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Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir
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—
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Paperback, 192 pages
Published
April 1st 1994
by Westview Press
(first published 1994)
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Community Reviews
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Kayano Shigeru is probably the last person who could have written a book like this. The Ainu weren't even recognized as an indigenous people in Japan until 2008, and by that point it was mostly too little, too late. There are less than a dozen fluent speakers of the Ainu language left, most of whom are in their 80s, out of only around ~20,000 (officially-counted) Ainu in Japan, and in another generation the language will probably be just a memory and all the yukar and uwepekere that Kayano's gra
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This struck me as a pretty important memoir. I gather that Kayano was one of the last half-dozen or so people who could have written anything like it. It was a quick read, it got me a little more context and background on the Ainu people (which I've been wanting ever since they were basically glossed completely over in my Japanese language and culture classes), and it raised a lot more questions than it answered. Especially recommended if you're interested in endangered languages and cultures an
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An essential read for anyone interested in Hokkaido
This was a very good book, not because the writing was the most moving, but because the story was. This biography was written by Kayano Shigeru, the founder of the Nibutani Museum of Ainu Cultural Resources and curator of the Kayano Shigeru Ainu Memorial Museum. Because of the author's dedication throughout his life to acquire artifacts and document and translate Ainu language, information on the Ainu, including the political injustices they endured, can be passed on to us. The story of his life
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Kayano Shigeru's memoir (June 15, 1926 – May 6, 2006), covering his life until just before he became the first Ainu (indigenous person) to sit in the Japanese Diet. This is a beautiful, courageous, and eloquent account of true struggle. Anyone who wants to know anything about "Japan" and "Japanese" history should read this.
Really, it wasn't a bad book as far as telling the story of the Ainu but the writing style was blander than saltines.
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