Ainu Creed & Cult

Neil Gordon Munro (1863-1942) was born in Edinburgh, where he was educated. Soon after qualifying as a medical doctor, he began to travel in the Far East, first in India and later in Japan. In 1893, he became Director of the General Hospital in Yokohama and, although he returned to Europe occasionally, from that time until his death he made Japan his home. He became interested in Japanese history, and it was during his many visits to Hokkaido that he encountered the Ainu, the little-known aboriginal people of Japan. His interest then shifted to them and he studied all aspects of Ainu life over several decades, finally going to live among them for the last twelve years of his life. Over several years, and in difficult conditions, he wrote his seminal work Ainu Creed and Cult, the first detailed account of the Ainu to be written by either a westerner or a Japanese. Munro's object in writing it was not only to give an account of his careful observations of this mysterious people and their customs, but also to demonstrate to the world at large and the Japanese in particular that the Ainu had an independent culture worth of respect and preservation. His unique position of trust among the Ainu enabled him to describe fully their religious beliefs, homes, ceremonies, social organisation, arts, festivities and funerary practices. In it he established the intricacy of Ainu spirit beliefs and ritual practices, which so dominated their culture that daily life could not be understood without reference to religious and magical procedures. Munro's work stands today as a fine example of the anthropological method, as a historical record of those decades at the beginning of the century when the old Ainu ways were still followed, and as an eloquent and timeless plea for the dignity and survival of a minority culture.