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Aino Folk-Tales
Basil Hall Chamberlain
Not for the squeamish or for children, these folk-tales are from the Ainu, the
somewhat mysterious indigenous people of Japan, thousands of whom still live in
the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Ranging over all of the usual themes
of folklore, from creation to marriage to war, these stories have a pungent, ribald
frankness concerning all aspects of human life that offended their scholarly
collector Basil Hall Chamberlain (his apologies to the reader are themselves
entertaining) but that make them fresh, provocative, and amusing to the twenty-
first century reader. Attention to the Ainu is especially timely because of the
revival in Japan of Ainu activism on behalf of indigenous rights, pride, and culture,
but are well worth reading for their purely entertainment value.
Read for LibriVox.org by Expatriate
Total running time 2:21:40
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Cover image: Ainu statue from the 19th century.
Cover designed by Avail le. This design is in the public domain.
