Songs of gods, songs of humans Book

The Ainu People are the indigenous inhabitants of the northernmost regions of Japan. Today there are not many Ainu people left. They lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and their neolithic traditions seem to have been untouched by all the changes that effected their neighbours. By the time the Japanese decided to invade them with muskets and steel, the Ainu were still living the same neolithic lifestyle they had been living for tens of thousands of years.

This is a collection of their traditional stories directly from the mouths of Ainu people, and it makes for very fascinating reading and gives valuable insight into the way of life of a mostly forgotten people. It is a rare treat to find so many well-preserved stories of a neolithic culture. Many of these stories offer insights into the neolithic human mind. Animals are revered as essentially superior than humans, for instance.

All of the stories are told from the first-person. The Ainu believed that the shaman story-teller was literally possessed by the spirit of whatever animal, god, or hero the story is about during the recitation of it. It is fascinating to think of a group of hunter-gatherers sitting around a fire, with a venerable old woman possessed by the spirit of a killer-whale telling a story about lost love.

Ainu gender norms, the structure of their society and their economy, their shamanistic and animistic religion and their love of the landscape around them are all revealed in beautiful ways in these stories.

There are 33 stories in this collection and they can sometimes get a little repetitive because so many of them are extremely similar to each other, but I respect the efforts of the author to preserve as many stories as humanly possible. Often many of the stories are essentially the same but with regional differences.

My favourite stories in this collection are the ones that elucidate the Ainu bear-cult. The bear was the most sacred animal for the Ainu and they would actually raise a bear cub in their village, worshipping it and putting it in a sacred enclosure that contained the finest rugs. A shamaness would breastfeed it and sing lullabies to it as though it were a human baby. After the bear got too big for its enclosure they would send it back to Heaven by killing it, and then they would have a long festival that involved dancing around its dead body and making offerings of wine, sake, and food. In one of the stories, the spirit of a bear who was ritually killed in this way watches over the ceremonies and describes them in elaborate detail and delights in the festivities, saying that he will bless the humans when he returns to heaven.

All in all, a truly splendid collection of stories. Highly recommended to anyone who is fascinated by hunter-gatherers.