Aino Folk Tales

What It's About

A collection of 54 tales gathered from Ainu storytellers on the island of Yezo (modern Hokkaido) and from an Ainu visitor to Tōkyō. They are grouped into origin tales (why the owl wears a feathered cap, why dogs cannot speak, why there are no monkeys in Ainu country), moral tales, the trickster cycle of Panaumbe and Penaumbe, miscellaneous adventures, and a closing set of "scraps" of folk belief covering omens, birth customs and the meaning of dreams. Chamberlain's own preface and an introduction by the anthropologist Edward B. Tylor frame the tales as evidence of how a people with no written literature explained the world.

Key Concepts

The cast includes Okikurumi, the culture-hero who taught the Ainu their arts, his sister-wife Turesh, and his henchman Samayunguru. Clever foxes, ravens, owls and bears also appear as gods or shape-shifters. In the Panaumbe and Penaumbe stories, the shrewd "man of the lower river" prospers while his foolish imitator "from the upper river" comes to grief. Chamberlain argued that the Ainu told their tales as true events, treating the explanatory myths as early science, and suggested that many motifs were borrowed from Japanese tradition. The collection is also notable for its candour. He chose not to sanitise the earthy, sexual content of the originals, which he considered essential to the scholarly record. His commentary reflects the condescending attitudes of its era towards the Ainu, so readers should treat his framing with caution, though the tales themselves remain a valuable record.

About the Author

Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935) was a British scholar of Japan. Born in Southsea, England, he arrived in Japan in 1873 and became professor of Japanese and philology at the Imperial University in Tōkyō. He lived there for nearly four decades before retiring to Geneva, and he was one of the leading Western Japanologists of his day.