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Dulles NOT Dallas! |
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Kitty Dubreuil's Exhibit Journal '97 |
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February 23 - March 10, 1997: The Ohtsuka's arrive in America - That's the good news, the bad news is that instead of landing at the Dulles Airport outside of Washington, DC, they landed at the Dallas Airport in Texas. What a shock that was!!! Unfortunately, this tale of woe doesn't end there. We were going to Philadelphia, PA by train immediately after the Ohtsuka's arrived in Washington, DC area. Because their return trip from Texas would be around 11:00 pm, that was no longer possible, so we booked a flight for them from Texas to Philadelphia. Enter problem number two, the message given the Ohtsuka's was terribly mixed up, and thinking the Philadelphia tickets were a mistake, they cashed them in and bought tickets for Washington, DC. Of course, by now David and I were at the Philadelphia Airport. It was one of the worst days of my life. They eventually made it to Philadelphia the following day. While we all had a lot of laughs about it later, at the time, it was a nightmare gone bad. The next two weeks were great. After examining the Ainu collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, we went to New York City and surveyed the collections at the Brooklyn Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History. While there were a few cultural differences to work through, we made wonderful progress in making preliminary object selections. We also made a very important discovery. The Brooklyn Museum has a collection of Ainu-e scrolls, paintings of the Ainu by Japanese artists during the 13th - 19th century's. These paintings are of considerable importance because they are the only records of traditional Ainu culture. The Ainu do not have a written language and did not paint or draw from life scenes. The Japanese, on the other hand, depicted everything, from the foods the Ainu ate, to the houses they built, from Ainu dances to their ritualistic sending ceremonies. The most important sending ritual is the bear (God of the Mountain) ceremony, the iyomante, in which they send the slain bear's spirit back to the land of the Gods. Other sending ceremonies include the spirits of animals such as the fox, owls, squirrels and hares, and the spirits of objects of daily or ceremonial use such as hand carved plates or spatulas. After the ceremony, in the case of animals, their skulls are fastened to an outdoor altar called a nusa. In one of the scenes of a very old Ainu-e scroll, the nusa is shown containing the skull and tail of a killer whale (God of the Ocean), a deer, and a swordfish. As far as we know, these animals have never been depicted before. Finding this scene was very exciting. While the exact date isn't known, it's thought to be from the 1820s or earlier. Unfortunately, its condition is badly deteriorated with many cracks in the Japanese washi paper. It will have to be completely restored before it can be photographed let alone displayed, and that will be very expensive. We will approach the Japanese government to see if they are interested in funding the restoration. The Japanese are often very protective of their important artistic treasures, even those in out-of-country collections. After New York we went to Washington, DC to discuss our progress. The talks went very well. Professor Ohtsuka has agreed to assist us in anyway he can, and will be the lead ethnologist for the project. - Chisato (Kitty) Dubreuil, Ainu Exhibit Coordinator |
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