Customer Reviews

Harukor: An Ainu Woman's Tale (Voices from Asia)

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Harukor is a good introduction to Ainu culture that does a credible job of presenting Ainu culture as a culture both like and unlike others, without sentimentalizing the Ainu or depicting them as primitive.

The introduction is particularly good as a general overview to Ainu culture (as far as it can be reconstructed) for the period ending in the late 17th century when the Ainu were increasingly subjugated to the expansive Japanese presence.

The biggest weakness of the volume is that it tries to serve two purposes: the first is to present an Ainu tale as an Ainu would tell it; the second is to make the Ainu culture more accessible to non-Ainu. Unfortunately these two goals are some times contradictory and Honda makes a number of digressions and explanations that someone living the traditional Ainu lifestyle would not feel the need to makel while these are needed for the tale to be understandable to modern readers, the effect is to render the actual tale somewhat uneven and cumbersome.

The above flaw is somewhat offset by the quality of the writing and general and the very natural-feeling English translation.

I highly recommend this book for those somewhat curious about the Ainu who are also looking for something easier to read than the volumes of scholarly material available. Even for those familiar with the scholarly material Harukor does a good job of putting a more personal face on Ainu culture.

While the volume is not perfect, it is the only volume of its sort that I know of and is worth the price.