First Contact: The Ainu

Every eight to ten months, we run across a story more-or-less identical to this one lamenting the declining visibility of Japan's Ainu minority. It's certainly a sad tale, given that forced assimilation was the nation's official policy throughout much of the twentieth-century. Yet the Ainu have received equally callous treatment from the West, particularly at the notorious 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. There, a bevy of Ainus were "imported" to hang out at an ethnographic exhibit, much like ...