Making Cloth from Tree Bark with Ainu in Japan 

Hello Greg uncle, I suppose Aiko is in junior high school and shin is in elementary school so could you please make a video with both of them on japan's education system. Like what subjects students study and what does Japanese education system prioritize more

You finished it one way or another so all is good :D

you're still doing great!

I guessed it could be during the summer as we can see the trees are very green :p

a year that is Not a long time, hahahahaha 🐙🐲

Yes! I was just going to right about this. It seems like most of the indigenous peoples around and in the Pacific have this practice. Very fascinating.

​@@lost_penguin And the process of turning the stalks of fibrous grasses (like rice and flax and hemp) does not differ by much, only replacing the de-barking with the harvesting of the straw/hay which to be boiled in ash-water (potash) which is an alkaline substance which dissolves the non-fibers first, and without the separation of the layers of fibers because the straws are already separated and thin enough, and without the peeling of the slimy substance because there is not that much in grasses. Cotton differs in processing though, though not by that much, with a cotton gin used to clean the fibers just like how the wool is cleaned with a similar but differently named device which is a scaled up version of the cotton gin.

Haha, I see I am not the only person here to share about kapa! To expand on this for the rest of the class... kapa (or tapa, depending on what part of Polynesia you're in) is a little different in that it is not a woven cloth. The strips of soft inner bark are soaked, layered, and then beaten with a club to mesh them together... so in structure it is more like felt or soft paper than a woven cloth. I was always fascinated by this, a different solution to the universal problem of "how to make make clothing."

You're Hawaiian with this name?Wow

We do this kind of weaving too in the Southeastern US native nations. Mulberry and hemp cloth is very traditional, and we're bringing back the art of making the cloth using these. The finger-woven belts that we make are now made of commercial yarn, but they were originally made of bark or hemp

we have that in latvia too, they are called "lībieši"

Thanks Angela!

They can take the craft preservation too far though. For instance, I have heard some swordsmiths are jealous that in the US we don't have legal restrictions on materials and can use any steel we want instead of just traditional steel.

Why don't you make videos anymore Angela?

Learn about the Ainu a bit, they weren't exactly loved until recent times. Ainu are now trying to reclaim and rediscover their culture, not exactly having preserved it.

I thought the Japanese were super safety conscious lol operating a chain saw around people who don't know what they're doing, with no eye, or ear protection. Jeez. Forestry is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world for work place accidents.

@@CircumcisionIsChildAbuse Ha, you're right. But i have a sinister feeling about this video, it's more about the japanese government micro controlling the Ainu culture to always be a sub-current of japanese culture even though they are totally unrelated. It's cultural imperialism. Having a lot of japanese people mingling in what should be purely Ainu tradition supports my suspicions. The japanese govt decides which tree the Ainu are allowed to peel and then requires them to cut the tree (not part of Ainu tradition) clearly looks like nosing in to control Ainus. I bet the chainsaw is part of Japanese requirement on the Ainus.

@Bianca D I don't think ainu are related to most japanese people either ? To my understanding the ainu people were already there before the people that we now consider japanese.

So.... Asahi or Sapporo?!? 🤔

Agreed

Absolutely right.

The big cities are Yamato, though

And it's very different from the rest of Japan

Are you eating all those peaches? Or how are you getting your source of pits?

I'm so glad you posted this! I live on a peach orchard and am looking for ways to live more naturally and sustainably while being creative. It would be fun to try this myself with the pits of peaches that have fallen on the ground.

@@FBIMOUS377 The pits are happy byproduct of eating fresh peaches; which are in season in my area and usually on sale as a result.

@@NoiseDay Awesome, but be sure to clean and dry your peach pits before filing or you will clog your file.

@@NoiseDay Ground up peach pits are actually used in exfoliating peach scrubs!

You are excused

​@Saudi King Volintine Ander of Arabia Yes, well said. Even in this video, it felt sinister when the girl said but non-ainu also are doing and participating in this and then she tried to justify in a weird way. But i see it as a continuation of forced assimilation where the japanese are so much worried of separatism (even though they eliminated that option long ago) that a non traditional japanese culture lives on the land they claim (which is Ainu ancestral land really). The real reason Japanese are involved in this Ainu tradition, is to prevent Ainu from doing something purely on their own reviving a separate culture. There are many subtle points in the video that indicate that the japanese are not allowing AInu culture to be under its own leadership. Like the government telling them which tree to cut, and changing their culture demanding the tree to be cut, or kimono, is that really an Ainu clothing or a Japanese one ? This all had the marks of cultural imperialism. You will tell me the Han chinese group who rules China is doing far worse in Tibet or Xinjiang / East turkmenistan. For sure, they're putting people in camps and drugging them + brainwashing them and god knows what else (organ harvesting for those they genocide). So I try not to be to judgemental about the Japanese.

@Saudi King Volintine Ander of Arabia "USED to be", but now they're literally like modern Japanese but have different traditions, that was rezars point. And yeah i think most watching this will know that ngl my man

@Saudi King Volintine Ander of Arabia Hypocrite, have you ever studied genetic analysis of the Ainu, huh? They are a mix from the start.

Yeah they are so unheard of. Glad to see Ainu culture and people in action.

@@FireSilver25 I'm canadian, and metis. I'm well aware of the history of treatment of indigenous peoples.

Ainu culture hasn't been lost but has been continuing for generations, you think it's been lost because it's not mentioned in news media, but in fact they are still carried on in Hokkaido.

Yup,Kapa,Tapa,Hiapo,Siapo different names same concept

yeah! since the channel guy is from Vancouver I thought he would mention our local cedar weaving tradition but he didn't

It’s a universal technique...

Dugout canoes too.

@@kilipaki87oritahiti It really is a universal/human technique. Humans are able to find and use local materials, wherever they may be. How humans create fabrics/cloths from materials like cotton, sheep, etc. was just an attempt to emulate/copy nature's more naturally grown fibers seen in grasses, trees, vines, etc. Most of my grandparents PARENTS and GRAND PARENTS, from the 1920s to the 50s, used to make most of their clothes from HEMP, in the highlands of northern Laos/southern China/Yunnan. In Asia, the particular hemp subspecies tribal people grew --- small and straight trees with very fine bark/skin --- they're 100% for their very strong, elastic linen-like skin fabric (not for smoking, such as the use of the leaves, like it is here in the US and Latin America, in modern day "synthetically engineered" weed growing). Manufactured linen and other clothes were still very expensive, for most tribal people, so only the lighter clothes were made with the lighter, more refined city-manufactured linens that must be bought from faraway towns and cities. The heavier skirts and coats were still made largely from locally produced, locally weaved hemp fabrics.... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YJPyFPwET3E.html This video, of modern day OLD STYLED skirt making.... was NOT necessarily an actual hemp-based skirt. But the fabrics --- as well as the stitching technique ---- LOOKED rough enough to be similar to what I saw, decades ago, of what my grandmothers used to stitch, used to wear...

I thought I was the only one watching this because of golden kamuy lol

lol your Kanna Kamui dp is oddly fitting here. Kanna is an Ainu goddess based on her name.

Hina Hina

@@vivoslibertos That is about the only phrase i remembered.

Same

@@vivoslibertos Chitatap Chitatap

And sinna kisar and also osoma