Our Ainu Wedding Ceremony
- Our Ainu Wedding Ceremony at the Lake Akan Ainu Kotan
On March 4, 2022, my wife and I had the privilege of experiencing a traditional Ainu wedding ceremony at the Lake Akan Ainu kotan (village) in Hokkaido. The Ainu are the original inhabitants of Hokkaido, which is Japan’s northernmost island, and their history there predates the arrival of the modern Japanese (Yamato or wajin). Similar to the plight of other indigenous populations such as the Native Americans and the Aboriginal Australians, the Ainu also suffered at the hands of their colonizers during Japan’s modernization of the late Edo and early Meiji periods (approximately 1800–1912). Although their lands were taken from them and they were forcibly assimilated into the dominant Japanese culture, the Ainu spirit and culture have persevered through these darker times and there have even been recent moves by the Japanese government to acknowledge the cultural significance and status of the Ainu.
These efforts have been realized through government encouragement of travel to Ainu homelands, such as in Lake Akan, as well as the construction of a brand new National Ainu Museum and Park “Upopoy” in Shiraoi, Hokkaido. I have long been fascinated by Ainu culture ever since first learning about them (along with other groups marginalized by Japanese society) as part of my Japanese history class at Georgetown University. Since moving to Japan, I have made several trips to Hokkaido and have read many books about the Ainu (including most notably Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan by Richard Siddle, The Ainu of Japan by John Batchelor, and the splendid anthology Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Chisato O. Dubreuil), however I have had very few opportunities to experience Ainu culture firsthand.
This changed after a chance encounter with an acquaintance who knew several members of the Ainu community in Lake Akan, and offered to reach out to them on our behalf to see if they would be willing to lend us several of their traditional Ainu kimonos (known in the Ainu language as chikarkarpe, and which are famed for their very unique embroidery) for a wedding photo shoot that my wife and I were planning (as a temporary measure in lieu of a full wedding ceremony with friends and family as Japan’s borders remained closed due to COVID-19). After some back and forth, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that that several members of the Ainu community in Lake Akan would be delighted to perform a traditional Ainu wedding ceremony for us. We were very humbled by this generous offer and after confirming that they would be happy to do this for us even though we have no direct Ainu connections, we began the process of planning our travel to Lake Akan for this very special event.
Lake Akan is located in the northeast corner of Hokkaido, and involves an approximately 2 hour flight from Tokyo to Tancho Kushiro Airport followed by an hour long bus ride. The lake is located within Japan’s Akan National Park, and is most widely known throughout Japan as home of “marimo”, which are masses of algae that form into spherical shapes and are a phenomena only seen in certain lakes and rivers of Japan and parts of Northern Europe. During the summer months, many tourists flock to Lake Akan to dive in the lake or hope to catch a glimpse of the marimo on the lake’s shoreline. In the winter months, many tourists are drawn to the ice fishing and other winter sports activities as well as by the luxurious Akan Yuko no Sato Tsuruga hot spring resort, where Kaho and I stayed. Of course, the Lake Akan Ainu kotan (village) is also a major tourist attraction, and travelers from all over the world come here to experience a taste of Ainu culture.
Unfortunately, the effects of COVID-19 on the tourist industry have reverberated down to Lake Akan and the Ainu community there, which has seen a dramatic decrease in visitors during the pandemic. Nevertheless, Mr. Hideo Akibe (known as Debo-san) was delighted to host Kaho and myself at the Ainu cultural center in the middle of Lake Akan’s Ainu kotan and perform a wedding ceremony for us. Debo-san is one of the Ainu elders living in Lake Akan, where he also owns a woodworking and souvenir shop (“Debo no Mise”). He is also one of the directors for Ainu artistic performances that are commonly held at the cultural center, and also directed the Ainu cultural performances held during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic events that took place in Hokkaido (marathon and race walking).
Accompanying Debo-san from the Lake Akan Ainu community was Mr. Kengo Takiguchi (Takiguchi-san), who also owns his own woodworking shop (“Ichinge no Mise”) and serves as one of the few English-speaking Ainu guides in Lake Akan. His father was renowned woodcarving artist and sculptor Masamitsu Takiguchi, who is known for his gentle and somewhat surrealist carvings of cranes and women. The elder Takiguchi’s carvings can be found throughout Lake Akan, most notably in the lobby of the Akan Yuko no Sato Tsuruga hotel where there is a small gallery dedicated to his works. The younger Takiguchi continues his father’s woodworking legacy and his pieces are also in significant demand. Two other members of the Lake Akan Ainu community also joined our wedding ceremony: Ms. Fumie Pete (known as Petteko-san), who also performed several traditional Ainu songs for us on the mukkuri (a type of jaw harp) and the tonkori (a plucked string instrument), and Ms. Misako Akibe, who is Debo-san’s wife.
The wedding ceremony itself was held inside of the Ainu cultural center at Lake Akan, in front of a traditional “irori”, which is a type of hearth that forms the center of an Ainu “chise” (home). The “kamuy” (spirit or god) of the hearth is called “fuchi” and is one of the most important kamuy in the Ainu tradition. Since the irori is central to Ainu domestic life, traditional Ainu wedding ceremonies are held in front of the irori and in honor of the fuchi kamuy. Debo-san and Takiguchi-san led the proceedings, which involved an exchange of gifts between myself and Kaho, the sharing of a bowl of millet rice, the drinking of ceremonial sake and a musical performance by Petteko-san. The YouTube video above contains a complete recording of the ceremony as well as English language annotations which describe the significance of the rituals performed during the wedding ceremony. Rather than write out a description of the ceremony here, I encourage readers to view the YouTube video above to get a sense of what a traditional Ainu wedding ceremony may have looked like several centuries ago.
Kaho and I were both incredibly moved by the ceremony and gained a new appreciation for Ainu culture and its strong connection and gratitude for nature. This is a memory that we will cherish for the rest of our lives and we will continue to do our part to raise awareness in Japan and abroad of the Ainu people and culture, who are woefully underappreciated. We want to thank everyone from the Lake Akan Ainu community who were so kind as to open their community to Kaho and myself and share this incredible experience. We would specifically like to thank Debo-san, Takiguchi-san, Petteko-san, and Ms. Misako Akibe for their generosity, hospitality and patience. Thank you also to Ms. Yuko Kajiya, who facilitated our connection to the Lake Akan Ainu community.
For those that would like to learn more about Ainu culture and history, I would encourage you to pick up any of the three books mentioned above ( Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan by Richard Siddle, The Ainu of Japan by John Batchelor, and the splendid anthology Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Chisato O. Dubreuil). I have also prepared a very brief (and incomplete) history of the Ainu of Hokkaido in Section 2 below as well as an overview of certain Ainu cultural and social dynamics in Section 3 below which may provide additional background on some of the rituals and ceremonies performed during the wedding ceremony. I would also encourage those who are interested in making a trip to Ainu communities like Lake Akan or elsewhere in Hokkaido — nothing really compares to experiencing the beauty and sophistication of Ainu culture firsthand.
2. A Brief Overview of Ainu History
The Ainu are the indigenous inhabitants of Japan’s northernmost main island, Hokkaido, and are ethnically and culturally distinct from the current inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago, the Yamato (or wajin) people. Ainu ancestors have been present in parts of Hokkaido, the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin (both now part of Russia) since at least 10,000 BC while what is known today as Ainu culture is said to have developed around 1,200 AD from its Okhotsk predecessor. The origins of the Ainu people continue to mystify anthropologists, as somewhat conflicting genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence has traced Ainu ancestors to the tribes of the Amur River basin in Russia, the Nivkih peoples of the northern half of Sakhalin as well as the pre-historic hunter-gatherer occupants of the Japanese islands — the Jomon people. Other artifacts have suggested Ainu connections to the indigenous Ryukyuan (Okinawan) people of southern Japan, the Sunda Shelf (Indonesia and Malaysia) inhabitants of Southeast Asia, the Inuit of the Central Canadian Arctic and even Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest. In light of these varied connections, the only thing that anthropologists can say with much certainty is that the Ainu are likely descendants of a proto-Jomon tribe based in Hokkaido, the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin.
From the time of their proto-Jomon ancestors, the Ainu occupied Hokkaido, the Kuril Islands and parts of Sakhalin in relative isolation. While the Ainu did trade with Amur River basin tribes and the Chinese, these contacts were minimal and relatively conflict-free. Historians largely credit this isolation to the geography of the Ainu homelands, which were cut-off from major landmasses and located in colder climates that were not conducive to agriculture (the staple food source for the Yayoi and other East Asian peoples at the time). Hokkaido itself was separated from the rest of the Japanese islands by the unusually deep Tsugaru strait while the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin were also difficult to access from the Asian landmass. The harsh winters north of Blakiston’s Line (the biogeographic boundary line between Japan’s Honshu and Hokkaido islands) prevented large scale agriculture from taking hold and as a result the Ainu subsisted primarily on a hunter-gatherer diet with a heavy focus on salmon, deer, bear, seal and whale meat.
Ainu interaction with the rest of Japan began to change with the arrival of the Yayoi people (the direct predecessor to the modern Japanese) to Japan from Korea about 2,000 years ago. The Yayoi people consisted primarily of farmers from the Korean peninsula who likely migrated across the Tsushima Strait from what is now Busan, South Korea into the northern tip of Kyushu, Japan’s southern-most main island. They then spread across the Japanese archipelago up through most of Honshu. These Yayoi settlers effectively replaced Jomon culture soon after their migration from the Korean peninsula to Japan. Nevertheless, this Yayoi culture did not make significant headway into northern Japan due to the limits on agriculture cultivation in these colder climates. As a result, the Ainu enjoyed their homeland in Hokkaido principally to themselves until the beginning of the Edo Period (1603–1867).
The first permanent interaction between the Ainu and the Japanese occurred during the tail end of the Sengoku Period (1467–1615) when Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate, gave a sub-clan of the Takeda Clan from Yamanashi Prefecture in northern Honshu (later renaming itself the Matsumae Clan) the authority to control all trade between Honshu and Hokkaido (which was known at the time as “Ezo”, meaning ‘foreigner’ or ‘barbarian’ in Japanese). The Matsumae Clan moved to occupy the southern tip of Hokkaido, just across the Tsugaru Strait from what is now Aomori Prefecture, building the first permanent Japanese settlement on Hokkaido. Early interactions between the Matsumae Clan and the Ainu were primarily transactional and at times contentious. The Ainu offered bear, sea otter and seal skin pelts, eagle feathers, woodcarvings and dried seafood including salmon, sea cucumber and abalone in exchange for Japanese sake, rice, tobacco, lacquerware, cotton and iron goods.
Trade was limited to the port areas around Matsumae City as well as certain other designated trading outposts established by the Matsumae Clan throughout the rest of Hokkaido. The Ainu were prohibited from freely visiting mainland Japan to trade their goods with other Japanese clans, meaning that the Matsumae Clan had an effective monopoly on trade with the Ainu which allowed them to impose unfavorable trade terms. Nevertheless, the Matsumae Clan at the time did not expand their territory in Hokkaido much further beyond the small foothold in southern Hokkaido. This began to change, however, as wajin (ethnic Japanese) realized new potential for mining, fishing and agriculture in Hokkaido and began to expand their presence in Hokkaido.
As the wajin presence in Hokkaido increased, the Japanese government at the time took measures to assimilate the Ainu, by at times banning the Ainu language as well as other customs, such as the practice of tattooing and the growing of beards. These tensions boiled over on several occasions, with Ainu clans attacking Matsumae settlements. The most famous of these conflicts was the attack in 1669 by Shakushain, the elder leader of the Ainu of Shibechari, of several Matsumae trading posts throughout Hokkaido. These attacks resulted in the deaths of several hundred wajin settlers before Shakushain’s forces were defeated by Matsumae troops near Matsumae City. Shakushain himself was brutally assassinated during peace negotiations that were offered by the Matsumae clan as a pretext to draw him into their territory and bring his guard down. Matsumae officials negotiated a “fake” peace settlement with Shakushain, even going so far as to exchange gifts. After Shakushain and his generals believed they had secured a peace with the Matsumae clan, they began to celebrate by drinking sake, at which time Matsumae assassins ambushed the negotiating party and killed Shakushain.
Following the Shakushain revolt, the Matsumae clan took more aggressive steps to dominate and assimilate the Ainu of Hokkaido. The Ainu threat to Japanese commerce was essentially neutralized at the end of the 18th century, when Catherine II of Russia sent her envoy, Adam Laxman, to Nemuro on the northeastern coast of Hokkaido to officially petition for the opening of Japan to trade with Moscow. While the Japanese were able to withstand Laxman’s demands at the time, the arrival of this Russian expedition in Hokkaido created a new sense of urgency for the Tokugawa shogunate regarding its exposed northern border. As a result, the Tokugawa shogunate took more direct control over administration of Hokkaido, much to the detriment of the Matsumae clan, whose power over the island would steadily recede throughout the 19th century. For the first time, Hokkaido was directly administered by the Tokugawa shogunate, which took more extensive steps to assimilate the Ainu and establish settlements across the Hokkaido shoreline.
With the formal opening of Japanese ports to international trade by Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the United States Navy in 1854 pursuant to the Convention of Kanagawa, the rapidly modernizing Meiji government moved to more formally absorb Hokkaido into the Japanese state. ‘Ezo’ was formally renamed ‘Hokkaido’ in 1869, and new development policies (kaitakushi) were introduced to more rapidly populate the island with wajin settlers from other parts of Japan. These moves did not take into consideration the interests of the Ainu, who were quickly dispossessed of their land and more forcefully assimilated into Japanese society through government requirements to learn and speak Japanese, take Japanese surnames, and forced intermarriage with wajin. The Meiji government encouraged the broad commercialization of the fishing industry in Hokkaido, which resulted in overfishing that deprived the Ainu of one of their primary food and trade revenue sources. The government also resettled many Ainu onto reservations during this time in order to transfer former Ainu lands to wajin settlers and landowners. This displacement and radical change to ways of living in Hokkaido decimated the Ainu population, which was reduced to approximately 15,000 at the turn of the century, down from approximately 27,000 from the time of the first Japanese census of Hokkaido in 1807.
Hokkaido was slowly integrated into rest of Japan through the end of World War II, when in 1947 it was designated an official Japanese prefecture equivalent with all other prefectures throughout the country. While successive Japanese governments did begin to realize the importance of preserving Ainu society and culture, not much was done in the way of indigenous rights until an “awakening” in the mid-twentieth century when Ainu activists began to demand better treatment of and conditions for the Ainu. These efforts were best symbolized by the establishment of the first Ainu association in 1930, the Ainu Kyokai, which worked to better the lives of the Ainu in Japan and advocate for formal government support of Ainu communities. Nevertheless, the Ainu continued to be discriminated against by Japanese society, and it was not uncommon for many Ainu to hide their identities by assimilating into the dominant Japanese culture during this period.
As civil rights movements moved to the forefront of the global consciousness in the 1960s and 1970s, the younger Ainu generations pushed the Japanese government for more rights and recognition for the Ainu. These efforts culminated with the passage of the Ainu Shinpo (Ainu New Law) in 1997, which contained a formal recognition by the Japanese government of the cultural importance of the Ainu, though it stopped short of granting the Ainu indigenous status. There is still a long way to go to afford the Ainu true recognition and to eliminate discrimination, but the Japanese government has taken positive steps in recent years, most notably with the opening of the National Ainu Museum and Park “Upopoy” in Shiraoi, Hokkaido. Ainu culture was also featured in recorded parts of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony (although part of the live ceremony was cut due to the pandemic), and there has been a renewed emphasis on Ainu culture in recent domestic travel campaigns for Hokkaido.
3. Overview of Traditional Ainu Communities, Religion, Rituals and Marriage
Traditional Ainu life centered around the village, which is known as the “kotan” in the Ainu language. These kotan usually consisted of several groups of families who lived and worked together:
For the past two hundred years, the kotan has been the highest unit of traditional Ainu social life. The basic Ainu kotan comprised a group of scattered houses — from a few to a dozen or more. Coastal settlements were usually located near the mouths or deltas of rivers, where salmon fishing and ocean fishing were productive and boats could be hauled out of the reach of the sea, and inland kotan were often located near marshlands or where tributaries ran into a main river. Most villages were located directly on rivers, which provided opportunities for both transportation and fishing. Within a kotan, houses were usually separated from each other by approximately 150–350 foot wide wooded areas; similarly, each kotan was surrounded by a resource zone, or iwor, from which the residents drew sustenance through hunting and gathering. (Spirit of a Northern People at 227).
In the Edo period, each kotan had a population of about 25–50 people that was spread across 5–10 individual homes that were called “chise” in the Ainu language.
The chise itself was laid out according to a precise plan that reflected the Ainu worldview. In general, the house was rectangular in shape and lacked internal compartments or additional rooms or annexes, except for an entrance vestibule and a storeroom. Its dimensions were determined by family size, but in general houses were about twelve by eighteen feet (four to six meters). The house timbers were made from small trees lashed together with grapevines and bark. Depending on the availability of local materials, the walls and roof were covered with bark or a thatch of Japanese nutmeg, reeds or bamboo grass… In the center of the single interior room was a central rectangular fireplace with two carving stands at the east end where men could sit and create sacred shaved sticks (inaw) or carve wooden implements; inaw erected to the fire goddess were placed at the northeast corner near this carving stand. All the daily prayers and prayers for ceremonies took place at this location. Fire tongs, an ash leveler and other tools were found around the fireplace. Above the fireplace were racks for drying and smoking fish; an apparatus used to suspend pots over the fire was also hung over the hearth. The space above the rafters was used for drying food and for storing mats, reeds and other materials. (Spirit of a Northern People at 229).
The kotan was usually represented by an appointed elder, known as “kotan-kor-kur” in the Ainu language, who was also the head of the kotan’s dominant patrilineage. Those who married into or moved to a new kotan were expected to adopt the traditions and customs of their new kotan and abandon those of their previous kotan. Major rituals and ceremonies, such as marriage, funerals and the so-called bear-sending ritual (known as “iomante” in the Ainu language) were led by the kotan-kor-kur, who “directed the spiritual life of the community” (Spirit of a Northern People at 231).
The fundamental belief of the Ainu religion is animist: they believe that spirits (known as “kamuy” in the Ainu language) imbue all living and non-living things and that respect should be afforded to all of these spirits in order to develop harmony with nature. According to the Ainu religion, these spirits possess certain powers and abilities that are superior to those of man.
The Ainu’s concept of kamuy extends to humans and things that man produces, such as tools and utensils. Humans die, and likewise, things end their life cycles, after the end of their lives, the spirits of both humans and things become gods. If the spirits of living entities (gods, humans, and things) are referred to as live spirits, then the spirits after death or a life cycle are considered dead spirits. The difference between live and dead spirits is as follows: the gods, humans and things are integrated beings of form and spirit, and the spirit activates the function of each being. Take, for example, a human. The flesh is the container and the soul a medium to activate his or her function as man or woman; the body and soul coexist with each other. The soul is considered immortal even after flesh decays and bones return to the soil. The spirits are thought to repeat themselves and reincarnate according to their specific species and gender, so for instance a man will always return as a man and a female cat as a female cate. (Spirit of a Northern People at 193)
Several commentators have noticed the similarities to the concept of rebirth in the Buddhist religion, though there is no evidence that the Ainu religion developed from or was otherwise directly influenced by Buddhist thought. The Ainu religion can, like Buddhism, be somewhat pessimistic about human nature at times: “gods, humans and things are all essentially good-natured… [however], as they grow older, their minds become complex and sometimes create trouble; when they cannot control their minds, they tend to attach others … if this uncontrollable mind is treated while still alive on the earth, the person can go to the next world as a good-hearted god … In contrast, if a human cannot solve his problems by the time of his death, he will become a god with an evil mind.” (Spirit of a Northern People at 194).
Ainu religious ceremonies usually involve the offering of food, drink or other items to the kamuy using special lacquerware cups called “tuki” and a prayer stick called “ikupasuy”. The ikupasuy are retained by Ainu men and are one of the most important objects in Ainu rituals. Each ikupasuy is highly individualized, and usually contains the crest of the owner’s family, which is passed down from father to son and is known as “itokpa” in the Ainu language. Other patterns or symbols can be carved into the ikupasuy to evoke a narrative (such as a successful killer whale hunt), though humans are never depicted in the ikupasuy.
When performing a ritual, the ikupasuy is placed on top of the tuki with its pointed end to the left. The performer then dips the ikupasuy into the liquid in the tuki (typically Japanese sake) and then “makes offering gestures to the venerated object at hand, allowing drops to fall on the object or sends drops skywards to the gods” (Spirit of a Northern People, at 15). Each Ainu family also had its own specific practices used during the rituals that were never revealed to outsiders beyond one’s own patrilineage. The most important rituals for the Ainu were those ceremonies honoring bears, killer whales or specific mountains.
Another important object in Ainu ceremonies and rituals is the “inaw” which is a wooden carving made from the branches of the willow tree. These carvings are meant to represent birds “that carried men’s prayers to the gods” (Spirit of a Northern People, at 231) and were prominently displayed in Ainu chise:
The most important inaw were those dedicated to fuchi, the goddess of the home, and were placed at the northeast corner of the hearth box. Men used special types of knives to varve inaw; one was similar to a regular man’s knife but had a wide hooked tip; another was a thin iron blade with a wooden block fitted to the end. The block served to guide the blade when shaving long, thin curls. (Spirit of a Northern People at 231).
The inaw were carved by Ainu men using a small craftsman knife called a “makiri”, which was proudly displayed at the waist. Ainu men took great care of these knives, carving intricate designs into the sheath and at times even carving compartments into them to hold their tobacco. A similar type of knife called a “menoko-makiri” is used by women. When Ainu men have found a desirable partner for marriage, they would typically carve a menoko-makiri as a proposal gift. If the Ainu woman accepted the proposal, she would accept the menoko-makiri and keep it at her side.
After acceptance of the proposal, a wedding ceremony would be performed (similar to the one at the start of this article in the YouTube video). The couple would be presented with a new inaw carved for them in honor of the fuchi kamuy and to be placed in their new home. The new home of the couple would typically be built in the same kotan as the groom’s parents (with the bride severing her connection to her former kotan if she came from outside the groom’s community). The youngest child of a family to marry would typically stay with his or her parents rather than build a new house and his or her spouse would move in with them. It has therefore been said that Ainu bestowed leadership of the family to the youngest child.
