Koji Yuki, an indigenous Ainu and woodblock artist, at an exhibition of his work in Sapporo in northern Japan.
© AFP/File Kyoko Hasegawa SAPPORO, Japan (AFP) - As a child, Yuki's family fled discrimination on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, the traditional homeland of the Ainu, for Tokyo.
His father Shoji often clashed with police, shooting to notoriety when he scratched the name of Hokkaido's governor off the sculpture of an Ainu hero and called him an intruder.
By the time he was seven years old, Yuki's mother had left the family and he says now that she probably "got fed up with my father's radicalism".
"I think I understand her feelings," he said.
"I don't think anything will be created out of negative feelings. Our culture is full of treasures. I want to share them with others," Yuki said.
Yuki detached himself from any activities related to the Ainu until his early 30s but now aged 44, he has set up the Ainu Art Project, a loose support network of Ainu artists who dance, sing, tell stories and make coats with traditional patterns.
Like many other indigenous cultures, the Ainu are animist, believing spirits dwell in plants and animals.
The Ainu were recognised in June as Japan's indigenous people in a landmark parliamentary resolution.
More hirsute and stout than Japan's dominant ethnicity, the Ainu historically dominated Hokkaido until the 19th century when Japanese were encouraged to settle there, pushing the Ainu off their land and banning their language and culture.
Today, Ainu culture is gradually becoming trendy, with handbags and other accessories with Ainu motifs popular among young Japanese and selling in trendy shops in Hokkaido, including its capital Sapporo.
But Yuki wants to provide more than just "cool designs" and so in 2000 he took part in a project to build a traditional Ainu boat, a government-funded plan aimed at promoting the culture.
The experience proved an epiphany, he said, as the boat ended up in a museum -- rather than being put to sail -- becoming a symbol in his eyes of the slow death that his culture was suffering.
"I had enormous hope that I would find something," Yuki said of his involvement in the boat building project.
"I had long been asking myself 'Who am I?' when I was living in Tokyo but I felt like I was being betrayed by my lover.
"That's when our Ainu Art Project started. We wanted to produce the Ainu culture alive, not to see it dead in a museum," he said.
To that end he has taken up the traditional art of carving woodblocks with motifs of animals he says depict some of the central tenets of Ainu culture.
One print entitled "Temptation to Naughtiness on a Sunny Day" depicts a bear, regarded by Ainu as a divine spirit, with a mischievous expression on its face.
His favourite is called "Crane's Dance" which resembles a crane with a woman's face dancing in the wind.
"This is about a crane's dance mingling with everything -- wind, nature -- like the Ainu philosophy of coexistence with nature," he said.
Like nearly all 21st-century Ainu, Yuki cannot speak the language, which is not related to Japanese, but hopes his children will grow up to speak it.
He also hopes the Japanese government will teach Ainu culture and history "more thoroughly, adding a viewpoint from those who were invaded".
Yuki's goals are supported by others in his generation.
Koji Yuki, an indigenous Ainu and woodblock artist, shows his work at an exhibition in Sapporo in northern Japan.
© AFP/File Kyoko HasegawaErushikain Funada, whose father was a colleague of the elder Yuki, became an Ainu activist of sorts after noting a dearth of resources online and has set up a website (www.ainu.info) on Ainu history and culture.
"The fact that so many Japanese people know little about the Ainu is impermissible," he said.
"A majority of the Ainu are still comparatively poor, like African-Americans and Hispanics in the United States, because of the past plunder and discrimination," said Funada, who studied in New York.
"I don't want an apology from the current generation of Japanese, who have no memory of discriminating against the Ainu," he said.
"Rather, I want people to know history."
©AFP