Hello!
How are you? Today let's look at Japan's own indigenous people (先住民族) - the Ainu.
Let's look at the picture above. It's a map of Japan showing the original area, plus the widest places of where the Ainu lived.
At one time they lived from the northeastern part of the Tohoku, all of Hokkaido, and the way up through Sakhalin Island (what many older Japanese call Karafuto「樺太」) and even up through the Kuril Islands (千島列島).
But now they only live in Hokkaido. Their numbers are small, and they have married mainstream Japanese people enough so that they do not look so different. But they are proud of their culture and traditions.
Here's a picture of a gathering in an Ainu village from around 1905:
Activity 1/homework
Here is one video about the Ainu. Watch it and answer the questions below it. It's in Japanese and is short, but watch the video more than once if you have to.
Let's look at the picture above. It's a map of Japan showing the original area, plus the widest places of where the Ainu lived.
At one time they lived from the northeastern part of the Tohoku, all of Hokkaido, and the way up through Sakhalin Island (what many older Japanese call Karafuto「樺太」) and even up through the Kuril Islands (千島列島).
But now they only live in Hokkaido. Their numbers are small, and they have married mainstream Japanese people enough so that they do not look so different. But they are proud of their culture and traditions.
Here's a picture of a gathering in an Ainu village from around 1905:
Here is one video about the Ainu. Watch it and answer the questions below it. It's in Japanese and is short, but watch the video more than once if you have to.
Please write answers to these questions in your notebooks:
1. The first man is Akibe Tokuhei, the deputy executive director of the Ainu Association of Hokkaido. What does he say is the first thing that Ainu people do when they get together?
2. Which rights does he say that the UN said are basic to all indigenous people around the world?
3. What is the most important right he believes that the Japanese government took from the Ainu?
4. What kind of right in government does he want the Ainu to have?
5. What does Sakai Mina say about the dance and music of the Ainu Rebels band?
6. What kind of image does she say that most Japanese have had about the Ainu?
7. How did she used to feel about being an Ainu?
8. When did she begin to change her feeling about being an Ainu?
9. What does "ainu" mean in the Ainu language?
10. What did the Ainu do for their traditional way of life for centuries?
Here are the board notes for our class today on 6/10:
Take care! See you next time!Here are the board notes for our class today on 6/10:
Images: Top - by Arnold Platon - This vector image includes elements that have been taken or adapted from this: Japan on the globe (claimed) (Japan centered).svg (by TUBS). - Own work (Vectorization), based on this map, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25364093/Ainu group - by Unknown - Japanese book "Series of Japanese geography and folk culture: Vol.14" published by Shinkosha, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7622792/courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Video uploaded from YouTube. I do not own the rights to these videos, artwork, or the musical content. Uploaded for educational purposes only. All rights reserved to the copyright holders.
