HOKKAIDO / JEJU: The tag of being Ainu haunted Miyuki Muraki throughout her youth.
” Since I was a kid, I was called Ainu and bullied”, the 64-year-old said. ” Because of that, there was a time when I hated the word ‘ Ainu'”.
The racial group, who were the first to settle in northeastern Japan and are indigenous to the land of northern Japan, have been suppressed for years. In the late 19th century, the Meiji state outlawed their customs and traditions.
While Japan is currently investing millions of dollars to help the Ainu people and their society, some people like Muraki are still afraid of prejudice, leading to them to completely prevent speaking the Ainu vocabulary.
Her work, the National Ainu Museum and Park – also called Upopoy, an Ainu word for “let’s sing” – has been trying to revive the dying speech, which has been designated as thoroughly endangered by UNESCO.
However, nearly 2, 000km aside, South Korea’s largest isle of Jeju is also attempting to reverse the decline of its language.
The Jeju-eo speech, which was once a fundamental component of the geological region’s identity, was also designated as critically endangered in 2010 and has largely been replaced with common Korean.
However, common interest is assisting in a renaissance of sorts. Jeju-eo has even found an unlikely alliance in social media, where it is gaining a growing following.