insights from frontier Japan

Starting in late March, Hokkaido Coca-Cola Bottling (Sapporo) began selling special Hokkaido-only bottles featuring an indigenous Ainu pattern in the design. The bottle design was crafted by Sekine Maki (53), an Ainu craft artist based in the town of Biratori in the Hidaka area.

On May 21, activity tourism provider Akan Adventure Tourism (Akan Town, Kushiro City) will begin offering "Kamuy Lumina, an Enchanted Night Walk at Lake Akan", a nighttime Lake Akan lakeside forest walk enhanced by lights and video with an Ainu myth theme. A multilingual guide app will heighten convenience for foreign tourists and the hearing impaired.

Nine organizations, including a fruit orchard in the Toyama district of Minami-ku, Sapporo and a Sapporo travel agent have teamed up to create the “Active Village Toyama Executive Committee” and, on February 17, began moves to make the Toyama district into a new tourist destination.

The "Akan Yukar Utasa Festival" displays the amazingness of the Ainu culture that exists in the Lake Akan area of eastern Hokkaido's Kushiro City. Starting on February 13, it was held for 2 days at the Lake Akan Ainu Kotan settlement. It was held without a physical audience to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus. Performances including prayer ceremonies to the gods and ancient Ainu ritual dances were broadcast online for free.

Products featuring traditional Ainu designs are becoming popular in the Sapporo area. One reason is thought to be the July 2020 opening of Ainu culture revival hub "Ainu Culture Preservation Society (Upopoy)" (Shiraoi Town, central Hokkaido). Another reason is possibly the continuing spread of the novel coronavirus generating a rise in interest for designs with imbedded "warding off evil" symbolism, differing with region and product type.

International students at the Higashikawa Japanese Language School in Asahikawa’s neighboring town of Higashikawa in northern Hokkaido began a series of five special lectures on January 13, learning about Ainu culture and the history of nature and railways in Hokkaido.

A training workshop for learning about the culture of the indigenous Ainu people and thinking of ways to utilize it as a tourism resource was held in eastern Hokkaido's Obihiro City.

The movie "Ainu Mosir" focuses on Ainu culture, and was filmed in areas like Kushiro City's Lake Akan Ainu Kotan settlement. It won Best Picture in the International Feature Film category at the "23rd Guanajuato International Film Festival", Mexico's largest film festival.

A traditional Ainu ritual to welcome Akisake-salmon swimming upstream was held on September 13 at the Toyohira River riverside in Sapporo.