Images of the Ainu

Today, peoples of the world live in a new phase of history with the acceleration of globalization. Massive quantity of global flow now requires us to study culture with observations of the interrelations between societies. In addition to the synchronous perspective, the axis of time is also indispensable in order to understand the dynamism of culture. In this book, the Ainu, an indigenous people of the northern part of Japan, are studied from the perspective that culture and manifested forms of culture are continuously in the process of creation. The relationship between the Ainu and the Japanese is focused to know how they affected each other throughout history. Furthermore, the relations between Japan and other countries are taken into consideration since Japan''s foreign situations affected the manner in which the Japanese treated the Ainu. Images of the Ainu are employed as clues to study the process of producing culture. This accessible and creative analysis of histories and identities of the Ainu provides a new light on questions of the current multi-cultural/ethnic environment.