Our Land Was A Forest: An Ainu Memoir (Transitions--Asia & the Pacific) [Paperback]

Kayano Shigeru (Author), Mark Selden (Author), Kayano Shigeru (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0813318807 | ISBN-13: 978-0813318806 | Publication Date: April 1, 1994

This book is a beautiful and moving personal account of the Ainu, the native inhabitants of Hokkaido, Japan's northern island, whose land, economy, and culture have been absorbed and destroyed in recent centuries by advancing Japanese. Based on the author's own experiences and on stories passed down from generation to generation, the book chronicles the disappearing world—and courageous rebirth—of this little-understood people.Kayano describes with disarming simplicity and frankness the personal conflicts he faced as a result of the tensions between a traditional and a modern society and his lifelong efforts to fortify a living Ainu culture. A master storyteller, he paints a vivid picture of the Ainus' ecologically sensitive lifestyle, which revolved around bear hunting, fishing, farming, and woodcutting.Unlike the few existing ethnographies of the Ainu, this account is the first written by an insider intimately tied to his own culture yet familiar with the ways of outsiders. Speaking with a rare directness to the Ainu and universal human experience, this book will interest all readers concerned with the fate of indigenous peoples.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Through this memoir of a contemporary Ainu, we see the story of his people, the aboriginal inhabitants of Japan's Hokkaido island, during the period of cultural change following World War II. Kayano saves this from being another sorrowful story of a culture destroyed by presenting his role in efforts to preserve Ainu language, customs, and artifacts. Since there are few books on the Ainu, this is a valuable enthnographic record of a traditional culture banging up against modern life. This title in the "Transitions: Asia & the Pacific" series is recommended for academic anthropology collections.
Stella I. Wheat, Univ. of Southern Mississippi Lib., Hattiesburg
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Japanese --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press (April 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813318807
• ISBN-13: 978-0813318806
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #119,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "The Vanishing Ainu" are still there !, September 5, 2002

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Our Land Was A Forest: An Ainu Memoir (Transitions--Asia & the Pacific) (Paperback)

Sometimes the way things repeat themselves is uncanny. Just as the American literature of the early 20th century reflected the idea that the Native Americans would soon vanish, and writers in Australia and New Zealand pontificated on similar lines on their aboriginal neighbors, so in Japan, the aboriginal Ainu have long since been labelled "mysterious, but vanishing". To tell the truth, I thought they had already gone by the 1980s. I was wrong. Here is an autobiography, written by Kayano Shigeru, an Ainu of around 60 when he originally wrote, that informs us that the Ainu are far from gone. Kayano is personally responsible for building up a collection of Ainu artifacts, for preserving a great number of `yukar' or epic poems, for writing an Ainu-Japanese dictionary, for helping establish Ainu language primary schools in Hokkaido, and working in the political sphere to improve the lot of Japan's only aboriginal people. This memoir tells in very simple, matter-of-fact style about his early years of grinding poverty, the hardships suffered by all his fellow villagers, about being a draft laborer, about life hunting, fishing, and logging in the deep forests of Japan's northernmost island. Kayano's life is not specifically "Ainu", it is life in a mixed world of changing conditions. Japanese, Ainu, and even Western cultural strands mingle, but the author never tries to separate them. Whatever Ainu people of his generation faced, that, for him, is Ainu life. This is very effective in a way, though foreigners without much knowledge of Japan will be hard-pressed to figure out what is unique here. Kayano tells a straightforward tale, but natural reticence and perhaps lack of higher education mean that he does not delve much into psychology, he seldom develops other characters. A few sentences at most suffice. He often reports events with little comment. His feeling for his land and for his people's condition come straight from the heart, though. Nobody can remain unmoved by that.

OUR LAND WAS A FOREST reminds me very much of Native American memoirs, though in this case there is no attempt whatsoever to play up "mystical" aspects or try to be a "wise, traditional guru". The Ainu experience has been close to that of other aboriginal peoples from Siberia to Sydney, from Boston to Buenos Aires. The harmony of their life in nature was disrupted by the coming of greater numbers of more organized, materialistic peoples. The book is easily read and contains a number of useful black and white photographs. If you need much background knowledge on the Ainu, this might not be the place to begin, but if you are looking for an interesting book on a little heard-from people, choose this one.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Toward Understanding of Aboriginal People, March 15, 2001

By 

diane h peapus (Kyoto Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Our Land Was A Forest: An Ainu Memoir (Transitions--Asia & the Pacific) (Paperback)

Shigeru Kayano gives candid and passionate voice to an aboriginal people. The breath of the Ainu pour from each page as he narrates his life ...from the snow on his skin as small boy playing in his native homeland of Ainu Mosir (lit: Peaceful Land of the Ainu), to his grandmother's lessons and father's disillusionment, through naive comments of tourists at bear-sending ceremonies, and finally to his political ascent as the first Ainu elected to the Japanese Diet.

More then a memoir, Kayano records Ainu traditions, language and sentiment along side of the oppression that sucked the lives of able bodied Ainu into 'draft labor' and almost drove the Ainu culture into forgotten unwritten history.

Our Land Was a Forest is the courageously humble saga of an aboriginal people written by the harbinger of traditional revival.