In the last decade or so, the handling of human remains has come to the forefront in conflicts between the Japanese state and scientific institutions on one side and indigenous activists of the Ainu and Okinawan People on the other. For these activists the relations to their ancestors and their remains are central points of addressing the legacies of colonial violence and war, while they also emphasize a continuous unique identity as ethnically and culturally distinct groups in Japan. One important way of expressing these separate identities in the context of conflict are memorial practices that range from ancestor worship rituals and burials of returned human remains to the actual search for these remains in scientific institutions and the field as well as legal confrontations in courtrooms. This talk explores these manifold ways of remembering the dead and which role human remains play in the context of minority-state relations.
Marius Palz is a Walter Benjamin postdoctoral research fellow at the Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne. He received his PhD from the University of Oslo in 2023. In his dissertation he discussed the history, politics, and ecology of the Okinawa dugong.