The Penn Museum, in collaboration with the Penn Libraries, hosted various Ainu-themed programming.
Credit: Chenyao LiuThe Penn Museum, in collaboration with the Penn Libraries, recently launched various Ainu-themed programming, including a documentary screening and an ongoing exhibit on Ainu representation in media.
The screening featured the 2018 documentary, “Ainu: Indigenous People of Japan,” which follows four Ainu elders in Biratori, Hokkaido, and the ways they contribute to the preservation of Ainu culture. It was followed by a Q&A session with filmmaker Naomi Mizoguchi.
Before making the film, Mizoguchi co-founded Cineminga, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing film equipment and training for indigenous filmmakers in Colombia, Ecuador, and Nepal. She was first inspired to learn more about the Ainu people when she was asked by a colleague about the indigenous people of Japan and realized she did not know much about the topic.
To learn more about the Ainu, she spent years living in Biratori with Kazunobu Kawanano, one of the elders prominently featured in the documentary.
“I was not there to make a film,” Mizoguchi said. “I was just there to learn what’s going on, and Ainu culture.”
She formed close relationships with all of the featured elders in her time in Hokkaido before making the documentary, even referring to Kawanano as “otou-san” (father, in Japanese) as a term of respect. This is reflected in the film’s focus on the Elders’ everyday routines and rituals, in which they pass on and share the importance of Ainu culture.
The film features scenes of Sachiko Kibata teaching students the Ainu language and helping them rehearse for speech competitions, Reiko Kayano teaching sewing lessons for traditional Ainu clothing, Tamotsu Nabesawa giving farming advice and demonstrations, and Kazunobu Kawanano and his wife making tree bark fabrics and teaching children to cultivate millet.
The documentary also portrays the ongoing struggles of maintaining the Ainu culture after the forced-assimilation and stigmatization of Ainu culture that began in Meiji-era Japan. For instance, exposure to the Ainu language is scarce: no one in the Biratori community predominantly speaks it, and old recorded tapes are a primary learning tool.
“We should all follow [Kibata]’s example,” Shiro Kayano said, the son of Shigeru Kayano, the first Ainu member of the Japanese National Diet. “If we don’t continue our efforts, the Ainu will go extinct.”
Wajin — to the people of the Japanese archipelago — colonization of Hokkaido poses additional challenges. The construction of the Nibutani dam, completed in 1997, was fiercely protested against by Ainu activists, including Shigeru Kayano, and resulted in the flooding of sacred Ainu lands and the disruption of the ecosystem.
“Long ago, there were marshes around the Saru river where you could find swan mussels,” Kawanano said. “Now the marshes have disappeared because of the dam.”
The film also contained traditional Ainu music — provided by the Biratori Ainu Culture Association — as attributed by the film’s website. The film closes on a song with the lyrics, “may our community pass down our Ainu blood. Let us thrive and be happy. Deities, please protect us.”
The screening accompanies another collaborative exhibit by the Penn Museum and Penn Libraries called “From Manuscript to Manga: Ainu Representation in Media,” the fruition of years of planning and a chance to feature Penn’s extensive Ainu collections.
“We wanted to make sure that there was some kind of programming that would involve having Ainu voices present,” Stephen Lang, keeper of the Asian Collection at the Penn Museum, said.
The exhibit accompanies increasing legal and cultural awareness of the Ainu people. The Japanese government officially recognized the Ainu people in 2019, and new programs in Biratori aim to incentivize the preservation and dissemination of Ainu culture. More positive representations of Ainu people in media, informed by better research and consultation, have also helped drive more mainstream interest in their culture.
College first-year Hannah Nieuwveld expressed gratitude for the array of programming offered at the exhibit.
“It's a benefit that the University supports the humanities and the arts,” she said. "Best case, you learn something and have a transformative experience — worst case, you get a cookie.”
Beyond the Ainu people, Lang expressed hope in an increased interest in indigenous groups around the world, and a more accurate and nuanced understanding of Asia’s ethnic landscape.
“There's minority groups in China that we have textiles from, and people in Sri Lanka and India … We have collections from them, too,” Lang said. “Asia isn't homogeneous at all."
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