Our Land Was a Forest

Transitions: Asia and Asian America KAYANO Mark Selden, Series Editor Praise for OUR LAND WAS A FOREST: An Ainu Memoir by Kayano Shigeru, with a Foreword by Mikiso Hane OUR LAND A FOREST: WAS translated by Kyoko and Lili Selden “Kayano is the last great Ainu storyteller, and his eloquent account of his own OurOur LandLand life conveys nothing less than the beauty and tragedy of a vanishing culture. Our Land Was a Forest is a gem, indispensable for understanding not only the Ainu but also the costs of development in modern Japan.” —John W. Dower Was a Forest author of War Without Mercy Was a Forest “The Ainu people of Japan have long haunted travelogue and anthropology text- books alike in the guise of ‘the vanishing Ainu,’ ‘the hairy Ainu,’ and ‘the abo- rigines of Japan.’ In this slim volume, skillfully translated by the able mother- AnAn AinuAinu MemoirMemoir daughter team of Kyoko and Lili Selden, Kayano Shigeru banishes the mythical Ainu who never were. Instead, his autobiography burns with indignation at ex- periences of discrimination, outrage at the success of the systematic effort to ex- An Ainu Memoir tinguish Ainu language and culture, and a fierce pride in his heritage. Informant to some of Japan’s leading scholars of Ainu language and culture and founder of a museum of Ainu material culture, Kayano has done all that one man can do to leave a record of what his people had accomplished before they were over- whelmed. The Seldens have given the English-speaking public a rare chance to savor a life that, however remote in its particulars, is universal in its appeal.” —Robert J. Smith Cornell University WESTVIEW PRESS ISBN-13: 978-0-8133-1880-6 5500 Central Avenue • Boulder, Colorado 80301-2877 ISBN-10: 0-8133-1880-7 12 Hid’s Copse Road • Cumnor Hill • Oxford OX2 9JJ KAYANOKAYANO SHIGERUSHIGERU www.westviewpress.com Westview Press Our Land Was a Forest TRANSITIONS: ASIA AND ASIAN AMERICA Series Editor, Mark Selden Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir, Kayano Shigeru The. Political Economy of China's Financial Reforms: Finance in Late Development, Paul Bowles and Gordon White Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism: Doi Moi in Comparative Perspective, edited by William S. 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Our Nibutani Valley 1 2. The Four Seasons in the Ainu Community 11 3. My Grandfather, a Slave to the Shamo 23 4. Following Forced Evacuation 37 5. A Long Absence from School 45 6. My Father's Arrest 57 7. An Adolescence Away from Home 71 8. Realizing My Dream of Becoming a Foreman 87 9. Lucky Is the One Who Dies First 97 10. The Teachings of Chiri Mashiho 111 11. Making the Acquaintance of Kindaichi Kyosuke 125 12. Building the Museum of Ainu Cultural Resources 133 13. As a Member of the Ainu People 147 Epilogue 159 Glossary 163 About the Book and Author 171 vii Illustrations MAPS The island of Hokkaido xv Detail of south-central Hokkaido 6 FIGURES The plan of the Kaizawa house 3 A sara nip (backsack) 13 Aysirosi (insignia) of the author's forebears 24 A rabbit trap 64 A sapanpe (crown) 68 A tamasai (woman's necklace) 68 An taripe (rope with embroidered headband) 102 A marep (fish hook) 114 A rawomap (fish trap) 114 An emusiat (embroidered sword sash) 150 PHOTOGRAPHS Restored Ainu houses 2 Part of a model kotan, or Ainu hamlet 12 The author's grandfather and grandmother 35 Pounding millet with an iyuta (pestle) 55 The author's wedding day 92 A ceremonial tukipasuy (chopstick) and bowl 98 The author carving wood 116 IX x Illustrations Stretching handmade threads for weaving 121 A traditional cotton robe 122 Kindaichi Kyosuke and the author 127 Interior of a traditional Ainu house 137 The author's mother 138 The author and Kayano Reiko at an award ceremony 144 Kayano Reiko weaves 151 A recent photo of the author 155 Foreword THIS IS AN ABSORBING ACCOUNT of Ainu life written by an Ainu striving to preserve his people's cultural heritage and sense of na tionhood. Unlike many accounts by outsiders, which impose pre determined socio-anthropological categories on indigenous cul tures, Kayano Shigeru offers a living testimonial to the history, ethos, customs, beliefs, hopes, and aspirations of a people whose way oflife has been undermined by successive waves of invasion of their homeland by the Japanese. The author's candid account of the history of three generations of his family, and through them of a people, draws us into the world of the Ainu, enhancing our understanding of and empathy for a way of life that prizes the harmony of human society in na ture. It vividly reveals the tribulations that the Ainu endured as the Japanese occupied their home (mosir, the quiet land) and barred them from the subsistence hunting and fishing that pro vided the foundations of society and culture. The process of encroachment began hundreds of years ago with incursions by Japanese warlords. The loss of land and livelihood accelerated with the establishment of the Meiji state, which brought the Ainu homeland under ever more stringent control and sought to "Japanize" the Ainu while incorporating Hokkaido within the purview of an expansive empire. Our Land Was a Forest recounts the story of a remarkable Ainu leader raised in an impoverished but culturally rich family, who xi xii Foreword ended his formal education after graduating from elementary school and as a youth earned his living as a forester. Eventually, drawing on cultural traditions he absorbed from the ballads his grandmother sang and the ancient legends she recounted, he ded icated his life to preserving Ainu heritage, values, language, arts, crafts, and customs-including dance, song, folklore, and litera ture-and to restoring the land and rights of his people. As a writer, as founder-curator of an important Ainu museum, and as a political activist, he has played a central role in the rebirth of Ainu consciousness. Kayano Shigeru's story is an invaluable rec ord of a people and culture at the edge of extinction striving to preserve their integrity and their culture. Mikiso Hane Knox College Translators' Note THIS PROJECT WAS UNDERTAKEN at the suggestion of Matsuzawa Hiroaki, then of Hokkaido University and presently of the Interna tional Christian University. Jane Marie Law of Cornell University read the entire manuscript with painstaking care and greatly improved the translation. Sasha Vovin of the University of Michi gan assisted with romanization of the long quotations in Chapter 12. Kozaki Shinji checked the Ainu-language portions throughout the book and kindly provided romanization of all Ainu language portions of the text as well as syllable by syllable explanation. Saku rai Shin drew the two maps of Hokkaido and the illustrations of the family insignia of the author's ancestors who settled in Hidaka county. In the fall of 1992 and 1993, students in the third-year Japan ese reading course at Cornell read excerpts from Chapter 6 in the original and added to the spirit of the translation. Alice Colwell and Michelle Asakawa of Westview Press refined the language and for mat of the book. The author, Kayano Shigeru, extended warm sup port from Nibutani and provided a new epilogue and photographs, including a treasured original portrait of his grandparents. Suzu sawa Shoten, Tokyo, kindly granted us the use of eight drawings from their Ainu no mingu (1978). xiii xiv Translators' Note In the text and Glossary, Japanese names are given in the Japa nese style, with family names first. In Matsuura Takeshiro, for example, Matsuura is the family name, Takeshiro the personal name. The Ainu portions of the text were translated from the Japanese translations provided by Kayano Shigeru in the original version of the book; hence the translation may sometimes lack line-to-line correspondence with the Ainu. Minimal punctuation was added to prose sections of the originally unpunctuated Ainu text. Kyoko and Liii Selden Our Land Was a Forest Our Nibutani Valley THE AZURE HORIZON spreads in all directions, not a cloud in sight. The pine grove on the opposite shore of the Sam River is dark, but everything else in the vast landscape is pure white, cov ered with snow. The first time southerners see this Hokkaido win ter scene, they are likely to feel it would somehow be wrong to step into it. I myself felt such reluctance when I first went south and faced the grass that everywhere made the earth green.

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