REKIHAKU

No.141 A Witness to History

The other side of the movie camera

The collection of photographs held at Rekihaku called "Photographs of Folk Customs of the Ainu from the Saru River area in Hokkaido" (390 photos, 323 of which are dry glass plates), include photos taken of the "Iyomante" ceremony of the Ainu people. When they hunted and killed adult bears the Ainu would raise the cubs left behind for a period of one to two years, after which time they held a lavish ceremony at which the souls of the cubs were returned to the land of the gods. The Ainu believed that gods temporarily appeared as bears, and to show their gratitude for the meat and fur gifted by the gods they held this lavish ceremony to send back the souls of the bears to the land of the gods and to pray for their return.

It is believed these photos were taken by Shigezo Fujimoto, a photographer from Biratori, Saru-gun in Hokkaido, at the request of a Scottish doctor called Neil Gordon Munro.

Dr. Munro arrived in Japan in 1891 when he was 27 years old. As well as practicing medicine in Yokohama and Karuizawa, Dr. Munro had a strong interest in Japan's pre-historical period and undertook archaeological research, including excavation of the Mitsuzawa shell midden in Yokohama. Later, his research interest turned to Ainu culture. In the early Taisho period he studied Ainu culture at a number of locations in Hokkaido.

In the early Showa period, Dr. Munro's research on the Ainu became more intensive. The December 3, 1930 edition of the Muroran Mainichi Shimbun reported that Dr. Munro had been living in Nibutani, Hokkaido for a long time and was engaged in research. The newspaper also reported that he wanted to live there permanently and that an Iyomante ceremony was planned for December 25, 1930, at which a two year-old bear he had bought near Asahikawa would be used.

It is believed that the photos of the Iyomante festival in this collection of photographs date from this time. This Iyomante, which used a bought bear, was held for the purpose of research, and was not held at the instigation of the Ainu people for the ceremony's original purpose. Assimilation policies for the Ainu since the Meiji period led to fewer occasions on which the Iyomante was held for its original purpose and in its original form. By the late 1920s, apart from Iyomante which were held as commercial performances, there came to be cases where they were held for academic research (Masato Ogawa, "Modern History of the Iyomante" in "Ainu Culture Today", 1997, edited and published by the Faculty of Humanities, Sapporo Gakuin University). The Iyomante that Munro held belonged to this type.

There are a number of photos in the collection showing men filming holding a camera. The cameramen are holding an "Eyemo", a 35 mm film movie camera. Cameras that used 35 mm film at that time were usually large heavy Mitchell or Palevo cameras, which were not very portable. However, the Eyemo, made by U.S. company Bell and Howell, was a small, light handheld camera which was extremely portable. What is more, since the film was wound by a spring, it didn't require electricity and was therefore suitable for filming outdoors. The Eyemo is also known for having been used for reporting from the battlefield following the Shanghai Incident.

However, the maximum length of film that could be loaded into the Eyemo at one time was 100 feet. This meant that film had to be reloaded each 100 seconds or so. If the spring was wound back completely it was possible to film continuously for about 55 seconds. Consequently, in order to use up the 100 feet of loaded film the spring had to be wound back in the middle of filming.

The Iyomante ceremony comprised a variety of rituals both outdoors and indoors, with many requiring much movement, such as singing and dancing. Dr. Munro used at least two cameras for filming the Iyomante, which enabled him to prevent interruptions to the progress of the ceremony caused by loading film and winding back the spring.

Mr. Shigeru Kayano, who watched this Iyomante ceremony as a small child, says the following.

"I think I was taken to the ceremony by my grandmother who held me by the hand, and we headed for the site of the Iyomante walking on white snow that had just fallen. The site was a house that had been built on the eastern side of Shiranpeno Kaizawa's house, and when I looked at the house I got a shock. Only a small area on the eastern side of the roof was thatched and for the rest of the roof you could see the framing sticking out. Since I was a child my thought was "What would you do if it snowed or rained? Gosh, it would be cold". I later learned that at that time since electricity had yet to come to Nibutani the house was like that in order to provide light for filming." (Shigeru Kayano, "Flowered Arrow of the Iyomante" 2005, Asahi Shimbun Company).

Four rolls of positive 35 mm film thought to be of a relatively close generation to the film negatives. The movie negatives have not been found, so we have images for which only this positive film remains.

There is a photo in the collection that shows a house with no thatch on its roof. Since the practice when thatching a roof is to start at the bottom and work upwards, this photo showing thatch missing from the bottom does not depict the thatching process, but rather shows that the roof has been opened up. This was done in order to provide light for filming. From this photo we can easily see that this Iyomante ceremony took place in a house that had been built as a film set.

Rekihaku has 35 mm positive films thought to be of a relatively close generation to the film shot for this movie. When these images were viewed together with people from Nibutani where the filming had taken place, we learned that the tattoos women had around their lips were painted unnaturally dark. It is most likely that they were made darker as their tattoos would not have shown up clearly on film that had poor black/white sensitivity. There was also an example where a woman who did not have a tattoo had dark ink painted around her lips. This raises an important point when analyzing the film footage that remains, as it poses the question of how those who were "researching" or "recording" staged the event to make the Ainu people of the time appear "ethnic".

Dr. Munro added a commentary using subtitles to this film. In 1932 he completed a 16 mm silent movie called "The KAMUI IOMANDE or DIVINE DISPATCH Commonly Called the AINU BEAR FESTIVAL", which he sent to the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

In Japan, meanwhile, the Tokyo Olympia Eigasha used Dr Munro's leftover film to make a 35 mm, 28-minute movie called "Iyomande - In a Mysterious and Lyrical Land", which was released in 1965. It includes unused scenes from the completed film sent to Britain by Dr. Munro, including scenes of the Saru River basin and bears being dissected.

By comparing these films and from still images which recorded what took place at the movie set and also accounts of people from Nibutani who know what went on at that time, it is possible to discover what kind of staging was done during filming and editing. The photos that record the film site reveal much information about the people making the movie, and as such provide important clues regarding what was and was not authentic.

With this sort of perspective in mind, from 2005 to 2006 we undertook research on Dr Munro's film of the Iyomante, and with the cooperation of a great many people we produced a video entitled "AINU Past and Present - Things Revealed by Dr Munro's Movie" (Production and copyright: National Museum of Japanese History. Production assistance: TokyoCinema Inc.). This article is part of the results of this research.

Junko Uchida (Ethnographic Films Research, Museum Research Department)