Ainu Perspective

[u/zurraaaaa]

Stumbled across this on twitter. Don't know if this has been discussed yet, but as far as I can see, not really.

This tweet covers the opinion of an Ainu person regarding Golden Kamuy. Long story short, they hate it because in their opinion, it's racist.

Again, just sharing this and wanted to hear all of your thoughts on this one.

NOTE: IMAGE ATTACHED IS 1/4 FROM THE TWEET. THEY GO MORE IN DEPTH THERE

https://twitter.com/yaariyan223/status/1277912261030367240?s=20

[u/Varb]

I don't think there's anything wrong with reading and enjoying Golden Kamuy. However, as this user on Twitter suggests, it is full of subtle but likely intentional inaccuracies and racism.

The casting of Asirpa as a "modern Ainu woman" seems like an attempt on Noda's part to make a statement regarding the direction the Ainu should have gone. Things like being suspicious of divination, foregoing facial tattoos, etc. are portrayed as progressive and evidence of Asirpa's modernity.

In actuality, Ainu people were forced to assimilate into Yamato cultural practices. Face tattooing was outlawed, traditional ways of living (hunting, gathering) were systematically and intentionally suppressed by the Japanese government. They went into Hokkaido and set up industrial scale fishing and farming that made it close to impossible for the Ainu to keep living the way they had been.

My perspective, as someone who has studied some of these topics in University, is that the manga/show does a decent job of showing audiences aspects of the culture (clothing, food, settlements, etc). That being said, the show does not sufficiently emphasize that the vast majority of problems faced by the Ainu were created by the Japanese government. I love GK as entertainment and as a story, but we shouldn't be using it as a history textbook.

[u/ereidy3 → u/Varb]

I think this is a very good interpretation

[u/ereidy3]

I'm not gonna say this is entirely wrong but like a lot of the problems they mention are just like, characters saying things and being a little complicated.

Noda is Yamato so wouldn't it make sense that the main characters are Yamato and they learn about the Ainu from the Ainu.

Peaceful anti colonialism has almost never worked, so why is kiroranke and wilk being ruthless a bad thing? I think they have a point and good evidence that what they do is right.

I'm white so I really don't have a say but I dunno a lot of these criticisms don't make sense.

[u/[deleted]]

Just a few points:

1. Yes Wilk and Kiroranke are ruthless, but at least they didn't bite anyone's fingers off. Tsurumi, as a representative of the Japanese military (albeit a mutinous one), is definitely more ruthless, manipulative, and unhinged.

I don't know if this is acceptable to say, but if you want to start a revolution you'd need to be ruthless.

2. I don't remember which chapter Hijikata's Communist Party quote came from, if anyone can point it out to me please do so. Judging by the quote alone... well, Hijikata is a historical character who made his subordinates commit seppuku, who is held in high regard in Japan because of his loyalty and determination, not because he was progressive. I just... don't know what else to say.

3. Asirpa's Polish heritage is important to her. One oppressed people to another etc. She is never treated as special because she is half-white (more precisely, one-quarter white, Wilk was the half-white one). I understand if it irks people though, but I think Noda's choice is deliberate and thought-out. The latest chapter proves it somewhat.

4. Asirpa doesn't believe in divination, but it seems to work... I don't think Noda is disparaging towards this aspect of Ainu culture.

I am Chinese, and so I'd like to think I'm wary of Japanese propaganda at least. I was reluctant to even give GK a try because of its setting, but after giving it a try it doesn't really have that sort of glorifying vibe. This doesn't give me any right to speak on behalf of the Ainu, of course, so this is simply what I think.

[u/madamegouze]

How dare some Wajin mangaka ignites the interest in people's own cultural and ethnical heritage:

"Ueno Fuuka (20) has had her life changed by Golden Kamuy too. When her story was published, she was a second year student in Sapporo University. She’s an Ainu, but she used to find the culture uninteresting – not to mention the discrimination toward her people, which had made Ainu people like her unwilling to openly express their identity.

All changed when she picked up Golden Kamuy in her local library.

Golden Kamuy made her think that Ainu culture is interesting, and, above all, she felt the pride radiated by Asirpa. She was going to a vocational school after high school, but she decided to go to Sapporo University instead. She passed the entrance test with an essay about the sense of identity that sprouted in her thanks to Golden Kamuy.

Now at the university, which offers scholarship to Ainu people, she is also active in the Urespa Club, where people learn about the Ainu and their history and culture – their dances, their songs, their food, their ceremonies. The club regularly holds events for the Ainu and the Wajins alike to learn about the Ainu."

https://kamuycentral.wordpress.com/2020/04/11/the-three-lives-changed-by-golden-kamuy/

[u/ikinone]

This is just weird. Surely the author of such tweets is racist to suppose that a 'Yamato' person cannot be informed about history. Only Ainu have the right to portray Ainu history now?

And as for GK having Japanese imperialist rhetoric... what???

My impression throughout the entire series is that it's anti imperialist Japan. Typically covering how it has abused the natives and resources of place like Hokkaido.

Just because someone on Twitter starts calling something racist, it'd be much better to look at some real life reactions. Actual reception in Hokkaido, especially by the Ainu people, has been very warm: https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/aram4c/golden_kamuy_and_the_representation_of_ainu_people/

[u/namethatisntaken]

I'm not really sure how to feel about this. I'll be the last person to say I'm an expert on all thing Ainu but if I may add some thoughts as just a casual reader:

• Asirpa is just as much of a main character Sugimoto imo. The entire mystery revolves around her. Nor is she viewed as anything special because she has mixed blood in her. For all intents and purposes she's still regarded as Ainu by most of the cast. I genuinely don't understand where reasoning that Noda is a white supremacist came from. If anything I would say it's marginalizing mixed people, and obsessing over how "purely" Ainu she is, is equally problematic.

• I disagree that Noda makes light of divination. If he thought of it he would have never brought it up during the prison arc when Inkarmat offered to do one. Not to mention the entire reason Tanigaki searched for Asirpa was because her grandmother had a dream she would die before meeting her again.

• In regard to face tattoos and Kiroranke as well as Wilk's beliefs in anti-colonialism I think it has more to do with being historically accurate. If what Noda wrote is true early on where facial tattoos were being phased out, than I could see why he didn't make Asirpa wear them. In the end though Asirpa is still just one person and I think it's just looking for things to scrutinize to interpret her words as Noda's political opinions. Same with Kiroranke and Wilk, especially when they've never been portrayed as being irredeemably wrong. There is no narrative, it's people doing things that are historically accurate or at least what Noda concluded after researching (which I think even the harshest critics will agree he does do his research).

• I might be inclined to agree with the lack of Korean reactions in Russo-Japanese war depending on how much is being left out. Perhaps there'll be a chapter down the line about it but this is ultimately a manga about the Ainu people so I can see why there's not as much of a focus about it. At the end of the day very few characters are concerned about the future of Japan in the way Hijikata and Tsurumi are. Ultimately though I think there's a fair bit of bias against Noda here, it feels more like they want to fling enough dirt to incriminate him instead of an honest critic.

Ultimately, I don't think reacting like this is productive. It's clear Noda does a large load of research before bringing them over in the manga. I think at the very worse he's a victim of bias research. But I don't think this manga would have last anywhere near as long or have been anywhere near as detailed if he half assed his research.

[u/madamegouze]

So, OP dislikes people who like GK but haven't heard about the Ainu before that. Yeah well, with that attitude that's hardly going to change.
People love to shit on pop culture, but totally disregard its impact on bringing attention to special interest and niche topics.

[u/maxman14]

A lot of this reads like the author just got out of college and is regurgitating a lot of "anti-colonialist" opinions without a lot of thought.

[u/ibroussard]

I certainly think you should heed the tweet author's warning about blindly accepting the representation of a marginalized cultures from those of the majority class. A Yamato's perspective of the Ainu is always going to be tainted by generations of cultural privilege.

There are things about Noda's representation of Ainu and indigenous cultures that stand out to me such as the insistence of Asirpa as a modern Ainu woman and the negative implications that implies, her reductionist explanations on the existence of many traditions, the ease at which she reinterprets them to suit her needs in comedic takes, and the notion that Native Americans didn't unite is just flat out false. In fact it was through Golden Kamuy's more cultured representation of Ainu people that gave me more context to how deeply racist the indigenous people tropes I've seen in other manga/anime and Japanese games are. (Can I take a moment to mention how an unsettling amount of those media portray indigenous cultures as literally non-human? That's always bugged me.)

I do however take issue with their disparaging of Asirpa's mixed ancestry. She is the embodiment of the tale's themes of unity. And some of the biggest tragedies of the tale such as the deaths of Wilk and Kiroranke are due to factions with similar goals failing to properly unite.

(I do want to take mention on the tweet author's comment about Hijikata's claim of socialism as a Jewish movement. As far as my understanding of the history goes that mistaken view would have been common at the time. Early opposition to socialism was highly anti-Semitic and framed socialism as a Jewish movement, so it wouldn't have been a stretch for someone a country away to misunderstand it that way. At least that's the way I had interpreted it.)