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Actually, if you want a pretty apt comparison about what the Ainu are like, you can do worse than the Sami; where especially in Norway where I've read about them, they're visually indistinguishable in many cases from their 'host' nation, are arguably the original inhabitants, their religion has been persecuted at various times but is now tolerated and while there is some level of bigotry, it's certainly faded now as secularism has gotten more popular in general. I mean, hell, in Norway for instance, they only recognized them as an indigenous group (which entitled them to special protection) in 1990, so if you have a progressive nation like that loving things up with natives, what do you expect from Japan? That said, in this case you can deffo make the argument that while the Ainu people were very focused on bears, they certainly weren't the only people to do so; Shinto is an animistic religion as well, as far as I remember there was also some worship on their end towards bears. Though there was very little co-opting of Ainu beliefs, they just evolved naturally as an extension of the worship of nature spirits. Bears are pretty baller after all; you can see the same in the Sibearian and Finno-Ungric Shamanistic traditions.
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Apr 14, 2016 07:56
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