Reconstructing Ainu Culture based on overseas Ainu Collections.

1)通过过去二十年来对海外阿伊努人藏品的调查，现在可以清楚地说，在欧洲、俄罗斯和北美的博物馆中，大约有13,000件阿伊努人标本。关于他们的各种书面资料现已汇编，准备放入阿伊努人的数据库，虽然个别资料仍有待整理。2) 2000年12月中旬，我们在波恩大学举办了“欧洲和北美阿伊努人收藏”国际研讨会，来自德国、英国、丹麦、瑞士、波兰、美国和日本的代表参加了研讨会。本次研讨会的论文集目前正在德国波恩大学日本研究所进行编辑，将于今年年底出版。3)上述研讨会指出的一个重要问题是，有必要建立一个数据库，将所有海外阿伊努人的收藏（包括书面记录和视觉信息……更多）纳入其中。所有与会者都同意它作为进一步研究阿伊努人的第一步的重要性，但也有人指出，在处理西欧博物馆标本的照片或幻灯片方面存在困难，因为在西欧，即使在这样的数据库中使用视觉信息，每个博物馆也必须对每件人工制品收取一定数额的专利费。因此，我们决定不使用关于西欧阿伊努人收藏的幻灯片或其他视觉资料，因为这些费用的总额远远超过教育部提供的助学金的上限。4)最后报告由两部分组成。第一部分包含三篇关于欧洲和北美阿伊努人藏品的研究论文，然后触及明治时代日本民族学家和人类学家应该重新审视的重要背景。第二部分包括西欧、莱比锡民族学博物馆（前东德）和北美的三份阿伊努人藏品清单。这些清单将作为进一步研究阿伊努文化的起点。少

1) Through investigations of overseas Ainu collections carried out over last two decades, it can now be clearly sai that about 13,000 pieces of Ainu specimens are available in European, Russian and North American museums. All kinds of written information on them are now assembled and are ready to be put into an Ainu database, although vidual information still remains to be worked out.2) In mid-December, 2000, we held an international symposium on "Ainu collections in Europe and North America" at the University of Bonn, with participants from Germany, Great Britain, Denmark, Switzerland, Poland, USA and Japan. The proceedings of this symposium are now being edited at the Institute of Japanese Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany and will be published later toward the end of this year.3) One of the important problems pointed out at the above-mentioned symposium is a necessity to build a database incorporating all the overseas Ainu collections(both written records and visual informa … More tion of them). All the participants agreed upon its importance as an initial step toward furthering of Ainu studies, but it was also pointed out that there is a difficulty in dealing with photographs or slides of museum specimens in Western Europe, where it is mandatory for each museum to charge a certain amount of patent fee on every artifact of which visual information is used even in such a database. We have thus made a decision not to make use of slides or other visual information on Western European Ainu collections simply because the total amount of such fees well exceed the upper range of the grant-in-aid from the Ministry of Education.4) The final report consists of two parts. Part one contains three research papers on Ainu collections in Europe and North America and then touch upon the important background against which roles of Meiji-era Japanese ethnologists and anthropologists should be re-examined. Part two contains three lists of Ainu collections in Western Europe, Leipzig Museum of Ethnology(former East Germany)and North America. These lists would serve as a starting point for further studies of the Ainu culture in general. Less