European Studies on Ainu Language and Culture

Research on Ainu culture has played an extraordinary part in the formation of a theoretical context of Japanese studies in Europe, and especially in Germany. The International Year for Indigenous Peoples has once more given prominence to the Ainu, today a largely assimilated northern Japanese people of hunters and gatherers. The large number of Japanese as well as international research projects calls for a synopsis of the current level of European research as presented at a convention in Bonn in 1987. This volume considers contemporary Ainu studies from a variety of perspectives, offers a historical survey of Ainu studies and the development of the European perception of the Ainu (J. Kreiner), and contains contributions on linguistics (F. Vos, H. A. Dettmer, K. Refsing), the history of ethnological research (A. F. Majewicz, K. Katō, H. D. Ölschleger), the establishment of ethnographical collections (J. Wilkinson, K. Teague, P. Thiele, W. Warthol, A. B. Spevakovski), and pictorial descriptions of Ainu culture (G. Prunner, T. Sasaki). The appendix contains detailed surveys of the history and scope of Ainu collections in European, North American and Japanese museums and thus constitutes an authoritative source for the further study of a topic whose relevance cannot be overestimated.