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The Ainu are the indigenous people of northern Japan. I have been reading about them lately through books like Kayano Shigeru’s The Ainu (Tuttle Publishing, 2004.) Kayano Shigeru, who died in 2006, was himself an Ainu and worked tirelessly to preserve and disseminate elements of Ainu culture to the world. The Ainu had an oral tradition of tale-telling and one of their oral tales or songs known as kamuy yukar is translated into English by Kyoko Selden and given here on the website of the Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. As typical of many oral tales, it is presented as poetry. As it explains on the website, kamuy yukar are songs of gods and demi-gods. This particular story is of the wind goddess, Pitatakamuy and her encounter with the demi-god Okikurumi. It is a revealing tale insofar as it shows how the Ainu relate to their deities — they relate to their gods not just with reverence, awe and respect but they also challenge and chastise the gods for wanton and destructive behaviour! I remember being surprised by that when I read The Song of the Cicada by Shizue Ukaji, another Ainu writer and storyteller. The old woman swept away in the typhoon gets angry at the goddess who has caused the terrible typhoon much like the demi-god Okikurumi becomes angry with Pitatakamuy.
The Ainu have a rich oral tradition of poetic tale-telling, but little of it has been translated into English. However this is slowly changing with the efforts of a variety of scholars and students of the culture. I’ve discovered a wonderful blog called Project Uepeker: Introducing the Ainu Oral Tradition to the English-Speaking World that is chock full of information about Ainu culture in English. In fact, it was at this blog that I discovered a new book called Ainu Spirits Singing by Sarah Strong (University of Hawaii Press, 2011) which is a study and translation of Ainu kamuy yukar as originally translated into Japanese by Ainu writer Chiri Yukie. I hope more developments like this keep happening and that word gets around about the oral storytelling traditions of this indigenous people of northern Japan.
Poetry Friday this week is hosted by Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe.
I stumbled upon this wonderful picture book (with some timely resonances) at my local picture book library. The Song of the Cicada by Ainu artist, poet, and storyteller Shizue Ukaji (Fukuinkan Shoten, 2008) tells the story of an old woman who prophesizes about a tsunami in which the waters of the sea will overflow and meet waters overflowing from the mountaintops to create one gigantic wave that will destroy everything. Night and day, the old woman sings this song of doom and peril. One village listens and moves their residences high up; the other village does not and gets swept away. Among the swept away is the old woman herself, but she is not without some grit and resources. Calling out to the sea god, she tells him that the fields of the sea will stink of the smell of their deaths unless he does something. Enraged by this taunt, he sends the woman to a ‘sixth’ hell. Luckily for her, a protector goddess who is also a weaver has thrust the end of her spindle right down to this hell. The old woman climbs out onto the earth, emerging as a cicada, thus it is that the book is called Song of the Cicada.
What I found particularly compelling about this picture book aside from its tsunami references, was the beautiful textile work of Ukaji who illustrated the entire story using old kimono fabrics (known as kofu in Japanese) and colorful embroidery thread to create the various scenes. Traditional Ainu patterns and motifs are evident in some of the embroidery work. Herself an Ainu born in 1933, Ukaji moved to the capital and worked her way through school. She subsequently was married and had two children. It was only until she was in her sixties that she had the wherewithal to enjoy creating stories and artwork about her Ainu heritage. Song of the Cicada is the second published work of Ukaji. I hope that this wonderful Ainu artist’s books can be someday translated into English! For more on Ukaji and Ainu textile artwork, check out this video of a recent exhibit held in Osaka.