Anthropology Cultural anthropology

Assistant Professor Mai Ishihara is the first female full-time researcher at Hokkaido University’s Center for Ainu and Indigenous Studies (CAIS) and is the first female faculty member who openly reveals her Ainu ancestry. As a quarter-Ainu, Ishihara talked about how she had been subdued by her own ignorance, and later by silence, of her Ainu ancestry. She transformed her struggle and her views on the pain faced by her Ainu (indigenous people of Hokkaido) ancestors into a book based on her long-term research.

Susanne Klien is an associate professor at Hokkaido University’s Modern Japanese Studies Program (MJSP). Having explored intangible cultural heritage across Japan, Klien has been expanding her research in area studies and anthropology on rural Japan. During her previous work for a research institute in Tokyo, she observed a unique migration pattern that has been taking place in Japan: more young people are relocating from big cities to rural areas, for example to the Tohoku area, the northeastern portion of Japan’s main island of Honshu.