Ainu Spirits Singing: The Living World of Chiri Yukie's Ainu Shin'yoshu

Chapter 5: Symbolic and Ordinary Animal Spirits

139 C H A P T E R F I V E Symbolic and Ordinary Animal Spirits In this chapter I examine the remaining two categories of animal kamui in the Ainu shin’yōshū, those I have called symbolic and those that the Ainu call light or ordinary animal spirits. As in chapter 4, for each section I first discuss the pertinent animals in both their somatic and spiritual dimensions before moving on to an examination of key features of each chant. In the case of the category of “symbolic animal spiritual beings,” in order to facilitate the comparison of like and unlike qualities among the animal spiritual beings, the discussion of the chants is arranged in the order 6, 5, and 3. The Wolf, Large Reptile, and Black-Colored Fox In this section we look at one chant narrated in the first person by the child of a weighty spiritual being (pase kamui), the wolf, as well as two chants narrated in the first person by spiritual beings whose names indicate residence in a particular location in the landscape and who thus belong to Yamada Takako’s middle category of Ainu kamui, those with a metonymical relationship to the place where they dwell. The two place-based spiritual beings are Nitat-orun-nitne-kamui (Evil Spiritual Being Who Dwells in the Bog), a kamui whose bodily form is that of a large reptile, and Shitunpe (One Who Dwells on the Ridge), a spiritual being encountered in chapter 2 that is understood to appear as a black-colored fox. In none of these chants 140 Symbolic and Ordinary Animal Spirits do we see the spiritual beings at home in an anthropic existence, nor do we see them receive the prayers and offerings of human beings. In this sense, all three contrast to the fish owl and orca pase kamui. Further, the first-person narrators of two of the chants—the large reptile and black fox spiritual beings—are both highly distinguishable from the weighty fish owl and orca kamui in being seen as harmful (wen) rather than helpful to human beings.1 As we might expect for spiritual beings of the second category , the kind of harm that they do and the symbolic values they possess are linked to characteristics of the places where they dwell (the bog and the ridge). In the case of the young wolf kamui of chant 6, the correspondence between the word for wolf in Ainu (horkeu) and the name for a kind of alder tree with red, easily decomposing wood (horkeu kene) seems to give this spiritual being a symbolic value that adds to, and perhaps to some degree supplants, its qualities as a “real” wolf. We will consider the wolf kamui’s connection to the alder in more detail when we discuss chant 6. In the meantime, it is helpful to know more about the Ainu understanding of each one of these three kinds of animal kamui: the wolf, the large reptile, and the black-colored fox. The Wolf We know from Chiri Yukie’s note for chant 1 that the wolf as Nupuripakor -kamui (Spiritual Being Who Governs the East of the Peaks) was considered by Yukie’s community to be second in importance only to the bear (Nupuri-kor-kamui, Spiritual Being Who Governs the Peaks) among the mountain kamui.2 According to Chiri Mashiho’s research on animal nomenclature , other names for the wolf spiritual being besides Nupuripakor -kamui are horkeu, or Horkeu-kamui, a term used widely in formal oral performance traditions such as the kamui yukar; Onrupus-kamui (Spiritual Being Who Hunts); and Wose-kamui (Spiritual Being Who Howls “Uo”) (1962, 141–142). While I have found no source that defines the semantic values of the word horkeu, the literal meanings of Onrupuskamui and Wose-kamui indicate two characteristics of the behavior of this animal spiritual being that were deeply attended to by the Ainu: its ability to hunt successfully animals deemed prey by the Ainu and its practice of howling. 141 Symbolic and Ordinary Animal Spirits These aspects of the wolf, as well as the key features of the Ainu-wolf relationship, are concisely explained by Sarashina Genzō and Sarashina Kō as follows: The wolf is called in the Kushiro area Onrupus-kamui (Spiritual Being Who Hunts), and in the Tokachi area it is called Yukkoiki-kamui (Spiritual Being Who Catches Deer). This is...