The Japan trip was a great success...

Kitty Dubreuil's Exhibit Journal '96

December 10, 1996:  We are back in Washington DC and jet lag is killing us.  We have no problem with jet lag going to Japan, but coming back is really rough.

The trip was a great success.  We met with Japanese government officials, Ainu organizations, Ainu family owned businesses, and artists.  Of course, going back to Hokkaido is going home for me.  Many of my friends are helping with the exhibition.  For example, we got a commitment from Takeki Fujito to use two of his outstanding life sized carved human figures, which will be the welcoming figures for the exhibition.  Fujito has carved several of these representative figures of Ainu elders, using real men and women as models.  A perfectionist, he spends so much time getting the detail he wants that, as sometimes happens with artists, he has a hard time letting them go for sale.  Today he spends most of his time creating bears of every size and shape, and is extremely successful.  Not only does he carve bears but he collects them as well.  He has, in his collection, perhaps the oldest bears carved by Ainu artists.  It should be noted that bears are considered to be the Gods of the mountains, and the iyomante, the bear sending ceremony, is the most important sacred ceremony of the Ainu.

Carved human figure by Takeki Fujito. Photo: D. Dubreuil

We also spent time with Noriko Kawamura, a leading textile artist.  She not only makes traditional Ainu gowns, she takes Ainu subject matter, already abstract, and pushes it to the next dimension of abstraction and makes these incredibly stunning and exciting wall hangings.  They range from 3 x 5 feet, to 20 x 30 feet, and she works with every type of material.  Aside from being an artist, she is also very active in promoting Ainu social issues.  Highly independent, she is a powerful role model.

Textile by Noriko Kawamura. Photo: D. Dubreuil

One of the most interesting traditionalists we met was Masahiro Nomoto.  While only in his mid-thirties, Nomoto is extremely serious about maintaining and passing on to the younger generations traditional customs.  He showed us his latest work, a dugout canoe (cip), a type used in lakes and rivers.  It rides and maneuvers exceptionally well, and it's beautiful just to look at.  In the bow of the boat is a sacred inaw.  The inaw is made from a stick that is shaved into "tufted curls" of different sizes and shapes, and are used for many occasions.  In this case the inaw is placed in the bow to protect the voyagers.  To make an ocean going canoe (itaomacip), a much larger tree would be selected and made exactly as the smaller lake type canoe.  They would then split another tree into planks and attach them to the sides of the canoe using hand made cord, making the sides higher and the canoe much wider.  These bigger canoes used oars and a sail made from hand woven vegetative material, and would be used to travel great distances to trade with other Northern peoples, and of course, to fish or hunt sea mammals.  If the fishing or hunting was successful, a small piece of the animal would be thrown back into the sea as thanksgiving, and some of its blood would be sprinkled on the canoe's bow to honor the God of the canoe.

Dugout canoe by Masahiro Nomoto. Photo: D. Dubreuil

In the bow of the boat is a sacred inaw.  The inaw is made from a stick that is shaved into "tufted curls" of different sizes and shapes, and are used for many occasions.  In this case the inaw is placed in the bow to protect the voyagers.

Of course, we are doing everything we can to get the loan of the best of Bikky Sunazawa's work.  While we can't get the large outdoor installations such as this wooden flower, we believe we can find one of his smaller flowers for the show.  We believe Bikky got his inspiration for the wooden flower from the sacred inaw.  Bikky used willow tree branches for his creations and they are truly handsome. 

David is also trying to find a way to bring one of Bikky’s "smaller" totem poles to the show.  I hope he can do it but it's not going to be easy.  Even the small ones are big. It should be pointed out that totem poles are not part of the Ainu’s traditional artistic heritage, but were inspired by the totem poles of North America's Northwest Coast.  First used as comical "advertisements" to induce tourists to enter in the Ainu gift shops, sometimes owned by Japanese, Bikky’s serious creativity brought an artistic legitimacy to Ainu totem poles and they are now found in all Ainu areas.  It does look, however, that we are going to be able to use one of my favorite works by Bikky, The Tongue of God.  This is no small tongue, it's tall and majestic, as you might expect from the title.  This is another case that we believe Bike was influenced by a traditional sacred object, the ikupasuy, or prayer-stick, which most often is sadly and incorrectly described as a "mustache lifter" because of the way in which it is used.  At the end of the prayer-stick is a very small carved triangle which was considered to be a tongue which symbolizes the action of a  mediator between the person and the gods.  This was a man's most important personal possession.

Wooden Flower by Bikky Sunazawa. Photo: D. Dubreuil

The Tongue of God by Bikky Sunazawa. Photo: D. Dubreuil

We also found an exciting private collection with some truly outstanding works.  For example, there are two finely and intricately carved ivory and wood makiri, small knives with a blade usually between four to six inches, with a sheath made of the same type of material.  This kind of knife was carried by both men and women.

Makiri Knives. Photo: D. Dubreuil

Aside from being a thing of beauty, they are interesting and important in that when a young male person learned the skills needed to make such a knife, and the patience to actually create a distinctive and superior knife, he was considered a man.  Women got their knives from the men.  In many areas, when a man wanted to get married, he would make the best knife possible and give it to the woman he was interested in.  If she accepted it, she was also accepting the man.  Carving skills were extremely important to the Ainu.

An even more exciting find was a very important example of tourist art never seen before, a pair of geta, a type of Japanese traditional platform "shoe" made for the Japanese tourist market.  This is a wonderful illustration of Ainu ingenuity and artistic talent.  The surface is fully carved with abstract curvilinear designs interspersed with exquisite crosshatching.  There are very few modern cultures in which the artists utilize space as well as the Ainu and other native people.  For example, the designs never look busy or contrived.  Their sense of composition is truly amazing.  It’s discoveries like these that make the endless procession of 18 hour days, and the jet lag, worth it.  We ended our trip with another two hour meeting with the funding foundation.  Once again they wanted more information, much more in fact, than they wanted last time.  That's O.K., as long as they're interested, we will provide whatever they want.  We must thank our colleague, Marjory Stoller, Chief of Special Exhibits here at the National Museum of Natural History.  She has not only answered our every request, she has guided us through the budgetary maze connected with a large traveling exhibition.  We would be lost without her.

- Chisato (Kitty) Dubreuil, Ainu Exhibit Coordinator

A pair of Japanese geta with Ainu designs.
Photo: D. Dubreuil

This is a wonderful illustration of Ainu ingenuity and artistic talent.  The surface is fully carved with abstract curvilinear designs interspersed with exquisite crosshatching.  There are very few modern cultures in which the artists utilize space as well as the Ainu and other native people.

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