Aino Folk-Tales

The volume gathers traditional narratives and explanatory myths collected from Ainu speakers and rendered into English, ranging from origin accounts and supernatural tales to animal fables and ghost stories. Many narratives feature talking animals and trickster figures such as the fox, while others treat sea and salmon spirits, islands of women, and themes of death and return. Ethnographic commentary accompanies the texts, noting ritual terms for spirits, language features, place-name survivals, and traits attributed to the people, and distinguishing indigenous motifs from stories adopted from neighbouring Japanese traditions. The compiler observes that listeners and tellers commonly regarded these tales as literal explanations of natural and social phenomena.