Picturing the Ainu: Representations of Ainu and Americans in Hokkaidō and beyond, during the Meiji Era (1871–1909)

This article considers photographs of Ainu, between 1871 and 1909, analyzing representations by Japanese, European and American photographers. The article discusses how Ainu were positioned as Others, not just in the Japanese imagination, but also, in comparison to the American and European images that circulated in Japan during that period. Japanese authorities followed the American model of taking over the ‘Wild West’, acquiring new lands, laying railroads and promoting intensive agriculture, while relating to the Ainu as ‘primitive’ and ‘disabled’, making them vulnerable and exploitable. This approach led to the occupation of territories, enslaving of Ainu men through the labour of modernisation, dislocating Ainu women and children, relating to them as ‘foreigners’ who do not belong to Japanese society, therefore, need to be transformed through Japanese and missionary educational activities in Hokkaidō. Complementary to this depreciatory approach, Americans (and Europeans) served as the role model for Japanese modernisation. Many Japanese (sometimes indirectly, not in the image, but through the photographer), admired and were eager to follow American models and associate themselves with that culture, while the Ainu served as a counter-model of the unworthy and inappropriate, thus, proving Japanese superiority. The article, therefore, moves between the disparaging representations of the Ainu, and the admiration of the Americans, with aspiration to become similar to them, using methods such as the recruitment of American advisors by the kaitaku-shi (Capron et al), marriage (Nitobe Inazo), and the use of Protestant missionaries as educators (Batchelor et al). Further, I discuss how Japanese officials adopted Western approach of superiority, directly treating the Ainu as lowly and incapable, as in the image taken in Kuril Islands.