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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 688

Part of Session 142: Deconstructing the urban-rural dichotomy (Other abstracts in this session)

Hybridity and Mixing in Tokyo: new contexts of language usage amongst Ainu younger generation in the urban diaspora of Tokyo

Authors: Martin, Kylie Anne
Submitted by: Martin, Kylie Anne (Hokkaido University, Japan)

The Indigenous Ainu of Japan have often been represented as a ‘dying race’, rooted in their traditional homelands of Hokkaido in northern Japan and assimilated into mainstream Japanese society. A number of Ainu people have sought to re-invent themselves or ‘escape’ from Hokkaido to the urban environment in and around Tokyo. This ‘escape’ or change has been motivated by a variety of social, economic, ideological and educational factors, and is often a means of escaping entrenched cultural and social stereotypes and discrimination. While the urban and dynamic locality can result in marginalisation and social displacement, it can also lead to social and cultural empowerment in the articulation of different urban Indigenous identities. Within this Tokyo urban diaspora, the younger generation of Ainu has now become both symbols for and agents of sociolinguistic change. This group appears to be “living their Indigenousness” (Nicholas 2009) through the hybrid performance of music and dance, mixing traditional Ainu music and dance with contemporary genres such as hip-hop and electronica, with global reach. These performances are based around the composition of new Ainu songs written in the Ainu language to capture the modern realities of being Ainu in urban Tokyo. The new contexts of language usage show the hybridity and mixing of this new urban identity in which the Ainu language is seen as a vehicle for connecting the past, present and future. In such a context, these new songs and the associated performances can be regarded as a new marketable skill or commodity (Heller 2003), which can lead to socio-economic benefit and/or financial gain for the Ainu people. This mixing of new and old shows the shifting of values and functions of the Ainu language from being a language of past rituals and a means for identity politics to being regarded as a resource of originality and authenticity in an urban diaspora.

 

In this presentation, a sociolinguistic ecological paradigm will be adopted to explore the dynamic nature of new contexts of Ainu language usage in this urban locality of Tokyo (Mühlhäusler 1996; Mufwene 2002, 2004). The focus will be on two younger generation Ainu performance groups to illustrate the development of hybridity in cultural identity and how the local interactions in an urban diaspora are connected to the broader dynamics of the larger Ainu revitalisation movement within the global Indigenous context.  

 

 

Heller, M. (2003) ‘Globalization, the new economy, and the commodification of language and identity’. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7 (4), 473-492.

Mufwene, S. (2002) ‘Colonization, globalization, and the future of languages in the 21st century’, International Journal of Multicultural Societies, 4, 162-193.

Mufwene, S. (2004) ‘Language birth and death’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, 201-222.

Mühlhäusler, P. (1996) Linguistic Ecology: Language change and linguistic imperialism in the Pacific region. London: Routledge.

Nicholas, S.E. (2009) ‘“I Live Hopi, I Just Don’t Speak It.”  - The Critical Intersection of Language, Culture,and Identity in the Contemporary Lives of Hopi Youth’, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 8(5), 321-334.