I'm currently working my way through a new book (printed in 2014) called
Japan's Ainu Minority in Tokyo: Diasporic Indigeneity and Urban Politics, written by
Dr. Mark K. Watson (currently of Concordia University in Montréal), which I loaned out from the local Japan Foundation library.
Quote:
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This book is about the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, living in and around Tokyo; it is, therefore, about what has been pushed to the margins of history. Customarily, anthropologists and public officials have represented Ainu issues and political affairs as limited to rural pockets of Hokkaido. Today, however, a significant proportion of the Ainu people live in and around major cities on the main island of Honshu, particularly Tokyo. Based on extensive original ethnographic research, this book explores this largely unknown diasporic aspect of Ainu life and society. Drawing from debates on place-based rights and urban indigeneity in the twenty-first century, the book engages with the experiences and collective struggles of Tokyo Ainu in seeking to promote a better understanding of their cultural and political identity and sense of community in the city. Looking in-depth for the first time at the urban context of ritual performance, cultural transmission and the construction of places or ‘hubs’ of Ainu social activity, this book argues that recent government initiatives aimed at fostering a national Ainu policy will ultimately founder unless its architects are able to fully recognize the historical and social complexities of the urban Ainu experience.
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One thing that is interesting about the book is how it often sets the situation of the Ainu diaspora in Tokyo in the framework of other indigenous peoples moving from their "traditional" lands (or at least those which may be formally designated as such by their respective governments) to live and work in larger cities - such as those from the various First Nations of Canada who live in places like Montréal, Toronto, or Vancouver.
It also mentions the role that the now-defunct Rera Cise restaurant played in helping to shape part of the Tokyo Ainu community - and notes that, despite its closure, its legacy lives on through a new restaurant, Harukor.
And, indeed, it notes that there is more than one group which holds claim to Ainu identity in the area. Just as the various First Nations peoples in a place like Toronto may come from a range of diverse groups across Canada, those who self-identify as Ainu in Tokyo are not necessarily descended from a common corner of Hokkaido (or Sakhalin, or elsewhere).
With the difficulties in trying to revitalize the Ainu presence in Hokkaido itself, the issue of what, if anything, to treat the Ainu presence in Tokyo and eslewhere has been controversial. But the volume makes a compelling case that, wherevet the ongoing process of re-defining the status and meaning of the word "Ainu" in Japan may go, it may well find itself being increasingly shaped by the role played by a broader Ainu diaspora.