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Karly Adams
Shamanism is considered to be a way of life for indigenous religions. Shamans are able to
communicate with spirits through rituals. They have the ability to heal souls or bodies since they
believe in the survival of the soul after death. In most indigenous societies, the living and the
dead are considered to be one community; so shamans keep the community together by using
their living body to connect to the dead souls. Shamanism is behind the ritual called iomante that
originated with the indigenous Ainu people that live in northern Japan primarily on the island
called Hokkaido. Iomante, a bear killing ritual, was seen as a technological ritual as it was
performed to please the mountain god so that bears would continue to be provided.
Unfortunately, the iomante with shamans is now performed only unofficially, as the Japanese
Buddhists have deemed it an uncivilized, sacrificial ritual. However as described below, the
iomante should be seen as a religious ritual that shows respect for the bears soul.
The Ainu believe that the soul lives on in the other world after death. Eventually these
souls will return to life after fulfilling their duties in the other world and are reincarnated into
later generations of their original families. It is also believed that every plant, animal, star, wind,
mountain, etc. has a spirit so that they are the same as humans in that respect. Through their
respect for all life forms, they believed that no animal, bird, tree or plant could be killed and used
without an expression of respect and reverence. The Ainu also realized that they could not
control all things, such as the wind, rain and sun, and so they regarded these phenomena as
kamuy, or deities. These kamuy spirits can shape shift into animals when they visit humans, but
they are still incarnations of higher beings, no matter what form they are in. The Ainu shaman
was believed to have an especially close relationship with the specific animals like the snake,
fox, wolf and otter which serve as their kamuy spirit guides. (Tanaka).

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Like many other prehistoric indigenous people, the Ainu were traditionally huntersgatherers and fishermen. Bears were important to the Ainu people because they provided food,
fur for clothes, as well as bones for tools. The Ainu believed the bear was the animal form for the
mountain god deity, one of their most revered gods. The shamans performed rituals to call or
attract these higher being spirits in the bears so the bears would present themselves to hunters.
First, the shaman would put on a mask of the head of a bear and dance until the bear possessed
him. Then, the shaman would travel to the spirit world and advise the bear to sacrifice itself and
its cubs to the humans. After the bears were captured by the bear hunter, the local community
would raise the captured bear cubs. The cubs were taken care of mainly by women who actually
took turns nursing them with their own bodies. After about one and a half years, the cub is
considered grown and the Ainu people perform the bear ceremony, or iomante.
The iomante was the Ainus most important religious ceremony because they believed the
bear was the life form for the mountain god deity. It was a funeral for the most important Ainu
deity and was intended to give the bear and mountain god spirit a proper send off before it
returned to the mountains. (Jeffrey Hays, Ainu). The purpose of this ceremony was to send the
soul of the bear back to the mountains gods, which will in turn be contacted by the shaman and
surrender to the Ainu with gifts of meat and fur (Ainu- Religion and Expressive Culture).
The iomante began with taking a grown bear cub from the bear house and killing it
with arrows and then strangled it between logs. The bear was skinned and prepared by the male
elders. The head of the bear was decorated and placed in the guests seat, and offered food and
drink as a guest. This was because the Ainu believed that the soul dwelled in the heart, and once
the body was cut up and eaten, the soul would have to leave the heart. However they believed the
animals soul would stay above its head between the ears for one night before it moved on.

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(Tanaka) There was joyous dancing, eating, and drinking during the four-day bear ceremony. But
there were also deeply religious prayers offered to the house and fire gods, as well as the
mountain god. Part of the festivities included the shaman putting on a bear mask and costume
and acting out the bear scenario through dance and songs. The four-day long ceremony was
ended when the bears head was placed on the altar and arrows were fired east so the bears
spirits could return to the mountains.
The iomante is no longer practiced in this traditional manner today. In 1899, Japans
Aborigine Protection Law forced the Ainu to integrate with the Japanese. They were forbidden
from using the Ainu language, forced to take Japanese names, and their hunting rituals, like the
iomante, were prohibited. However, until a few decades ago, a bearskin dance was still
performed as part of the bear ceremony. A young hunter would re-enact the bears actions during
the hunt while wearing fresh bearskin. The dance came from the older and more fully played out
version that the shamans once acted. The traditional Shaman ceremony was acted out as part of
the Ainu tourist attraction in Hokkaido. But it was done in more of a make fun of this
uncivilized ceremony manner.
In 1997 the Japanese government formerly recognized the Ainu as an Indigenous People
of Japan, recognized their culture and created a fund to help the Ainu promote their culture. As
part of the Ainu ethnic revival an Ainu music group is performing the iomante on stage as a
musical drama. But the shamanism spiritual essence of the Ainu culture will be hard to revive
since it is not recognized in the open; even the Ainu had forbidden it because of their
discrimination. The shamanic trance state came to be seen by the modern culture as madness.
Today the only type of shamanism resides in females, which are more like mediums. But instead
of controlling spirits, these females are possessed by spirits. These shaman types are named

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according to the shamanistic ability they display. The most common is the female tuskur, which
indicates they have the ability to enter into an altered state through the possession, whereby
kamuy (spirits) and ancestral souls can come into her with knowledge of healing herbs. The Ainu
are also working towards regaining some of the land taken from them and restoring more hunting
and fishing rights. While they still revere and worship the bear, they are no longer allowed to kill
them.
Shamans had two important roles in the iomante ritual. They performed rituals to attract
spirits to come down to earth and they participated in a dance during the bear ceremony. The
bear ritual was deemed important as it was four days long and concluded with the returning of
the bear spirit to the mountain gods with gifts; and in turn, the deities would give the Ainu a good
hunting season. Unfortunately, the Japanese treated the indigenous Ainu similarly to how
European settlers viewed the Indians. They put down the Ainu culture and even took control of
much of their land. Since the Japanese Buddhist believes that animals are traveling towards
enlightenment and must not be harmed, they viewed the Ainu iomante as uncivilized. Much of
the original intent and practices of the traditional iomante ritual have been lost; but now that the
Ainu have been recognized by the Japan government, perhaps the original bear ritual and other
Ainu culture can be restored.

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"Ainu - Religion and Expressive Culture." Religion and Expressive Culture. N.p., n.d. Web. 25
Oct. 2016.
Hays, Jeffrey. "AINU: THEIR HISTORY, ART, LIFE, RITUALS, CLOTHES AND BEARS."
Home. N.p., Jan. 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2016.
Tanaka, S. (Sherry). (2000). The Ainu of Tsugaru: the indigenous history and shamanism of
northern Japan (T). Retrieved from
https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/831/items/1.0076926 (Original work
published 2000)