FILE PHOTO: Wooden statues of an Ainu couple stand in front of an Ainu craft shop in the Nibutani district where several Ainu craft shops and a museum are located, in Biratori, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan, August 23, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
TOKYO (Reuters) - On a wooded lake shore in northern Japan, the government is building a modernist shrine that has divided the indigenous Ainu community whose vanishing culture it was designed to celebrate.
At a cost so far of $220 million (£171.07 million), Japan's "Symbolic Space for Ethnic Harmony" is on track to open in time for the 2020 Olympics, part of a drive by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to draw millions of foreign visitors to Japan and to the northern city of Sapporo, where the Olympic marathon will be run.
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