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Describes the history, modern and traditional cultural practices and economies, geographic background, and ongoing oppression and struggles of the Ainu of Japan.
"Some 55 scholars, mostly Japanese but with a considerable number from the US and Europe, write about the ethnicity, theories of origin, history, economies, art, religious beliefs, mythology, and other aspects of the culture of the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, now principally found in Hokkaido and smaller far northern islands. Hundreds of photographs and paintings, mostly in excellent quality color, show a wide variety of Ainu people, as well as clothing, jewelry, and various artifacts."--"Choice". "The most in-depth treatise available on Ainu prehistory, material culture, and ethnohistory." - "Library Journal".--Amazon.com (2001 ed, book description).
This book is about the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, living in and around Tokyo; it is, therefore, about what has been pushed to the margins of history. Customarily, anthropologists and public officials have represented Ainu issues and political affairs as limited to rural pockets of Hokkaido. Today, however, a significant proportion of the Ainu people live in and around major cities on the main island of Honshu, particularly Tokyo. Based on extensive original ethnographic research, this book explores this largely unknown diasporic aspect of Ainu life and society. Drawing from debates on place-based rights and urban indigeneity in the twenty-first century, the book engages with the experiences and collective struggles of Tokyo Ainu in seeking to promote a better understanding of their cultural and political identity and sense of community in the city. Looking in-depth for the first time at the urban context of ritual performance, cultural transmission and the construction of places or ‘hubs’ of Ainu social activity, this book argues that recent government initiatives aimed at fostering a national Ainu policy will ultimately founder unless its architects are able to fully recognize the historical and social complexities of the urban Ainu experience.
The volume is aimed at preserving invaluable knowledge about Ainu, a language-isolate previously spoken in Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Kurils, which is now on the verge of extinction. Ainu was not a written language, but it possesses a huge documented stock of oral literature, yet is significantly under-described in terms of grammar. It is the only non-Japonic language of Japan and is typologically different not only from Japanese but also from other Northeast Asian languages. Revolving around but not confined to its head-marking and polysynthetic character, Ainu manifests many typologically interesting phenomena, related in particular to the combinability of various voice markers and noun incorporation. Other interesting features of Ainu include vowel co-occurrence restrictions, a mixed system of expressing grammatical relations, which includes the elements of a rare tripartite alignment, nominal classification distinguishing common and locative nouns, elaborate possessive classes, verbal number, a rich four-term evidential system, and undergrammaticalized aspect, which are all explained in the volume. This handbook, the result of unprecedented cooperation of the leading experts of Ainu, will definitely help to increase the clarity of our understanding of Ainu and in a long-term perspective may provide answers to problems of human prehistory as well as open the field of Ainu studies to the world and attract many new students. Table of Contents Masayoshi Shibatani and Taro Kageyama Preface Masayoshi Shibatani and Taro Kageyama Introduction to the Handbook of Japanese Language and Linguistics Contributors Anna Bugaeva Introduction I Overview of Ainu studies Anna Bugaeva 1. Ainu: A head-marking language of the Pacific Rim Juha Janhunen 2. Ainu ethnic origins Tomomi Satō 3. Major old documents of Ainu and some problems in the historical study of Ainu Alfred F. Majewicz 4. Ainu language Western records José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente 5. The Ainu language through time Alexander Vovin 6. Ainu elements in early Japonic Hidetoshi Shiraishi and Itsuji Tangiku 7. Language contact in the north Hiroshi Nakagawa and Mika Fukazawa 8. Hokkaido Ainu dialects: Towards a classification of Ainu dialects Itsuji Tangiku 9. Differences between Karafuto and Hokkaido Ainu dialects Shiho Endō 10. Ainu oral literature Osami Okuda 11. Meter in Ainu oral literature Tetsuhito Ōno 12. The history and current status of the Ainu language revival movement II Typologically interesting characteristics of the Ainu language Hidetoshi Shiraishi 13. Phonetics and phonology Hiroshi Nakagawa 14. Parts of Speech – with a focus on the classification of nouns Anna Bugaeva and Miki Kobayashi 15. Verbal valency Tomomi Satō 16. Noun incorporation Hiroshi Nakagawa 17. Verbal number Yasushige Takahashi 18. Aspect and evidentiality Yoshimi Yoshikawa 19. Existential aspectual forms in the Saru and Chitose dialects of Ainu III Appendices: Sample texts Anna Bugaeva 20. An uwepeker “Retar Katak, Kunne Katak” and kamuy yukar “Amamecikappo” narrated in the Chitose Hokkaido Ainu dialect by Ito Oda Elia dal Corso 21. “Meko Oyasi”, a Sakhalin Ainu ucaskuma narrated by Haru Fujiyama Subject index
In 2008, 140 years after it had annexed Ainu lands, the Japanese government shocked observers by finally recognizing Ainu as an Indigenous people. In this moment of unparalleled political change, it was Uzawa Kanako, a young Ainu activist, who signalled the necessity of moving beyond the historical legacy of “Ainu studies.” Mired in a colonial mindset of abject academic practices, Ainu Studies was an umbrella term for an approach that claimed scientific authority vis-à-vis Ainu, who became its research objects. As a result of this legacy, a latent sense of suspicion still hangs over the purposes and intentions of non-Ainu researchers. This major new volume seeks to re-address the role of academic scholarship in Ainu social, cultural, and political affairs. Placing Ainu firmly into current debates over Indigeneity, Beyond Ainu Studies provides a broad yet critical overview of the history and current status of Ainu research. With chapters from scholars as well as Ainu activists and artists, it addresses a range of topics including history, ethnography, linguistics, tourism, legal mobilization, hunter-gatherer studies, the Ainu diaspora, gender, and clothwork. In its ambition to reframe the question of Ainu research in light of political reforms that are transforming Ainu society today, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in Indigenous studies as well as in anthropology and Asian studies. Contributors: Misa Adele Honde, David L. Howell, Mark J. Hudson, Deriha Kōji, ann-elise lewallen, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Hans Dieter Ölschleger, Kirsten Refsing, Georgina Stevens, Sunazawa Kayo, Tsuda Nobuko, Uzawa Kanako, Mark K. Watson, Yūki Kōji.
Once thought of as a 'vanishing people', the Ainu are now reasserting both their culture and their claims to be the 'indigenous' people of Japan. Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan is the first major study to trace the outlines of Ainu history. It explores the ways in which competing versions of Ainu identity have been constructed and articulated, shedding light on the way modern relations between the Ainu and the Japanese have been shaped.
This book is a beautiful and moving personal account of the Ainu, the native inhabitants of Hokkaido, Japan's northern island, whose land, economy, and culture have been absorbed and destroyed in recent centuries by advancing Japanese. Based on the author's own experiences and on stories passed down from generation to generation, the book chronicles the disappearing world—and courageous rebirth—of this little-understood people.Kayano describes with disarming simplicity and frankness the personal conflicts he faced as a result of the tensions between a traditional and a modern society and his lifelong efforts to fortify a living Ainu culture. A master storyteller, he paints a vivid picture of the Ainus' ecologically sensitive lifestyle, which revolved around bear hunting, fishing, farming, and woodcutting.Unlike the few existing ethnographies of the Ainu, this account is the first written by an insider intimately tied to his own culture yet familiar with the ways of outsiders. Speaking with a rare directness to the Ainu and universal human experience, this book will interest all readers concerned with the fate of indigenous peoples.
First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
An introduction to the Ainu people of Hokkaido, Japan's original inhabitants, including their history, customs, clothing, food, habitats, and beliefs.