Buraku Liberation News, July 1997 issue (N0.97)
3.Law to preserve Ainu culture was Passed.
The new Ainu Law was passed in the Lower House on May 8, 1997, and will take effect within three months. The law is the nation's first legislation acknowledging the existence of an ethnic minority in Japan. Although the law itself does not designate the Ainu people as an indigenous ethnic group, a resolution paired with it does.
The new legislation describes its purpose as an attempt to realize a society that respects the dignity of the Ainu as a distinct race by promoting Ainu culture and spreading information about Ainu traditions.
It requires prefectural governments nationwide to hammer out a basic program to this end, while the government plans to form a public body to promote and research Ainu culture. Debate over whether the law should note the indigenousness of Ainu attracted government concern that such a description could raise questions about aboriginal rights, including those related to land and natural resources.
The new legislation replaces the controversial 1899 Hokkaido Former Aborigine Protection Law, which was aimed at assimilating the Ainu through farming and Japanese education.
The 15,000 members Ainu Association of Hokkaido, which has long criticized the law for depriving the Ainu of their land and destroying their culture and traditions, proposed a bill in 1984 to recognize the ethnic group's right to self-determination and to set up a fund to help make the Ainu more self-reliant.
In an answer to the BLRI's interview conducted on May 8, 1997, Mr Shigeru Kayano, Board members of the association as well as Members of the Upper House, said that this was an historical day because a new law was enacted which replaced the Hokkaido Former Aborigine Protection Law, a discriminatory law. While some of the board members wanted the new law to be more favorable to Ainu people, we thought the enactment of the law should be a priority, he said. The law can be revised in the future, according to him.
According to the association, an estimated 50,000 Ainu live in Japan, less than 1 percent of the country's population of 124 million.