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ABSTRACT
The tension between silence and vocalization, embrace and rejection, of Ainu ancestry has been a key factor in negotiating Ainu subjectivity since Ainu territories were colonized in 1869. As early as 1799, expressions of Ainu ethnicity were alternately cloaked and exaggerated as Japan vacillated between assimilation and segregation policies in eastern Hokkaido Ainu communities. Officially recognized as Japan's indigenous peoples in 2008, Ainu subjectivity has become increasingly politicized as the state and other stakeholders seek to define Ainu ethnicity for future legislation. Today Ainu belonging is frequently gauged by bodily metaphors of a vocalized blood. Cultural sensibility and blood are often conflated in Ainu discourses of identity: Ainu revivalists report that a sensation of “clamoring blood” (J: chi ga sawagu) inspires them to revisit ancestral memories and begin fashioning Ainu identities. Historically, intra-Ainu relations were not bound to blood but instead embodied in material expressions, such as invisible cords for women and crest-like emblems for men, symbols that enabled flexibility where needed. Since the twentieth century, the hyper focus on blood raises the specter of colonially imposed rhetorics of eugenics, assimilation policies, and specifically, the problem of race. Relatedness in the Ainu community is not exclusively defined by “consanguineal relations”; rather, a long history of adopting ethnic Japanese children and non-Ainu into Ainu families renders complex the question of identity. This article assesses how immutable notions of racial difference intersect with self-determination and current articulations of Ainu identity.
Acknowledgments
This article, which is a substantially expanded and revised version of Chapter 3 in my forthcoming book, The Fabric of Indigeneity: Modern Ainu Identity and Gender in Colonial Japan (School for Advanced Research Press and University of New Mexico Press, 2016), draws upon ethnographic work in Ainu communities (2004–2009). I am indebted to many Ainu friends who opened their homes and memories to me, especially Tōyama Saki. Special thanks to Jennifer Robertson, Mark K. Watson, Maile Arvin, and two anonymous reviewers for engaged reading and feedback on the manuscript. I am also grateful to discussant Takezawa Yasuko and fellow panelists John Davis, Hwaji Shin, and Yuko Okubo for critical feedback during the panel “Axes of Alterity” at the 2012 American Anthropological Association meetings.
Funding
Research for this article was made possible by the Fulbright-IIE Program, the Hellman Family Fund, the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Research fellowship and the JSPS US Alumni Association BRIDGE Fellowship, the Social Science Research Council, the University of California Center for New Racial Studies, and the UCSB Academic Senate Faculty Research Grant.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Dr ann-elise lewallen's research focuses on critical indigenous studies, gender studies, multiculturalism, and environmental justice in the context of contemporary Japan and in Japan's transnational relations. Her publications include The Fabric of Indigeneity: Contemporary Ainu Identity and Gender in Colonial Japan (School for Advanced Research Press and University of New Mexico Press, forthcoming 2016), wherein she analyzes indigenous Ainu women's use of clothwork and other cultural production as idioms of resistance and tools for trans-generational cultural revival initiatives across the Ainu community. She is also co-editor, with Mark Hudson and Mark Watson, of Beyond Ainu Studies: Changing Academic and Public Perspectives (University of Hawaii Press, 2014).
Notes
1 I carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Ainu communities for a total of five years from January 2004–August 2005, November 2006–November 2008, and then in the summers of 2009, 2011, 2013, and five months during 2014. This article is drawn primarily from fieldwork conducted between 2004 and 2009.
2 Kauanui Citation2008, 3–5.
3 The “one-drop” folk theory was based on centuries-old folk logic of alterity and employed to control marriages between those deemed symbolically “pure” and those marked as symbolically “polluted.” Jennifer Robertson has described how this was synthesized with the twentieth-century eugenics movement to provide scientific legitimacy to an argument of “pure-blood” unions as necessary to preserve the Japanese race (Citation2005, 336).
4 The Ainu Diaspora extends through the Japanese archipelago and overseas. A 1988 Tokyo Prefecture survey placed the number of Ainu residents in Tokyo at 2699, while some observers estimate the Tokyo Ainu population is closer to 10,000 (Watson Citation2014a, 69). Ainu identity claims and access to need-based aid is filtered through the largest Ainu organization, the Ainu Association of Hokkaido (4238 members), and is limited to Ainu residing in Hokkaido.
5 Ainu language contains important hints. For example, degrees of intimacy are not restricted to the flow of blood, but are based on complex networks of interrelations, The term used for ancestor, sinrit, is a compound of the terms “root” (A: sin), and “line, sinew, or vein” (A: rit). See Chiri Citation1973–Citation1976.
6 Kauanui Citation2008, 2.
7 Ibid. 11.
8 Smith Citation2006, 66–73.
9 Medak-Saltzman Citation2015.
10 Ibid.
11 For detailed discussion of the contract fisheries system and its impacts on Ainu society, see Hanasaki Citation1996; Howell Citation2005, Citation2014; Kaihō Citation1992; Kayano et al. Citation1994; Siddle Citation1996; and Walker Citation2001.
12 lewallen Citation2016.
13 For example, in the eastern Hokkaido communities of Shari and Abashiri, a population of 2000 Ainu in 1789 had shrunk to 1312 Ainu in 1822, and by 1859 it had collapsed to 713 persons (Kaihō Citation1992, 189).
14 Maile Arvin (personal communication, May 29, 2014).
15 TallBear Citation2013, 4.
16 TallBear recasts Donna Haraway's framework of “material-semiotic” (Haraway Citation2000, 133) to argue that scientific interpretations (such as assigning genetic markers to human populations) have material consequences and when reinserted into local frameworks have the capacity to redefine human–non-human relationships.
17 TallBear Citation2013, 7.
18 No detailed cultural history of the upsorkut is available in English, excepting cursory discussions in Batchelor Citation1927; Munro Citation1962; Philippi Citation1982; and Sugiura and Befu Citation1962. Japanese sources are more plentiful, including Kōno Citation1931; Haginaka and Kōno Citation1967; Kubodera Citation1952; Natori Citation1940, n.d.; and Segawa Citation1952, Citation1972.
19 Batchelor Citation1927.
20 Batchelor Citation1892; St John Citation1872; and Refsing Citation2000.
21 Chiri Citation1975, 53–54. Chiri, an Ainu-born linguist who was raised speaking Ainu language with his grandmother in Asahikawa, compiled the most comprehensive multi-dialect (Sakhalin and Hokkaido) Ainu language dictionaries (Citation1973, Citation1975) and is thus an important source for understanding the historical meanings of Ainu language terms. Upsor is generally translated in Japanese as “bosom” (J: futokoro), but Chiri glossed it as “genital area” or “vagina,” which suggests the intimacy of being linked through a metaphorically shared womb.
22 Segawa Citation1952, 252.
23 Munro Citation1962 and Peng and Geiser Citation1977, 148.
24 Chiri Citation1975. In contrast, Munro interprets kemrit (A: “blood veins”) as matrilineal kin and Saru Region Ainu linguists Kayano and Batchelor both link “blood veins” in the physical body with metaphorical blood lineage (J: kettō) or “blood stock.”
25 Chiri Citation1975, 486.
26 For example, among the seventy-two terms for offspring, Chiri collected five for “mixed-blood child” and twenty-four that simply mean “child” or “grandchild” (Chiri Citation1975, 486–491, 494–499). Newborn infants generally did not receive proper names at birth, but were assigned nicknames related to excrement or filth, to guard against attacks from malevolent deities. At age four or five, they were christened with names according to the personality traits they displayed.
27 Munro Citation1962, 142–143.
28 Segawa Citation1952, 246–255.
29 Phillippi Citation1982, 50.
30 Segawa Citation1952, 251.
31 The Tokugawa period extended from 1600 to 1868.
32 Anthropologist Jennifer Robertson uses the term “eugenic modernity” to narrate Japanese ideologues’ uses of Western discourses of eugenics to contrive newly national subjects as one prong of nation-building projects. See Robertson Citation2002, 192.
33 Interview with Sikina, Sapporo, May 2005.
34 Morris-Suzuki Citation2002.
35 Segawa Citation1952.
36 Kaihō Citation1992, 42–44.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., 49–51.
39 Hanasaki Citation1996, 120–121.
40 Howell Citation2004, 12.
41 Ibid., 12–13.
42 Watson Citation2014b, 37–44.
43 Ibid., 58.
44 Abe Citation2009, 19.
45 Watson Citation2014b, 84–91.
46 Zainichi Koreans, or ethnic Koreans residing in Japan, is an ethnic category that indicates communities descended from Korean nationals who emigrated to or were compelled to relocate to Japan during Japan's settler colonialism in Korea, 1895–1945, and thereafter. Many of these descendants are fourth and fifth generation ethnic Koreans who are still not granted citizenship in Japan, unless they elect to naturalize.
47 The Burakumin community refers to a labor and descent-based outcast class, which suffered structural discrimination under the Tokugawa government's social stratification system. Although the Tokugawa status hierarchy was disbanded in the mid-nineteenth century, it continues in de facto form and many Burakumin continue to experience discrimination focused on historically Burakumin neighborhoods.
48 Howell Citation2004, 12.
49 Howell Citation2005.
50 Robertson Citation2005, 330, 333.
51 Siddle Citation1996, 12.
52 Robertson Citation2005, 330 and Siddle Citation1996, 12–13.
53 Robertson Citation2002, 336–337.
54 Harris and Kottak Citation1963, 203–209.
55 Robertson Citation2002, 191.
56 Siddle Citation1996, 13.
57 Robertson Citation2002, 191.
58 Ibid., 191.
59 Siddle Citation1996, 12.
60 See Siddle Citation1996, 1–14, for a detailed discussion of the introduction of Social Darwinism to Japan.
61 See Robertson Citation2005 and Suzuki Citation1983.
62 Former governor of Karafuto, Hiraoka Sadatarō, articulated the “pure-blood” position here, and it is cited in Siddle Citation1996, 91–92.
63 Takahashi, cited in Suzuki Citation1983, 32–34, and cited in Robertson Citation2002, 197.
64 Kita in Siddle Citation1996, 94.
65 Ibid., 95.
66 Ibid., 97.
67 Tokyo Ainu Citation2011.
68 Tezuka Citation1978.
69 Ishizaka Citation1992.
70 Sugawara Citation1968.
71 Baba Citation1980, 72.
72 Hankins Citation2014.
73 The expression “whether a person carries Ainu blood or not” (J: Ainu no chi wo hiite iru ka inaka) was used to denote “blood relationships” (J: ketsuen) in the survey (Council for Ainu Policy Promotion, December Citation2011).
74 Barker Citation2011, 7.
75 Kauanui Citation2008; Medak-Saltzman Citation2015; Barker Citation2011; and Arvin Citation2015.
76 Engle Citation2010, 149.
77 Ibid., 13.
78 Ibid., 14.
79 Said Citation1994, 276.
80 Ikeda Shigenori in Robertson Citation2002, 191.
81 lewallen Citation2016.
82 TallBear Citation2013, 8.
83 Ibid.
84 Brave Heart Citation2003, 7–10.