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Al Jazeera English reports on Japan’s Ainu community

A pretty interesting report from Al Jazeera English about Ainu activists who want compensation from the Japanese government:

101 East looks at Japan’s indigeneous people and their fight for cultural survival and acceptance. Over the last century, they have seen their traditions and their language stripped away, along with their ancestral lands. But after generations of oppression, racism and forced assimilation, change is in the air for the Ainu.

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30 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - February 8, 2010 at 6:04 am

Categories: Discrimination, Politics Tags:

Fat Tony

A nice report, but should he really be referring to Ainu as “Japan’s indigenous people”? What are the Japanese, if that’s the case?

Also, what’s up with going for the jugular on apologies? The grand poopah of the Tokyo Ainu lobby said he doesn’t want one, and most Ainu probably don’t either.

Alec

The Japanese people most think of are immigrants from Korea/China.

k9

so, they are the original japanese and we are the descendant of invader from korea or china. he should claim the compensation to korea & china! joke joke ahaha.
J.

Just to emphasize one thing qinese had little to none influence in the socio-cultural polical formation of Japan. Most culture influence came from the North cultural sphere mainly from Proto Balhae-Baekje-Kaya and subsequently from Korea.

James Watt

Of course the Qinese had no effect on Japanese development. Qina is in Egypt.

Rune

Yes he should, for several reasons. First is that the Ainu are more genetically similar to the people inhabiting Japan in the Jomon period, while the Yamanote Japanese have more in common with Koreans, Chinese and Mongols than the Jomon. Another is that the Ainu are recognised as the indiginous people of Japan, both internationally by the UN and more importantly, by the Japanese government.

With regards to the apology, I’d say that the unwillingness to come forth and ask for one on TV has a lot to do with tatamea and honne. This is also why you will regularly find that in Japanese politics there will be strong denials that a certain measure is under consideration if it is somewhat divisive until such a point where the behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings have secured a consensus, at which point the measure will be presented.

Fat Tony

or maybe they saw that apologies to aborigines in Australia didn’t really have any substantive effect, whereas progressive policies towards the indigenous populations of Canada and NZ have really made a difference.

stylesushi

This is what someone said about the origins of the “Japanese” people…

“During the last Ice Age, which ended approximately 15,000 years ago, Japan was connected to the continent through several land bridges, notably one linking the Ryukyu Islands to Taiwan and Kyushu, one linking Kyushu to the Korean peninsula, and another one connecting Hokkaido to Sakhalin and the Siberian mainland. In fact, the Philippines and Indonesia were also connected to the Asian mainland. This allowed migrations from China and Austronesia towards Japan, about 35,000 years ago. These were the ancestors of the modern Ryukyuans (Okinawans), and the first inhabitants of all Japan.”
http://aki-akiaki.blogspot.com Aki

I am a descendant of Japan’s indigenous people. I need apologies from the Japanese. A problem with this idea is that most Japanese are descendants of the indigenous people in this archipelago, and at the same time they are descendants of the immigrants from the Asian continent.

Ajapa

… descendants of the immigrants from the Asian continent.

It is very obvious that you have an intent to distort the history! You are a revisionist! Whenever you talk about the Japanese history, you must use a term such as “Korean and Chinese immigrants” but not something like “immigrants from the Asian continent” which certainly obscure the fact that Japan is one of unimportant offsprings of or a mere imitator of Korea and China!

So-called Ainu and Jomon people are indigenous only to Japanese islands but not to more broad areas of East Asia!

http://aki-akiaki.blogspot.com Aki

Yeah, the Irish are descendants of the French since Celtic people were living in France in 1,500-1,000 B.C…

Ajapa

No. French are descendants of Ethiopian since their ancestors immigrated from Ethiopia, so Irish are descendants of Ethiopian too. White supremacist fabricated the human history!
Britishizzznit

Oh Ajapa,

I used to have respect for you, my friend. What happened? You went coookooooo here! LOL

My eyes are blue, there’s nothing I can do……………. hahaha
Ajapa

What happened?

Mental disorder!

404error

there a more like Hokkaido indigenous are they?

Rune

No, as late as the Heian period, most of Honshu north of the Kanto plain was inhabited by Ainu, but gradually pushed northwards by conquest. The Sino-Korean settlers who brought, amongst others, rice cultivation, bronze and iron, horses and other domesticated animals to the Japanese islands first settled in the eastern parts of Honshu in what is known as the Yayoi period (300 BCE – 300 CE). Not much is known of the Jomon inhabitants who were displaced and/or interbred with the settlers, but consensus has it that they are probably related genetically to the altaic and sibiric peoples. If these were also the Ainu is unknown, but they were without doubt closer related to the Ainu than to the Sino-Korean settlers.

Rune

Should be western parts of Honshu of course, the area around Fukuoka.

Rune

LOL, why give either positive or negative karma to a comment correcting a typo in a previous comment? You people crack me up sometimes =P

J.

Not sure about rice cultivation but bronze, iron, gold, horses were brought from the Northern tribes which were Altaic and qina had little to none influence in the socio-political cultural influence formation of Japan.

Rune

I find it strange you say that, as the ritsuryo form of government instituted after the Taika-restauration in 645 CE based their form of government on the Chinese Tang dynasty. Also, I did not deny a great Korean influence, or that the first mainland settlers came from Korea, hence the use of Sino-Korean.

This is all basic stuff taught in Japanese History classes at university here in Europe and the governing consensus of most writing you will find on the web as well. Of course there are dissenters to these thoughts. In Japan there are scholars who deny any influence from the mainland and in Korea there are scholars who place a much greater emphasis on Korean influence than there is any basis for in historical sources to name the most common voices of dissent.
Rune

Seems from the negative karma that what I write, despite being what is taught in Japanese History 101 classes the world over, is none too popular, so let me refer anyone interested to the Wikipedia article on Japanese History and give some relevant quotes from same.

DNA analysis suggests that the Ainu, an indigenous people that live in Hokkaidō and the northern part of Honshū are descended from the Jōmon and thus represent descendants of the first inhabitants of Japan
—
The start of the Yayoi period marked the influx of new practices such as weaving, rice farming, shamanism[citation needed] and iron and bronze-making brought from Korea or China. For example, some paleoethnobotany studies show that wet-rice cultivation began about 8000 BC in the Yangtze River Delta and spread to Japan about 1000 BC.
—
The polity, suppressing the clans and acquiring agricultural lands, maintained a strong influence in the western part of Japan. Japan started to send tributes to Imperial China in the 5th century. In the Chinese history records, the polity was called Wa and its five kings were recorded. Based upon the Chinese model, they developed a central administration and an imperial court system and its society was organized into occupation groups.

Close relationships between the Three Kingdoms of Korea and Japan began during the middle of this period, around the end of the 4th century.

From the section on the Taika Reform.

The Reform began with land reform, based on Confucian ideas and philosophies from China, but the true aim of the reforms was to bring about greater centralization and to enhance the power of the imperial court, which was also based on the governmental structure of China. Envoys and students were dispatched to China to learn seemingly everything from the Chinese writing system, literature, religion, and architecture, to even dietary habits at this time. Even today, the impact of the reforms can still be seen in Japanese cultural life. All of this happened in the 600s

All this is the same as was taught me at Aarhus University as late as last year. I’d like you to disprove anything I have said. Remember, I have at no time claimed that this is the unsullied truth, just that this is what is consensus amongst scholars.
Ajapa

Fighting against an invisible enemy is a hard task. Are you fighting against some very rare extremist nationalist revisionist Japanese?

To mention on what happened in from Jomon to Yayoi period, there are still greater possibility that things were quite different than we thought. And, I am personally not interested in being taught again and again on what I had learned in my elementary school history class.
Rune

@Ajapa

I guess your comment was directed at me?

Most of my posts, except for the last, was directed directly at other posts in the thread. The lasts I felt was appropriate to support my other points with quotes. It’s regrettable that you feel I am trying to teach you what you have already learned, that was not the point. The point was to bring the consensus knowledge on Ainu to light to first Fat Tony who asked

[...] should he really be referring to Ainu as “Japan’s indigenous people”? What are the Japanese, if that’s the case?

He asked a question, I answered. You, being Japanese, know the answer from your elementary school history class, as you point out, but obviously, Fat Tony didn’t and asked a relevant question which I answered. The same goes for 404error who commented

there a more like Hokkaido indigenous are they?

The rest of my comments are directed at J who claim another position, ie that China had little to no influence on Japanese socio-political development and also on the people who apparently disagree with what I have written by voting negative. This in spite of the fact that I have pointed out time and again, that what I am presenting is merely the consensus on the matter and not necessarily the be-all-end-all. I have put several qualifiers into my posts. With regards to the revisionists, I made one mention that there of course are dissenters and mentioned the two most frequent camps of dissenters, that was not a judgement call.

If you find it silly that I devote so much time to writing on this matter, you might be right. But believe me, it is born out of a desire to get my point across without being misunderstood, which can be very difficult in a textual medium where I as sender cannot gauge the receivers (ie readers) response and elaborate on my point as easily as in conversation. This is how I am schooled to debate and it might seem over-the-top in a forum such as this. Believe me though, that no ill will is intended.
Ajapa

Rune,

I thought you have just pissed off by people simply pressing the red thumb down buttons for each of your comments without leaving any comments and you assume that those people are some sort of “scholars who deny any influence from the mainland” you once mentioned.

Sorry if I was wrong.

Jomon-Yayoi era is basically prehistoric and thus there can be always dispute and opposing views.

Ajapa

People indigenous to Japanese islands are usually called as Jomon people but Jomon people are not exactly the same as Ainu. Jomon people as a whole can hardly be regarded homogeneous but rather it is now considered that they can be more naturally divided into several groups. Ainu people are thus the descendants of one of the groups of Jomon people.

Things are not very clear yet though.

G-chan

Interesting report. Sounds a lot like Aborigines in Australia, “Indians” in America, etc.

Cultures get assimilated. Some as a matter of natural course, some by accident, and some by design.

You can do what you can do now in the present, but with respect to the past there is no point in crying over spilt milk. If your culture assimilated a weaker one before you were born YOU DON’T OWE ANYONE AN APOLOGY. You can see what you can do in the present, but some things just aren’t going to be able to be made back “right”.

Interesting that Al Jazeera is reporting on this. I’m of the opinion that reason one for the spat between the West and the Middle East currently has to do with fear on the part of the latter of cultural assimilation (of the creeping “natural course” or perhaps “accident” variety).
Yuseff

The Ainu people have such thick hair! I’m talking about the hair on their heads.

It’s beautiful. Their art is also beautiful, but I’m not sure if listening to their singing was a good experience or not.

Some of the Ainu people can pass for an Arab. I say that because I’m an Arab myself. I perhaps can also pass for an Ainu.
Phil

Really good report. Nicely shot, edited and reported.
Bojangles

Well, I understand that any suffering inflicted by past generations cannot be attributed to the present generation; however, it is an attempt to escape any responsibility to maintain a sort of indifference or denying that there never was any blame to begin with when there was in the first place.

What if your father got prosperous by oppressing other people, and you were born and raised in a prosperous environment while the oppressed continue to suffer from the consequences of the previous generation? While you are not to be blamed, it is outright evil to pretend that everything is as it should be, and to perpetuate any sort of illusion that avoids the painful past rather than confront it- it’s not about having guilt, it’s about doing something to absolve guilt by doing what is just, rather than screaming “We don’t owe anyone anything!” because it just sets the tone for any future relations with others. That is, you’re more likely to weasel your way out of all sorts of responsibility because you’d rather not confront the mistakes of past generations.

For example: The United States- did Japan really have to tell the Americans that they had a responsibility to help rebuild a nation they firebombed and twice made a victim of nuclear weapons? No! I think the Japanese were expecting to be left alone and just rebuild like how earthquakes don’t give a damn when they topple their buildings.

But I think there’s some hopeful signs with the Japanese government acknowledging the existence of the Ainu. No reason to despair, really.

As for the Ainu- they’re tough, aren’t they? How many centuries have these people lived a distinct culture, only to die out because the descendants of foreigners absorbed and assimilated them like Borg. For this reason, I strongly advocate a new influx of mainland immigrants from Korea and China. The Japanese would know how the Aniu would feel and the birth rate would increase.

helical

You sort of had me until the last paragraph.
Revenge by proxy for a perceived injustice totally removed from what I’m guessing is any personal interests? Really?

Maybe I should advocate for China to invade the mainland United States and relocate all Americans to some wasteland desert. That way, Americans today would know how Native Americans felt when the white man came and took their land. Hey, and then China would probably be nice enough to absolve the United States of that massive debt too.

Al Jazeera English reports on Japan’s Ainu community

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