A Cultural Revival - The spirit of Japan's Ainu artists

[Nick Thieberger]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126699701149750779.html

By LUCY BIRMINGHAM

Koji Yuki was 20 years old when he turned against his father and
buried his Ainu identity. That was the year Shoji Yuki died; a radical
activist, he had long fought to win legal rights for the Ainu, Japan's
underclass, and have them recognized as an indigenous people. More
than a century of government-backed racial and social discrimination
and forced assimilation had stripped the once-proud hunter-gatherers
and tradesmen of their identity and livelihood.


Singer Mina Sakai performs new works in the Ainu language (as well as
in Japanese and English), accompanying herself on an amplified
tonkori. The Ainu people's only stringed instrument, it was used
originally by shamans to communicate with the kamuy, or spirits in
nature.

The Ainu cause had torn apart the Yuki family. "My father divorced my
mother when I was young and devoted himself to the Ainu liberation
movement," says Mr. Yuki. "I couldn't understand the way he lived his
life."

Years later, Mr. Yuki changed his mind about his father's efforts, and
today the son is himself a powerful voice for the Ainu. But he speaks
through culture rather than politics, as one of the leaders of a
remarkable revival of Ainu arts, dance and music -- with a cool,
contemporary edge.