Harmony Olympics’

Volume 18 | Issue 4 | Number 6 | Article ID 5346 | Feb 15, 2020 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Indigenous Rights and the ‘Harmony Olympics’ Tessa Morris-Suzuki from the ashes of defeat in war to become an emerging economic and technological Abstract: The dynamics of Japan’s indigenous superpower. The gleaming new Shinkansen rail rights struggles are not well understood, but network and the flowing ultramodern lines of the 2020 Tokyo games may spark serious the Yoyogi Olympic stadium (designed by debate on restoring and promoting the social, architect Tange Kenzō) spoke of a dynamic, cultural, economic and political rights of the forward-looking nation embarking on its Ainu people. It appears that people from ‘economic miracle’. In 2020, in the words of throughout Japan and the world curious Olympic Organizing Committee CEO Mutō about Ainu culture mayToshiro, be ‘the greatest keyword of the Olympics disappointed in the Olympicis kyōsei’ – a term meaning harmony, or (as it is ceremonies and the new Upopoy National Ainu sometimes translated in Olympic publicity) Museum and Park that opens in 2020. The ‘unity in diversity’ Sanyō( Shimbun, 16 Olympic moment offers an opportunity to November 2019). This theme can be embrace diversity, but probably willinterpreted in many ways, but part of its highlight the limits of the Japanese state’s purpose is clearly to counter criticisms, willingness to recognise the rights of Ainu as sometimes heard from domestic and indigenous people. international commentators, that Japanese society can be insular and slow to protect the rights of its ethnic and other minorities. As an aging Japan opens its doors to higher inflows of migrant workers, the term kyōsei has gained Singing Together: Visions of Olympic growing traction as a Japanese alternative to Harmony the internationally more familiar term ‘multiculturalism’. Japan’s kyōsei will be on display throughout the In the modern era, Olympic games have always year, not only in the Olympic ceremonies been opportunities for nations to make grand themselves, but also in surrounding events and statements about identity. The games are a venues, though the precise nature of this venue, not just for sporting prowess, but for display has become a topic of some symbolic representations of the way the nation controversy. After early indications that would like to be seen (or, at least, the way its traditional dances by the Ainu indigenous leaders would like it to be seen) by the rest of people would be included in the opening the world; and such identity statements have ceremony, the ceremony’s organizers become ever more elaborate and spectacular announced that this would be impossible with the passing of time (Tamaki 2019). because of ‘time constraints’, but that Ainu would be present in some other form: ‘of In the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Japan presented course, it will be a ceremony where kyōsei with itself to the world as a nation that had risen Ainu people will be brought into view’ 1 18 | 4 | 6 APJ | JF (Hokkaidō Shimbun, 7 February 2020, evening edition). The most striking representation of this ‘kyōsei with Ainu people’ will take shape, not in the Olympic stadium itself but at the grand new Upopoy National Ainu Museum and Park, at Shiraoi in Hokkaido, which will open its doors to the public in late April 2020 – a date carefully chosen to ensure that it is ready to receive a flood of Olympic visitors to Japan (Kelly 2019). ‘Upopoy’ is an Ainu word meaning ‘singing in a large group’ – a vivid evocation of the theme of harmony – and the Museum and Park are known in Japanese as Minzoku Kyōsei The Land of the Ainu (© CartoGIS CAP ANU) Shōchō Kūkan: The Symbolic Space of Ethnic Harmony. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide has expressed his hope that the site will attract one million visitors in a year: a Ainu History and the Japanese State prospect which has been strengthened by the decision to stage the Olympic marathon in the Hokkaido capital, Sapporo (Kaneko and Satō 2019). Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the Ainu people lived in self-governing village For some, though, the creation of the new communities across a wide area stretching Museum and Park, at a cost of some US$220 from the south of the island now known as million to date, raises problems about the Hokkaido to the middle of the island of underlying meaning of the harmony being Sakhalin and throughout the southern part of celebrated at the 2020 Olympics (Kelly 2019; the Kurile Archipelago (now controlled by Nakamura 2019). Although the promotion of Russia). Some Ainu had even migrated as far as kyōsei, in this context, could become athe mouth of the Amur River on the Asian milestone in greater recognition of Japan’s mainland and the southern part of the cultural and ethnic diversity, it also seems Kamchatka Peninsula. In earlier times (until likely that the emphasis in the slogan ‘unity in about the late eighteenth century), Ainu had diversity’ will fall on the word ‘unity’. In that also lived in the northern part of the main case, recognition of diversity is likely to be Japanese island of Honshu. limited to the ‘cosmetic multiculturalism’ of food, costume and festivals, without more The various dialects of the Ainu language are substantial legal recognition of minority rights. completely different from Japanese, and Ainu These issues are particularly important and people had their own economic, cultural and contentious ones for Japan’s Ainu community. religious systems. Their economy was based largely on fishing and hunting, although in the warmer parts of Ainu territory they also grew small crops of grain and vegetables. Ainu society was connected by complex trade routes to the Japanese state in the south, China to the west and the expanding Russian empire to the north, as well as to other surrounding indigenous communities. 2 18 | 4 | 6 APJ | JF law remained in place for almost a century. After Japan’s loss of its colony of Karafuto (in the southern half of Sakhalin Island) and the Kurile Islands, most surviving Ainu from these places had little option but to relocate to Hokkaido, leaving their ancestral homelands forever (Inoue 2016). Because of intermarriage and the effects of long-lasting discrimination, it is difficult to say precisely how many Ainu people there are in Japan today. Hokkaido government surveys give a figure of around 24,000, but this is a substantial underestimate because some Ainu have migrated to other parts of Japan (including Tokyo), and some are reluctant to identify themselves as Ainu in public (Center The production of richly appliquéd and for Ainu and Indigenous Studies 2010, 3). embroidered robes is one of the hallmarks of Against a background of rising indigenous Ainu material culture, past and present (Early rights movements worldwide, in 1984 the Utari 20th century photo, location and photographer Association of Hokkaido Hokkaidō( Utari unknown) Kyōkai, now known as the Ainu Association of Hokkaido) launched a campaign demanding the abolition of the antiquated ‘protection’ law and its replacement by a New Ainu Law which would recognize and promote Ainu culture, Long contact with Japan to the south meant support education and economic self-reliance, that there was considerable intermarriage, and restore fishing rights and create guaranteed during the eighteenth century, the Japanese seats for Ainu in parliament and the relevant Domain of Matsumae, and later also the local assemblies (see Siddle 1996, 196–200). Japanese Shogunate, exerted growingThe response of the government, though, was economic control over Ainu fishing and trading very limited. In 1997 the Former Natives activities. It was only after the MeijiProtection Law was repealed, but was replaced Restoration of 1868, though, that most of the by an Ainu Cultural Promotion Law which land of the Ainu was incorporated into Japanese focused only on traditional culture, without territory, and that Hokkaido was given its addressing any of the wider economic and present name and became a magnet for the political demands. migration of Japanese settlers. Ainu lands were seized by the Japanese state and turned into Campaigns by Ainu groups continued, and in farmland, traditional Ainu hunting and fishing August 2019 the Ainu Cultural Promotion law practices were prohibited, and Ainu children was in turn repealed and replaced with a new were subject to assimilationist education. An measure, generally referred to in the media as 1899 ‘Former Natives Protection Law’the ‘New Ainu Law’ (though its actual title is attempted to impose assimilation throughout the much more cumbersome ‘Act on Promoting Ainu society, in practice resulting in the Measures to Realize a Society in Which the impoverishment and marginalization of many Pride of the Ainu People Is Respected’). But Ainu people (Kayano 1994; Siddle 1996). This this again remains far more limited in scope 3 18 | 4 | 6 APJ | JF than the new law proposed in 1984, and falls and discrimination, and concerns have been far short from the forms of indigenous rights raised at the way in which the new Ainu policy recognition which have been enshrined in law as a whole has been framed without any in countries like Canada, Australia, New reference to the rights of Sakhalin and Kurile Zealand and Taiwan. The 2019 law continues to Island Ainu descendants now living in Japan focus narrowly on culture – with the Upopoy (Tazawa 2017). National Ainu Museum and Park being its centrepiece – and grants Ainu permission to The Ainu Association of the Urahoro region of use traditional river, marine and forestHokkaido has already responded to the resources only under the most restrictive introduction of the law by launching a court conditions: for specific spiritual and cultural case against the national and prefectural purposes where special license has been governments demanding the right to fish in granted by the Japanese authorities.

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