Ainu Adventure

How cool! Today Nick and I traveled to Asahikawa, the second largest city on the island of Hokkaido. Asahikawa is about an hour away, and approximately the size of Omaha. Asahikawa is historically home to a large settlement of Ainu people.

The Ainu people are the indegenous of Japan, possibly related to Mongoloids or even Alaskan/American Indians. There are conflicting theories, but they've been on the northern islands of Japan for about 10,000 years. In the recent history of Japan, 2500 years ago, the islands were populated by people of Chinese ancestry, their culture developing into the modern Japanese culture. As the Japanese settlements spread northward, the Ainu people were pushed up to Hokkaido. According to Wikipedia, "Japanese policies became increasingly aimed at assimilating the Ainu in the Meiji period (mid 1800s), outlawing their language and restricting them to farming on government-provided plots and as labor in the Japanese fishing industry. As the Japanese government encouraged immigration of ethnic Japanese to populate Hokkaido, the Ainu became increasingly marginalised in their own land. The population was greatly reduced due to hardship and diseases introduced by the inmigrant Japanese." Pretty similar to American and Australian treatment of indegenous peoples on the continents. So there's about 25,000 people remaining who claim full or partial Ainu heritage, although that number is questioned because some people are ashamed/afraid to admit their own ancestry. Most live in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan.

This museum was particularly insightful, tho humble, because it was built and sponsored by the Ainu people of Hokkaido. A super-great lady let Nick and I dress up in traditional Ainu costumes. I'll post pics when I can figure out the damn Mac-to-Blogger situation.