State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Case study: Challenging exclusion through cultural traditions: the struggle of Ainu feminists to end multiple discrimination in Japan

By Michael Caster

For centuries Japan's marginalized Ainu population, historically based in the north of the country and in particular the island of Hokkaido, have suffered forced assimilation and the repression of their unique way of life. Only recently have there been signs of a more positive attitude from authorities, including the formal recognition in 2008 of the community as indigenous. This has been followed by various public initiatives to showcase Ainu traditions and practices. In July 2015, the Cultural Affairs Agency of Japan announced plans for the construction of an Ainu museum in Shiraoi, Hokkaido, scheduled for completion by the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. The agency announced the museum as a core project in its plan to promote Ainu culture and history, in line with the Council for Ainu Policy Promotion's advocacy for the creation of such a symbolic space. Shiraoi village already hosts an Ainu cultural village, supervised by the Hokkaido Government Board of Education, with traditional Ainu artifects and daily cultural performances that attract 180,000 visitors a year – a figure the government hopes to increase to 1 million by 2020. Meanwhile, the only World Heritage site in Hokkaido is the Shiretoko Peninsula, which is designated as a natural heritage site, and not a cultural heritage site to the consternation of Ainu rights defenders.

However, these initiatives alone may not necessarily improve Ainu livelihoods or address broader prejudice if they are not accompanied by fundamental changes to the way to the community is represented. Historically, the tourist industry in Hokkaido has been dominated by outsiders and has been criticized for reproducing stereotypes of Ainu primitiveness. At a national level, too, understanding of Ainu's history of discrimination and their situation today remains limited. In a series of textbooks approved in 2015, for example, references to the violent expropriation of Ainu land during the Meiji Period (1868–1912) were revised to imply the government had actually made efforts to protect Ainu.

Some Ainu rights defenders and scholars have also noted with concern that the localization of Ainu culture creates an inaccurate and essentialist notion of Ainu identity inextricably connected to Hokkaido, although the territory of Ainu Mosir, the Ainu name for their homeland, has never been clearly delineated. This has resulted in the alienation of Ainu living outside of Hokkaido: for example, they are ineligible to join the Hokkaido Ainu Association, the largest organization of its kind, and do not receive the rights and privileges of Ainu welfare measures. This means that, despite national recognition of Ainu as an indigenous people, at present Ainu living outside of Hokkaido are effectively denied such recognition and attendant rights. This has led to the creation of hierarchies within Ainu society, not only based on territory but also with regard to gender.

This can have a negative impact on the promotion and performance of Ainu cultural heritage. One area where Ainu efforts to achieve emancipation have challenged traditional prejudices and inspired cultural revival most starkly is through indigenous feminism, which has developed in distinct ways to mainstream Japanese feminism. Ainu feminists have accused Japanese feminists of disregarding the intersectional dimensions of race, class or ethnicity in their campaigning, while also challenging mainstream Ainu rights activism for privileging Ainu ethnic rights defence more broadly over gender empowerment issues.

Many Ainu women are involved in cultural revival activities, recovering traditional practices and performances in an effort to address both ethnic and gender discrimination. In Ainu culture, gendered spheres of labour have not necessarily been considered 'gender discrimination' because they were treated as part of a unique spiritual engagement between women and the natural world, which constituted an integral component of Ainu culture and feminine identity. Unlike mainstream Japanese feminism, which seeks to liberate Japanese women from traditional gendered spheres of production, Ainu feminism has embraced gendered cultural performances as empowerment. This is perhaps best demonstrated in traditional clothwork, as evidenced in research by Ainu scholar Ann-elise Lewallen.

Ainu clothwork is a form of both political and cultural performance. Embroidered or woven patterns convey deep narrative qualities ranging from expressing genealogy to communing with the natural and spirit world. Ainu women have organized community embroidery classes that have created platforms for the teaching and preservation of cultural performance but which also provide opportunities for Ainu women to negotiate what it means to be an Ainu woman in Japan today. Employing traditional motifs and oral histories, Ainu women are creating vehicles not only for the preservation of traditional Ainu cultural heritage but also for the creation of new identities and cultural practices.

Such practices have taken place within and beyond Hokkaido, reiterating the need to expand recognition of Ainu identity beyond localized geographies. It also points to the fact that mainstream feminism may not always recognize the specific issues at play within an indigenous community and may need to draw on indigenous feminist thinking. Ainu women are engaged in constructing hybrid cultural performances that draw on past tradition rather than simply reject it, while at the same time moving beyond certain practices such as woodcarving or clothwork that have become increasingly commodified by tourist villages. In this way, Ainu feminists are reaching for empowerment as both 'indigenous' and 'women' by embracing traditional cultural performances, but on their own terms.