NEW YORK - Ainu musician Oki returned to the city where he first began exploring his identity, bringing with him a sound that blends the traditional music of Japan's indigenous people with influences ranging from rock and reggae to African rhythms.
In early June, the sound of the tonkori, a traditional Ainu stringed instrument, reverberated through a concert hall in New York as Oki, 69, performed with the Oki Dub Ainu Band, the group he leads.
His music fuses traditional Ainu music with genres such as rock, reggae and Afrobeat. Returning to the city that had prompted him to reflect on his Ainu roots, he performed the distinctive style he continues to refine.
"I'm back home, New York City!" he called out during the concert. The packed hall erupted in cheers.
Oki was 4 when his parents divorced, and he grew up in Kanagawa Prefecture near Tokyo with his mother and stepfather. He did not learn that his biological father was Ainu until he was 22 and studying metalwork at the Tokyo University of the Arts.
Although he visited relatives in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, he felt like an outsider. He was neither "fully Japanese" nor Ainu, and struggled deeply, feeling lost and unable to define his own identity.
He had aspired to a career in contemporary art but could not find a form of expression that felt truly his own. At age 30, he moved to New York without a concrete plan.
While visiting art exhibitions, he met people from indigenous communities. He traveled to Arizona to visit one of them -- a Navajo artist -- and was struck by their traditional way of life. The experience deepened his awareness of his own roots.
He studied film production in the United States with the intention of building a career in the field, but a Japanese film project he was involved in fell through. He decided to start his life over in Hokkaido.
There, he encountered the tonkori, a five-stringed instrument passed down among Ainu who had migrated from Sakhalin to Hokkaido. At the time, there were no players left, and efforts to revive the instrument were just beginning within the Ainu community.
"Maybe this was the way I could find my own voice," he thought.
Through trial and error, he learned to play the instrument using postwar recordings as a guide and began composing songs in the Ainu language. He combined the electrified tonkori with bass and drums, blending it with reggae and African music he had experienced live in New York.
Today, Oki enjoys international recognition and is invited to world music festivals across the globe.
"I don't want being Ainu to be the first thing people associate me with," he said.
He sees interest in the Ainu -- who have historically faced discrimination -- as separate from appreciation of his own music.
"People who are only interested in the story of a young man of Ainu heritage playing the tonkori aren't really interested in my music," he said.
At the same time, he recognizes the importance of the Ainu telling their own stories.
Last year, he made his directorial debut with the documentary "Everyday Ainu," produced by the National Ainu Museum in Shiraoi, Hokkaido.
Speaking at an event at the Japan Society in New York the day after the concert, he said he wanted to make a film that tells "our own story," noting that many documentaries about the Ainu had been made by outsiders.
