Ainu Index

An Idea Takes Shape

Bill Fitzhugh's Exhibit Diaries '90-'94

In 1990 a group of Japanese anthropologists and museum specialists began inventorying Ainu collections in North American museums. In 1991, Dr. Yoshinobu Kotani, the leader of the inventory project, came to the Smithsonian and we discussed his work, and the possibility that the inventory could serve as the basis for planning a special exhibition.

The Ainu are a remarkable people -- Japan's only northern Native people. For years I had been feasting my eyes on the old Ainu collections and the few publications on this material. Beautiful scroll-like curvilinear art and striking designs that suggested convergence with Japanese and Amur River art styles. We had tried to include Ainu materials in the Crossroads exhibition, but I discovered that our Russian partners in that venture had been instructed to leave the Ainu out. Russians -- Soviets in those days -- did not want any publicity that would air their expulsion of Ainu people from southern Sakhalin at the end of WWII.

We had to shelve the idea, but in the back of my mind I stored away the idea of someday finding a way to present the culture and history of the Ainu people in their rightful place, among the peoples of the northern Pacific.

Kotani's inventory was a perfect way to begin thinking about a special Ainu exhibition in North America and subsequently, in Japan. In the next few years we began advancing plans, and a series of exchange research visits was begun. Spring 1992: Kotani invited me to Japan and introduced me to many Ainu experts. We toured museums and inspected Ainu collections. Beautiful materials, but not as well documented as the American collections. The highlight of the tour was a visit to Nibutani, a traditional Ainu village and one of the centers of Ainu cultural revitalization. This is the home of Shigeru Kayano, the Ainu leader whose work has contributed much to the preservation of his language and culture. Incredibly, in the midst of this, a dam is rising and many Ainu lands are to be flooded. A compromise has provided for a museum of Ainu culture to be constructed, but this seems a bitter trade...

Fall 1992: I traveled to Abashiri, a fishing town on the north coast of Hokkaido and gave a paper on North Pacific art traditions to the annual conference held at the Abashiri Museum. Met many new friends -- Ainu scholars and others. Unbelievable amounts of fish and crab being off-loaded here, caught in the Sea of Okhotsk! Lots of Russian fish coming ashore here too, transferred at sea to Japanese boats for the higher prices available in Japan.

1994: Koji Deriha, curator at the Hokkaido Museum of History, is spending seven months working with us at the Arctic Center, studying the Ainu collections and archives in detail. Great to get to know him and to have a direct link to Hokkaido. Their museum has the best exhibits of Ainu history and culture. Koji's family love it here in DC -- I don't think they want to leave!

Fall 1994: Kotani and his group have now finished their third documentation trip to North America, this time working in the West Coast museums. We're getting ready for a major curatorial confab in December, our first to outline the results of their work, and make further plans. By now they have identified more than 3000 Ainu artifacts in the North American collections, mostly at our museum, the University Museum at Philadelphia, the American Museum of Natural History, and The Brooklyn Museum. Wonderful material, and mostly better documented than the 5000 Ainu artifacts known in Europe. Strangely, most of the good and well-documented collections have been exported; the Japanese collections are much less valuable scientifically. Typical! the same happened with the American Indian collections from Eastern North America. All the old stuff is in Europe!

Continue: Coordinator Needed! - Bill Fitzhugh's exhibit journal '94-'95

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