Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir , by Kayano Shigeru

1996; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 28; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14672715.1996.10416220

0007-4810

Gerald Figal,

Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies

In an Asahi Shimbun interview (31 May 1994) Kayano Shigeru (1923-), author of Ainu no ishibumi (An Ainu Memoir, 1980), recalls the fireside uwepekere or folktales told to him in the Ainu language by his grandmother and remarks that “since there's no written Ainu language, it's only the ear, not the eye, that matters.” Our Land Was a Forest, Kayano's autobiographical memoir, impresses the ear as well as the eye of the reader, as Ainu voices—seldom listened to in the past—reverberate between the lines of the original Japanese version and this English language translation by Kyoko Selden and Lili Selden.