Portfolio categories: <span>Writing</span>

Food as Contact Zone: Navigating the Ainu/Wajin Encounter in Golden Kamuy (2014-)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role and representation of food in the Japanese manga and anime series Golden Kamuy (Gōruden Kamui, 2014-present) by Satoru Noda. While ostensibly an action-packed narrative about the hunt for indigenous Ainu gold, Golden Kamuy has earned a reputation among fans as a gurume, or gourmet, manga, and anime. Cooking scenes of both Ainu and Wajin food feature prominently throughout the series. This paper analyzes the rhetorical role of food in the fictional narrative and its connection to official and unofficial ideologies about ethnic harmony between Ainu and Wajin communities in Japan.

Citation

Spiker, Christina M. “Food as Contact Zone: Navigating the Ainu/Wajin Encounter in Golden Kamuy (2014-).” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 9, no. 2 (Fall 2023): 245-271. https://doi.org/10.1353/vrg.2023.a903029

Thirty-six Views of One World Trade Center in Context: The Symbolic Power of Landscape

Citation

Spiker, Christina M. “Thirty-Six Views of One World Trade Center in Context: The Symbolic Power of Landscape.” For Thirty-six Views of One World Trade Center: Stone Lithographs by Brenda Berkman. Catalogue. Northfield, MN: Engage Print, 2021.

You can purchase the catalogue here or read a .PDF version of the essay through the Flaten Art Museum.

The Indigenous Shôjo: Transmedia Representations of Ainu Femininity in Japan’s Samurai Spirits, 1993–2019

Citation

Spiker, Christina M. “The Indigenous Shôjo: Transmedia Representations of Ainu Femininity in Japan’s Samurai Spirits, 1993–2019.” Journal of Anime and Manga Studies 1 (2020): 138-168.

“Civilized” Men and “Superstitious” Women: Visualizing the Hokkaido Ainu in Isabella Bird’s Unbeaten Tracks, 1880

Abstract

Open any modern travel guide on Japan and you will likely find mention of Victorian explorer, writer, and naturalist Isabella Lucy Bird (1851–1904). Known for her travels throughout the United States, Australia, and Asia, Bird’s frequent publications and vibrant lecture circuit made her a household name in nineteenth-century Great Britain. Her two-volume work Unbeaten Tracks in Japan is unique in its detailed, subjective account of the customs and manners of the Ainu—the indigenous minority dwelling in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of the Japanese archipelago. This essay treats Bird’s travelogue as a visual object to analyze the role of photography and illustration in relation to the text. I argue that by adopting an art historical framework, we gain a unique perspective on Bird’s significant role in constructing the ubiquitous Ainu stereotype by reinforcing prescribed gender roles for Ainu men and women. This essay examines how photography taken by male photographers living in Japan, such as Baron Raimund von Stillfried (1839–1911) was translated into woodcut engravings and then printed in a travelogue written by a woman. This process raises questions regarding gender, medium, and the role of realism in a new transnational economy of Ainu images consumed by Victorian audiences.

Citation

Spiker, Christina M. “‘Civilized’ Men and ‘Superstitious’ Women: Visualizing the Hokkaido Ainu in Isabella Bird’s Unbeaten Tracks, 1880.” In Gender, Continuity, and the Shaping of Modernity in the Arts of East Asia, 16^th–20th Centuries, edited by Lara Blanchard and Kristen Chiem, 287-315. Leiden: Brill, 2017.