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GLOSSARY
Ainu music and Ainu folk songs
The Ainu people are of different racial stock from the Japanese. They are the aboriginals of Japan, having, according to some evidence, inhabited much of the Japanese mainland before the arrival of the Japanese race. They were certainly living in the southern part of Japan before the mid-7th century B.C., and many Japanese place names appear to have been derived from the Ainu language. Today, the Ainu people- about 17,000 in number-Iive in Hokkaido and on the island of Sakhalin (now Russian territory).Their music and songs are idiosyncratic and obscure in origin.
The Ainu have two musical instruments, the mukkuri and tonkori The former is a kind of mouth-harp made up of a strip of bamboo about 13cm long. The pitch is regulated by the breath of the player and a piece of cord attached near to the fixed end of the vibrating "tongue:" The other instrument, the tonkori, is a primitive stringed instrument with two, three or more strings. Originally the tonkori was played by the Karafuto Ainu of Sakhalin and the mukkuri by the Yezo Ainu of Hokkaido. The Bear Festival is the greatest of the Ainu festivals, the hunting,raising and killing of bears being among the Ainus' most fervent rituals.At the time of the festival, a bear cub is ceremoniously killed and his spirit is "sent away" to the mountain paradise.