acknowledged and the public secret of Japan’s acquisition of its northern islands is

revealed; that is, Japan’s so-called “natural” northern border cannot include the Northern

Territories because it cannot reasonably claim Hokkaido itself to be a natural extension of

281

the nation. The population of Hokkaido at the time of the rebellion consisted of a people

who did not share in the cultural, linguistic or biological heritage of what, at that time,

could be called the Japanese nation. Nearly all place-names in Hokkaido and the

Northern Territories are Ainu words awkwardly rewritten with Japanese script. The

symbolic defacement of the monument with the objects of Ainu ritual produces a

dislocation within the heavily marked statist space of the Nosappu Cape. The ritual

invites onlookers to witness the competing spatial narratives embedded within the park

and beyond. One is highly compartmentalized, permanent, inscribed in stone and steel

and marked with flags and slogans. The other is temporary, smuggled in, performed,

spoken in a language without a written tradition, yet rooted in and routed through the

landscape that bears its names.

The performance of course conceals as much as it reveals. For example, many Ainu

were historically inveigled by prestige goods and sake to give their lands and fishing

grounds over to Japanese entrepreneurs; that Ainu groups often fought amongst

themselves for access to trade with the Japanese; and, most damming of all, that the 37

Ainu who were beheaded in the aftermath of the rebellion were betrayed by their own

chieftain. The histories embedded within spaces tend to be complex and fraught with

contradictions - and the performative and revelatory aspect of Lefebvre’s idea that social

practices “secrete space” tends to involve a reciprocal “secret-ing of space” as well, a

narrative slight of hand that is bound up with politics as much as, and certainly no less

than, culture or history.

The ritual was in fact inspired by the cultural politics of other indigenous minorities

in the United States and Canada. The first Ainu rituals were held on the Nemuro

282

Peninsula in 1974 to commemorate the last organized act of Ainu resistance against the

Japanese and to reaffirm Ainu connections to the Northern Territories. Born of the

political aspirations shaped by the emergence of a global indigenous rights movement,

the Nosappu kamuinomi functions to promote Ainu solidarity and to provide Ainu from

diverse parts of Japan an opportunity to discuss political strategies in the recuperative

effort to regain some measure of increased access to Ainu territories in Hokkaido and

beyond. In contrast to commentators who insist on the deterritorializing effect of global

flows (e.g. Giddens 1990), the Ainu have used international norms regarding state-

indigene relations to intensify the specificity of place by valorizing indigenous

knowledge and by revitalizing cultural and affective connections to places. This process

of re-inidigenization is not a “return of the repressed.” A close analysis of the global

indigenous rights movement resists the seductions of dialectics altogether as indigeneity

today has become less a matter of social relations internal to states and more a political

strategy attached to developing enforceable legal norms through supranational

organizations (Niezen 2003); however, this does not preclude an engagement with

narratives of the nation-state.

The Nosappu ritual is one locus where, in Michael Taussig’s words, a “surplus of

sacredness” (1999:3) emitted from the rupture in statist spatial narratives is cultivated by

the Ainu community, deepening both a sense of emplacement and political empowerment

for the participants. It is here that Lefebvre’s “production of space” is most compelling in

its insistence on the immanent malleability of social space through practice. The point is

not so much that the social relations particular to modernity are revealed through spatial

283

practices, but that the relations themselves are transformed through the practice of

revelation.

Iwor by Committee: Recreating Archaic Territorial Forms through Bureaucratic

Processes

One of the tasks I undertook while at the Utari Kyōkai involved translating from

Japanese a three reports that charted the conceptual development of what modern-day

iwor sites might entail. “Iwor” is a territorial unit particular to pre-modern Ainu

settlements. It delimits the broader ecological region in which a particular kotan (village)

would claim for hunting, fishing and gathering (Izumi 1952). Ainu from other areas

would typically need to get permission to hunt, fish or gather within another tribe’s iwor.

For the Ainu of Nibutani, their iwor would consist of a stretch of the Saru River Valley,

its waters and the surrounding hills and forests. Other Ainu groups claimed coastal

regions as part of their iwor (e.g. the Shizunai Ainu or the Ainu of the Shibetsu area).

During the deliberations among various scholars, policymakers and, later in the process,

Ainu representatives (referred to as the Experts’ Meeting on Ainu Affairs) that led to the

1997 Cultural Promotion Act (CPA), the issue arose that for Ainu to continue to produce

their traditional handicrafts and practice the rites and rituals central to their religion and

worldview, they would require areas in which they could gather the requisite natural

materials. As discussed previously, the Experts’ Meeting on Ainu Affairs decided that

areas in Hokkaido should be designated for specifically this purpose, and, while they

would not be able to work out the details in time for iwor provisions to be included in the

CPA, they would necessarily have to work them out for the CPA to function as cultural

284

promotion legislation. In 2005, the final report was published and the Utari Kyōkai

wanted an English translation for its work with the United Nations Working Group on

Indigenous Populations.

In conjunction with Mr. Yamada and anthropologist Ann-Elise Lewallen, we

navigated the difficult policy-speak which sought to simultaneously limit how iwor

legislation could be interpreted while granting rights to riparian, coastal and forest areas

to Ainu involved in reproducing “traditional culture”. The fraught language of the

document highlighted the contradictions of the Japanese Government’s non-recognition

policy toward the Ainu. While the report attempted to explain why the policy was

necessary, it was careful not to refer to the indigenous status of the Ainu, but instead

made vague statements about the cultural connections the Ainu held with the landscape

of Hokkaido.

According to the Experts Meeting’s report, Ainu traditional living areas were

generally located in the vicinity of rivers, and their traditional subsistence

activities included gathering, fishing and hunting. Through these activities,

Ainu people developed a unique culture within this natural environment.

Therefore the Ainu culture is deeply bound up with the natural environment

and contemporary Ainu people embody this worldview. A symbiotic

relationship with nature is a critical factor of their identity. (Committee for

the Review of Ainu Cultural Transmission Policies including Iwor Recreation

2005:6—hereafter referred to as the Iwor Committee Report)

The report transforms the facts of Ainu history, especially vis-à-vis mainland Japanese,

into issues of a particular, regional tradition within Japan that requires special protections.

Here the criticism against multiculturalism-as-ideology is applicable as the report tries to

classify Ainu culture as one of many cultural variants within Japan, as opposed to a set of

traditions that adhere in spite of the state’s efforts to assimilate Ainu into the national

family.

285

For many of my informants, Ainu culture, language, and ethnic identity remains

distinctly exterior to the array of localisms that are interwoven into the complex of

narratives that define the variation internal to the state.

The report evaluates the situation of cultural preservation and transmission,

and determined that current efforts were insufficient. In addition, according

to the report, the development of new measures for the Ainu people should

contribute to the preservation and promotion of Ainu language and traditional

Ainu culture which are said to be in crisis, and, through the promotion of

understanding of the Ainu people, the realization of a society in which the

ethnic pride of the Ainu people is respected and the national culture can be

developed. It is important that the new development measures work in

harmony with existing national diversity. (Iwor Committee 2005:4)

Statements like this obscure the history of Hokkaido as colonial possession and the Ainu

as a subjugated population. Furthermore, the iwor, as a sovereign tribal territory,

historically central to the subsistence and economic development of Ainu villages,

becomes a site where natural materials may be collected for handicrafts meant to edify an

inquiring public and the for education of young Ainu. So, despite the centrality of

subsistence and economic activities to these tribal regions, the modern iwor simply

reproduces a long-held government policy toward the Ainu: that traditional Ainu culture,

as an important element in Hokkaido tourism, should be supported, while the much

needed economic development is ignored.

Yet, according to the staff at the Utari Kyōkai, the establishment of an iwor in 2005

was the closest the state had yet come to recognizing that Ainu people held some kind of

priority of access in terms of the landscape in Hokkaido. For Mr. Yamada and the

directors of the association, iwor represented an opening where land management could

be considered in terms of joint venture between the state and the Ainu community.

Lacking official recognition as an indigenous group, which sidelined issues of

286

sovereignty and self-determination, the next best option would be to embrace a

partnership with the state where the Ainu communities around Hokkaido would have

some input as to how these areas would be managed. For Mr. Yamada, this was not the

merely the end product of the Expert’s Meeting on Ainu Affairs, rather it constituted the

beginning of a long term project of enlarging the terms of the iwor policy.

The establishment of the fist iwor became a point of contention within the Ainu

community. The first iwor was to be mapped onto the town of Shiraoi in southern

Hokkaido. This location was chosen for a variety of official reasons, foremost of which

was the relatively large population of Ainu in the town and the famous Ainu Museum

which was already situated on a large plot of relatively undeveloped land. There were

some Ainu from different regions who suspected that the real reason that Shiraoi was

chosen had more to do with the fact that the Hokkaido Kyōkai’s director was from the

area. I spoke to one of the museum staff in Shiraoi concerning the new site. He was

dismissive about it replying that it was simply another effort to promote traditional Ainu

culture. “The Ainu need jobs, our children need college educations and our towns require

economic development. Culture is important, but no one here is being helped by making

the mukkuri (a traditional musical instrument) or the saranip (a bag made of tree fibers).”

Despite the cynicism surrounding the iwor, Mr. Yamada was hopeful that it was one

more step in the direction toward land rights for the Ainu; more areas were to be

designated in the following years.

Mr. Yamada’s tempered optimism sprang from his method of enlarging Ainu

policies, that is, putting pressure on the appropriate agencies or ministries that were

responsible for implementing Ainu countermeasures to further Ainu cultural and

287

economic autonomy. With each success the Utari Kyōkai was able to make further

appeals to broaden the scope or stretch the terms of these policies. He was fond of saying

that the Japanese Government moves very slowly, yet you can get what you need by

moving at its pace. Often critical of some leaders in the Ainu community who were

impatient in their demands for immediate change, Mr. Yamada sought revolution through

consensus, and knew that making strong demands only created obstacles for sustainable

progress in the economic, social and legal arenas. Responsible for the annual expenditure

reports, he was at all times cognizant that the Utari Kyōkai operated largely due to state

largess and that budget cuts imposed by an irate bureaucrat could stop its operations cold.

The iwor policy has all the hallmarks of an Ainu countermeasure that could, through

time, be used to illustrate that the iwor was central to Ainu modes of autochthony and

territorial sovereignty in the past, and that its present incarnation highlights the

contradictions with which an indigenous people must today contend.

This general approach to making Ainu space in Hokkaido, as opposed to the kinds of

place-making activities conducted by local Ainu communities or groups of activists, has,

over the past three decades, accumulated a number of specific measures that collectively

beg the question of policy-makers, Why not provide group rights for the Ainu? Why not

recognize that their claims to the lands of Hokkaido and the Kuril Islands? Why not allow

them the space, both legal and territorial, to develop socially, economically and

commercially in a way that is consonant with their collective values and history? Not that

there is any agreement within the Ainu community about these things, to the contrary,

disagreements on the minutia of all things Ainu are legion and have in some cases been

responsible for divisive political factions. Mr. Yamada’s use of bureaucratic methods to

288

enlarge Ainu access to state funds, lands and natural materials have invigorated the pace

of cultural revitalization over the years while putting pressure on state narratives that

portray Japan as a nation of “one race, one culture, one language.” These methods draw

on procedural, linguistic and rhetorical conventions that are immanently understandable

within the bureaucratic community within which Utari Kyōkai staff operates and, taken

together, suggest a state of exception particular to the Ainu.

I am thinking here of several instances in which the Utari Kyōkai worked to expand

the scope of existing legislation. For example, the Utari Kyōkai lobbied the government

to use Ainu welfare funds for cultural revitalization activities in the early 1980s. Before

the Foundation for the Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture (FRPAC) was

established by the 1997 Cultural Promotion Act, the Utari Kyōkai worked to find

governmental funding for Ainu language classes, dance classes, craft fairs and archiving

Ainu oral histories and cultural events, often within existing legislation. One of my first

projects working at Utari Kyōkai offices was to translate a revision of the law that

required the organizers of annual Ainu salmon celebrations to submit petitions to catch a

set number of salmon for ritual purposes. The revision allowed Ainu groups to submit a

standing request, thus avoiding the red tape involved in having to reapply each year.

These small changes in bureaucratic procedure, accumulated over the years, make a

strong case for Ainu exceptionalism and argue for a distinct regime of rights for the Ainu

people. It appears that the Utari Kyōkai has been working to implement a version of the

1984 Ainu Shinpō piecemeal through exactly these kinds of policy manipulations. This

long revolution through culturally specific bureaucratic means has a complementary

element that seeks, more radically, to shape the emergent regime of international rights

289

that would, “from above” so to speak, work to alter Japanese Governmental policy vis-à-

vis the Ainu. In terms of territory, the Utari Kyōkai, with considerable prodding from

activist groups, lobbied the IUCN to include the Ainu as the people indigenous to the

Shiretoko Peninsula in its report to UNESCO on the peninsula’s eligibility as a World

Heritage site.

World Heritage and Indigenous Space along the Shiretoko Peninsula

The Shiretoko Peninsula in northeast Hokkaido projects out like a knife into the Sea of

Okhotsk. It became part of the Japanese National Park system in 1964 and in 2005 the

peninsula was inaugurated as an UNESCO World Heritage Site. The peninsula is largely

uninhabited; the northern towns of Shari and Rausu border the park to the northwest and

southeast respectively. If Hokkaido has acquired the popular image of Japan’s vast and

pristine northern wilderness, Shiretoko combines the aesthetic of undisturbed nature with

a sense of remoteness akin to the Northern Territories; the large island of Kunashiri is

plainly visible from its shores. The name itself, according to the late Ainu leader, linguist

and folklorist, Kayano Shigeru, means “end of the earth” in the Ainu language145.

Ainu involvement in its recent designation as a World Heritage Site was crucial to

their inclusion as the indigenous people of the area in the IUCN (International Union for

the Conservation of Nature) nominating report. The Japanese Government completely

neglected the Ainu issue in the nominating process--their justification was that there are

no Ainu currently living on the peninsula. Ainu organizations responded that all

landmarks along the peninsula carry Ainu names and that lack of Ainu habitation in

Shiretoko had more to do with Japanese policies of exclusion and assimilation than Ainu

290

abandonment of the region. In early 2005 a group of Ainu and Wajin activists organized

SIPETRU (Shiretoko’s Indigenous Peoples Eco-Tourism Research Union), an

organization that explores how integrating members of the Ainu community into the

management and maintenance of Shiretoko as a World Natural Heritage Site would

further UNESCO’s mission of integrating the social and natural elements of its sites

while creating opportunities for young Ainu to become involved with stewardship

responsibilities. According to a paper written by its founding members,

The education of the Ainu youth has been retarded by an assimilative policy

of the Japanese Government. The Ainu language is not taught in public

education. The history and the culture of the Ainu have been also ignored.

The number of the Ainu who can communicate to each other by the Ainu

language is limited because of a long-lasting assimilation policy. There is no

system for a linguistic education of the Ainu. The number of Ainu youth

regularly studying the Ainu language is still few, although the number of

Ainu language schools has increased after the establishment of the Ainu

Culture Promotion Act (which now totals fourteen). This law tends to regard

the Ainu culture as only a traditional one such as traditional music, dancing,

embroidery, and oral literature. This attitude has limited the activity of the

Ainu, especially that of the youth, because any attempts aiming at the

creation of new culture on the basis of traditions are scarcely evaluated.

Under such a situation, the percentage of Ainu students to enter the university

is still much lower (only 16.1% ) than the non-Ainu Japanese (34.5% ),

according to the 1999 census.

We believe that the indigenous ecotourism in the Shiretoko World Natural

Heritage area opens the possibility for the Ainu youth to study systematically

their language, history and culture. Not only in Shiretoko, but also in all over

Hokkaido, land names are based on the Ainu language. They indicate

precisely their nature and the land’s history. Therefore the eco-tour guide

should understand the meanings of Ainu land names and be able to

communicate them to the eco-tourists. If we open the way for Ainu youth to

become eco-tour guides and park rangers, there will be much more

opportunities for them to study the Ainu language, history and culture. (Ono

et al 2005)

291

According to groups like SIPETRU, Ainu involvement in the development of the

Shiretoko Peninsula as a World Natural Heritage Site offers an opportunity to address a

perceived decreasing cultural competency among Ainu youth. Beyond issues of

education and employment, the citing of the Ainu in the IUCN nominating report as the

indigenous people of the region bolstered their argument for official recognition of their

indigenous status from the Japanese Government146.

Ainu who live near the peninsula have mixed feelings about the Shiretoko becoming

an UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site. For an Ainu walking tour organization in the

town of Shari, the designation offers an increase in tourism for the region. Emphasizing

their history in the area and the seeming innate Ainu ability to “coexist with nature,” the

tour company offers a two hour walking tour in Shiretoko Park. But not all Ainu residents

in the area are as enthusiastic about the new designation. My Rausu informant, Mr. Endo,

lives at the very south-eastern edge of the park where the coastal road narrows to a mere

trail as it disappears into the foothills of Shiretoko. Walking along the shoreline Mr. Endo

pointed to a stream writhing with decaying yet determined salmon. “This was the

fundamental food of my people, but now, if I scoop one out to feed my family, I’ll be put

in jail... And now they want to take my Shiretoko away from me. First the Wajin and now

UNESCO.” Throughout our conversation Mr. Endo referred to Shiretoko as “my

Shiretoko” or “my peninsula.” He in fact has a very intimate relationship with the area

and is familiar with the forests and foothills that rise up from the shoreline at the base of

the peninsula. He operates a tour boat out of Rausu, taking tourists around the peninsula

to witness the dramatic scenery along the coast of Shiretoko. The trip also provides his

patrons with unobstructed views of the forbidden Kunashiri Island (although he stays

292

within the maritime boundary of Japan), easily visible from Rausu. But now, with the

new UNESCO designation, he is prohibited from conducting these coastal excursions. At

the time of this interview, Mr. Endo was worried about his continued livelihood in the

area. Drawing from the general perception that the Utari Kyōkai has been dragging its

feet in recent years on issues that concern Ainu in the remote northeast of Hokkaido, Mr.

Endo sharply criticized the association at the 2006 annual meeting for neglecting issues

like the Northern Territories and Ainu involvement with Shiretoko development.

The Utari Kyōkai was quite late to the table during the 2004-2005 assessment process

conducted by the IUCN. It was only after smaller activist organizations like SIPETRU

sought to urge the IUCN to involve the Ainu-as-indigenes in the nominating report that

the association scrambled in an eleventh hour attempt to represent the Ainu vis-à-vis

UNESCO organizations. As the report was being finalized, a director of the Utari Kyōkai

flew to Paris and New York to confer with David Sheppard, head of the IUCN’s

Protected Areas Program. This lack of attention to land issues in the north highlights

regional tensions within the Kyōkai , where there is the general perception that Kyōkai

efforts are directed toward the more populated South and West of Hokkaido. Critics

within the Kyōkai note that that these regions are where the more influential directors

originated.

For Kyōkai members like Mr. Endo and Mr. Nakajima, Ainu autonomy in the region

requires more aggressive measures because it is being impinged upon from several

different fronts. As the Japanese and Russian governments work toward an agreement on

the Northern Territories dispute, Ainu from the region want the Kyōkai to take a more

assertive stance, one that may work to generate policies of exception, or, more

293

importantly, regional autonomy, for indigenous groups—a situation where the Ainu, who

see themselves as legitimate stakeholders in the region, would become a third party in

treaty negotiations. In 1983 the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai General Assembly moved to

demand that the Japanese and Russian governments reconfirm that the Ainu are

indigenous to the Kuril Islands. Again in the 1990s the Ainu entered into negotiations

with Japan and Russia to resolve the Northern Territories dispute; Russia agreed to

recognize the Ainu as an indigenous population with claims to the region, but the

Japanese delegation refused. Presently, with the Ainu finally attaining official

governmental recognition of their indigenous status, it is not clear how future Northern

Territory negotiations will be conducted. One distinct possibility is that the Ainu will

become a de facto presence due to their current involvement with the development of the

Shiretoko World Natural Heritage Site, as UNESCO is presently considering expanding

the site into a trans-regional “peace park” which would encompass both Shiretoko and

the adjacent Russian-held Northern Territories.

Here lies the promise of 21st century indigeneity: if states, supranational organizations,

and indigenous groups can work out the tangle of rights, permissions and pecuniary

details that have until now only challenged, if not outright obstructed, efforts toward

indigenous autonomy, issues of sovereignty and self-determination may become

imbricated within the nation-state system, a system that is currently reacting and adapting

to a variety of destratifying forces characteristic of late modernity. Organizations like

UNESCO, problematic as they undoubtedly are, have the potential to open regions within

states and between states, and to facilitate new modes of indigenous attachment to place.

For Shiretoko and the Northern Territories, it is too soon to tell what kinds of

294

arrangements will present themselves. Groups like SIPETRU see these supra-nationalized

sites as openings where indigenous groups can gain a foothold, with an eye to eventually

overcoding state restrictions, and begin to re-establish connections between indigenous

groups and their ancestral lands. However, as some commentators have pointed out,

UNESCO potentially represents a deterritorializing force - injecting distinctly Western

notions of heritage, nature and culture, and then placing restrictions on local populations

(Cruikshank 2007:369), or alternatively promoting cultural heritage by filtering

international flows of products, media and people in protected areas (Brown 2007:184).

Mr. Endo faces precisely this dilemma: UNESCO may provide a path toward Ainu

reterritorialization in the region, but, as for now, he can no longer take tourist excursions

along the protected peninsula. The question remains whether organizations such as

UNESCO can work some flexibility into their programmes and thus provide indigenes

new opportunities to rearticulate a collective attachment to place.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have illustrated several different modes of territorialiality. The statist

mode, informed by a bureaucratic epistemology, creates abstract spatalizations by

producing social and material cartographies via grids and surveys—rendering landscapes

as an array of particular genres of knowledge. This kind of mapping (and there are many

kinds) forms the basis of political projects; in Hokkaido this would include the

annexation and then organization of immense swaths of land without the knowledge or

permission of local inhabitants. The other form, Ainu geographies, informed by a

cosmology that emphasizes the immanent and ethnospiritual connections to place, seek to

295

transcend the spatial schemes of modern polities by recovering pre-colonial meanings

and modes of dwelling in places, but not for the purpose of re-appropriating archaic

lifestyles or even creating facile re-enactments. Rather, these reterritorializations clear the

space for a less restricted articulation with late modern present, be it cultural, political or

commercial. The former serves to mark geopolitical limits and assess the productive

capacity of the state, while the latter is connected to the cultural and political economic

aspirations for a nation that is not reducible to, nor is it entirely separable from, the

nation-state at large.

I situate this re-emergence of Ainu cultural geographies within what I perceive to be a

general unraveling of many of the social contradictions that have been, until the late 20th

century, held in place by a strong state. However, due to a new regime of supranational

moral and legal discourse and, increasingly, mechanisms of enforcement, the late modern

state has attained a level of culpability vis-à-vis its native populations. The international

community appears less tolerant of states who continue to subjugate minority

populations; thus groups like the Ainu are able to bring a potent form of political pressure

to bear against their settler states. Yet, leverage finds efficacy only through claims to

indigeneity.

With few exceptions, most Ainu have been displaced from their original tribal lands

(i.e. areas inhabited before the relocations of the mid-19th century), although many do

participate in regional tribal communities, so their connection to place has to be actively

asserted. The reterritorialization efforts led by the Utari Kyōkai have been successful in

making visible to the state and the international community the necessity of increased

access to the lands, waters and natural materials of Hokkaido. Continued restrictions on,

296

for example, access to salmon harvests are not simply inconveniences: they threaten the

very survival of Ainu culture. Now the issue quickly attains an urgency that was not

easily communicable thirty years ago - it becomes a human rights issue and the history

between the Japanese polity and the Ainu indigenous minority stands out in stark relief.

The Ainu have appealed to human rights discourse since the late 1970s, but they have

been most successful in challenging government policies only since the mid-1990s. The

juridical reterritorialization that I outline above in the Nibutani Dam Case relied heavily

on article 27 of the United Nations’ ICCPR, which outlines the rights of minority

populations to practice their culture. Similarly, the passing of the 1997 Cultural

Promotion Act, which included recommendations for establishing iwor spaces, was

motivated in part by Ainu activism at the United Nations, specifically their involvement

with the Working Group on Indigenous Populations. The inclusion of the Ainu in the

IUCN Shiretoko nominating report to UNESCO was a further assertion, at the

international level, that the Ainu held a privileged connection to the landscape of

Hokkaido. Ainu ritual, be it the festive Shakushian-matsuri in Shizunai or the somber

Nosappu Kamuinomi, enables the articulation of an indigenous “voice” (Tsing 2007)

connecting divergent historical trajectories with current political commitments. I frame

the Nosappu ritual as a political statement which opens a specifically nationalist space to

indigenous reappropriation.

In the end, Ainu cultural geographies, informed as they are by the specificity of place,

historical fact and a particular cosmology, are rendered coherent to nation-states through

the formulation of indigeneity as it has been worked out, not in the tribal hinterland, but

in the halls of the United Nations, regional NGOs and in international forums located in

297

the global metropoles. Ainu presence at international gatherings in New York, Paris and

Geneva are well documented at the Utari Kyōkai and are a constant source of activity as

scheduling, buying plane tickets, hotel reservations, etc. consumes considerable resources

(Utari Kyōkai 2000). The formulation of what it means to be indigenous has been

codified by the recently passed Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This

document speaks to the broad similarities that exist between indigenous populations and

their collectively voiced aspirations. The most controversial portions of the Declaration

spell out indigenous positions on self-determination, land rights and reparations. Clearly

indigenous “cultural geographies” are equally emergent “political geographies”—new

“positionings” (Li 2000:151) enabled by a loosening of the historical, legal, political and

cultural sedimentations of nation-state.

298

Chapter Seven

Indigeneity, Post-National Politics, Territoriality

The trajectory of the analysis has moved through the pre-modern cultural and political

entanglements of northern Ainu and Honshu Wajin, the geopolitical consolidations of the

late Tokugawa polity and the Meiji nation-state, the bureaucratic organization of the Ainu

in Hokkaido, the early involvement of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai with international

indigenous rights forums, and into the present effort to reterritorialize Hokkaido and the

Northern Territories as indigenous space. A reworking of national and transnational space

that has been consistently challenged in Japan, yet, by means of the political leverage

provided by international organizations like the UN and UNESCO, certain spaces in the

north have been incrementally denationalized through their identification with Ainu

history and connection to current Ainu cultural, economic and political activities. I argue

that the rise of indigeneity as an emergent political force within states is animated

through two interrelated dynamics: the progressive re-functioning of state institutions to

serve populations with connections to places and epochs that transcend the state, and the

efforts of indigenous activists to redefine national territories in terms of their pre-state

associations (e.g. populations, cultures, political structures, language).

I have asserted current levels of organization and activism by indigenous people

represent the kinds of novel articulations that could only occur at this historical moment.

For the Ainu, and many other indigenous groups, the bureaucratic management of their

affairs strengthened their existing political structures, facilitated communication not only

across tribal divisions but also with other indigenous groups, institutionalized goals, and

299

provided the inter-generational and trans-political framework to realize these goals. The

capabilities and modes of expertise nurtured through bureaucratic organization, once the

province of state or corporate power, easily transferred to the regime of supranational

organizations that have sought to disseminate a moral code, developed in the post-war

era, which is succinctly articulated in the International Declaration of Human Rights and

most recently refocused on indigenous affairs through the Declaration on the Rights of

Indigenous Peoples. The global activism for many indigenous peoples has been focused

on strengthening their connections to, and control over, specific places within the nation-

state(s) in which they reside147.

Finding an analytical language capable of bringing into view the kinds of changes

presently occurring within indigenous communities is crucial to developing an

understanding of the kinds of transgressions, capitulations and resistances one encounters

while doing ethnographic work in these communities. I occasionally found post-colonial

critique, Foucauldian analytics and (post-) Marxist assessments useful in lending

intellectual coherence to my observations, but more often than not my subjects did not

share the spirit of 1968. Yuki Shoji’s son, a musician blending traditional Ainu music

with various elements of modern popular genres, described his efforts as an attempt to

build cultural bridges with his Wajin neighbors while retaining, even amplifying, his

indigenous identity. My interlocutors at the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai effectively, if not

always comfortably, operated between Ainu activists, state bureaucrats and international

organizers, reifying cultural and ethnic differences at one point, obfuscating them at

another and building semblances at yet another. Their efforts tended to be pragmatic and

geared toward serving their membership while maintaining a political efficacy that

300

assured continued involvement with the governmental and academic experts who shape

domestic policy regarding the Ainu. For Mr. Yamada and his staff, remaining somewhat

unlocalizable, even imperceptible, enabled them to assert more influence than if they

were wholly engage in the overt politics of postcolonial resistance as Yuki Shoji did a

generation ago.

Bureaucratic Indigeneity

The unobtrusiveness of the bureaucrat has been crucial to the process of the Ainu

“becoming indigenous”. Indigeneity, as it turns out, is less an existential position than an

evolving project--grounded as it is in the essential facts of ethnic difference and pre-state

occupation of place. A project that is in no small part aided by a bureaucracy that serves

as a mediator between indigenous people and the myriad institutions that form a global

assemblage that is presently changing ideas and laws concerning indigenous peoples

within states. It was the work of bureaucrats that organized the first incarnation of the

Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai in the 1930s, bringing a spatially disparate and tribally divided

peoples together through gatherings and publications. Functionaries of the post-war Utari

Kyōkai, like Yuki Shoji, were among the first to valorize Ainu identity, suggesting that

assimilation was not the only option, or even a desirable option, and that the Ainu could

thrive as a native people even in modern Japan. Kyōkai staffers, Wajin and Ainu alike,

pushed to have the Ainu community connect with emerging indigenous rights groups in

other countries. It has been a cadre of bureaucrats and activists (not always mutually

exclusive categories) that have applied persistent pressure on state agencies to pass

cultural protection legislation like the 1997 Cultural Promotion Act and later, in 2008, to

301

formally recognize the Ainu as an indigenous people. Through the effort of bureaucrats,

the Ainu have established an extensive archive of policy papers and correspondences

between institutions like the UN, the Japanese government and Ainu organizations. Using

this documentary evidence, the Utari Kyōkai has consistently held the Japanese

government accountable for its actions or inaction regarding Ainu groups in Japan.

Finally, perhaps most importantly, the capacity and expertise to effectively pursue long-

term goals (often requiring decades to realize) and to translate the processual minutia

involved in these projects to very different audiences, has come from the institutional

support provided by the Utari Kyōkai. Weber's iron cage has provided, albeit not

unproblematically, a line of flight for Ainu interested in maintaining their historical and

cultural specificity vis-à-vis the Wajin majority.

The issue of translation is crucial for the staff at the Utari Kyōkai. In order to present

their goals (e.g. socioeconomic parity with the Wajin) as relevant they need to convince

their membership, many of whom prioritize parochial interests over, for instance,

engaging with indigenous peoples globally. They must maintain their connections to

many agencies within the Japanese state, both at the prefectural and national levels.

Finally, the Kyōkai must continue to work with the supranational institutions that are

creating international norms regarding indigenous peoples. The goals and methods of the

day require very different modes of presentation relative to the group being addressed.

The Kyōkai membership routinely gets a rousing speech by the director of the

organization, Mr. Watanabe. In addition, organizational news is disseminated via a

quarterly brochure entitled Senkusha no Tsudoi (“A Gathering of Pioneers”—in this case

“Pioneer” holds the connotations of “trail blazer” and “those who were there first” rather

302

than a “colonial settler,” as might be inferred from a North American reading of the term)

and through the annual general meeting. Information is exchanged with state agencies

through a variety of formal letters, spreadsheets, forms and emails, all communicated in a

language that is professional, deferential and quite formulaic in terms of the legal and

procedural jargon used. The kinds of communiques that are routinely sent UN working

groups, UNESCO agencies, and other international organizations combine the narratives

commonly communicated to the Kyōkai membership, but in a form that ties Ainu

concerns with the mechanisms of international law and emergent global norms regarding

indigenous populations. In addition, the letters and forms sent to supranational

organizations are further translated into English. Considering the complex imperatives of

communication alone, it is doubtful that any indigenous group could fully participate in

the groundswell of activism at nation and international levels without a bureau of

technocrats well versed in the forms, procedures and idiomatic codes of officialdom.

The ability to effectively translate information to these very different audiences has

been key to Kyōkai successes in the past. What is of interest here is that the kinds of

expertise developed in the post-war period by Kyōkai functionaries enabled a formal

linking up with organizations whose purview exceeded the legal and customary regimes

of specific states and sought to engage with human rights norms globally. This led to a an

articulation of what Tania Li (2000) calls the "tribal slot" and Anna Tsing (2003) refers to

as the "tribal allegory," which indicate the gradual defining of a novel subject position in

the late 20th century and new millennium that is suggestive of cultural difference, quiet

dignity and deep ecological wisdom. The new discourses involving tribal peoples move

from the "ward of the state" model (e.g. reservations, special welfare measures and

303

extending educational opportunities to tribal youth) to the "global cultural heritage"

model, where tribal people, like their ancestral lands, are to be protected and funded by

states and international agencies to maintain their traditions.

What constitutes an indigenous tradition, however, is a contentious issue. For my Ainu

interlocutors living in villages on Hokkaido's eastern seaboard, industrial salmon fishing

was considered a logical extension of earlier Ainu subsistence activities. For others,

traditional embroidery, the manufacture of natural fiber textiles, Ainu language and dance

classes constituted indigenous traditions and were, more so than the activities of the

fishermen, immanently fundable through the 1997 CPA. It is clear from my research that

increasing the sphere of "indigenous traditions" to include commercial enterprises is a

central issue for many Ainu living in the countryside. Nonetheless, the switch from a

state-bound positionality contending with nationalist ideology, statist histories,

ethnocentrism and a legal system that does not recognize one's status as an indigenous

minority, to a position where one has access to international legal mechanisms, entry into

an evolving global moral discourse, as well as a profound sense of belonging to an

international group of people with similar experiences would not, in many instances, have

occurred without the inter-generational longevity of a bureaucratic organization like the

Utari Kyōkai. It is through this complex interplay between an evolving sensibility

regarding what indigenous identity might mean in the 21st century and the efforts of

cultural and political activists and, crucially, bureaucrats that have created a patient, if

inexorable, expectation that the state conform to its enunciated positions on human rights

regarding native populations within states.

304

There is, in the history of the Ainu cultural politics, a point where the bureaucratic

organization responsible for bringing the Ainu into socioeconomic parity with the

majority of Japanese "'jumped the tracks," that is, the association adopted a new mandate,

enabling a set of functions which, relying on old capabilities, were geared toward

obtaining, first, minority legal protections for the Ainu; second, cultural promotion

legislation; and, most recently, formal recognition by the Japanese Government of the

indigenous status of the Ainu. This final move allows people with Ainu ancestry to make

claims based on a coalescing international legal framework regarding indigenous rights.

I have attempted to map the Kyōkai's transition from an organization concerned with

moral suasion, to, essentially, a welfare distribution organization, and, now, a political

organization that has taken a leading role in international politics regarding indigenous

populations. Here we see globalizing legal mechanisms, which have little to do with

international trade, migration or finance, working to enunciate a new regime of rights for

groups within states. This is significant in that it is essentially a rewriting the social

contract upon which many modern democratic states derive legitimacy. This is one

example of a traditionally statist capability, i.e. bureaucratic functionality, getting re-

lodged into globalizing dynamics and effecting a partial denationalization of the state.

Post-National Politics: Exceeding the Nation-Space, Nation-Time

Broadly speaking, indigenous groups are coming together to formulate legal

frameworks and policy initiatives in international forums in order to realize some degree

of political and cultural self-determination, regional sovereignty and reparations from

states--initiatives that, in sum, locate indigenous groups beyond the political, spatial and

305

temporal boundaries of the state. These efforts, for the Ainu, are just now beginning to

bear fruit. Just in terms of transformations in state policy, the Ainu have moved from a

population defined (by the state) by their welfare needs, to a national minority group, to

an indigenous people in the span of thirty years - a remarkable feat given that Japan is

demographically an extremely ethnically homogenous state and has been, at the best of

times, reluctant to acknowledge the historical colonization of the Ainu and their lands.

Yet, formal state recognition of the Ainu as a group indigenous to Japan, leveraged as it

was by UN mediators, is not in itself a move beyond the nation-state. Integration into

state legal codes, re-assertions of state territorial control, and new narratives of national

unity are sure to follow - requiring further study. The Ainu, however, have been carving

out indigenous spaces in Hokkaido for some time prior to Japan's 2008 recognition of

their indigeneity. The Utari Kyōkai has worked to persuade state agencies to provide the

Ainu with what appear to be provisional group rights in regards to salmon fishing,

collecting natural materials for traditional handicrafts, and a role in the management of

the Shiretoko World Heritage site. In addition, individual Ainu have put pressure on state

restrictions regarding the Northern Territories--claiming that the Japanese state has no

authority to keep Ainu from entering their ancestral territories.

Ainu claims to the waters in and around Hokkaido, to iwor spaces in the mountains

and forests, and to the Shiretoko Peninsula have begun to re-tribalized spaces within the

nation-state by driving legislative easements and recuperating distinctively Ainu

narratives of place, belonging and tribal consubstantiality with the landscape (efforts

which appear mutually supportive). These kinds of reterritorializations all invoke an

anteriority to the state which problematizes the ethno-political coherence of the Japanese

306

archipelago. That the Ainu both predated the establishment of the Japanese polity in the

north and remain active in asserting themselves as ethnically, culturally, linguistically

and politically different from the Wajin majority pose a challenge to the social contract

that stipulates a legal relation between the state and the individual citizen. The

negotiation of group rights has been underway since the Ainu Shinpo of the 1980s, the

Nibutani Dam decision in the 1990s and continues today as the Ainu work out what it

means to be an indigenous citizen in Japan.

I have argued that many Ainu, through the efforts of the Utari Kyōkai, have been

pursuing territorial rights and group rights based on an essential cultural, ethnic and

linguistic difference that preceded the formation of the Japanese nation-state, weathered

the pre- and post- war nationalisms of the 20th century, and experienced a deepening and

revitalization in the late 20th century – a sense of cultural and historical difference that

has only intensified in the new millennium. The move to define Hokkaido and the

Northern Territories as "Ainu Territory"--Ainu ryoudo or Ainu moshir--has occupied a

central position in Ainu indigenous politics since the 1970s. Most of the gains (legal,

territorial, and cultural) made by the Ainu vis-à-vis the Japanese state have been achieved

through their involvement with international organizations that put pressure on the state

to recognize and make provisions for the cultural diversity that exists within their

borders. From the UN, the primary legal mechanisms have been Japan's ratification of the

ICCPR, ILO 107 and ILO 169. Novel territorial arrangements have been made to

accommodate Ainu demands that their culture is a product of a sustained engagement

with the particular ecology of Hokkaido and the Kuril Islands. Ainu, in places like

Nibutani and Kushiro, have maintained private land holdings as iwor, which were

307

originally a portion of a river valley or coastal area under the control of an Ainu tribe,

now a forested area from which natural occurring materials can be harvested for cultural

productions. In 2005, following the dictates of the 1997 CPA, several areas around

Hokkaido were designated as iwor.

The dynamics shaping the place-making activities of bureaucrats and Ainu activists,

while articulating a constellation of profoundly local practices and representations, are

decidedly global in character. I chart the movement of Ainu involvement in global

institutions from the late 1970s and intensifying through the millennium. I characterize

this process in Hokkaido, and Japan more generally, as post-national in character - that is,

a partial reterritorialization of sections of national space by an organization that defines

itself and its goals vis-à-vis the state as specifically pre-national as well as transnational

(e.g. the Northern Territories and connections to First Nations Peoples via a cultural

complex defined by trans-Pacific Salmon migration), all the while embedded in the heart

of Japan's national bureaucracy.

The term “post-nation” and the process of “'post-nationalization” are underwritten by

many of the same processes entailed in Saskia Sassen's concept of “denationalization.”

She argues that globalizing dynamics are increasingly finding their way deep within

territories and institutional domains that received their definition from a sustained period

of development and interconnection during the historical emergence of the nation-state.

These global influences, rather than exerting the kinds of centripetal forces characteristic

of transnational political and economic development, are intimately connected to the

constitution of the local to the extent that it is often experienced and codified as national

(Sassen 2003, 2005). We see precisely this kind of dynamic playing out as the Japanese

308

government extends special territorial rights for the Ainu and then identical rights for the

Japanese citizens (see the example of the iwor) in an attempt to contain Ainu cultural

specificity and spatial claims within a single national imaginary. While Sassen

conceptualizes denationalization as an abstract intermediary process, I suggest a

particular type of reterritorialization is occurring within regions identified as central to

the continued survival of indigenous peoples — regions that transverse national and

international geographies. My point is that Japan is just beginning to experience the post-

nationalization of its northern frontier – a process that is impacting the kind of national

coherence (or imagined community) many of my Wajin interlocutors did not generally

question. It is important to point out that this process, as connected as it is to other places

and peoples, does not trade exclusively on the political potency of difference, rather, the

deployment of semblances has been central to its unfolding both at home and abroad. I

posit that, in many cases, subverting differences has been key to what Francesca Merlan

calls “a collective ethnogensis” in the emergence of a indigenous people as a new social

category (Merlan 2007:126).

Territoriality

In the relatively short period of time I spent at the Utari Kyōkai, and in the Ainu

community more generally, the movement to assert Ainu indigenous status in Japan was

just beginning to intensify. Meetings were scheduled between Ainu leaders and

emissaries from other indigenous groups in the Pacific region: Maori, Taiwanese,

Malaysian and Hawaiian, to name a few. Often the topic of these meetings revolved

around the upcoming completion of the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous

309

Peoples by the Indigenous Caucus, and it subsequent presentation to the United Nations

Human Rights Council, an event that was to take place at the UN in New York in June of

2006. Specifically, there was much anxiety over the precise wording of the articles

relating to land-use and territorial sovereignty. Much turned on the restoration of

indigenous control over their traditional lands, yet, at the same time, the most obvious

impediment to eventual ratification of the Declaration, was the refusal of states to ratify it

in the General Assembly.

Consequently, many of the statements regarding land and sovereignty is couched in

ambiguous language. For example, Article 26 states,

1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources

which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or

acquired.

2. Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the

lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason of traditional

ownership or other traditional occupation or use, as well as those which

they have otherwise acquired.

3. States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands,

territories and resources. Such recognition shall be conducted with due

respect to the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the indigenous

peoples concerned. (Article 26 of the Declaration on the Rights of

Indigenous Peoples)

The issue of “rights” is not specified. “Rights to the lands...” could mean circumscribed

modes of access, like the Ainu have to salmon fishing in certain areas at particular times

during the year; or rights could refer to any of the varied types of tribal sovereignties

enjoyed by Maori, First Nations Peoples or many Native American groups in the United

States. Further, legal protections are demanded only for lands already possessed by

indigenous peoples – although “traditional ownership” is purposely left vague.

For my interlocutors at the Utari Kyōkai, simple access to land for traditional cultural

activities is the first step in a much longer process of restoring certain territories to Ainu

310

tribal control. The process needs to be long and incremental in order to introduce change

into a vast bureaucratic and political organization that is often characterized as adverse, if

not hostile, to change. Territoriality is thus a sensitive subject for the Ainu, yet it drives

activists and bureaucrats alike to push for more access, increased visibility for Ainu

landscapes in Hokkaido (this currently takes the form of Ainu pronunciations

accompanying the Japanese script on signs), and, for some, dreams of an international

region where Ainu tribal sovereignty takes precedence over national laws.

311

Endnotes

1 The Ainu are one of several groups in Japan claiming indigenous status. In 2008,

they became the only indigenous group recognized by Japanese Government.

2 I conducted a full-text searched for the terms differs, difference, differences, and

different in JSTOR’s catalogue of 51 anthropology journals. The second search included

antonyms similar, similarities, resembles, and same.

3 The Japanese Government has since modified its position and in July of 2008

officially recognized the Ainu as an indigenous group in Japan. At the time of this

writing, the question of the social, political and material consequences of this recognition

is unknown. Although indigenous peoples are already speaking of an “implementation

gap,” that is, the difference between the policy imperatives of the Declaration on the

Rights of Indigenous Peoples and their implementation in specific states.

4 Throughout this dissertation I refer to “indigenous peoples,” “tribal peoples” and

“native peoples” interchangeably to describe pre-state peoples in general. All these

appellations apply to the Ainu and many of the indigenous groups with whom they

associate, but do not necessarily describe all groups involved with the international

indigenous rights movement.

5 This is not the first use of the term, however. According to Marisol de la Cadena

and Orin Starn (2007:4), the first English usage of “indigene” comes from a 1598 missive

concerning the discovery of America. The word is used to differentiate between Native

Americans, “the people bred upon that very soyle,” and the slaves brought to the New

World by Spaniard and Portuguese colonists.

6 “The Ainu” are not a homogenous people. The “Ainu community” in Japan is

composed of two main factions, the largest resides in Hokkaido and the other lives a

more diasporic existence in the Kantō region on the island of Honshu (Watson 2006). In

Hokkaido, Ainu tend to affiliate with regional groups that possess significant cultural and

linguistic differences from each other - although all Ainu speak Japanese today. The

community is cross-cut with regional identities, political agendas and different degrees of

engagement with the indigenous rights movement. It is true that, in the aggregate, twice

the number of Ainu are on the state’s welfare roles when compared to their Wajin (ethnic

Japanese) neighbors, and about half the number of Ainu attend college as their Wajin

counterparts; however, there are Ainu represented in every socioeconomic stratum in

Japan. Indeed, many of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai directors are successful businessmen

and, increasingly, young Ainu are attending post-secondary institutions.

7 See Survival International (www.survival–international.org) for current

demographic information. Who is counted as indigenous is not unproblematic. As some

commentators have pointed out, due to the potential political gains that stand to be made

312

by many groups, “indigenous peoples” are appearing in the most unlikely of places.

There has been no established method of assessing who is and who is not “indigenous.”

On the one hand, this has allowed the movement a productive flexibility in considering

widely varying claims; on the other hand, this fuzziness endangers the movement’s legal

viability in negotiations with states. For example, the Japanese Government has

repeatedly exploited this lack of a definition to defer official recognition of the Ainu as

an indigenous group.

8 “Nation” is etymologically derived from the Latin natio, meaning a breed, race,

tribe, or set of people. While usage varies widely, the term tends to describe a group of

people who share a set of basic commonalities. Even in states like the U.S. where the

assertion of collective similarity is more of a contentious issue, many clamor for English

to become the official national language, while national origin narratives are most often

traced back to England or Western Europe. So, although it is easy enough to problematize

the concept of “nation,” the word itself carries a semantic load that discursively binds a

diverse people to a set of commonalities that they may not share.

9 The recently passed Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a document

over 20 years in the making, is a testament to the erudite awareness the drafters possessed

concerning the subtleties of national and international laws, the complex dynamics of

colonization and current political realities. I compare this to nativists who tend to hold a

blinkered view of the past and often adopt simplistic solutions to multifaceted problems

(these tend to include the building of walls, passing mono-lingual legislation, promoting

official histories and glossing over the contributions of indigenes, immigrants and

minorities to “the nation”).

10 According to Alain Badiou (2005), the only space left for revolutionary politics is

at the heart of political power. Rather than oppositional or revolutionary politics, he

suggests that those seeking social, economic or political change operate in close

proximity to the state. The implication is that the forces of post-modernity are so

unpredictable that the state can no longer claim any coherent ideology and that, within

this flux, groups may find political opportunities to create new conditions for themselves.

11 ILO 169, a foundational multiparty convention concerning the rights of

indigenous peoples, alludes to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which asserts

that the issues of indigenous minorities within states should be approached in terms of

their exceptionality vis-à-vis other national populations (Office of the High

Commissioner for Human Rights, 1989).

12 ILO 169 captures the spirit of current indigenous rights discourse. It recognizes

“the aspirations of these people to exercise control over their own institutions, ways of

life and economic development…and to maintain their identities, languages and religions,

within the framework of the states in which they live” (Office of the High Commissioner

for Human Rights 1989). Here the crux of the indigenous rights movement is made clear.

The movement toward indigenous “control over their own institutions, ways of life and

313

economic development…and to maintain their identities, languages and religions”

suggests the possibility of a different set of rights for indigenous peoples within states,

but the modifier “within the framework of the states in which they live” makes group

rights a near impossibility for populations in states with constitutions that define rights as

a cohering between the individual and the state. Such is the case in Japan.

13 David Howell presents a compelling argument that development of early

Japanese capitalism occurred in Ezo (Hokkaido) in the mid-19th century. Entrepreneurs

prospered due to the region’s vast natural resources and the existence of an indigenous

labor force that was not subject to the customary laws that would otherwise prohibit

abuse elsewhere in Japan proper (Howell 1995:39-40).

14 The Burakumin are descendants of an occupational caste in feudal Japan whose

jobs dealt with death in some way. Executioners, tanners and mortuary technicians were

all part of the Buraku caste and tended to live on the outskirts of towns. These outcast

communities faced, and in many respects continue to face, all manner of social

discrimination (see Alldrit 2000 and Neary 1997).

15 The Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai sought to replace the 1899 welfare act that identified

the Ainu as kyūdojin (former natives) with the 1984 Ainu New Law (Ainu Shinpō).

Reading documents from this period, it is clear that some in the administration of the

Kyōkai were wary of the connotations associated with the term “native” (dojin, lit. people

of the land). Unlike native peoples in North America who appropriated these words,

giving them their own politically charged valences (e.g. the American Indian Movement),

there was still some ambivalence among Ainu in the early 1980s as to whether they

should be aiming for assimilation or a separate identity relative to mainland Japanese. By

the mid-1980s the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai had embraced the term senjūmin (indigenous

peoples) and regularly participated in the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations.

The career trajectory of indigenous rights trailblazer Nomura Giichi is particularly

illustrative regarding the association’s changing stance toward indigeneity.

16 In two foundational documents, ILO 169 and the Declaration on the Rights of

Indigenous Peoples, Article 33, the issue of who qualifies as an indigenous person is left

to the individual and the tribe which she or he is claiming. The lack of an indigenous

person litmus test has allowed the movement to embrace a wide range of groups, but it

becomes a stumbling block when specific policies are promoted in their home countries.

Citing lack of definition, the Japanese Government has rejected Ainu claims to

indigeneity on a number of occasions.

17 Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s elaboration of “deterritorialization” (Deleuze

and Guattari 1987), I am using the term to refer to a general process where locality,

biophysicality and cultural practice impact one another in very specific ways over time.

For example, forest patterns shift according to the particular needs of slash and burn

agriculturalists; bone structure, immune responses and distributions of body fat are linked

314

to specific environments; and cultural practices are shaped by available materials and the

needs of a people in place.

18 “Chishima” is the Japanese term for the Kuril Archipelago.

19 The northernmost island of the Japanese Archipelago was dubbed “Hokkaido”

only at the beginning of the Meiji Restoration in 1869. Beginning in the Kamakura period

(AD 1185-1333) the northern peoples that the Japanese were coming into contact with

were generally referred to as Ezo（蝦夷）thus the island became known as Ezogashima

（蝦夷が島 = Island of the Ezo) or Ezochi (蝦夷地 = Ezo Land). To the Ainu who live

there it is also known as Ainu Moshir (Land of the Ainu). It is important to note that the

kanji that represents Ezo is also pronounced Emishi which has been translated as savage,

barbarian (Siddle 1996:29-30) and even Ainu (Nelson 1997:968). However, Ainu is

today written アイヌ using the Japanese katakana syllabary, indicating a word of foreign

origin.

20 Karafuto is perhaps better known to English-speakers by its Russian name

“Sakhalin” (Сахали!н) and the Chishima island chain is more broadly known as the

“Kuril Islands” (Кури!льские острова!). When referring to the islands of the Chishima

archipelago, I use the Japanese word, which is a mispronunciation, of the original Ainu.

For example, Karafuto is the Japanification of the Ainu placename Kraftu.

21 As the Ainu have been Japanese citizens since the early Meiji period, it is

important to distinguish identities based on factors other than state membership. Wajin（

和人）is used throughout this dissertation to indicate non-Ainu Japanese. It is a

designation used widely by the Ainu (although the Ainu slang term shamo is more

prevalent in casual conversation) when discussing ethnic Japanese; however, Japanese

people refer to themselves as Nihonjin (people of Japan)—a term that tends to conflate

racial, ethnic and national identities. The Ainu I met usually considered themselves

citizens of Japan, but their racial and cultural identities were expressed as being Ainu.

22 A “han” is a term that denotes a clan or fiefdom in feudal Japan. The term often

follows the name of the han, for example Matsumae-han or Nanbu-han.

23 The idea of territoriality in the literature varies widely from notions of physical

occupation, to abstract notions of sovereignty, to more philosophical notions that deal

equally with physical and ideational spaces. In this chapter I am working with the latter

view as I emphasize the connection between modes of political economy, state expansion

and the management of populations through methods of coding specific to the nation-sate

(e.g. systematic methods of demography, cartography and taxation).

24 A hallmark of modern constitutional democracies is the insistence on individual

rights which produces, among other things, an equivalence between the citizens of the

nation-state, recasting them as legal entities whose only common denominator is the state

315

itself. In Japan, this is expressed in Articles 13 and 14 of the constitution. Group rights

based on ethnicity, race or sex are not available within this framework. By striving for

indigenous status, the Ainu hope to engage a different regime of rights based on

international agreements on the special rights and protections of indigenous peoples (see

Levin 2001; Siddle 2002, 2003).

25 The Northern Territories consist of the southern four islands of the Chishima

archipelago (Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai cluster). The islands are

currently Russian territory, but there is a determined political movement in Japan to see

the islands returned.

26 Correct only insofar as plate tectonics is concerned…which seems to be the only

area of knowledge that can unproblematically make these declarations.

27 Harumi Befu (2001) suggests that in Japan the traditional symbols of the

nation—flag, anthem or mascot—are charged with an embarrassment that stems from

their use during World War Two. He suggests that the cherry blossom circulates more

effectively as an unofficial symbol of the Japanese nation—transcending time (as it

figures heavily in the Edo period’s symbolic lexicon as observed in the poetry of Basho

or as a symbol of the samurai) and space as the march of the cherry blossom moves up

the length of the 3000 island archipelago.

28 The raised floors, thin sliding doors and wooden construction of Japanese homes

are well suited to the hot and humid summers from Honshu south to Okinawa. In

addition, roof construction is traditionally shingled and slanted to minimize leaks and

facilitate runoff during the rainy season. Watsuji (1961:v), seeking to interpolate the

vicissitudes of space into Heidegger’s ontology (which dealt with existence and time),

developed a philosophy based on the impact of climate on culture. Using his framework,

Japan is considered a “monsoon culture” and dealing with yearly monsoons has though

time shaped not only architecture and other material culture, but also the way in which

Japanese relate to one another. While many consider Watsuji a major Japanese

philosopher, others more critically label him a nationalist writing some of the first

Nihonjinron in the fascist era (Sakai 1997).

29 The word Jomon (縄文) refers to the rope markings made on the pottery of this

era.

30 After introducing myself as an anthropologist studying the Ainu, it was not

uncommon for someone to ask what I thought about the idea of Ainu and the Okinawans

being ancestrally related. Unaware of this connection I would turn the question on them

and invariably got “omoshiroi desu ne…” (interesting isn’t it?).

31 There has been a great deal of debate about the role of the Emperor in granting

sovereignty. While some scholars point out that there have been very few times in

Japan’s past where the Emperor wielded any real power (see Ishii 1950; Webb 1968;

316

McClain 2002), others point out that the institution of Emperor is bound up in a complex

system of myth, organized religion and kinship that confers prestige upon not only

aristocrats and oligarchs, but the Japanese people as a whole (Wakabayashi 1991)

32 Both Ishii (1960:369) and Shinzō (1949:257) emphasize the primacy of

customary law (kanshū hō) in defining the relationship of individuals to one another and

in the regulation of land during the medieval period. They note that while there was a

shift to administrative legal procedures promulgated on the national level in the

Tokugawa era, customary law continued to influence the definition of social relations.

33 There is some debate over the importance of the edicts of 1615. The general

consensus is that they are the culmination of a decade of increasingly more severe

restrictions placed on the daily practices and political power of Heavenly Sovereign and

the court. However, Lee Butler (1994) argues that this benchmark in Japanese history is

less significant than previously thought. He finds that the edicts issued by Tokugawa

Ieyasu were by and large unenforceable, rather they were an expression of the Shogun’s

idealistic wish for the court to regain its splendor of ancient times.

34 The Sakoku policy was preceded in the 1620s with a number of purges during

which foreigners were expelled or executed. In 1635 foreign travel by Japanese was

prohibited and in 1641 all foreign trade was cut off except for the Dutch who were

restricted to the port of Nagasaki. Ronald Toby (1977) and Tashiro Kazui (1982) argue

convincingly that Sakoku was less restrictive than commonly thought. The shogunate in

particular found legitimacy through continued commercial and diplomatic contacts with

China and Korea.

35 This system of surveillance had become so sophisticated that Sir Rutherford

Alcock would write that the later Tokugawa government functioned as a “Feudal form of

government, and an administration based on the most elaborate system of espionage ever

attempted…” (Alcock 1863:250 cited in Hall 1974).

36 I deliberately use class instead of caste for the four major feudal divisions of

Japanese society as some social mobility between these segments of society was possible

through marriage or obtaining a title. However it has been argued that those at the very

top and bottom of the social hierarchy, the Emperor and the Eta respectively, were

members of castes. Both were either blessed or cursed at birth, the Emperor with his

divinity and the Eta with their inherited “impurities” making transcending their

respective social positions nearly impossible.

37 Herbert Bix (1986) argues that peasant revolts during the Tokugawa period had a

variety of causes. Early in the 18th century revolts were sparked by direct exploitation by

daimyo and samurai who capriciously increased local taxes to offset the fall in rice

prices. Later revolts were in response to the deterioration of the feudal social order in

which village headmen and wealthy peasants increasingly bought up the plots of poorer

317

or indebted peasants creating a class of tenant farmers who revolted against high land

rents and increases in taxation.

38 Donald Shivley details some of the more spectacular displays of wealth during

this period as recorded in Ihara Saikaku’s Nihon Eitaigura (Japan’s Eternal Storehouse)

(1688) and Seken Munezanyo (1692). A quote from the latter illustrates the concern over

ostentatious displays of wealth in terms of their value in rice: “Two ryō in gold coins for

a comb to put in the hair is like setting on the head 15 bushels of rice at the current price.

Even the loincloth for bathing is a double layer of crimson silk dyed in safflower, while

the tabi are made of white satin. These are things that in former times even a daimyo’s

lady did not have. Considering that their status is that of townsmen’s wives, they should

be in fear of divine punishment (Saikaku 1692 quoted in Shivley 1965).

39 Latter part of the 17th century saw the emergence of Kokugaku 国学, a broad

intellectual movement that, in a reaction against the pervasive influence of Chinese

culture in Japan, valorized native Japanese art, literature, Shinto religion and the ancient

regime under the Emperor (Harootunian 1988).

40 The bakufu itself used the cultural disparities between regions as an excuse to

restrict travel between domains (see the 1615 Buke Shohatto). While it is thought that this

was a justification to inhibit the formation of daimyo alliances that might rise against the

bakufu, the idea of an early modern Japan as a culturally diverse nation raises questions

about the effectiveness of national integration during the Tokugawa period. Historians

Edwin O. Reischauer (1979) and Victor Leiberman (2003) tend toward the view that by

the 19th century Japan had developed a high degree of cultural and intellectual

conformity. Elizabeth Berry (1986, 1997), on the other hand, finds a much greater range

of social and ideological complexity.

41 Howell’s work concerning the Ainu and Japanese identity is an exceptional

example of a group of foundational works in English that can best be described as Ainu

Studies. His portrayal of Ainu-Japanese relations, while illuminating, tends to obscure the

nature of the mutual dependence of the two populations. He asserts that the Japanese

needed the Ainu in order to (negatively) define themselves, whereas the Ainu simply

relied on the Japanese for the acquisition of trade items. I would suggest that the mutual

dependence between the two groups was fundamentally economic while also serving

ideological ends (see for example Walker 2002; Kawakami 1997).

42 The prohibitions enforced to keep Okinawans and Japanese culturally and

linguistically separated has been interpreted in a variety of ways. Furuki (2003) suggests

that because of China’s trade embargo against Japan (in response to Japanese incursions

into Korea in the 16th century), these distinctions were maintained as a ruse to keep China

trading with the Ryūkyū Kingdom, who in turn traded Chinese goods to Satsuma-han. As

Japan entered the Sakoku era, cultural differences became undesirable as they indicated

opposition to the bakufu’s prohibition on trade with foreign countries; thus, cultural

integration is promoted in the 18th and 19th centuries to obfuscate transgressive trade

318

relations. On the other hand, Morris-Suzuki’s (1998) position is that the bakufu began to

enforce a number of prohibitions on dress, hairstyle, food in the north and south in order

to better define who was and was not Japanese—the idea being that the body-politic

could best be inscribed on the body of the subject.

43 Most maps of the Tokugawa period (1603-1868) contained little or no detail

about the interior of Ezo. The comments were confined to coastal trading posts, the

mouths of rivers and they often referred to a mountain range that ran down the center of

island (there are in fact three separate ranges: Hidaka, Daisetsu’en and Shiretoko).

44 Ezo, labeled on the map “Eso,” is off-center right at the top of the map. It is

depicted here as an extension of the southward projecting Kamchatka Peninsula.

45 The town of Matsumae at this time consisted of about 700 houses and three

temples: 150 were samurai residences and about 550 were the homes and stores of

townspeople and merchants (Tahashi 2000:82).

46 As salmon migrate upstream to their spawning grounds, they literally begin to

disintegrate. Catching them at the mouth of the river ensures a more presentable product

and a bountiful catch, but as generations of salmon are deprived of their spawning

grounds, the population declined.

47 In 1700, in the uimam held at Matsumae’s castle, the domain lord and the Ainu

headmen were seated near each other, indicating only a small degree of social difference.

A century later, the Ainu contingent was seated in the garden, a fair distance from the

domain lord. Furthermore, the uimam became a scheduled event, requiring the presence

of Ainu headmen from all over Ezo (Howell 1994:141).

48 The Ainu chieftain Tsukinoe was attempting to establish formal trade relations

with Russian counterparts during the Matsumae trade embargo in the 1780s.

Furthermore, Russians were attempting to establish trade through Matsumae. The bakufu

feared that Russian southern encroachment along the Chishima archipelago might, with

the help of Ainu confederates, extend to Hokkaido .

49 A detailed description of a tribute mission in 1841 is recorded by Kaga Denzō

(2001:70-71).

50 According to Japanese census figures, the total Ainu population in 1804 was

23,797 and it declined to 17,810 by 1854. The steep decline in population is attributed to

smallpox epidemics in all population centers in Ezo and the rampant transmission of

sexually transmitted diseases (Tahara 2006:59; Brett Walker 2001; Seki 1995:36).

51 It is important to note that there were many Ainu communities (e.g. Shizunai and

Shibetsu) already situated along or near the coasts. These kotan had long participated in

319

the trade that occurred along the Chishima archipelago to the north, with Honshu from

the south and Russia to the east (Uemura 1990).

52 The question of purity is a means to discredit Ainu claims of indigeneity. During

my fieldwork many Japanese were incredulous when asked about what they thought

about the issue of Ainu indigeneity in current-day Hokkaido. The response was often,

“There are no pure Ainu today” (junketsu no Ainu-shu ga imasen). As for the Ainu I

spoke with, they reversed the argument and said that 80% of the population of Hokkaido

is descended from Ainu (i.e. there are few pure Japanese in Hokkaido). The notion of

blood and purity in the Japanese context will be discussed further in Chapter 3 (see

Robertson 2002; Ojima 2002; Befu 2002; Lee 2006).

53 Kaitaku (開拓) can be translated as either “development” or “colonization”—

from the standpoint of the Japanese, they had, for all intents and purposes, claimed the

island at the beginning of the 19th century and it was natural that they would want to

develop the island to promote industry (agriculture, mining and forestry). Of course, for

the Ainu, kaitaku, as it pertains to Hokkaido, signifies the dispossession of land, rights

and resources that most indigenes encountered through the process of colonization. For

my purposes here I translate it as “colonization.”

54 Written Japanese routinely uses three separate systems for producing words and

meaning. Traditionally, Japanese borrowed kanji, or Chinese characters to render words.

In the Heian period (794-1185), katakana (lit. fragmentary writing) was created as a kind

of shorthand. It gradually became incorporated into standard Japanese orthography to

signify linguistic particles and foreign words. Prior to the Meiji Era, by far most of the

features of Ezo were written in katakana to represent a Japanese pronunciation of Ainu

place names. During Meiji, these became replaced with kanji as part of the colonization

process. This move obscured the origin of these place-names, but only partially. Kanji

produces both sound and meaning; thus, the kanji 東京 produces the sound “Tokyo” and

means “Eastern Capital” which, when considered in relation to Kyoto, it is. However, the

characters 札幌 produce the sound “Sapporo” which is a Japanified pronunciation of

the Ainu “sat poro pet” which means “river running through a large plain” in Ainu—an

apt description of the Sapporo River and environs. However, the characters themselves 札

幌 mean “bill” and “roof”—completely nonsensical. Most areas in Hokkaido are labeled

this way and a source of amusement for Japanese and kanjiphiles alike.

55 Naitō Chisō (内藤耻叟 1827-1903) was a lecturer at Tokyo University who wrote

on subjects historical, philosophical, and pedagogical. His major historical work is

entitled “A History of the Fifteen Generations of the Tokugawa Era”.

56 Commentators Nakane Chie (1990) and Nakamura Naofume (2000) make it clear

that the seeds of industrialization were present in the Edo Period in terms of a high level

of social organization from the metropolitan centers to the provinces. In particular the

bureaucracy that had developed during the early modern period is thought to have been

an indispensable element in the process of organizing villages for industrial development.

320

57 Carol Gluck (1987) warns against the tendency of scholars of tennōsei (the

Emperor System) to project on the Meiji Era the virulent nationalism and unquestioning

emperor worship that was characteristic of the 1930s and 1940s. In her analysis, the

national ideology of Japan was an amalgam of newly developed state Shintoism,

bureaucratic control of governmental processes, familial piety, aesthetic traditions and

sociology—a thesis affirmed by Oguma (2002).

58 In preparation, Japanese exhibition planners repeatedly requested more space at

the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Due to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, the Russian

delegation withdrew its exhibit in protest to the participation of the Japanese and the

Japanese immediately asked for and received the 44,000 squared feet of abandoned

Russian exhibition space (Christ 2000:686).

59 A note on names: from 1930 until 1944 the organization was called the Hokkaido

Ainu Kyōkai (北海道アイヌ協会). Due to the Pacific War, it disbanded until

reincorporated in 1946. It kept the name until 1960 when, for reasons that will be

elaborated upon later, it was renamed the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai (北海道ウタリ協会),

a moniker that the association retained for the rest of the 20th century and most of the first

decade of the 21st. There has been a lively debate in which one side argues that the name

should revert to the original title—which happened in 2009. Today the Hokkaido Utari

Kyoukai is called once again the Hokkaido Ainu Kyoukai.

60 There has been considerable debate over whether or not Japan transformed into a

fascist state during the 1930s. I suggest that the literature on “the national body,” kokutai,

was indicative of fascist leanings prior to the Showa Era and believe there to be ample

evidence to support the claim that Taisho Democracy gave way to the kind of totalitarian

practices and conflation of ethnicity and citizenship that has been associated with fascist

regimes of the time. Marcus Willensky (2005) makes a solid, if at times overly polemical,

argument that General Arakai Sadao’s promotion of kodo in the 1930s was a clear move

to, if not wholly sublimate, at least align the desires and motives of the individual

Japanese citizen to the interests of the state. He summarizes his argument by asserting,

"...the steps in Imperial Japan’s evolution into a fascist state are clear: Imperial Japan’s

withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1933; the controversy over the Emperor Organ

Theory, Tenno Kikan Setsu, in 1935; the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi

Germany in 1936; the promulgation of the National General Mobilization Law, Kokka

Sodoin Ho, in 1938; the New Structure Movement, Shin Taisei Undo, and the dissolution

of the political parties in May 1940; the signing of the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany

and

Fascist Italy in September of the same year; and then the inauguration of the Imperial

Rule Assistance Association, Taisei Yokusan Kai, in October. During this entire period

the Imperial Japanese Government used ubiquitous calls for service to the state and

allegiance to the ideal of Kodo to shape and mold the population into just the sort of

motivated yet servile populace that Mussolini and his Fascio di Combattimento were

working toward in Fascist Italy. Members of the Japanese right wing, the military and the

321

government may have vehemently denied that they were fascists but this doesn’t in any

way change the political realities of what prewar Japan had become by the early 1940s—

a fascist state."

61 This is not to suggest that the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai does not harbor

conservative tendencies. Within the organization there is, for example, tensions between

some progressive technocrats and some board members who, as relatively wealthy

individuals (both Ainu and Wajin), tend to be averse to changes that might disrupt their

status within the governmental and business communities. These internal tensions will be

discussed in more detail in Chapter 4.

62 The moniker “Ainu community” is used throughout to reference the diverse

group of social actors who identify collectively as Ainu. The term unfortunately obscures

more than it describes. Within the community there is a wide disparity in terms of income

levels, degree of assimilation into Wajin society and commitment to the political or

cultural agendas of the various Ainu organizations I discuss. Even within the Utari

Kyōkai there are a diverse set of interests that require constant negotiation. The Ainu

often refer to themselves collectively as Ainu Minzoku (Ainu nation), utari or, more

recently, Ainu Kommyuneti; however, regional differences between Ainu groups are

policed and maintained by local organizations and culture workers.

63 Nakane Chie (1973) famously describes the vertical structure of interpersonal

relationships in Japan as derived from the organization of the household (ie). Nakane

finds that the parent-child dynamic that informs group activity within the household is

expanded and reiterated throughout Japanese society. Hierarchy (tate), as performed

within the bureau and again throughout society, is popularly imagined to be embodied by

the Japanese salaryman.

64 It should be noted that the term rational is used here to describe methods rather

than ends. I think much of the debate over the ir/rationality of fascism originates with the

difference between the rationality’s closely related dual meanings: sane and sensible. The

first is a moral evaluation of mental health, while the other indicates an adherence to the

rules of logic and causality; however, one does not entail the other. For example, Japan’s

Unit 731 was highly rational insofar as it and its research projects were sensibly

organized and implemented, yet the level of brutality involved in its “experiments” was

undeniably pathological.

65 For Horkheimer and Adorno the eclipsing of the pre-modern worldview based on

myth and morality by the rationality characteristic of the Enlightenment was precisely

what led to more severe and inhuman forms of domination. “With the extension of the

bourgeois commodity economy, the dark horizon of myth is illumed by the sun of

calculating reason, beneath whose cold rays the seed of the new barbarism grows to

fruition” (2001 [1944]:32).

322

66 Showa nationalism reflected a series of ideological positions that resulted in the

militarization of Japanese society, widespread belief in the divinity of the Emperor,

imperialist expansion into East Asia and the ascendancy of the state-sponsored Shinto

religion.

67 In addition to “Ainu,” the Ainu people have been variously labeled ezo 蝦夷 ,

emishi 蝦夷 , iteki 夷狄 , moujin 毛人 and dojin 土人 by the Japanese. The first three

appellations are some permutation of barbarian; moujin means “hairy people” and dojin,

as the least pejorative, means “native.”

68 The banner is a replica of the flag flown by the Japanese Imperial Navy from

1869-1947.

69 It is difficult to disentangle the notions of citizenship and race during the Taisho

(1911-1925) and the early Showa (1925-1989) eras. The signifier for the race and citizen

are the same in both Japanese and English. The Japanese will refer to the Yamato Race (

大和民族) to indicate a racial identity that is somehow “more Japanese” than other racial

identities (e.g. Korean, Ryūkyūan, Ainu or Chinese). The mythic progenitor of the

Yamato people is thought to be the first divine Emperor of Japan, Emperor Jimmu (660-

585 BCE). Thus, the unbroken line of Japanese Emperors and the Yamato Japanese are

blood relatives. This foundation myth was reestablished at the beginning of the Meiji

Restoration in 1869, legitimating the rule of the emperor through his direct descent from

the Sun Goddess Amaterasu and placing the Japanese people in contact with divinity.

70 The term “shamo” is a derogatory Ainu word for a Wajin (ethnic Japanese).

71 Kushner writes that many Taiwanese born in the early 20th century maintained

Chinese ethnic identity and Taiwanese regional identity, even while adopting Japanese

language and nationality during the years of colonial occupation (1895-1945). Following

the war, these Taiwanese were labeled kimin, or “abandoned people” – no longer needed

by the Japanese and considered collaborators by the Chinese (2010:123-124). This

highlights the complexity of place-based identity during periods of rapid social and

political transition; yet it is worth noting that in Kushner’s study Taiwanese identity

formed the base over which competing nationalities, citizenships, political affiliations,

and degrees of nativeness (long time residents vs. recent arrivals vs. aborigines) played.

This suggests that Japanese assimilation measures were successful enough to cause many

Taiwanese difficulties in the war crimes courts at home, yet not successful enough to

avoid widespread discrimination for residents in Japan itself.

72 Takamure cites the first Emperor Jimmu’s proclamation that ‘the eight corners of

the world would be gathered under one roof’ (hakko ichiu 八紘一宇), the edict of

Emperor Takakura that “all seas under one roof,” and Emperor Meiji’s statement that

“the people of the four seas are all siblings” (1943, cited in Oguma 2002:170).

323

73 Jennifer Robertson links Japan’s “eugenic modernity” with folk notions of pure

and impure bloodlines. For example Burakumin and spirit-animal possessors are labeled

“black stock” (kurosuji 黒筋) while their social betters are labeled “white stock”

(shirosuji 白筋). Intermingling the two results in contamination and the white stock

participant would turn his or her entire household into black stock (2002:198). The Ainu

within Japan would threaten the same indignity by marrying into a Wajin family.

74 The Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai “Brochure on the Ainu People” includes a five-page

timeline that indicates events of significance for the Ainu. There is no mention the Ainu

Association’s 1930 incarnation. The explanation given to me for this omission was that

the original Ainu Association advocated assimilation with the Japanese, while the Utari

Kyōkai insists on the recognition of the indigenous nature of the Ainu.

75 Depending on the reference you use, this event took place at some point between

1945 and 1947. According to “A Record of the Conversation between Shiiku Kenichi and

Major General Josef Swing” in the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai’s Ainu Shi (1990), this

conversation occurred at some point in 1945. See Siddle 1996 and Koshiro 1999 for other

estimates.

76 To illustrate the differences within the Ainu community on this issue, Takahashi

Makoto, presaging the anti-assimilationist tack of the future Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai,

petitioned SCAP for the creation of an independent Ainu state.

77 In the first decade of the new millennium, there was a growing number of Ainu

who want to again use “Ainu” in the organization’s name, as it is readily recognizable

and, as the de facto designation for their people, many feel that it is time to re-appropriate

the word. In 2009 the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai once again became the Hokkaido Ainu

Kyōkai.

78 According to a government survey carried out in the 1962 in the Hidaka region of

southern Hokkaido, the Ainu community was deeply affected by poverty, discrimination

and education shortfalls. The report revealed that the majority of Ainu were either poor

farmers or day laborers scraping by at or below the poverty line. For example, 38% of

Ainu households were at the poverty line and 17% were on welfare, six times higher than

the average for the Hidaka region. Over half of the Ainu respondents reported that they

had been discriminated against based on their racial identity. In the schools, 16% of Ainu

middle school students were absent for long periods of time (for a detailed breakdown

and analysis of the survey see Siddle 1996:154-155).

79 This “originary violence,” the beheading 37 Ainu after the Kunashiri Menashi,

functions as a trope around which relationships can be named and arrayed. For Michael

Taussig the state and the subaltern are dialectically bound up in founding violence of

nation-building—the state functioning through the repression of alternative narratives and

the persistence of the subaltern resurfacing in the performance of public secrets. “[T]he

negative sacred within the awe of the stately sublime is not so much hidden as it is

324

hiddenness performed, an intermittently exposed public secret…within the founding

violence” (Taussig 1997:120 emphasis in original). In the Derridian sense of the term this

process of naming is itself a form of violence—a presencing of one aspect of an

immanent totality (Derrida 1997:112). And there are aspects of the historical event that

are elided during the Nokammuppu Icharpa—for instance, Ainu involvement in the

eventual suppression of the revolt and complicity with the shogunate. In addition, this

generative event, this spectacular brutality, can be read as sacrifice, lending sacredness to

an event that demands ritualized repetition (Bataille [1936]1985); but it seems clear to me

that the ritual significance of the act was conferred post hoc by politically motivated

Ainu.

80 The words “Yukar” in Yukara Sekai and “Ainu Moshir” in Ainu Moshiri are both

Ainu words and enhance the sense of alterity intended by these terms. In Japanese the

words are represented ユカラ世界 and アイヌモシリ. The katakana script, as opposed

to the Chinese characters, indicates a word of foreign origin. The project to circulate Ainu

words through various media into the general lexicon is an interesting phenomenon that

requires further research. However, the use of katakana representations of the Ainu

language, as opposed to confusing kanji sets sometimes used to depict Ainu words, in

Ainu events, public signs, museums and artistic productions is a deliberate strategy to

inscribe difference, to represent something that is irretrievably foreign.

81 The Hokkaido Mayoral Conference met in June 1970 and suggested repealing the

1899 Former Aborigines Protection Act. The Utari Kyōkai general assembly met shortly

thereafter and voted for the continuation of the legislation, as it formed the basis for

claiming special welfare measures for the Ainu people. The position of the 1972-73

Ashikawa Ainu Conference is thought to be influenced by the fact that Asahikawa Ainu

did not receive lands prescribed by the act (Kinase 2002).

82 Anthony Wallace’s seminal paper on the subject conceives cultural revitalization

movements as rigorously organized and executed plans of cultural change, often led by a

charismatic individual, and occurring over a relatively short period of time (Wallace

1956). The Ainu movement for cultural revitalization was and still is much more diffuse.

There is constant negotiation over which regional dialects to include in the Ainu language

classes, whether or not women can lead in a ritual capacity, exactly what the parameters

are of the Ainu homeland, etc. In that cultural change has ostensibly been occurring much

more organically, and without the dubious benefits that a charismatic leader would lend

to the process, Ainu efforts at cultural recovery cannot be classified as a revitalization

movement in the strictest sense; nonetheless, the expenditure of resources, time and effort

in this direction is unmistakable in terms of the deliberate intent of Ainu and Wajin

participants to recuperate Ainu traditions.

83 The Ainu were not considered a minority group by the Japanese Government

until 1988. In its initial report on human rights in Japan in 1980, regarding

implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the

Japanese Government denied the existence of minority groups in Japan (United Nations

325

1980). Only after criticism by the UNHRC did the government admit that the Ainu fit the

definition of a minority group under Article 27 of the ICCPR (United Nations 1988) (see

also Iwasawa 1998; Sonohara 1997).

84 The notion of “becoming” is a central concept for the philosophers Gilles

Deleuze and Felix Guattari. The essence of the idea is that phenomena arise through the

steady proliferation of differences that accrue via connections to other forms. In

Difference and Repetition Gilles Deleuze writes, “Difference is not diversity. Diversity is

given, but difference is that by which…the given is given as diverse. Difference is not

phenomenon, but the noumenon closest to the phenomenon…Every phenomenon refers

to an inequality by which it is conditioned… Everything which happens and everything

which appears is correlated with orders of differences” (Deleuze 1994:222).

85 For example, in an effort to dismantle the legacy of slavery that viewed African

Americans as inherently different legal entities, the 14th Amendment to the US

Constitution abolishes the possibility of group rights in the United States. Interestingly,

the spirit of the law is to prohibit a majority population from subjugating a minority

population through the creation of legal codes that would apply to one group and not the

other; however, section two of the amendment mentions the exemption of “Indians not

taxed” from receiving the benefits of citizenship. While much more inclusive, Article 13

of the Constitution of Japan similarly states, “All of the people shall be respected as

individuals;” and Article 14 elaborates, “All of the people are equal under the law and

there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race,

creed, sex, social status or family origin.” This precludes the possibility of any group

attaining a separate social contract that acknowledges a different set of social, historical

and economic circumstances from the majority population.

86 Narita Tokuhei, a long-time Ainu activist who was born on Uruppu Island 得撫

島 (just north of the cluster of islands that make up the disputed Northern Territories),

changed his name to Akibe Tokuhei. According to one informant, the name “Narita” was

simply “too Japanese” for an Ainu leader.

87 The Ainu practice of politics moves beyond ethnopolitics in their assertion of

indigeneity. Difference is marked not only according to ethnos, but by their prior

inhabitation of Hokkaido and the Northern Territories and original spatial remove from

the main islands that constituted the feudal Japanese nation. It is these last two points that

question Japanese sovereignty in the north and provoke strong reactions among

government officials when this is presented by Ainu leaders as an argument for increased

access to lands, waters and natural resources of the region. In short, Ainu political

projects threaten not only the nation, in the sense of a ethnically homogenous Japan, but

threaten the state as well (i.e. the uniform control over the geographical space that is

modern Japan).

88 The 1997 law, often referred to as the Cultural Promotion Act (CPA) is a watered

down version of the original Ainu Shinpou. As the title indicates, it primarily promotes

326

cultural revival activities and research on Ainu issues. There is no substantial provision

for increasing Ainu access to Hokkaido’s natural resources (including fisheries, forestry,

farming, manufacturing or trading), increased political representation, nor the

establishment of an Ainu Independence Fund—all major demands in the Ainu Shinpou.

In addition, the government, to ensure no misunderstanding that group rights were being

accorded the Ainu, passed an identical law that would support the cultural activities of

any individual that defines themselves as culturally distinct in Japan.

89 The term “ethnicity” (minzoku 民族) was routinely and uncritically used to

describe the perceived biological and cultural boundary between Wajin and Ainu by my

informants.

90 The pervasiveness of gift-giving in Japan is difficult to overstate. According to

Katherine Rupp, Tokyo department stores receive 60% of their annual profits during the

summer and winter gift-giving periods (Rupp 2003:2). Importantly, this percentage does

not include the giving of gifts during rites of passage and the more casual gift giving that

occurs at the office or home.

91 A literal translation of the kanji that constitute the word “Sapporo” would mean

“the top of the ticket.”

92 Kanji is not the only way to obscure the foreign history of a place. Even

Susukino (the entertainment district in Sapporo), which is a derivation of an Ainu word,

is typically represented in hiragana (the syllabary for Japanese words) rather than

katakana (the syllabary for foreign words).

93 In traditional Japanese households, the fist-born son and his wife will continue to

live in his father’s house and care for the aging parents. The daughter-in-law, taking over

much of the cooking and cleaning duties, is central to the functioning of the household.

The friction between the older matron of the house and the daughter-in-law is legendary

in Japan—thus, inheriting a household by marrying a first-born son is considered by

many women to be something of a mixed blessing.

94 During my stay in Japan, one of the popular topics of the day included whether or

not the imperial family should adopt a male heir, as the current heir apparent, Prince

Naruhito, had only daughters (the more scandalous option was to allow a female to

ascend to the Chrysanthemum Throne and head the imperial household). It was a hotly

debated topic not only because it involved the imperial lineage, rather, it contained a

series of paradoxical positions that were embodied in the royal family. While mukoyoshi,

adopting a male heir outside the consanguine family to head the household, is not

atypical in Japan, the blood-line of the emperor mythopolitically connects the imperial

house, indeed all Japanese according to the kokutai tradition, to the divine. The imperial

household may be the only household in Japan where adopting an heir is considered

problematic. Furthermore, the crisis revealed that long-held gender inequalities were no

327

longer taken for granted in Japan, and, that for some Japanese, an empress was an

imaginable outcome.

95 In addition to watashi and the slightly more formal watakushi, men will use boku

or the more vulgar ore when referring to themselves. Women occasionally use atashi in

addition to watashi or watakushi. Quite often, though, the first-person is omitted and one

surmises from context that an other is referring to the self.

96 There are further permutations of these greetings and salutations that vary

depending on the relative rank between the two parties. For example, otsukaresama

deshita will be said by coworkers that approximate your rank in the office, whereas

gokurosama deshita is a parting remark made by superiors to those of lower rank.

Similarly, if the office head leaves first, which is typical, he will abbreviate the parting

remark to “osaki ni,” as begging forgiveness (shitsurei shimasu) for a man of his position

would be unseemly. Two coworkers of equivalent status parting company at the end of

the day might say more informally “ja, mata ashita” (well, see you tomorrow) or “ki o

tsukete” (take care)—however, these informal salutations would more likely occur

outside the office.

97 This was a concern for me when I interviewed junior staff in other offices. Our

interviews were easily within earshot of the office heads which doubtlessly impacted how

the interviewee answered questions.

98 American offices of comparable size and function as the Kyōkai tend to have

little apparent differentiation that would indicate the rank of the staff. One exception is

that the degree of privacy accorded the individual worker is often an indicator of rank

(e.g. managers may have rooms while the rest of the staff occupies a maze of cubicles).

But in terms of dress, language and method of addressing one another (first names only),

an outside observer might be led to assume that equality exists among the staff despite

differentials in income or seniority. Americans reserve a special set of derogatory labels

for workers who are overly observant of status differences within the office (e.g. an

obsequious underling is a “bootlicker” while an autocratic manager is a “slave driver”).

99 Interestingly, the words for company and for society are mirror images of each

other. Kaisha (会社) or company, is a reversal of shakai (社会), which means society.

This may be the reason that many Japanese commentators find the modes of organization

and conduct in the office or the family reenacted in larger assemblages like the company,

the municipality or the nation.

100 The mandatory age of retirement is just now changing. Due to upward

demographic shifts in the age of the workforce and life expectancy, companies are now

encouraged to up the age of retirement; however, at the time of my fieldwork the

mandatory age of retirement at the Utari Kyōkai was still 60 years old.

328

101 Indicating the short-term nature of the position, Ogasawara cites a survey of 575

OLs conducted by a Japanese insurance company. The average age was 24.4 years and

the average length of time at their position was 3.5 years. Seventy-five percent still lived

at home and therefore had considerable discretionary income. Three-quarters of

respondents also planned to leave the company when they married. Interestingly,

complaints about their position did not reflect dissatisfaction with the differential

treatment they received as compared to their male co-workers. Instead, work uniforms,

poor use of their talents at the office and lack of eligible men at work were the three most

frequent complaints (Ogasawara 1998:25).

102 Murakami’s thesis is similar to Wittfogel’s hydraulic theory of social

organization in Asia (Wittfogel 1957:18). Both theorists find the need for large-scale

irrigation projects (such as those needed for rizoculture) as the impetus behind the

exercise of particular kind of power, resulting in formalized social hierarchies However,

according to Murakami, due to the decline of the centralized Imperial system and the

intra-group homogeneity in Japan, the proto-ie of the medieval period were less

repressive and more cooperative than the highly stratified caste system of South Asia or

the bureaucratic despotism of China.

103 It is important to note that ie organizations, what Murakami calls homo-

functional hierarchies, come into being for very specific purposes (originally land

reclamation and defense) and translate well into modern military and bureaucratic modes

of organization. However, during the Tokugawa period efforts were made to establish

universal norms regarding the ie; thereafter, ie take on a society-wide caste-like

appearance due to their new legal staus, but this attempt at horizontal integration was

partial at best. That is, due to severe restriction on travel outside of one’s domain, there

was never any true regional integration (like the guilds or trade unions of Medieval

Europe) until the emergence of kabu-nakama (commercial monopolies) of the late

eighteenth century (Streenstrup 1991:148).

104 Although management strategists and japanophiles tend to extol the virtues of

self sacrifice and deferred gratification that characterize collective efforts, the negation of

personal needs has led to an epidemic of work-related pathologies, the most extreme of

which is death from overwork. While far from common, it is a condition occurring

frequently enough that the Japanese coined the word “karōshi” 過労死 to describe it and

the government has kept statistics on the phenomenon since 1986. The Japanese Ministry

of Health, Welfare and Labour reports that during 2006 there were 355 cases of death or

severe illness due to overwork. Another 819 workers contended that they became

mentally ill from work-related stress. Furthermore, student suicides were at an a record

high of 886 in 2006 according to a report by the National Police Agency. The most

frequently cited reasons for the suicides were bullying at school and failure to meet

expectations (Editorial, The Japan Times June 15, 2007).

105 “Horizontal integration” has become a popular concept in American corporate

culture. The idea is that through “flattening” the hierarchies that structure the workplace,

329

companies can increase efficiency the removal of obstacles created by the sedimentation

of decades of bureaucratic proliferation, chain-of-command hierarchies and top-down

management structures. The horizontally organized company can better take advantage of

the pool of human capital that is otherwise underutilized. Critics of the movement cite

endless meetings designed to take advantage of workers’ ideas and get them invested in

new initiatives, more work as lower level workers begin to assume middle management

tasks, and the intrusion of work into what used to be considered “off time.”

106 This high-end estimate is reported by Dr. Uemura Hideaki in the Japan Research

Policy Institute Working Paper 88 written by Yamanaka Keiko. It includes all individuals

of Ainu descent (25,000 – 50,000 openly identify as Ainu), most of whom in this estimate

“pass” as Wajin to avoid discriminatory attitudes of the majority population.

107 This is not to say “the Ainu experience” is in any way monolithic, as differences

in gender, class and tribe are ever-present and manifest themselves at any large Ainu

gathering; however, in the interest of political efficacy, the Utari Kyōkai members tend to

defer their many internal disagreements when attending public gatherings.

108 This would be the inverse of the situation in the mid-20th century when the Ainu

were “vanishing” into the Japanese nation—a problem of assimilation. Today there is the

concern that if the Ainu are understood as simply one of a plethora of other indigenous

groups, that the immediacy of their concerns could be more easily dismissed. Indeed this

is happening now. When the Utari Kyōkai indicates their quasi-legal status at the United

Nations as an indigenous people, the Japanese Government defers any meaningful

engagement with the response, “What is an indigenous person?” The Ainu have

repeatedly requested that the United Nations define what constitutes an indigenous

people--most recently at the 2007 UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New

York City.

109 How the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (gaimushō) justifies its claims that the

Northern Territories are integral to the Japanese nation (nihonkoyū no ryōdo) is

problematic. In the introduction of Warera Hoppō Ryōdo (Gaimushō 2007a) the ministry

writes:

我が国はロシアより早く、北方四島、樺太及び千島列島の存在を知り、既

に一六四四年には、「クナシリ（国後）」島、「エトホロ（択捉）」島等の地名

を明記した地図（正保御国絵図）が編纂され、幾多の日本人がこの地域に渡航し

ていました。我が国の松前藩は、十七世紀初頭より北方四島を自藩領と認識し、

徐々に統治を確立していきました。

(Trans.) Our country knew of the four northern islands, Sakhalin and the

Chishima Archipelago before the Russians. Already in 1644 Kunashiri and Etorofu

islands were recorded on maps (e.g. ShōhōEra Country Map) and many Japanese

traveled to the area. From the early 17th century Japan’s Matsumae Clan became aware

330

of these northern islands as part of its territory, gradually establishing governance over

the region.

The ministry here glosses over the fact that there were already long-established

Ainu settlements on these islands when the few seasonal Japanese fishermen first arrived

in the 17th century. Also the Matsumae Clan controlled only a small portion of southern

Hokkaido in the 17th century and had virtually no influence over the islands of Kunashiri,

Etorofu, Shikotan and Habomai until much later. In fact, it was Ainu resistance to Wajin

encroachment that precipitated the 1789 Kunashiri Battle in this area; Hokkaido itself

was not annexed to Japan until 1868. So, the premise that ethnic Japanese were the first

to discover and settle the Northern Territories, and thereby concretize the territorial

continuity between Japan and the four islands, is simply not true. And this idea that

sovereignty is based on priority is precisely what unnerves proponents of the return of the

Northern Territories to Japan when confronted with an indigenous group that uses the

same logic to ground their claims to the region.

110 Ronald Niezen (2003) has traced the first instance of “indigenous” as referring to

autochthonous native groups to the 1957 International Labor Organization (ILO)

Convention 107 “Concerning the Protection and Integration of Indigenous and Other

Tribal and Semi-Tribal Populations in Independent Countries.” This was almost two

decades before the term was appropriated by groups to facilitate diverse strategic

engagements with the forces of modernity and to connote a degree of pride in being

“native.”

111 The CIA’s World Fact Book finds that ethnic Japanese or Yamato Japanese

constitute 98.5% of the population, making Japan indeed one of the world’s most

ethnically homogenous nations. There is the sense that if one were to single out an ethnic

minority in Japan, other facets of their identity would, by association, be called into

question.

112 Examples of the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai invoking these words and phrases can

be found in the association’s collection of documents sent to the United Nations

regarding indigenous issues (Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai 2001).

113 The Nibutani Forum is an international gathering held once every 10 years in the

Ainu village of Nibutani for indigenous groups to meet and discuss their political

situations and strategies for overcoming the many obstacles inherent to becoming

indigenous within established nation-states.

114 It is worth noting here that the Japanese postwar Constitution can be seen as an

artifact of western constitutional legal tradition as it was largely a creation of the

Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), an organization of several hundred

bureaucrats and military personnel from the United States, and generally reflects the

rights and obligations found in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

331

115 There is a naturalization process by which foreign-born nationals can become

Japanese citizens, but the procedure is difficult as the first stipulation is that five years

continuous residence in Japan is required, yet work visa renewals beyond three years are

notoriously difficult to obtain.

116 The Ainu were recognized by the Japanese Government as a national minority

group in 1991.

117 It is widely understood that only states are sovereign, in fact this is one of the

foundational premises upon which the United Nations derives its efficacy in the world

(Childers and Urquhart 1994:19). This explains why the issue of tribal sovereignty does

not emerge in UN documents, rather “self-determination” has become code for ethno-

local control over territories within the broader nation-state.

118 I make the distinction here between the modern Japanese state and feudal state

that preceded it. The Tokugawa Bakufu recognized Ainu sovereignty, or at least

territorial control, in the premodern era even when local daimyos and entrepreneurs did

not (see chapters 2 and 3); although there were no official bilateral agreements from the

feudal era, only edicts from the bakufu.

119 For Hardt and Negri the “multitude” disrupts the national imaginary of a unified

populace. It consists of those for whom the prerogatives and obligations commensurate

with citizenship are not regularly available (Hardt and Negri 2004:5). This would include

immigrants; refugees; and ethnic, political or economic minorities—groups that do not

share in the cultural atavism of the nation-state.

120 I am writing here of the changes in laws governing salmon fishing for the Ainu;

the development of “iwor,” regions where Ainu can harvest natural resources for their

cultural productions; and the incorporation of Ainu into the development of the UNESCO

Shiretoko Peninsula World Heritage site. Changes that may proliferate as legislation

based on the recognition of Ainu indigeneity. These issues will be discussed in detail.

121 The term ressentiment denotes the variety of impulses that compel one to (re)act

to either remembered or actual events, often through the imagination. In Friedrich

Nietzsche’s The Geneaology of Morals, ressentiment occurs when one cannot otherwise

act and is driven to imaginary acts of defiance. The problem for Nietzsche is that

ressentiment is productive of values based on negative reaction, rather than the

affirmative, active and creative capacities of individuals (Nietzsche 1999:22). For Gilles

Deleuze the problem is slightly different in that ressentiment creates forces that support

systems of domination. The political reactionary who finds comfort in his own cultural,

linguistic and political traditions and acts out against those who are different is, for

Deleuze, a victim of ressentiment, that is, she is not acting in the world, rather she reacts

to an interiority productive of perceived differences (Deleuze 1990:152). The distinction I

make between joy and ressentiment is meant to indicate that all identities, by virtue of the

332

differences that structure them, contain the potential to retreat into a nativism that

eschews any kind of active and productive engagement with others.

122 I refer to Isaac by his given name as our relationship was informal and because

this tends to be the custom for fellow travelers in such circumstances. Similarly, my

relationship with Mr. Yamada was very close and often informal, but I referred to him at

all times as Yamada-san (Mr. Yamada) because it would have been rude by Japanese

standards of propriety to do otherwise. In Japan, given names tend to be used only by

one’s spouse or one’s school chums.

123 Later I was told that it was a kind of raw sake called doburoku 濁酒 that is, like

moonshine in the U.S., illegal. It is made by adding steamed rice to a batch of fermented

sake, a process that gives doburoku its thick white, slightly chunky, consistency. It also

increases the alcohol content of the drink. The legal control of the drink does not seem to

be strictly enforced as Buddhist Temples and Shinto Shrines hold doburoku festivals

throughout Japan.

124 A note on Ainu cosmology: Many Ainu continue to hold to a traditional animistic

spirituality that has been linked to Siberian shamanism. Not unlike Shinto, the folk

religion of the Japanese, the Ainu believe that people, all flora and fauna, cultural objects,

landscapes and waters contain spirits or kamuy. Kamuy can be influenced through

supplication and ritual practices to heal, divine or ensure a propitious hunt. The Ainu

recognize two realms, ainu moshir and kamuy moshir (the land of humans and the land of

the spirits respectively). Ainu shamans act as conduits between these domains,

communicating the desires of humans and relaying the responses of the gods. The

icharpa and kamuinomi rituals are opportunities to reconnect with ancestors who have

passed on to kamuy moshir and to honor these spirits with food and sake (Chriri 1973;

Irimoto 1987; Ohnuki-Tierney 1980; Wada 1996).

125 For many of the cultural revivalists of the 1970s, authenticity was to be found in

decoupling Ainu tradition from the cash nexus that, ironically, preserved much of what is

known about Ainu cultural history through tourism throughout much of the 20th century.

Today, as many of these activists have become museum curators, Utari Kyōkai officials

and even tourist shop owners, what once was performed as spectacle for tourists is now

presented as an educational experience. This does not remove the profit motive from this

equation, but now, in places like Akan Village and Nibutani, young Ainu can find

employment in a sector of the economy that reproduces their cultural traditions in a

manner that is both more dignified and in line with a locally produced, historically

informed revivalism.

126 Two fine examples of this kind of hybridity are the Ainu Art Project in Sapporo

and the Ainu Rebels of Tokyo. Both are musical groups, the former creates songs that

typically combine lyrics in the Ainu language, Ainu musical motifs with western rock

and a more generalized “world music” or pan-tribal aesthetic. The Ainu Rebels are a

group of 20-somethings that infuse Ainu dance and melodies with urban hip-hop

333

sensibilities. Both groups seem to delight in coming up with new ways to express what

they perceive as “Ainu-ness.” In addition, they are not adverse to the proliferation of

media representations of their performances. One can find their performances on many

different online video sites.

127 “Salix” is the genus designation meaning “willow.” “Pet-susu” is the species

name and is Ainu for “river-willow.”

128 While I find Turner’s “communitas” useful in thinking about the kinds of social

practices that produce semblances between individuals of different backgrounds, the

concept is not without its problems. John Eade and Michael Sallnow (1991) suggest that

the term is only useful when viewed as a phenomenon that is part of a broader, more

complex, whole. I agree with this critique and try to represent the ritual itself as one

moment of communitas that is generally sandwiched between more contentious or

separatist tendencies that can emerge at different points in large Ainu gatherings.

129 Article 13 states: All of the people shall be respected as individuals. Their right to

life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness shall, to the extent that it does not interfere with

the public welfare, be the supreme consideration in legislation and in other governmental

affairs. The Ainu have used this law to protect lands significant to Ainu cultural

productions (see Levin 2001).

130 For a persuasive argument on purging these categories from social analyses see

Doreen Massey’s For Space (2005). It extends her assertion (1994) that all spaces/places

are too heterogeneous for commentators to analytically separate the two. Yet I would

contend that people continue to redraw boundaries, to invest with meaning and animate

social relationships in spite of the rapidity of late modern deterritorializations.

131 Doreen Massey (2005) argues that places and spaces as analytic categories have

become fraught with interpenetrations, so much so that the distinction between the two

has become useless. I would contend that just as anthropologists have had to abandon

their affinity for a culture that did not exceed its place and instead recognizing that

cultures, or generalities that functioned like cultures, were proliferating everywhere,

human geographers will also come to find strands of coherence in the chaos. I assert that,

beyond the analytical challenge of trying to productively work with their complexity,

place and space have different characteristics, are produced differently and often for

different ends. Each term has come to acquire a semiotic density, a cluster of connotative

referents, which fuzzily defines its domain. Massey exploits the fact that, just as in other

dichotomous analytical constructs, when getting into the details of where two terms meet,

they cease to exist as separate categories. But that is precisely where a focus on the

practices and negotiations of people working with these very categories can yield some

insights as to how they are produced and why.

132 The term “spiritual practitioners” is meant to encompass the range of magico-

religious activities practiced by Ainu. This would include mediums, healers, midwives

334

and leading participants in rituals such as the icharpa and kamuinomi. The word

“shaman” has become a blanket term imported from Tungusic speaking people in Siberia

by some contemporary Ainu to describe their religious specialists. Some commentators

suggest that the morpheme sama, found in Ainu words that denote methods of divination

(ex. e-sama-an-ki), can be traced back to Tungusic origins (see Chiri 1953:91; Wada

1996:305); however, in Ainu “tuskur” is the word for a spirit medium, although the

anglicization of the original Tungusic “saman,” “shaman,” now appears to be in general

use. There is a high degree of semantic ambiguity when using these terms and this, in

part, accounts for the contention between scholars and the Ainu themselves in defining

who is and is not a shaman in the Ainu community.

133 Historically there were differences between regions in terms of gendered

participation in shamanic ritual. Irimoto contends that in recent times Hokkaido

shamanistic activity has been practiced primarily among women (Irimoto 1994:9; see

also Kindaichi 1961:45; Segawa 1972:192), while other commentators claim that among

Sakhalin Ainu males were more often shamanic practitioners (Wada 1961:186).

However, Ohnuki-Tierney claims that among Hokkaido Ainu, women assisted male

elders as diagnosticians while the elders performed the rituals associated with healing.

Tanaka claims that women were largely responsible for shamanic duties in Northern

Japan (Tanaka 2000). My own research finds that male elders in Hokkaido routinely lead

public rituals, engage in trance, act as mediums and consider themselves inheritors of the

shamanic tradition among the Ainu. Despite the conflicting reports of anthropologists, I

think it is fair to say that regionally there were (are?) differences in the kinds of

participation men and women contribute to shamanic activities. Clearly this point

requires further study.

134 Depending on the transliteration, Kamuy Moshir may also appear Kamui

Moshiri. The latter is more of a direct transliteration of the Japanese pronunciation as

based on the Japanese syllabary.

135 For a comprehensive sampling of Ainu folktales and yukar (epic poetry) in

translation, refer to Basil Hall Chamberlain’s Aino [sic] Folk-Tales ([1888] 2008).

Reflecting an animist cosmology, humans in Ainu folktales are often the dramaturgical

equals of animal spirits, gods and the elements.

136 I am using the term “conservative” to denote the tendency toward preserving

established social structures (class, caste, institutions, etc) and mores and resisting the

progressive spread of human rights within nation-states. It is becoming apparent that

“human rights” are not always synonymous with social equality, as issues deriving from

historical instances of injustice, dispossession and forced relocation may require the

establishment of group rights that, to affect redress, grant some minority populations

access to special rights and privileges over the majority.

137 It is tempting to read the evocative last passage as a commentary on Weber’s

personal spiritual inclinations. Commentators instead suggest that the phrase is simply a

335

continuation of Goethean thematic that began with “the demands of the day” (see

footnotes 32-33 in Weber 2004:31). I read this passage as a metaphor for the tension

between the dictates of reason and the vague compulsions that push one to excel in one’s

chosen profession (it is questionable if Weber would have found this particular tension as

productive as it appears here).

138 Amanuma Kaoru (1987) finds the word “ganbaru” central to Japanese attitudes

toward work and leisure. It means to persist, endure or to “keep at it.” Dorinne Kondo

writes that Japanese ideally perform their social roles with “isshoken mei ni, with all their

heart and soul, or sei ippai, with all their might, to the utmost” (1990:109). I regularly

observed this ethos in action at the Kyōkai offices, but, as I suggest in Chapter 4, the

work day was ritually broken up with tea, lunch and casual conversation. Far from the

caricature of the Japanese workaholic, the Kyōkai staff valued the non-productive

conviviality of friendship and levity as much as strenuously concentrated effort when

working (although informal activities were often viewed as necessary for team cohesion).

139 I mean “conflicted” in the sense that our empathies are always under

interrogation by ourselves and our interlocutors. Mr. Yamada is guarded in his feelings of

connection with his Ainu counterparts. While extremely knowledgeable about Ainu

society, history and culture, he never “dresses up” for Ainu events, nor does he really

ever participate with the singing and dancing. Such an outward display could easily be

misconstrued as “playing Ainu,” so he remains on the margins, always a guest, never

attempting a crossing that would bring him more fully into the Ainu community.

Similarly, after the critical turn of the 1980s and 1990s, anthropologists appear hesitant to

venture from behind their notebooks, cameras and recorders and fully participate in their

adoptive community. Such a move is fraught with the insecurities that attend issues of

postcoloniality, authenticity and professional ethics. Of course, as described above, Mr.

Yamada’s reticence was overcome, perhaps with the assistance of sake, during the

kamuinomi and the anonymity of the impenetrable dark on the night of the Nokammappu

icharpa.

140 I am adopting here the general tenets of World System Theory insofar as

Immanuel Wallerstein’s line of analysis takes into account global movements of people,

capital and polities through history, while not losing sight of the nation-state as the key

institution of the modern world system. The core-periphery dynamic plays out even today

as Tokyo places pressure on the agricultural output of Hokkaido while continually cutting

budgets of the prefectural government. The possibility of secession from Japan is

mentioned whenever budget cuts are brought up. Shirai Nobuaki wrote a polemical work

on secession in 1992 when the fallout from the bubble years hit both businesses and

public works projects in Hokkaido (Shirai 1992); this idea persists today as the push to

privatize government institutions promises job cuts (e.g. Prime Minister Koizumi,

jeopardizing the political hegemony of the LDP, forced the privatization of the postal

service in 2005).

336

141 For my informants, the idea of a post-colonial Japan was laughable. While it is

true that Japan had lost most of its colonial territories by the end of World War Two (e.g.

Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, etc.), the unilateral annexations of Hokkaido and Okinawa in

the early Meiji Era (1868 and 1874 respectively) remain unresolved issues for many Ainu

and Okinawans.

142 Deleuze and Guattari (1987) create a general opposition between state forms of

territoriality and the deterritorializations of those groups that live outside the state.

Specifically they point to the historical antagonisms between nomads and states. Their

analysis, while ethnographically informed, has been criticized as overly reductive. I

attempt to address this shortcoming by fleshing out the different engagements occurring

between contemporary indigenes and states and identifying different modes of

territoriality.

143 Koichi Kaizawa assumed the role of plaintiff after his father, Tadashi, died in

1992.

144 This would have been the case if the legislature did not subsequently pass

identical legislation that would grant the same kind of funding for all Japanese interested

in promoting some regional cultural tradition (indeed in 1997, this is precisely how the

government sought to portray the Ainu)—along an archipelago of some 3000 islands,

these place-based traditions are legion.

145 Shiretoko-hanto (知床半島) is a Japanese gloss on the original Ainu toponym

“sir etok,” lit. “earth’s end.” The kanji used to represent the phonetics of the Ainu “sir

etok” change the pronunciation into the more pronounceable Japanese “Shire – toko.”

The characters themselves are a meaningless combination that translates into “knowledge

bed.”

146 From section 5.4 of the IUCN World Heritage Evaluation Report, “Shiretoko was

reverently called by the Ainu People as “sir.etok” (the end of mother earth) indicating the

importance of this area for traditional inhabitants. It is important, as reinforced in the

management plan (page 214 of the nomination document) to ‘study the culture of the

Ainu people and the traditional wisdom and skills of the local residents in order to

determine the methods to preserve, manage and realize sustainable use of the natural

environment.’ Accordingly it is considered important that representatives of the Ainu

people, such as through the Hokkaido Utari (Ainu) Association, have the opportunity to

be involved in the future management of the property, including in relation to the

development of appropriate ecotourism activities which celebrate the traditional customs

and uses of the nominated property” (IUCN 2005:31).

147 My interlocutors were often distressed that, despite the significant gains in

territorial access they achieved over the last decade, they still lacked more substantial

modes of sovereignty that would allow for Ainu tribal political control over these newly

created spaces. The efforts to insert Ainu decision-makers into the structures that control

337

the regions recently associated with Ainu history and culture (specifically the newly

established iwor and Shiretoko World Heritage Site) were just beginning at the end of my

period of field research, thus this crucial phase requires further study.

338

Glossary

Note: All words are of Japanese origin unless noted otherwise.

Ainu Moshir (also Ainu Moshiri) – The Ainu name given to the Ainu homeland. The

exact geographical extent varies, but in all cases includes the island of Hokkaido. Ainu

Moshir may also include the Tohoku region of northern Honshu, Sakhalin Island, and

segments of the Kuril Archipelago. Some individuals have also included parts of

Kamchatka, the Amur River Basin, and the Aleutian Islands; however, there is little

ethnographic, linguistic, or archaeological support for these claims.

akinaiba – Trading posts established in Ezo (Hokkaido) by the Matsumae clan to

facilitate exchange between Ainu and Wajin traders.

amae – Describes an indulgence-seeking behavior Doi Takeo believes to be generalized

in Japanese society.

bakufu – “Shogunate” in English. Refers to the system of government during Japan’s

feudal period headed by the military.

basho – Trading posts that were gradually appropriated by Japanese merchants interested

in extractive industries, primarily fishing.

Burakumin – Descendents of feudal Japan’s outcaste communities. Their ascribed status

was a result of “contamination” due to occupations in which they traditionally engaged.

Occupations associated with death, for example, butchers, tanners, and undertakers, were

thought to be tainted with impurity.

butsudan – A small Buddhist alter often found in Japanese homes or businesses.

chise – An Ainu word for house.

Chishima Rettō – The Kuril Archipelago.

daimyo – A feudal lord.

dojin – A word commonly translated as “native”.

doka seisaku – Assimilation policy.

dōryō – Colleague.

Edo period – Another term for the Tokugawa Period. Edo (Tokyo) was where the

shogunate ruled from the early 17th century.

339

Eta – Outcast. Literally “full of filth”. It was used to label Burakumin during the feudal

era.

Etorofu – The largest of the Southern Kuril Islands. Also known as “Iturup” in Russian

and “Etuworop-sir” in Ainu.

Ezo – The Japanese name for the island of Hokkaido until 1869. Also spelled Yezo.

han – A term for a clan or fiefdom in Japan’s feudal period

Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai - (renamed the Hokkaido Ainu Kyōkai in 2009) It is an

organization that represents Ainu families living in Hokkaido.

hokori – Pride.

icharpa – An Ainu word for a memorial service.

ie – House, home, family.

iteki – Barbarian, savage.

iwor – An Ainu term for the territory over which a particular kotan or village held

exclusive hunting, fishing, and gathering rights.

iyomante - An Ainu term for the “bear sending ceremony” in which a bear is sacrificed.

Kaitakushi – Formed at the beginning of the Meiji Era, the Kaitakushi was the emperor’s

Colonization (some commentators prefer “Development”) Commission charged with

organizing the administrative apparatus of Hokkaido.

kami – Spirits, gods, deities. The word is closely connected to Shinto beliefs.

kamidana – A small Shinto shrine often found in Japanese homes and businesses.

kamui – An Ainu word for spirits. It corresponds to the Japanese “kami”. Sometimes

spelled “kamuy”.

kamuinomi – An Ainu word that means “prayer to the gods”.

kenri – Rights, e.g. human rights.

ketsu – Blood.

konbu – An edible seaweed used to season soups and sauces

340

koseki – The Family Registry.

Kanto region – The region surrounding Tokyo.

kōhai - Relative to ego, a junior at work or school.

kotan – An Ainu word for village.

Kuril Islands – An archipelago of 56 islands that stretch 810 miles northeast of Hokkaido

to Kamchatka. They are known in Japanese as Chishima Rettō.

Kunashiri – The southernmost of the Kuril Islands and one of Japan’s Northern

Territories.

Kunashiri Menashi – The region of eastern Hokkaido and Kunashiri Island. The setting

for the 1789 revolt of Ainu against local Wajin.

kyōkai – Association, organization.

kyūdojin – Former native. A word used to describe the Ainu after Japan annexed

Hokkaido.

Meiji Period (also Meiji Restoration) – The period of time corresponding to the reign of

Emperor Meiji – 1868-1912. Considered to be the beginning of Japan’s modern era.

minshuku – A traditional Japanese inn. Similar to an English bed and breakfast.

minzoku – A people who share the same ethnicity.

minzokusei – Ethnic identity.

nemawashi – A gardening method of binding the roots of a plant together for

transplanting. In business or governmental organizations the term is used to indicate a

process of generating consensus among all involved in a project.

nengajō – New Years cards.

Nemuro – A port town on the east coast of Hokkaido.

Nibutani – A district of the larger municipality of Biratori in the Hidaka region of

southern Hokkaido. Nibutani contains a large proportion of Ainu families.

Nihonka – A policy deployed to assimilate colonial holdings into the Japanese Empire in

the late 19th and 20th centuries.

onsen – Hot springs that serve as communal baths.

341

Rausu – A town in eastern Hokkaido near the Shiretoko Peninsula.

Ryūkyū Kingdom – A polity based in Okinawa between the years 1429 and 1879. It

territory included the archipelago from southern Japan to Taiwan.

Sakoku period – The time roughly between 1641 and 1868 during which, under most

circumstances, foreigners could not enter Japan, nor could Japanese leave.

sempai – a senior work or school colleague

senjūminzoku (also senjūmin) - Indigenous people.

shamo – An Ainu slang word for Wajin or “ethnic Japanese”.

Shibetsu – A fishing village on Hokkaido’s east coast.

Shikotan - One of the disputed islands that makes up Japan’s Northern Territories.

shiminken – Citizenship.

shinpō – “New law” – in this dissertation it refers to the Ainu Shinpo, a law drafted in

1984 by the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai to replace the 1899 Former Aborigines Protection

Act.

Shiretoko Peninsula – A peninsula off of Hokkaido’s northeast coast. It was declared an

UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005.

shogunate – The English term for the military ruling apparatus know in Japanese as the

“bakufu”. The shogunate was in power from 1603 until 1868.

Shōwa period – The period of time between 1926 and 1989.

Taishō period – The period of time between 1912 and 1926.

tōchiken – Land rights.

Tokugawa period – Also referred to as the Edo Period. A division of Japanese history

between 1603 and 1868. It was a time military rule and ended with the 1868-69 Boshin

War and the restoration of imperial rule.

uimam – An Ainu language term for a formal trading ceremony in which Ainu traders

entertained trading partners. The event was gradually used by Matsumae officials as a

342

method of ordering their relationship with Ainu tribes variously as a method to collect

tribute or bestow welfare (buiku).

unjōkin – Levy, price, tax.

utari – An Ainu term for “comrade” – it was used in the renaming of the Hokkaido Ainu

Kyōkai as the Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai.

wafuka – An assimilation policy outlined in the 1802 Hakodate Edict which encouraged

Ainu to adopt Wajin language and customs.

Wajin – A word denoting “ethnic” Japanese. Wajin prefer to use the term nihonjin

(Japanese people).

Yamato – A term that came into use during the late 19th century to describe the dominant

ethnic group in Japan.

Yūjō – Friendship.

343

Bibliography

Ainu Association of Hokkaido

2004. Brochure on the Ainu People. Sapporo: Ainu Association of Hokkaido.

Alcock, Sir Rutherford

1863 The Capital of the Tycoon, Vol.2. London.

Alfred, Taiaiake

2001 From Sovereignty to Freedom: Towards an Indigenous Political Discourse.

Indigenous Affairs 3:22-34.

Alldritt, Leslie.

2000 The Burakumin: The Complicity of Japanese Buddhism in Oppression and an

Opportunity for Liberation. Journal of Buddhist Ethics (7). Electronic document,

http://www.buddhistethics.org/7/alldritt001.html, accessed December 12, 2008.

Amanuma Kaoru

1987 Ganbari no Kōzo: Nihonjin no Kōdō Genri (The Structure of Ganbari: A

Theory of Japanese Behavior). Tokyo: Kikkawa Kobunkan.

Amith, Johnathan

2005 Place Making and Place Breaking: Migration and the Development Cycle of

Community in Colonial Mexico. American Ethnologist 32(1):159-179.

Anderson, Benedict

1991 Imagined Communities. New York: Verso.

Apadurai, Arjun

1996 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press.

Arasaki Moriteru

2004 Okinawa Dōjidai-shi 1990-1992 (Contemporary Okinawan History 1990-1992).

Tokyo: Gaifusha.

Atsushi Tashima

2004 Genetic Origins of the Ainu Inferred from Combined DNA Analyses of Maternal

and Paternal Lineages. Journal of Human Genetics 49:187-193.

Badiou, Alain

2005 Metapolitics. New York: Verso.

344

Baker-Christales, Beth

2008 Magical Pursuits: Legitimacy and Representation in a Transnational Political

Field. American Anthropologist 110(3):349-359.

Balzer, Marjorie

2003 Sacred Genders in Siberia: Shamans, Bear Festivals and Androgyny. In

Shamanism: A Reader. Graham Harvey, ed. Pp. 242-262. New York: Routledge.

Barnhart, Robert

1988 The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology. New York: H.W. Wilson Publishing.

Basso, Keith and Steven Feld

1996 Senses of Place. Santa Fe: SAR Press.

Batchelor, John

2002[1898] The Ainu of Japan. In Early European Writings on Ainu Culture: Religion

and Folklore, vol. 1. Kirsten Refsing, ed. New York: Routledge.

Battaille, Georges

1985 The Sacred Conspiracy. In Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939. Allan

Stoekl, ed. Pp.178-181. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Befu Harumi

2001 Hegemony of Homogeneity: An Anthropological Analysis of Nihonjinron.

Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.

Bell, Sandra and Simon Coleman

1999 The Anthropology of Friendship. New York: Berg.

Benedict, Ruth

1989 The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. Boston:

Houghton Mifflin.

Berry, Mary

1986 Public Peace and Private Attachment: The Goals and Conduct of Power in Early

Modern Japan. Journal of Japanese Studies 12(2):237-271.

1997 Was Early Modern Japan Culturally Integrated?. Modern Asian Studies 31(3):547-

581.

Biolsi, Thomas

2005 Imagined Geographies: Sovereignty, Indigenous Space and the American Indian

Struggle. American Ethnologist 32(2):239-259.

Bix, Herbert

345

1986 Peasant Protest in Japan, 1590-1884. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Boas, Franz

1940 Race, Language, Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Brace, C.

1989 Reflections on the Face of Japan: A Multivariate, Craniometric and Odontometric

Perspective. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 78:93-113.

Broome, Richard

2002 Aboriginal Australians: Black Responses to White Dominance 1788-2001. East

Melbourne: Allen and Unwin.

Brown, Michael

2007 Sovereignty’s Betrayals. In Indigenous Experience Today. Marisolde la Cadena

and Orin Starn, eds. Pp.171-194. New York: Berg.

Butler, Judith and Gayatri Spivak

2007 Who Sings the Nation-State: Language, Politics, Belonging. New York: Seagull.

Butler, Lee

1994 Tokugawa Ieyasu’s Regulations for the Court: A Reappraisal. Havard Journal of

Asiatic Studies 54(2):509-551.

Casey, Edward

1998 The Fate of Place. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Castells, Manuel

2000 The Rise of Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.

CERD

2010 Consideration of reports submitted by States parties under article 9 of the

Convention : concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial

Discrimination : Japan. Electronic Document. http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/

publisher,CERD,,,4c15ef6b2,0.html, Accessed August 09, 2010.

Chamberlain, Basil Hall

[1888] 2008 Aino Folk-Tales. Charleston, South Carolina: BiblioBazaar.

Childers, Erskine and Brian Urquhart

1994 Renewing the United Nations System. Uppsala Sweden: Dag Hammarskjold

Foundation.

Chiri Mashio

1953 Bunrui Ainugo Jiten (The Classified Ainu Dictionary). Tokyo: Okashoin.

346

1973a Chiri Mashio Chosakushu (The Collected Works of Mashio Chiri) Volume 3.

Tokyo Heibonsha.

1973b Yukara no Hitobito to sono Seikatsu (The People of Yukar and their Lives). In

Chiri Mashiho Chosakushū, Volume 3. Pp.5-64. Tokyo: Heibonsha.

Christ, Carol

2000 The Soul Guardians of the Art Inheritance of Asia: Japan and China at the 1904 St.

Louis World’s Fair. Positions 8(3):676-709.

Clifford, James

1997 Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press.

2001 Indigenous Articulations. The Contemporary Pacific 13(2):468-490.

2007 Varieties of Indigenous Experience: Diasporas, Homelands, Sovereignties. In

Indigenous Experience Today. Marisol de la Cadena and Orin Starn, eds. Pp.197-224.

New York: Berg.

Coaldrake, Willaim

1981 Edo Architecture and Tokugawa Law. Monumenta Nipponica 36(3):235-284.

Cole, John and Eric Wolf

1974 The Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley. New York:

Academic Press.

Collier, George

1994 Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas. Oakland: Institute for Food

and Development Policy.

Committee for the Review of Ainu Cultural Transmission Policies including Iwor

2005 Fundamental Plan Regarding the Revitalization of Lands Germane to Traditional

Ainu Cultural Activities. Sapporo: Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai.

Cruikshank, Julie

2007 Melting Glaciers and Emerging Histories in the Saint Elias Mountains. In Marisol

de la Cadena and Orin Starn, eds. Indigenous Experience Today. Pp. 355-378. New

York: Berg.

De Heusch, Luc

1981 Why Marry Her? Society and Symbolic Structures. Cambridge: Cambridge

University

De la Cadena, Marisol and Orin Starn

2007 Introduction. In Indigenous Experience Today. Marisol de la Cadena and Orin

Starn, eds. Pp.1-30. New York: Berg.

347

Deleuze, Gilles

1990 The Logic of Sense. New York: Columbia University Press.

1992 Postscript on the Societies of Control. October 59:3-7.

1994 Difference and Repetition. New York: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari

1987. A Thousand Plateus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Deloria, Philip

1999 Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Derrida, Jacques

1997 Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Duus, Peter and Daniel Okimoto

1979 Fascism and the History of Pre-War Japan: The Failure of a Concept. The Journal

of Asian Studies 39(1):65-76.

Eade, John and Michael Sallnow

1991 Introduction. In Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage

John Eade and Michael Sallnow, eds. Pp. 1-29. New York: Routledge.

Edelman, Marc

2001 Social Movements: Changing Paradigms and Forms of Politics. Annual Review of

Anthropology 30:285-317.

Eliade, Mircea

1964 Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. London: Arkana.

Elliston, Deborah

2000 Geographies of Gender and Politics: The Place of Difference in Polynesian

Nationalism. Cultural Anthropology 15(2):171-216.

2004. A Passion for the Nation: Masculinity, Modernity and Nationalist Struggle.

American Ethnologist 31(4):606-630.

Escobar, Arturo

1994 Encountering Development. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

2001 Culture Sits in Places: Reflections on Globalism and Subaltern Strategies of

Localization. Political Geography 20:139-174.

Evans-Pritchard, E.E.

1940 The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a

Nilotic People. Oxford: Claredon.

Favero, Paolo

348

2003 Phantasms in a Starry Place: Space and Identification in a Central New Delhi

Market. Cultural Anthropology 18(4):551-584.

Featherstone, Mike

2002 Postnational Flows, Identity Formation and Cultural Space. In Identity, Culture

and Globalization. Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Yitzhak Sternberg, eds. Pp.483-525.

Boston: BRILL Publishing.

Fletcher, Miles

1979 Intellectuals and Fascism in Early Showa Japan. Journal of Asian Studies 39(1):

39-63.

Fletcher, William

1982 The Search for a New Order: Intellectual s and Fascism in Prewar Japan. Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Foucault, Michel

1998 The History of Sexuality Volume One. London: Penguin.

2006 Governmentality. In The Anthropology of the State. Akhil Gupta and Aradhana

Sharma, eds. Pp. 131-143. New York: Blackwell.

Fox, Richard and Orin Starn, eds.

1991 Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present. Santa Fe: School of American

Research.

Friedman, Thomas

1999 The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

2005 The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 20th Century. New York: Farrar, Straus

and Giroux.

Furuki Toshiaki

2003 Considering Okinawa as a Frontier. In Glen Hook and Richard Siddle, eds.

Okinawa: Structure and Subjectivity. New York: RoutledgeCurzon.

Gaimushō

2007a Warera no Hoppō Ryōdo 2007 (Our Northern Territoriy 2007). Tokyo:

Gaimushō.

2007b 2007 Warera no Hoppō Ryōdo Shiryōhen (2007 Our Northern Territory:

Collection of Materials). Tokyo: Gaimushō.

Garon, Sheldon

1994 Rethinking Modernization and Modernity in Japanese History: A Focus on State-

Society Relations. The Journal of Asian Studies 53(2):346-66.

1998 Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life. Princeton: Princeton

University Press.

349

Giddens, Anthony

1990 The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Gluck, Carol

1987 Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period. Princeton. Princeton

University Press.

Goodman, Roger

1992 Ideology and Practice in Japan: Towards a Theoretical Approach. In Ideology and

Practice in Modern Japan. Roger Goodman and Kirsten Refsing, eds. New York:

Routledge.

Goodenough, Walter

1981 Culture, Language and Society. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin-Cummings

Publishing.

Grant, Bruce

1995 In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas. Princeton: Princeton

University Press.

Grossman, Kenneth

1981 Japan’s Renaissance: The Politics of the Muromachi Bakufu. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press.

Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson

2001 Culture, Power, Place: Ethnography at the End of an Era. In Culture, Power, Place:

Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, eds. Pp. 1-

32 Durham: Duke University Press.

Haggerty, Kevin and Richard Ericson

2006 The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility. Toronto: Toronto University

Press.

Hale, Charles

2005 Neoliberal Multiculturalism: The Remaking of Cultural Rights and Racial

Dominance in Central America. PoLAR 28(1):10-28.

Hall, John

1974 Rule by Status in Tokugawa Japan. Journal of Japanese Studies 1(1):39-49.

Hammer, Michael and Horai Satoshi

1995 Y Chromosonal DNA Variation and the Peopling of Japan. American Journal of

Human Genetics 56: 951-962.

350

Hammer, Michael, et al.

2006 Dual origins of the Japanese: Common Ground for Hunter-Gatherer and Farmer Y

Chromosomes. Journal of Human Genetics 56:45-58.

Hannerz, Ulf

1996. Transnational Connections. London: Routledge.

2003. Being there…and there…and there: Reflections on Multi-site Ethnography.

Ethnography 4(2):201-216.

Haraway, Donna

1991 Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.

Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri

2004 Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin.

Harris, Marvin

1979 Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture. New York: Random

House.

Harvey, David

1990 The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change.

Malden, MA: Blackwell.

2000 Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Harutoonian, Harry

1989 Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokugawa Nativism.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

2001 Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture and Community in Interwar Japan.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Hasegawa, Ko

1998 Comments on Will Kymlicka’s Thinking on the Rights of Indigneous Peoples. In

Universal Minority Rights: A Transnational Approach. Morigiwa Yasutomo, Ishiyama

Fumihiko and Sakurai Tetsu, eds. Pp.85-93. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

Heidegger, Martin

1977 The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper and

Row.

Herzfeld, Michael

1993 The Social Production of Indifference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Heyman, Josiah

1995 Putting Power in the Anthropology of Bureaucracy: The Immigration and

Naturalization Service at the Mexico-United States Border. Current Anthropology

351

36(2):261-287.

Hilger, Mary

1971 Together with the Ainu: A Vanishing People. Norman: University of Oklahoma

Press.

Hokkaido Jinja Chōchō

2002 Hoppō Ryōdo no Jinja (Shrines in the Northern Territories). Sapporo: Hokkaido

Jinja Chōchō.

Hokkaido Kaitaku Kinenkan

2000 Kindai no Hajimari (The Early Modern Era). Sapporo: Kaitaku no Mura Bunka

Shinkōkai.

Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai

1983 Chishima Rettō no Ainu Minzoku Senjū ni kan suru Shiryō (The Indigenous Ainu

of the Chishima Archipelago). Sapporo: Shadan Hōjin Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai.

1984 Ainu Shinpō (Ainu New Law). Senkusha no Tsudoi 37:4-6.

1990a Ainu Shi (Ainu History). Sapporo: Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai .

1990b Seifu wa Ainu Shinpō ni tai suru Kentō Iinkai o Setchi (The Government

Establishes an Exploratory Committee for the Ainu New Law). Senkusha no Tsudoi.

Sapporo: Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai.

2001 Kokusai Kaigi Shiryō-shū (International Conference Materials). Sapporo: Shadan

Hōjin Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai .

2004 Brochure on the Ainu People. Sapporo: Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai.

Holmes, Douglas

1989 Cultural Disenchantments: Worker Peasantries in Northeast Italy. Princeton:

Princeton University Press.

2000 Integral Europe: Fast Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Neofascism. Princeton:

Princeton University Press.

Holmes, Douglas and George Marcus

2005 Refunctioning Ethnography: The Challenge of an Anthropology of the

Contemporary. In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, Norman Denzin and

Yvonne Lincoln, eds. Pp.1099-1114. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Horkheimer, Max and Theodore Adorno

2001 [1944] The Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Hosoya Chihiro

1971 Retrogression in Japan’s Foreign Policy Decision-Making Process. In James

Morley, ed., Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan. Princeton: Princeton University

Press.

352

Howell, David

1994 Ainu Ethnicity and the Boundary of the Japanese State. Past and Present 142:69-

93.

1995. Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society and the State in a Japanese Fishery.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

2004 Making ‘Useful Citizens’ of Ainu Subject in Early 20th Century Japan. Journal of

Asian Studies. 63:5-29.

2005. Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth Century Japan. Berkeley: University of

California Press.

ILO 107

1957. Protection and Integration of Indigenous and Other Tribal and Semi-Tribal

Populations in Independent Countries. Adopted by the ILO at the 1957 International

Labor Conference.

Ingold, Tim

2000 The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill.

New York: Routledge.

Irimoto Takashi

1987 Saru-gawa Ryuiki Ainu ni Kansuru Rekishiteki Shiryo no Bunka-

Jinruigakuteki Bunseki (A Cultural Anthropology of Historical Materials concerning

the Saru River Ainu). Bulletin of the Institute for the Study of North Eurasian Cultures

at Hokkaido University, 18.

1994 Circumpolar Religion and Ecology: An Anthropology of the North. Tokyo: Tokyo

University Press.

1995 Ainu ni Shaamanizumu wa aru ka? (Is there Shamanism among the Ainu?) In

Ainu Bunka no Henka to Bunka Fukkō Undō ni kan suru Bunka Jinruigakuteki

Kenkyū. Sapporo: Hokkaido Daigaku.

Ishii Ryōsuke

1950 Tennō: Tennō Tōchi no Shiteki Kaimei (The Emperor: A Clarification on the

Reign of the Emperor). Tokyo: Kōbundō.

IUCN

2005 World Heritage Nomination – IUCN Technical Evaluation, Shiretoko (Japan), ID

No: 193. Gland, Switzwerland: IUCN.

Ivy, Marilyn

1995 Discourses of the Vanishing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Iwasawa Yūki

1998. International Law, Human Rights and Japanese Law: The Impact of International

Law on Japanese Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

353

Izumi, Seiichi

1952 Saru Ainu no Chien Shūdan ni Okeru Iwor (Iwor as the territorial unit of the Saru

Ainu). Kikan Minzoku Kenkyū 16(3-4):213-229.

Jackson, Michael

1996 Introduction. In Things as They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological

Anthropology. Michael Jackson, ed. Pp.1-50. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

1998 Minima Ethnograohica: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological Project.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jackson, Keith and Miyuki Tomioka

2004 The Changing Face of Japanese Management. New York: Routledge.

Jameson, Fredric

1991 Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. New York: Verso.

Japan’s Ministry of Justice

2008 The Nationality Law. Electronic document. http://www.moj.go.jp/ENGLISH/

information/tnl-01.html, accessed April 22, 2008.

Johnson, Chalmers

1982 MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy. Stanford:

Stanford University Press.

Kaga-ka Bunsho

2001a Kaga-ka Bunsho: Genzai Goyaku-han Dai ichi (Kaga Family Records: Modern

Language Edition Vol.1). Bekkai-cho: Bekkai-cho Kyōdo Shiryōkan.

2001b. Kaga-ka Bunsho: Genzai Goyaku-han Dai ichi (Kaga Family Records: Modern

Language Edition Vol.2). Bekkai-cho: Bekkai-cho Kyōdo Shiryōkan.

Kamiya Nobuyuki

1990 Bakuhansei Kokka no Ryūkyū Shihai (The Tokugawa Polity’s Control over

Ryūkyū). Tokyo: Kokura Shobō.

Karan, Pradyumna

2005 Japan in the 21st Century: Environment, Economy, and Society. Lexington:

University Press of Kentucky.

Kawakami Jun

2003 Nichiro Kankei no naka no Ainu (The Ainu of the Japan/Russian Connection). In

Ezogashima to Hoppō Sekai. Kikuchi Isao, ed. Pp.260-313. Tokyo: Yoshikawa

Kōbunkan.

2005 Nemuro Nokamappu Icharupa Jigyō: Kunashiri Menashi no Ikusai Gaiyō

(Nemuro Nokamappu Icharupa Project: Outline of the Kunashiri Menashi Battle)

Handout at the Nokamappu Icharupa, Nemuro, Hokkaido.

354

Kayano Shigeru

1994 Our land was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

1998 Who Owns the Salmon?. In First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North

Pacific Rim. Judith Roche and Meg Hutchison, eds. Pp. 40-45. Vancouver: University

of British Columbia Press.

Kazui Tashiro

1982 Foreign Relations during the Edo Period: Sakoku Reexamined. Journal of Japanese

Studies 8(2):283-306.

Keeley, Timothy

2001 International Human Resource Management in Japanese Firms. New York:

Palgrave.

Kinase Takashi

2002 Difference, Repetition, Positionality: An Examination of the Politics of the

Contemporary Ainu. Senri Ethnological Studies 60:171-181.

Kindaichi Kyōsuke

1961 Ainu Bunkashi (Ainu Cultural History). Tokyo: Sanseido.

Kiss, George

1947 The Cartography of Japan in the Middle Tokugawa Era: A Study in Cross-Cultural

Influences. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 37(2):101-119.

Kondo, Dorinne

1990 Crafting Selves: Power, gender and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Koshiro Yukiko

1999 Trans-Pacific Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan. New York: Columbia

University Press.

Kuno Susumu

1973 The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Kushner, Barack

2010 Pawns of Empire: Postwar Taiwan, Japan and the Dilemma of War Crimes.

Japanese Studies 30(1): Pp.111-133.

Kymlicka, Will

2001 Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship. New

York: Oxford University Press.

355

Landor, A.H.

1893 Alone with the Hairy Ainu. Or, 3,800 miles on a Pack Saddle in Yezo and a Cruise

to the Kuril Islands. London: John Murray.

Lee, Soo im

2006 Japan’s Diversity Dilemmas: Ethnicity, Citizenship, and Education. Lincoln, NE:

iUniverse Inc.

Lefebvre, Henri

1992 The Production of Space. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Levin, Mark

2001 Essential Commodities and Racial Justice: Using Constitutional Protection of

Japan’s Indigenous Ainu People to Inform Understandings of the United States and

Japan. NYU Journal of International Law and Policy 33(2): 419-526.

Lewallen, Ann-Elise

2006 Hands that Never Rest: Ainu Women, Cultural Revival and Indigenous Politics in

Japan. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan.

Lewis, Ioan

2003 Possession and Morality: Other Cosmological Systems. In Shamanism: A Reader.

Graham Harvey, ed. Pp. 69-91. New York: Routledge.

Li, Tania

2000 Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal

Slot. Comparative Studies in Society and History 42(1):149-179.

Lie, John

2001 Multiethnic Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Lieberman, Victor

2003 Strange Parallels: Southeast Asian in Global Context, 800-1830. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Lovell, Nadia

1998 Belonging in Need of Emplacement?. In Locality and Belonging. Nadia Lovell,

ed. New York: Routledge.

Lummis, C.

2007 Ruth Benedict’s Obituary for Japanese Culture. Japan Focus. Electronic document,

http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2474, Accessed December 12, 2008.

Maaka, Roger and Augie Fleras

2000 Engaging with Indigeneity: Tino Rangatiratanga in Aotearoa. In Political Theory

356

and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Duncan Ivanson, et al. eds. Pp. 89-

111.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Malkki, Liisa

2001 National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of

National Identity among Scholars and Refugees. In Culture, Power, Place:

Explorations in Critical Anthropology, Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, eds. Pp.

52-74. Durham: Duke University Press.

Marcus, George

1995 Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multisited Ethnography.

Annual Review of Anthropology 24:95-117.

Marcus, George and Michael Fischer

1999 Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human

Sciences. Chicgao: University of Chicago Press.

Marcuse, Herbert

2006 One-Dimentional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society.

New York: Routledge.

Masciarelli, James

2000 Powerskills: Building Top-Level Relationships for Bottom-line Results.

Gloucester: Nimbus Press.

Masquelier, Adeline

2002 Road Mythographies: Space, Mobility, and the Historical Imagination in

Postcolonial Niger. American Ethnologist 29(4):829-856.

Massey, Doreen

1994 Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

1997 A Global Sense of Place. In T. Barnes and D. Gregory, eds. Reading Human

Geography. London: Hodder Arnold Pub.

2005 For Space. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Mathews, Gordon

2004 On the Tension between American and Japanese Anthropological Depictions of

Japan. In The Making of Anthropology in East and Southeast Asia. Yamashita Shinji,

et al. eds. Pp.114-135. New York: Berghahn Books.

Matsuura, Taheshirō.

2002. Ainu Jinbutsu-shi (The Ainu People). Tokyo: Hebonsha.

Mauss, Marcel

2000 The Gift. New York: Routledge.

357

McClain, James

2001 Japan: A Modern History. New York: Norton.

Mcveigh, Brian

2000 Wearing Ideology: State, Schooling and Self-Presentation in Japan. New York:

Berg.

Meillassoux, Claude

1981 Maidens, Meal and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Community. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Mignolo, Walter

2000 Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border

Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Mogami, Tokunai

1972 [1786] Ezochi no Fūsoku Shūkan (The Habits and Customs of Ezochi). In Nihon

Shomin Seikatsu Shiryō Shūsei, vol.4. Takakura Shinichiro, ed. Pp. 445-451. Tokyo:

San-ichi Publishing.

Monbetsu Kaoru

1973 Kenryoku to Gyōsei wa Nan o shite kita ka? (What has the Government Done?)

Ainutari Ainu: Warera Ningen 4:1-2.

Morris-Suzuki, Tessa

1998 Japan: Time, Space, Nation. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe.

Mosse, David

2005 Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid, Policy and Practice. Ann

Arbor: Pluto.

Mozume Takami

1919 Kokutai Shinron (A New Theory on the National Body). Tokyo: Hirobunko Pub.

Murakami Yasusuke

1979 Bunmei to shite no Ie Shakai (Ie Society as Civilization). Tokyo: Chūoukōron-sha.

1984 Ie Society as a Pattern of Civilization. Journal of Japanese Studies 10(2):279-363.

Nader, Laura

1991 Harmony Ideology: Justice and Control in a Zapotec Mountain Village. Palo Alto:

Stanford University Press.

Nakamura Naofume

2000 Meiji-era Industrialization and Provincial Vitality: The Significance of the First-

358

Enterprise Boom of the 1880s. Social Science Japan Journal 3(2):187-205.

Nakane, Chie

1990 Tokugawa Japan: The Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan. Tokyo:

University of Tokyo Press.

1998 Japanese Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Naitō Chisō

1888 Kokutai Hakki (Manifesting the National Essence). Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku.

Neary, Ian

1997 Burakumin in Contemporary Japan. In Japan's Minorities: The Illusion of

Homogeneity. Michael Weiner, ed. Pp.50-79. New York: Routledge.

Nemuro Rekishi Kenkyū Kai

1992 Kunashiri Menashi no Tatakai (The Kunashiri Menashi War). Nemuro: Nemuro

Rekishi Kenkyū Kai.

Nemuro Symposium

1990 Sanjūnana-pon Inau (37 Inau). Sapporo: Hokkaido Publication Center.

Nei Masatoshi

1995 The Origins of Human Populations: Genetic, Linguistic, and Archeological Data.

In The Origin and Past of Modern Humans as Viewed from DNA. S Brenner and K

Hanihara eds. Pp.71–91. Singapore: World Scientific.

Nelson, Andrew

1997 The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary. Rutland, VT: Charles E

Tuttle Publishing.

Newburn, Tim and Stephanie Hayman

2002 Policing, Surveillance and Social Control: CCTV and Police Monitoring of

Suspects. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.

NHK and Kokuritsu Kagaku Hakubutsukan

2001 Nihonjin Haruka na Tabi (The Long Journey of the Japanese). 320 minutes.

Tokyo: NHK Nihonjin Purojekuto.

Nibutani Fōramu Jikkō Iinkai

1994 Ainu Moshiri ni Tsudō: Sekai Senjū Minzoku No Messeeji (Gathering in Ainu

Moshir: A Message from the World’s Indigenous Peoples). Tokyo: Eikō Kyōiku

Bunka Kenkyūjo.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

1999 The Genealogy of Morals. New York: Oxford University Press.

359

Niezen, Ronald

2003 The Origins of Indieneity: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity. Berkeley:

University of California Press.

Nomoto Masahiro

1998 Gendai ni ikiru Ainu no Sake-ryō Bunka (Salmon Culture among Contemporary

Ainu) IAS 12:77-80.

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

1989 Convention (ILO 169) concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent

Countries. Electronic document, http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/62.htm,

Accessed December 12, 2008.

Ogasawara Yuko

1998. Office Ladies and Salaried Men: Power, Gender and Work in Japanese

Companies. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Oguma, Eiji

2002 A Genealogy of Japanese Self-Images. Victoria, AU: Trans Pacific Press.

Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko

1980 Shamans and Imu Among Two Ainu Groups: Toward a Cross-Cultural Model of

Interpretation. Ethos 8(3):204-228.

Omoto Keiichi and Saitō Naruya

1997 Genetic Origins of the Japanese: A Partial Support for the Dual Structure

Hypothesis. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 102, 437-446.

Ong, Aihwa

1998 Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke

University Press.

2000 Graduated Sovereignty in South-East Asia. Theory, Culture and Society 17(4):55-

75.

Ong, Aihwa and Stephan Collier

2005 Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological

Problems. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Ono Yugo

2005 Recovering Ainu Governance in the Shiretoko World Natural Heritage area in

Japan through Education and Training for Indigenous Ecotourism. Unpublished paper

ms.

Ooms, Herman

360

1975 Charismatic Bureaucrat: A Political Biography of Matsudira Sadanobu. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Ōta, Ryū

1973 Ainu Kakumei Ron: Yukara Sekai e no Taiyaku (Ainu Revolution: Our Obligation

to Yukar World). Tokyo: Ainu Moshiri Jōhōbu.

Ota, Yoshinobu

2002 Okinawa-hatsu Dochaku Kosumoporitanizumu no Kasōsei (Toward Okinawan

Vernacular Cosmopolitanism). Institute of Foreign Affairs Bulletin 40(11):95-108.

Partner, Simon

2001 Taming the Wilderness: The Lifestyle Improvement Movement in Rural Japan

1925-1965. Monumenta Nipponica 64(5):487-520.

Pocock, John

2000 Waitangi as Mystery of State: Consequences to the Ascription of Federative

Capacity of the Maori. In Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Duncan Ivison, et al., eds. Pp. 25-35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pratt, Mary-Louise

2007 Afterword: Indigeneity Today. In Indigenous Experience Today. Marisol de la

Cadena and Orin Starn, eds. Pp. 397-404. New York: Berg.

Prygoski, Philip

1995 The Supreme Court's Treatment of Tribal Sovereignty from Marshall to Marshall.

Complete Lawyer: American Bar Association.

Ramos, Alcida Rita

1998 Indigenism: Ethnic Politics in Brazil. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Reed, Christopher

2005 Ghosts of Wartime Japan Haunt Koizumi’s Cabnet. Electonic Document.

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=f6f50bd7a1687

ece711a7ef721bb6fb8, Accessed August 10, 2010.

Reischauer, Edwin

1970 Japan: The Story of a Nation. New York: Knopf.

Reischauer, Edwin and Albert Craig

1989 Japan: Tradition and Transformation. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Riles, Annelise

2001 The Network Inside Out. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

2006 Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan

361

Press.

Robertson, Jennifer

2002 Blood Talks: Eugenic Modernity and the Creation of the New Japanese. History

and Anthropology 13(3):191-216.

Rohlen, Thomas

1974 For Harmony and Strength. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Rosaldo, Renato

1989 Imperialist Nostalgia. Representations 26:107–122.

Rose, Gillian

1993 Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge. Cambridge:

Polity Press.

Rupp, Katherine

2003 Gift-giving in Japan: Cash, Connections, Cosmologies. Stanford: Stanford

University Press.

Saikaku Ihara

1688 [1960]. Nihon Eitagura (Japan’s Eternal Storehouse). In Saikaku-shū. Noma

Kōshin, ed. Tokyo: Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei.

1692 [1960]. Seken Munezanyo. In Saikaku-shū. Noma Kōshin, ed. Tokyo: Nihon

Koten Bungaku Taikei.

Sakai Naoki

1997 Translation and Subjectivity: On 'Japan' and Cultural Nationalism. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press.

Sakai, Robert

1964 The Satsuma-Ryūkyū Trade and the Tokugawa Seclusion Policy. Journal of Asian

Studies 23(3):391-403.

Saltman, Michael

2002 Introduction. In Land and Territoriality. Michael Saltman, ed. Pp. 1-9. New York:

Berg.

Sassen, Saskia.

2003 Globalization or Denationalization. Review of International Political Economy

10(1):1-22.

2006 Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton

University Press.

Schaar, John

362

1981 Legitimacy in the Modern State. Edison, NJ: Transaction Press.

Seki Hideji

1995 Kita no Seikatsu Bunko Vol.1: Hokkaido -min no Naritachi (Northern Life Library

Vol.1: The Formation of the People of Hokkaido ). Sapporo: HokkaidoShinbun.

Shaw, Carl

1992 Hegel’s Theory of Modern Bureaucracy. American Political Science Review

86(2):381-389.

Shivley, Donald

1965 Sumptuary Regulations and Status in Early Tokugawa Japan. Harvard Journal of

Asiatic Studies 25:123-164.

Shumway, J. and R. Jackson.

1995 Native American Population Patterns. The Geographical Review, vol. 85.

Siddle, Richard

1996 Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan. New York: Routledge.

2002. An Epoch-Making Event? The 1997 Ainu Cultural Promotion Act and its Impact.

Japan Forum 14(3):405-423.

2003. The Limits to Citizenship in Japan: Multiculturalism, Indigenous Rights and the

Ainu. Citizenship Studies. 7(4):447-462.

Sinclair, Karen

2002 Maori Times, Maori Places: Prophetic Histories. New York: Rowman and

Littlefield.

Sjoberg, Katrina

1993 The Return of the Ainu: Cultural Mobilization and the Practice of Ethnicity in

Japan. New York: Routledge.

Smith, Colin.

in prep. Freeters and the Search for Meaningful Work in Post-Bubble Heisei Japan. In

David Slater, ed. Youth in Japan.

Sonohara, Toshiaki

1997 Toward a Genuine Redress for an Unjust Past: The Nibutani Dam Case. Electronic

document, http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v4n2/sonoha42.html, Accessed

June 23, 2007.

Spivak, Gayatri

1990 The Post-colonial Critic. New York: Routledge.

1999 A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

363

Starr, Fredrick

1904 The Ainu Group. Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing.

Steenstrup, Carl

1996 A History of Law in Japan Until 1868. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Steward, Julian

1936 The Economic and Social Basis of Primitive Bands. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merril.

Stocking, George

1982 Race, Culture and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Strathern, Marilyn

1995 Shifting Contexts: Transformation in Anthropological Knowledge. New York:

Routledge.

Sugiita T.

1998 Shibetsu no Bunkazoku (The Cultural Groups of Shibetsu). Shibetsu: Shibetsu

Pogawa Shiseki Shizen Kōen.

Tahara Kaori

2006 Senjūminzoku Ainu (The Indigenous Ainu). Tokyo: Ningenshupan.

Tahashi Hiroshi

2000 Hokkaidono Rekishi (The History of Hokkaido ). Tokyo: Yamakawa Pubishing.

Tairamura Yukio

1930 Will the Ainu Endure or shall we Assimilate with the Shamo? Our People at a

Crossroads. Ezo no Hikari 1:14-16.

Takagi Takayoshi

2003 Hokkaidono Furui Chizu: Edo Jidai no Hokkaidono Sugata o Saguru (Old Maps of

Hokkaido : Investigations into the shape of Edo-era Hokkaido ). Hakodate:

Goryōkaku Publishing.

Takakura S.

1943 Ainu Seisaku Shi (History of Ainu Policies). Tokyo: Nihon Hyōronsha.

Takamure Itsue

1943 Jingū Kōgō (Empress Jingū). Nippon Fujin 1(8).

Takematsu Okada

1936 The Climate of Japan and its Influences on the Japanese People. Tokyo: Kokusai

364

Bunka Shinkokai.

Takezawa Taiko

2004 Jitsuzaishō to Gainen ga ika ni Kōsaku no ka? Jinshu no Hyōshō to Hyōgen o

Meguru Gakusaiteki Kenkyū (How did Reality and Idea Intermingle? The

Representation and Description of Race in Interdisciplinary Research). Jinbunkagaku

Kenkyū.

Tanaka, Sherry

2000 The Ainu of Tsugaru: The Indigenous History and Shamanism of Northern Japan.

Doctoral dissertation. Vancouver: University of British Columbia.

Tanaka Sakurako

2003 Ainu Shamanism: A Forbidden Path to Universal Knowledge. Cultural Survival

27(2).

Taylor, Ralph

1988 Human Territorial Functioning: An Empirical, Evolutionary Perspective on

Individual and Small Group Territorial Cognition, Behaviors, and Consequences.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Taussig, Michael

1997 Magic of the State. New York: Routledge.

1999. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Palo Alto: Stanford

University Press.

Teshima, Takemasa

1995 Toward Shattering the Myth of the Mono-Ethnic State: Japan, the Ainu and the

Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Ph.D. dissertation, Department Of Political Science,

University of Washington.

2005 Senjuuminzoku no Kenri to Jiketsuken Hitei no Ronpō (Indigenous Rights and the

Denial of the Right to Self-Determination). Ritsumeikan Gengo Bunka Kenkyū

16(3):57-75.

Toby, Ronald

1977 Reopening the Question of Sakoku: Diplomacy in the Legitimation of the

Tokugawa Bakufu. Journal of Japanese Studies 3(2):323-363.

1994 The “Indianness” of Iberia and Changing Japanese Iconographies of Other. In

Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reflecting and Reporting on Encounters between

Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era. S.B. Schwartz, ed. Pp.323-51.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Totman, Conrad

1986 Tokugawa Peasants: Win, Lose or Draw? Monumenta Nipponica 41(4):457-476.

1989 The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Pre-Industrial Japan. Berkeley: University of

365

California Press.

Tōgō Minoru

1925 Shokumin Seisaku to Minzoku Shinri (Colonial Policy and Ethnic Psychology).

Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

Tsing, Anna

2007 Indigenous Voice. In Indigenous Experience Today. Marisol de la Cadena and

Orin Starn, eds. Pp.33-68. New York: Berg.

Turner, Victor

1975 Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual. New York: Cornell University Press

Uemura, Hideaki

1990 Kita no Umi no Kōekishatachi: Ainu Shakai Keizai Shi (The Traders of the

Northern Seas: A History of Ainu Society and Economy). Tokyo: Dōbukan.

UNHCR

2008 Global Refugee, Internally Displaced Figures Climb for a Second Year in a

Row. Electronic document. http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/485244f52.html,

Accessed July 20, 2008.

United Nations

1980 Initial Report of Japan. UN doc CCPR/C/10/add.1. New York: UNHCR.

1988 Second Periodic Report of Japan. UN doc CCPR/C/42/add.4. New York: UNHCR.

United Nations General Assembly

2008 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Electronic document,

http://iwgia.synkron.com/graphics/SynkronLibrary/Documents/InternationalProcesses

/DraftDeclaration/07-09-13ResolutiontextDeclaration.pdf, accessed December 12,

2008.

Vitebsky, Piers

2003 From Cosmology to Environmentalism: Shamanism as Local Knowledge in a

Global Setting. In Shamanism: A Reader. Graham Harvey, ed. Pp.276-298. New

York: Routledge.

Wada Kan

1961 Buronisurafu Pirusutsuki-cho Karafuto Ainu no Shaamanizumu (Bronislaw

Pilsudski: Shamanism of the Sakhalin Ainu). Hoppobunka Kenkyū Hōkoku 16:179-

203.

1996 Some Shamanistic Features of Ainu Religion. In Shamanism and Northern

Ecology. Juha Pentikainen, ed. Pp.305-312. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Wakabayashi, Bob

366

1991 In Name Only: Imperial Sovereignty in Early Modern Japan. Journal of Japanese

Studies. 17(1):25-57.

Walker, Brett

2001. The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion 1590-

1800. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Wallace, Anthony

1956 Revitalization Movements. American Anthropologist 58(2):264-281.

Wallerstein, Immanuel

1974 The Modern World System. New York: Academic Press.

Watson, Irene

2002 Aboriginal and the Sovereignty of Terra Nullius. Borderlands E-Journal 1:2.

Electronic document. http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol1no2_2002/ watson_laws.html,

accessed May 05, 2008.

Watson, Mark

2006 Kantō Resident Ainu and the Urban Indigenous Experience. Electronic Document,

http://cigad.massey.ac.nz/documents/watson_ Kanto%20Ainu%20paper.pdf, accessed

February 21, 2008.

Watsuji, Tetsuro

1961 Climate and Culture: A Philosophical Study. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press.

1988 [1935]. Climate and Culture. Geoffrey Brownas, trans. Westport, CT: Greenwood

Press.

Weber, Max

1958. From Max Weber. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.) New York Galaxy.

1968. Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society. Max Rheinstein (ed.) New York:

Simon and Schuster.

1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University

of California Press.

Webb, Herschel

1968 The Japanese Imperial Institution in the Tokugawa Period. New York: Columbia

University Press.

Westbrook, David

2003 City of Gold: An Apology for Global Capitalism in a Time of Discontent. New

York: Routledge.

White, Leslie

1949 The Science of Culture. New York: Farrar Straus.

367

Wilson, Richard

2002 The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-

Apartheid State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wilson, S.

1998 Bureaucrats and Villagers in Japan: Shimin and the crisis of the early 1930s. Social

Science Japan Journal 1 Pp.121-140.

Wolf, Eric

1982 Europe Europe and The People Without History. Los Angeles: University of

California Press.

Wunder, John

1999 Native American Sovereignty. New York: Garland Publishing.

Yamada Masahiro

1999. Parasaito Shinguru no Jidai (The Age of Parasite Singles). Tokyo: Chikuma

Shobo.

Yamanaka Keiko

2002 Ana Bortz’s Law Suit and Minority Rights in Japan. Japan Policy Research

Institute Working Paper 88. Electronic document, http://www.jpri.org/publications/

workingpapers/wp88.html, accessed October 23, 2007.

Yoshida, S.

2004 Japanese Seniors. Electronic Document, http://www.jarc.net/aging/04dec/index.

shtml, accessed July 28, 2007.

Young, Iris

2000 Hybrid Democracy: Iroquois Federalism and the Postcolonial Project. In Political

Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Duncan Ivison et al., eds. Pp.237-258.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yuki, Shoji

1997. Charanke (Negotiations). Urayasu-shi: Sofukan.

The Ainu of Northern Japan: Indigeneity, post-national politics, territoriality

Abstract and Figures

Recommended publications

Initiatives in the Hydro Sector Post-World Commission on Dams – The Hydropower Sustainability Assess...

Romancing Civil Society: European NGOs in Latin America

After Seattle: Public International Organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations (Ngos), and Democr...

TOOLS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PEACEBUILDERS