Aiming at Olympic boom, Japan
builds 'Ethnic Harmony' tribute to indigenous Ainu
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[October 29, 2019]
By Tim Kelly
TOKYO (Reuters) - On a wooded lake
shore in northern Japan, the government is building a modernist
shrine that has divided the indigenous Ainu community whose
vanishing culture it was designed to celebrate.
At a cost so far of $220 million, Japan's "Symbolic Space for Ethnic
Harmony" is on track to open in time for the 2020 Olympics, part of
a drive by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to draw millions of foreign
visitors to Japan and to the northern city of Sapporo, where the
Olympic marathon will be run.
(Click https://reut.rs/2NejDTG to see a picture package.)
Also known as "Upopoy" or "singing together" in the Ainu language,
the complex will include a museum, a replica of an Ainu village,
many of which Japan destroyed in its 19th Century colonization of
Hokkaido, and a memorial housing the bones of hundreds of Ainu whose
remains were sent to universities in the 20th Century.
For some surviving Ainu, whose exact numbers are unknown, the
project underscores how Japan has failed to come to terms with its
history - despite more than a decade of deliberation on how Tokyo
could meet its commitments to an indigenous group it officially
recognized in 2008.
Some Ainu worry the new museum complex is mostly meant to burnish
Japan's international standing ahead of the Olympics.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2019/Oct/29/images/ads/current/lincolntheatre_sda_031016.png)
"I think it's possible it could end up becoming a theme park," said
Ainu tattoo artist Mai Hachiya. "People would come to see the
dancing and other performances. It would be like a zoo."
'SILENT AINU'
Scholars say the Ainu settled in Japan's northernmost island and
across Sakhalin, Russia, by the 1300s. They hunted, fished,
practiced an animist religion and spoke a language unrelated to any
other.
Japan took control of Hokkaido by force in the 19th Century and made
it a colony. After opening it to Japanese settlers, it forced the
Ainu, which it labeled "former aborigines," to assimilate.
A 2017 survey counted just over 13,000 Ainu in Hokkaido. The actual
number is estimated to be much higher, because many Ainu fear
identifying as other than Japanese and have moved to different parts
of the country.
Ainu children are half as likely to go to college as other Japanese
and average household earnings are significantly lower, official
data show.
"Society was not accepting of the Ainu, and it still isn't," said
Mai Ishihara, an anthropologist at Hokkaido University. "There are
still many people who keep their Ainu identity secret from their
children."
Ishihara discovered at age 12 that her maternal grandmother was
Ainu. She describes people detached from their roots as "silent
Ainu."
In 2009, after signing the UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, Japan's government began considering how to
establish a new policy for the Ainu. Early proposals zeroed in
quickly on the creation of the government-funded "Symbolic Space"
now taking shape on the shore of Lake Poroto near the town of
Shiraoi in Hokkaido.
In consultations that concluded in early 2018, Ainu representatives
asked for legal rights to state-owned land, more funding for
teaching Ainu culture and language and an apology from Japan's
government.
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![](../images/102919pics/sports57.jpg)
Wooden statues of an Ainu couple stand in front of an Ainu craft
shop in the Nibutani district where several Ainu craft shops and a
museum are located, in Biratori, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan, August
23, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Mar/14/images/ads/current/tires250x300.gif)
None of those proposals was considered.
"We can't do something if it is not achievable," said Hiroshi
Koyama, the official in charge of Japan's Comprehensive Ainu Policy
Office.
Giving back forest where Ainu once hunted and foraged, he said,
would "be hard for the Japanese people to accept." And he added that
an apology would be uncomfortable for many Japanese, as well as an
insult to the Japanese settlers who built modern Hokkaido.
"It would focus people's attention on the bad things that happened
and not the future," he said.
'THE VERGE OF EXTINCTION'
Ainu hunter Atsushi Monbetsu, 36, sees Tokyo's actions, including
the ethnic-harmony park, as "useless." Discrimination as a child
made him decide to embrace his heritage and live as a hunter, he
said.
"It would have been nice if the government had given us a place
where we could carry out our traditional rites," said Monbetsu, who
burns birch shavings in a prayer to the Ainu gods before stalking
deer with a shotgun.
A group representing about 2,000 Ainu supports Abe's project,
arguing it will provide economic benefits from tourism and a forum
focusing on Ainu culture and arts. Five of the 20 curators hired for
the new museum are Ainu.
At a former school a short drive from the museum construction site,
curators are preparing exhibits. Traditional Ainu coats hang in
abandoned classrooms with knives, ceremonial sticks and heavy beaded
necklaces laid out on tables. In the gymnasium, dancers practice
next to stuffed bears and Ainu handicrafts.
With pictures of smiling performers, a draft brochure describes Ainu
hunter-gatherer culture as "on the verge of extinction." It makes no
reference to Japanese policies that forced Ainu to adopt Japanese
names, speak Japanese and outlawed practices such as a traditional
form of tattooing Hachiya is trying to revive.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2019/Oct/29/images/ads/current/Peasley_lda_PPP_2018.png)
Hachiya, 36, who is also a singer, has been asked to practice a
routine with other Ainu performers that may be included in the
Olympics opening ceremony in Tokyo.
"I think Hokkaido is a Japanese colony," she said. "That's a hard
thing to say, but if you look back on what was done, that's what you
have to conclude."
(Reporting by Tim Kelly, additional reporting by Kwiyeon Ha and
Kyung Hoon Kim; Editing by Kevin Krolicki, Billy Mallard and Gerry
Doyle)
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