The Ainu Wolf Carving

Book review for The Ainu Wolf Carving by Kayano Shigeru. I was recently in Hokkaido, and got to chatting with a friendly hotel concierge by the name of Peter Howlett. A Canadian man born-and-raised in Hokkaido, he had also done some translation work of Japanese children’s stories on the side, and kept a stack of them in the hotel for guests to borrow. Two of these were Ainu folktales - The Ainu Wolf Carving and Kanna Kamuy and the Maiden. Kanna Kamuy was about a young woman who lived alone in the forest. One day a handsome man came down to stay (the children’s book doesn’t really go into details on weird it would actually be if a random dude started living in your house, ha) and then it turns out he was Kanna Kamuy, the god of thunder in Ainu lore. He gets driven away due to his family not approving of their union, but after 6 years he returns and takes her to Ainu heaven (Kamuy Mosir) to live happily ever after. The pair in Kamuy Mosir The Ainu Wolf Carving was a little longer, about…