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Human Rhythm and Divine Rhythm in Ainu Epics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

François Macé

Extract

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The Ainu are still in existence, but their reduced numbers, now around 20,000, indicate how marginal their presence is even in Hokkaido, their ancestral territory. Moreover, they have undergone much metissage, in both ethnic and cultural terms. Legally, the Ainu do not yet constitute an indigenous ethnic minority; they have only recently obtained some gestures of recognition from the government, such as the interruption of a dam project on a ritual site. In 1994, for the first time in history, an Ainu, Kay ano Shigeru, was elected to the senate. The legislation concerning the Ainu lands, dating from 1899, has finally been revised. And with a boost from the International Year of Ethnic Minorities, in 1992, Ainu organizations managed to inflect the official Japanese doctrine that Japanese soil is home to only one community, that of the Japanese.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 46 , Issue 181 , March 1998 , pp. 31 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

Tsushima, Yuko, ed., Tombent, tombent les gouttes d'argent - Chants du peuple aïnou (Paris, 1996).Google Scholar
Philippi, Donald, Song of Gods, Song of Humans - The Epic Tradition of the Ainu (Tokyo, University of Tokyo Press, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minzokuhakubutsukan, Ainu, ed., Ainu bunka no kiso chishiki [Basic information about Ainu culture] (Tokyo, Sofukan, 1993).Google Scholar