Some lakes around Abashiri in Hokkaido prefecture, Japan, are unique for the practice of under-ice net fishing, but it's contemporary and historical situation has not been systematically researched until now. There we can find some types of winter fishing have been practiced: seine fishing in Lake Abashiri and Lake Akan, gillnet fishing in Lake Notoro and Lake Saroma and set net fishing in Lake Notoro and Saroma and several lakes in the east part of Hokkaido. Especially the under-ice seine fishing in Lake Abashiri is important in that it has been practiced regularly from the moment of propagation from Lake Hachiro, Akita prefecture in 1920's. The under-ice seine fishing in Lake Abashiri has some features: seining rope and net by gasoline engine from 1970's, Wakasagi-Japanese smelt as main target with low bycatch of other fishes, corrective fishing with sharing the catch income among 10 groups of workers. This article has put special accent on the relationship between environmental change and this type of fishing activity in local economic and cultural aspects. Abashiri region is not the place of exception of the climate change process and warming tendency of local climate might has affected the fish resource and ecology, but such researches are mostly under process. Generally, the winter seine fishing has been executed by local communities around the lake coast because of the necessity of numbers of workers. It is one of factors why this type of winter fishing has been existed until now. As for the influence of the climate change we can't detect corresponding factors of the fishing catch change directly, even if some resource decline is reported by fishery researchers. In the last 20 years or so the ratio of winter (under-ice) fishing in the all season's Wakasagi catch is relatively high - about half or more and we can estimate that the vulnerability of this winter fishing exists but it has functioned as a subsistence activity for this region.

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[in Japanese]

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Torsion traps are one of the interesting styles of traps in North America. They have a heavily twisted string as a spring and use its releasing power to trap animals, especially foxes. In this paper, I discuss three topics about North American torsion traps. At first, I discuss distribution of torsion traps in detail, focusing on the “Uralo-Siberian” type in North America. Secondly, I classify its trigger into five types. Finaly, from the point of view of trigger types and historic / ethnographic records, I discuss diffusion of Uralo-Siberian torsion traps into North America. I conclude that there were three possible routes from Siberia to North America. Firstly, these traps were directly brought by Russians into Aleutian Islands (Aleut) and Southwest Alaska (Alutiiq). The second is the Chukchi-Eskimo route. This was a trading route between Chukchi and Alaskan Eskimos over the Bering Sea. Third is the Chukotka Peninsula to St. Lawrence Island route. This was a trading route among the Siberian Yup'iks between the Chukotka Peninsula and St. Lawrence Island sides. Regardless of each route, the diffusion of Uralo-Siberian torsion traps into North America can be regarded as the influence of Russian invasion to Alaska and the fur trade both directly and indirectly.

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Located on the shores of Moller Bay in the centre of the Alaska Peninsula, the Hot Springs Village Site was excavated by an archeological team under the direction of Hiroaki Okada and Atsuko Okada from 1972 to 1984. Their fieldwork resulted in various research findings. In this report, some 1500 bone artifacts excavated from the Hot Springs Village Site were analyzed. By examining shell layers, the condition of house depressions, and the radiocarbon dates of various deposits, the following four occupational phases were established; Port Moller I (4200 B. P. - 3800 B. P.), Port Moller II -1(3500B. P. -2800B.P.), Port Moller II -2(2800B. P. -2000B. P.), and Port Moller III (1500B. P. -600B. P.) Excavated bone artifacts were classified as follows; 8 types and 41 subtypes of hunting and fishing tools (such as arrowheads, fishhook barbs, appear and harpoon points), 13 types and 26 subtypes of working tools (such as flaking tools, shovels, drills, awls, and wedges), 12 types and 17 subtypes of connecting tools (such as sockets, hafts, fore shafts, and wedges), 7 types and 8 subtypes of ornaments and ceremonial objects, The intended use of each artifact and their change in form through time was also analyzed. During Port Moller II -2, the use of large multi-pronged fishing spears and bone arrowheads with a projecting tang on the base was observed. Along with the climate change that brought mudflat in the bay, the bone artifacts during this period suggest the change in subsistence activities, such as introduced shallow sea fishing, salmon fishing, and hunting of caribou as well as other land mammals.

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Shoji Kimura (1905-1991) was a Japanese painter. He was born in Hakodate, Hokkaido and emigrated to Karafuto (present south area of Sakhalin Island). He spent his boyhood in Sakhalin, went back to Hokkaido and enrolled in the preparatory course of medical school at the Hokkaido University (Hokkaido Daigaku Yoka Irui) (present Hokkaido University School of Medicine). However, he could not give up his dream of learning the art. He quitted the Hokkaido University, enrolled in the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (Tokyo Bijutsu Gakko) (present Tokyo University of Art). He graduated from the school in 1931 and became a teacher at Hakodate Jissen Girls' Hight School (Hakodate Jissen Koto Jogakko). He went to Karafuto after he retired in 1938. That time, many of the indigenous peoples lived in the area called Otasu (present suburb of Poronaisk) in the Japanese territory of Karafuto. He spent a long time with the indigenous peoples and painted pictures of them. His paintings vividly tell us how people lived around that time. This article introduces how Kimura's paintings from the collection of Abashiri Museum of Art contribute to Karafuto studies. This article is a continuation of “Indigenous Peoples in Sakhalin (Karafuto) paintedby Shoji Kimura (1) and (2). (Kodoya and Sasakura 2014, 2016) ”

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The Hokkaido Museum of Northern Peoples has excavated the Notaro Cape West Coast Site since 1996. This site has occupations of the Jamon, the Epi-Jomon, the Okhotsk, and the Satsumon cultural periods. This report provides the results of the excavation campaign in June, 2017. The past site survey identified a total of six localities: Locations a, b, c, d, e, and f.The archaeological remains attributed to the Okhotsk Culture are mainly found from Locations a, b, and c. In the present season, we excavated approximately 5㎡ in Location b, located on the edge of the precipice. The excavation uncovered the concentration of animal and fish bones, a posthole and a pit house attributed to the Okhotsk Culture and a pit attributed to the Epi-Jomon Culture. Conspicuous cultural materials of the Okhotsk Culture were whale bone fragments, a composite fish hook stem, abrasive stone slabs, handstones and fragments of bronze products. In the next excavation, we plan to excavate Location d, also located on the edge of a precipice to elucidate human activity in this Okhotsk Cultural site.

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The present list contains the bibliographical data of Tungusic and Paleoasiatic books (primers, readers, and other text materials) published in the Soviet period, which were inspected by T. Tsumagari and S. Kazama during their stay in Khabarovsk from December 1989 to January 1990 as a part of joint research with the Khabarovsk Regional Museum. Most of the books were owned by the Khabarovsk Regional Library and taken out to study in an office of the Khabarovsk Regional Museum. The list includes materials which are little known and hardly accessible outside Russia, and it will give a facility to those who wish to know about the teaching materials for the northern minority languages in the Soviet period.

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[in Japanese]

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