Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans: The Epic Tradition of the Ainu

Donald L. Philippi was a translator and scholar of Japanese and Ainu, and this University of Tokyo Press book is his scholarly translated study of the Ainu yukar epic tradition, including its named kamuy deities, the spirit beings central to Ainu religious thought. Its strength is Philippi's own linguistic command of the Ainu language required to translate this oral epic literature directly, work few outside scholars were equipped to do. Its limit is that it is a specialist literary and linguistic study of the epic tradition specifically, so a claim about lived, contemporary Ainu religious practice, as distinct from the content of these epic narratives, needs a source focused on present-day practice rather than this textual study.