The Lost Wolves of Japan

A Note to the Reader

A NOTE TO THE READER As is customary with scholarly writing on Japan, Japanese names are given in the Japanese order, with the surnames preceding the given namesthat is, unless written otherwise, as in the case of an author of an Englishlanguage scientific publication, for example. I have supplied the appropriate diacritical marks for Japanese words and names, except for common words or place-names such as Hokkaido and Tokyo. I have provided translations of all Japanese titles cited in this book. Whenever an English title was appended to a Japanese title in the original publication, however, I used that, sometimes with slight modifications. Place-names, mountain ranges, shrine locations, and other spatial information appear in the maps so masterfully drawn by Dale Martin. All Chinese is written with the pinyin system, and the diacritical marks have been excluded. There are only a few Ainu names, but they are written as they appear in the sources. Except for such names, I have standardized the Ainu language according to Kayano Shigeru's Ainugo jiten (A dictionary of the Ainu language) (Tokyo: Sanseido, 1996). Months written as, for example, "the third month" of a year refer to the lunar calendar that was employed in Japan prior to "the twelfth month" of 1872, when Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar, but aU years have been estimated according to the modern Western calendar. In the original documents , Japanese dating used imperial reign names and the Chinese calendar . The equivalents for weights and measures have been translated in the text. THE LOST WOLVES OF JAPAN If we carefully observe the countless varieties of birds and beasts, even tiny insects, we shall discover that they love their children, long to be near their parents, that husband and wife remain together, that they are jealous, angry, greedy, selfseeking , and fearful for their own lives to an even worse degree than men because they lack intelligence. How can we not feel pity when pain is inflicted on them or people take their lives? A man who can look on sentient creatures without feeling compassion is no human being. KENKO, Tsurezuregusa (Essays in idleness; c. 1330) Forty years ago, there were very few Japanese in Hokkaido, which, under the uninviting name of Yezo, was considered as an island cold in the extreme and full of danger from wild beasts. If you should go to Hokkaido now-which you can easily in two days from Tokyo-it would be hard to see an Ainu hut, and so far as a bear or a wolf is concerned, I am afraid you would never make his acquaintance in his home. The old haunts ofthese animals are now turned into plowed fields; and where they once roamed in unmolested freedom, you find in their stead children playing; where two decades ago you heard the hungry howl ofwolves and the angry growl of bears, you hear the sweet notes of school songs. NITOBE INAZO , May 1906 The wolves' hunting noises were always far off, back north in the river bottoms. In the eerie clarity of the white nights they seemed to cry from inexpressible distances, faint and musical and clear, and he might have been tempted to think of them as something not earthly at all, as creatures immune to cold and hunger and pain, hunting only for the wolfish joy of running and perhaps not even visible to human eyes, if he had not one afternoon ridden through a coulee where they had bloodied half an acre with a calf. WALLACE STEGNER, Wolf Willow ...