About TDF Session 210
More details on the session and the Zoom link available on Registration.
About Yuichiro Yamada
filmmaker
The Biratori Ainu Culture Promotion Corporation
Hokkaido, Japan
Yuichiro Yamada is a filmmaker based in Hokkaido, Japan.
After graduating from Ritsumeikan University’s Faculty of Law in 2004, he completed his studies at the Cinema Department of Binghamton University, State University of New York, in 2006. He later pursued documentary studies at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, completing his graduate program in 2010. He began filmmaking in Hokkaido in 2011.
Since 2018, he has been producing 10-minute short documentaries on Yahoo! JAPAN’s platform. In 2021, he received the Best Director of the Year Award in the Documentary category from Yahoo! News Expert. At Tokyo Docs, he won the “Docs for SDGs Award” in 2022 and an Excellence Award in 2024.
Since 2019, he has been responsible for video production for the Biratori Ainu Culture Promotion Corporation. In January 2025, his film was also screened as part of a special exhibition at Upopoy, the National Ainu Museum and Park.
About Nibutani
Nibutani, part of the town of Biratori, is in Hokkaido’s Hidaka region on the Pacific Ocean side, spreading out in the valley of Hidaka’s longest and largest river, the Saru. Nibutani is a town alive with the richness of Ainu culture. Legend says that long ago, the kamuy Okikurmi descended to the banks of the Saru and taught the people living there how to hunt, make tools, and other important parts of living culture. In Nibutani, such spiritual culture and legends have passed down and developed along with craft skills.
One example is the rebuilt Nibutani Kotan, a village with restored cise—the Ainu language word for traditional houses—preserving an image of the village as it was long ago. They also host an annual boat-launching ceremony, the cip-sanke, to pray to the kamuy, as well as the kamuynomi ritual, and beyond that, performances of oral yukar literature and traditional ceremonial dance are elements of Ainu culture which have become treasures of the Saru River basin to preserve and pass on to the future.
