Biratori, Hokkaido

The Saru River moves quietly through a valley flanked by the western ridges of the Hidaka Mountains, and the landscape along its banks carries the weight of long habitation. Biratori is the town at the center of this basin, and what distinguishes it from other small Hokkaido municipalities is the density of Ainu presence — not as artifact or spectacle, but as ongoing life.

At the Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum, reconstructed *chise* houses stand beside a tree garden, and the collection of Ainu implements inside runs deep enough to require patience. Nearby, the Kayano Shigeru Nibutani Ainu Museum holds the personal collection of an Ainu researcher, including materials from indigenous peoples worldwide — a reminder that the questions being asked here are not purely local. The Saru River basin itself carries formal designation as a cultural landscape of national importance, recognizing the layered history from ancient settlement through Ainu culture to modern agricultural development.

Craft is still made here. *Nibutani ita* — carved wooden trays — and *Nibutani attush*, a textile woven from elm bark fiber, are designated traditional crafts with active production. Biratori beef and the tomato known as Nishipa no Koibito come from the surrounding farmland and pastures. The Chipsanke festival, a canoe-launching ceremony on the river, and the Aino Moshiri Ichiman-nen Festival mark a calendar that insists on continuity. The legal history is present too: a landmark court ruling here recognized Ainu indigenous status, making Biratori not merely a cultural site but a place where that recognition was fought for and won.