Seeing as two of my fellow students, on different dates, have brought to my attention the fact that my tangent-inducing remarks and interruption are getting in the way of their learning, I am admittedly bad at keeping my thoughts to myself, I have decided to try something new. From now on I will have a small pad with me in class every day on which I will jot down whatever factoids or unrelated questions pop into my head. I will then post them on this thread each day. That way I still get to share what I know and yearn more from Tony-sensei, without ticking off my classmates. If I deviate from this, feel free to remind me, or if you what to preempt any possible deviation, feel free to ask me if I have my tangent-pad ready each day before class begins.
The Ainu people Tony-sensei mentioned today are pretty interesting. I had only really heard about them before while researching bakemono, during which time there were two sea-monsters of Ainu origin that caught my interest. However, having heard what happened to them i decided to do some more research. Here are some of the links I came across.
these are just text
http://www.ainu-museum.or.jp/english/english.html
Funny this should come up... The following was just posted to a mailing list I'm on:
In case you teach about Ainu experience in Japan, or if students want to do a project about Ainu lives, this announcement may be a useful starting place.
--Guven Witteveen, sjmi@hotmail dotcom
=-=-=-= as seen on the EASIANTH email list today for anthropology today
The University of Wisconsin Digital Collection is pleased to announce
its recent collaboration with Professor Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. She is the
William F. Vilas Professor in the Anthropology department at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison, as well as the 2009 Kluge
Distinguished Chair of Modern Culture for the John W. Kluge Center at
the Library of Congress. The UWDC has scanned Ohunki-Tierney’s
collection of books on the Ainu by the Japanese. The books focus on the
Sakhalin Ainu, since the books were acquired by Ohnuki-Tierney at the
time she was studying them. The Ainu, who lived on Sakhalin, Hokkaido
and the Kuriles are earliest known occupants of these islands. The books
are extremely rare and are either hand-written, with illustrations
hand-drawn, or are wood block prints. Many of these early documents were
authored by explorers and scholars at the order of the Bakufu or the
Matsumae clan. Since these authors were sent by the Japanese government
which for the first time began to be concerned with territorial
expansions and boundaries, these documents often include a number of
detailed maps, including the topography and Ainu place names.
The Ainu Komonjo (18th & 19th century records) -- Ohnuki Collection can be freely viewed at:
http://digital.library.wisc.
UW Digital Collections Center, http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu