The house truly presented a gay showing of inao. Those for the fireplace are called chi e horo ka kep. There were four of them in line at the east end of the fireplace; the top end is four-cleft and there are two tufts of shavings at different heights; in the upper tuft were three small bunches, neatly curled; in the lower tuft, were two bunches; in shaving these the movement is downward and toward the cutter; the bark is left on the lower part of the sticks; these inao should be burned after the ceremony. The chise koro inao were two in number, one to the north, the other to the south, of the fireplace; they are cut squarely across at the upper end and tapered gradually below; no bark is left upon them; they are for the household god and, after the ceremony should be placed with it in the northeast corner. Inao kike, loose shaving curls, were hung at the entrance and at the sides of the two windows; when evil people look in at the window, where these are located, the god strikes them in the face; only evil people will look in at a window. Great inao, with beautifully curled masses of shavings, called kike parase were fastened—one at the south window, one somewhat larger at the east window, another still larger on the roof beam above the south end of the fireplace; those at the windows are to keep away evil spirits and ghosts; that bound to the beam is dedicated to the god who holds up the house; the two on the roof, at the ends of the ridgepole were of the same kind and were to ward off harm from winds and evil birds. Chise koro inao is a name used only while that kind of an inao is at the fireplace; when it is elsewhere it is called kike chinoe; the shaving curls of which it is composed may be twisted together into cords giving it an entirely peculiar and different appearance. Most important of all, however, is the inao netobe; this is the one at the extreme northeast corner of the room, and, even for our inspection the people were unwilling to bring it out, though they showed it to me in its place, in full detail; the top end is cut obliquely at a single stroke, and the resulting slope is called “the face”; the bark is left on and in it three notches are cut, at each of three levels, around the stick, nine in all; cords of kike inao are tied around this stick and rest upon these notches, as supports; these cords bind in place pendant kike; as new household festivals occur new kike are added until a great bunch of them is formed; under this mass of pendant shavings the coal from the hearth is bound; a little arrow or spear is laid among the shavings and a miniature sword is bound to the upright; this inao represents the very spirit of the house, and while it ought never to be moved during the lifetime of the house, it should be destroyed if the house is deserted. The nusa to the east of the house consisted of twenty sticks of which twelve were long, eight short. The longer ones consist of support sticks to which kike parase were lashed, both support and inao being cut to neat sloping surfaces for fitting. The shorter sticks were cut with a single sloping stroke, giving a “face,” which was slit across with one cut, “the mouth”; in each mouth inao shavings were thrust. The shorter sticks are said to be merely ornamental; the longer ones are sacred. The one to the left is the moon, the next the wells, next bears, the rest are mountains in which bears are hunted.
GREAT INAO: KIKE PARASE.
AINU IN CANOE: SARU RIVER.
In Yezo, when an Ainu has been away from the village and returns, his home-coming is made a public occasion. All the people gather, someone being their spokesman. He and the traveller seat themselves facing. He who has been away begins to sing, narrating his adventures, telling where he has been and what he has seen and done. Presently he stops and the other begins to sing the happenings of the village during the traveller’s absence from home. So they sing, alternating, until both stories are completed. When our Ainu group returns, they will be received as those who were dead and have returned; what a many things the poor fellows will have to sing of the people and the places they have seen so far away from their home villages in the Saru River valley.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Unfortunately photographed inside out.
[2] Ainu village.
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