Sharing Ainu Wisdom Through Music: Intercultural Encounters in Performance in Education (PIE)

This paper reports on Ainu artist and musician Motoi Ogawa’s performance lectures given in two English-medium liberal arts elective courses, Culture (Ethnomusicology) and Performance in English at Komazawa University in Tokyo, during June 2025. The flow of classroom activity surrounding the performance, including pre-teaching and post-lecture reporting is detailed, and important themes from student responses in the form of “messages to the artist” are presented. The paper discusses the potential benefits to both cultural and linguistic learning of inviting visiting artists into a Performance in Education (PIE) classroom. In this case, the inclusion of an essentially Japanese language-based activity within an English medium class illustrates how diverse linguistic resources can be positively juxtaposed and integrated for meaningful English language learning. In addition, based on in-class teacher observation and written feedback from students, direct contact with an Ainu culture bearer resulted in considerably greater levels of student engagement and interest when compared with the mere provision of information about Ainu culture and prerecorded digital examples of performance.