Japanese or Ainu? Does the Term “Jomon” Delegitimize the Ainu as an Indigenous People?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Indigenous Issues in Hokkaido Island, Japan" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Some politicians and writers in Japan have proposed that the Jomon are the cultural precursors of the contemporary Japanese, while others recognize the Ainu as the descendants of the Jomon people of Hokkaido. Japan’s “Jomon archaeological culture” helps create conflicting interpretations and influences the expansion of contemporary Japanese nationalism. This paper discusses the role of the term “Jomon” as it has been applied to archaeological cultures in Japan and elsewhere. It includes a brief discussion on the utility (or problems) with identifying archaeological cultures, and then offers a case study on the more recent use of such concepts to rewrite one group’s past at the expense of another’s. Some contemporary Japanese have claimed “We are ALL Jomon” as a means of questioning whether the Ainu—the recently recognized Indigenous people of Japan—should have any “special rights” not available to all other Japanese. Thus, archaeology needs to continue to clarify the way it presents the concept of archaeological culture so that such issues might be better understood by general populations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeology and Indigenous Issues in Hokkaido Island, Japan   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36441.0