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Thank you very much đ...I should have known I watched Golden Kamui years ago...I just didn't recognize the Ainu from the picture, I thought they were Siberians in The USSR or something.
golden kamuy is so good. its a top tier show IMO and if you love westerns its perfect. takes place in hokkaido after the russo japanese war, and you learn about cool stuff from that time period.
also has homo erotic moments like a cum battle but other than that its damn good
yeah, I adore Golden Kamuy. It does have a lot of perverted weirdness but the fact that absolutely none of it is directed at the young girl character gives it a pass. That is totally how military dudes are. It can be a weirdly wholesome show for a story about tracking down criminals to collect their skins to put together a puzzle map to some lost gold!
I wouldn't really say it's Japanese styled. Similar, but not the same.Â
Japanese people will only wear kimono/yukata with a specific side on top because doing the opposite is reserved for the dead. You can see them going both ways in the photo. The patterns on the clothing and jewelry are quite different from Japanese styles too.Â
Probably seems nit picky, but when you're familiar with it, the differences are pretty stark. Ainu people are also more closely related to Siberian ethic groups than to the Yamato people who make up most of Japan's population. The guy in the middle especially doesn't look Yamato, IMO, even regardless of his beard.Â
The Ainu people and culture are kind of the equivalent of the genocide of Indigenous peoples of North America. It's pretty depressing to look into.Â
Tbf, I didnât know one of them had a beard until I read your comment and then tapped on/revealed the full picture (âyou spelled âbearâ wrong. And thatâs not a full bear[d], thatâs a young bear[d]âŚwait a minâŚâ)
LOL yoo I got the same vibe cuz the mobile app crops the top and bottom of each picture unless I enlarge it. so I only saw the lower half of their bodies with the bear at first and was like "oh that's some soviet shenanigans"
Its a tradition, they don't view the bear as a creature, but as a bear god who when killed returns to his bear god world. He leaves behind a pelt and meat as a offering and seen as a blessing from the bear. So By killing the bear is going to a better place in which it was meant to. Also grown bears don't domestic well and im sure these folks knew that as well.
I mean if you play the game or read into it, they do within orphaned bears. They donât just kidnap them. So either way, without intervention an orphaned bear dies almost immediately. This way, it does get to experience love and life.
"Love" Right. Hey, that war orphan over there is probably going to die anyway. Let's raise him to adulthood letting him believe he is loved and then euthanize him when he gets too big to take care of. That isn't love.
"The creature is brought to the center of the village, tied to a post with the rope. The men in the village then take shots at the cub with blunted ceremonial arrows, until the time comes for it to be slaughtered."
They kill the mother in her den. The actual ritual involved shooting at the cub for a day with arrows blunted so they hurt and wouldn't kill it. Then they choke it to death. So no, it is a actually a really fucked up cultural tradition. Young Ainu today typically don't want to see this tradition brought back for a reason.
Without intervention, the bear cub just lives a normal life. With intervention some humans kill its mother and then rear it so they can torture it to death. Its one of those things that is an interesting tradition, but simultaneously distinctly cruel at the end. Tradition is not an excuse to be cruel. That's why the Ainu don't push to get this back the way it used to be. They just want ceremonial representation of the ritual without the whole literal bear torture.
Of all the horrible shit organized religion has perpetuated, I don't count "raise animal for meat and pelt" as one of th-"it is raised like a human child indoors, and even breast-fed until it teethed" Yeah nah that's pretty weird.
The world is a scary place and for a long time our collective knowledge wasnât enough to figure out how it worked, so we made up stories to justify the world. Then once we started using stories and rituals to explain the unexplainable, we started to use them justifying our actions as humans. Once complex societies formed, our ruler used the stories to justify their actions and authority.
Basically you go from thinking the stars are spirits of our ancestors, to are cutting the head off of a goat in order to feed its blood to the ground god, so the crops have a good harvest, and then to giving half of the harvest to the god king for him letting you plow his fields, real quick.
If it makes you feel any better, the practice probably began as a replacement for doing the same with human children. It was probably considered incredibly progressive at the time.
The abduction of a young child, treating it like royalty while keeping them drugged or sedated, then ritually torturing them to death was a form of human sacrifice many cultures practiced at one time or another.
It's basically just well treated livestock. When they kill it they eat it's meat and use it's pellet so.it isn't wasted, and while it lives it has a good life l.
God, that's disgusting. The reasoning the Wiki says they claim for doing it doesn't even make sense. 'We believe everything just returns to nature, so...we're going to mutilate an animal slowly and torturously, and we assume the Gods thank us for this! Yay!'
I looked into it and there are vary accounts of what the actual practice is. The more gruesome ones seemed to be viewed through 1800's European lens, double translated from a Japanese interpreter, from Ainu Dialects.
The main controversy seems to be the killing. With some saying they used penetrative arrows, to soft blunted arrows with low poundage bows that "did not harm the bear". The Neck Crush seems to be ceremonial, with the bear actually being killed by an elder with a real arrow to the heart. It seems to be great shame to miss this arrow, with the belief that blood cannot touch the ground (must only touch snow) or else it is impure.
If I put on my speculative anthropology hat on, most likely it was a cultural touchstone that was related to survival. It seems to be at its core, a ritualistic hunt. The ceremony provides a way to orient this people's place in the world as a part of the natural world. They did not kill the bear for wealth, but for food, warm clothes to make from its pelt. Hunting any bear is an amazing and vital resource that feeds and clothes them, and they live in some of the harshest climates (with some of them essentially living like inuits/eskimos/northern natives).
Their religion they believed a sort of reincarnation, that spirits came down, take mortal forms and are their actual kin. If the mother bear leaves a cub, they have to give the bear a good life or else it will never return.
In terms of practicality, there is no way for hunter gatherers to continue raising a bear past 3 years, hormones, aggression and the lack of fear of humans means that the tribes that did, probably suffered deaths and bear attacks afterwards.
I would say that 3 years of human protection, choice cuts of meat and fish and shelter is by far better a treatment than a wild bear would. A cub probably who would slowly starved or been cannibalized by an adult male bear. A "ritual hunt" is in no way more painful or crueler than death by adult bear predation, or slow starvation.
Thanks for this, i read and learned something new. I appreciate that, also didn't realize Japan has access to bears to begin with. I assumed their small island was devoid of predators but i was wrong.
I mean, Japan isnât THAT small. Itâs about the size (and width for that matter) of the US east coast.Thatâs plenty big enough for large predators to have a niche.
I always tell people that Japan is very similar to California in a few ways; landmass is similar, a lot of mountains and farms, skiing, and get earthquakes a lot. Just that Japan is more "fragmented", more densely populated, and have bullet trains. Hell, I tell people that the rivalry between Tokyo and Osaka is similar to the rivalry between NorCal and SoCal or San Francisco and Los Angeles. Neither of these California cities see snow, though.
Also, if you followed any news about Japan recently, there have been a few bear attacks in Japan. I believe the bears are black bears, but I am probably wrong. There are also snow monkeys there that I have yet to see.
Wow! yeah i paid attention to the culture and other news, but totally missed this. I thought since they are so tight on space that nothing that big could even roam.
This does nothing to help bear populations, they kill the bear without it ever having kids and the safest way to obtain a baby bear is to kill the mom so you are removing 2 bears from the wild population 1 of which will never have a kid and the others kid is the cub you are killing.
Domesticating would require them to breed the bears before slaughtering them which they dont do. They are killing adult bears in order to abduct the baby and then kill it for no reason.
They are very much killing it for a reason. It's a ritual and integral part of the culture. It also provides resources from the tribe as well. To say it's done for no reason is silly.
Iâm sure itâs easier to provide resources to the tribe by using an animal thatâs easier to read (and eats cheaper food and grows faster), like a cow, goat or a chicken.Â
None of those animals are indigenous to Hokkaido. They were a hunter-gatherer society rather than a farming society. Very different cultural contexts, likely driven by a lack of indigenous access to readily-domesticated animals.
Still easier and probably more productive to directly eat the meat they feed to the bear, but imo ritual alone is big enough justification for such rare event.
My understanding (and this comes entirely from Golden Kamuy so it could be wrong or missing some nuance) is that they used bears as a food source similar to how Native Americans used buffalo and then this is how they would treat the orphaned cubs. So not for nothing, but rather to support an entire culture for hundreds of years. Honestly I found it incredibly beautiful, and one of the most humane ways to treat a cultureâs primary food source for
To add context: after killing a bear that the Ainu typically didnât know beforehand had cubs, they would take the cubs in and raise them. They did this because they knew the cub would not make it on its own in the wild, yet they couldnât abide by domesticating a wild animal that would never find its way once domesticated. Then thereâs an inherent risk of not being able to domesticate the wild out of a wild animal. At a certain point, youâre risking lives.
So, this was their way of honoring the natural path of wild life without dooming the cubs to starvation and a cruel life. The cubs were typically celebrated and a communal responsibility.
Their reverence for the life of their food and its relationship with their environment, this practice is the alternative to simply letting the cub starve to death when they kill its mother.
it's terrifying and sad because it's a culture and practice that's foreign to you. at the end of the day, that is an animal they're raising for slaughter so that its meat and body can be used by their community. The same as a small farm raising pigs to ship off to butchers
Yeah...and what do you think happens to a lot of the cute baby animals raised by 4h programs? How many chickens are farm children's favorite pets? How many baby cows are cared for by the ranchers that raise them?
This is absolutely normal... but a bunch of people are so out of touch with the food system that they act like it's abhorrent.
i get what you're saying, but i do want to be clear that i've been vegan for a couple years now. i unfortunately know very well the topics people would rather not hear about haha, despite happily being active participants
âThen comes the phase in the ceremony where blunted ceremonial arrows referred to as hana ya (čąç˘; "flower arrows") in Japanese and heper-ay are shot at the bear.[54][47][24] These arrows have wooden hooks attached to the tip so that they may penetrate skin but only lightly. The arrowhead is dyed black and carved with intaglio patterns. Also silk-cloth (saranpe) might be tied to it.[57] If the ceremony arrows happen to stick, it is swept off using a bamboo grass switch or broom (takusa[54]). This portion lasts till sunset, and since both people and animal are exhausted, the bear is led back to the stake to rest.â
Instead livestock are often locked in hellish factory farms, male chicks are brutally murdered right after birth and other horrible shit. Sure that one part of the practice (if wikipedia is correct) is certainly more cruel way of execution than some others. But honestly there are way more important animal right issues than this
My guy, ethical farmers (note the distinction here, not factory farmers) are not torturing their livestock for hours before brutally killing it in the name of some kooky ass religious bullshit. Be a vegan all you want and judge other humans for being evolutionarily omnivorous or whatever else makes you feel morally superior, but this is downright disgusting and cruel:
Why does people being disturbed by this trigger you so much? Am I to understand that if your neighbors were to ritually sacrifice their golden retriever not only would you be unconcerned, but you would be upset if it bothered anyone else?
I don't think vegans are idiots per se, but I don't follow those same principes myself and hold a fundamentally different perspective at this point in my life. That being said, I do think they are the only ones who can really talk here. I guess vegetarians as well? But, either way, the grand majority of people aren't spending $30 on a 2lb chicken from their local farmer. They're being the $6 one from Safeway that's on sale and they just try not to think too hard about what they must be doing to those chickens to be able to sell them for so cheap (it's nothing good). Plus, half of these people don't have a deeply held cultural tie to chicken that they would identify with; they just don't don't want to have to get their protein from beans and tofu or whatever, which I do get. Don't get me wrong, plenty of people do have that tie or have specific dietary needs, but most sort of don't. Yet, how many of those same people will not hesitate to turn their noses up at these people?
There's just a whole lot of blinding hypocrisy from veganism, but it's a different hypocrisy, but you're not wrong, and it's the point I'm trying to make that i'm being both upvoted and downvoted for in different sections.
I used to be vegan for years and my feelings are that veganism itself isn't necessarily hypocritical itself (or at least, not any more hypocritical than most other people's behaviors and ideologies surrounding food and animals and such), but there are certainly a ton of non self reflecting vegans out there that are very hypocritical as people. That being said, I entirely agree with your point and it's one of those things I feel like perhaps people who are more directly involved in obtaining their own meat are inherently aware of? Essentially, people in most of the United States at least don't want to change their entire way of life surrounding food, clothing, makeup, etc or break the bank because of how the chickens "feel" but because it's someone else doing the killing it feels not as bad, yet these people are doing something they've been doing for hundreds of years and are expected to let it all go because it hurts the bear. I read the wiki, it sounds like they're just a bear hunting population and after killing the mom for food, they also take up the cubs who would have probably died on their own anyways tbh. Maybe they also want to be able to use the same products and eat the same food and perform the same cultural rituals that has sustained them for generations? It's just they don't get to pay someone else to do the raising and killing for them or something.
Sad as fuck. But the wiki articles translation of Iomante as âto send itâ is honestly fucking hilarious. You send it little bear bro, just wish you got to swipe some necks first.
You all know we also raise animals to a certain age and then kill them? Except our factory chickens don't enjoy their short lives nearly as much as this bear probably did.
Have you seen the living conditions of your food? Fuck a head, their whole body is squeezed between two chickens their whole lives before we kill it. So, not so different.
The Iyomante ritual was a traditional Ainu ceremony in northern Japan (mainly Hokkaido) where a bear, raised by the community and seen as a divine being (kamuy), was ritually killed so its spirit could be sent back to the spirit world with prayers and offerings. The real ceremony with a live bear isnât practiced anymore, but symbolic versions still happen today. The last known cases of actual bear sacrifice were in the 1950s.
Ngl thereâs a lot of handwringing in this thread on how a hunter-gatherer society without access to arable land or readily-domesticated animals integrated their food source into their culture 1000+ years ago, from people who can DoorDash a cheeseburger in 20 minutes đ¤ˇđźââď¸
Exactly! Like, Iâm sure there could be some point about how they were slow to modernization or something but as an American Iâm incredibly hesitant to criticize another historically persecuted indigenous population given my governmentâs history with the Native Americans and their buffalo food source
Yeah, the game definitely softens it a bit, implying the cub would not survive without its mother anyway, so at least it's getting good treatment for a few years before its size makes it too dangerous.
I was fascinated and looked it up, and was pretty bummed to learn they would kill the mother bears to take the cubs.
Im rewatching Golden Kamuy right now. Like 95% of this anime is centered around Ainu. When i saw this image, the clothes and a baby bear, i thought "there is no fucking way". But, as others mentioned its Ainu. A japanese tribe.
The whole idea of the OPs meme is that they are going to kill that baby bear. In the anime they also explore this problem:
People kill the mother bear in self defense (even though the main character provoked the bear to attack these people), the bear dies. The bear had a cub. MC brings it back to Ainu. He remarks that he will be released when he is of sufficient age. Ainu say that by tradition they will have to kill him after a while to please the gods or whatever. It will also be able to rejoin his mother in afterlife.
For people who enjoy watching anime i REALLY REALLY suggest watching Golden Kamuy. Its a perfect ratio of seriousness and comedy. Just dont be discouraged by the bears. Youll know what i mean after the first episode xd
What pointless stupid shitty ritual!âI am glad many of these old religions from this one to the Mayansâ are dead and gone. More still remain around the world, sadly.
They're ainu, native japanese tribes who, when found a cub bear, they took care of him for around 3 years, then sacrificed him for the gods. They believed almost every animal was some god disguised. The gods go to earth to "play" with humans and are hunted down, rewarding them with meat and leather.
The sacrifice ritual for the bear was surrounded by good food as offerings. So when they returned, they would tell the other goods the earth was a good place and they would keep coming.
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Guessing it has something to do with the Ainu, who raise bear cubs until a certain age before killing them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iomante?wprov=sfla1
Also showcased in Ghost of Yotei.
Thank you very much đ...I should have known I watched Golden Kamui years ago...I just didn't recognize the Ainu from the picture, I thought they were Siberians in The USSR or something.
You can always tell its Ainu when they have Japanese style clothing but full beards
So stylish, the Ainu and the show. You really learn a lot about their culture and history from the series too.
golden kamuy is so good. its a top tier show IMO and if you love westerns its perfect. takes place in hokkaido after the russo japanese war, and you learn about cool stuff from that time period.
also has homo erotic moments like a cum battle but other than that its damn good
yeah, I adore Golden Kamuy. It does have a lot of perverted weirdness but the fact that absolutely none of it is directed at the young girl character gives it a pass. That is totally how military dudes are. It can be a weirdly wholesome show for a story about tracking down criminals to collect their skins to put together a puzzle map to some lost gold!
Wait, what? Lol
you NEED to watch it the cum battle is peak although it happens late in the anime
The hell you mean other than that, those are the best parts and you will admit that you like them too.
i reccomended the show to friends who enjoy westerns and anime but the gay moments killed the mood for them
Weak
Sounds like they're not true western fans
"Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other"
While eating pudding together
I wouldn't really say it's Japanese styled. Similar, but not the same.Â
Japanese people will only wear kimono/yukata with a specific side on top because doing the opposite is reserved for the dead. You can see them going both ways in the photo. The patterns on the clothing and jewelry are quite different from Japanese styles too.Â
Probably seems nit picky, but when you're familiar with it, the differences are pretty stark. Ainu people are also more closely related to Siberian ethic groups than to the Yamato people who make up most of Japan's population. The guy in the middle especially doesn't look Yamato, IMO, even regardless of his beard.Â
The Ainu people and culture are kind of the equivalent of the genocide of Indigenous peoples of North America. It's pretty depressing to look into.Â
Itâs very different from Native Americans treatment. Ainu were forced to assimilate and be absorbed into the Japanese society
Tbf, I didnât know one of them had a beard until I read your comment and then tapped on/revealed the full picture (âyou spelled âbearâ wrong. And thatâs not a full bear[d], thatâs a young bear[d]âŚwait a minâŚâ)
And if you look carefull at the woman on the right, her mouth is traditionally tattooed
The style of traditional ainu and the style of Siberian natives is pretty similar
The clothing is also quite distinct in cut and pattern from those of the Yamato people in the rest of the Japanese archipelago
Ainu couple wearing Ainu clothing. Japanese man wearing Japanese clothing.
Well some Ainu do live in Russia, in the Kuril Islands
Ahhh golden kamuy...... Perfect blend of informative, humor, action and romance. 10/10 manga imo.
And don't forget cooking!
No other manga can make squirrel brain looks so delish!
The clothing design gave it away for me.
LOL yoo I got the same vibe cuz the mobile app crops the top and bottom of each picture unless I enlarge it. so I only saw the lower half of their bodies with the bear at first and was like "oh that's some soviet shenanigans"
Wojtek is a hero!
That's so sad. I wish they kept it as a pet. They raised him so close to them it's just sad.
I donât think keeping adult bears as pets work out well.
Well someone forgot to give Corporal Wojtek the message.
Didn't he retire as a sergeant?
Its a tradition, they don't view the bear as a creature, but as a bear god who when killed returns to his bear god world. He leaves behind a pelt and meat as a offering and seen as a blessing from the bear. So By killing the bear is going to a better place in which it was meant to. Also grown bears don't domestic well and im sure these folks knew that as well.
Man, humans will just justify the worst shit with religion.
I mean if you play the game or read into it, they do within orphaned bears. They donât just kidnap them. So either way, without intervention an orphaned bear dies almost immediately. This way, it does get to experience love and life.
....I mean...if we ignore the most fundamental assumption regarding how those bears come to be orphans, of course.
I you don't want to make your own, store bought orphans are fine
You don't think adult bears abandon cubs, starve to death, get injured while hunting... etc?
On Wikipedia it says they kill the mama
Damn. Fuck ghost of Yotei for romanticizing the practice lol
Wtf. They torture the cub with hooked arrows then choke it to death. That bear isn't loved and is sentenced to a drawn out, terrifying death.
"Love" Right. Hey, that war orphan over there is probably going to die anyway. Let's raise him to adulthood letting him believe he is loved and then euthanize him when he gets too big to take care of. That isn't love.
Eh, their family is fed and clothed for another winter.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
"The creature is brought to the center of the village, tied to a post with the rope. The men in the village then take shots at the cub with blunted ceremonial arrows, until the time comes for it to be slaughtered."
May this love never find me
They kill the mother in her den. The actual ritual involved shooting at the cub for a day with arrows blunted so they hurt and wouldn't kill it. Then they choke it to death. So no, it is a actually a really fucked up cultural tradition. Young Ainu today typically don't want to see this tradition brought back for a reason.
Without intervention, the bear cub just lives a normal life. With intervention some humans kill its mother and then rear it so they can torture it to death. Its one of those things that is an interesting tradition, but simultaneously distinctly cruel at the end. Tradition is not an excuse to be cruel. That's why the Ainu don't push to get this back the way it used to be. They just want ceremonial representation of the ritual without the whole literal bear torture.
While that sounds sweet, itâs more likely they did it because bigger bear is more meat and more fur than smaller bear.
No, they go in and kill hibernating mothers and take them also. There is a link to an article in this post.
Love and life they would literally torture the bears
The people orphan it. They kill the mother. Thereâs nothing redeeming about this practice. Itâs just cruelty bookending raising a sort of pet.
Of all the horrible shit organized religion has perpetuated, I don't count "raise animal for meat and pelt" as one of th-"it is raised like a human child indoors, and even breast-fed until it teethed" Yeah nah that's pretty weird.
Its the day long arrow torture most people today react to, actually.
Suffocation with logs is also a contributing factor.
The world is a scary place and for a long time our collective knowledge wasnât enough to figure out how it worked, so we made up stories to justify the world. Then once we started using stories and rituals to explain the unexplainable, we started to use them justifying our actions as humans. Once complex societies formed, our ruler used the stories to justify their actions and authority.
Basically you go from thinking the stars are spirits of our ancestors, to are cutting the head off of a goat in order to feed its blood to the ground god, so the crops have a good harvest, and then to giving half of the harvest to the god king for him letting you plow his fields, real quick.
Technically the stars are our ancestors.
There's way worse fuckery in the world.
So only the very worst thing is bad?
"There are worst things." often means "I don't really care."
And dumbest shit.
You eat meat?
That is a really great way to put it.
Well.. it's the only way to justify it.
Thatâs true but this example doesnât come close to âworstâ weâve sacrificed people and killed untold billions in war
I think theyâre getting their bear karma back. Japan has had something like 2000 bear attacks I think in just the last year.
The meat industry is far far worse than this, but yes religion does in fact justify horrible things
If it makes you feel any better, the practice probably began as a replacement for doing the same with human children. It was probably considered incredibly progressive at the time.
The abduction of a young child, treating it like royalty while keeping them drugged or sedated, then ritually torturing them to death was a form of human sacrifice many cultures practiced at one time or another.
I mean if they're eating the bear, and using everything they can from it, I dont see what the problem is
Maybe some traditions should die. Also they donât just kill the bear they toy with it and torture it until it dies.
It's basically just well treated livestock. When they kill it they eat it's meat and use it's pellet so.it isn't wasted, and while it lives it has a good life l.
Yeah, and then they fucking torture it to death.
Read about the killing ceremony
Hate to tell ya but plenty of livestock have names and are fond of their owners until they aren'tÂ
Alright, I read it, and every step of the entire thing is terrible.
Tldr:
God, that's disgusting. The reasoning the Wiki says they claim for doing it doesn't even make sense. 'We believe everything just returns to nature, so...we're going to mutilate an animal slowly and torturously, and we assume the Gods thank us for this! Yay!'
I was wondering what the reason for this "practice" was. Is it really just for religious purposes?
Was hoping it would have been something less disappointing, like related to survival.
I looked into it and there are vary accounts of what the actual practice is. The more gruesome ones seemed to be viewed through 1800's European lens, double translated from a Japanese interpreter, from Ainu Dialects.
The main controversy seems to be the killing. With some saying they used penetrative arrows, to soft blunted arrows with low poundage bows that "did not harm the bear". The Neck Crush seems to be ceremonial, with the bear actually being killed by an elder with a real arrow to the heart. It seems to be great shame to miss this arrow, with the belief that blood cannot touch the ground (must only touch snow) or else it is impure.
If I put on my speculative anthropology hat on, most likely it was a cultural touchstone that was related to survival. It seems to be at its core, a ritualistic hunt. The ceremony provides a way to orient this people's place in the world as a part of the natural world. They did not kill the bear for wealth, but for food, warm clothes to make from its pelt. Hunting any bear is an amazing and vital resource that feeds and clothes them, and they live in some of the harshest climates (with some of them essentially living like inuits/eskimos/northern natives).
Their religion they believed a sort of reincarnation, that spirits came down, take mortal forms and are their actual kin. If the mother bear leaves a cub, they have to give the bear a good life or else it will never return.
In terms of practicality, there is no way for hunter gatherers to continue raising a bear past 3 years, hormones, aggression and the lack of fear of humans means that the tribes that did, probably suffered deaths and bear attacks afterwards.
I would say that 3 years of human protection, choice cuts of meat and fish and shelter is by far better a treatment than a wild bear would. A cub probably who would slowly starved or been cannibalized by an adult male bear. A "ritual hunt" is in no way more painful or crueler than death by adult bear predation, or slow starvation.
Goddamn now I regret doing that side quest in Ghost of Yotei where you rescue a bear cub
Just played that story last night l.
That's a shame, I was hoping it was going to be something to do with Bosco the bear from The Last Airbender
It kind of does, if you know how Bosco met his end in Legend of Korra.
Facts
Jesus fuck, it's my fault for having google
Sorry to break the news. If it makes you feel any better his murderer had all the air forcefully bent out of her lungs until she asphyxiated.
The Gyatso Method
Ya, they also breast fed the baby cubs as part of their sacred ritual until the bears grew teeth
Yeah I found the picture by looking them up.
Thanks for this, i read and learned something new. I appreciate that, also didn't realize Japan has access to bears to begin with. I assumed their small island was devoid of predators but i was wrong.
I mean, Japan isnât THAT small. Itâs about the size (and width for that matter) of the US east coast.Thatâs plenty big enough for large predators to have a niche.
Small is a very relative term. Japan is about one and a half times the size of the UK, and the UK is large enough to have predators.
Jimmy Saville
I always tell people that Japan is very similar to California in a few ways; landmass is similar, a lot of mountains and farms, skiing, and get earthquakes a lot. Just that Japan is more "fragmented", more densely populated, and have bullet trains. Hell, I tell people that the rivalry between Tokyo and Osaka is similar to the rivalry between NorCal and SoCal or San Francisco and Los Angeles. Neither of these California cities see snow, though.
Also, if you followed any news about Japan recently, there have been a few bear attacks in Japan. I believe the bears are black bears, but I am probably wrong. There are also snow monkeys there that I have yet to see.
They used to have their own subspecies of wolf too. Wiped out by humans.Â
Black bears are still around, but they used to have brown bears too.
Multiple people have been killed in japan by bears in the last few months to the point they now have patrols going around to shoot bears
Wow! yeah i paid attention to the culture and other news, but totally missed this. I thought since they are so tight on space that nothing that big could even roam.
Yeah theyâre wearing the Ainu robes
Bears are getting their revenge. 13 people killed in Japan this year.
Ainu that already
Like livestock?
Holy shit I literally just got done playing the mission where they describe this in GoY about 60s ago
Yeah, I'll kill the bastard when it comes to steam
Glancing at this, it made me think of Wojtek: the coolest bear story I ever heard.
the TL:DR version
Many totemic ritual were similar across the globe. Ok, not many used bears, but that's a minor detail.
To be clear. They cared for the bear and gave it a good life and killed it as a spiritual practice to send it to a good place in the afterlife.
Bears were treated like gods. People raised a bear cub, then killed it in a ritual, believing its spirit would go back to the world of the gods...
Kind of an interesting way to keep the species from going extinct but not have to deal with the inconvenience that wild adult bears might present.
Also seems like theyâre essentially domesticating them lol.
This does nothing to help bear populations, they kill the bear without it ever having kids and the safest way to obtain a baby bear is to kill the mom so you are removing 2 bears from the wild population 1 of which will never have a kid and the others kid is the cub you are killing.
Domesticating would require them to breed the bears before slaughtering them which they dont do. They are killing adult bears in order to abduct the baby and then kill it for no reason.
Oh ⌠this is a major face palm moment. I assumed they were waiting until after they had a chance to procreate.
Well, maybe we could frame this as âmaintaining an active social awareness campaignâ?
Donât listen to me Iâm tired lol.
They are very much killing it for a reason. It's a ritual and integral part of the culture. It also provides resources from the tribe as well. To say it's done for no reason is silly.
Iâm sure itâs easier to provide resources to the tribe by using an animal thatâs easier to read (and eats cheaper food and grows faster), like a cow, goat or a chicken.Â
None of those animals are indigenous to Hokkaido. They were a hunter-gatherer society rather than a farming society. Very different cultural contexts, likely driven by a lack of indigenous access to readily-domesticated animals.
Still easier and probably more productive to directly eat the meat they feed to the bear, but imo ritual alone is big enough justification for such rare event.
Torturing an animal is never acceptable. The "it's tradition" excuse is complete bullshit.
My understanding (and this comes entirely from Golden Kamuy so it could be wrong or missing some nuance) is that they used bears as a food source similar to how Native Americans used buffalo and then this is how they would treat the orphaned cubs. So not for nothing, but rather to support an entire culture for hundreds of years. Honestly I found it incredibly beautiful, and one of the most humane ways to treat a cultureâs primary food source for
To add context: after killing a bear that the Ainu typically didnât know beforehand had cubs, they would take the cubs in and raise them. They did this because they knew the cub would not make it on its own in the wild, yet they couldnât abide by domesticating a wild animal that would never find its way once domesticated. Then thereâs an inherent risk of not being able to domesticate the wild out of a wild animal. At a certain point, youâre risking lives.
So, this was their way of honoring the natural path of wild life without dooming the cubs to starvation and a cruel life. The cubs were typically celebrated and a communal responsibility.
what part of this specifically do you find beautiful/humane?
Their reverence for the life of their food and its relationship with their environment, this practice is the alternative to simply letting the cub starve to death when they kill its mother.
Killing bears actually makes them go extinct faster
Plus its tasty
... It's so weird what people get upset about.
Show a picture of a farmer with a cow, or a sheep, or chickens. Why is it "horror" when it's a bear? I mean, unless you're vegan.
I think the horror is that the bear seems to have form a child-parent bond with its caretakers.
The bear gets raised and then sacrificed⌠it is very terrifying and sad
it's terrifying and sad because it's a culture and practice that's foreign to you. at the end of the day, that is an animal they're raising for slaughter so that its meat and body can be used by their community. The same as a small farm raising pigs to ship off to butchers
Both can be wrong and sad. Pig slaughter is horrific.
Yeah...and what do you think happens to a lot of the cute baby animals raised by 4h programs? How many chickens are farm children's favorite pets? How many baby cows are cared for by the ranchers that raise them?
This is absolutely normal... but a bunch of people are so out of touch with the food system that they act like it's abhorrent.
Golden rule of the farm, if it's food don't name it and don't treat it like a pet.
You don't get attached and you don't let the animal get attached to you, basics of farming, if that dies happen it becomes a pet and not husbandry.
that's wild. "raising an animal like your own and then killing it is bad. but treating an animal like an object and then killing it is good."
just a very strange perspective to have of the world. treating the animal worse during its life makes the overall situation more justifiable? oh okay.
you're starting to understand. I warn you though, if you continue to go down this line of inquiry, people will find you annoying
i get what you're saying, but i do want to be clear that i've been vegan for a couple years now. i unfortunately know very well the topics people would rather not hear about haha, despite happily being active participants
[deleted]
Also this:
âThen comes the phase in the ceremony where blunted ceremonial arrows referred to as hana ya (čąç˘; "flower arrows") in Japanese and heper-ay are shot at the bear.[54][47][24] These arrows have wooden hooks attached to the tip so that they may penetrate skin but only lightly. The arrowhead is dyed black and carved with intaglio patterns. Also silk-cloth (saranpe) might be tied to it.[57] If the ceremony arrows happen to stick, it is swept off using a bamboo grass switch or broom (takusa[54]). This portion lasts till sunset, and since both people and animal are exhausted, the bear is led back to the stake to rest.â
From the wiki article
seems, but I don't think that bears are capable of bonding with humans like that
like veal calves?
Two things can be fucked up at once actually
The bears were tortured to death over hours.
The conditions of the vast majority of livestock are torture
Farmers don't spend a day shooting the livestock with partially blunted arrows, wait a day, and then crush it to death.
Instead livestock are often locked in hellish factory farms, male chicks are brutally murdered right after birth and other horrible shit. Sure that one part of the practice (if wikipedia is correct) is certainly more cruel way of execution than some others. But honestly there are way more important animal right issues than this
Farmers instead inflict torture upon their livestock over their entire lives
My guy, ethical farmers (note the distinction here, not factory farmers) are not torturing their livestock for hours before brutally killing it in the name of some kooky ass religious bullshit. Be a vegan all you want and judge other humans for being evolutionarily omnivorous or whatever else makes you feel morally superior, but this is downright disgusting and cruel:
https://preview.redd.it/rh0quokzn47g1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=22869098dba08ba3c3acfb530ecb32f4a8ada811
"ethical farmers" are not nearly as ethical as people make them out to be
See, we farm those animals for food and many other things, hence why they are kept as livestock. That has a practical reason.
Rasing and killing a bear because you think a gods spirit is trapped in it had no practical reason.
Dont really see how its weird that people find that pretty fucked up.
Why does people being disturbed by this trigger you so much? Am I to understand that if your neighbors were to ritually sacrifice their golden retriever not only would you be unconcerned, but you would be upset if it bothered anyone else?
I mean those are horrible too
Vegan, and it's all horrifying.
Because they torture it before killing it?
And woody version instead of mr. incredible.
https://preview.redd.it/s4if4hhe347g1.png?width=1152&format=png&auto=webp&s=8b1cda35f6a40317ae0891695726a25faa4a9a1b
Um, hello?
Hello???
I said "and woody version instead mr. incredible".
Have to agree.
I guess itâs all sad if you think long enough.
This seems was more respectful and contemplative than how that Chuck roast got into my fridge
Depends on the farming practices where you live and if you buy free range.
And respectful and contemplative animal cruelty isn't any better than disrespectful an thoughless kinds.
Well, in this case the bear is more of a pet, like a dog. Do you kill your pet dogs after the first year of their life?
I don't, but I would be a fucking hypocrite if someone raised a dog to be slaughtered and it made me mad.
"Its so weird what people get upset about."
Like posts on reddit?
Valid.
Being vegan gives one the power to chadyes many arguments.
Kinda slashes the Gordian knot
I think vegans are idiots, but at least they aren't being hypocritical about this one.
Anyone who eats meat that has issues with an animal being raised for a purpose, slaughtered, then eaten is... well.
I don't think vegans are idiots per se, but I don't follow those same principes myself and hold a fundamentally different perspective at this point in my life. That being said, I do think they are the only ones who can really talk here. I guess vegetarians as well? But, either way, the grand majority of people aren't spending $30 on a 2lb chicken from their local farmer. They're being the $6 one from Safeway that's on sale and they just try not to think too hard about what they must be doing to those chickens to be able to sell them for so cheap (it's nothing good). Plus, half of these people don't have a deeply held cultural tie to chicken that they would identify with; they just don't don't want to have to get their protein from beans and tofu or whatever, which I do get. Don't get me wrong, plenty of people do have that tie or have specific dietary needs, but most sort of don't. Yet, how many of those same people will not hesitate to turn their noses up at these people?
There's just a whole lot of blinding hypocrisy from veganism, but it's a different hypocrisy, but you're not wrong, and it's the point I'm trying to make that i'm being both upvoted and downvoted for in different sections.
It's fucking hilarious to me how reddit works.
I used to be vegan for years and my feelings are that veganism itself isn't necessarily hypocritical itself (or at least, not any more hypocritical than most other people's behaviors and ideologies surrounding food and animals and such), but there are certainly a ton of non self reflecting vegans out there that are very hypocritical as people. That being said, I entirely agree with your point and it's one of those things I feel like perhaps people who are more directly involved in obtaining their own meat are inherently aware of? Essentially, people in most of the United States at least don't want to change their entire way of life surrounding food, clothing, makeup, etc or break the bank because of how the chickens "feel" but because it's someone else doing the killing it feels not as bad, yet these people are doing something they've been doing for hundreds of years and are expected to let it all go because it hurts the bear. I read the wiki, it sounds like they're just a bear hunting population and after killing the mom for food, they also take up the cubs who would have probably died on their own anyways tbh. Maybe they also want to be able to use the same products and eat the same food and perform the same cultural rituals that has sustained them for generations? It's just they don't get to pay someone else to do the raising and killing for them or something.
Sad as fuck. But the wiki articles translation of Iomante as âto send itâ is honestly fucking hilarious. You send it little bear bro, just wish you got to swipe some necks first.
You all know we also raise animals to a certain age and then kill them? Except our factory chickens don't enjoy their short lives nearly as much as this bear probably did.
They also ceremonially tortured the bear for a day long âfestivalâ prior to squeezing its head between two logs to kill it. So, a bit different.
Have you seen the living conditions of your food? Fuck a head, their whole body is squeezed between two chickens their whole lives before we kill it. So, not so different.
There's no difference between being stuck between two chickens vs having your head crushed by two logs? I think that's super different
In short: bear will be sacrificed
The Iyomante ritual was a traditional Ainu ceremony in northern Japan (mainly Hokkaido) where a bear, raised by the community and seen as a divine being (kamuy), was ritually killed so its spirit could be sent back to the spirit world with prayers and offerings. The real ceremony with a live bear isnât practiced anymore, but symbolic versions still happen today. The last known cases of actual bear sacrifice were in the 1950s.
Ngl thereâs a lot of handwringing in this thread on how a hunter-gatherer society without access to arable land or readily-domesticated animals integrated their food source into their culture 1000+ years ago, from people who can DoorDash a cheeseburger in 20 minutes đ¤ˇđźââď¸
For real. Yes they killed the mom bear but⌠for food? And clothing? Not to just randomly steal babies!
Exactly! Like, Iâm sure there could be some point about how they were slow to modernization or something but as an American Iâm incredibly hesitant to criticize another historically persecuted indigenous population given my governmentâs history with the Native Americans and their buffalo food source
Japan had a very unique route to modernization and immediately turned to imperialism once the country did. Very interesting historically
They kill it :(
Iâve seen Golden Kamuy I think they raise the baby bear and then kill it
Oh shit its not Wojtek
If i recall the game suggests they adopt orphan cubs not kill mothers
Yeah, the game definitely softens it a bit, implying the cub would not survive without its mother anyway, so at least it's getting good treatment for a few years before its size makes it too dangerous.
I was fascinated and looked it up, and was pretty bummed to learn they would kill the mother bears to take the cubs.
Still a fascinating ritual, and culture.
Paddington?
Where do they get the cubs from?
this is so sad
Isnât this a ainu tradition of sacrificing a bear cub to the god kimun kamui? I learned about it from housamo.
The early concept art for Guardians of the Galaxy
He was the king
Im rewatching Golden Kamuy right now. Like 95% of this anime is centered around Ainu. When i saw this image, the clothes and a baby bear, i thought "there is no fucking way". But, as others mentioned its Ainu. A japanese tribe.
The whole idea of the OPs meme is that they are going to kill that baby bear. In the anime they also explore this problem:
People kill the mother bear in self defense (even though the main character provoked the bear to attack these people), the bear dies. The bear had a cub. MC brings it back to Ainu. He remarks that he will be released when he is of sufficient age. Ainu say that by tradition they will have to kill him after a while to please the gods or whatever. It will also be able to rejoin his mother in afterlife.
For people who enjoy watching anime i REALLY REALLY suggest watching Golden Kamuy. Its a perfect ratio of seriousness and comedy. Just dont be discouraged by the bears. Youll know what i mean after the first episode xd
Poor bear
Wojtek ist that you?
I need to replay yotei man
Went to Sapporo museum....
Bearcub grows up a certain age in the Ainu village then they sacrifice to their gods
Hokkaido, Japan
Stupid ass rituals!
Jokes on them, the bears are getting their revenge now.
What pointless stupid shitty ritual!âI am glad many of these old religions from this one to the Mayansâ are dead and gone. More still remain around the world, sadly.
Please Donât tell me they grape a bear. Reddit please donât
I played Ghosts of Yotei, I KNOWđđđ
Aw. I thought this was gonna be Wojtek....
They're ainu, native japanese tribes who, when found a cub bear, they took care of him for around 3 years, then sacrificed him for the gods. They believed almost every animal was some god disguised. The gods go to earth to "play" with humans and are hunted down, rewarding them with meat and leather.
The sacrifice ritual for the bear was surrounded by good food as offerings. So when they returned, they would tell the other goods the earth was a good place and they would keep coming.
Humans are just plain evil.