Suppression, Revival and Present Practice

Iyomante and Ainu religious and cultural practice more broadly came under sustained pressure during Japan's modern assimilation policies, particularly following the 1899 Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act, which pushed Ainu communities toward Japanese language, agriculture and custom and treated indigenous Ainu practice as an obstacle to be overcome rather than a tradition to be respected, a documented history of state suppression that closely parallels the treatment of indigenous religious practice by settler states elsewhere in the world.

Iyomante in its traditional bear raising form became rare through the twentieth century, and by recent decades is performed only occasionally, chiefly as a deliberate act of cultural preservation and revival by Ainu organisations and communities working to sustain a heritage that came close to being lost outright, rather than as the regular ceremonial practice it once was across Ainu settlements. Japan formally recognised the Ainu as an indigenous people only in 2008, and further legislation in 2019 acknowledged Ainu cultural and linguistic rights more fully, a late and still incomplete national reckoning that Ainu cultural organisations continue to press further, with ceremonies including iyomante, performed in careful, deliberately non-exploitative and community-led settings, forming part of the wider contemporary effort to keep Ainu religious tradition genuinely alive rather than reduced to a museum exhibit.