Aino Folk Tales

Aino Folk-Tales is a book by Basil Hall Chamberlain, first published in 1888. This compact collection presents a selection of traditional stories, legends and myths told by the Ainu people — the indigenous inhabitants of Hokkaidō, the Kurils and Sakhalin — rendered into English with Chamberlain’s careful field-notes and commentary. The tales range from animal-heroes and tricksters to creation legends and accounts of spirits, offering readers a vivid window into Ainu worldview, ritual practice and the natural landscape that shapes their storytelling.

Chamberlain, a British Japanologist and academic who spent many years in Japan, frames the tales with explanatory notes that place them in linguistic and cultural context, making the book useful both for general readers seeking enchanting folk narratives and for students of folklore, ethnography and Japanese studies. Because the collection was assembled in the late nineteenth century, it also reflects the early scholarly efforts to record indigenous oral traditions — valuable primary material for anyone researching Ainu mythology, comparative folklore, or the history of anthropological collecting.