Group items tagged

The "iwakte" also is a ceremony to send back the spirits of disused daily necessities and festival-related articles which have become unusable from damage or age. The sending back of spirits of small animals, such as squirrels and hares also was called "iwakte" in some districts. Ash from a hearth and the bran of millet including yard millet were gathered at a certain site and returned to the divine world.

The soul has the power to punish only when it has been mistreated. Deities ( kamuy ), in contrast, possess the power to punish or reward at will. Some scholars believe that among the Ainu nature is equated with the deities. Others claim that only certain members of the universe are deified.

The Ainu consider all animal deities to be exactly like humans in appearance and to live just like humans in their own divine country—an important point in Ainu religion.

Evil spirits and demons—called variously oyasi, wenkamuy (evil deity), etc.—constitute another group of beings in the universe who are more powerful than humans. They exercise their destructive power by causing misfortunes such as epidemics. The smallpox deity is an example. Some of them are intrinsic or by definition bona fide demons, whereas others become demons. For example, if a soul is mistreated after the death of its owner, it turns into a demon. The Ainu devote a great deal of attention to evil spirits and demons by observing religious rules and performing exorcism rites. Human combat with demons is a major theme in Ainu epic poems

Shamanism is not an exclusively male role. Sakhalin Ainu shamanism differs considerably from Hokkaidō Ainu shamanism. Among the Sakhalin Ainu, with regard to the symbolic structure, the shamanistic ritual represents the process of cooking, a role assigned to women in Ainu society. Shamanism is highly valued among the Sakhalin Ainu, and highly regarded members of society of both sexes, including heads of settlements, may become shamans. Although shamans sometimes perform rites for divinations of various sorts and for miracles, most rites are performed to diagnose and cure illnesses. When shamans are possessed by spirits, they enter a trance and the spirit speaks through their mouths, providing the client with necessary information such as the diagnosis and cure of an illness or the location of a missing object.

Among the Hokkaidō Ainu, shamanism is not highly regarded and shamans are usually women, who collectively have lower social status than men.

Male elders must consult a shaman before they make important decisions for the community.

Among the rich and varied Ainu religious beliefs and practices, the bear ceremony is perhaps the most important religious ceremony among both the Sakhalin and Hokkaidō Ainu, for whom the bear represents the supreme deity in disguise.

The bear ceremony combines deeply religious elements with the merriment of eating, drinking, singing, and dancing. All participants don their finest clothing and adornments. Prayers are offered to the goddess of the hearth and the deity of the house, but the major focus of the ceremony is on the deity of the mountains, who is believed to have sent the bear as a gift to humans. After the bear is taken out of the "bear house," situated southwest of the house, the bear is killed. The Sakhalin Ainu kill the bear with two pointed arrows, while the Hokkaidō Ainu use blunt arrows before they fatally shoot the bear with pointed arrows, and then strangle the dead or dying bear between two logs. Male elders skin and dress the bear, which is placed in front of the altar hung with treasures.

The mythic and heroic epics are long and complex; some heroic epics have as many as 15,000 verses. While the mythic epics relate the activities of deities, the heroic epics are about the culture hero who, with the aid of the deities, fought demons to save the Ainu and became the founder of the Ainu people. Among the Hokkaidō Ainu, the culture hero descended from the world of the deities in the sky and taught the Ainu their way of life, including fishing and hunting and the rituals and rules governing human society. Some scholars contend that the battles fought by the culture hero are battles that the Ainu once fought against invading peoples.

var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_channel = 'adspot_14'; function google_ad_request_done(google_ads) { var adsense_ad_unit = ""; if (google_ads.length == 0) { return; } adsense_ad_unit += 'Ads by Google'; for(i = 0; i < google_ads.length; i++) { adsense_ad_unit += '' + '' + google_ads[i].line1 + ' ' + ' ' + google_ads[i].line2 + ' ' + google_ads[i].line3 + '' + ' ' + google_ads[i].visible_url + '' + ''; } document.write(adsense_ad_unit); google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } google_max_num_ads = 3; google_ad_client = "ca-pub-7332027313721357"; google_ad_output = "js"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_protectAndRun("ads_core.google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad);Ads by GoogleJapan 24 Hr. Registration Pre-Register Now For Your NACCS Reporter ID. Register Now! www.japan24.jpBible Trivia Questions See How Much You Know The Bible Plus Free Access To Verses w/ App! www.BibleTriviaTime.com"Easy Productivity Hacks" 3 Proven Productivity Breakthroughs Signup for Your Free Action Plan. Paperitis.com/Gain1ExtraHour &nbsp;by TaboolaFrom The WebFrom The Web<

The Colonization of Ainu Moshir Until the middle of the nineteenth century, "Ainu moshir" ["the land of the Ainu"] covered most of the island of Hokkaido, as well as the southern half of Sakhalin and the islands of the Kuril Archipelago (which are now part of the Russian Federation). Earlier, Ainu occupation had extended further south, into the main Japanese island of Honshu. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Ainu society felt the growing impact of the gradual northward expansion of the Japanese state. Japanese merchants established trading posts along the Hokkaido coastline; exchanging goods like rice and ironware for fish and seaweed, and for the Chinese brocades which Ainu traders bought from the Asian continent. Gradually, however, the Japanese presence became more intrusive, provoking several waves of armed resistance from the Ainu. The last major conflict, the Battle of Kunashir-Menash, took place in 1789. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, most Ainu people continued to speak their own language and maintain their own spiritual and material traditions, even though a growing number were persuaded or forced to work for Japanese-run fishing enterprises.

While asserting Japan's right to independent nationhood, Japanese scholars adopted notions of "progress" and "civilization" which defined the Ainu as "prehistoric hunter gatherers," destined either to extinction or to assimilation into the majority population. As in other parts of the world so too in Hokkaido, the land occupied by the original inhabitants was seen as "terra nullius" to be claimed by the state and distributed to colonial settlers. Ainu were required to adopt Japanese names and speak the Japanese language. Ainu communities were also often moved to remote areas to make room for new Japanese towns and villages. By the early 1880s, the Ainu population of Hokkaido, officially estimated at around 17,000, was already vastly outnumbered by a Japanese settler population of approximately 250,000. (It is worth observing though that given high levels of intermarriage, adoption, and social prejudice, official counts of the Ainu should always be treated with some caution.)

The Ainu, however, have never been passive victims of colonization. By the early twentieth century, a number of Ainu leaders were voicing resistance to the prejudice that they were experiencing in Japanese society. One of the more interesting instances of protest took place in 1927 when Kaizawa Hiranosuke, an Ainu villager from Nibutani, wrote to the government demanding the right for Ainu and other Indigenous people to be represented at the Congress of Asian Peoples in Nagasaki, an event being organized to promote Japan's status as a leader in the Asian struggle against colonialism.

It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that Ainu activists began to place growing emphasis on the maintenance or revival of disappearing craft skills, rituals, and modes of Indigenous knowledge.

Among them was Kayano Shigeru, who put together the large collection of Ainu artifacts now displayed in the Ainu Cultural Museum at Nibutani.

In 1987 Ainu representatives participated for the first time in the deliberations of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations. Interaction with Indigenous peoples worldwide gave encouragement to the Ainu cause, and promoted renewed debate amongst activists about issues such as Indigenous knowledge, resource rights and self-determination.

So began a prolonged campaign, which led to the passing of the 1997 Cultural Promotion Law.

So far, the law's most obvious result has been to focus attention on the fundamental question, "how and by whom is `Ainu cultural heritage' defined?" The whole notion of "cultural heritage," as embodied in the new law, implies notions of continuity rather than change, stability and order rather than conflict.

But as Ainu commentator Tahara Ryoko points out in a recent collection of essays on the new law, "Ainu culture is not limited to language or ceremonies or dance. It is Ainu life itself. Whatever happens every day within the household is Ainu culture."