Issue:
May 2026 | Letter from Hokkaido
The Japanese right is turning the Ainu’s status as an indigenous people into a culture wars battleground
On April 6, Japan Conservative Party leader Naoki Hyakuta brought up what has become a recurring theme among extreme right-wing elements and nativists - namely, that the Ainu are not an indigenous people.
In Hokkaido, a few elderly men connected to Nippon Kaigi staged their own propaganda festival in central Sapporo in March. A series of somewhat crudely drawn panels with the purpose of throwing doubt on whether the Ainu are truly an indigenous people embarrassed the city. All officials could do was to point out that the organisers had filled out the paperwork required to hold the event in a busy public space.
The panel display closed down, and the incident was largely forgotten by the Hokkaido media. But last month, Hyakuta, dismissed as a politically insignificant gadfly by his critics (including those in Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party), dragged the Ainu issue into the spotlight again when he told a press event in Tokyo that the government’s recognition of the Ainu as indigenous in 2008 had been a mistake.
While the Nippon Kaigi exhibition in Sapporo attempted to sow doubt among the public with dense wording and complex historical information and archaeological evidence – much of it still debated among scholars - Hyakuta suggested that the Japanese government’s declaration of the Ainu as indigenous was a victory for Chinese propaganda aimed at “dividing Japan”.
Hyakuta was joined at the table by fellow Conservative Party member Kaori Arimoto, who, demonstrating the superb rhetorical skills and selective use of historical facts that modern right-wing revisionists and historical deniers around the world are noted for, took listeners through her version of Jomon and Ainu history before concluding that the Japanese’s government’s decision to grant the Ainu indigenous rights was a Chinese government plot to divert attention from its domestic problems.
Hyakuta, Arimoto, and the Hokkaido members of Nippon Kaigi aim to instil enough doubt over the Ainu’s indigenous status to make it harder to grant them their rights under indigenous treaties, and to assuage voters who believe that that the Japanese are all one race.
It’s an old myth, long since disproven by respectable scholars across multiple disciplines in Japan and around the world. But since when have facts ever deterred zealots, regardless of where on the political spectrum their agenda lies? With Takaichi and the more hardcore right-wing elements of the LDP now back in power, it has become easier for the nativists to say publicly what just a few years ago would have landed them in trouble.
Asked about Hyakuta and Arimoto’s remarks, Minister of State for Ainu-Related policies Hitoshi Kikawada refrained from direct comment, saying only that “the government’s understanding that (the Ainu) are the indigenous people of the northern part of the Japanese archipelago, especially Hokkaido, remains unchanged”.
He went on to talk about the need to deepen the public’s understanding of Ainu history and culture, but in language that government officials have used since 2008 – “realizing a society where the pride of the Ainu people as a group is respected”.
Respected, rather than legally guaranteed their rights as an indigenous people under international treaties that Japan has signed.
Hokkaido Governor Naomichi Suzuki, when asked about Hyakuta remarks and Kikawada’s response, criticized the latter’s statement that the government was working to educate the public, noting there was little or no information about the opening of the National Ainu Museum Upopoy. He went further, saying the government had to work harder to counter prejudice, discrimination, and slander against the Ainu.
But those who do not want the Ainu to be recognized as an indigenous people have the upper hand. Not long after Kikawada’s fairly mild rebuke, Conservative Party members and volunteers set up a booth in central Sapporo, chatting politely with anyone who stopped to find out more.
Like Sanseito and its media-savvy leader Sohei Kamiya, Hyakuta’s party has learned the value of recruiting well-dressed, polite young men and women to peddle their lies, rather than rely on middle-aged men in army fatigues shouting through megaphones mounted on sound trucks.
The propaganda about the Ainu has emboldened nativists to try to persuade the public that Japan is all one race, and that designating the Ainu as an indigenous group was a mistake. If their mistruths go unchallenged, Takaichi’s “respect” for the Ainu is unlikely to last long.
Eric Johnston is the Senior National Correspondent for the Japan Times. Views expressed within are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Japan Times.
