AINU; HOKKAIDO.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Manuscript copy of Ezo-shima kikan ("Curious Sights of the Island of Ezo"). A vibrant late-Edo rendition of the most popular early modern work to depict the customs and lifestyles of the Ainu people. This example shows one Ainu creation myth, "The Tale of the Dog Ancestor", traditional Ainu dress such as the sapanpe headband and tamasay necklace, hunting practices, housing, and ceremonies like the Iomante bear sacrifice.In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Tokugawa shogunate recognized the need to survey and prepare the north of Japan against a possible Russian incursion. They commissioned a number of geographer-explorers to survey the island of Ezo (now Hokkaido). One of them was Murakami Shimanojo (1764-1808), who was sent to the region in 1799 by the senior councillor Matsudaira Sadanobu (1758-1829). He wrote his observations in the manuscript Ezo-shima kikan (original held in the Tokyo National Museum, accession number QB-10015) in 1800, which "endures as among the best ethnographic renditions of late eighteenth-century Ainu life" (Walker, p. 289). Murakami wrote that "I hope to avoid losing the past descriptions of the Ainu and show them to those who have never seen them" (Irimoto, p. 63). Indeed, his descriptions and illustrations of Ainu culture were so popular that over 65 manuscript copies have been traced in institutions.Each of these manuscripts is unique, containing a different selection of the over 100 illustrations in Murakami's original. This is because "t

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