UK university hands over ancestral remains to Japan's indigenous Ainu people
A university in Scotland has returned ancestral remains to indigenous Ainu people of Japan that were kept in its museum for over a century.
The skulls of three Ainu people were given back to representatives from Japan, including an ethnic Ainu group, in a ceremony at the University of Edinburgh on Wednesday.
The university's principal and vice-chancellor, Peter Mathieson, handed the remains in boxes wrapped with white cloth over to the executive director of the Ainu Association of Hokkaido, Okawa Masaru.
The remains are to be interred at the memorial site in the Upopoy National Ainu Museum and Park in Hokkaido on Saturday.
The university says the Ainu remains were donated in 1913 by a Scottish-born anthropologist and physician who was an Edinburgh graduate and who lived in Japan. Last year, it expressed its intention to return them.
Okawa said he was filled with emotions to think of how the ancestors had felt for so many years in foreign lands. He said Ainu people will honor their spirits with dignity at the memorial facility.
Remains and cultural artifacts of Ainu people were taken abroad for research purposes between the late 19th and the early 20th century.
The latest is the third such return of Ainu remains from abroad, following ones from Germany and Australia.
In Britain, the remains of three Ainu people are kept at the Natural History Museum in London. The Japanese government is requesting their return.
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