The Song The Owl God Sang: The collected Ainu legends of Chiri Yukie

More than 100 years ago, an Ainu writer captured these tales in the Ainu language and in Japanese; with an excellent translation and commentary, one can begin to feel how a people saw their world. With humor, the eschatological often seems to meet the scatological.

"The Song The Owl God Sang" is a collection of 13 Ainu legends, the first record Hokkaido's indigenous Ainu oral legends. They are written down by an Ainu, Chiri Yukie, in an excellent English language translation by Benjamin Peterson. I highly recommend it.

I truly enjoyed reading this translation of Chiri Yukie's very well-known Ainu legends. The translation was very smooth and seemingly accurate, with a number of footnotes offering background information on Ainu words and cultural concepts that appear. I would give it five stars except that it does not have Chiri Yukie's original Ainu, which would have made it much easier for the reader to really appreciate the effort that went into translation and the flavor of the original text as presented by Peterson. (Japanese translations of these tales tend to have both the original and the translation.) Overall, though, this was an extremely good effort and something lacking (appearing as a single volume) in the English language study of Ainu.

This simple book is a set of Ainu People's stories, which explains many things about Japanese people's identity, specially Hokkaido. It was deliveried in a quick way, with no problems.

A translation of poetry from a foreign language is itself an original poetic work. These translations are graceful, fluid and fine poetry in their own right. I've read some of the other translations of Chiri's work and this is by far the best. I don't read Japanese, much less Ainu, and I can't comment on ethnography, but if the great care Peterson obviously took with the English language is any guide (and I suspect it is), this is a fine contribution to the understanding of the Ainu world.

i think it's silly

Easy to understand. Very good.

Maravilhosa introdução à cultura Ainu, a partir deles mesmos, e com introdução que ajuda a contextualizar os contos apresentados.

Benjamin Peterson presents a beautiful and poetic translation of Ainu oral folklore that is clear and easy to read aloud. These stories were originally recited aloud, and the vocabulary and rhythm of this translation is very readable. The introductions are concise and provide necessary context, as do the footnotes that were part of Yukie Chiri's original Japanese translation. This English translation is a valuable resource for understanding Ainu culture, but you will also want to reread it for enjoyment.

I found this collection of Ainu legends both entertaining and fascinating. The antics of the various animal gods are told in richly patterned oral narrative which is sensitively and engagingly translated by Benjamin Peterson, who also introduces the stories with obvious relish. I particularly enjoyed the many colourful profanities in some of the tales. The book would be of interest to many people, including anyone who likes reading myths and folktales. I was often reminded of animal fables from Western traditions, but at the same time there seemed something very special about these particular 'chants' and the traditional beliefs and ways of life underlying them, which Peterson's notes vividly explain. We learn for example that Chiri Yukie, a young Ainu woman of the early twentieth century, transcribed the stories from her aunt and translated them into Japanese, shortly before dying suddenly at the age of nineteen. Also included is a translation of Yukie's original prologue, which is touching in its elegiac concern for an endangered traditional culture, and an interesting account of the challenges of rendering her work into contemporary English. I hope that this very pleasing book won't be the last that we see from Mr Peterson.

Eloquently written. Timeless. So many similarities to Pacific Northwest Aboriginal lore. A treat to read. Written in song/lyrical format I only wish that I had a soundtrack to listen to!