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.

This dictionary contains entries which identify the principal historical and mythological names that are central to the Shinto tradition but also demonstrate the relationship of Shinto to Japanese culture. Subjects covered include: the relationship of Shi.

One of Japan's major religions, Shinto has no doctrines and there are no sacred texts from which religious authority can be derived. It does not have an identifiable historical founder, and it has survived the vicissitudes of history through rituals and symbols rather than through continuity of doctrine. Shinto is primarily a religion of nature, centered on the cultivation of rice, the basis of a culture with which the western world is not familiar in terms of either its annual cycle or the kind of lifestyle it generates. The roots of the Shinto tradition probably precede this and reflect an awareness of the natural order. The oldest shrines came to be located in places that inspired awe and wonder in their observers, such as the great Fall of Nachi in Kumano, or in mountains that conveyed a sense of power. The expanded second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Shinto relates the history of Shinto through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and over 800 cross-referenced dictionary entries on Shinto concepts, significant figures, places, activities, and periods. Scholars and students will find the overviews and sources for further research provided by this book to be enormously helpful.

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.