
The Ainu, the Indigenous people of Japan - sohkamyung
https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/prejudice-pride
======
leroy_masochist
Two thoughts on this:

1) Fascinating story. I had no idea the Ainu existed. Their way of life seems
very reminiscent of the Haida and other indigenous peoples of the Pacific
Northwest.

2) I thought the author's description of the _iyomante_ was precious and
patronizing. TLDR: according to the article, the _iyomante_ is the ritualized
slaughter of an adult bear that has been taken from its mother as an infant
and raised in confined captivity. It's not a quick death, according to the
article:

> At the start of the ceremony, an elder offered a prayer first to the goddess
> of the fire and hearth, Fuchi. The elder led the men to the bear cage. They
> prayed. They released the bear to exercise and play, then shot him with two
> blunt arrows before strangling and beheading him, freeing the spirit. People
> feasted, they danced, they sang. They decorated the head and an old woman
> recited sagas of Ainu Mosir, the floating world that rested on the back of a
> fish.

I get that knowing how this ceremony was carried out is extremely important
anthropologically, and there's something to admire in the extent to which the
Ainu were connected to the ecosystem in which they lived. That said, I thought
the article really went out of its way to romanticize the captivity and
torture of a non-domesticated wild animal.

~~~
cabaalis
It even describes it as "powerfully seductive" which is not how I felt at all
about the description. It's above my paygrade to judge another culture. But I
felt sorry for the poor bear.

~~~
jacobush
That made me laugh and _still_ feel sorry for the bear. Best put ever...
"above my paygrade to judge another culture". :-)

Very Star Trek.

~~~
bitwize
_Star Trek_ doesn't have paygrades because _Star Trek_ doesn't have money. Try
the U.S. military, the stereotype of the corrupt commissioned officer saying
things like "Askin' questions like that is above your paygrade, son."

~~~
monknomo
I think that is probably more literal than a person should be with a simile,
metaphor or poetical comparison

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jtraffic
This got me into a rabbit hole on Wikipedia about where all the peoples of
Japan came from, and what makes the Ainu indigenous. If an indigenous people
is the first to settle, not sure the Ainu are clear winners. Lots of dispute
about early population dynamics of Japan.

It seems the Ainu are considered indigenous because some have maintained their
culture instead of assimilating into the larger group, which is unlike the
Jomon and Yayoi people who many believe are the ancestors of modern Japanese
people.

~~~
Steko
> If an indigenous people is the first to settle

Not what it means.

~~~
jpatokal
Japan consists of islands, everybody there came from somewhere else.

This is true in Australia and the US as well, the Aboriginals and Native
Americans just came several thousand years before the next waves of
settlement.

~~~
Steko
I'm not sure what your point is but I'm just pointing out he's extrapolating
from an incorrect definition.

I'm certainly not claiming that 'indigenous' means their ancestors literally
sprouted from that ground.

~~~
hacking_again
Go on then, enlighten us with the definition, and failing that, the most
precise definition you can give.

------
ThinkingGuy
This is a pretty good documentary about the Ainu:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q6cYEQUpBg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q6cYEQUpBg)

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justwantaccount
I learned growing up in Japan in the 90's that the Ainu are indigenous people
of Hokkaido, the northernmost island in Japan. Okinawa and Hokkaido weren't
really Japanese until recently. I think I remember learning that Hokkaido was
like Australia, where the mainland sent Japanese prisoners/criminals to or
something.

~~~
mcbain
The north coast of Hokkaido is home to the Abashiri Prison. The original
building was built in the late 1800s by the prisoners, in pretty harsh
conditions. We were told being sent there was like being banished to Siberia.
It was used for Yakuza and political prisoners.

We were recently in Northern Hokkaido, but didn't have enough time in Abashiri
to visit the prison museum. That part of the island is nothing like the rest
of Japan.

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gexla
Anyone else first hear about the Ainu through arcade games? I didn't remember
which one, but a Google search brings up Samurai Shodown, which looks
familiar. The character was Nakoruru.

~~~
dragontamer
I certainly did. I didn't know that the official Japanese Government didn't
fully recognize the Ainu until 2000s.

Samurai Showdown was straight up a 90s arcade game, which arguably means that
Nakoruru's placement as a Ainu character would have been before the official
recognition of those people.

Nakoruru's moveset revolved around her Bird (either a falcon or an eagle... I
forgot exactly), as well as her own dagger style. So it seems like the Ainu
are very similar to the Native American tropes (Natural and close to the
earth).

------
r00fus
I only know of the Ainu from the 1993 fighting game Samurai Shodown character
Nakoruru [1].

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakoruru](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakoruru)

------
mter
Interesting article. I didn't know the Ainu still existed as a group.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, there has been more written on the
okinowan experience which is similar.

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edem
Do they have anything to do with Tolkien's ainus?

~~~
detritus
I beg your pardon?

~~~
sampo
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainur_(Middle-
earth)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainur_\(Middle-earth\))

------
sandworm101
Animal cruelly plain and simple. This isn't simple killing but torture, the
deliberate infliction of unnecessary pain, on an animal. Such rituals are to
be studied by academics but not celebrated.

What really gets me is the obvious role this ritual plays. It is a baby-
killing game. It is meant to harden people against the slaughter of a being
raised as a member of the family. It was raised as more than a pet. Women
nursed this animal. Then they tortured it to death. How did those women feel?
Watching such things, accepting them as normal, makes killing of friends and
family that much easier. This is torture being used to enable more torture and
is far from unique. Shall we also celebrate how our ancestors trained
themselves to be cruel? Should the British Navy celebrating the grand
traditions of whipping sailors?

~~~
dang
We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15449966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15449966)
and marked it off-topic.

------
imustbeevil
> I thought the article really went out of its way to romanticize the
> captivity and torture of a non-domesticated wild animal.

This is how I feel about dog ownership. We take children from their species,
sterilize them, and gaslight them into thinking they're part of our family
instead. The only reason dogs are domesticated is because we've been
inbreeding their species for thousands of years and they literally can no
longer live in nature because of how we've bred them. If anything, raising,
hunting, and killing an animal is more natural than what we do.

~~~
jonnathanson
I'd highly recommend reading a book like "The Domestic Dog," which was
recently updated with a new edition in 2017. It contains all of the latest
science and anthropology around the origins of the human/dog relationship.

The tl;dr is that dogs really _do_ identify us as family, and in all
likelihood, the first ancestral wolves to become domesticated dogs took as
many co-evolutionary steps towards us as we did them.

Humans and dogs have been evolving alongside each other for at least 15,000
years. The sorts of dog breeds that can't survive in the wild (bulldogs, etc.)
are a fairly recent innovation in all of that time, dating back to the mid
1800s and the emergence of the modern breeding program.

Dogs like being with us as much as we like having them around. They were the
first domesticated species, and they are literally the only mammals we know of
who can read human facial expressions and emotions as well as the great apes
can. Our relationship with them is a partnership, not an enslavement.

If you want to take issue with the way humans treat animals, there are _so
many_ better targets for outrage than our treatment of the dog. Take the cow
or the chicken, for instance, most of whom lead a tortured and awful existence
and would want nothing to do with us in a state of nature.

~~~
imustbeevil
The reason I chose dogs is because it isn't an easy target.

Another example is Deer. I live in New Jersey and we have an overpopulation of
Deer, to which the most common response is that we should cull them so they
don't become dangerous to roads. The moral stance would be to design our
transportation in a way that doesn't frequently kill other species. Another
common response is that the overpopulation will lead to them dying anyway as
their isn't enough food to sustain them, so the argument boils down to kill
them because they're going to die anyway.

The Ainu people believe that their treatment of bears is just. I'm just
pointing out that I'd rather see all of these animals free from human
emotional projection.

~~~
afarrell
If you had the choice between death from a gun, death from starvation, death
from the claw and tooth of a non-human predator, which would you choose?

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people)

------
throwaway47861
Off-tangent incoming:

In my observations (and some bias; I am openly admitting it) which were
sometimes reinforced by meeting real Japanese people, most Japanese are
xenophobes, racists and very easily collectively agree not to speak about
stuff they dislike / feel threatens some imaginary dominance / endanger their
prejudices.

For all the glorification the country and its people get around the globe, and
for all the romantic blemish their fatalistic and stoic philosophy receives,
the Japanese I've encountered and observed remotely are pretty ordinary people
with a lot of prejudice and hostility towards foreigners attached.

Not impressed. And this news comes as no surprise as well.

Guess people just love to glorify stuff that's very different from their own,
with zero thought if that's actually a good thing?

~~~
corey_moncure
You're not wrong. I believe the effect comes from living in a racially and
culturally homogeneous society.

I lived in Japan for several years on and off. Near the end of one of my
longest stretches, I clearly remember walking by the glass window of a
storefront in Osaka. I saw someone in the reflection that had an absolutely
startling appearance, and gasped aloud. Taller, with different hair, eyes, and
skin than anyone I'd seen in months. It was me.

The experience of returning to the USA was particularly jarring that time,
too. I remember feeling surprised at how fat everyone in the airport was, how
there were people with different skin colors everywhere, how loud and lacking
in politeness social interactions were. I was born and raised in the USA but
there I was, experiencing fight or flight response in completely ordinary
situations.

I learned to forgive the Japanese after these experiences.

~~~
throwaway47861
On point, thank you. And pretty good evidence of neural network [re-]training,
too.

You know, I couldn't give two shits about xenophobic and racist people like
them, really. Let them do that and be happy.

As we say in my country however: "be stupid but get the fuck off the road".

Bad influences on young people from old and prejudiced (and bitter?) people is
never good. We need a world with more open-minded people and societies like
the Japanese aren't helping matters at all. But to be as objective as possible
-- not sure our societies help matters either.

