Read on Twitter
“Ainu group sues for confirmation of Indigenous rights” (challenging the institution of unceded Ainu territory as Crown land in Hokkaido). https://twitter.com/nhk_news/status/1295299841623339009
Or in English:
https://twitter.com/ajwasahi/status/1295649961330130944?s=21 https://twitter.com/ajwasahi/status/1295649961330130944
https://twitter.com/ajwasahi/status/1295649961330130944?s=21 https://twitter.com/ajwasahi/status/1295649961330130944
I didn't have time to post any detailed comment earlier, but both of these articles fail to properly contextualize this legal action. Most English articles fail to even identify the Ainu as "Indigenous," de-indigenizing them by calling them "minorities."
First, let's state the obvious: all of Hokkaido was originally #Ainu territory, and Ainu communities certainly didn't need Japanese permission to hunt or fish on their own land.
While this fact is missing from MSM reporting on this case, with Japanese title to Ainu land being assumed, the narrower historical context of how the Japanese state dispossessed the Ainu of their land and animal resources on that land is also totally absent.
During the Tokugawa period, fishing become the focal point of the Matsumae clan's often violent exploitation of the Ainu. As mainland Japanese increasingly took over Ainu coastal fisheries, they forced many Ainu, including young children, to work as slaves.
These fishery managers, moreover, frequently took Ainu "wives", which is to say forced concubines. Or, to put it another way, they engaged in the widespread, systematized rape of Ainu women. This devastatingly spread syphilis, an often fatal disease, into Ainu communities.
While all of this is, of course, unspeakably awful, it's not what's most pertinent to the current lawsuit. In fact, the Meiji Japanese government explicitly condemned Tokugawa era exploitation of the Ainu, and formally "liberated" the Ainu from Japanese-run fisheries.
However, in 1869 and into the early 1870s, the Meiji state adapted Anglo-American colonial land use policies which rendered Ainu territories into "terra nullius" (empty or ownerless land -- a legal fiction). It claimed this unceded land as "Crown land".
The property rights of ethnic Japanese then living in Hokkaido was formally recognized. However, any land Ainu lived on became the exclusive property of the state. It was to be dolled out to settlers, though the state turned a blind eye to land theft.
Not only land, but all flora/fauna on that land, as well, was commodified as public property on European models (ie. the "king's deer"). Following what were formally conservationalist reforms in the 1870s, any unlicensed hunting or fishing on "Crown land" was considered poaching.
The Ainu, however, had long subsisted on these animal products, with salmon in particular representing a critical source of protein but also a valuable trade item to be exchanged with Japanese traders for calorie-rich rice.
So, with these bans, Ainu subsistence was criminalized. Yamada Shin'ichi describes Ainu formally protesting the hunting/fishing bans, warning of impending famines. They were ignored. Predictably, the institution of Crown land led to famines in communities throughout Hokkaido.
These famines continued to devastate Ainu communities from the 1870s until at least the early 1890s, and the government response was not to reverse bans but to encourage the Ainu to engage in smallholder agriculture in Hokkaido's emerging capitalist economy.
The hunting and fishing bans were rigorously enforced, and Ainu caught "poaching" on "Crown land" were jailed. Famous 20th century Ainu writer and politician recounted a policeman armed with a sword hauling his father away from the family home for poaching.
It can't be overemphasized that salmon meant survival for Ainu for countless generations. Called kamuy cep, or "divine fish", salmon were so vital for the Ainu that they took on a distinctly religious significance not unlike, for example, bread in Christian traditions.
So, while this is a case about salmon fishing, it's also a case about the legality of terra nullius (already judged a legal fiction in Canada and Australia after successful Indigenous lawsuits). And, by the same merit, it's also about Ainu sovereignty on that unceded land.
Sources: Kayano Shigeru, アイヌの碑 (Eng: Our Land Was a Forest); Yamada Shin'ichi, 近代北海道とアイヌ民族ー狩猟規制と土地問題; Brett Walker, Conquest of the Ainu Lands (Jp: 蝦夷地の征服1590‐1800); Ukuyama Ryō, アイヌの衰亡史.
