Hamilton: By the first light of day, fishing boats are making their way back to port.
It’s early autumn, and on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, the salmon season has begun.
Hamilton: The boats have been out at sea for just a few hours, but already their holds are filled to the brim.
Each year, forty million salmon are harvested from the waters around Hokkaido, to supply the smart restaurants of Tokyo and beyond.
HamiltonSuper: WALTER HAMILTON It’s all about speed — rushing the fish from the sea to the market. Very different from times past, when the indigenous people of Japan — the Ainu — stalked each individual salmon in the rivers of what was once their land. For this is a story not just about new methods replacing old. Hokkaido’s modern salmon fishery symbolises the conquest of one culture by another. The stripping of a people’s rights and dignity.
Hamilton: A short distance up from the coast, a very different scene.
Hamilton: A century ago, the Japanese government took away these people’s rights to fish the rivers of Hokkaido.
Even now the Ainu need special permission to catch just a few salmon in the traditional way.
Trucked in for the killing, nets laid so they can’t escape, it’s a one sided contest.
To this, a once proud race of hunters and craftsman, have been reduced.
Shigeru Kayano: The Japanese are just a gang of thieves. They invaded this big land of Hokkaido without saying a work to the Ainu — without asking permission, or even greeting us. They came en masse, backed by military power.
Hamilton: Shigeru Kayano is the most famous Ainu in Japan. He’s also just made history becoming the first member of his race to gain a seat in parliament. Kayano-san has devoted his life to defending Ainu culture, while Japanese scholars were measuring it up for the graveyard of history.
Kayano: My mother, for example — they hung a number plate on her.
Hamilton: Literally measuring it up.
As they did his mother, one day in their village.
Kayano: They pulled back her collar and pushed up her sleeves to see how hairy she was. And they took blood. It was dreadful.
music
Hamilton: For a thousand years, using just bows and arrows, the Ainu fought off the armies of imperial Japan.
Until late last century, when the Meiji government, in response to Russian moves in the Far East, annexed the frozen frontiers of Hokkaido.
The Ainu were driven from their hunting grounds, the source, not only of their food, but also their ceremonies and traditions.
Conscripted as forced labour, they were even banned from speaking their own language.
It was a policy of extinction by assimilation.
Hamilton: Today, most Japanese believe that’s where the story ended.
It they think of the Ainu at all, it’s as museum exhibits — part of the tourist circuit on a rainy day.
Hamilton: Here at Shiraoi, an Ainu village has been reconstructed, where Ainu staff dress up to perform for the visitors. While history’s less photogenic side isn’t completely forgotten...
Man: Our Ainu language, traditions and culture were all prohibited.
Hamilton: ...the eyes soon glaze over. And after the show, what have the customers learnt?
Woman: I feel they’re like Japanese. I don’t think they are especially different — not a separate ethnic group.
Hamilton: Even some of the staff wonder whether they’re preserving history or ignorance.
Woman: There are people who imagine we still live this way — in these kinds of houses, eating primitive food together with the bears. Many people see us like that.
Hamilton: Indeed, it seems to be the bears, not the Ainu, that most of the tourists want to remember.
Hamilton: Behind the tourist acade is the continuing story of Ainu discrimination.
The Ogawas are an Ainu family of three generations.
On a bright Sunday in Hokkaido’s main city of Sapporo, they could be just other faces in crowd.
But this is a society which values conformity above all else, making the Ogawas aliens in their own land.
Sanae Ogawa: It is not easy living in this society. We get the most dangerous and unstable jobs. We’re used and thrown away, like toilet paper. This is the reality for the Ainu. It hasn’t improved at all.
Hamilton: It’s understandable that many Ainu try to conceal their identity. The census counts them 25,000, although the real figure is probably double that.
But there are more and more Ainu who will not deny their heritage.
Today is called Asir Chep Nomi: the Festival of the Salmon. It turns out those fish we saw earlier being speared from the canoe, represent a culture, not lost, but reclaimed. Anointing their prayer sticks with sake, they call on the gods of fire and stream and mountain. By the riverside in Sapporo, they declare to the rest of Japan — ‘We have survived.’
Hamilton: If any one person is responsible for this resurgence of Ainu self-confidence it is Shigeru Kayano.
It’s four hours drive from Sapporo to the village where he lives. Nibutani is known as the Ainu heartland, although the highway has also made it a thoroughfare for Japan Incorporated.
But the man I’ve come to meet, as he prepares to mount the national stage, strikes me as unlikely sort of crusader.
A collector of artefacts, author of the first real Ainu dictionary who hates wearing ties, and munches home grown watermelon for lunch.
Shigeru Kayano: Delicious!
SHIGERU KAYANO Ainu M.P.
Kayano: I speak the Ainu language fluently and feel qualified to make the MPs aware of the Ainu’s existence...even though I hate politicians.
Hamilton: Back in Sapporo, and at a dozen places around Hokkaido, Ainu are starting to learn their native tongue again.
Stories told by the old women.
Rescued by the tape recorder.
Passed on to young women like Harumi Sawai.
Sawai: We can’t wait for the Japanese government to help us. It’s time for us to put things in order ourselves.Having an Ainu politician is a first step. From zero to one is actually a big difference.
Hamilton: Sawai-san is a university graduate, has represented the Ainu is international forums and visited Australian aborigines.
She knows here own mind, including when to use her expert English.
Sawai: So Ainu people we are not happy when people say ‘You are a minority.’ But we are the indigenous people.
Hamilton: Do you think Japanese people are, these days, ready to accept you?
Sawai: I don’t know, some people are and some people aren’t.
Hamilton: What Harumi Sawai wants is for Japan to become a society in which being Ainu, being different, is nothing special.
Finally, she gives the lie to the notion of a ‘vanishing culture.’
Sawai: You can’t say the Ainu of a hundred years ago was the only true Ainu culture. What we have today is also Ainu culture even though the form has changed.
Hamilton: Obviously you’re not vanishing.
Sawai: No, absolutely not.
Hamilton: And so now the Ainu people turn their eyes to the Diet here in Tokyo, where a government committee is considering a proposal to replace the nineteenth century law which has been the instrument of Ainu oppression, with a new law, granting them compensation and a permanent voice in parliament. But for five years that committee has made no progress, unable to decide even whether the Ainu qualify as indigenous people.
The Ainu cause has had no champion in Tokyo, no one to give it a national priority.
Hamilton: Shigeru Kayano may be a king in Nibutani, but this is unfamiliar territory, where an Ainu voice must strain to rise above the madding crowd.
Kayano: I’ll keep saying Hokkaido is the land of the Ainu. You, Japanese, let’s discuss this as equals. I’ll keep on saying it.
Hamilton: It’s a message the rest of Japan may not be ready to hear.
But, like it or not, the nation’s law makers henceforth will be obliged to listen.
Negus: Walter Hamilton with the Ainu people of Japan. That’s all from Foreign Correspondent for now. See you next week.
Series music
CHECHNYA
Reporter CHRIS CLARK
Camera TIM BATES
Editor MARK GLEESON
Research TOM SZYPULSKI
AINU Reporter WALTER HAMILTON
Camera JOE PHUA
Sound HIROYUKI MURAMOTO
Editor JOE PHUA
Producer LISA McGREGOR
It’s early autumn, and on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, the salmon season has begun.
Hamilton: The boats have been out at sea for just a few hours, but already their holds are filled to the brim.
Each year, forty million salmon are harvested from the waters around Hokkaido, to supply the smart restaurants of Tokyo and beyond.
HamiltonSuper: WALTER HAMILTON It’s all about speed — rushing the fish from the sea to the market. Very different from times past, when the indigenous people of Japan — the Ainu — stalked each individual salmon in the rivers of what was once their land. For this is a story not just about new methods replacing old. Hokkaido’s modern salmon fishery symbolises the conquest of one culture by another. The stripping of a people’s rights and dignity.
Hamilton: A short distance up from the coast, a very different scene.
Hamilton: A century ago, the Japanese government took away these people’s rights to fish the rivers of Hokkaido.
Even now the Ainu need special permission to catch just a few salmon in the traditional way.
Trucked in for the killing, nets laid so they can’t escape, it’s a one sided contest.
To this, a once proud race of hunters and craftsman, have been reduced.
Shigeru Kayano: The Japanese are just a gang of thieves. They invaded this big land of Hokkaido without saying a work to the Ainu — without asking permission, or even greeting us. They came en masse, backed by military power.
Hamilton: Shigeru Kayano is the most famous Ainu in Japan. He’s also just made history becoming the first member of his race to gain a seat in parliament. Kayano-san has devoted his life to defending Ainu culture, while Japanese scholars were measuring it up for the graveyard of history.
Kayano: My mother, for example — they hung a number plate on her.
Hamilton: Literally measuring it up.
As they did his mother, one day in their village.
Kayano: They pulled back her collar and pushed up her sleeves to see how hairy she was. And they took blood. It was dreadful.
music
Hamilton: For a thousand years, using just bows and arrows, the Ainu fought off the armies of imperial Japan.
Until late last century, when the Meiji government, in response to Russian moves in the Far East, annexed the frozen frontiers of Hokkaido.
The Ainu were driven from their hunting grounds, the source, not only of their food, but also their ceremonies and traditions.
Conscripted as forced labour, they were even banned from speaking their own language.
It was a policy of extinction by assimilation.
Hamilton: Today, most Japanese believe that’s where the story ended.
It they think of the Ainu at all, it’s as museum exhibits — part of the tourist circuit on a rainy day.
Hamilton: Here at Shiraoi, an Ainu village has been reconstructed, where Ainu staff dress up to perform for the visitors. While history’s less photogenic side isn’t completely forgotten...
Man: Our Ainu language, traditions and culture were all prohibited.
Hamilton: ...the eyes soon glaze over. And after the show, what have the customers learnt?
Woman: I feel they’re like Japanese. I don’t think they are especially different — not a separate ethnic group.
Hamilton: Even some of the staff wonder whether they’re preserving history or ignorance.
Woman: There are people who imagine we still live this way — in these kinds of houses, eating primitive food together with the bears. Many people see us like that.
Hamilton: Indeed, it seems to be the bears, not the Ainu, that most of the tourists want to remember.
Hamilton: Behind the tourist acade is the continuing story of Ainu discrimination.
The Ogawas are an Ainu family of three generations.
On a bright Sunday in Hokkaido’s main city of Sapporo, they could be just other faces in crowd.
But this is a society which values conformity above all else, making the Ogawas aliens in their own land.
Sanae Ogawa: It is not easy living in this society. We get the most dangerous and unstable jobs. We’re used and thrown away, like toilet paper. This is the reality for the Ainu. It hasn’t improved at all.
Hamilton: It’s understandable that many Ainu try to conceal their identity. The census counts them 25,000, although the real figure is probably double that.
But there are more and more Ainu who will not deny their heritage.
Today is called Asir Chep Nomi: the Festival of the Salmon. It turns out those fish we saw earlier being speared from the canoe, represent a culture, not lost, but reclaimed. Anointing their prayer sticks with sake, they call on the gods of fire and stream and mountain. By the riverside in Sapporo, they declare to the rest of Japan — ‘We have survived.’
Hamilton: If any one person is responsible for this resurgence of Ainu self-confidence it is Shigeru Kayano.
It’s four hours drive from Sapporo to the village where he lives. Nibutani is known as the Ainu heartland, although the highway has also made it a thoroughfare for Japan Incorporated.
But the man I’ve come to meet, as he prepares to mount the national stage, strikes me as unlikely sort of crusader.
A collector of artefacts, author of the first real Ainu dictionary who hates wearing ties, and munches home grown watermelon for lunch.
Shigeru Kayano: Delicious!
SHIGERU KAYANO Ainu M.P.
Kayano: I speak the Ainu language fluently and feel qualified to make the MPs aware of the Ainu’s existence...even though I hate politicians.
Hamilton: Back in Sapporo, and at a dozen places around Hokkaido, Ainu are starting to learn their native tongue again.
Stories told by the old women.
Rescued by the tape recorder.
Passed on to young women like Harumi Sawai.
Sawai: We can’t wait for the Japanese government to help us. It’s time for us to put things in order ourselves.Having an Ainu politician is a first step. From zero to one is actually a big difference.
Hamilton: Sawai-san is a university graduate, has represented the Ainu is international forums and visited Australian aborigines.
She knows here own mind, including when to use her expert English.
Sawai: So Ainu people we are not happy when people say ‘You are a minority.’ But we are the indigenous people.
Hamilton: Do you think Japanese people are, these days, ready to accept you?
Sawai: I don’t know, some people are and some people aren’t.
Hamilton: What Harumi Sawai wants is for Japan to become a society in which being Ainu, being different, is nothing special.
Finally, she gives the lie to the notion of a ‘vanishing culture.’
Sawai: You can’t say the Ainu of a hundred years ago was the only true Ainu culture. What we have today is also Ainu culture even though the form has changed.
Hamilton: Obviously you’re not vanishing.
Sawai: No, absolutely not.
Hamilton: And so now the Ainu people turn their eyes to the Diet here in Tokyo, where a government committee is considering a proposal to replace the nineteenth century law which has been the instrument of Ainu oppression, with a new law, granting them compensation and a permanent voice in parliament. But for five years that committee has made no progress, unable to decide even whether the Ainu qualify as indigenous people.
The Ainu cause has had no champion in Tokyo, no one to give it a national priority.
Hamilton: Shigeru Kayano may be a king in Nibutani, but this is unfamiliar territory, where an Ainu voice must strain to rise above the madding crowd.
Kayano: I’ll keep saying Hokkaido is the land of the Ainu. You, Japanese, let’s discuss this as equals. I’ll keep on saying it.
Hamilton: It’s a message the rest of Japan may not be ready to hear.
But, like it or not, the nation’s law makers henceforth will be obliged to listen.
Negus: Walter Hamilton with the Ainu people of Japan. That’s all from Foreign Correspondent for now. See you next week.
Series music
CHECHNYA
Reporter CHRIS CLARK
Camera TIM BATES
Editor MARK GLEESON
Research TOM SZYPULSKI
AINU Reporter WALTER HAMILTON
Camera JOE PHUA
Sound HIROYUKI MURAMOTO
Editor JOE PHUA
Producer LISA McGREGOR