Our Land Was a Forest

A conversation with the great Shigeru Kayano, the man who saved Japan's indigenous Ainu people's language and culture from oblivion.

An elderly Ainu man in traditional dress on the island of Hokkaido in northern Japan. The Ainu were officially recognized as indigenous people of Japan in 2008. (Michele and Tom Grimm / Alamy)

In my recent TFP conversation with Joy Harjo, America’s first Native American poet laureate, she spoke eloquently of how the United States “will continue to falter until everyone’s voice has a place. No matter how difficult the stories, they’re all essential now. So many stories have been repressed because they don’t uphold a certain idea of culture—for instance, indigenous peoples and our lack of visibility in almost every area of American life.” 

Sadly, the same could be said of indigenous people on every continent, from North and South America to Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa.

Nowhere are Harjo’s words truer than in Japan, a country where the indigenous Ainu people—along with their stories, language, traditions and way of life—were brutally and systematically stamped out by those who arriv…