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ABSTRACT
This roundtable presents the proceedings of the “Hokkaidō 150: Settler Colonialism and Indigeneity in Modern Japan and Beyond” workshop held at the University of British Columbia in March 2019. The sesquicentennial of Japanese settler colonization of the northern island of Hokkaidō or Ainu Mosir received only scant attention either in Japan or around the world. The goal of this roundtable is to reinsert settler colonialism into modern Japanese history while introducing the case of the Ainu into global conversations of Indigeneity. Katsuya Hirano draws attention to how the Meiji state manipulated ideas of ownership to enable exploitation of Ainu lands. ann-elise lewallen recenters Ainu women’s resistance to the sexual colonization of Hokkaidō. Mai Ishihara interrogates her own positionality and asks why many people with Ainu heritage remain silent. Sheryl Lightfoot reviews how the case of the Ainu in Hokkaidō complicates prevailing paradigms of settler colonial studies. Musicians Mayunkiki, Tomoe Yahata, and Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson discuss issues of Indigenous identity and their practice. Finally, Danika Medak-Saltzman concludes the roundtable by re-situating Ainu at the intersection of settler colonial and Native studies, challenging Japan scholars to more meaningfully engage and prioritize Indigenous studies.
Acknowledgements
Hokkaidō 150 took place on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people and was hosted by the Centre for Japanese Research at the University of British Columbia.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Tristan R. Grunow ([email protected]) is a historian of modern Japan. At the time of Hokkaidō 150 he was an assistant professor in the Department of History and a member of the Centre for Japanese Research at the University of British Columbia. He is now an associate research scholar at the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University.
Fuyubi Nakamura ([email protected]) is a sociocultural anthropologist trained at Oxford. She is a curator at the Museum of Anthropology and an associate member in the Departments of Anthropology and Asian Studies as well as the Centre for Japanese Research and Himalaya Program at the University of British Columbia.
Katsuya Hirano ([email protected]) is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of California-Los Angeles. His publications include “Settler Colonialism in the Making of Japan’s Hokkaidō” in Ed Cavanagh and Lorenzo Veracini (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Settler Colonialism (London: Routledge, 2016).
Mai Ishihara ([email protected]) obtained her doctorate in cultural anthropology from Hokkaido University in 2018. She is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Humanities and Human Sciences, Hokkaido University. Her research focuses on people with Ainu heritage.
ann-elise lewallen ([email protected]) is an associate professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara and author of The Fabric of Indigeneity: Ainu Identity, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Japan (2016). lewallen dedicates this essay to the memory of her adopted Ainu grandmother, the late Tōyama Saki.
Sheryl Lightfoot ([email protected]) is senior advisor to the President on Indigenous Affairs, Canada Research Chair in Global Indigenous Rights and Politics, and an associate professor in First Nations and indigenous studies as well as political science at the University of British Columbia.
Mayunkiki is a member of Marewrew, a female Ainu quartet that performs traditional Ainu songs. She is also an instructor of the Ainu language and researches traditional Ainu tattooing known as sinuye.
Danika Medak-Saltzman ([email protected]) is an assistant professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Syracuse University. Her work focuses on Indigenous Feminisms, Native histories, Indigenous thought and theory, transnational Indigeneity, Indigenous futurisms, and visual culture.
Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson ([email protected]) is a Haida musician, artist, and lawyer, well known for her work in aboriginal environmental law and as a recognized keeper of traditions. She has dedicated herself to the continuation of Haida culture.
Tomoe Yahata is a curator who works for the Foundation for Ainu Culture and is preparing to open the National Ainu Museum in 2020 in her hometown, Shiraoi, Hokkaidō. She is also a singer and dancer, and committed to introducing Ainu culture.
Notes
1 Japanese Cabinet Secretariat Citation2018.
2 Hokkaidō Government Citation2019.
3 Takahashi Citation2019.
4 Please visit the UBC Hokkaidō Citation150 website (https://meijiat150.arts.ubc.ca/hokkaido150/) to learn more about the workshop, see photos and video of Ainu and Haida musical performances, view videos of the workshop panels, peruse digital resources related to Ainu history, and listen to supplementary Hokkaidō 150 podcast episodes hosted by Tristan Grunow.
5 Personal correspondence, June 17, 2019. Many thanks to Hirano for discussions on this point.
6 Wolfe Citation1999, 163.
7 Matsu'ura Citation2002 [Citation1912], 108.
8 Hirano Citation2015.
9 Capron Citation2015 [Citation1875], 48.
10 Capron Citation2015 [Citation1875], 43.
11 Capron Citation2015 [Citation1875], 59.
12 Chikappu Citation2001, 235.
13 In this essay I employ the toponyms Ezo to refer to Wajin conceptualizations of the land up until 1869, Hokkaidō to reference Wajin conceptualizations of the land post-1869, and Ainu Mosir to recognize distinct Ainu relations with their ancestral land and question the continued normalization of the settler state’s claims over Hokkaido.
14 A detailed discussion of Ainu women’s roles in Hokkaido’s early colonization is published in lewallen Citation2016; here I analyze how heteropatriarchy, settler colonialism, and genocide were interwoven in women’s experiences.
15 Cf. Mason Citation2012.
16 Ogihara Citation2005.
17 Tsuda Citation2014; lewallen Citation2016.
18 Kayano Citation1978.
19 Heteropatriarchy refers to the imposition of social systems in which patriarchy and heterosexual relations are instituted, normalized, and all other social relations, including those with the non-human world, are seen as aberrant. See Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill Citation2013.
20 Howell Citation1995.
21 Cf. Whyte Citation2015.
22 Kaihō Citation1992, 183–185.
23 Cited in Sasaki Citation2013, 57.
24 Matsu’ura Citation1969, 786–787.
25 Matsu’ura Citation1969, 749.
26 Matsu’ura cited in Kaihō Citation1992, 183–186.
27 Matsu’ura Citation1969, 768–770.
28 Gilio-Whitaker Citation2019, 39.
29 Hanasaki Citation1993.
30 Takakura Citation1972.
31 Matsu’ura Citation1977.
32 Wolfe Citation2006.
33 UN Convention on Genocide 1948 quoted in Office of the Special UN Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide 2010, 3. The ongoing legacy of heteropatriarchy and settler colonialism on Indigenous women is increasingly gaining global recognition. On June 4, 2019, the Canadian government recognized the national epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls as genocide. See National Inquiry Citation2019.
34 Revised and edited, with annotations, by Fuyubi Nakamura, to whom I am indebted.
35 Kaneko Citation2014a. Unless otherwise stated, translation is by Fuyubi Nakamura.
36 Kaneko Citation2014b.
37 Abe quoted in Mainichi Shimbun, August 17, 2019.
38 Ishihara Citation2018a and Citation2018b.
39 Ishihara Citation2018b, 137.
40 Turner Citation1969, 143.
41 Hokkaidō Government Citation2017.
42 Morris-Suzuki Citation2005, 26.
43 I acknowledge the significant contributions of Fumiya Nagai whose conscientious efforts made this article possible.
44 For details on global Indigenous politics, see Lightfoot Citation2016.
45 U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs Citation2019.
46 U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs Citation2019: E/CN.4 Sub.2 / 1983/21/Add.8; para. 379.
47 Ishihara Citation2019.
48 lewallen Citation2016, 30.
49 lewallen Citation2019.
50 Hirano Citation2019.
51 Hirano Citation2019.
52 lewallen Citation2016, 32.
53 Siddle Citation1996, 123–133.
54 For more on this court case, see https://www.haidagwaiiobserver.com/news/another-victory-for-the-haida/.
55 Featherstone Citation2017.
56 Hopson and Zwigenberg Citation2018.
57 Wajin refers to ethnic Japanese people.
58 Medak-Saltzman Citation2015.
59 See Hirano in this article.
60 Barakat Citation2018.
61 McClintock Citation1992.
62 Medak-Saltzman Citation2015.
63 Medak-Saltzman Citation2019.
64 Byrd Citation2014, 151.
65 Barakat Citation2018, 361.
66 Kauanui Citation2016.