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The Mainichi
13-07-2025
- Science
- The Mainichi
Why are overseas indigenous remains kept at Japanese universities?
The Mainichi Shimbun answers some common questions readers may have about the remains of overseas indigenous people kept by Japanese institutions like universities. Question: Institutions in Japan have recently returned the remains of overseas indigenous peoples, right? Answer: Yes, in June, the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University and Tokyo's National Museum of Nature and Science returned a total of 10 sets of remains of Australian indigenous peoples, which they had held for about a century, to the indigenous group. The University of Tokyo also returned 10 sets of remains to a native Hawaiian group in November last year. Q: Why were overseas indigenous remains held at Japanese universities? A: Since the Meiji era (1868-1912), remains were sent to Japan through Japanese doctors, military personnel and migrants who went overseas. These remains were stored at universities and other institutions mainly under the pretext of anthropological research. In a letter to Yoshikiyo Koganei, an anthropologist and professor at Tokyo Imperial University Medical School (now the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Medicine), an individual who sent remains wrote, "It's not easy to work under the cover of night," suggesting that many bones were taken without the consent of indigenous peoples. Q: Why do they study bones in the first place? A: Anthropology, which began in Europe in the latter half of the 19th century, aimed to explore differences among races and ethnicities within humankind. For instance, researchers attempted to determine intellectual superiority by examining differences in the size and shape of skulls. Q: Why have they decided to return the remains now? A: Returning remains is a global trend as part of efforts to restore the rights of indigenous peoples, who have been persecuted since the colonial era. In Australia, rules were established in the 1980s to return remains held by domestic museums to indigenous peoples. The recent return was prompted by an international conference in Kyoto in 2016, which revealed that Australian indigenous remains were stored at the University of Tokyo, leading the Australian government to file a request with its Japanese counterpart for their return. Japanese universities also hold remains collected from other countries, as well as those of Japan's indigenous Ainu and Ryukyu peoples. There is potential for the movement to return remains to expand further.
DW
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- DW
Japan's nuclear revival and the fight over indigenous land – DW – 07/11/2025
Nuclear power is making a comeback in Japan. But in Hokkaido, indigenous Ainu communities are being sidelined as their ancestral land is eyed for nuclear waste storage. The Ainu musician Oki Kano leads a quiet resistance - raising questions about justice and who gets a say in the race to decarbonize. Transcript: In a dimly lit club in Kyoto, Japan, the sound of the Tonkori — a five-stringed instrument once silenced by cultural assimilation — cuts through the air. On stage is Oki Kano, a 68-year-old musician who's spent decades reviving the music and spirit of Japan's indigenous Ainu people. Oki Kano: "It's like salmon knows where they were born, always back to the same river. So I'm, I was one of the salmon. That's why I returned to my Ainu background.." Oki's music blends rock, dub, and traditional Ainu folk — a sound that's both a celebration and a protest. He doesn't call himself an activist, but his work speaks volumes about identity, survival, and resistance. Oki Kano: "My father was Aino, you know. And my parents divorced when I was like four years old. And my mother hid my Aino background, you know. Then I found out that I was in like a 20 something-" Stories like Oki's aren't unique. For generations, Ainu families were forced to hide who they were. After Japan annexed their homeland - the northern island of Hokkaido - in the late 19th century, the government banned traditional hunting, fishing, and language. Many Ainu were pushed into poverty and silence. Today, the exact number of Ainu in Japan is hard to pin down. A 2017 government survey identified around 13,000 in Hokkaido, but advocacy groups believe the true figure could be ten times higher. Oki Kano: "The time of my grandfather, they decided not telling Ainu language to the kids, my father's generation, you know. Four survived, you know, so Ainu needed to acting like a ordinary Japanese. That was the best way to survive in Japan." Today, Oki is one of the most well-known Ainu musicians in the world. He's helped bring Ainu culture back into public view - even as the legacy of colonization continues to cast a long shadow. And now, he's worried about a new and toxic threat to his homeland. Oki Kano: "Nuclear is totally against the Aino philosophy.' …the threat of his homeland being used as permanent storage site for nuclear waste. This week's episode of Living Planet brings you a story about energy, identity, and the cost of progress. It's about who gets to decide what happens to the land - and who gets left out of that decision. I'm Neil King. Music March 2011. A massive earthquake strikes off Japan's northeastern coast. The tsunami that follows devastates entire towns and triggers one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. At the Fukushima nuclear plant the tsunami wrecks the power supply and cooling systems. Three reactors melt down. Radiation leaks into the air, the soil, the sea. Over 24,000 people are forced to flee their homes. Following the disaster, all of Japan's nuclear reactors are shut down. And the shock ripples far beyond Japan. Germany and Switzerland announce nuclear phaseouts. Anti-nuclear sentiment surges across the globe. But more than a decade later, the tide is turning again. Japan, like many countries, is under pressure to decarbonize and fast. With few natural resources of its own and the specter of energy insecurity and inflation the Japanese public appears to be warming to nuclear energy again. Since 2015 it has gradually ramped up nuclear power to about 8.5% and the Japanese government is planning to get 20% of its electricity from nuclear by 2040. But there's still a problem no one has solved: what to do with the waste? Jacopo Buongiorno: The amount of high-level waste generated by nuclear reactors is exceptionally small. That's nuclear scientist Jacopo Buongiorno from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT. Jacopo Buongiorno: And that's because the energy density of uranium is exceptionally high. Just to give you a comparison, compare to, say, burning coal or natural gas, kilogram for a kilogram. If you are using uranium as your fuel, you get about 10, 20 million times, not just 10 to 20, but 10 to 20 million times more energy out of the same material… If an individual like myself or you would use only nuclear energy for all their energy needs throughout the lifetime, so not today, not a month, not a year, but our lifetime, say 80 years, then the amount of nuclear waste generated would fit within a coffee cup. That would be it. So that's the amount of energy, how energy dense that fuel is. And therefore, the amount of waste that you generate is exceedingly low. The bad news is that it's highly radioactive and it has to be sort of handled with care And that waste he's referring to - which essentially is the spent fuel rods - stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years. And it has to be stored somewhere, ideally underground. In 2020, two tiny fishing villages in Hokkaido — Suttsu and Kamoenai - volunteered to be studied as potential sites for Japan's first permanent nuclear waste repository. In exchange, they received millions in government subsidies. But there's a catch: these villages sit on traditional Ainu land. But the Ainu – who number about 25,000 in Japan were never asked. Ann-Elise Lewallen: 'This is Ainu land. And so technically speaking, running like the whole idea of having nuclear power anywhere in Japan is always an Ainu problem. Ann-Elise Lewallen is an American scholar who's spent years researching Ainu rights. She describes what's happening to the Ainu as 'energy colonialism' – that's when Indigenous lands are used for energy projects without consent. Ann-Elise Lewallen: "With energy colonialism, it's a particular kind of settler colonialism that is targeting some kind of resource. For example, it often involves both removing uranium or some other sort of raw material that will be made into nuclear fuel on the one end of the nuclear fuel cycle and then the other end is to sort of hollow out the land and use that land as a permanent wasting ground. In 2011, just months after Fukushima, Oki Kano stood before the United Nations in Geneva. He warned that nuclear energy was not just a safety issue - it was a justice issue. Ann-Elise Lewallen: 'And he was the first person that I recall having asked the question and really trying to sort of link this question of sort of who is really bearing the burden of nuclear waste' The answer, increasingly, seems to be Indigenous communities - not just in Japan, but around the world. Suttsu and Kamoenai - two quiet fishing villages on the western coast of Hokkaido. Combined, they're home to just over 3,600 people. Nearly half are over the age of 60. These towns have seen better days. The fishing industry is shrinking. Young people are moving away. So when the Japanese government offered billions of yen in subsidies to communities willing to be studied as potential nuclear waste sites - they said yes. The money has helped repair piers, build nursing homes, and fund local infrastructure. For some, it's a lifeline. For others, it's a gamble with the future. The Ainu weren't part of that decision. Not when the villages volunteered. Not when the studies began. Not even when the government's own agency - NUMO, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization - came to town. Since then NUMO have said they'd be happy to address any concerns. But critics say that's too little, too late. Ann-Elise Lewallen: "You can't sort of say, on the one hand, we support the UN DRP and we pass this new law, but Ainu have no right to speak about nuclear waste." Japan signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples or UNDRIP in 2007. It explicitly states that hazardous materials should not be stored or disposed of on the lands or territories of Indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent. Even if the declaration is not legally binding it is a moral commitment. But in Hokkaido, that principle appears to have been ignored. The decision to move forward now rests with the village mayors — and the governor of Hokkaido. The governor has voiced opposition, citing a 2000 ordinance that bans nuclear waste from the island. But under current law, the first phase of study can proceed without his approval. Deep beneath the surface of Hokkaido, Japan has been testing what it would take to store nuclear waste underground - permanently. The site is called Horonobe. It's an experimental facility meant to simulate what a real repository might look like. The facility includes shafts and tunnels that go down to 350 m, allowing research into hydrogeology and rock stability as well as radionuclide behavior in sedimentary formations But there's a problem: water. Shaun Burnie: "I think it was around 300 cubic meters of water per day were coming into their facility. That's underground water.' Shaun Burnie is a nuclear specialist with Greenpeace East Asia. He's worked in Japan and South Korea for over a decade. And he says water is a dealbreaker. Shaun Burnie: 'Water is a transport mechanism for radiological materials. So if you can't isolate your facility from water, I mean, the containers that the waste is put into, of course, that will corrode over potentially hundreds of years, certainly thousands of years. There will be no containment as such. And therefore the radionuclides will migrate through the water system, water course. So Hokkaido is completely unsuitable as a geological repository.' Japan is one of the most seismically active countries in the world. Earthquakes, groundwater, and long-term corrosion - these are not small risks when you're talking about waste that stays radioactive for tens of thousands of years. But not everyone agrees. At MIT, nuclear scientist Jacopo Buongiorno sees things differently. Jacopo Buongiorno: 'The radioactivity contained within these fuel rods is not particularly mobile. It doesn't really want to go anywhere…because it's 99% it's actually in solid form…so it's also very easy to shield.' He says the waste is stored in solid ceramic pellets, encased in steel and concrete. First, it cools in water pools for several years. Then it's sealed in dry canisters that can last a century or more. Jacopo Buongiorno: 'In fact, in all the environmental impact assessments, our assessment studies done for these repositories, you have to assume that at one point your containers are completely rusted away. So at one point you assume that there is complete failure. And so now you've got these radionuclides. They are maybe a couple of hundred meters underground. And then the question becomes, how do they diffuse underground? And so the bulk of the analysis and assessment that go into the licensing of the repository is exactly how are the radionuclides, once they are outside these canisters or these containers, how are they going to diffuse underground? And that's why the selection of the proper geology is very important.' The science, he says, is sound - if the geology is right. But that's exactly what critics like Burnie are questioning in Hokkaido. Shaun Burnie: 'The materials in there will be hazardous for millions and millions of years. It removes the problem from this generation, from this government, these scientists, these companies, for someone in the future to deal with the problem when it starts affecting them.' And that raises a deeper question: even if we can store nuclear waste safely, should we? Especially if the people most affected - like the Ainu - never agreed to it? Japan's nuclear future is still uncertain. The government wants nuclear to make up 20% of the country's energy mix by 2040. But experts disagree on whether that's realistic - or even wise. Shaun Burnie: 'If they get the best case scenario…they could possibly reach around 15% of national electricity from nuclear energy by 2030. And that assumes that there's not problems with the reactors... and they still have huge problems seismic problems design problems security problems.' Burnie believes Japan is clinging to a fading dream. He says nuclear energy diverts resources from renewables - and risks locking the country into fossil fuels when nuclear falls short. Shaun Burnie: 'The biggest problem I see with maintaining nuclear is that they will fail on the nuclear target…that's where there's a very close relationship between the nuclear industry and the fossil fuel industry um so the fossil plants will basically be retained uh of course. But when the gap becomes clear, it will be filled most likely by fossil fuel plants. So Japan will undermine its own decarbonization progress by maintaining a nuclear share. They need to signal that they can go fully 100% renewables, which they can.' But MIT's Jacopo Buongiorno sees nuclear as essential - not just for Japan, but for the world. Jacopo Buongiorno: 'If you're trying to decarbonize your grid exclusively with intermittent renewables such as solar and wind, the average cost, the aggregate cost of your grid goes up dramatically. Yes, it is true that a solar panel or a wind turbine have become cheaper. But if you don't have a reliable base load source like nuclear, and you're trying to meet your electricity demand 24-7, 365 days per year, no matter what the weather is, no matter what the load is, et cetera, then in order to meet that demand, you need to overbuild and overgrow the amount of solar and wind and, importantly, energy storage batteries that goes with it to meet that demand. And the aggregate cost of all that equipment far exceeds the cost of having also a nuclear baseload in the mix. It's really the combination of nuclear and renewables that gives you the least cost decarbonized system.' Two visions. One sees nuclear as a bridge to a cleaner future. The other sees it as a costly detour - one that risks repeating old mistakes. But all the experts interviewed for this episode agreed on one thing: communication matters. Jacopo Buongiorno: You can't simply say it's safe, therefore accept it. You got to engage them from the beginning, try to explain what the risks are, what the benefits are, what the value of nuclear is. Ann-Elise Lewallen: 'All Ainu need to be given an opportunity to participate in whatever way they feel is appropriate, which means there's many, many different groups and they need to be approached in good faith' Back in Kyoto, Oki Kano finishes his set. The crowd cheers. But his message lingers - a quiet reminder that this isn't just about energy policy. It's about respect. It's about balance. Oki Kano: 'We need to make some harmony in between people and nature… We get together and face up to the problem and do some activity …I think this is not only the Ainu issue, you know. Everybody's issue.'
The Mainichi
05-07-2025
- Science
- The Mainichi
Editorial: Japan urged to return indigenous remains to restore dignity
The University of Tokyo and other institutions have returned the remains of overseas indigenous people that had been held for research purposes for about a century. Some of them were collected through inappropriate methods, and it must be said that the response has been too slow. The remains of 10 indigenous people that were returned to Australia had been collected by institutions including the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University. In November 2024, the former also returned the remains of 10 people to indigenous Hawaiians. The study of indigenous remains expanded as anthropology, which explores the origins of races and ethnicities, became popular in Europe and the United States in the 19th century. Anthropology at the time classified humans based on physical characteristics, and was used to justify colonial rule on the basis of racial superiority. Remains and burial items for research were collected through methods such as robbing graves. In the 1970s, movements seeking restoration of indigenous rights gained momentum. Reflecting on the past, laws concerning remains were established in the United States and Australia from the 1980s onward, and the return of indigenous remains became a global trend. However, Japan's response lagged. It was revealed in 2016 that remains of Japan's indigenous Ainu people and indigenous Australians had been exchanged between researchers in both countries. Subsequently, the Australian government sought to achieve the mutual return of the remains, but the University of Tokyo's response was reportedly sluggish, as there was an opinion they could possibly be retained for research purposes. The Japanese government was also reluctant to demand a move, stating that "the handling of remains should be left to the autonomous judgment of universities." It was not until 2023, when the Australian government formally requested their return, that the Japanese government ordered universities and museums nationwide to investigate the storage status of Australian indigenous remains. The right of indigenous peoples to reclaim human remains was recognized in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2007. Japan supported this declaration and should be responsible for responding sincerely to return requests. Other remains of indigenous peoples from countries such as Indonesia are still held by Japanese universities and museums. According to sources including past diplomatic documents, there have been cases where the Japanese government has been involved in the transportation of remains from overseas. The return of remains is a step toward restoring the dignity of indigenous peoples. Universities should independently investigate the status of remains in their custody. The government should also support these surveys and ascertain the overall situation.
BBC News
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Can AI speak the language Japan tried to kill?
More than a century after colonisation, the Ainu language almost vanished. Now machines are listening to hours of old recordings and learning to give it a new voice. The cassette player would catch the reels, pulling magnetic tape through its mechanism. At first, just a slight hiss of static – and then the voice of her ancestors would flood the room. Maya Sekine's bedtime stories were special. Chosen by her father, these colourful tales came to her through old tapes featuring folk tales told in Ainu, the language spoken by her family's Indigenous forebears. They lived in the northern island regions of what is now Japan starting as early as the 12th Century before they were colonised by the state. As a child, Sekine's favourite story was about a singing Hokkaido wolf. The narrative had a melodic quality to it, with a refrain oscillating between sung Ainu phrases and barking vocalisations. But at school, none of Sekine's friends understood Ainu. And while her mother and grandparents knew some phrases in the language, they mainly spoke Japanese. Other adults couldn't speak it at all. She realised that her family's language, and culture, were dying. There are only a handful of native Ainu speakers left. The language is currently listed by Unesco as "Critically Endangered". Records suggest that in 1870 – one year after Ezo or Ezochi (now Hokkaido) was declared part of Japan – some 15,000 people spoke local varieties of Ainu, and the majority spoke no other language. But various government policies, including the banning of Ainu in schools, almost wiped the language and culture out. By 1917, the estimated number of speakers had plummeted to just 350 and has dropped precipitously since then. Despite this, Ainu is arguably undergoing a revival. In 2019, Japan legally recognised the Ainu as Indigenous people of the country through a bill that included measures to foster their inclusion and visibility. And now various projects aim to preserve and revitalise the language – including with the help of artificial intelligence. There's a chance that Ainu could survive for generations to come. Sekine was born and raised in Nibutani, Hokkaido, where about 80% of residents reportedly have Ainu heritage. But even there, knowledge of the language is scarce. "I think my family is a unique one," says Sekine. "My mother's side is Ainu and her family is famous for their handicrafts. My [Japanese] father is also an Ainu language teacher. Sekine, who is in her mid-20s, is the creator of a conversational Ainu YouTube channel. "I know I'm special and lucky," she adds. While much of Ainu's nuances have been lost over time, knowledge survives, including more than 80 different ways of describing a bear, according to her father Kenji Sekine. The language reflects the community's connection with nature, and their reverence of other living beings. "In the Ainu's way of thinking, everything other than human being is 'kamuy' (god or spiritual deity). Some animals are often called 'kamuy,' like 'kimunkamuy' (bear) and horkewkamuy (wolf)," he says. Although Ainu is recognised as a second national language, it isn't part of the school curriculum in Hokkaido. "Students have no chance to learn about the Ainu culture and language," says Hirofumi Kato, archaeology professor and director of the Global Station for Indigenous Studies and Cultural Diversity at Hokkaido University. "There is only one stereotyped image of Japanese culture and history. The education system [reinforces] this mono-cultural perspective." This whitewashing of Japanese history makes it difficult for Ainu people to connect with their roots and navigate their identities in modern Japanese society. While renewed interest in Ainu culture has led to more representations of Ainu people in mainstream media (for instance in manga) that have fostered curiosity and understanding of the community – there have also been instances of cultural appropriation. Growing up, Sekine felt overwhelmed by the pressure to preserve her culture, so much so that she hid her ancestry when she moved away for middle school. It wasn't until she entered university that she gained the confidence to embrace her indigenous identity and actively promote Ainu culture. Now, she's part of a young generation of community members seeking to redefine what it means to be Ainu. "Language is the most important thing for us. it's the connection between our culture and values," Sekine said. "Family too. We have a big family; we get together every night and have dinner. [These] are Ainu values." While there are few Ainu speakers around today, there is a rich repository of oral stories. In recent years, researchers have turned to these audio archives with the aim of bringing Ainu back to life. "By using our technology, this process has been largely automated. They now have 300 to 400 hours of data," says Tatsuya Kawahara, an informatics professor at Kyoto University, who leads a project using AI speech recognition technology to preserve Ainu recordings. "The sound quality is not so good because many were recorded on analogue devices in houses, where it was sometimes noisy. It's really challenging." With support from government funding, Kawahara and his colleagues used about 40 hours of recordings featuring uwepeker, or narrated prose stories, from eight speakers shared by the Upopoy National Ainu Museum and the Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum. These recordings are part of a wider archive that in total contains around 700 hours of vocal data collected since the 1970s. Most of the archive is on cassette tapes, just like the folk tales Sekine heard as a child. In 2015, Japan's Cultural Affairs Agency began digitising these recordings for research and educational purposes, with the AI initiative emerging three years later. Conventionally, automatic speech recognition technology is built using massive datasets that help the system understand the rules of a language before it can transcribe it. However, endangered languages such as Ainu lack such background data, meaning the researchers had to rely on an "end-to-end" model – an approach that allows the system to learn how to process speech into text without prior knowledge of the language. Kawahara's team is now developing a system for Ainu speech synthesis, which uses AI to generate speech from text. So far, they've successfully trained the AI to emulate speakers who've provided more than 10 hours of recorded speech. The system has even produced speech from the text of two prose stories: Tale of Bear, transcribed between 1950 and 1960; and Raijin's Sister, transcribed in 1958. The AI audio version of Raijin's Sister was shared with the Upopoy National Ainu Museum, in order to train actors for performances. To the untrained ear, the recording – rendered in a voice that could be an elderly woman – sounds eerily natural, with the abrupt pauses and slight tonal inflections you would expect from a real life speaker, albeit slightly too rapid. "I hope this kind of AI can help people in Hokkaido, Ainu ancestors or young people, to learn the Ainu language," says Kawahara. He suggests that the technology could enable virtual avatars – Ainu teaching assistants that guide young learners of the language. Kawahara's team also hopes to capture more Ainu dialects with AI and include content from younger generations, not just old recordings, he says. But how accurate are such systems? At present, the AI's translation proficiency is comparable to that of a graduate student of Ainu, the researchers claim. When transcribing some speakers, it has a word recognition accuracy of 85%. The AI's accuracy at recognising phonemes (individual units of sound in a language) can be as high as 95%, though this drops to 93% for unfamiliar speakers using the same dialect, and to 85% for speakers of different dialects. Sekine doubts the AI's ability to speak Ainu authentically, and is worried that the technology will spread mispronunciations or other mistakes. At first, many community members contacted by Kawahara and his team were similarly wary of the project and expressed concerns that the technology could create fake speech or spread misinformation, he says. However, those who supported the project have helped check the quality of the transcripts and computer-generated speech, as well as the source data. "It's difficult to say what I think about [the project]," Sekine says. While such a system could help raise awareness of the language, "Ainu people have to have knowledge about the language, so they can understand what is fake. I would say it's more important to get and verify living data." Sekine has made her own recordings of Ainu stories told by her grandmother and other elderly residents in Nibutani. That said, her own father, Kenji Sekine, has taken part in the AI initiative. He helped source recordings for Kawahara's team. While not Ainu himself, he began learning the Saru dialect of the language while helping Sekine's mother run a children's Ainu language class when he first settled in Nibutani in 1999. He eventually took over the course and has been teaching Ainu ever since. "It's my life's work," he says. "I want more people to learn. I think the [AI project] is a good thing." During the researchers' visits to Nibutani, they made rice dumplings together with other residents and attended one of Kenji Sekine's regular classes, which cater to more than a dozen students aged seven to 15. Taught in a circle, the sessions are energetic, and incorporate elements of Te Ataarangi, a method of language teaching emphasising speaking and visualisation, which was developed by Maori people, an Indigenous group in New Zealand. "What we're struggling with now is we don't have many conversational recordings. The [last] person we called a native speaker passed away 20 years ago," Kenji Sekine says. Keeping Ainu alive is clearly important to this community. But at what cost? Maya Sekine wonders whether the data used to train the AI system will be fully accessible to the public. David Ifeoluwa Adelani, assistant professor at McGill University's School of Computer Science in Canada and a specialist on low resource languages in Africa, says that Ainu researchers will need to build trust and transparency with the community. "In some cases [of language revitalisation], there's an aspect of, 'You come in and collect data, then you sell it back to us'," Adelani says. "Researchers need to get consent, and then agree on how the data will be used." This is a particularly sensitive point for people with Ainu heritage because, over the years, Ainu culture has been commodified and appropriated for profit in Japan – via tourism, media and trade, Sekine explains. The threat of further exploitation is a real one for Ainu people, whose land was colonised by the Japanese state. Banned from fishing and hunting for centuries, many Ainu were forced to make a living through farming and low-value labour. There are no official statistics on how many Ainu people remain in Japan today, but a survey in 2023 by the Hokkaido Prefectural Government reportedly found that 29% of Ainu people have experienced discrimination, a 6% increase from the previous poll in 2017. Local media reports also suggest that Ainu people earn lower incomes than the national average and are also more likely to experience unstable employment. It's more ethical to train community members on how to use these tools to revitalise their language, rather than swooping in and collecting data, argues Adelani. "We work on very low resource languages with native speakers in Cameroon because they want to work on it. That's why it's important to train community members. If you teach them, they can prioritise." While some members of the Ainu welcome the government's recent interest in Indigenous cultural preservation, critics say it has fallen short of addressing historical injustices and providing fundamental rights. Some argue that the Upopoy National Ainu Museum, which houses Ainu human remains that community members seek to reclaim, is yet another continuation of Japan's assimilation policies. "Upopoy looks like another instance of the Japanese exerting their power over the Ainu," Ainu activist Shikada Kawami said in a statement days before the museum's opening. "I don't know how many Ainu are aware of the degree to which they are still exploited." According to Kawahara, the National Ainu Museum holds the copyright of the original data used to develop the system, with consent from the speakers' families. The laboratory owns the rights to the AI system itself. "But the system does not work without data," he notes. In the future, it could be hard to verify the AI's work given the lack of Ainu speakers around, notes Sara Hooker, head of Cohere for AI, a non-profit that serves as the research arm for the technology company Cohere. "When we're thinking about multilingual [systems] and global reach, it's not just about making sure languages are covered, it's making sure the nuances and how people use these models every day is rich enough to serve people." But AI for speech recognition and generation is developing at a blistering pace, says Francis Tyers, computational linguistics advisor at Common Voice, a crowdsourced multilingual speech dataset initiative run by US non-profit Mozilla Foundation. Today, developers are releasing AI systems that cover hundreds of languages – an impossibility just five years ago, he says. "In an ideal world, language technology is done by the speakers, for the speakers," said Tyers. He gives the example of Spain, where many machine translation systems targeting underserved languages like Catalan or Basque are spearheaded by members of those communities themselves. In other cases, where native speakers are rare or non-existent, leaders can ensure that Indigenous communities have agency over how public money is spent to preserve or develop language learning tools. Tyers gives the example of a Sámi language project. Sámi people live in the Sápmi region, which straddles northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. "[The Sámi people involved in that project] are the ones making the political financial decisions," says Tyers. More like this:• How an Antarctic base got its own accent• The people who 'see' foreign languages• Japan's forgotten indigenous people Efforts to improve Ainu representation are ongoing. For Sekine and her father, the hope is that more Ainu people will become fluent speakers in the future, and that Japanese society will come to better understand and embrace this unique aspect of the region's indigenous heritage. And, there is hope. Younger generations, for example, continue to coin new words and phrases in Ainu, including "imeru kampi". Imeru means lightning strike while kampi means letter – together they have become the Ainu term for "email". "The language itself won't be the same as in ancient times, but that's okay," Sekine's father Kenji says. Every language is living, lively – and changing." -- For timely, trusted tech news from global correspondents to your inbox, sign up to the Tech Decoded newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Mainichi
23-06-2025
- General
- The Mainichi
Rescuers try to stay aloof at Japan's sole seal sanctuary
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- At Japan's lone facility dedicated to seal protection, the animals get no names. Doing so would only increase the heartbreak of the staff when returning them to the wild. The Okhotsk Tokkari Center on the Sea of Okhotsk in Mombetsu, Hokkaido, rescues injured or weakened seals who have washed up on shore before releasing them back into the sea after they have recovered. "Tokkari" means "seal" in the indigenous Ainu language. Launched in the 1980s at a time when locals viewed seals as harmful pests to the fishing industry after a surge in their population, the rescue operation has helped more than 200 of the sea mammals. The staff at the center purposely forgo naming or having direct contact with the seals to avoid growing emotionally attached. But try as they might, staff still develop an affectionate bond with them. At the end of December last year, a male spotted seal was released on a ramp near the facility. It wriggled its stout body down the plank and slid into the harbor, then headed out, occasionally darting its head out of the water, before disappearing from sight. It took about eight months for the animal to get healthy enough to return to the sea after it had been washed up in a small fishing port in a town located in the Okhotsk subprefecture. "I'm worried about whether he'll be able to survive," said Miku Watanabe, 25, head of rearing and exhibitions at the center. "But I'm glad we could return him. This makes it all worthwhile." Seals are seen along the Sea of Okhotsk coast from winter to spring and were once overhunted for their skin and fat. When hunting ceased in the 1970s, the population grew and caused serious fishery damage -- then making them a target for removal. The late Yoshitsugu Hirosaki, former director of the Enoshima Aquarium, took a pioneering step in 1987 by collaborating with the city of Mombetsu to begin caring for two injured seals in a private residential setting. This initiative led to the establishment of Japan's only specialized facility for seal protection. If there is a report of an injured seal, the staff is ready to drive to the coast at a moment's notice. In the beginning, the cases often involved seals getting entangled in fishing nets, but in recent years, the majority have been pups and young seals that have become emaciated due to a lack of food. In principle, the seals are returned to the sea within one year. To prevent them from becoming used to human contact, fish are not fed directly to the seals but thrown into a pool. Staff also do their utmost not to get too close by not calling or naming them. "But I still become attached to them," Watanabe said. For most of the seals, survival is not guaranteed. In fact, after being rescued, many die while in the center's care, with only roughly 40 percent making it back to sea. The ones that are blind or otherwise unable to return to the wild are kept in captivity, and currently about 30 spotted and ringed seals appear in public exhibitions at the center. Visitors can watch staff feed the seals and check their health, as well as learn about their ecology. According to Mari Kobayashi, a professor in marine mammalogy at Tokyo University of Agriculture, the number of seals along the coast of Hokkaido has been declining in recent years, while their culling by fishermen has also decreased. But the seals are losing their habitat with the recession of drift ice, which the animals use for breeding, pupping and hunting, accelerated by global warming. She says a continuation of the trend threatens the possibility that they will no longer be seen in Japan. The center is funded by the hometown tax payments received by the city. Watanabe hopes more people will take an interest in learning about the various seal species under their protection. "We want to return as many seals as possible to the sea. Hopefully, through our activities, people will become interested in the protection of animals and the environment," she said. (By Tomoki Hoshii)
