Bhowmik, Davinder LNiver-Johnson, Jordan2025-08-012025-08-012025-08-012025NiverJohnson_washington_0250O_28438.pdfhttps://hdl.handle.net/1773/53212Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2025A plethora of media are readily available that paint a picture of the Ainu and their culture –a recognized Indigenous population within modern-day Japan. For instance, we can read about one of their ceremonies, the Iomante (in which a bear is ritually “killed” and sent back to the land of the gods) in Netsugen (Heat Source) by Kawagoe Sōichi, visualize it in the manga Golden Kamuy by Noda Satoru, and engage with it both auditorily and visually in the anime (and now live action) adaptation of Golden Kamuy, The Ainu Bear Ceremony a documentary by Gordon M. Neil in 1931, and in the modern drama film Ainu Mosir. No two media represent the ceremony in the same way, and after one has consumed all these disparate representations, they are left with a multifaceted concept of the ceremony itself which is made up of various visual, auditory, and linguistic sources. This study explores how multimediality shapes our modern perception of the Iomante and by extension Ainu culture. I hope to underscore the significance of fictional characters who exhibit a non-prescriptive and ethnorelativistic relationship with culture. Non-prescription herein will mean refraining from imposing rules, expectations or specific ways of being on oneself in relation to cultural expectations. Characters with this approach to culture observe and interact with it without insisting that they themselves or other members need to conform to that culture completely. Ethnorelativism herein will mean the ability to see one’s own beliefs and behaviors as just one reality among many possibilities. Characters who fit into this category approach cultural practices with a willingness to understand them from within that culture’s cultural framework.Central to the current study are the following questions: what is Ainu culture, especially when viewed through a modern lens? How has multimediality shaped, albeit sometimes through negative example, our view of the Iomante ceremony as a part of that culture? And finally, what significance may this media have for those who consume it? I hope to show how media figures have been portrayed in ways that encourage us to rethink the concepts of cultural prescription and involvement. In Ainu Mosir, Netsugen and Golden Kamuy we connect to characters who show agency in how they navigate their culture, a model of agency which may eventually prove beneficial to modern people and how they relate to Ainu culture in contemporary settings.application/pdfen-USnoneAinuAinu MosirGolden KamuyIomantemedia studiesNetsugenLiteratureFilm studiesSociologyAsian languages and literatureThesis