Ainu patterns on Coke bottles. Meet craft artist Sekine from Biratori
Starting in late March, Hokkaido Coca-Cola Bottling (Sapporo) began selling special Hokkaido-only bottles featuring an indigenous Ainu pattern in the design. The bottle design was crafted by Sekine Maki (53), an Ainu craft artist based in the town of Biratori in the Hidaka subprefecture. The design combines an Ainu pattern with a Hokkaido logo designed in the 1960s by her father, who passed away at the young age of 41. Sekine reports, “I am very glad that a product employing the logo my father left behind is being used.”
The Hokkaido-only bottle, which was first released in 2017, is now featuring its first Ainu pattern design. Hokkaido Coca-Cola Bottling hired Sekine to craft the design in order to promote Hokkaido culture against the backdrop of the Tokyo Olympics.
The center of the design is a logo resembling a map of Hokkaido composed of the three Japanese symbols that make up the word “Hokkaido”. It is encircled by a design that includes the Ainu “aiushi” curved thorn pattern. Sekine commented, “As soon as I started thinking about the design, the Hokkaido logo my father made when he was alive immediately came to my mind.”
Sekine’s father, Kaizawa Moriyuki, was born in 1935 in Biratori’s Nibutani district, and opened a folk craft shop in Nibutani in 1962. The Hokkaido logo on the new Coke bottles was originally designed for his shop uniforms. Kaizawa passed suddenly from a myocardial infarction in August 1977, when Sekine was 10 years old. Approximately 190 of his works are stored at the National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka).
Sekine creates art from her base in Biratori. When she has trouble with ideas for her work, she still looks at the sketchbooks her father left behind to help her think. She reminisces, “My father is my teacher, and he still resides in my heart today. I want many people to enjoy these bottles designed by my father and myself as a team.”
The Ainu or the Aynu , also known as the Ezo (蝦夷) in historical Japanese texts, are an East Asian ethnic group indigenous to northern Japan, the original inhabitants of Hokkaido (and formerly North-Eastern Honshū) and some of its nearby Russian territories (Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, Khabarovsk Krai and the Kamchatka Peninsula).
Many forms of Ainu art, such as textile arts and woodworking, are known for their intricate and stylized patterns. In the case of clothing, these patterns are created through embroidery or through stitching appliqué patches on to the garment. The creation of clothing and fabric art has historically been considered an important task for women in Ainu communities, and many patterns and designs have been passed down along maternal lines for generations. For the Ainu, this ornamentation of clothing is not only for aesthetic enjoyment; these patterns have also been considered to have magical purposes such as to ward off evil spirits
北海道コカ・コーラボトリング株式会社（本社：札幌市清田区 代表取締役社長：佐々木康行）は、地域それぞ
れの観光名所をイラストで描き、スタイリッシュで特別なパッケージにデザインした「コカ･コーラ」スリムボトル 地域デザインの
北海道デザインを 3 月 22 日(月)よりリニューアルし発売いたします。
今回リニューアルし、新デザインとなる<アイヌ文様デザイン>は平取町二
風谷のアイヌ工芸家 関根真紀氏にデザインをしていただきました。北海道の
文字のイラストの周りにアイヌ文様が描かれています。
また、従来から発売中の<観光地デザイン>には、札幌時計台、クラーク
博士像、札幌テレビ塔、五稜郭タワーなど北海道を代表する観光スポットが
描かれています。
いずれも北海道内のお土産店、物産店、スーパーマーケット、自動販売機
を中心に発売しております。
「コカ･コーラ」スリムボトル 地域デザインは、“スリムボトル”ならではのスタイ
リッシュな形状で 250mlの飲みきりサイズです。日本各地にあるシンボルや観
光スポットなどをデザインし、それぞれの地域限定で発売。いずれの地域でも
旅行中の食事やリフレッシュに、またお土産にぴったりのボトルとして人気を集
め、多くの方にご好評いただいています。
