By stepping off the Silver Whisper in Hakodate, I’ve now walked on all four of Japan’s main islands. However, they have over 14,000 islands; so, don’t be too impressed. That’s only counting islands with at least 100 meters of coastline. However, only around 200 or so are inhabited.
We stopped at the Museum of Northern Peoples, but first some background. As I described last week at the Fukuoka National Museum, the people who became Japanese landed in the western-most island of Kyushu and worked their way north. The Ainu (distantly related to the Aleuts, think Aleutian Islands of Alaska) already lived on the islands and over the centuries were “encouraged” to migrate north. There are similarities to the Western Expansion in North America. Over 10,000 Ainu still live in Hokaido. This museum documents the Ainu culture. However, like most of the museums I’ve visited in Japan, they do not use non-reflective glass on their exhibits. Sorry for the light flare…
Here is a sample of clothing. The Ainu made both leather and plant fiber woven clothing. After contact with Japanese merchants they traded for iron and cotton.
There was an annual event where the Ainu captured a bear and sacrificed it to allow spirits of the world to return to the gods. This is a photograph of the original artwork by Japanese early anthropologists.
Seems this ritual was done by indigenous peoples from northern Japan across Russia to Alaska. The red boxes show where the bears were domesticated first, while the blue boxes show where bears were only captured in the wild. Alaska is top-right, Japan is bottom-left.
While iron was traded with the Ainu, they never learned how to forge it. Here is a small collection of fake swords used in what we’d call “Shaman” rituals.
For a small museum, which used to be a bank, they do a good job. Our guide found a docent who was able to answer many of our questions.
Afterwards we took a cable car to the top of the local mountain, which gave a great view of the city and surrounding mountains. Hakodate is surprisingly big for being on the remote island of Hokaido. Seems when Japan re-opened to the rest of the world after the Shoguns left power, Hakodate was one of the original ports to open first for trade.
From there we were dropped off at a set of red-brick warehouses that have been converted into a shopping area. It wasn’t ALL tourist stuff. Here’s a great example of the fake food many restaurants put outside to lure you in.
On the other hand, here is a ink pen with a toilet on top, out of which the contents move up and down as you write. I am not making that up.
