Japan’s taxpayer-funded ethnic theme park

MALTREATMENT OF ETHNIC MINORITIES has always been a part of the human condition, and the history of every nation or region is blighted by shameful chapters that illustrate the ordeals of those minorities. The history of Europe can be told as one long narrative of ethnic conflict and oppression. Human slavery still exists in Africa and the Middle East, and today’s Han Chinese are unapologetic about their continuing subjugation of the minorities unlucky enough to fall within what the dominant culture considers its national borders.

We all know the American problem, though that country has taken more constructive steps to make things right than anyone else. The American concept of the melting pot remains the most productive solution over the long term, for anyone with the courage to attempt it.

No exception can be made for the Japanese. At one time, some people in this country liked to think of themselves as tanitsu minzoku (a homogenous race), but few take that domestic propaganda seriously any more. These islands are also the home of ethnic minorities that have suffered at the hands of the majority population.

One of these is the Ainu, the aboriginal people of Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, the Kuriles, and Sakhalin. As I described in this previous Ampontan post, the Japanese developed Hokkaido in the 19th century in a manner similar to the way Americans opened up the West. That includes their treatment of the native population, though it was much less violent than in North America.

After Japan signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1979, however, it was obligated to deal with the Ainu as an indigenous minority population. The relevant clause seems to be Article 27:

In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language.

A Japanese court recognized the Ainu in as an indigenous minority in 1997, which gave them the legal justification to pursue activities related to their culture and language as rights, though it is doubtful anyone was trying to prevent those activities by that point.

Under a 1997 law, the Law for the Promotion of the Ainu Culture and for the Dissemination and Advocacy for the Traditions of the Ainu and the Ainu Culture, Japan is required both to promote Ainu culture, and to “respect the autonomous spirit and ethnic pride of the Ainu people in the implementation of the measures to promote Ainu culture”. The sole organization authorized to conduct the services provided for in the law is the Foundation for the Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture (FRPAC), which is entirely funded by the national and local governments. It claims that “dissemination of Ainu culture is essential for the diversified development of Japan’s culture”—a high-minded assertion that rings increasingly hollow the more one thinks about it.

Some activities to promote Ainu culture seem to be exemplary. The previous post concerned Hokkaido University’s announcement that it would be the site of the country’s first Ainu-Aborigine Research Center, which opened in April to study the Ainu from the perspectives of language, culture, and history. (As that post pointed out, however, the intentions of some of the people involved with the center had more ominous, race-hustling overtones.)

But now that the government feels compelled to give out free money, Japan’s taxpayers are being forced to write a blank check to an informal guild of professional Ainu who are being paid to determine their own agenda, which the government is legally required to accept. It is unlikely the taxpayers are getting their money’s worth.

Another recent report in the Hokkaido Shimbun (in Japanese and no longer on line) explained that construction work has started at the Ainu Kotan (village) on the Akan lakeside in Kushiro of a kamui mintara. In the Ainu language, that is “a garden where the gods play”. With only 130 people in 36 households, the Ainu Kotan is now the largest Ainu settlement in Hokkaido.

The planned work will take several years (photos). It includes the rebuilding of a central park in the village, and the erection of kamui ni, or god’s tree, which resembles a totem pole. A hot spring will eventually flow through the site like a river. The newspaper described it as a trial that will allow tourists to come in contact with the spirit of the Ainu and their worldview.

The park will be flanked by souvenir shops on both sides. At the front will be an onne cise, or an old-style dance theater. The kamui mintara will have several carved sculptures, based on the content of yukar, or Ainu epic poems that have been handed down orally.

The carved god’s trees will be located at the center of the park. Five logs of Canadian cedar have been delivered to the site, where people have begun carving them. Nuburi Toko, who is overseeing the project, already created a kamui mintara in Barnaby, Canada, Kushiro’s sister city. He will carve owls, bears, cranes, and other animals into the logs to represent the Ainu world view.

The construction schedule calls for the god’s tree, a toi cise (earthen house) of the type Ainu used to live in, and an arbor where tourists can view tree carving to be completed by mid-October.

The first stage of construction this year will cost 50 million yen (US$430,000). It will be paid for by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, the city of Kushiro, the Akan Tourism Association & Community Development Promotion Organization, a local merchants’ association, fishing cooperatives, and the Kushiro Shinkin Bank.

People in the tourism industry say they hope the strong emphasis on Ainu culture will contribute to the appeal of the Akan lakeside, and that this will help boost the lagging tourist industry.

Some reading this might wonder why anyone could object to these activities. That’s the wrong question. Rather, I would ask why a UN treaty that calls on the signatories to allow indigenous minorities to enjoy their culture is being perverted to force the Japanese public to pay people for making a career out of their ethnicity.

Here’s the tipoff: The people in Japan whose ancestry is half Ainu or greater is estimated to range from just 150,000 to 300,000. Over the years, most have done what comes naturally with people everywhere—mix and mingle. They’ve intermarried with the rest of the population and moved away from ethnic enclaves.

With only 130 people, the Ainu Kotan is just a trade name—it isn’t even a real community, because the Ainu never used to live there. It is an artificially created Potempkin village for tourists. As this website for tourists notes:

Although the Ainu Kotan Village itself is just a souvenir shop-lined street, it leads to a thatched-roof lodge where you can see Ainu performing traditional dances and playing bamboo mouth harps.

I’m sure the performances are delightful. They’re certainly affordable–admission is only 1,000 yen. But what’s next? The Kamui Mintara Golf Course and Tennis Club?

In addition to the souvenirs–most of which are probably wood carvings–there are restaurants serving Ainu cuisine. One wonders whether cuisine is the most appropriate word to use for the dietary habits of people who lived in the wilderness and were mostly hunter-gatherers or fishermen. But ethnic restaurants are an essential element in attracting tourists with disposable income.

In other words, a covenant to protect the basic rights of indigenous minorities has been twisted to leverage the system and create a self-governing authority with its own agenda. The result of the expenditure of time, money, and good intentions is a mini-ethnic theme park where visitors can buy a cup of watery coffee and honest-to-goodness hand-carved wooden Ainu keyholders on their way out the door.

No one denies that Japanese law once deprived the Ainu of basic rights and forced them into second-class citizenship. But it has been quite some time in Japan since anyone has denied the Ainu the “right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language.”

There are Ainu dictionaries, some compiled by the late Shigeru Kayano, the first Ainu elected to the Diet (the upper house, naturally, the home for celebrity and single-issue politicians). He and others transcribed and translated many of the yukar, most of which are still in print. Kayano was a prolific author, and it’s easy to find used copies of Ainu no Ishibumi (The Ainu Monument), an autobiography that portrays his efforts to preserve the Ainu culture, which I read at least 15 years ago. And thanks to videos and DVDs, their costumes, dances, and music will be preserved forever.

What no one says openly is that Ainu culture seems now to be more museum exhibit than living dynamic entity. The decline in their population will continue, due to both demographic trends and to intermarriage. Their traditional way of life is not viable in the modern world, and in any event, few people would choose to live that way. As far as I can determine, there is no one left who speaks Ainu exclusively; all of them are fluent in contemporary Japanese.

Even the Ainu political movement seems to have run out of steam. Kaori Tahara, a half-Ainu political activist, was unable to unseat the scandal-tainted LDP incumbent in Hokkaido in the recent upper house election in a year when it was a liability to be an LDP member was a liability. (Perhaps Ms. Tahara’s anti-American and left-of-center positions, and her attempt to exploit the politics of grievance and resentment worked against her.)

Cultures are inherently strong—stronger than some give them credit for being—and they do not die out so easily. But when the preservation of a culture requires the mandatory government funding of people who set their own agenda, and the best they can come up with is the Ainu Kotan, that culture is on a life-support system.

Mr. Kayano did not need government funding to compile his dictionaries or his anthologies. People do not need encouragement to use a language when it is meaningful or of benefit to them. And people most certainly do not need government assistance to learn how to dance, perform music, and make costumes. If the remaining Ainu wish to preserve their culture, there’s nothing stopping them from preserving it.

Unfortunately, however, what we’re seeing is the literal preservation of the culture, in much the same way that an amateur entomologist might catch a wasp and preserve it in alcohol, taking it out of his desk drawer occasionally to marvel at its colors and now-harmless stinger.

The past has gone where it always goes, and there is no point in requiring other people to recreate someone else’s unrecoverable pastoral ethnic fantasy in the 21st century, where people will increasingly look and behave like Tiger Woods and Barack Obama. When a culture and a way of life have been reduced to a tourist attraction with six performances a day in the summer, it should be apparent that the shadows of twilight are approaching.

But that’s all the better to hide the fact that the situation is starting to look more about the money than it is about respecting “the right of people to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language”.