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Joe Watkins, "Indigenizing Japan: Ainu Past, Present, and Future" (U Arizona Press, 2025)
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- [00:01]
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Caleb Zakrin
Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Caleb Zakrin, editor of the New Books Network. Today I'm speaking with Joe Watkins, senior consultant for Archaeological and Cultural Education Consultants and an affiliated faculty member in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. We're discussing his new book, Indigenizing Ainu Past, Present and Future. Hailing from the northern island of Hokkaido, the Ainu people arrived more than 15,000 years ago in what is now known as Japan. Despite their importance to the island country's history, the Ainu people and their descendants are often overlooked and neglected. Set the record straight. I'm pleased today to have Joe Watkins on the podcast. Joe, thanks for joining me today on the New Books Network.
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Joe Watkins
Thank you, Caleb. I'm very glad to be here.
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Caleb Zakrin
Really happy to have you on. This is just such a fascinating topic. This book, as I was saying before, is just an incredible crash course in Ainu history and Japanese history. I really just feel like, I mean, you cover almost 40,000 years of history, it seems so. It's really a remarkable achievement and really looking forward to talking to you about the book. But before even jumping into the subject, I was wondering if you could just tell us a little about yourself and your background.
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Joe Watkins
Certainly. Again, my name is Sho Watkins. I am a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma in Southeastern Oklahoma. I've been doing archaeology for more than 55 years now, having started at the University of Oklahoma when I graduated from high school in 1969. It's been an interesting career learning about archaeology, but also at times trying to figure out whether I could be an American Indian and an archaeologist at the same time. However, I've enjoyed doing archaeology. I've been able to work a great deal here in the United States, but it's also taken me to France, to Australia, New Zealand and of course to Japan. So again, I'm very glad to be here and thank you very much for having me.
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Caleb Zakrin
I always love talking to archaeologists because I feel in many ways like archaeologists. Maybe it's because of Indiana Jones or something like that. It's, you know, there's something, I think when you're a little kid and you, you learn about archeology, there's something so exciting about it, this idea of working in the field and it's, it's very different than that's. Obviously, you know, you do a lot of reading and literature reviews. It's very different than a lot of other sciences and social sciences. So I'm wondering if you could tell us how you became interested in the I knew people and the origins of the book.
- [04:15]
Joe Watkins
Certainly in, in the year 2000, I wrote a book called Indigenous Archaeology, American Indian Values and the Scientific issues. And in 2007, a colleague, Hirumi Kato of Hokkaido University in Japan sent me an email asking if I would come to Japan to talk about the issues American Indians faced in terms of how the their membership was established, how they dealt with repatriation and other issues that involve archaeology and American Indians. So in 2007, my wife Carol Ellick and I went to Sapporo in Hokkaido, Japan for a quick four day trip and gave presentations on American Indian issues, repatriation, membership status and how things worked with archaeology here in the United States. Of course, using primarily the Choctaw as an example, but very broadly talking about repatriation laws and such. That four day trip was the beginning of a basically a 17, 18 year long work with Hokkaido University on archaeological excavations that involved Ainu histories of working with Ainu individuals to further discuss how archaeology can impact Ainu communities and really learning how the Japanese view cultures that are not seen as mainstream Japanese culture. The group they call the Wage and the the People of Jin. So it's, it's been a long time coming. I, I joke that this book was 18 years in the making. I thought the title up about, oh, 14, 15 years ago. And then spent the next 15 years trying to tease it out of my brain and, and try to get it onto paper, both real paper and electronic paper. So it's been. I don't want to say it's been a struggle. It's. It's just been a. It's taken me a while to say, that's enough. It's not the final word on the Ainu in Japanese archaeology. It is just one word on the Ainu in Japanese archaeology.
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Caleb Zakrin
I think this book also could just be used as an incredible introduction to Japanese history through the lens of the Ainu people. Your book just includes incredible. So much incredible details, graphs, information. It's just, it's extremely jam packed and, and you start by looking at the, the early genetic and archaeological origins of the Ainu people. This is, this sort of prehistory. I find it extremely interesting. I was wondering if you'd talk a little bit about what the study of Ainu genetics tells us about how they first arrived in Hokkaido and other things that, that we, that we have learned from this work.
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Joe Watkins
Sure, I'm glad to. Genetically, the first group of people that went into what's called the mainland islands of Japan, Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku Islands, came to that area about 40,000 years ago. They probably migrated in from through the Korean Peninsula, from the Chinese mainland, as after they got into the Japanese, the main Japanese island. They spread both south into what's now Okinawa and north into the Hokkaido Islands. So as they spread and as they became more involved with their local environments genetically, they maintained sort of a very basic genetic structure. They interacted, they still intermarried and served to form these different communities. But as time advanced and as they operated, say in Hokkaido, as opposed from the mainland, they did. Some genetic differences occurred. What's called genetic drift. I don't want to get too involved in the science of genetics, but as these populations became a little bit more isolated, their genetics sort of shifted. At about 3,000 years ago, another group came in from the, from the Chinese mainland and brought with them a different culture. They brought with them wet rice agriculture, and they also brought another set body of genetics with them as they moved into the Japanese mainland, Hanshu Shikoku, Kyushu they intermarried with the local populations and they created a genetic population that was different than the groups in Hokkaido and further south in Okinawa area. Now the people in Hokkaido, who were much less influenced by the people on the mainland, also received some genetic material from the Amur region of what is now Russia and that Mongolian area of the Asian mainland. So the groups in Hokkaido from Sahalin island and perhaps from the Kamchatka Peninsula formed another group that had a genetic structure different from the mainland Japanese. So that group, after about 3,000 years, sort of became more and more economically and genetically separated from the group the known as the Yayoi on the, the mainland Japan. It's a little complicated, but if you think about mainland Japan as forming the, the nucleus or what has become, or what did become the, the Japanese Empire and the historic, what people really consider to be the ethnic Japanese, if you will, that is what has separated the group that eventually became the Ainu in Hokkaido and the group that became the, the group in Okinawa, the Ryukyuans, another separate group from the Japanese Wajin. So that is just a very brief description of how the genetic differences came about and how the Ainu are genetically different from the mainland Japanese.
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Caleb Zakrin
During your work there and, you know, visiting the various archaeological sites, I was wondering if you could just tell us, you know, about these archaeological sites. What, what you, you know, what has been discovered, learned about how, you know, the people that would become the Ainu people lived, you know, they were, they were hunter gatherers. What their, what their, what their, what we know about what their lives were like, you know, 3,000, 4,000 years ago.
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Joe Watkins
I'll be glad to. The Ainu in Hokkaido primarily had two or three different lifestyles. They were hunter gatherers and. But in the northern part of Hokkaido, they eventually developed a marine based lifestyle. They hunted whale and seal and they lived off of kelp and sea animals. So they lived a very different lifestyle than say the people on the eastern side of Hokkaido. On eastern Hokkaido, many of the population lived along the rivers. They hunted deer and other fur bearing animals and they also lived on salmon and other fish. Along the riverside on the southern part of Hokkaido and the very northern portions of Honshu island, the people that became the Ainu lived on a combination of deer and other fur bearing animals and they also lived on shellfish that we have large shell middens that indicate that the people who lived in that area lived on clams and mussels and crab and other marine animals. So we had this very broad group called the Ainu, if you will, who on the entire occupied the entire island of Hokkaido in a very broad hunter gatherer based lifestyle, very different from, as we talked about briefly, the Yayoi on the mainland of Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu Islands, lived primarily on a rice based agriculture. With the development of wet rice agriculture, there was also a need for a social Structure that could help determine who had access to water, who had access to the rice after it was harvested, as well as distribution systems for rice for metal materials that were coming in from the Chinese mainland, and trade relations between the Chinese mainland and across the Korean peninsula. So at about 3,000 years, we get that separation of cultures derived as much from dependence on the economy of wet rice agriculture or the hunter gatherer economy in Northern Honshu, in Northern Honshu and Hokkaido. So there is that cultural difference, genetic difference, and we really can see it archaeologically in that the types of raw materials that are being encountered in the archaeological sites.
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Caleb Zakrin
Prior to the 19th century, what was the interaction like between the Ainu people and the Wajin people?
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Joe Watkins
Good question. Prior to the 19th century, most of the interaction between the Wajin and the Ainu were based primarily in terms of economics. At about 1500 AD, the Japanese Empire developed a relationship with the Ainu based on trade. The Ainu provided deer skin, eagle tail feathers and other raw materials of the sort of to the Japanese government, the Edo government, in order in exchange for rice and raw materials and metals. So this trade was primarily two way, but the Japanese Wajin gained much more from it than the Ainu did. So the Japanese government at that time created what's called the Basho system, a trade alliance whereby particular Shogun families interacted with individual Ainu groups portrayed. Eventually, about the 1700s, the Ainu groups worked to the benefit of the Japanese rather fully than for themselves. And so the Japanese government truly exploited the Ainu. Over time, there were a couple of situations where the Ainu rebelled against the way they were being treated. Most notably was Shock Shane's war, which led to the assassination of Shock Shane. Eventually, at about the 16 and 1700s, the Ainu and the the Japanese government were again, the government were exploiting the Ainu for fish, for deer skins and for other products. And the Ainu were basically just trying to survive based on that hunter gathering situation.
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Caleb Zakrin
Still, how did that relationship then develop in the the Meiji period?
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Joe Watkins
In the Meiji period, after the the Japanese after Japan had been opened up to the the Europeans, the situation changed. After about the 1860s, the Meiji government on the main island in in Honshu sent people to Hokkaido to colonize the island. They wanted to convert Hokkaido into the frontier, basically copying the United States and the British colonization of the North America and Australia and New Zealand, the Japanese government actually brought a couple of American government officials to Hokkaido to help them both colonize the Ainu as well as to try to find ways to fully assimilate the Ainu and into being productive Japanese citizens. So eventually in 1899, the Japanese government passed the former Aborigines act, which officially proclaimed the Ainu to no longer be Aborigines but to be actual Japanese citizens on par with with other Japanese citizens of basically the the lower caste. So in the 18th, in the 19th centuries, both the Japanese government made a concerted effort to erase Ainu identity and to basically equate the Ainu with the lowest Japanese populations. Essentially trying to say that if you want to be Japanese, then you give up everything there is to be Ainu and we will give you little bits of land, we will allow you a pittance for educating your children, but you will be Japanese and you will live in the pride of being Japanese. So again, very similar to what the United States was trying to do to American Indians in the 1800s with the assimilation acts that occurred and what the Australian government was trying to do to the Aboriginal populations and the British government was trying to do with the Maori of Ayote, Aurora, New Zealand this episode.
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Caleb Zakrin
Yeah, that chapter that you have where it's sort of a comparative study looking at how the Japanese treated the Ainu and then looking at how, you know, America treated the indigenous population, how the British Empire treated its various indigenous populations, that obviously there are lots of similarities. Are there any differences that you found as well in terms of how they treated Ainu, or were you struck by just the remarkable similarities of the way in which they sought to oppress them?
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Joe Watkins
Well, during the assimilation period of the late 19th century, I think that there are just so many similarities because the Japanese government actually brought in American officials so familiar with assimilation in the United States. I think two of the biggest differences that I found while I was in in Japan is the fact that the Japanese government never entered into any sorts of treaties with the Ainu. Basically, the Japanese government viewed the Ainu not as separate groups of people, but just as individuals, individuals that had people who, who ran their towns or something administrative, if you will, while in the United States, the United States government and the British government entered into treaties with the people that they encountered, basically equating them with nations such as French, France, Spain and other European colonies or countries at the time. So that really set the stage for how those governments treat their indigenous populations today. And then the second difference I have seen is that in Japan, the Japanese Constitution does not equate the Ainu. Even though the Japanese government has recognized the Ainu as an indigenous group on a level with other groups as recognized in the United nations, that recognition does not carry over into any form of official recognition that the Ainu could use in their constitutional struggle for differential rights different from those rights of Japanese individuals. So that's, to my mind, that's the biggest thing that I think the Ainu are going to have to explore in terms of perhaps a constitutional amendment to the Japanese constitution that would allow that level of recognition. So that remains to be seen.
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Caleb Zakrin
How did the Ainu identity evolve and develop under this pressure at the turn of the century? You talk about this idea of this almost this self awareness developing in response to, due to some of these pressures. Can you. Can you discuss the Ainu identity formation?
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Joe Watkins
Sure. Ainu identity formation. There were people who always recognized that they were Ainu, people who may not have publicly admitted they were Ainu because of the immense amount of discrimination, but there were people who actively both pursued maintaining their own Ainu identity. But they also felt that by becoming Japanese citizens, they could find a way to operate within the the particularly acknowledged system and retain Ainu and Dent identity. So in 1935, 35 years after the Ainu had been formally stripped of their identity, the Japanese government, through the Hokkaido government, created what was has been called the Ainu association of Hokkaido. It's also known as the Hokkaido Ainu association and over time has had various names. But the Hokkaido Ainu association was a quasi governmental organization set up to try to help the Ainu become Japanese, if you will, as well as how to take. To spread the Japanese funding to Ainu organizations on Hokkaido. So in many ways, it was similar to the Bureau of Indian affairs as it exists within the United States. But it also served as a mechanism whereby individual Ainu communities across Hokkaido and in Northern Honshu could send representatives to an organization to sort of provide an Ainu voice to the Hokkaido and to the Japanese government about Ainu issues as the local groups saw them. So in the 1930s and into the 1940s, the Hokkaido Ainu association formed two purposes in it served as a means for the Japanese government to get their information and their funding out to Hokkaido groups, local groups. And it also served as a means whereby the local Ainu organizations could provide a voice to the Hokkaido Ainu association and sort of provide a unified voice to the Japanese government on the issues that the Ainu themselves were concerned about. So that organization changed in the 1960s and in the 1970s when they saw the amount of issues that were being raised in North America and in the United States with the American Indian movement, with the. The voting rights issues of African Americans, all the issues that were being raised in North America. The Hokkaido groups in the island of Hokkaido, the Ainu really began asserting their needs for rights as well. So they had protests in Sapporo, they had protests in, in Tokyo, and they started trying to assert their rights. And so at that time, with the immediacy of information that was coming from the United States and with the growth of global indigenous rights issues, the Ainu started becoming more involved in global indigenous rights, and it continues today. The Ainu are active members of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous affairs and still are trying to more fully adapt the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples in their court cases against the Japanese government.
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Caleb Zakrin
You look at the various, you know, various, like, legal, legal cases to, to identify the Ainu people as the indigenous people of Japan, you know, various attempts also to protect their language, their culture for preservation after attempts to, you know, to wipe. Wipe them out. You know, where does, where does the sort of the preservation and status of their, their culture and their history stand today? Obviously, there, there aren't that, you know, that many people in Japan and in the world, you know, that are, that are, that are Ainu, you know, what's the sort of the status of, of the Ainu people and just the, you know, preserving their culture, preserving the people.
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Joe Watkins
Well, currently the Ainu language is considered an endangered language. There are very few native speakers of the language, although there are quite a few people who have who didn't speak the language and have picked up the language. I think currently there are some Ainu groups who are trying to adapt many American Indian methods of sending the language out to individuals, if you will. The. The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, as I mentioned that I'm a member of, has a very active web based school on learning the Choctaw language. And they would love for the entire world to be able to speak chakra. I think I know that there are teachers at Sapporo University who teach the Ainu language. There are groups like at Nibutani, a very active Ainu community who have language courses and who teach the Ainu language to the youth as sort of a language nest. Very similar to the way the Native American languages are taught in the United States. In terms of Native culture, the Ainu are very strongly utilize Native communities as a means of transferring Ainu culture. They still practice ceremony within Native communities. Many of the ceremonies are led by specific individuals who have retained these ceremonies over time. Other communities are trying to regain their ceremonies by bringing people who can conduct the ceremony into the community and the members are reloaning them to. So it's very active. There are very active Ainu communities all across Hokkaido. In Nibutani, Bira, Torni, just about most of the towns across Hokkaido have Ainu communities. The Ainu communities actively meet generally monthly. The local communities meet monthly. They practice songs, they practice language, they have ceremonies at particular times of the year. And on Hokkaido there is a major event that happens usually in. In September. It's called the Shock Shane ceremony. And it's a celebration of Shock Shane. And it's also a time where all the Ainu communities from around the island of Hokkaido and Honshu gather together to celebrate their culture. Each local community will perform a dance. They will have a large community wide ceremony. They will have a ceremony honoring the ancestors and they will have a large ceremonial meal at lunch. So it is a time of rejoicing. It's a time of regaining acquaintances. And it's a time of celebration of Ainu identity, Ainu culture and Ainu history. I was. My wife and I were able to attend a ceremony in 2000, about 2011. And it just made me feel great. I. I enjoyed and I really basked in the, the celebration and, and the reality that these people were Ainu and they knew how to celebrate being Ainu.
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Caleb Zakrin
Yeah, that's incredible. And you know, obviously you Spent so long working on this, on this project, and you cover so much. I'm wondering for you, you know, what. What additional work, you know, you hope to pursue on this topic or that you hope other archaeologists, other scholars, you know, can pick up the torch and, you know, and do work to really know, understand the Ainu people and their place in. In Japanese history and also just, you know, help. Help, you know, maintain and preserve their. Their culture and history moving forward.
- [37:23]
Joe Watkins
Yes, Caleb, I think that there's a great deal more to be done. Much of the issues that I found in doing the research for this volume is that there's a lot of information out there, but most of it is in Japanese. There's a lot of information about Japanese relationships with the Ainu, but there's really only two or three volumes available in English, and most of those were written in the early 1900s or in the 2000s. There's not a lot that has been written from an Ainu perspective about their. How they have taken advantage of the global indigenous movement to further Ainu studies and Ainu rights. So much of what I see that the place for this book. I've told all my Ainu colleagues and all my Japanese colleagues that I never have seen or intended for this book to be the final word on the Ainu of Hokkaido in Japan. I have seen it, and I've written it primarily as an introduction so that all the people who know about the Ainu can say, well, this is where the Ainu can cast their beginnings, and this is where the Ainu will be going from now. Honestly, most of the Japanese, the Wajin, the non Ainu Japanese that I encountered in Japan, know very little about the Ainu. Many of them believe that the Ainu disappeared in the 1900s, that with the passage of the 1899 law, the Ainu became Japanese and disappeared. Many of the Wajin, or the non Ainu people of Hokkaido felt the same way. There's still a great deal of discrimination against the Ainu people on Hokkaido, but because the Ainu were always seen as primitive, they were always seen as non Japanese because they have a different appearance. Genetically, the Ainu appeared to be more of a Caucasian. They had very thick, wavy hair. They had very heavy beards and just looked different than the ethnic Japanese. So they were always discriminated against. And so what I am hoping and what I think my next project in regard to this book will be, is that I would like to get this book translated into Japanese so that it can then become available. And not only my Ainu Friends and the Ainu colleagues who helped me with this, but also become available to non Ainu Wajin Japanese so that they can perhaps gain a better understanding of who the Ainu are, how they came into being and why they still continue to maintain their identity into. Into what is very often seen as a homogenous culture, which Japan has often portrayed itself to be certainly.
- [41:25]
Caleb Zakrin
And I think highlighting, you know, highlighting these, these histories and highlighting different people like I think can only, you can only benefit honestly. And obviously there's sometimes a fear, anxiety that is produced about, you know, as you would talk about the book, you know, there's such an emphasis on non Ainu histories because, you know, the whitewashed histories of Japan. And it's really important for people to learn, learn, you know, the real histories, to really understand, understand where they live, you know, what, what transpired. So, so important. So, you know, Joe, it's just so wonderful to get the chance to speak with you about your book. I really enjoyed our conversation and thank you so much for being guest on the New Books Network.
- [42:09]
Joe Watkins
Thank you very much, Caleb. I feel like I've rambled on and on and on, but working on this book has been a wonderful part of my life. And the year I spent in Sapporo working on the book, talking with people, really immersing myself in not only the Japanese culture, but every little bit that I could within Ainu ceremony and the Ainu culture. The amount that I was allowed into made me truly appreciate the similarities between American Indian struggle for identity and the Ainu struggle for identity within a rapidly global, global indigenous grouping has really opened my eyes and made me think about all the types of things that I would, I need to be doing now and, and in the future. So thank you very much for having me here and I hope in some way it's, it will be beneficial to anybody who's able to, to hear this. So thank you again.
- [43:26]
Caleb Zakrin
Certainly. Yeah, thank you so much. I, I really agree. I think that global, you know, that, that global framing is just absolutely fascinating and, and it, it, you know, really, you know, I love the comparative work that you just the comparative history that you looked at too. And I think that there's so much, there is a lot that can be done of interesting work, work to come. So thank you for being a guest. It was really great to talk with you.
- [43:48]
Joe Watkins
Thank you very much, Caleb and I, I appreciate your help.