A Comparative Study : between Okinawa Culture and Ainu Culture

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This study aims to make clear how Ainu and Okinawa identities were formed and preserved in spite of strong influence of the Japanese society.The core of identity is language and what it conveys. So, we have analyzed the oral literature of Ainu and“OMOROSOSHI", a collection of hymns compiled by the Ryukyu Government from the 16th century to the 17th century. Especially we have focused our effort to restore the history in the illiterate societies.It was very difficult work, but we have concluded it is necessary to assume the“imagined history"encouraged people to act. In a sense, this history was more important than the real history.As the way of restoring history, we turned to icons and pictures. They had much influence on people's life in the illiterate societies because in such societies these materials gave them more relevant information about society and culture than many documents written by the Japanese.We have also examined the Ainu and Okinawa cultures in search of their similarities. We have concluded the basic cultural structure of their languages and rituals was almost same between Ainu and Okinawa. These studies have a very wide perspective in time and space.In the course of pursuing this study, we came across a turning point in Okinawa study. It shed light on the archeological development on the Amami Islands. The Ryukyu society, especially that of the Okinawa island, had not grown autonomously. This fact is deeply concerned with our study, so we have tackled on this problem.