The standard Ainu greeting ¡°¾±°ù²¹²Ô°ì²¹°ù²¹±è³Ù±ğ¡± ¡ª literally, ¡°let me touch your heart softly¡± ¡ª may one day be consigned to the annals of history.
Indeed, the Ainu language is currently considered critically endangered ¡ª one step away from extinction, an academic classification that refers to a language that is no longer in use.
Transmitted orally and transcribed only relatively recently, Ainu was all but obliterated with the assimilation of its speakers, the indigenous inhabitants of Hokkaido, into Japanese society, a process that began in earnest during the Meiji Restoration in the late 1860s.
Ainu people were taught conventional Japanese in schools built by colonizers, and, in the process, coerced into abandoning their traditions. A growing sense of shame about Ainu heritage resulted in the indigenous population electing not to teach their native language to their children.
The last people to have been raised in an Ainu-speaking environment are thought to have passed away around the middle of the 20th century.
In spite of the language¡¯s bleak outlook, however, a small number of cultural organizations that are supported by an international network advocating for indigenous rights are refusing to give up on it just yet.
Endangered language
There are no reliable nationwide statistics on Japan¡¯s remaining Ainu population, as many descendants are believed to hide their identity. Similarly, it¡¯s hard to say with any amount of certainty just how many speak the language today. According to a Hokkaido survey in 2017, a paltry 0.7% of the 671 respondents acknowledged some ability.
Starting as early as the 1950s, however, there has been an increasing interest in reviving the Ainu language, whose genetic origins are unknown.
¡°What matters is generational transmission,¡± says K. David Harrison, a linguistics professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, who has devoted much of his career to documenting the recordings of the last speakers of endangered tongues around the world. ¡°As long as children are learning it, the language is secure.¡±
While many are passive speakers ¡ª older people who were exposed to the language as children ¡ª and Ainu is not being expressly taught to new generations on a national scale, Jeffry Gayman, an educational anthropologist at Hokkaido University, says that youths in Hokkaido are being raised around people who continue to have an affinity for the culture.
¡°This is an important foundation,¡± Gayman says. ¡°They¡¯re using Ainu words more and more in their daily conversations and messages with one another. Ainu culture is still very much alive in rural Hokkaido.¡±
Ainu language courses are available all over the prefecture as well as in other areas such as Tokyo, and there...
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