Ainu culture

Japanese breed of dog

'''''' () are Ainu sagas that form a long rich tradition of oral literature. In older periods, the epics were performed by both men and women; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when Ainu culture was in decline, women were generally the most skillful performers. Traditional tales describe floating worlds with , or the land of the humans (as opposed to , the land of the gods), resting on the back of a fish whose movements cause earthquakes.

thumb|Matagi hunters with Japanese black bear, 1966, [[Kamikoani, Akita]]

Nikhil Kumar Vishwakarma

, sometimes written as is an Ainu ceremony of Hokkaido and Sakhalin in which a hand-raised brown bear cub is ceremonially killed, under the notion that the soul merely returns to its god-world (). The physical body of the bear god is considered merely to be his "disguise" (), and the pelt and meat harvested are accepted as gifts that the god has left in gratitude for the ceremonious hospitality it received.

In Ainu culture, ' or ' ( or ) is a ritual wood-shaving stick used in prayers to the spiritual world. They were used in most Ainu religious rituals and were also frequently made to request assistance for hunting and childbirth. Some can be used multiple times, while others are destroyed immediately after one use. Their size and the direction in which they are shaved depends on which (spiritual being) it is offered to and what is being requested.

type of traditional Ainu Settlement

thumb|300x300px|Itaomacip drawn by Kodama Teiryo, bearing cargo of fur and dried salmon for trade. The ship drawn is not to scale: the actual hull is much larger than a human. An itaomacip (Japanese: イタオマチㇷ゚, Ainu: ita-oma-cip, "boat with a board") is a boat built traditionally by the Ainu for seafaring purposes. The name itaomacip is derived from the Ainu words ita-oma-cip, meaning literally a "boat with a board" (ita is a loan word from Japanese meaning "board"). It is a sewn boat enlarged via attaching side plates to a dugout canoe. When navigating inland waters, like rivers or lakes, Ainu

subspecies of mammal

traditional Ainu costume

thumb|upright=1.8|A Cercidiphyllum|katsura tree '''''' (, ; Sakhalin Ainu: , ) are wooden, carved ceremonial sticks used by Ainu men when making offerings to spirits.

thumb|A replica amappo on display at the Osaka Museum of Natural History thumb|John Batchelor (missionary)|John Batchelor (1854-1944), "The Ainu of Japan", 1892, classic horizontal amappo thumb|Ibid., vertical amappo for otter thumb|Ibid., amappo rat trap An was a traditional bear and deer hunters' trap of the Ainu people of the northern Japanese archipelago and Sakhalin. Traps similar to amappo were also used by ethnic Japanese matagi hunters.