Story and Photograph by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

My friend came to visit me in Hakodate. He thought he would write a travel story for an inflight magazine while he was there. He called the City Hall to ask them about local artisans or people of interest, but the City Hall pointed him in the direction of a souvenir sausage shop, which he wasn’t really interested in.

I want to meet some Ainu people, said my friend. But it was common knowledge in Hakodate that there were few if any people in the town calling themselves Ainu. Then I remembered Machan. I’d heard from a journalist friend that he was Ainu. Machan was a little-bit-wild looking man who I often saw around riding his bicycle with his dog following along. We had talked a little bit a few times without any particular connection. He had a shop across the road from the International Hotel. So we went along to Machan’s shop.
Machan’s shop had a kind of log-cabin look to it, and inside it was a bit dark and a bit shabby. There were certainly some carvings of bears and owls, but they looked a lot like the mass-produced carvings you find in all the souvenir shops, and the recycle shops, just a bit dustier. Other than that there really wasn’t much you could buy. Mostly when it was warm enough Machan sat with his dog on the front step of his shop, which looked out on to the lobby of the International Hotel.

My friend asked Machan a bit about the Ainu. Did he know any Ainu people living in the town my friend could talk to? Not really. Did he know of any Ainu artists? Not really. Did he know of anything interesting he could write about? Not that he could think of. Anyone who made things? Nah. Machan’s shop is gone now, but it was there quite a long time.

Somehow the response we got that day did not surprise me. I used to see Machan around a lot, riding his bicycle, with his dog following along, one time he gave me a CD he had in his basket; The Beatles, for no particular reason; I took it and said thankyou. I like to see Machan’s life as a complicated and contradictory act of civil disobedience, of social education. Somehow I must have been prepared by the people around me to understand that. But here – I am speaking for him again. I will stop.