Folk Dance of Ainu Descendant

　　After a nice dinner, we went out for a walk in the used-to-be-busy street of the Kawayu Onsen Spa. I had been there 17 years ago and the center of the town was swarming with tourists at that time, but today the number of people on the street even in such a high season was a half or a quarter of former times. I was sad to see how the town was. Several Ainu descendants were performing their traditional dance and musical instruments on the makeshift stage. We enjoyed them for a while.
　　Ainu people had once lived in Hokkaido and the northern part of Honshu, the largest island of Japan, and now have been completely absorbed in Japanese people. When two peoples lived closely, one of which had their own letters and the other didn't, the latter would become a part of the former. It's the inevitable rule of history. Several Japanese researchers of linguistics left a series of achievements written in Japanese about the language of Ainu. However, their accurate pronunciation had already evaporated in years. Today, their words are retained only in the names of lots of places, lakes, mountains, rivers and so on in Hokkaido.
　　I had visited an Ainu cuisine restaurant in Tokyo once. They surely used ingredients which I could imagine that Ainu people would have used, but all the cuisine was seasoned by soy sauce, oily dressing materials or flavouring, even mayonnaise, which didn't exist in the world of Ainu. Their culture is rapidly disappearing.

(Vocabulary from comments)
resurrect〈昔のことなど〉 を復活させる;《通例受け身形で》 〈死者〉 をよみがえらせる
He has been trying to resurrect his political career. 彼は政治家としてもう一度花を咲かせようとしている．

　ホテルで夕食後、川湯温泉の中心温泉街を散策。寂れように驚く。１７年前はかなり賑やかだったのに。広場ではアイヌ民族の血を引く人たちが伝統芸能を披露していた。北海道、東北のアイヌは日本人と同化し、樺太や沿海州のアイヌたちはロシアなどに同化した。文字を持たない民族と持つ民族が国境を接した場合、文字を持たない民族が消えるのは歴史の必然。とはいえ、この文化がなくなるのは惜しい。最後の写真は前の日に余市のニッカ蒸留所で買い求めたウィスキーとつまみ。愛媛からはるばるやってきた弟子屈町で旅情に浸る。

Comments

[KUMO]

The accurate pronunciation of Ainu languages have completely disappeared not only in Japan but other countries. The documents of their own didn't exist, for they didn't have letters. Now, in Ainu museum, their daily necessities are only exhibited.

[Peter]

Is their any chance of resurrecting the Ainu language in the school system?