Iomante

Iomante, sometimes written as Iyomante is an Ainu ceremony of Hokkaido and Sakhalin in which a hand-raised brown bear cub is ceremonially killed, under the notion that the soul merely returns to its god-world. The physical body of the bear god is considered merely to be his "disguise", and the pelt and meat harvested are accepted as gifts that the god has left in gratitude for the ceremonious hospitality it received.
The term in some circles is used in the narrow sense of this elaborate ceremony of "sending" fostered animals, as opposed to more general "bear sendings", and the simpler rite performed for the bear or other game animals taken in the wild may be referred to as opunire or hopunire.
The iomante can technically apply to other animals such as owls, foxes, and raccoon dogs for special rites, and the Ainu home does accommodate for setting up the nurusan for these animals.

Nomenclature

The term iomante derives from i + oman + te, thus meaning "to make that go", hence "to send it".
Technically, the term can generally apply to any game or prey, such as foxes, raccoon dogs, or owls.
While John Batchelor glossed "iyomande" as "sacrifice", he takes pains to explain this translation superficially transmits less than the meaning the Ainu has given it, noting that it is not "sacrifice to gods, but an offering to the victim himself". The meaning of the sending is better explained below.
Often, or at least in certain areas, the term iomante is reserved strictly to the "sending" that is performed during the special ritual that involves the bear raised in captivity, while the term opunire or hopunire is used for the more informal sending ritual performed on the bear killed at the hunting ground. The term hopunire breaks down into hop 'buttocks' + puni 'to lift something' + re ; hence it means "to cause it to be lifted, or cause it to start off and leave".
In the modern era, iomante generally refers to the sending performed on the brown bear, the only bear native to Hokkaido where the Ainu people were all eventually driven.
Also, when sending rather trivial small creatures, the term iwakte might be use. Although iwakte normally refers to the rite of sending off the soul of broken tools or vessels, the sending of a squirrel or hare may be called an iwakte.

Practice

A bear cub is captured and raised in its pen or cage, until the ceremony of iomante, in which it is ritually killed. However, the "bear god" is merely considered to have returned to his god-world, and his carnal body being merely his outer shell the pelt and meat for food that is harvested is interpreted to be a gift from the bear god in exchange for the ceremonious hospitality it receives at home or in the iomante ceremony.
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. The bear is skinned, and the meat is distributed amongst the villagers. Its bare skull is dressed in flowery wood-shavings, placed on a pole, which is then dressed up. This "doll" is an object of worship for the villagers. The bear has now been "sent off".

Capture, caging, raising

As winter ends around February, a bear cub is captured from the open field, or having been born during its mother's hibernation. The mother bear is killed, and the cub is brought back to the village to be raised in captivity. In the beginning, it is raised like a human child indoors, and even breast-fed until it teethed. After it is weaned and grows larger, it is moved to a cage barred with logs known as heper-set. It is treated with high-quality food as behooves a guest, practically meals fit for humans. The fostering lasts usually until it reaches 1, 2, or up to 3 years of age.
When the bear-sending festival season arrives, it is taken out of its cage. Thus a specialized cord called the heper-tush is dangled from between the log bars, and when the loop snags around the neck, and the bear is bound in tasuki fashion, then the lower logs are dislodged, so that the cub can be led out.

Festival grounds

The festival grounds are typically set up right outside a home. The coaxing of the bear cub out its cage may be conducted before the audience at the festival ground. The woman clap to rhythm raucously but melancholically, singing the 'upopo and dancing the rimse to entertain the bear. After the bear is bound, it is made to wear a ponpake
The bear cub is brought to the open square, and tethered to a stake driven into the ground. The stake is referred to as a shutu-ni a "club-tree" The tip of the stake is decorated with inau wood-shavings.

Ceremonial arrow-shooting and slaying

Then comes the phase in the ceremony where blunted ceremonial arrows referred to as hana ya in Japanese and heper-ay are shot at the bear. 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 might be tied to it. If the ceremony arrows happen to stick, it is swept off using a bamboo grass switch or broom. This portion lasts till sunset, and since both people and animal are exhausted, the bear is led back to the stake to rest. Slaughter involves crushing it to death by clasping its neck between two or more logs. This killing contraption is called rek-nunpa-ni. If the cub's size has become too unwieldy, an adept elder is chosen to shoot it through the heart with a real arrow. Batchelor witnessed some of the hardiest men engage in drinking the warm blood, apparently to have courage imparted on them. When the slaughter is over, someone shoots an arrow in the sky signaling the end. The girl who had been assigned to raise the bear is known to cry out in grief.
The brown bear is then butchered so the meat can eventually be served,.

Offering-place

On the festival grounds, the nusasan is set up where special inau wood-shaving sticks are propped up, and laid out with nikap-umbe. Various offerings from, quiver, sitoki, armor, and sintoko. Also food items such as sito, dried fish, together with ceremonial arrows are bound together inside a rolled-up ornamental mat, so that the god can shoulder it as a take-home gift. Batchelor learned the name of the take-home gifts to be imoka-sike and describes it as strung-up millet cakes.
The bear is laid flat, and arrows or quivers filled with dried salmon is hung around the neck, and the ponpake apron is laid atop it. Alcoholic drink is offered in a kip.

Walnut-tossing

In the modern-day iomante, after the bear has been slaughtered, there occurs the event of so-called "walnut-tossing", which is plainly similar to the Japanese custom of conducted as shrines, and this aspect has been regarded as a likely borrowed piece of culture due to contact between the Ainu and Japanese.
In the bear-sending performed at, Tokachi Subprefecture, after the bear is slaughtered some men climb atop the cage and throw walnuts and chestnuts to the crowd. And during the ceremony in Suwankotan formerly of Nishibetsu,, after the bear is butchered, the elders throw walnuts and thick cuts of dried salmon, which the people vie with each other to collect. A 1920s book also records the distributing of walnuts and mikan oranges.
A much older record survives in Murakami Shimanojō 's painting Ezo-shima kikan that chestnuts and kibi were distributed.

Overall flow after slaughter

There follows the process of trying to remove the fleshed head from the entire fur-pelt with the head part still attached. That head is then "cleaned". The skull is then taken indoors to have un-memke, after which the skull is moved out through the "window of gods" and affixed to a pole, which propped up in the decorated nusasan area. Now the hopunire of the head is considered complete, and the ceremonial part of the iomante is virtually done as well, with the carousels to follow until the third night.

Un-memke

The skull decorating or un-memke is typically performed indoors in front of the altar, but may be performed outdoors at the kamuy-nusa adorned with wood-shavings called inau-kike, inaw-kike in Ainu or kezuri-bana in Japanese. Cavities like the eye-sockets are filled with these shavings, and other decor is made, differing depending on the region.
It is noted that some pieces of skin or flesh may remain on the skull which will eventually decay away after it is propped up on display, but as illustrations show, the bear's ears remain attached, and this is deliberately done so in some regions. Thus in the aforementioned Suwankotan hamlet, it had been customary to leave the snout portion beyond the eyes intact on the skull, until this was discontinued due to mercantile reasons of preserving the hide's fetch price. But the custom of keeping the ears intact has remained. Furthermore, a film of subcutaneous connective tissue is crafted into a torii-shaped ribbon, and is then wound in shavings, to form a sike-tar for carrying his takehome gifts back.
The skull is placed in front of the hearth, and here too offerings are made: necklace, shito dumplings, bows, decorated sword, etc. The sapanpe or ritual crown used by the elder may also be offered, and the final farewell prayer kamui-nomi is pronounced. A portion of the foodstuff such as the shito dumplings, the clouded sake, and meshi has been set aside specifically for offerings, and separated from what people are allowed to consume.
When the decorating is done, the skull is moved out through "window of gods" or "spirit window", and affixed securely to the yuk-sapa-o-ni, or keomane-ni.
The skull and pole might then get "dressed up" by having the ponpake cape/apron suspended from the head, or be made to wear a kapar-amip.

Interpretations

The bear god when freshly slaughtered still has his soul abiding, and this must be separated and released for its passage back home to the gods dominion, and this is the purpose of the festival. The religious interpretation is that the god assumes the guise of a brown bear to visit the human world, and after receiving hospitality for a time from the humans, the humans conduct a parting farewell carousel, to send him back to the god world. The flesh and hide gained from the slaughter is considered the god's parting gift, and reward for the iomante which was the act of humans entertaining the god. As for the take-home gift for the bear god, this was already discussed above. The ceremonial "flower-arrows" are also part of the gift, and according to Ainu belief, when these arrows are swatted down with the takusa broom and broken into shaft and point, the soul of the arrow is separated, and becomes able to be taken to the kamui world.
There is also the interpretation that when the bear god is entertained in this way, he is encouraged to return once again, and the Ainu people are blessed with plentiful hunting harvest.
So the gift to the bear-god is in part a bribe to induce its return. In fact, during the iomante, the reciting of the yukar is deliberately interrupted at climactic spot, so that the frustrated god will return to hear the rest of it.
Similar rites are known among the hunter people of the taiga terrain of the Eurasian polar regions, such as the Nivkh people around Sakhalin.
The prefectural government of Hokkaido issued a notification signed by the governor in 1955 that declared iomante a "savage rite", that de facto banned the practice. The notification was revoked in April 2007.

Progress of the rite

The shogunate official Murakami Shimanojō pen named Hata Awakimaro painted Ezo-shima kikan annotated with inscriptions. This is perhaps the oldest documentary attestation to "iomante".
The painting has been recopied many times over by a number of artists.
It contains 5 scenes relating to the bear-sending ceremony:

Inau-making and people surrounding the caged cub
Cub being shot with flower-arrows
Cub being choked by logs
Arranging the bear on the altar and offering prayer .
Banquet inviting Japanese officials

Non-bear sending

As for iomante conducted on animals other than the bear, sending of the kotan-kamuy is held to be of importance in certain areas.
Owl-sending is also known as kamuy-hopunire. and the sending of Blakiston's fish owl in particular has been designated mosir-kor-kamuy-hopunire.
Also there is iomante conducted for the orca. The brown bear, the kotan-guarding owl, and the orca which are honored with the iomante ceremony are considered to be kamuy of higher order.

Early history and origins

On the origins of iomante, scholar Takao Ikeda recently wrote a survey on the various theories by scholars.
proposed the theory that iomante was introduced from the medieval Okhotsk culture.
Whereas Hiroshi Udagawa delivered the opinion that while the simpler forms of bear-sending is archaeologically evidenced in skulls found at 15th century sending sites, the "iomante in the stricter sense" probably didn't develop until the latter half of the 18th century, so the older culture cannot be directly linked.
Ainu history professor Kazuyuki Nakamura assessed that the iomante ceremony was already established in the time before Shakushain's revolt,, since an altercation developed between Shakushain and another chief over whether the former was willing to part with one of the two bear cubs he obtained.
Early recorded instances where the Ezo people conducted an iomante type bear-sending occurred is documented in 's Ezo-dan hikki and Sakakura Genjirō's Hokkai zuihitsui, stating the Ainu fostered the bear by having a woman suckle the cub, slaughtering it within the year, and holding a banquet. However, these Edo Period Japanese writers regarded the conduct as strictly a venal enterprise to fatten the cub and harvest its meat and gall bladder, so the sending aspect is not clearly elaborated. Perhaps the earliest explicit mention of iomante occurs in the in Hata Awakimaro's Ezo kenbunki followed by Ezo-shima kikan already detailed above.
A heretofore overlooked piece of evidence according to is the mention of iomante being conducted by the Ainu in Kitashiretoko Peninsula, Karafuto in the 1643 voyage logs of Maarten Gerritszoon Vries.。

Okhotsk derivation theory

Due to the lack of archaeological evidence in Satsumon culture strata for any sending rite ceremonies among the Ainu in Japan, there has developed the view that the simpler sending and iomante was probably transmitted from the Okhotsk culture, which is associated with the Nivkh people, indirectly via the Tobinitai culture. There certainly was a cultural transmission of some sort, and the change from earthenware to metalware usage marked the advent of the so-called "Ainu Culture", dated to approximately the 1450–1667 period, and while it may be possible that a field-type sending rite had been transmitted in that time frame, iomante in the narrower sense of "cub-fostering type sending" is not evident until the so-called "New Ainu Culture" age, Udagawa has argued one cannot establish a direct connection, with some other explanation needed to bridge the gap.

Jōmon culture derivation theory

Another hypothesis is that the wild boar rites conducted during the Jōmon period eventually evolved into a sending rite for bears.
Another archaeologist, had already floated the idea that pork-farming was transmitted from the Mohe people on the Asian continent, and this eventually developed in to bear-raising and bear ceremony.

Reconstruction of the past

It is believed that in the past, iomante could be performed to send back the kamui of any game animal hunted and killed. In particular, even though the iomante has generally become associated with sending brown bears, when the Ainu still lived in parts of the Honshu mainland they could have only hunted the Asian black bear, and that bear species must have been used.

Legality

Hokkaido encouraged local governments to abolish the Iomante in 1955, but the prefecture-issued notice was revoked in April 2007, because the Ministry of the Environment of Japan announced that animal ceremonies were generally regarded as an exception of the animal rights law of Japan in October 2006.

Museum displays

Iomante videos and artifacts are on display at the Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum in Nibutani, Hokkaidō, as well as the Ainu Museum in Shiraoi-cho, Hokkaidō.

Audiovisual resources

Hokkaido University Botanical Gardens has in its archives on the northern people a footage of bear-sending made by Hokkaido University during the pre-war period when it was called an Imperial University.
A 1977 bear-sending in Nibutani conducted under the supervision of Kayano Shigeru was filmed by folklorist under the title Iyomante kuma okuri.
In January 1985, Kawakami District revived the iomante after a 29-year hiatus, whose footage was published in laser disc format unde the title Sekai minzoku ongaku taikei1: KIta/Higashi Ajia hen.