Japan’s Ainu people have faced an overlooked history of repression

Next summer, the torch relay of the Tokyo Olympics will make its way across the archipelago of Japan. One of the places the Olympic cavalcade will stop at is a new museum in Shiraoi on Hokkaido, the most northerly of the four main Japanese islands. The National Ainu Museum has been established to celebrate a history that the Japanese have kept hidden for almost 150 years.

The people we think of as the Japanese, the Wajin, are not and have never been the only ethnic group living in Japan. Hokkaido is the traditional home to a forgotten people: the Ainu, who have their own distinct language, religion, diet, dress and way of life. They are also a people who have faced an overlooked history of repression.

In the 19th century, isolationist Japan faced a choice: either modernise or risk domination by the encroaching powers of Russia, Britain and the US. In the Meiji restoration, which began in 1868, the traditional shoguns were swept aside and a reforming, centralising government headed by the emperor took power. Japan embarked upon on a programme of modernisation, which included the colonisation of Hokkaido, much of which had hitherto been an autonomous region.

In 1869, Japan annexed the island and, in the same years in which thousands of Americans headed west, thousands of Wajin Japanese migrated north. Their task was to open up the interior of Hokkaido and to develop the island’s natural resources – lumber, farmland and coal. The government gave the pioneers horses and offered them instruction in the farming techniques then being imported into Japan from America. Hokkaido was going to be both modern and Japanese.

The Ainu, with their facial tattoos, hunting traditions and animist religion, didn’t fit with this vision. And they found themselves subjected to a programme of Japanisation. They were given Wajin names and forbidden to speak their own language, to practise their custom of animal sacrifice, or to mark their bodies with tattoos. The government appropriated Ainu hunting grounds and tried, largely without success, to force them to become farmers. This programme of assimilation was enshrined in law with the passing of the Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act in 1899. The new legislation eliminated traditional land rights and automatically converted the Ainu into Japanese citizens. Japan thus presented itself to the 20th century as an ethnically homogeneous nation.

By 1964, when Japan hosted its first Olympics, the Ainu were all but forgotten. Japanese children growing up in Hokkaido knew nothing of its indigenous past, and at school were taught only the history of the Wajin Japanese. Even those of Ainu ancestry were often unaware of their heritage, because older relatives kept it secret from them. As late as 1986, Japan’s prime minister was claiming that “there are no ethnic minorities in Japan”.

But not all the Ainu gave up on their culture. A few demanded recognition and looked for support from the UN Committee on Indigenous Rights. Finally, in 1997, Japan recognised the Ainu as an “independent ethnic group” and passed the Ainu Cultural Promotion Law. More recently, the government accorded the Ainu ‘indigenous people’ status, which should help to protect and to sustain Ainu culture. When the Ainu museum opens next year, it will be a very public acknowledgement of a history too long hidden.