Bones Back Home

A private academic group in Germany returned old bones of an indigenous person in Japan, called Ainu, to the ethnic group on Monday. The bones were stolen by a German traveler from a cemetery in Sapporo in 1879. It became the first case for stolen bones of Ainu in overseas for ethnic study to be returned to their homeland through diplomatic route. Ainu people keep on requiring the researchers in overseas to return other bones to Japan.

Ainu has been an object for anthropologic study, because of its uniqueness of their appearance, apparently different from Mongoloid, with hypothesis of possible relationship with Caucasian. The bones stolen from Sapporo have been kept in Berlin Association of Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory. It is supposed that Nazis took advantage of the study for their propaganda for superiority of Germen.

The return of the bones was an implementation of United Nations Declaration for the Right of Indigenous Peoples, which guarantees repatriation of indigenous people’s remains. The Chairman of the association, Alexander Pashos, admitted that the stealing the bones exceeded a moral line. “Not only violating the law at that time, it lacked consideration for Ainu,” told Pashos in the ceremony held in Embassy of Japan in Berlin.

Executive Director of Hokkaido Ainu Association, Tadashi Kato, received the bones. “No one knew the facts for a long time. The bones embarks on a healing trip to home,” told Kato. Regretting one hundred and thirty eight years in foreign country of the bones, Kato hoped to comfort the soul and regain the honor and dignity with ethnic rituals in their homeland.

The government of Japan is going to promote returning the bones of Ainu in foreign countries. “This is a big step forward and we will make further effort for returning Ainu bones,” told Director of Council for Ainu Policy Promotion, Hirohide Hirai. Kato appealed to the researchers in the world for early return of Ainu bones with sincere reflection of the past.

United Kingdom and Australia have been returning the bones of aborigines. Australian Ambassador to Japan announced the policy of returning of bones of three Ainu persons to Japan. However, the bones of fourteen Ainu people in Germany may not be returned to Japan, because the process of obtaining them has not been proved to be illegal. It is possible that other bones are scattered in countries such as Czech, Hungary, Switzerland or Russia. Human rights of indigenous people has not fully been recovered.