Ainu Handicrafts

This article examines the mass commercialization of Ainu handicrafts as Hokkaido’s official folk art and signature souvenir during the 1930s. Focusing on the political economy of these works, it analyzes how the Japanese empire constructed a colonial handicraft industry that promoted the popular consumption of Ainu woodcarvings and attus textiles as symbols of Japan’s civilizing mission over the Ainu people. Despite such appropriation, Ainu craftspeople repurposed these works as instruments of political mobilization to confront colonial inequalities. At Asahikawa, Ainu activists from the Third Chikabumi Land Dispute envisioned collective handicraft workshops as a centerpiece of their proposal to dismantle their reservation and construct a new village. In the Saru River basin, Ainu weavers also drew on community-based management of mountain forests to connect attus textile production to Indigenous land rights. By tracing Ainu cultural production across these sites, the article argues that Ainu handicrafts were critical sites for the articulation of Ainu demands for land recovery, local autonomy, and equitable resource use.