Life of Ainu including information about marriage, pregnancy, birth, child-raising, naming and coming of age from the Ainu Museum.
Ainu fight for return of plundered ancestral remains: Landmark case pits indigenous people of Hokkaido against local university holding lion's share of grisly trophies This article looks at court case brought by an Ainu group in Kineusu, Hokkaido against Hokkaido University to have Ainu remains held by the University returned to them. The case raises the issue of differences of kinship and whether we understand ancestry as individual, as Japanese law requires, or as collective and tribal as it is for Ainu group. Japan Times, Aug 12, 2013.
33/Ainu Spirituality by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. The author discusses social hierarchy and gender on pages 244-245 and argues that while there are social hierachies and divisions in Ainu society, these are not fluid and complementary, not fixed and that gender relations are based on complementarity not conflict or power inequality. From the catalogue to Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People, (an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC), 1999.
Indigenous women facing educational disadvantages: The case of the Ainu in Japan This page has a summary of an academic article by Takayanagi Taeko and Shimomura Takayuki from 2013.
Ainu Shamanism: A Forbidden Path to Universal Knowledge by Sakurako Tanaka. This article discusses the historical development of Ainu spiritual beliefs and the gender roles connected to them. It explains how a gender division of labour developed in Ainu Shamanism with men as masters of ceremonies and women as mediums who communicated with spirits and taking medical roles healing people who were ill. Later Ainu Shamanism become dominated by female healers and mediums. The article also includes the story of Aiko, an Ainu medium, healer and midwife (who helped women give birth), and concludes by arguing that recent Ainu cultural revitalization has focused on public ceremonies such as Iyomante (the bear-sending ceremony) but has excluded the role of women in Ainu Shamanism. Cultural Survival, Summer 2003.
Gender and Cultural Revitalization Movements Among the Ainu Takako Yamada, Kyoto University. This long academic article argues that although it, "is often pointed out that among Ainu people today there is an idea of male dominance or male chauvinism...Ainu women are neither helpless nor dependent on men but are strongly self-reliant". The division of labour by sex in everyday life may not lead it inferiority for women but may be based on complementarity or harmony between men and women. It also explains that women have played a greater role than men in movements for Ainu cultural revitalization partly because Ainu women have maintained their cultural knowledge and roles more than men, but it also notes that Ainu women often come to have more pride in their Ainu identities than Ainu men even if they had originally lost a sense of themselves as Ainu. It also argues that Ainu cultural revitalization has mainly maintained rather than challenged traditional gender roles for men and women. Senri Ethnographical Studies 56, no date (1990s?)