{"collection":"shi","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/shi/aft/index.htm","path":"shi/aft/index.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/shi/aft/index.htm","text":"The Ainu are an ethnic minority in Japan, living primarily on the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaid\u014d, although there were also small populations of Ainu living on the island of Sakhalin and in the Kuriles until the end of World War II, when the Soviet Union took control of Sakhalin and the Ainu there fled. Until the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when Japan took formal possession of Hokkaid\u014d and began the systematic integration of the Ainu into the Japanese nation, the Ainu lived almost exclusively as hunter-gatherers north of the always advancing frontier of Japanese agriculture. 'Traditional' anthropological wisdom holds that the Ainu are descended from the aboriginal inhabitants of Japan who were gradually dispossessed of their land by the invading Japanese and their superior civilization. This view is held up by the fact that the Ainu generally do not look Japanese, by the apparently radical differences between the two languages, and by the large number of Ainu place-names in Japan proper. More recent anthropology, however, sees a far greater continuity between the two cultures, with many deep and ancient similarities.\nAinu literature was traditionally of an exclusively oral variety, and very little was reduced to writing in any language before the 19th century. Many of the stories occur in more or less lengthy poems known as yukar, which are an epic-like form. Many of the stories presented in this book also occur in the context of much longer and deeper stories, which is not made apparent; more than likely because the importance or even existence of the yukar was unknown to the author.\nBasil Hall Chamberlain was well-known as one of the pioneering translators and interpreters of things Japanese in his time. (He also translated the Shinto classic Kojiki.) Like many philologists, his interest in the Ainu was purely academic, centering mainly on the light that knowledge of the Ainu could shed on Japanese place-names and prehistory. Like many of the Japanese among whom he lived and worked, his opinion of the Ainu was quite mean, and his comments in the Prefatory Remarks sound downright inflammatory today, a fine specimen of Victorian racism.\n \n Introduction\n Prefatory Remarks\n \n \n \n I.\u2014TALES ACCOUNTING FOR THE ORIGIN OF PHENOMENA.\n \n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0i.\u2014The Rat and the Owl.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0ii.\u2014The Loves of the Thunder-Gods.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0iii.\u2014Why Dogs cannot speak.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0iv.\u2014Why the Cock cannot fly.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0v.\u2014The Origin of the Hare.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0vi.\u2014The Position of the Private Parts.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0vii.\u2014The Reason for there being no Fixed Time for Human Beings to copulate.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0viii.\u2014The Owl and the Tortoise.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0ix.\u2014How a Man got the better of two Foxes.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0x.\u2014The Man who Married the Bear-Goddess.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xi.\u2014The two Foxes, the Mole, and the Crows.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xii.\u2014The Stolen Charm.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xiii.\u2014The Fox, the Otter, and the Monkey.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xiv.\u2014The Fox and the Tiger.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xv.\u2014The Punishment of Curiosity.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xvi.\u2014How it was settled who should rule the World.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xvii.\u2014The Man who lost his Wife.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xviii.\u2014The First Appearance of the Horse in Aino-land.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xix.\u2014Sunrise.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xx.\u2014The Sex of the Two Luminaries.\n \n \n \n II.\u2014MORAL TALES.\n \n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxi.\u2014The Kind Giver and the Grudging Giver.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxii.\u2014The Man who was changed into a Fox.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxiii.\u2014The Rat Boy.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxiv.\u2014Don't throw Useful Things away.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxv.\u2014The Wicked Wizard punished.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxvi.\u2014The Angry Crow.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxvii.\u2014Okikurumi, Samayunguru, and the Shark.\n \n \n \n III.\u2014TALES OF THE PANAUMBE AND PENAUMBE CYCLE.\n \n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxviii.\u2014Panaumbe, Penaumbe, and the Weeping Foxes.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxix.\u2014Panaumbe, Penaumbe, and the Insects.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxx.\u2014Panaumbe, Penaumbe, and the Sea-Lion.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxxi.\u2014Panaumbe, Penaumbe, and the Lord of Matomai.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxxii.\u2014Drinking the Sea dry.\n \n \n \n IV.\u2014MISCELLANEOUS TALES.\n \n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxxiii.\u2014The Island of Women.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxxiv.\u2014The Worship of the Salmon, the Divine Fish.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxxv.\u2014The Hunter in Hades.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxxvi.\u2014An Inquisitive Man's Experience of Hades.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxxvii.\u2014The Child of a God.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxxviii.\u2014Buying a Dream.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xxxix.\u2014The Baby in the Box.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xl.\u2014The Bride Bewitched.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xli.\u2014The Wicked Stepmother.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xlii.\u2014The Clever Deceiver.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xliii.\u2014Yoshitsune.\n \n \n \n V.\u2014SCRAPS OF FOLK-LORE.\n \n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xliv.\u2014The Good Old Times.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xlv.\u2014The Old Man of the Sea.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xlvi.\u2014The Cuckoo.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xlvii.\u2014The [Horned] Owl.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xlviii.\u2014The Peacock in the Sky.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0xlix.\u2014Trees turned into Bears.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0l.\u2014Coition.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0li.\u2014Birth and Naming.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0lii.\u2014The Pre-eminence of the Oak, Pine-tree, and Mugwort.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0liii.\u2014The Deer with the Golden Horn.\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0liv.\u2014Dreams.","title":"Aino Folk-Tales - Index","type":"page"}