Presentation and Discussion Report

This presentation was more comfortable for me, because both of my partners know about my topic, and I have talked with them in this cycle or in the spring semester’s Ainu research. With the first page, I talked about today’s situation of Ainu language. It was looked unique that Ainu language was spoken in Japan and Russia for them. I think it was because Japanese and Russian languages are completely different, except some imported terms.

With the second, I talked about oral literature of Ainu, I think I should talked that Ainu people didn’t have any alphabet in this part, I talked that at first, so it made my audience bit confused. Anyway, they looked be interested in the oral literature, and its differences with Japanese those kind of literature. It was interesting for us that Ainu language has some dialect.

In the third part, I talked about other culture of Ainu people, such as dance, cloths and Iyomante. Until I went to the Caranke festival, I hadn’t known anything about Ainu people’s dance, so I talked what I saw at the festival such as grasshopper dance in Tokachi area. They were interested in cloths of Ainu, especially which made by plant such as Nipesi, they were very surprised when I told them some cloths made by bark of a tree. They concerned about the comfortableness of those cloths, but Yukari find out that we wear cloths made by plants such as flax, so maybe it is not so bad we think, if I have chance to touch it I want to try.

With the fourth part, I talked about Ainu culture center near the Tokyo station. About 4,000 people visit there in a year, but it has only 3 staffs, so my partners said it is too few. And they didn’t know there is that kind of center in Tokyo, so it sounded interesting for them.

And at last I talked about the Caranke festival. I showed picture of the festival, then Shu thought I went to Hokkaido, to join the festival, it was funny for me. But I thought Ainu culture might be far from us as he thought so. I talked that many Ainu people live in Tokyo with their traditional and new culture.

Research Sources

Japan Times: Ainu musician oki brings the world to Hokkaido: Aug 28, 2008

Beats 21: 注目のアイヌ・ミュージシャン、オキ

Countries and their cultures

Omniglot - Ainu itak

Hokkaido Ainu Culture Research Center

Hokkaido Prefecture: Pon kapi-sos

財団法人アイヌ民族博物館監修「アイヌ文化の基礎知識」草風館 1993

北海道新聞： ピヤラ アイヌ民族の今

榎森進編「アイヌの歴史と文化 Ⅰ・Ⅱ」創童社 2003・2004

Primary Research

Ainu Culture Center (Oct. 26th)

Caranke Festival (Nov. 3rd)