When I traveled to Japan two winters ago, I went there following a trail of controversy in the lead-up to the now delayed and done with 2020 Olympic Games.  It had everything to do with the country owning up to its own imperialism and  racism, beginning with the Indigenous Ainu.

The Ainu are the only Indigenous Peoples formally recognized by the government of Japan as of 2008.  Shortly after the country secured the bid to host the 2020 Olympic Games in 2013, Ainu delegates attending the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York had complained to me that they felt they were on the fast-track of becoming politicized - this, after generations of invisibility in Japan - and to boost the image a country long criticized for its homogenous tendencies. 

First came the country's announcement of constructing a National Ainu Museum soon after securing the Olympics.  The roughly $220 million dollar park was slated to receive at least $9 million in government spending according the 2019 Ainu Promotion Act. The new law was passed roughly a decade after the Japanese government adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (what led to formal acknowledgment of the Ainu). 

But then came a lack of consultation whenever Ainu traditions and ceremonies, and more dire - repatriated Indigenous remains - became an issue.  A turning point came when Olympic organizers suddenly canceled the Ainu from the Opening Ceremony without explanation.  It stoked languishing resentment among Indigenous leaders, mostly over the estimated 1,600 Ainu bodies whose graves were plundered by anthropologists in the late 19th-century only to be "returned" to the very museum that has sowed so much division.

At face value, the National Ainu Museum is gorgeous - the sleekest, most expensive structure to ever be built in the sleepy seaside town of Shiraoi, Hokkaidō.  Dubbed Upopoy, an Ainu word meaning "singing together in a large group," ironically such language epitomizes the problems that have languished with Japanese colonization.  The government is happy to celebrate Ainu culture when it sees fit, but would prefer not to address in any meaningful way Ainu genocide and their demands as survivors.  Like America, Japan refuses to outwardly apologize for its mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples.

A government survey conducted in 2017 found just over 13,000 Ainu in Hokkaidō, though the UN estimates there may be as many as 25,000 or more.  One professor I spoke with who studies Ainu affairs, said many more live in the "underground" - too afraid to be Ainu for fear of discrimination, and not Japanese enough to fit in.  

On Saturday, just as Kenya's winning marathoners in the women's race were making their way to gold and silver victories in Sapporo, the Ainu took center stage for what became an hours-long dance performance. Officials with the Olympic committee made remarks. The event was live-streamed by the National Ainu Museum. But little fanfare was mentioned elsewhere, least of which what such visibility to the world represents: resistance.

Ainu leaders’ demands are no different than that of Indigenous leaders here in North America: they want to hunt and fish as they had for millenia, predating settler disruption; they want rights restored to pray and bury their relatives in the way of their ancestors; and they want a say in how their very Indigeneities are being represented, starting with that museum.  So little involvement included the Ainu. 

• I've added a book to the Indigenously Bookshelf that challenges Japan's colonial narrative of Hokkaidō 
• Otherwise, this fast take from the Georgetown Journal about Ainu activism lends a more in-depth overview in only a few pages

Estimated cost for Japan to host the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics: $20B

Total times that Japan has hosted the Games: 4

That Japan has had to cancel: 1

Number of seats inside Tokyo's new (and empty) Olympic Stadium: 60K

Total years since Japanese nationality was forced on the Ainu: 150

Exact number of settlers who first arrived on Hokkaidō in 1869: 500

Total years since Shigeru Kayano is the first Ainu elected to Japan's Diet: 27

Total months after Japan adopts UNDRIP that it formally recognizes the Ainu: 9

Estimated Ainu population of Hokkaidō according to the government: 13K

According to the United Nations: 25K

Estimated number of bodies owed by repatriation to the Ainu: 1,600

Number of Ainu allowed to fish for ritual purposes under the Ainu Promotion Act: 20

Total salmon allowed for harvest from September to November: 50

Average cost of the Symbolic Space for Ethnic Harmony Ainu National Museum: $220M

Amount in yen for an Adult General Admission fee into the museum: 1200 JPY

"Thanks for the latest edition of Indigenously - so interesting!"

Shakuntala, the Internet

Thanks, Shakuntala! Hoping my back-to-back Olympiad coverage tops off the Summer Games for you for another four years. 🏅