The Inaw of Ishikawa: Ainu Religious Implements in Japanese Shrines and Temples

In 2015, the researcher Imaishi Migiwa discovered a group of Ainu religious implements called inaw イナウ in Shinto shrines in two coastal villages in Ishikawa Prefecture, some thousand kilometers from Hokkaido. Upon close examination, these nine inaw were recognized to have been brought to Honshu by a similar process that brought twenty-four inaw to Engakuji 円覚寺, a Shingon Buddhist temple on the west coast of Aomori Prefecture. These inaw were collected from multiple locations across the islands of Sakhalin and Hokkaido over the period of 1868 to 1888 by Wajin 和人 (non-Ainu Japanese) merchants doing regular business with the Ainu. While this period is known for the seizure of Ainu lands by Japan and Russia and the imposition of Western-style colonialism, the inaw viewed as a group of artifacts paint a very different picture. Imaishi assembled a team of experts specializing in inaw, maritime trade, and Ainu-Wajin interaction, who together published a research report in 2019, Umi o watatta inau (Imaishi 2019). Its contributors describe every aspect of the process that brought these inaw to the island of Honshu, including Ainu ritual practices, the religious customs of Wajin merchants on the northern seas, and power Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 47/2: 341–351 © 2020 Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture dx.doi.org/10.18874/jjrs.47.2.2020.341-351