CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Pflueger, Lea Katharina |
|---|---|
| Title | Marketing "Ethnic Harmony" - Ainu Tourism, the National Ainu Museum, and Japan's Imperial Legacy |
| Summary | As a form of settler colonialism, Japan’s imperial conquest of the Ainu homeland necessitated the erasure of the presence of its Indigenous population both directly and indirectly. This ongoing structure of elimination extends to the realms of memory and becomes entangled with the narratives transmitted in tourism and museums. Tourism in particular has long played a central role in the material and ideological structures of colonialism in Ainu Mosir, serving the agenda of different stakeholders. The realities of settler colonialism are often unacknowledged in dominant discourse, affected by settler memory and historical amnesia. This thesis analyzes Ainu tourism and museum narratives with frameworks of settler colonial theory, memory studies, and heritage tourism, paying special attention to the newly established Upopoy National Ainu Museum and Park in Shiraoi as a complex site that reflects the historical dynamics of Japanese settler colonial memory in Yaun Mosir (Hokkaido). It finds that Ainu tourist sites and museums constitute contact zones in which official government narratives clash with Indigenous experiences and knowledge, revealing continued imperial structures and mechanisms. Though these spaces are deeply asymmetrical, there is potential for Indigenous empowerment and counternarratives, which can disrupt dominant narratives and subvert settler memory. |
| Supervisor | Seaton, Philip |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/pflueger_lea.pdf |
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