Construction of a ‘Place of Memory’ by Indigenous Ainu People: The Commemoration of Shakushain in Mautayama, Hokkaido

Abstract

Analysing the construction of a ‘place of memory’ by indigenous people and the cultural and social influence of the dominant majority helps to explain the relationship between the identity of indigenous people, the past, and a place. This paper examines how the construction of a place of memory by indigenous people was influenced by the postcolonial conditions surrounding them, with special reference to Mautayama in Shinhidaka Town, Hokkaido Province, which was constructed for the commemoration of Shakushain by indigenous Ainu people. Although Mautayama was formerly a place to commemorate Shakushain, since the late 1960s it has evolved into a place of memory of the Ainu identity under the influence of the gaze of the Wajin (the Japanese majority) involving Ainu people from all regions. It has continued to be reconstructed in line with the changing ways the Ainu people have received this gaze. This process reveals the culturally and socially postcolonial circumstances of the contemporary Ainu people—who have lost their traditional culture and assimilated into the Japanese culture but have not yet been liberated from the Wajin gaze. Mautayama is a postcolonial place of memory that reflects the vestiges of colonialism among contemporary Ainu people. We must assume that there are various interpretations about these vestiges of colonialism and analyse them carefully in order to more deeply understand the construction of Mautayama as a place of memory.