HIEA 112 Week 2

Put yourself in the shoes of an Ainu person who lived through the extension of the boundaries of the old Tokugawa regime to include your ancestral homelands. How might your life change on an everyday level? How might you respond, either individually or collectively to this imposition of colonial rule over you?

When looking at the Hokkaido Former Natives Protection Law, it can be seen that the Ainu people did have some rights, but very few. They were granted free access to a very small amount of land per household but this could easily be taken away if certain requirements weren’t met. In addition, they were to be given access to medical assistance if it was needed regardless of if they could pay or not. An elementary school was also to be built for these natives, however, this separated them from other citizens and ostracized them. It also provided a place for teachers to help colonize the children of these people.

Although the creation of the New Ainu Law gave the Ainu people more rights, it doesn’t change the fact that they were still mistreated and forced to colonialize. The New Ainu Law was created to give the people a false sense of victory under the guise of forcing them to lose many key cultural practices.

As an Ainu person I would be upset that we were being forced to lose our culture to these people and that we didn’t get a say in anything. The mistreatment we faced simply because we were different from them would be an annoyance. Although it wouldn’t have been ideal I’d also at least be glad that there were some changes to the previous set of laws set before the New Ainu Law. It’d also be sad to see the culture that I grew up with slowly fading away as new generations come about. It would be upsetting because we didn’t willingly give this land away and we were attacked by the Japanese people and forced to live under them because we couldn’t defend against them. Although we were provided with medical treatment and education, it was all done with an ulterior motive, making it feel as though every action they do to help us is a way to get us to feel in debt to them and give in.