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goldenkamuyhunting · 4 years

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Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 221 “Bear Man”

And so we come to the end of the Heita arc which, ironically, will likely sign the start of Vol 23.

The chapter starts with a rather meaningful cover, there’s a bear with its mouth open, inside it we see Heita and, on Heita’s head we see the faces of the old man, Taka, Saburou and Noriko.

Symbolically it seems to tell us they’re a single creature… but, while the old man, Taka, Saburou and Noriko only lives in Heita’s head, the bear basically swallows Heita whole. So, fundamentally, although Heita is the primary identity, the bear personality is the one who’s truly dominant and who can take over Heita.

To tell us more about Heita the scene moves to Kadokura and Kirawus, Kadokura coincidentally telling Kirawus about Heita.

This very obvious plot device, allows Noda to share with us info about Heita’s backstory in a rather fast paced way, including his full name, Matsuda Heita (松田平太) which, as usual, is given to us as to signal we’re going to know the character in full.

The fact we’re told Heita was on the death row also answers to a question posed long ago, among the tattooed convicts there are some who were sentenced to death and, apparently, they weren’t kept into complete isolation (as it happens nowadays) as Heita somehow came into contact with Nopperabou and managed to get a tattoo.

Kadokura is slightly tipsy as he tells this story to Kirawus, we can see he’s drinking and his face is red. According to the background they seem to be in Hijikata’s old hideout in the outskirt of Otaru… though, of course, it could just be another house which has, coincidentally, the same structure. If they’re in Hijikata’s old hideout this could become relevant in the future so let’s rememebr it.

Anyway, back to Heita.

Kadokura starts by telling Kirawus how there was something weird about Heita, as he kept on switching the way he talked (something that is probably lost in the translations but that might have happened in the story as well starting with how sometimes he used ‘watashi’ and sometimes he used ‘boku’ to refers to himself) and sometimes he even started to talk as if he were a sexy girl (probably Noriko) and how, one day, Heita himself confessed to him that inside him lived more than one human and they tended to shift into taking control of his body… and of how Heita has always been terrified by the brown bear which hangs around him.

Kadokura explains that according to Heita the bear was a ‘whatchamacallit-Kamuy’, an evil god who eats people and Kirawus corrects him by providing him the right name, ‘Wenkamuy’.

This tells us Heita’s meeting with Ainu happened much before Heita met Sugimoto and Co, as Heita knew about Ainu prior to ending up in jail... and also that somehow Kadokura should be a man to whom it’s easy to open up. Sekiya wanted to tell him about his past and why he killed, Heita felt comfortable confessing Kadokura his fears and his feelings. This even though Kadokura was the head jailer in charge of keeping them trapped.

Even the men under Kadokura seemed to like him.

I’m really curious to learn more about Kadokura and I look forward to the day we’ll learn his full name.

It’s also interesting because, for once Kirawus’ bandana isn’t projecting a shadow on his eyes, though of course maybe it’ll be corrected in the volume version.

Anyway, Heia explained to Kadokura how the Wenkamuy would eat all the personalities in his head and, ultimately, would ‘eat him’ as well, taking control of his body and forcing him to go and attack and kill someone REAL. Then,once he kill that someone, he would explode into pieces and return to his original self... to then restart everything all over.

This means that, when at the start of chap 217 we saw Heita being eaten by the bear,

what happened afterward was that Heita killed someone, probably his fifth victim since he ‘killed 5 people since last year’....

...which can also be our clue convicts had escaped the year prior to the one Asirpa and Sugimoto are.

The drunk Kadokura finds this part of the story hilarious but Kirawus instead recognizes in it the way his people deal with a Wenkamuy . They chop it into fine pieces and scatter the pieces on the mountain, while saying ‘Kaishinshiro’ [改心しろ “Convert”], they own way to lecture the Kamuy to mend its ways. According to Kirawus this is way Heita was trying to explain to Kadokura and this is also a further confirmation of how Heita was influenced in his delirium by Ainu beliefs.

An info box though tell us that the way Ainu deal with Wenkamuy varies from region to region. Kirawus was from Kushirou. Heita met the Sugimoto group on Uryugawa river, fairy distant from Kushiro but, conveniently closer, although not by much, to Abashiri and pretty close to Asahikawa.

Long story short it’s possible that Heita was from Kushirou but ended up in the Uryugawa river when the convicts escaped the men of the 7th division on their way from Abashiri to Asahikawa.

The only problem to this theory would be that Heita somehow retrieved the tobacco case and the bear pelt, so he should have gone back home... so maybe his home was on Uryugawa river in the first place and it was only convenient that place was on the way to Asahikawa from Abashiri.

Heita goes on in his story by confessing he’s glad he was captured because in this way he doesn’t get eaten/possessed by the Wenkamuy as the bear can’t reach him because he doesn’t have ‘that’ (’that’ clearly being the bear pelt that so frightened him and that he claimed he attempted to get rid many times, the bear pelt he wears when the Wenkamuy takes over his body)… and therefore the bear can’t force him to kill anyone.

It’s clear Heita, or the Heita personality, is fundamentally a person who doesn’t want to do any harm and prefers to be in a prison, sentenced to death, than free to commit murders.

However Heita admits that even in the prison he’s not safe from the Wenkamuy, that the bear is still trying to get him by controlling his body and working on plans to break Heita out of prison. He then shows Kadokura how he has ended up on having a tattoo on his body and believes he had got it while he was under the bear’s control, the visual showing us the bear peeking at Heita from the window.

This also tells us the ‘Wenkamuy’ isn’t just a ‘bear personality’, as it’s apparently clever enough he can plot escape plans and keep calm so that Heita’s body could receive a tattooo.

On a sidenote I don’t know how Nopperabou picked up the convicts for his tattooing project.

Evidently at the time Nopperabou too wasn’t kept into isolation… but still supposedly it was Asirpa who was meant to collect the skins. Sure, in Wilk’s mind he likely expected her to do it with Hijikata’s help and choosing a certain type of convicts would make harder for Tsurumi to collect them but really… it’s a plan that, more than clever, just requires a huge suspension of belief from the get go.

We know Nopperabou gave a tattoo to dangerous 24 convicts, meaning he gets to see them more than once to complete their tattoos as such big tattoo require time to be drawn.

We also know the convicts were passed their escape plan by Hijikata who, however, doesn’t know them all while Wilk apparently only tattooed them and didn’t really talk to them, some convicts, like Shiraishi, avoiding to look at him at all.

This two info however enter in conflict.

Supposedly the convicts agreed to get a tattoo because this would give them a chance to escape… unless Wilk had opened up a nice tattoo shop in Abashiri and getting a tattoo from him was considered the last fashion.

I mean, if the convicts agreed to be tattooed because this would allow them to escape and, since the escape plan was passed to them by Hijikata as Wilk only tattooed them silently or so Shiraishi said, it was Hijikata who picked them up and proposed them to get a tattoo so that they could use it to escape... so he should know them all… but no, Hijikata doesn’t know them all either.

Not mentioning in order to request for all the tattooed prisoners to be moved Tsurumi too should have gotten a list with their names on but no, he doesn’t know them all either or he would have found Youichirou immediately as the guy, after escaping, went straight home.

Besides, whoever told Tsurumi about the tattooed prisoners? Usami was a rookie learning how Abashiri worked by the time we saw him working as a guard… meaning he wasn’t around when the convicts escaped so did Tsurumi have a previous spy in the prison? And if the answer is yes, where is he now? Couldn’t he remain there? Was he among the guards who were moved away?

Oh well, hard to answer to all this now so let’s go back to Heita.

As @bloody-fabre pointed out in this ask, interestingly enough Heita’s tattoo isn’t cut in the middle of his torso but seems to continue.

A mistake from Noda’s part that will be corrected in the volume version or is there a purpose for this?

I discussed this in a more detailed way in my answer to that ask so I’ll merely send you there if you’re interested and dig into something else.

One of the kanji on Heita’s body could be read as ‘shi’ (刺). Currently we were assuming the ‘shi’ kanji that would represent the ‘shi’ part of Horokew Oshikoni was the one Gotou had but it can be the right ‘shi’ is this one. Hard to say as this is the first time that, as far as we know, someone has this kind of tattoo.

We’ll see.

Back to Kadokura, he gets thoughtful and, although he claims one would think all Heita said was something Heita made up, the truth is Heita was arrested and sentenced to death because he murdered someone and ripped apart his body while wearing a bear pelt.

From the instruments near to the victim we can easily figure the guy was a gold panner.

Anyway this caused Heita to be called ‘Dōtō no higuma otoko' Matsuda Heita (「道東のヒグマ男」松田平太 “Matsuda Heita, “the bear man of east Hokkaido””)... but what Kadokura also realizes is that, if what Heita told Kadokura is true, Heita might be trying to do the same again and again… which in fact is exactly what’s happening.

We switch back to Heita and Sugimoto’s fight and yes, Heita really broke Sugimoto’s arm which we can see swinging around the way Ogata’s arm did when Sugimoto broke it so, even though the visual might not have been perfectly faithful (Heita is much shorter than Sugimoto, he couldn’t have attacked him from that height) the arm breaking really happened.

Not that Sugimoto is bothered by it as he uses his rifle to… swing it at Heita, trying to hit Heita with it as if it were some sort of wand.

Now, it’s not a bad move, as Sugimoto really have no time to aim and shoot and probably wouldn’t have managed to do it with just one arm, but, as Sugimoto is more prone to use his rifle as if it were a club or some sort of javelin he tosses at enemies, while shooting isn’t really his strongest suit, maybe Sugimoto should consider adding a club or something similar to his equipment.

Anyway Heita fights exactly like a ferocious bear. He bits Sugimoto’s good arm...

and causes them both to roll off the mountain and down a cliff (the whole thing ironically reminds me of Sugimoto’s meeting with Ogata in which he broke Ogata’s arm and caused him to fall off a cliff by hitting him with his rifle… but it’s probably just a coincidental parallelism) a tree probably breaking their fall so they don’t exactly slam straight on the ground from the cliff.

As Sugimoto falls Shiraishi reaches Asirpa with Vasily’s draw in his hand, asking where Heita is and telling her Heita is a tattooed convict.

Meanwhile we discover that Sugimoto’s rifle remained trapped in the branches of the tree while Sugimoto and Heita reached the ground and Heita is again jumping on Sugimoto, impressing Sugimoto with his terrible strength... which is quite a feat really as I remember the only people who managed to impress him previously were Ushiyama and Gansoku.

As Heita growls like a bear, trying to bite Sugimoto again, Sugimoto keeps him away with his foot and retrieve his bayonet, with whom he stabs him multiple times, same as he did with Henmi.

The visual shows us the bear screaming… and then, from his mouth two hands emerge, one of them pulling the rope close to Sugimoto’s head,

rope which we’ve come to associate to an amappo trap, which, predictably, fires. However, as it’s about to hit Sugimoto, Heita gets in between, and is stabbed in his neck.

Sugimoto is surprised as Heita falls and Asirpa and Shiraishi reach them.

Heita comments he finally beats ‘it’, ‘it’ being the Wenkamuy. As Asirpa realizes that was the place in which the Amappo trap that almost killed Vasily was, Heita explains he basically tried to lead the Wenkamuy there on purpose... meaning he has some vague measure of awareness and control on the Wenkamuy, at least as he and Sugimoto were fighting.

Shiraishi would like for Asirpa to save Heita from the arrow… but Heita doesn’t want to be saved.

He explains when he was 12 he heard the story of the Wenkamuy from the Ainu. The visual focuses on the cigarette case, as if to imply he got it in that circumstance. The whole story scared him a lot yet he was always fantasizing about it.

Then Heita switches to talk about his family. Even if he worked hard to pan gold, his family would have wasted it all in a single day.

It’s worth to note here Heita is using ‘Watashi’ (私) to refer to himself.

私が汗水ながして砂金を掘ってもその日のうちに散在する家族たち.

Watashi ga asemizu nagashite sakin o hotte mo sonohi no uchi ni sanzai suru kazoku-tachi.

“Even if I sweat to pan gold dust, my family would waste it all in a single day day.”

Heita claims this digusted him and he wanted to punish those greedy, ugly guys who were blinded by gold...

until one day, FINALLY, HIS Wenkamuy killed his whole family.

Yes, Heita says

‘his’

Wenkamuy or, more specifically he says:

僕のウェンカムイが家族を全員殺してしまった

Boku no Wenkamui ga kazoku o zen'in koroshite shimatta

“My Wenkamuy killed my entire family.”

Yes, he has switched again to using ‘boku’. This can be our hint that, when his family was killed by the Wenkamuy he was pretty young and also, in the past, when he used ‘boku’ he was merely reliving what had happened to his family when he was younger. Was he only 12 when this happened? Or did he manage to get a little older? Hard to say as there’s no visual showing us how Heita was at the time.

Anyway, although Heita is clearly telling us the truth, the situation is deliberately unclear. Does he defines the ‘wenkamuy’ as HIS because he’s admitting he was the one doing the slaughtering or is he calling it as such because he fantasized about it to the point he believes a real bear has become his own Wenkamuy and he had called it?

It’s hard to say, the slaughtering of his own family at the hands of a real bear as well as a misplaced sense of guilt could be the drama that caused Heita’s mind to shatter and reduce him the way he is now… or he could have shattered much earlier, as it’s pretty clear he has no love for his family and views it as ugly and greedy from when he was pretty young, so it’s possible they might have abused him as a common characteristic of who suffer of DID in real life is that a great percentage of them also suffered of abuse.

There’s no doubt though his story is told in a rather rushed manner to fit the 18 pages which constitute the lenght of each Golden Kamuy chapter printed in the magazine and I think, very likely, it be expanded in the volume version as it happened to other convicts (see Youichirou or Sekiya for example).

Heita switched again to Watashi as he says ‘the greedy me’ was also eaten in punishment by the Wenkamuy as well.

そして欲深い私も罰として食べられ・・・

Soshite yokubukai watashi mo batsu to shite taberare…

“Then it ate the greedy me in punishment...”

Is Heita defining himself greedy because he wanted Noriko for himself as in his hallucination/flashback we saw him trying to kiss her?

Or he views himself as greedy because he too wanted the gold and this is why he was mad with his family who wasted it and wanted it to be murdered?

Hard to say with the little info we have.

Heita continues saying that after he was eaten by the Wenkamuy he turned into a Wenkamuy as well and went off to eat someone… but he wanted to stop this.

Rather long ago I made a post titled ‘Do the Golden Kamuy characters feel guilty when killing people?’.

Heita, like many other characters, in his own way confirms he too felt guilty for what he did, even though each time he murdered he apparently lost control of himself.

Not only Heita believed he too needed to be devoured in punishment by the Wenkamuy...

...but he told Sugimoto and Asirpa to escape when he met them after he re-lived the murder of his whole family,

a sign he didn’t want to kill them, and the whole thing with the Amappo trap is, ultimately, Heita’s desperate way to stop himself from murdering Sugimoto.

In fact his last words are for Sugimoto. He thanks ‘Sugimoto-san’ for fighting him, so that he finally managed to stop himself (by killing himself).

In a way Heita’s story is tragic. He’s a guy whose mental illness forced him to commit crimes he didn’t want to commit. The poor guy only wanted to be stopped.

After thanking Sugimoto Heita dies.

Asirpa explains Heita’s understanding of the story of the Wenkamuy was wrong.

According to her, in her region, people think that the ones killed by the Wenkamuy are killed, not in punishment, but because ‘they were liked by the kamuy’.

Basically she thinks Heita misunderstood or didn’t know in full the story told by the Ainu and let grow inside himself the wrong type of Wenkamuy.

Due to this Asirpa concludes it’s important to communicate things correctly.

As she says so Asirpa is likely thinking at her own culture… which she wants to save and pass down... and which ended up being tied to Heita’s demise... but in this manga it can have a double meaning as a lot of people here don’t convey things correctly or don’t convey things at all, among which there are Asirpa and Sugimoto themselves.

I’m really curious to know if this chapter will work as the opening to them reaching a better understanding of each other by talking more.

Sugimoto, who instead has no real worry for Ainu culture, focuses on the gold and Heita’s madness.

He wonders if it was the greed for gold that turned Heita’s life into madness…

Or there’s a magical power in the gold that turn people mad?

As he says the last sentence we’re shown Tsurumi, whose background behind him could be Otaru but it’s really hard to say, Hijikata, whose background behind him I can’t recognize and Ogata, whose background behind him is the one of the outside of Hijikata’s hideout in Otaru… though again it could also be a random building who looks like it.

Hard to say.

The last person we’re shown is Shiraishi who hugs Heita and begs him not to die before telling him where he should pan next, as if to imply he is a guy who would care only about the gold and not about Heita’s death.

Likely the scene is meant to lighten the spirit, even if I can’t say I find it that funny as I really can’t think Shiraishi would mourn Heita only due to Heita being tied to the gold.

Anyway… going in reverse order I’ll focus first on the last page and then I’ll go back a little.

The fact that Ogata is back in Otaru is an interesting possibility.

Although he was actually in an alliance with Kiro and Hijikata could have guessed it, it’s hard to figure if Hijikata has the means to prove it as Hijikata likely didn’t get to hear Inkarmat’s story and it’s unlikely Ariko knew about it and could report it to Hijikata.

Long story short, Hijikata might not know Nopperabou was shoot by ‘a sniper’ and Ogata could claim he merely escaped with Kiro following the escape plan they had prepared previously together. After all he didn’t exactly swore to follow Hijikata through thick and thin and Hijikata was currently missing, likely busy hiding from Tsurumi’s men with Ushiyama, Kantarou and Toni Anji.

Besides it’s not like Hijikata can claim to be a perfectly loyal boy, not after he had used Sugimoto as a bait in cooperation with Kadokura and Toni Anji.

On the other side, attempting to resume a cooperation with Hijikata would require quite an amount of risk as yes, the possibility Hijikata figured out Ogata was actually working with Kiro to kill Wilk and steal Asirpa is HUGE and since Ogata is a poor liar he might not want to have to defend himself form such accusation.

So yes, while it’s possible Ogata will want to resume a cooperation with Hijikata… is also possible he went there to check the place without meeting anyone as the hideout is BEHIND Ogata meaning he’s leaving it… unless he’s actually meeting someone outside of it.

Hard to say as I can’t figure out where Hijikata is.

Anyway, all this reminds me that Tsurumi planned to post on the newspaper some fake news regarding the death of Asirpa’s grandmother.

While Asirpa likely hadn’t read any newspaper (it was told long ago Asirpa didn’t know how to read, although she might have learnt to recognize the kanji on the convicts’ skins as she figured out correctly which were the relevant ones on Gotou, prisoner number 1 and Shiraishi) it seems no one who knows how to read had the chance to read a newspaper and report the info to her as they had hid in Ainu villages where there was apparently shortage of newspapers.

So, unless Heita had a newspaper and the guys will read it now, it almost seems as if the whole plan was a moot point.

It could be, Tsurumi wasn’t putting much faith in it… but on the other side Hijikata read newspapers and could be interested in checking this as he could try to use the info to win Asirpa over to his cause. On the other side we also have Ogata who has a weakness for grandmothers so he could end up being involved in this as well.

We’ll see.

So let’s go back into the chapter a little more.

This arc ends again with Sugimoto wondering about something, namely the connection between gold and madness. He’s unsure if madness is caused by greed or gold just has a ‘magical power’ that turn people mad.

Sure, it could be just a reference to the title, ‘Golden Kamuy’ which imply the gold is a ‘kamuy’, where ‘kamuy’ for the Ainu are ‘all the things that are useful’ but also ‘all the things with power beyond their control’.

The gold can, of course, be labelled as a ‘kamuy’ because useful... but now Sugimoto is wondering if it actually has a power beyond their control.

Personally I don’t like much this idea because it discharges the men’s responsability in being greedy and places the blame on the gold, which would just drive them to insanity.

Of course it can also be Noda’s way to remark again the difference between Sugimoto and Ogata. Ogata is a guy who strongly believes in the relation between cause and effect. It’s not the kamuy who save people, it’s the Orok’s hat and him shooting to the Russian border guards’ leader. Sugimoto instead is more prone to think into magic and divine punishment, like how he assumed through the whole chapter that the bear was sent by the gods of the mountain to punish them for not sending off the bear properly.

I wonder if this is going to turn out relevant in the future… or it’s just a mere characteristic of the two of them… and let’s keep on talking of them as Heita, with his uncontrollable Wenkamuy reminds me of Sugimoto and how he lost it while fighting Gansoku.

Is Sugimoto going to lose it again?

Is the Heita arc going to foreshadow that? Sugimoto losing complete control of himself and his friends having to find a way to bring him back?

It could be interesting, Sugimoto’s loss of control was touched only once… it would be good to see it again and, this time, being handled by his friends and not just by people who were to tell him they’ll kill him if he were to lose it again (albeit I like to think Tsukishima did it to try and motivate Sugimoto not to lose it again…).

On the other side the only other character who attempted ‘suicide’, albeit indirectly, is Ogata when he tried to persuade Asirpa to shoot him… and while Heita’s actions were tied to him misunderstanding the Wenkamuy’s story, Ogata’s actions were also tied to him mistakenly thinking Asirpa had been set up to be the Ainu’s idol… never mention both Heita and Ogata started their wrong path when they both were pretty young.

So this small arc of apparently little importance could actually be meant to work as a bridge to introduce us to the future development of both Ogata and Sugimoto or of just one of them.

Personally I’ll be glad if we’ll learn more on either of those two as I’m greedy for more info about Sugimoto or Ogata. It might be just me though but they’re both in interesting situations with Ogata back in Hokkaido and, possibly, in Otaru and Sugimoto now with his arm broken… poor Sugimoto out of late seems to have troubles not to end up seriously injured… the past time it was bullet wounds, now it’s a broken arm… he’s really not having it easy.

Anyway Noda is taking a break so next week there sadly will be no chapter. We’ll see what he’s preparing for us.

He still has only four convicts to reveal and if he’ll handle them as fast as he did with Heita we might be closer to the ending than we’ve assumed.

We sadly can only wait.

#Golden Kamuy #Sugimoto Saichi #Asirpa #Ogata Hyakunosuke #Shiraishi Yoshitake #Matsuda Heita #Tsurumi Tokushirou #Hijikata Toshizou #Golden Kamuy Ramblings and Theories #Matsuda Taka #Matsuda Jirou #Matsuda Noriko

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amer-ainu · 5 years

Link

ON 15 February, the Cabinet of Japan approved a bill that officially recognises the Ainu as Indigenous people of northern Japan, many of which live in Hokkaido. Although Japan formally recognised the Ainu as an Indigenous group in 2008, concrete legal recognition has not been established until now.

The new ‘Bill on the implementation of the policies to realise a society where the pride of Ainu people are respected’ consists of 45 clauses and nine supplementary clauses. The first clause states that the Ainu are the Indigenous people of northern Japan and defines the nature of the bill; the fourth bans discrimination against them.

It even simplifies the procedures individuals must follow to obtain permission to collect timber from national forests for indigenous rituals and to catch salmon in rivers using traditional methods. Moreover, it defines the purpose and structure of the Symbolic Spaces for Ethnic Harmony – a national centre for promoting Ainu history and culture set to open in Shiraoi, Hokkaido, in April 2020. The national government will also be committed to subsidising similar local government projects.

Shiraoi Ainu Museum, Source: PixHound/Shutterstock

The bill, however, ultimately shies away from the genuine protection of Indigenous rights. It fails to directly address welfare policies, including life protection insurance, employment support schemes, and existing gaps in education levels. Furthermore, the bill does not acknowledge the immorality of past assimilation policies that have resulted in immeasurable losses for Ainu populations.

Merely defining a series of administrative procedures, the bill is limited to mandating the national and local governments to actively help preserve Ainu culture and improve the rest of the population’s understanding of it as well as of its people.

As such, it is not very difficult to identify the shortcomings of this so-called reform and condemn the government for its half-hearted approach to Indigenous issues.

Indeed, some activists and specialists have been quick to attack it. Some have argued that Japan’s Indigenous policies do not recognise Ainu self-determination and autonomy, disqualifying the country from meeting international human rights standards despite its government voting in favour of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007.

Nevertheless, it is too early to determine whether the new bill will prove useless or whether it will eventually benefit the Ainu people.

The new bill replaces the 1997 Ainu Culture Promotion Act (ACPA) that had also initially been largely criticised by Ainu activists and experts for explicitly rejecting the general concept of ‘Indigenous rights’. Some argued that the ACPA would not change anything and would fail to improve the socioeconomic status of the Ainu people.

However, the enactment of the ACPA actually encouraged – at least to an extent – individuals from the Ainu community to engage more in promoting their own culture. The Foundation for Ainu Culture, established under the ACPA, has hosted annual craft exhibitions and festivals across Japan that have arguably contributed to raising national awareness. Things seem to have changed, if even slightly, for the better over the past two decades with ACPA in place.

Additionally, in the past, government funding for cultural initiatives was only available on a case-by-case basis. The town of Biratori in Hokkaido, for example, where the famous Ainu village Nibutani is located, has long received financial assistance from the national government to temporarily employ workers in the development of Ainu cultural projects. The majority of project employees from the town have been of Ainu ethnicity.

Traditional Ainu dishes in Otaru museum. Hokkaido. Japan. Source: ArtNat/Shutterstock

Now, other local municipalities can facilitate similar programs under the new bill as well. That is, local governments can propose or plan an Ainu cultural promotion project and receive subsidies from the national government to create local employment, contributing to social and economic prosperity in the area.

Local Ainu populations naturally possess the required skills to work on these projects, meaning that the hiring process is based on merit rather than ethnicity.

In this way, the new bill can indirectly contribute to easing employment problems faced by the Ainu and to enhancing the socioeconomic status of Ainu communities in the region. Without compromising their identity, the Ainu are more easily able to live amongst other ethnic groups as ‘normal’ citizens of Japan.

While it is true that Japan’s law does not properly define who the Ainu are – only implying equality and rejecting collective Indigenous rights – this also means that regions with big Ainu communities are able to take advantage of the general lack of legal constraints. This results in there being less conflict with existing laws, and allows for greater social and economic prosperity that benefits the entire region instead of just the local Ainu populations.

Like ACPA, this new bill may well change social and economic conditions surrounding the Ainu in the long-term. From here, however, its success depends entirely on the tactics and initiatives local governments and individuals decide to implement.

Naohiro Nakamura is a senior lecturer in the School of Geography, Earth Science and Environment, The University of the South Pacific, Fiji.

This piece was first published at Policy Forum, Asia and the Pacific’s platform for public policy analysis and opinion.

Anyone in Japan with a greater understanding of the situation there (as well as less ambiguous translations) can tell me if I’m wrong, but it sounds to me that one of the details of this new Ainu bill scheme is to allow non-Ainu to request government funding as long as their projects are Ainu themed enough (like a souvenir shop, perhaps?)

This particular article seems optimistic that somehow Ainu’s “natural” predisposition to certain skills would certainly guarantee their position at the front of hiring considerations, despite the bill stripping them of legally requiring Ainu folks involvement in Ainu cultural projects.

On the other hand, it may offer Ainu folks who aren’t on the Japanese government’s registry (most Ainu are not registered) to benefit from financial assistance as well, at least in northern Japan. I’d be interested to know if that includes northern Honshu, or just Hokkaido. One issue that is consistently raised is how Ainu identity in the eyes of the occupying Japanese government is essentially region-locked. Hokkaido is a reservation in everything but name.

So far everything I’ve read continues to illustrate the shallowness of the 2019 Ainu bill, and the naked avarice that motivates it.

#Ainu #Ainu Moshir #2019 Ainu Bill #Hokkaido #Japan

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