Excerpt from The Language, Mythology, and Geographical Nomenclature of Japan Viewed in the Light of Aino Studies If little is generally known either in Japan or in Europe concerning the natives of Yezo, the reason must be sought in the remoteness of the subject from topics of general interest. There is no lack of books dealing with the Hairy Ainos. Dr. Scheube has weighed and measured them. The Chevalier Heinrich von Siebold has beautifully pourtrayed their utensils. Miss Bird has described their customs in her picturesque style. Before the time of these foreign travellers, men like Nogami, Mamiya, and Matsuura had recorded in print their experiences oftravel in every accessible portion of the island. Other Japanese had described Aino manners, Aino superstitions and traditions. At least one Catholic missionary had penetrated into Yezo as early as the year 1617. Indeed, the Jesuit Father Froes had indicated, if not clearly asserted, the existence of the Ainos in a work published a.d. 1574. The catalogue of Japanese and European books on the subject, appended to the present Memoir, includes several hundreds of titles; and there doubtless still remain many others to be unearthed from the dust of old-fashioned libraries. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

A survey of the two main indigenous languages of Japan includes the most comprehensive study of the polysynthetic Ainu language yet to appear in English as well as a comprehensive analysis of Japanese linguistics.

Creation myths around the world reveal an intricate network of recurrent motifs. Many of these are counterintuitive and not widely known, describing a time when the sky was low, the stars did not yet shine, multiple suns appeared, the moon was brighter than the sun, no land existed, deities and mortals maintained frequent contact, a 'world axis' in the form of a tree, ladder or giant man connected the earth with the sky, a devastating flood or fire ended the old order, and so forth. The present work, in multiple volumes, aims to find an origin for this cross-culturally and internally consistent body of traditions in a series of extraordinary natural events relating especially to the earth's transition from the last glacial period to the Holocene. This first volume sets the stage for the interdisciplinary hypothesis. Essential lines of research receive a historical introduction: comparative mythology, catastrophism and the study of the mythical world axis in relation to the earth's rotation. Various astronomical and meteorological interpretations that are not strictly catastrophist are explored for several types of myths about the sun, the moon and the world axis, but leave many of the most intriguing traditions unexplained. It is argued that a structural core of the worldwide mythology of 'creation and destruction', in which the cosmic axis takes pride of place, points to a specific period of dramatic natural circumstances in real prehistoric time. A new synopsis is provided of this universal mythological substrate. It emerges that the mythical world axis cannot have been based on a single object seen or imagined at one of the poles, as has usually been supposed. This surprising conclusion paves the way for the innovative geomagnetic theory proposed in volume 2.

As an especially beautiful and pure example of the archaic epic styles that were once current among the hunting and fishing peoples of northern Asia, the Ainu epic folklore is of immense literary value. This collection and English translation by Donald Philippi contains thirty-three representative selections from a number of epic genres including mythic epics, culture hero epics, women's epics, and heroic epics. This is the first time, outside of Japan, that the Ainu epic folklore has been treated in a comprehensive manner. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The volume is aimed at preserving invaluable knowledge about Ainu, a language-isolate previously spoken in Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Kurils, which is now on the verge of extinction. Ainu was not a written language, but it possesses a huge documented stock of oral literature, yet is significantly under-described in terms of grammar. It is the only non-Japonic language of Japan and is typologically different not only from Japanese but also from other Northeast Asian languages. Revolving around but not confined to its head-marking and polysynthetic character, Ainu manifests many typologically interesting phenomena, related in particular to the combinability of various voice markers and noun incorporation. Other interesting features of Ainu include vowel co-occurrence restrictions, a mixed system of expressing grammatical relations, which includes the elements of a rare tripartite alignment, nominal classification distinguishing common and locative nouns, elaborate possessive classes, verbal number, a rich four-term evidential system, and undergrammaticalized aspect, which are all explained in the volume. This handbook, the result of unprecedented cooperation of the leading experts of Ainu, will definitely help to increase the clarity of our understanding of Ainu and in a long-term perspective may provide answers to problems of human prehistory as well as open the field of Ainu studies to the world and attract many new students. Table of Contents Masayoshi Shibatani and Taro Kageyama Preface Masayoshi Shibatani and Taro Kageyama Introduction to the Handbook of Japanese Language and Linguistics Contributors Anna Bugaeva Introduction I Overview of Ainu studies Anna Bugaeva 1. Ainu: A head-marking language of the Pacific Rim Juha Janhunen 2. Ainu ethnic origins Tomomi Satō 3. Major old documents of Ainu and some problems in the historical study of Ainu Alfred F. Majewicz 4. Ainu language Western records José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente 5. The Ainu language through time Alexander Vovin 6. Ainu elements in early Japonic Hidetoshi Shiraishi and Itsuji Tangiku 7. Language contact in the north Hiroshi Nakagawa and Mika Fukazawa 8. Hokkaido Ainu dialects: Towards a classification of Ainu dialects Itsuji Tangiku 9. Differences between Karafuto and Hokkaido Ainu dialects Shiho Endō 10. Ainu oral literature Osami Okuda 11. Meter in Ainu oral literature Tetsuhito Ōno 12. The history and current status of the Ainu language revival movement II Typologically interesting characteristics of the Ainu language Hidetoshi Shiraishi 13. Phonetics and phonology Hiroshi Nakagawa 14. Parts of Speech – with a focus on the classification of nouns Anna Bugaeva and Miki Kobayashi 15. Verbal valency Tomomi Satō 16. Noun incorporation Hiroshi Nakagawa 17. Verbal number Yasushige Takahashi 18. Aspect and evidentiality Yoshimi Yoshikawa 19. Existential aspectual forms in the Saru and Chitose dialects of Ainu III Appendices: Sample texts Anna Bugaeva 20. An uwepeker “Retar Katak, Kunne Katak” and kamuy yukar “Amamecikappo” narrated in the Chitose Hokkaido Ainu dialect by Ito Oda Elia dal Corso 21. “Meko Oyasi”, a Sakhalin Ainu ucaskuma narrated by Haru Fujiyama Subject index