JAPAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION JOURNAL - Volume 29 (2026)
Dam Construction and Ainu Cultural Revival in Biratori, Hokkaido
Lonny E. Carlile
For PDF version of the article, including full citations, click here.
Figures and tables can be found at the end of the article.
Figures and tables can be found at the end of the article.
Abstract
This article attempts to contribute to a fuller and more nuanced understanding of Ainu policy in Japan by showing how efforts to revive indigenous identity and culture on the part of a local Ainu community interacted with concurrent changes in Japan’s administrative state in the context of the implementation of a dam construction project to produce policy outcomes at the local level. There is a substantial body of English language literature that assesses the 1997 verdict in the lawsuit over the construction of Nibutani Dam in Biratori and its legal implications with respect to the status of the Ainu within the broader national context. This article, by contrast, focuses on efforts to construct a second dam (the Biratori Dam) in the Saru River Valley watershed in order to examine how the relationship between the Biratori Ainu community and the national government changed in the years that followed the Nibutani verdict. In doing so, it outlines the seemingly paradoxical process by which the construction of the new dam facilitated a deeper engagement of local Ainu with their traditional culture and the re-inscription of cultural meaning on the landscape. Through this, it illustrates the opportunities for and limits of the promotion of indigenous rights in a context like Japan’s where the state has embraced the promotion of indigenous culture as a state function without recognizing any sort of indigenous sovereignty over land.
Keywords: Ainu, Japan, indigenous politics, Nibutani, infrastructure administration, local government, environmental impact assessment
This article attempts to construct a fuller and more nuanced understanding of indigenous policy in Japan by showing how local level efforts to revive indigenous Ainu identity and culture interacted with concurrent changes in Japan’s administrative state in the context of the implementation of a dam construction project to shape outcomes at the local level. While there is a substantial body of English language literature that assesses the 1997 verdict in the lawsuit over the construction of Nibutani Dam in Biratori and its legal implications with respect to the recognition of the indigenous character of the Ainu people (e.g., Levin 2001, Maruyama 2012), this article focuses on the effort to construct a second dam (the Biratori Dam) in the Saru River Valley watershed and examines the way in which the verdict, in the context of a reorganization of Japan’s national government bureaucracy and the law governing dam construction on Japan’s major rivers, significantly altered the character of the relationship between the Biratori Ainu community and the national government. In so doing, it outlines the seemingly paradoxical process by which the construction of the new dam facilitated a re-engagement on the part of the local Ainu community with their traditional culture, including practices that were on the verge of disappearing, and the re-inscription of cultural meaning onto the town’s landscape.
Figure 1
The Saru River Watershed and the Location of the Nibutani and Biratori Dams
Source: Suigenchi netto website https://www.dam-net.jp/dam_content/topix/02_topix_list/2308/t230801.html Accessed July 5, 2025.
The first section below contrasts the politics and administrative processes associated with the construction of the Biratori Dam with that of its predecessor. The section that follows reviews in more detail the way in which the process of assessing the cultural impact of the Biratori Dam was skillfully utilized by the local Ainu community as a means to recover cultural practices and to rediscover the cultural significance of natural features in the local landscape, and through this to deepen and broaden Ainu identity in the local community. It concludes with a brief assessment of the possibilities and limitations of indigenous politics within the current Japanese institutional framework.
I. Administering Dam Construction in the Saru River Valley from the Nibutani to the Biratori Dam
A. The Nibutani Dam and the Nibutani Verdict
The Saru River runs through Biratori, a town with a current population of around 4,500 located about 15 km from the coastline in south central Hokkaido. The impetus for the decision to build a dam across the river in the district of Nibutani, whose population is estimated to be 70 percent Ainu, was an industrial development plan adopted by the national government in the early 1970s to build a massive petrochemical complex in the nearby coastal town of Tomakomai located southwest of Biratori. The Nibutani Dam, along with a sister dam on a tributary further upstream known as the Biratori Dam, were to supply electric power to the industrial complex. However, the plan to build the Tomakomai complex was abandoned in the wake of the 1973-74 oil crisis. The Ministry of Construction nevertheless pushed ahead with its plan to build the Nibutani Dam, using the argument that the dam was still required for flood control purposes. Construction on the dam commenced in 1986, and the dam was completed a decade later in 1996.
As was common in public works projects at the time (Aldrich 2008, Jain 2000), planning for the dam proceeded with at best pro forma input from the local population and despite substantial local opposition. It was in the face of this administrative juggernaut that two Ainu landowners, Kayano Shigeru and Kaizawa Tadashi, who had refused to accept the compensation offered by the government and whose land was subsequently expropriated, sued the Hokkaido Expropriation Committee, the administrative entity that approved the expropriation of their lands on behalf of the construction ministry, claiming that Committee’s action was illegal due to its, “failure to consider the influence of the above-described dam construction on the Ainu people and Ainu culture” (Levin 1999. p. 3). In its March 1997 verdict, the Sapporo District Court maintained that the dam had been completed and considering the public benefit it would provide in areas like irrigation and flood control, there was no reason or means to reverse this fait accompli. Nonetheless, it did accept the plaintiff’s argument that in the process leading up to the dam’s construction the government did not sufficiently take into account the impact of the dam’s construction on the area’s indigenous culture. In justifying its ruling, it put forward arguments that would ultimately reshape the way in which the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation (MLIT, into which the functions of the former Ministry of Construction were incorporated in 2001) approached the construction of the Biratori Dam, and beyond this, state policy toward the Ainu more broadly. First, the verdict specifically recognized the Ainu as an indigenous people with a culture distinct from Japan’s majority wajin. As such, the state must assess the impact of any public works project that has the potential to significantly impact Ainu cultural practice. It claimed that the Japanese state failed to do this in the case of the Nibutani Dam. The Hokkaido Development Agency, the regional branch of the Ministry of Construction that oversaw the dam’s construction, had failed to make any effort to gain the requisite knowledge it needed to conduct a proper assessment of the dam’s impact on Ainu culture, as it should have. The verdict, in fact, went on to list specific Ainu cultural sites and practices that, by the time of the verdict, had been adversely affected or inundated: the site where a cipsanke or boat-launching ceremony was held, a casi or Ainu hilltop fortifications, and a cinomisir, or sacred outcropping near a mountain peak (Levin 1999, pp. 37-38).
Given that the Ministry of Construction had attained its primary objective by keeping the dam in place, it decided not to appeal the Superior Court’s verdict. On their part, the plaintiffs Kayano and Kaizawa Kōichi also chose not to pursue further legal remedies in light of their recognition of the verdict as a huge legal advance for the Ainu.
B.The Biratori Dam
The Biratori Dam was conceived as a dam that would hold back flood waters that might otherwise exceed the capacity of the Nibutani Dam 34 km downstream. Located at the confluence of the Nukapira and Shukushubetsu Rivers, both large tributaries of the Saru, the dam is considerably larger than the Nibutani. Opposition to its construction, reassessments of the desirability and feasibility of the project, and other developments conspired to delay its construction. It was not until after the Nibutani Dam was completed that the Ministry of Construction began to actively push for the initiation of construction work on the Biratori Dam.
By that time, however, the political and policy context had changed greatly. Perhaps most fundamental here was the May 1997 revision of the River Law that altered the regulatory framework governing river projects. Whereas prior to the revision, the objective of the management of the nation’s Class I rivers was defined simply as supplying water and flood control, the revision added the additional objective of the improvement and preservation of river environments, including water quality, ecological environments and landscapes (Union of Kansai Governments n.d.). In addition, the review process for approving plans was altered to increase the number of steps required. It added the requirement that there be opportunities for input from outside experts, local residents, and local government leaders. This requirement of outside input had been absent from the previous version of the law that was applied to the Nibutani Dam project (Hayashi 2007). By increasing the number of voices that needed to be heard, the revision greatly complicated the dam approval process. In addition, it also deserves note here that in 2001 there was an extensive reorganization and consolidation of the national government’s ministries and agencies that marked the culmination of a quarter century long neoconservative push to slim down Japan’s state bureaucracy (Carlile 2013). In the reorganization, the Ministry of Construction was merged with the ministries in charge of transportation, national land development, and Hokkaido Development into the newly created Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT). This new organizational structure helped to shift public works administration away from a narrow engineering-oriented “hard” policy focus to a more inclusive, broadly configured orientation that took into account a variety of “soft” dimensions.
A second change can be seen in the alteration of the relationship between the Japanese state and the Ainu people that was embodied in the Ainu Culture Promotion Act, also passed in May 1997. As detailed in Nakamura (2018), this legislation has its roots in a push by Ainu organizations in Hokkaido to replace the assimilationist Hokkaido Former Aborigines Act of 1899 that was at the time serving as the legal framework defining the relationship between the Japanese state and the indigenous Ainu (See also Stevens 2014). The new law by contrast called on the government to “make efforts to promote measures for the nurture of those who will inherit Ainu culture, the fruitfulness of educational activities concerning Ainu Traditions, the promotion of the monitor and study of the Ainu culture, which will contribute to its promotion and other measures to promote Ainu culture, as well as providing advice and support to the local governments necessary for measures to promote Ainu culture.” (University of Minnesota Human Rights Library n.d.). MLIT was named along with the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) as one of the two ministries specifically responsible for the law’s implementation. From the standpoint of the analysis of the Biratori Dam case specifically, it is noteworthy that the new law added the promotion of Ainu culture to the ministry’s writ.
Critics of the new law rightly point out that the Ainu Culture Promotion Act focused on the promotion of Ainu culture but did not grant any sort of land-based sovereignty to the Ainu people (e.g., Stevens 2014). Nevertheless, the idea that Ainu should have access to land-based resources traditionally important to their culture came to be put forward as a tenet in the discussion of post-Promotion Act Ainu policy. The catalyst here appears to be the 1996 final report of the advisory commission that the government had set up to formulate recommendations for a new Ainu policy. It advocated what it described as the “re-creation of [a] traditional [Ainu] living space[s] (iwor)” (Utari Taisaku no Arikata ni Kansuru Yūshikisha Kondankai 1997). The term iwor refers to a hunting and plant gathering area reserved for the exclusive use by a particular Ainu kotan (village) (See, e.g., Olschleger 1999, 218-219). The description in the commission’s report indicates that it envisioned the establishment of one central iwor that would function as a national demonstration space for educating Ainu and non-Ainu about traditional cultural practices. [SB1] (Such a national demonstration site was eventually constructed in Shiraoi in the form of the current Ainu National Museum complex.) However, the concept came to take on a life of its own as Ainu communities throughout Hokkaido embraced it and declared their intention to create their own iwor. [Note that in the Japanese language there is no inherent demarcation between singular and plural nouns.] Finally, there was the Nibutani verdict itself, which, as noted, specifically identified the Ministry of Construction’s failure to consider the impact of dam construction in the Saru River Valley on Ainu culture as illegal.
The altered administrative environment required the MLIT to revisit and revise its plans for dam construction in the Saru River watershed, a process that reached fruition in a revised Saru River System River Improvement Plan completed in July 2002. In line with the new procedures, an initial outline was released by the Ministry of Construction in December 1999 that mainly addressed the technical engineering aspects of the project. Following this, a series of hearings and public meetings were held as prescribed in the revised Rivers Law. Noteworthy for our purposes is the inclusion in the new plan of a set of “initiatives to preserve, pass on, and promote Ainu culture”: 1) an archaeological survey to locate Ainu-related sites and the preservation and the display of discovered artifacts, 2) the conservation and management of the landscape adjacent to the dam with consideration given to its significance from the standpoint of Ainu culture, and 3) the support of initiatives aimed at the preservation and advancement of Ainu culture (Biratori Chō 2009, p. 49).
Following this, via a series of negotiations with local authorities in Biratori, the decision was made to subcontract to the Biratori Board of Education and the Biratori town government the task of conducting a formal assessment the dam’s likely cultural impact. This decision to conduct a formal cultural impact assessment on a major public works project was unprecedented and a complete contrast with the process that characterized the construction of the Nibutani Dam a quarter-century earlier.
II. The Ainu Cultural Environment Preservation Measures Survey
A. Cultural Preservation in Biratori
In agreeing to subcontract the cultural impact assessment, the Ministry of Construction was engaging with a community that had the capacity not only to conduct the assessment but also to make use of it as a vehicle for facilitating its agenda of Ainu cultural preservation and promotion. As discussed earlier, the town of Biratori is noted for its large Ainu population when compared to other areas of Hokkaido, with the percentage of Ainu residents in Nibutani District estimated to be as high as 70 percent. However, like all areas of Hokkaido, Biratori had experienced a decline and disappearance of Ainu cultural practices from the Meiji Period onward. By the postwar period, it was common for Ainu parents to actively discourage their children from learning about Ainu culture. With the aging of the last generation of Ainu who had been directly exposed to the old practices and the Ainu language, Ainu culture was on the verge of disappearing as a living culture by the last quarter of the 20th Century.
Amid this general trend, the Nibutani District was noteworthy for active efforts there to preserve and record Ainu culture. The seminal figure here was Kayano Shigeru (1926-2006), one of the two plaintiffs in the Nibutani suit. As described in his memoirs (Kayano 1994), after years of rejecting his Ainu heritage, he experienced an epiphany in his late 20’s that led him to tirelessly collect Ainu artifacts, learn the Ainu language, preserve cultural knowledge through recorded interviews with Ainu elders, publish books on these subjects and to engage in a variety of other endeavors aimed at preserving Ainu culture. He eventually established a museum in Nibutani in 1972 to display his burgeoning collection. Much of this collection was transferred to the newly built and city-run Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum in 1992. In the mid-1980s Kayano initiated a program to teach the Ainu language. Having established himself as a leader in the local Ainu community, he was elected as a member of the upper house of the Japanese Diet in 1994, thereby becoming a nationally known advocate for Ainu causes.
Thanks in no small part to Kayano’s efforts, by the turn of the 21st Century Nibutani had come to be recognized as—and to increasingly recognize itself as--a hub for Ainu cultural revival. As early as 1982, the idea of developing the Nibutani area as an “Ainu Culture Village” (Ainu Bunka no Sato) was being discussed. This brainstorming process picked up momentum and took a synergistic turn following the passage of the 1997 Ainu Culture Promotion Act, precipitating developmental concepts like the Ainu Culture Promotion Cluster Formation Vision (Ainu Bunka Shinkō Kurasutā Keisei Kōsō) and the Saru River Watershed Iwor Vision (Sarugawa Ryūiki Ioru Kōsō). Both of these “visions” were built on the idea that what the community needed were dedicated spaces where Ainu culture could be practiced and passed on. In the case of the former, this space was envisioned as a “clustering” of facilities around the existing Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum—i.e., a group of traditional Ainu cise (houses) that would provide a venue for the performance of oral recitations and dances, and a crafts center where Ainu woodcarving skills could be mastered. The latter proposal, echoing the broader rise of iwor as a core concept, would be a forest space where non-native species would be replaced with trees and plants traditionally used by the Ainu in the weaving of attus and other Ainu clothing items and for traditional medicine and food.
In a nutshell, all of this meant that when the proposal to subcontract the cultural impact assessment to the Biratori Town government was published, the community was primed to respond. The proposal was recognized as a challenge and an opportunity for its efforts to revive Ainu culture locally. Over the course of negotiations with the regional MLIT office, it was agreed that the Biratori branch of the Ainu Association would be directly involved, and that members of the local Ainu community would be recruited to participate in the implementation of the assessment process (Biratori Chō 2006, p. 4). A more detailed summary of the arrangement that was arrived at is as follows:
Information was derived from several qualitatively different sources. These are described in Table 1. One type of source was histories and historical documents that were used as a tool to reconstruct where Ainu resided in the past and how they utilized the landscape surrounding their villages. There was also an emphasis on identifying Ainu places names. These place names were utilized as lenses through which to ascertain the significance of a particular place (its functional utility, its symbolic or spiritual meaning). Fieldwork was conducted to determine the location and quantity of plants traditionally used as food and material for crafts. Finally, interviews were conducted with Ainu elders and area residents to shed light on past and current practices regarding hunting and the collection of forest resources, and to survey the views and opinions of residents living near the Nibutani Dam regarding how the impact of that dam had affected their lives. This information was then utilized to construct a composite, multi-dimensional picture of the cultural significance of the dam site and its vicinity, both in the past and in the present.
Table 2 contains a list of excerpts from the assessment report that highlight key findings of the survey. The report concludes:
Historically and presently, the Nukapira River Basin is inextricably linked to the Ainu people's way of life and cultural identity. This connection underscores the basin's vital role in safeguarding Ainu cultural heritage. Serving as a spiritual anchor for the Ainu, the region embodies the essence of their cultural heritage. The abundant flora and fauna provide the raw materials for their traditional practices, ensuring the continuation of their cultural legacy. The Nukapira River Basin stands as a sacred space, one that would ensure that future generations of Ainu people have access to the resources and spiritual
environment necessary to experience and perpetuate their unique culture. (Biratori Chō 2006, 12)
The report included the graphic reproduced in Figure 2, which expresses its understanding of the cultural significance of the site in terms of a holistic model in which the various dimensions of its findings are interconnected.
B. After the Assessment
It is apparent from the preceding that the three-year cultural impact assessment, which was compiled into an expansive 760-page final report with a large appendix of compiled data, interview transcripts, audio and video recordings, and other resources, was a massive exercise with which members of Biratori’s Ainu community were engaged directly, either as part of a work group or vicariously via the Cultural College’s seminars.
Further negotiations with the Hokkaido Development and Construction Bureau following the completion of the cultural assessment report produced an agreement to set up a successor oversight committee whose mission it would be 1) to engage in continued research on the impact of the dam on Ainu culture, 2) to come up with ideas for “countermeasures” to alleviate or compensate for the loss or alteration of culturally significant sites in the dam construction area, and 3) to monitor the ongoing impact of the dam’s construction. The membership of the committee was essentially the same as the earlier oversight committee. The new committee, which was given the name, Committee for Examining Measures to Preserve Culture in the Biratori Dam Area, held its first meeting in August 2006 and has continued to meet periodically ever since. A research and analysis apparatus similar to that of the original assessment was also set up, again accompanied by the hiring of members of the local Ainu community.
It was as a result of discussions in the new oversight committee that a number of “compensatory” arrangements were put forward. One was the creation of what came to be known as the Nokapira Iwor Visitor Center, a two-story MLIT-operated museum next to the dam that houses interpretive displays on Ainu culture focused on the Biratori Dam area. Center staff are recruited from local Ainu. Another example of such “compensatory” arrangements is the ministry’s building into the project alternative prayer sites on nearby dry land as substitutes for prayer spots that were inundated. Modern day “improvements” such as parking areas and paved walkways were incorporated into these plans.
The submission of the assessment report also appears to have marked an inflection point of sorts for Ainu policy initiatives in Biratori. It is arguable that the clarification of local Ainu culture and a resulting concrete articulation of what it was in Ainu culture that needed to be revived and preserved in the context of the local landscape was a factor. On the supply side, there was a concurrent increase in the willingness among the national government ministries to fund Ainu-related projects. Among the projects implemented by Biratori Town with central government grants and subsidies (with implementing agencies and dates in parentheses) were: Ainu Cultural Environment Conservation Project (MLIT, 2005); the Cultural Landscape Maintenance and Improvement Project and the town’s designation as an “important cultural landscape” (Agency for Cultural Affairs, 2007); and the 21st Century Forest for the Transmission of Ainu Cultural Traditions Project (Forestry Agency, 2013). As can be seen in the project titles, the landscape and its cultural significance were thematically central. It was also with central government assistance that a “cluster” of facilities for the passing on and promotion of Ainu culture was completed in the area adjacent to the Nibutani Ainu Cultural Museum (Biratori Ainu Bunka Shinkō Kōsha 2022). In fact, the significance of Ainu Policy initiatives has risen to the point that the town government now has a public corporation for implementing Ainu policy initiatives and a formal Ainu policy promotion plan that has been incorporated as a key pillar of the town’s general development plan.
Conclusion
In one sense, one could argue that participating in the cultural impact assessment was an ultimately futile exercise given that the Biratori Dam, like the Nibutani Dam, was ultimately built and culturally significant sites and resources that the assessment painstakingly identified ended up under water. Nevertheless, some of those involved in the assessment look back on it as a “good” or useful exercise. How can this be? In addressing this question, it is helpful to deconstruct how participation of the Biratori Dam cultural impact assessment process might have encouraged a more holistic apprehension of traditional Ainu culture on the part of members of the Biratori Ainu community. It should be emphasized that what is being posited here is not an empirical claim about local Ainu perspectives since it is not based on any sort of survey of the members of that community. Rather, what is being suggested is a hypothetical postulate that should ideally be confirmed or denied via appropriate further research involving listening to Ainu voices. First off, the focus of the assessment research was a delimited area—namely the site of the dam and its immediate vicinity. As a delimited area, it was well suited for the observation and apprehension of interactions and interconnections among different aspects and variables operating therein. It was, at the same time, to one degree or another a familiar landscape for members of the Biratori Ainu community since even members of the community who lived outside of the surveyed area were likely to have passed through the area on multiple occasions. Furthermore, there was a directly experienced, tangible dimension for those who took part in the field surveys of plants and animals, the cultivation of traditional crops, and the experiments with Ainu cooking. These tangible elements were then connected via the report’s narrative to intangible aspects of the culture associated to specific places or objects—historical significance, legends, religious significance, etc.—thereby making it possible to comprehend the cultural significance of the area in a holistic way. This holistic engagement with Ainu culture would constitute an engagement qualitatively different from the way with Ainu culture in which traditional Ainu culture is encountered by most modern-day Ainu—that is, in the form of occasional or periodic participation in or the observation rituals and perfomances, or as abstract concepts. In both instances, the experience is disembodied; it typically occurs outside of its original environmental context. And since such interconnections between tangible and intangible elements of a landscape operate in parallel ways elsewhere, this gestaltic apprehension of the Biratori Dam site could be transliterated to other locations of Ainu settlement, facilitating a deeper engagement and identification with traditional Ainu culture throughout the community more generally.
The ultimate outcome of the dam building project illustrates both the positives and the limitations of the exercise. On the one hand, the local Ainu community participated in the planning process in a manner that was inconceivable when the earlier Nibutani Dam was built. It also resulted in a number of MLIT actions that served at least symbolically as a kind of compensation for the loss of sites of cultural significance. While not necessarily conflict-free, the relationship between officials of the Muroran Branch of the MLIT’s Hokkaido Development Bureau has been transformed into one that is more consultative in character. For its part, in the years since the compilation of the cultural assessment report in 2006, the local Ainu community has been able to take advantage of a number of national government programs to obtain subsidies to cover initiatives pursued by Biratori Town’s Ainu Policy Promotion Section that, to one extent or another, reflect the holistic, landscape-centered orientation articulated in the assessment report.
As significant as these gains might be, it is also important to reflect on the fact that in Japan, all of this is occurring in a context where there is no recognized legal framework of indigenous rights over territory or resources, nor are there institutional arrangements for Ainu self-government as is the case in a number of other countries. The most prominent consequence of this can be seen in the Biratori Ainu community’s lack of autonomy in implementing Ainu-related initiatives. Instead, it has little choice but to work through the town government and, given the limited nature of local government in the Japanese system, various agencies of the Japanese state. As a result, these initiatives must inevitably remain within parameters defined by non-Ainu governance mechanisms.
This article attempts to contribute to a fuller and more nuanced understanding of Ainu policy in Japan by showing how efforts to revive indigenous identity and culture on the part of a local Ainu community interacted with concurrent changes in Japan’s administrative state in the context of the implementation of a dam construction project to produce policy outcomes at the local level. There is a substantial body of English language literature that assesses the 1997 verdict in the lawsuit over the construction of Nibutani Dam in Biratori and its legal implications with respect to the status of the Ainu within the broader national context. This article, by contrast, focuses on efforts to construct a second dam (the Biratori Dam) in the Saru River Valley watershed in order to examine how the relationship between the Biratori Ainu community and the national government changed in the years that followed the Nibutani verdict. In doing so, it outlines the seemingly paradoxical process by which the construction of the new dam facilitated a deeper engagement of local Ainu with their traditional culture and the re-inscription of cultural meaning on the landscape. Through this, it illustrates the opportunities for and limits of the promotion of indigenous rights in a context like Japan’s where the state has embraced the promotion of indigenous culture as a state function without recognizing any sort of indigenous sovereignty over land.
Keywords: Ainu, Japan, indigenous politics, Nibutani, infrastructure administration, local government, environmental impact assessment
This article attempts to construct a fuller and more nuanced understanding of indigenous policy in Japan by showing how local level efforts to revive indigenous Ainu identity and culture interacted with concurrent changes in Japan’s administrative state in the context of the implementation of a dam construction project to shape outcomes at the local level. While there is a substantial body of English language literature that assesses the 1997 verdict in the lawsuit over the construction of Nibutani Dam in Biratori and its legal implications with respect to the recognition of the indigenous character of the Ainu people (e.g., Levin 2001, Maruyama 2012), this article focuses on the effort to construct a second dam (the Biratori Dam) in the Saru River Valley watershed and examines the way in which the verdict, in the context of a reorganization of Japan’s national government bureaucracy and the law governing dam construction on Japan’s major rivers, significantly altered the character of the relationship between the Biratori Ainu community and the national government. In so doing, it outlines the seemingly paradoxical process by which the construction of the new dam facilitated a re-engagement on the part of the local Ainu community with their traditional culture, including practices that were on the verge of disappearing, and the re-inscription of cultural meaning onto the town’s landscape.
Figure 1
The Saru River Watershed and the Location of the Nibutani and Biratori Dams
Source: Suigenchi netto website https://www.dam-net.jp/dam_content/topix/02_topix_list/2308/t230801.html Accessed July 5, 2025.
The first section below contrasts the politics and administrative processes associated with the construction of the Biratori Dam with that of its predecessor. The section that follows reviews in more detail the way in which the process of assessing the cultural impact of the Biratori Dam was skillfully utilized by the local Ainu community as a means to recover cultural practices and to rediscover the cultural significance of natural features in the local landscape, and through this to deepen and broaden Ainu identity in the local community. It concludes with a brief assessment of the possibilities and limitations of indigenous politics within the current Japanese institutional framework.
I. Administering Dam Construction in the Saru River Valley from the Nibutani to the Biratori Dam
A. The Nibutani Dam and the Nibutani Verdict
The Saru River runs through Biratori, a town with a current population of around 4,500 located about 15 km from the coastline in south central Hokkaido. The impetus for the decision to build a dam across the river in the district of Nibutani, whose population is estimated to be 70 percent Ainu, was an industrial development plan adopted by the national government in the early 1970s to build a massive petrochemical complex in the nearby coastal town of Tomakomai located southwest of Biratori. The Nibutani Dam, along with a sister dam on a tributary further upstream known as the Biratori Dam, were to supply electric power to the industrial complex. However, the plan to build the Tomakomai complex was abandoned in the wake of the 1973-74 oil crisis. The Ministry of Construction nevertheless pushed ahead with its plan to build the Nibutani Dam, using the argument that the dam was still required for flood control purposes. Construction on the dam commenced in 1986, and the dam was completed a decade later in 1996.
As was common in public works projects at the time (Aldrich 2008, Jain 2000), planning for the dam proceeded with at best pro forma input from the local population and despite substantial local opposition. It was in the face of this administrative juggernaut that two Ainu landowners, Kayano Shigeru and Kaizawa Tadashi, who had refused to accept the compensation offered by the government and whose land was subsequently expropriated, sued the Hokkaido Expropriation Committee, the administrative entity that approved the expropriation of their lands on behalf of the construction ministry, claiming that Committee’s action was illegal due to its, “failure to consider the influence of the above-described dam construction on the Ainu people and Ainu culture” (Levin 1999. p. 3). In its March 1997 verdict, the Sapporo District Court maintained that the dam had been completed and considering the public benefit it would provide in areas like irrigation and flood control, there was no reason or means to reverse this fait accompli. Nonetheless, it did accept the plaintiff’s argument that in the process leading up to the dam’s construction the government did not sufficiently take into account the impact of the dam’s construction on the area’s indigenous culture. In justifying its ruling, it put forward arguments that would ultimately reshape the way in which the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation (MLIT, into which the functions of the former Ministry of Construction were incorporated in 2001) approached the construction of the Biratori Dam, and beyond this, state policy toward the Ainu more broadly. First, the verdict specifically recognized the Ainu as an indigenous people with a culture distinct from Japan’s majority wajin. As such, the state must assess the impact of any public works project that has the potential to significantly impact Ainu cultural practice. It claimed that the Japanese state failed to do this in the case of the Nibutani Dam. The Hokkaido Development Agency, the regional branch of the Ministry of Construction that oversaw the dam’s construction, had failed to make any effort to gain the requisite knowledge it needed to conduct a proper assessment of the dam’s impact on Ainu culture, as it should have. The verdict, in fact, went on to list specific Ainu cultural sites and practices that, by the time of the verdict, had been adversely affected or inundated: the site where a cipsanke or boat-launching ceremony was held, a casi or Ainu hilltop fortifications, and a cinomisir, or sacred outcropping near a mountain peak (Levin 1999, pp. 37-38).
Given that the Ministry of Construction had attained its primary objective by keeping the dam in place, it decided not to appeal the Superior Court’s verdict. On their part, the plaintiffs Kayano and Kaizawa Kōichi also chose not to pursue further legal remedies in light of their recognition of the verdict as a huge legal advance for the Ainu.
B.The Biratori Dam
The Biratori Dam was conceived as a dam that would hold back flood waters that might otherwise exceed the capacity of the Nibutani Dam 34 km downstream. Located at the confluence of the Nukapira and Shukushubetsu Rivers, both large tributaries of the Saru, the dam is considerably larger than the Nibutani. Opposition to its construction, reassessments of the desirability and feasibility of the project, and other developments conspired to delay its construction. It was not until after the Nibutani Dam was completed that the Ministry of Construction began to actively push for the initiation of construction work on the Biratori Dam.
By that time, however, the political and policy context had changed greatly. Perhaps most fundamental here was the May 1997 revision of the River Law that altered the regulatory framework governing river projects. Whereas prior to the revision, the objective of the management of the nation’s Class I rivers was defined simply as supplying water and flood control, the revision added the additional objective of the improvement and preservation of river environments, including water quality, ecological environments and landscapes (Union of Kansai Governments n.d.). In addition, the review process for approving plans was altered to increase the number of steps required. It added the requirement that there be opportunities for input from outside experts, local residents, and local government leaders. This requirement of outside input had been absent from the previous version of the law that was applied to the Nibutani Dam project (Hayashi 2007). By increasing the number of voices that needed to be heard, the revision greatly complicated the dam approval process. In addition, it also deserves note here that in 2001 there was an extensive reorganization and consolidation of the national government’s ministries and agencies that marked the culmination of a quarter century long neoconservative push to slim down Japan’s state bureaucracy (Carlile 2013). In the reorganization, the Ministry of Construction was merged with the ministries in charge of transportation, national land development, and Hokkaido Development into the newly created Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT). This new organizational structure helped to shift public works administration away from a narrow engineering-oriented “hard” policy focus to a more inclusive, broadly configured orientation that took into account a variety of “soft” dimensions.
A second change can be seen in the alteration of the relationship between the Japanese state and the Ainu people that was embodied in the Ainu Culture Promotion Act, also passed in May 1997. As detailed in Nakamura (2018), this legislation has its roots in a push by Ainu organizations in Hokkaido to replace the assimilationist Hokkaido Former Aborigines Act of 1899 that was at the time serving as the legal framework defining the relationship between the Japanese state and the indigenous Ainu (See also Stevens 2014). The new law by contrast called on the government to “make efforts to promote measures for the nurture of those who will inherit Ainu culture, the fruitfulness of educational activities concerning Ainu Traditions, the promotion of the monitor and study of the Ainu culture, which will contribute to its promotion and other measures to promote Ainu culture, as well as providing advice and support to the local governments necessary for measures to promote Ainu culture.” (University of Minnesota Human Rights Library n.d.). MLIT was named along with the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) as one of the two ministries specifically responsible for the law’s implementation. From the standpoint of the analysis of the Biratori Dam case specifically, it is noteworthy that the new law added the promotion of Ainu culture to the ministry’s writ.
Critics of the new law rightly point out that the Ainu Culture Promotion Act focused on the promotion of Ainu culture but did not grant any sort of land-based sovereignty to the Ainu people (e.g., Stevens 2014). Nevertheless, the idea that Ainu should have access to land-based resources traditionally important to their culture came to be put forward as a tenet in the discussion of post-Promotion Act Ainu policy. The catalyst here appears to be the 1996 final report of the advisory commission that the government had set up to formulate recommendations for a new Ainu policy. It advocated what it described as the “re-creation of [a] traditional [Ainu] living space[s] (iwor)” (Utari Taisaku no Arikata ni Kansuru Yūshikisha Kondankai 1997). The term iwor refers to a hunting and plant gathering area reserved for the exclusive use by a particular Ainu kotan (village) (See, e.g., Olschleger 1999, 218-219). The description in the commission’s report indicates that it envisioned the establishment of one central iwor that would function as a national demonstration space for educating Ainu and non-Ainu about traditional cultural practices. [SB1] (Such a national demonstration site was eventually constructed in Shiraoi in the form of the current Ainu National Museum complex.) However, the concept came to take on a life of its own as Ainu communities throughout Hokkaido embraced it and declared their intention to create their own iwor. [Note that in the Japanese language there is no inherent demarcation between singular and plural nouns.] Finally, there was the Nibutani verdict itself, which, as noted, specifically identified the Ministry of Construction’s failure to consider the impact of dam construction in the Saru River Valley on Ainu culture as illegal.
The altered administrative environment required the MLIT to revisit and revise its plans for dam construction in the Saru River watershed, a process that reached fruition in a revised Saru River System River Improvement Plan completed in July 2002. In line with the new procedures, an initial outline was released by the Ministry of Construction in December 1999 that mainly addressed the technical engineering aspects of the project. Following this, a series of hearings and public meetings were held as prescribed in the revised Rivers Law. Noteworthy for our purposes is the inclusion in the new plan of a set of “initiatives to preserve, pass on, and promote Ainu culture”: 1) an archaeological survey to locate Ainu-related sites and the preservation and the display of discovered artifacts, 2) the conservation and management of the landscape adjacent to the dam with consideration given to its significance from the standpoint of Ainu culture, and 3) the support of initiatives aimed at the preservation and advancement of Ainu culture (Biratori Chō 2009, p. 49).
Following this, via a series of negotiations with local authorities in Biratori, the decision was made to subcontract to the Biratori Board of Education and the Biratori town government the task of conducting a formal assessment the dam’s likely cultural impact. This decision to conduct a formal cultural impact assessment on a major public works project was unprecedented and a complete contrast with the process that characterized the construction of the Nibutani Dam a quarter-century earlier.
II. The Ainu Cultural Environment Preservation Measures Survey
A. Cultural Preservation in Biratori
In agreeing to subcontract the cultural impact assessment, the Ministry of Construction was engaging with a community that had the capacity not only to conduct the assessment but also to make use of it as a vehicle for facilitating its agenda of Ainu cultural preservation and promotion. As discussed earlier, the town of Biratori is noted for its large Ainu population when compared to other areas of Hokkaido, with the percentage of Ainu residents in Nibutani District estimated to be as high as 70 percent. However, like all areas of Hokkaido, Biratori had experienced a decline and disappearance of Ainu cultural practices from the Meiji Period onward. By the postwar period, it was common for Ainu parents to actively discourage their children from learning about Ainu culture. With the aging of the last generation of Ainu who had been directly exposed to the old practices and the Ainu language, Ainu culture was on the verge of disappearing as a living culture by the last quarter of the 20th Century.
Amid this general trend, the Nibutani District was noteworthy for active efforts there to preserve and record Ainu culture. The seminal figure here was Kayano Shigeru (1926-2006), one of the two plaintiffs in the Nibutani suit. As described in his memoirs (Kayano 1994), after years of rejecting his Ainu heritage, he experienced an epiphany in his late 20’s that led him to tirelessly collect Ainu artifacts, learn the Ainu language, preserve cultural knowledge through recorded interviews with Ainu elders, publish books on these subjects and to engage in a variety of other endeavors aimed at preserving Ainu culture. He eventually established a museum in Nibutani in 1972 to display his burgeoning collection. Much of this collection was transferred to the newly built and city-run Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum in 1992. In the mid-1980s Kayano initiated a program to teach the Ainu language. Having established himself as a leader in the local Ainu community, he was elected as a member of the upper house of the Japanese Diet in 1994, thereby becoming a nationally known advocate for Ainu causes.
Thanks in no small part to Kayano’s efforts, by the turn of the 21st Century Nibutani had come to be recognized as—and to increasingly recognize itself as--a hub for Ainu cultural revival. As early as 1982, the idea of developing the Nibutani area as an “Ainu Culture Village” (Ainu Bunka no Sato) was being discussed. This brainstorming process picked up momentum and took a synergistic turn following the passage of the 1997 Ainu Culture Promotion Act, precipitating developmental concepts like the Ainu Culture Promotion Cluster Formation Vision (Ainu Bunka Shinkō Kurasutā Keisei Kōsō) and the Saru River Watershed Iwor Vision (Sarugawa Ryūiki Ioru Kōsō). Both of these “visions” were built on the idea that what the community needed were dedicated spaces where Ainu culture could be practiced and passed on. In the case of the former, this space was envisioned as a “clustering” of facilities around the existing Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum—i.e., a group of traditional Ainu cise (houses) that would provide a venue for the performance of oral recitations and dances, and a crafts center where Ainu woodcarving skills could be mastered. The latter proposal, echoing the broader rise of iwor as a core concept, would be a forest space where non-native species would be replaced with trees and plants traditionally used by the Ainu in the weaving of attus and other Ainu clothing items and for traditional medicine and food.
In a nutshell, all of this meant that when the proposal to subcontract the cultural impact assessment to the Biratori Town government was published, the community was primed to respond. The proposal was recognized as a challenge and an opportunity for its efforts to revive Ainu culture locally. Over the course of negotiations with the regional MLIT office, it was agreed that the Biratori branch of the Ainu Association would be directly involved, and that members of the local Ainu community would be recruited to participate in the implementation of the assessment process (Biratori Chō 2006, p. 4). A more detailed summary of the arrangement that was arrived at is as follows:
- It would be implemented as a three-year project running from April 2003 to March 2006.
- It would be overseen by a steering committee that would meet periodically and whose membership consisted of Biratori Town government officials, members of the Ainu Association, and academic specialists in anthropology, Indigenous rights, and cultural heritage.
- Day-to-day operations would be conducted by paid staff hired for that purpose, the majority of whom would be local Ainu.
- Administratively, the project was organized into three function-specific “working teams” attached to the steering committee, and seven “fieldwork groups” attached to the administrative secretariat. These units and their respective functions are described in Table 1.
- A series of seminars open to the general public would be held in the name of “Sisirmka [Saru River in Ainu] Iwor Cultural College” that would provide periodic reports on the ongoing work and resulting findings of the assessment teams. Ultimately, sixteen such seminars were held over the course of the three-year project (Biratori Chō 2006, 4-5, 9-10).
Information was derived from several qualitatively different sources. These are described in Table 1. One type of source was histories and historical documents that were used as a tool to reconstruct where Ainu resided in the past and how they utilized the landscape surrounding their villages. There was also an emphasis on identifying Ainu places names. These place names were utilized as lenses through which to ascertain the significance of a particular place (its functional utility, its symbolic or spiritual meaning). Fieldwork was conducted to determine the location and quantity of plants traditionally used as food and material for crafts. Finally, interviews were conducted with Ainu elders and area residents to shed light on past and current practices regarding hunting and the collection of forest resources, and to survey the views and opinions of residents living near the Nibutani Dam regarding how the impact of that dam had affected their lives. This information was then utilized to construct a composite, multi-dimensional picture of the cultural significance of the dam site and its vicinity, both in the past and in the present.
Table 2 contains a list of excerpts from the assessment report that highlight key findings of the survey. The report concludes:
Historically and presently, the Nukapira River Basin is inextricably linked to the Ainu people's way of life and cultural identity. This connection underscores the basin's vital role in safeguarding Ainu cultural heritage. Serving as a spiritual anchor for the Ainu, the region embodies the essence of their cultural heritage. The abundant flora and fauna provide the raw materials for their traditional practices, ensuring the continuation of their cultural legacy. The Nukapira River Basin stands as a sacred space, one that would ensure that future generations of Ainu people have access to the resources and spiritual
environment necessary to experience and perpetuate their unique culture. (Biratori Chō 2006, 12)
The report included the graphic reproduced in Figure 2, which expresses its understanding of the cultural significance of the site in terms of a holistic model in which the various dimensions of its findings are interconnected.
B. After the Assessment
It is apparent from the preceding that the three-year cultural impact assessment, which was compiled into an expansive 760-page final report with a large appendix of compiled data, interview transcripts, audio and video recordings, and other resources, was a massive exercise with which members of Biratori’s Ainu community were engaged directly, either as part of a work group or vicariously via the Cultural College’s seminars.
Further negotiations with the Hokkaido Development and Construction Bureau following the completion of the cultural assessment report produced an agreement to set up a successor oversight committee whose mission it would be 1) to engage in continued research on the impact of the dam on Ainu culture, 2) to come up with ideas for “countermeasures” to alleviate or compensate for the loss or alteration of culturally significant sites in the dam construction area, and 3) to monitor the ongoing impact of the dam’s construction. The membership of the committee was essentially the same as the earlier oversight committee. The new committee, which was given the name, Committee for Examining Measures to Preserve Culture in the Biratori Dam Area, held its first meeting in August 2006 and has continued to meet periodically ever since. A research and analysis apparatus similar to that of the original assessment was also set up, again accompanied by the hiring of members of the local Ainu community.
It was as a result of discussions in the new oversight committee that a number of “compensatory” arrangements were put forward. One was the creation of what came to be known as the Nokapira Iwor Visitor Center, a two-story MLIT-operated museum next to the dam that houses interpretive displays on Ainu culture focused on the Biratori Dam area. Center staff are recruited from local Ainu. Another example of such “compensatory” arrangements is the ministry’s building into the project alternative prayer sites on nearby dry land as substitutes for prayer spots that were inundated. Modern day “improvements” such as parking areas and paved walkways were incorporated into these plans.
The submission of the assessment report also appears to have marked an inflection point of sorts for Ainu policy initiatives in Biratori. It is arguable that the clarification of local Ainu culture and a resulting concrete articulation of what it was in Ainu culture that needed to be revived and preserved in the context of the local landscape was a factor. On the supply side, there was a concurrent increase in the willingness among the national government ministries to fund Ainu-related projects. Among the projects implemented by Biratori Town with central government grants and subsidies (with implementing agencies and dates in parentheses) were: Ainu Cultural Environment Conservation Project (MLIT, 2005); the Cultural Landscape Maintenance and Improvement Project and the town’s designation as an “important cultural landscape” (Agency for Cultural Affairs, 2007); and the 21st Century Forest for the Transmission of Ainu Cultural Traditions Project (Forestry Agency, 2013). As can be seen in the project titles, the landscape and its cultural significance were thematically central. It was also with central government assistance that a “cluster” of facilities for the passing on and promotion of Ainu culture was completed in the area adjacent to the Nibutani Ainu Cultural Museum (Biratori Ainu Bunka Shinkō Kōsha 2022). In fact, the significance of Ainu Policy initiatives has risen to the point that the town government now has a public corporation for implementing Ainu policy initiatives and a formal Ainu policy promotion plan that has been incorporated as a key pillar of the town’s general development plan.
Conclusion
In one sense, one could argue that participating in the cultural impact assessment was an ultimately futile exercise given that the Biratori Dam, like the Nibutani Dam, was ultimately built and culturally significant sites and resources that the assessment painstakingly identified ended up under water. Nevertheless, some of those involved in the assessment look back on it as a “good” or useful exercise. How can this be? In addressing this question, it is helpful to deconstruct how participation of the Biratori Dam cultural impact assessment process might have encouraged a more holistic apprehension of traditional Ainu culture on the part of members of the Biratori Ainu community. It should be emphasized that what is being posited here is not an empirical claim about local Ainu perspectives since it is not based on any sort of survey of the members of that community. Rather, what is being suggested is a hypothetical postulate that should ideally be confirmed or denied via appropriate further research involving listening to Ainu voices. First off, the focus of the assessment research was a delimited area—namely the site of the dam and its immediate vicinity. As a delimited area, it was well suited for the observation and apprehension of interactions and interconnections among different aspects and variables operating therein. It was, at the same time, to one degree or another a familiar landscape for members of the Biratori Ainu community since even members of the community who lived outside of the surveyed area were likely to have passed through the area on multiple occasions. Furthermore, there was a directly experienced, tangible dimension for those who took part in the field surveys of plants and animals, the cultivation of traditional crops, and the experiments with Ainu cooking. These tangible elements were then connected via the report’s narrative to intangible aspects of the culture associated to specific places or objects—historical significance, legends, religious significance, etc.—thereby making it possible to comprehend the cultural significance of the area in a holistic way. This holistic engagement with Ainu culture would constitute an engagement qualitatively different from the way with Ainu culture in which traditional Ainu culture is encountered by most modern-day Ainu—that is, in the form of occasional or periodic participation in or the observation rituals and perfomances, or as abstract concepts. In both instances, the experience is disembodied; it typically occurs outside of its original environmental context. And since such interconnections between tangible and intangible elements of a landscape operate in parallel ways elsewhere, this gestaltic apprehension of the Biratori Dam site could be transliterated to other locations of Ainu settlement, facilitating a deeper engagement and identification with traditional Ainu culture throughout the community more generally.
The ultimate outcome of the dam building project illustrates both the positives and the limitations of the exercise. On the one hand, the local Ainu community participated in the planning process in a manner that was inconceivable when the earlier Nibutani Dam was built. It also resulted in a number of MLIT actions that served at least symbolically as a kind of compensation for the loss of sites of cultural significance. While not necessarily conflict-free, the relationship between officials of the Muroran Branch of the MLIT’s Hokkaido Development Bureau has been transformed into one that is more consultative in character. For its part, in the years since the compilation of the cultural assessment report in 2006, the local Ainu community has been able to take advantage of a number of national government programs to obtain subsidies to cover initiatives pursued by Biratori Town’s Ainu Policy Promotion Section that, to one extent or another, reflect the holistic, landscape-centered orientation articulated in the assessment report.
As significant as these gains might be, it is also important to reflect on the fact that in Japan, all of this is occurring in a context where there is no recognized legal framework of indigenous rights over territory or resources, nor are there institutional arrangements for Ainu self-government as is the case in a number of other countries. The most prominent consequence of this can be seen in the Biratori Ainu community’s lack of autonomy in implementing Ainu-related initiatives. Instead, it has little choice but to work through the town government and, given the limited nature of local government in the Japanese system, various agencies of the Japanese state. As a result, these initiatives must inevitably remain within parameters defined by non-Ainu governance mechanisms.
Figure 1
The Saru River Watershed and the Location of the Nibutani and Biratori Dams
Source: Suigenchi netto website https://www.dam-net.jp/dam_content/topix/02_topix_list/2308/t230801.html Accessed July 5, 2025.
The Saru River Watershed and the Location of the Nibutani and Biratori Dams
Source: Suigenchi netto website https://www.dam-net.jp/dam_content/topix/02_topix_list/2308/t230801.html Accessed July 5, 2025.
