October 1, 2018
To:
Mr. Yoshihiro Hayashi, Director, National Museum of Nature and Science
From:
Yuji Shimizu (Co-Chair, Hokkaido University Declassified Document Research Group)
Yoshihiko Tonohira (Co-Chair, Hokkaido University Declassified Document Research Group)
Ryukichi Ogawa (Plaintiff in the court case for the return of Ainu remains)
Hiromichi Kamiya (Kotan Association)
Kimura Fumio (Member, Biratori Ainu Association)
Yoshio Yamazaki (Deputy Chair, Kotan Association)
Tsugio Kuzuno (Deputy Chair, Kotan Association)
Tsutomu Takatsuki (Administrative Director, Kotan Association)
Satoshi Hatakeyama (Chair, Monbetsu Ainu Association)
Recursion to answer
In May this year, we received an answer from your institution (27 July 27, your ref. 39) to the questions we sent you. We have reviewed the answers you provided, but there are numerous concerns about which we have not yet received a satisfactory explanation. We are therefore sending you further questions, and request your response.
1. In the article “Ethnic Derivation of the Ainu Inferred from Ancient Mitochondrial DNA Data”, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (issue 165), Shinoda, Adachi et al. discuss research using the mitochondrial DNA of Ainu people. In our previous questions sent in May, we wrote “Shinoda and Adachi should have sought the consent of Ainu who are members of the relevant Kotan... but both researchers performed DNA analysis on these remains without obtaining such consent. Does this not contravene your research institutions’ research ethics regulations?”
The response from your institution states: “in choosing the remains to be studied, we acted with the understanding of the Utari Association of Hokkaido and of the Hokkaido Education Committee”.
We had already noted in our original questions to you that “it may be the case that both researchers have obtained consent from the Ainu Association of Hokkaido before the start of their research, but the Ainu Association of Hokkaido is a voluntary grouping of Ainu and entirely distinct from the members of the Kotan where the human remains were excavated.” Moreover, the Hokkaido Board of Education had no authority to grant permission for this research.
Your reply therefore ignores the context of the question, and can only be described as insincere.
In 2014, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare issued their "Ethical Guidelines on Medical Research Involving Humans".
These guidelines state that in researching materials obtained from human beings, it is a requirement that the informed consent of the subjects of the research be obtained. In the case of deceased persons, “consent by a representative” is acceptable, but the representative must be “a person who is considered to be able to express the wishes and interests of the research subject”. In addition, researchers need to explain in their research plan how they selected the representative/s of the research subject/s.
Although the two researchers conducted their project prior to the issuing of Ministries’ guidelines, it should surely have been natural for the researchers to follow the behaviour prescribed in the guidelines as a matter of their own ethical judgment.
The subjects from whom the researchers acquired the DNA samples are deceased Ainu, belonging to the Kotan of the 23 villages, towns or cities where human remains were buried, among them Urakawa Town and Date City. Researchers seeking to study Ainu remains have a responsibility carefully to explain the research use of these remains to the Ainu of the area who are the descendants of the deceased research subjects, and to obtain their consent. Neither Adachi and Shinoda can be said to have made efforts to gain consent of the local Ainu descendants of the dead. The issue is not how great or small the damage to the bones of the ancestors was. How would you feel if the remains of your ancestors were damaged by others? Would you not immediately visit the site and apologize? We would like to ask whether you have any intention to do so.
In your response, you wrote that “the research only used remains whose provenance was known”. If this is the case, both researchers must know the “provenance” of the remains which were “entrusted to Sapporo Medical University by the Hokkaido Education Committee”. If so, when, where and how were the 115 Ainu remains shown in the list excavated? Please inform us about this.
If the provenance of the remains is clearly known, you should immediately go to the site where they were excavated and give a detailed explanation to the local Ainu who are the descendants of the deceased.
Information on DNA is extremely important personal information, and is information to be handled with special care. How is the DNA data collected currently being managed and kept confidential? The handling of this information should also be explained to Ainu descendants of the affected Kotan. Once again, we strongly insist that you should visit these sites and provide a sincere and polite explanation to the Ainu who are the descendant of the deceased.
2. In our questions to you, on the basis of the report issued by the Urakawa Town Board of Education, we noted that the remains of 34 humans excavated at the Urakawa Toei site were post-Meiji remains from the modern era. Thus the researchers’ treatment of their samples from these remains as being from the Edo period is mistaken. We pointed out that “Shinoda and Adachi, in asserting an Edo Era provenance for Ainu human remains which are in fact modern, and should not even be designable as cultural property, have conducted DNA research based on a spurious premise”. We wrote, “does this not mean that the basis of their research article is flawed, and that the article should be withdrawn?”.
In response to this comment, your institution replied that the remains have been judged to be from the Edo period on the basis of DNA analysis. You stated that, as a result of examination of the “mitochondrial DNA haplogroup” of the 32 skeletons from Toei, it had been determined that only one skeleton showed influence from Mainland Japanese. You wrote that “this is an outcome of our research”, but that you had concluded from it that “these are remains of Ainu from the Edo period.”
This answer makes an elementary logical mistake from the standpoint of research. It seeks to use the conclusions of the research to prove the research premise. The aim of the research article is to examine data from Ainu human remains of the Edo period, and thus to investigate the genetic makeup of the Ainu. Therefore, before the analysis started, it was surely necessary for the researchers to confirm that their research material was actually from the Edo period. However, the response from your institution uses the low level of influence from Mainland Japanese to conclude that the remains originate from the Edo period. As a result, your defence of the legitimacy of the article becomes a matter of circular reasoning, as follows:
Why are we able to assert that they (the Ainu remains excavated at the Toei site) are from the Edo period? → Because the genetic influence of Japanese is small → Why is the influence of Japanese small? → Because the remains are from the Edo period →
Surely this is a flaw on which no academic article can be sustained?
From the proposition that “there was little influence from Mainland Japanese people during or before the Edo period”, it is possible to conclude that “if the influence of Mainland Japanese people is high, the remains are not from the Edo period or earlier”. But there is no logical confirmation of the converse proposition that “since the influence of Japanese people is small, the remains must date to the Edo period or earlier”. The research tells us nothing about the Meiji and post-Meiji periods. There may well have been areas where the genetic influence of Japanese people was small even after Meiji era.
Have any previous researches been undertaken which show that, in the Toei area, modern era Ainu human remains show a large genetic influence from majority Japanese? Please inform us about this.
3. We pointed out that the pottery and stone tools from the Toei site are from the early Jomon period, while the Ainu remains excavated at the same time are modern, and noted that it was therefore incorrect to certify the human remains as “cultural property”. Your institution replied that “from the start until now, many researches have treated the human remains from the Toei site as being from the Early Modern period. Respecting these earlier researches, we conducted our research treating these remains as Early Modern”.
Please let us know the nature of the prior research that has been undertaken on this, giving the names of the author/s, title of the article/s, journal/s where the research was published, and location of the relevant information within the article/s. Your institution states, “we believe that in future, studies from archaeological and many other perspectives will be undertaken to determine whether the remains from the Toei site contain post-Meiji material”. This can be understood to be an acknowledgement that there is a problem with the research material. That being the case, surely the conclusion that “we have no intention of withdrawing the article” demonstrates a lack sincerity in the approach to the research. Your institution asserts that the research was “conducted on the basis of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”.
How can research which extracts research material from human remains without obtaining the consent of members of the affected Kotan, and also contains problems in the dating of the research material, be said to “respect the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”? We cannot accept research which seeks to justify its own results by trampling on the right of Ainu to memorialize their deceased ancestors. We feel deep anger at the fact that that the researchers, having damaged the ancestral remains without permission, show no signs of remorse.
We urge you sincerely to come face-to-face with the Ainu who are the descendants of the Kotan from which the remains were removed. We anticipate your sincere response.
These are our questions. We request a response by the end of October at the latest.
Tadao Miura,
Hokkaido University Declassified Document Research Group Office Secretariat,
c/o Ainu People’s Information Center
3-39-8 Miyano-cho Rumoi 077-0032
Phone/Fax 0164-43-0128
Questionnaire to University of Yamanashi & National Museum of Nature and Science.May 14, 2018
THE REPLIES from University of Yamanashi & National Museum of Nature and Science. July 30, 2018
