The Ainu of Japan: an indigenous people or an ethnic group?

Abstract

In 1997 the Japanese Parliament ratified the Act for the Promotion of Ainu Culture and the Dissemination and Advocacy for. the Traditions of the Ainu and Ainu Culture; this act officially designates Ainu culture and language for restoration and promotion in Japan. However, despite demands from Ainu people to be recognized as an indigenous group, the Japanese government designates the Ainu only as an ‘ethnic minority’. Generally, the Japanese define Ainu people as descendants of those. who assumed Ainu culture in Hokkaido during the period of Japanese colonization (from the 13th/14th centuries to the middle of the 19th century). A primary consideration today is to identify and date the origins of Ainu culture (which can then be conserved in accordance with the 1997 Act). Most Japanese academics agree that the Ainu people are the prior inhabitants of Hokkaido, but they also consider Hokkaido ‘Japan's inherent territory’. At present, the Japanese authorities seem to consider the term ‘indigenous’ to mean a population who had prior possession of land, but who now have no right to it or its natural resources. However, many Ainu continue to demand recognition as an ‘indigenous people’, rather than an ethnic minority.     

北海道文学述略

北海道不仅以风光旖旎名重扶桑,其作家的数量和创作成就亦位居前茅。从明治初年登上北海道土地的国木田独步至30年代名扬世界的日本左翼代表作家小林多喜二,乃至今日誉满全球的渡边淳一等,均在这片丰饶的土地上留下了无数精美的篇章。     

Mundane mobilities,banal travels

Participatory approaches have become a critical and somewhat normalised methodology in geography for working in a positive and constructive way with Indigenous communities. Nevertheless, recent literature has seldom examined the sustainability of participatory projects or looked critically at their ongoing impacts. Since the early 2000s, Nibutani, an Ainu community in Hokkaido, Japan, has developed several participatory projects led by a non-Indigenous professional. The projects have involved community members working to revitalise and promote local Ainu culture. Over the last decade, some positive outcomes from the projects have been observed; for example, the younger generation has had opportunities to engage intensively in learning local Indigenous knowledge and skills. The projects have also helped some participants to develop a stronger sense of ethnic identity and gain empowerment. Still, the power transfer from the talented non-Indigenous leader to community members has been limited and Nibutani has yet to realise a sustainable project structure. Also, community members have multiple perspectives in regard to the direction of participatory projects and their impact. I discuss these issues in Nibutani's participatory projects based on my observations and interviews and suggest that Indigenous geographies need to undertake follow-up evaluations of participatory projects.     

The revival of rituals among the Sakha‐Yakut and the Hokkaido Ainu

The revival of rituals has been one of the serious concerns of indigenous peoples. This paper deals with cultural revitalization movements among the Sakha‐Yakut in eastern Siberia and the Ainu in Hokkaido. First, it examines the revival of rituals among the Sakha. The relationship between recent cultural revitalization movements and shamanism in a broad sense, as well as the revival of rituals, focussing especially on the ysyakh festival, are examined, and the motivation for this revival is discussed. Second, the cultural revitalization movements among the Ainu after the Second World War and the recent revival of their rituals are described and the motivation for it discussed. Finally, the paper compares the revival of rituals among these two different ethnic groups and discusses its significance.     

Not-so-new silk roads: Japan's foreign policies on Asian connectivity infrastructure under the radar

Scholarly narratives concerning China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) tend to contextualise this project within China's rivalry with the United States and Japan. Such interpretations often reduce and misconstrue Japan's initiatives in Asian infrastructure finance as mere reactivity to China's advances. This paper will showcase Japan's own foreign and financial policies regarding infrastructure in Asia and the New Silk Road regions since the end of the Cold War. I argue that Japan's presence in that field is underappreciated and under-researched, as Japan's infrastructural footprint in the New Silk Road significantly pre-dates the BRI. Furthermore, I stress the fact that Japan's foreign policy in Asian infrastructure finance featured important cooperative postures toward China, especially within multilateral development banks. The paper makes a contribution to emerging scholarship on the BRI—often reliant on strategic communications and projections—by highlighting Japan's role in regional infrastructure to show how our understanding of international relations and international political economy in Asia can be better informed by economic history and area studies.     

Towards a Culturally Sustainable Environmental Impact Assessment: The Protection of Ainu Cultural Heritage in the Saru River Cultural Impact Assessment,Japan

Culturally sustainable environmental impact assessment (EIA) requires consideration of the impact of development on local people's cultural activities, including holding ceremonies, collecting resources, and learning skills, which are fundamental essences of Indigenous rights. While culturally sustainable EIA has become a common practice when a development project involves an Indigenous community, it is still argued that Indigenous cultural heritage is not adequately protected. This is due to the fact that Indigenous people do not always keep power in the post‐approval stage of EIA, or the lack of practical measures to minimise the impact of development projects on Indigenous cultural heritage and to enhance the possibility of reaching a consensus among stakeholders. The Cultural Impact Assessment of the Saru River Region in Japan was the first investigation of a site to preserve an ethnic minority culture, with regard to a dam construction. In the second phase of the assessment project, research staff members, some of whom are of Ainu ethnicity, suggested alternative ceremony sites and conducted experimental transplants to protect the local cultural activities. The long‐term investigation by research staff, in fact, influenced the direction of the dam construction. The developer agreed not to proceed with the construction until measures were taken to minimise the impact on cultural activities that would satisfy residents in the construction area. While still early to conclude that Indigenous participation in this assessment project has been successful, Indigenous participation has clearly enhanced the possibility of reaching a consensus. The project should be considered with other published EIA reports, in demonstrating a return from investing in EIA with Indigenous participation, with a practical means for realising Indigenous rights.     

Japan's response to China's rise: regional engagement, global containment, dangers of collision

Japan and China's ability to manage their bilateral relationship is crucial for the stability of the East Asian region. It also has a global impact on the security and economic development of other regions. For just as China's rise has inevitably involved an expansion of its global reach, so Japan's responses to the challenges posed by China have increasingly taken a global form, seeking to incorporate new partners and frameworks outside East Asia. Japan's preferred response to China's regional and global rise in the post‐Cold War period has remained one of default engagement. Japan is intent on promoting China's external engagement with the East Asia region and its internal domestic reform, through upgrading extant bilateral and Japan–China–US trilateral frameworks for dialogue and cooperation, and by emphasizing the importance of economic power to influence China. Japan is deliberately seeking to proliferate regional frameworks for cooperation in East Asia in order to dilute, constrain and ultimately engage China's rising power. However, Japan's engagement strategy also contains the potential to tilt towards default containment. Japan's domestic political basis for engagement is becoming increasingly precarious as China's rise stimulates Japanese revisionism and nationalism. Japan also appears increasingly to be looking to contain China on a global scale by forging new strategic links in Russia and Central Asia, with a ‘concert of democracies’ involving India, Australia and the US, by competing for resources with China in Africa and the Middle East, and by attempting to articulate a values‐based diplomacy to check the so‐called ‘Beijing consensus’. Nevertheless, Japan's perceived inability to channel China's rise either through regional engagement or through global containment carries a further risk of pushing Japan to resort to the strengthening of its military power in an attempt to guarantee its essential national interests. It is in this instance that Japan and China run the danger of a military collision.     

Open Door or Sphere of Influence?: The Diplomacy of the Japanese–French Entente and Fukien Question, 1905–1907

Japanese–French negotiation for their 1907 entente revealed contrasting approaches to the application of the Open Door principle in China, particularly to the Fukien province after the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War. Having learned about France's wish to receive Japanese guarantee for the safety of its colony in Indo-China, Japan strove to define Fukien as its additional sphere of influence once it had secured much needed loans in the Paris financial market. France tried to resist Japan's request to define Fukien as its sphere by adopting a secret note, and attempted to restrain Japan's future expansion into China by enmeshing Japan in the web of political and financial ententes with itself and Britain supporting Open Door. This approach of France was a continuation of French policy toward East Asia since the Boxer Uprising, securing its economic interests by supporting Open Door rather than pursuing territorial competition with other great powers in China. In contrast, the Japanese government strenuously attempted to weaken the general application of Open Door doctrine in China, and could define Fukien as Japan's additional sphere by securing a secret explanatory note for such a purpose.     

Asia's century and the problem of Japan's centrality

Japan has long been regarded as a central component of America's grand strategy in Asia. Scholars and practitioners assume this situation will persist in the face of China's rise and, indeed, that a more ‘normal’ Japan can and should take on an increasingly central role in US‐led strategies to manage this power transition. This article challenges those assumptions by arguing that they are, paradoxically, being made at a time when Japan's economic and strategic weight in Asian security is gradually diminishing. The article documents Japan's economic and demographic challenges and their strategic ramifications. It considers what role Japan might play in an evolving security order where China and the US emerge as Asia's two dominant powers by a significant margin. Whether the US–China relationship is ultimately one of strategic competition or accommodation, it is argued that Japan's continued centrality in America's Asian grand strategy threatens to become increasingly problematic. It is posited that the best hope for circumventing this problem and its potentially destabilizing consequences lies in the nurturing of a nascent ‘shadow condominium’ comprising the US and China, with Japan as a ‘marginal weight’ on the US side of that arrangement.     

Indigenous Methodologies: Suggestions for Junior Researchers

Indigenous methodologies in geography have recently been developed to decolonise Western dominated paradigms. It has been argued that research which does not benefit Indigenous communities should not be conducted. However, Indigenous methodologies are not taught in many post-secondary institutions. Therefore, when they pursue Indigenous topics, many junior researchers are self-taught in these methodologies. However, these methodologies cannot be defined simply and they are too diverse to be learnt in a short period. In Japan, Indigenous peoples are not widely recognised and research on contemporary Indigenous issues is limited. The concept of Indigenous methodologies is rarely discussed. Because of this, Japanese researchers rarely identify their research as adopting an Indigenous methodology. Indigenous researchers are thereby discouraged from pursuing Indigenous methodologies. Furthermore, a methodology or a thesis statement used by researchers to reflect Indigenous perspectives often gets little support from Indigenous peoples. My master's research on the Ainu mirrored this situation. While Indigenous methodologies remain difficult to learn, junior researchers should not be discouraged from this form of engagement. Practical suggestions are therefore necessary to encourage their use and application. Based on my experience, I suggest that researchers approach Indigenous communities from a learning perspective. This would encourage open-mindedness and sensitivity. Researchers should also be prepared and willing to refine their research questions and to continue their literature searches after their fieldwork is completed. These strategies could limit misinterpretation and exploitation of Indigenous knowledges and peoples.     

Contextualising Australia–Japan security cooperation: the normative framing of Japanese security policy

On July 1, 2014, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's cabinet commenced a historic transformation of post-war Japan's security policy by overturning previous interpretations of the constitution's pacifist clause, Article 9. The Cabinet Decision on the Development of Seamless Security Legislation to Ensure Japan's Survival and Protect Its People stated that collective self-defence was consistent with the constitution and, consequently, Japan would immediately develop a more proactive and less constrained security policy. But while this outcome may seem sensible and overdue from a realist perspective of Japan's standing as a mature democratic nation in an increasingly difficult geopolitical situation, the manner in which it is being enacted may seriously undermine the normative legitimacy of Japan's new security identity. In this article, the author examines how Shinzō Abe's administration has attempted to shape the norms surrounding security policy revision in Japan, and how these norms, in turn, have affected or constrained Abe's agency. This is done with specific reference to the external contexts of the USA's ‘rebalance’ policy and the deepening of Japan's security relationship with Australia, with a view to anticipating how normative turmoil might impact on the potential of this relationship.     

30年来日本对华经贸政策的调整与演变

日本是中国最重要的贸易伙伴,是我国最大的援助国家,最大的投资国家之一,从1972年9月恢复邦交正常化以来,中日经贸关系总体来说发展顺利,但在不同时期日本采取的对华经贸政策是不同的,是不断根据国家的经济发展现状结合国际形势的变化进行调整。70年代日本对华经贸政策是以发展本国经济为前提推动中日经贸关系向前发展。80年代继承了70年代的对华政策,但政治色彩加浓;90年代采取不断发展中日经贸关系的政策;展望21世纪发展友好的中日经贸关系仍为日本对华的主导政策,但摩擦会不断增加。     

Soft Transport Policies and Ground‐Level Ozone: An Evaluation of the “Clear the Air Challenge” in Salt Lake City

In recent years, communities have begun to implement both “soft” and mandatory policies designed to address worsening air quality. Voluntary or soft transportation policies have included air quality alert systems that encourage people not to drive on days when the air quality index is above a specified threshold and public education/action campaigns that focus on reducing automobile related travel. In this article, we evaluate the effectiveness of one such soft policy, the Clear the Air Challenge (CAC), in reducing ground‐level ozone during the Wasatch Front's summer ozone season. Using daily ozone data and color‐coded daily air quality designations from 2006 through 2012, we estimate a range of nonequivalent control group models. In only one of the models does the CAC generate a statistically significant but small reduction in ground‐level ozone. Future research should assess the full range of costs and benefits to the public associated with such soft transport policies.     

Cultural attraction, ‘soft power’ and proximity: the popularity of Japanese language in Hong Kong since the 1980s

This paper discusses the cultural attraction, ‘soft power’, and importance of cultural proximity to the popularity of the Japanese language in Hong Kong over the last three decades. Exploration of both primary and secondary sources constitutes the main research methodology employed. Email surveys and face-to-face interviews were undertaken to ascertain the nature and degree of the cultural attraction that stimulates local people's interest in learning Japanese language and culture. The paper concludes that Japan's ‘soft power’, i.e., popular culture and cultural products, are the most influential driving forces behind the popularity of Japanese language in Hong Kong. Also, the Japanese cultural proximity to the Chinese is another factor that excites local people's interest in learning Japanese as a foreign language. In the Hong Kong context, geopolitical and national identity factors do not seem to detract from the popularity of the Japanese language.     

Japan's security policy,the US-Japan alliance,and the 'war on terror': Incrementalism confirmed or radical leap?

Japan's response to the 'war on terror', in the form of the despatch of the JSDF to the Indian Ocean and Iraq, has given policy-makers and academic analysts grounds for believing that Japan is becoming a more assertive military power in support of its US ally. This article argues that JSDF despatch does not necessarily mark a divergence from Japan's previous security path over the short term. This is because its policy-makers have continued to hedge around commitments to the US through careful constitutional framing of JSDF missions and capabilities, allowing it opt-out clauses in future conflicts, and because it has also sought to pursue economic and alternative diplomatic policies in responding to terrorism and WMD proliferation in the Middle East. However, at the same this article argues that Japan has established important precedents for expanded JSDF missions in the 'war on terror', and that over the medium to longer terms these are likely to be applied to the bilateral context of the US-Japan security treaty in East Asia, and to push Japan towards becoming a more active military power through participation in US-led multinational 'coalitions of the willing' in East Asia and globally.     

Change and continuity in strategic culture: the cases of Australia and New Zealand

The relationship between strategic culture and defence policies has not yet been much explored. Australia and New Zealand provide some evidence of the impact of strategic culture on defence policy. Australia has a dominant strategic culture which is strong enough to prompt both the major political parties to adopt realist defence policies, even though Labor has a traditionally ‘idealist’ outlook. Until the 1970s, New Zealand had a similar dominant strategic culture which influenced both major political parties, but it was always less strong than Australia's. In recent years, the Labour Party has rejected that culture, and allowed an alternative strategic culture based on its ideology to influence its defence policies. The result has been that on the last two occasions when Labour has been in government, New Zealand's defence policy has changed dramatically.     

Japan's global environmentalism: rhetoric and reality

The 1992 Earth Summit marked the emergence of a new type of global environmentalism in which nation states increasingly sought to represent themselves as key environmental actors. Since the early 1990s, Japan has attempted to position itself rhetorically as a global environmental leader. This rhetoric must be compared to Japan's international environmental impacts, which are considerable, especially in East and Southeast Asia. Japan's domestic environmental situation is evaluated, and five key areas of international environmental impacts are discussed: official development assistance, foreign direct investment, deforestation, overfishing, and the promotion of high technology. Motivations for Japan's use of global environmentalist rhetoric including its domestic political environment, geopolitical goals, geoeconomic motivations, and the increasing globalization of the Japanese economy are analyzed. The spread of the Japanese model of development is linked to Asia's continuing environmental crises.     

Financial Deregulation in Japan

This article examines the process of financial deregulation in Japan and asks: what are the prospects for future reform of Japan's financial sector? In the past, reform of Japan's financial sector has been slow and incremental as various vested interests, including political interests, negotiated specific compromise outcomes rather than sweeping changes. This article argues that, in spite of recently announced reforms, change will continue to be gradual and piecemeal because the institutional structures which in the past worked against any rapid response to pressures for change are still in place.     

The Tenpō-Era (1830–1844) Map of Matsumae-no-shima and the Institutionalization of Tokugawa Cartography

Japan’s early modern Tokugawa government (1603?1868) sponsored a series of projects of national mapping. The Matsumae family, ruling what is now Hokkaido, were loosely incorporated into these projects. It was only during the last of these, in the Tenpō era (1830?1848), that their lands were represented in the same manner as the rest of Japan because the central government made the final Matsumae-no-shima map. This article examines the production of this final official map of Japan’s north to argue that the Tokugawa’s institutional mapping made this region part of the nation through its own mapping framework, distinct from the cartographic forms with which national or imperial states are usually associated.