TGS 2019 Interview: On Utawarerumono and its Ainu influences

Interview by Matt S.

Japan’s Ainu people have become one of the most diminished native peoples in the world. They’re native to northern Japan, predominantly Hokkaido, and if you weren’t aware of that, don’t worry, you’re by no means alone. Many, many people in the west don’t even realise there exists a native people separate to the Japanese in Japan. Within the mainstream Japanese population itself knowledge and understanding of the Ainu people is minimal at best. The reason is quite sad: for centuries the government actively aimed to suppress Ainu culture, and from 1899 to 1997 Japan officially acknowledged no ethnic minority communities. It also destroyed Ainu communities to make way for factories and modernisation, and limited the way that Ainu could live in order to force them to assimilate into Japanese culture.

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