Y’all. If you’re not Ainu, and you’re interested in our culture, don’t do this. Come on. We’re not specimens. We’re human beings who will kick your ass.
Here’s a list of books that I either own or have read that I can more or less vouch for, and where to find them (links imbedded in the titles). Anything marked with an * is written by an Ainu author. You should be able to find a lot of them at your local libraries as well. It’s a long list, so it’ll be under the cut.
*Our Land Was A Forest: An Ainu Memoir, Shigeru Kayano
An Ainu Memoir. This is an absorbing account of Ainu life written by an Ainu striving to preserve his people's cultural heritage and sense of nationhood. Unlike many accounts by outsiders, which impose predetermined socio-anthropological categories on indigenous cultures, Kayano Shigeru offers a living testimonial to the history, ethos, customs beliefs, hopes, and aspirations of a people whose way of life has been undermined by successive waves of invasion of their homeland by the Japanese.
Kayano Shigeru was the founder and director of the Kayano Shigeru Ainu Memorial Museum, the first Ainu politician to sit in the Diet of Japan, often posing questions in Ainu itak.
ISBN-10: 0813318807
ISBN-13: 978-0813318806
*The Ainu: A Story of Japan's Original People, Shigeru Kayano
Grade 3-6–Shigeru attempts to preserve the language and the customs of the Ainu by providing autobiographical snapshots of growing up in the 1930s in Hokkaido, Japan. He shows his respect for the traditions of his people to honor nature and family in his own reminiscences and in his retellings of two traditional tales. He is also quite outspoken about his strong opposition to the Japanese government overrunning the land of Ainu Mosir.
ISBN-10: 080483511X
ISBN-13: 978-0804835114
Full transparency, I haven’t read this book yet, but being written by an Ainu author it’s an inherently valuable read regardless.
*The Ainu And the Fox, Shigeru Kayano
A very cute children’s book about Ainu’s relationship with nature and Kamuy, and how we have to treat everything with careful respect, keeping our fragile ecosystems intact. The book also comes with an audio CD that narrates the book, with music performed by Ainu musician and tonkori master, Oki Kano.
ISBN-10: 1741260531
ISBN-13: 978-1741260533
*The Song The Owl God Sang: The collected Ainu legends of Chiri Yukie
These thirteen beautiful Ainu chants were collected by Chiri Yukie in 1922 -- the first Ainu literature to be written down by an Ainu. This book presents new English translations of Chiri's remarkable work.
Originally written in yukar form, a type of chant used by female storytellers among the Ainu villages of Hokkaido, these stories tell of the relationship between mankind and the world of spirits. Each yukar is narrated by a spirit -- fox, whale, frog, or even shellfish. Most important is the owl god, Kotankor Kamui, whose two long songs describe the covenant between humans and the spirits who provide them with food. Other tales focus on the balance of nature, on the respect due between animal spirits and people, and on the strength of Okikirmui, the human hero.
Although she died at 19, the thirteen tales she had written down went on to become a sensation. Her clear and beautiful yet intricate and emotive Japanese translations brought Ainu culture to a wide audience in Japan and created a movement to record and preserve Ainu belief in a living state.
ISBN-10: 099260060X
ISBN-13: 978-0992600600
*From the Playground of the Gods: The Life and Art of Bikky Sunazawa, Chisato O. Dubreuil
"Bikky Sunazawa’s art was unknown in North America and relatively little-known outside Hokkaido, Japan, when the Smithsonian opened its special Ainu exhibition [in 1999]. Conceived to explore the relationship of history, culture, and art of the Ainu people with other North Pacific native groups, the exhibition included a large section of contemporary Ainu sculpture, painting, graphic arts, and textile arts. The largest body of work was sculptures created by Bikky Sunazawa. . . . This is the first English-language book devoted to Bikky’s life and the most complete presentation of his principal artworks. . . . [It] is the most comprehensive treatment of the artist who became the pivot point in the development of modern Ainu fine art." ―from the Preface by William W. Fitzhugh
ISBN-10: 0967342988
ISBN-13: 978-0967342986
This one is crazy expensive, so I’d definitely recommend trying to find it at a library.
*First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North Pacific Rim
The arc of land and water forming the North Pacific Rim is a cut lace work of rivers running to the great ocean. The salmon, sacred to people who lived along the pathways of its journey, once engorged these rivers, but no more. Twelve writers from cultures profoundly based on salmon were asked to write about "the fish of the gods" from both a historical and a contemporary perspective.
These writers from two continents and four countries are Ainu from Japan, Nyvkh and Ulchi from Siberia, Okanagon and Coastal Salish from Canada, Makah, Warm Springs, and Spokane from the United States. Their writing remembers the blessedness and mourns the loss of the salmon while alerting us to current dangers and conditions.
The text is enhanced by glyphs--traditional designs from each Nation--and photographs, both contemporary and historical, as well as personal family pictures from the writers. These words and images offer a prayer that our precious remaining wild salmon will increase and flourish.
ISBN-10: 0295977396
ISBN-13: 978-0295977393
Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans: The Epic Tradition of the Ainu, Donald L. Philippi
As an especially beautiful and pure example of the epic styles that were once current among the hunting and fishing peoples of northern Asia, the Ainu epic folklore is of immense literary value. This collection and English translation by Donald Philippi contains thirty-three representative selections from a number of epic genres including mythic epics, culture hero epics, women's epics, and heroic epics. This is the first time, outside of Japan, that the Ainu epic folklore has been treated in a comprehensive manner.
ISBN-10: 0691063842
ISBN-13: 978-0691063843
Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People
Published in association with an exhibition of the same title organized by the Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and circulated by the Office of Special Exhibits of that institution between 1 April 1999 and 1 April 2001. Some 55 scholars, mostly Japanese but with a considerable number from the US and Europe, write about the ethnicity, theories of origin, history, economies, art, religious beliefs, mythology, and other aspects of the culture of the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, now principally found in Hokkaido and smaller far northern islands.
ISBN-10: 0967342902
ISBN-13: 978-0967342900
Also insanely expensive. Try to find it at the library.
Beyond Ainu Studies: Changing Academic and Public Perspectives
This major new volume seeks to re-address the role of academic scholarship in Ainu social, cultural, and political affairs. Placing Ainu firmly into current debates over Indigeneity, Beyond Ainu Studies provides a broad yet critical overview of the history and current status of Ainu research. With chapters from scholars as well as Ainu activists and artists, it addresses a range of topics including history, ethnography, linguistics, tourism, legal mobilization, hunter-gatherer studies, the Ainu diaspora, gender, and clothwork. In its ambition to reframe the question of Ainu research in light of political reforms that are transforming Ainu society today, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in Indigenous studies as well as in anthropology and Asian studies.
Contributors: Misa Adele Honde, David L. Howell, Mark J. Hudson, Deriha Kōji, ann-elise lewallen, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Hans Dieter Ölschleger, Kirsten Refsing, Georgina Stevens, Sunazawa Kayo, Tsuda Nobuko, Uzawa Kanako, Mark K. Watson, Yūki Kōji.
ISBN-10: 0824836979
ISBN-13: 978-0824836979
The Fabric of Indigeneity: Ainu Identity, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Japan, ann-elise lewallen
In present-day Japan, Ainu women create spaces of cultural vitalization in which they can move between "being Ainu" through their natal and affinal relationships and actively "becoming Ainu" through their craftwork. They craft these spaces despite the specter of loss that haunts the efforts of former colonial subjects, like Ainu, to reconnect with their pasts. The author synthesizes ethnographic field research, museum and archival research, and participation in cultural-revival and rights-based organizing to show how women craft Ainu and indigenous identities through clothwork and how they also fashion lived connections to ancestral values and lifestyles. She examines the connections between the transnational dialogue on global indigeneity and multiculturalism, material culture, and the social construction of gender and ethnicity in Japanese society, and she proposes new directions for the study of settler colonialism and indigenous mobilization in other Asian and Pacific nations.
ISBN-10: 9780826357366
ISBN-13: 978-0826357366
Harukor, Katsuichi Honda
In this engaging tale, Honda Katsuichi reconstructs the life of an Ainu woman living on the northern island of Japan over five hundred years ago. Harukor's story, created from surviving oral accounts of Ainu life and culture as well as extensive scholarly research, is set in the centuries before the mainland Japanese nearly destroyed the way of life depicted here.
