Post by Sindran on Aug 4, 2020 4:51:25 GMT
(Long time no see, I'm not very active these days but I found this interesting creature while reading Golden Kamuy and I think I'll add more Ainu mythology as time goes on.)
Ipetam: A "man eating sword" that lives in the Kamuy Kotan. Taken from daisetsu-kamikawa-ainu.jp:
"In the legend Sokonashi Numa to Yoto, it is said that a leader of the Ainu village threw a man-eating sword into the bottomless swamp where the strange red Tateiwa rock reach up eight meters. A sword discovered at the bottom of the swamp is still enshrined at the Ryuo Shinto Shrine to the Water God.
Asam-sak-to (bottom – lacking – swamp) and Ipetam-suma (sword – rock) are the Ainu words for the bottomless swamp and Tateiwa rock. Tateiwa rock was given its name due to its resemblance to a sword, and the word Ipetam is derived from the Ainu words for eat (ipe) and sword (tam) to form the meaning of a man-eating sword.
This rock is said to be the same sword from the legend."
The manga Golden Kamuy talks of the legend thus:
"A glowing sword that floats though the sky and attacks people. Even if you abandoned it deep in the mountains or sunk it to the bottom of a deep river, it would always come back. If you put it into a box with some rocks, it would eat the rocks with a scraping noise. As soon as it ate all the rocks, it would fly out of the box and attack people again. Once the ipetam was sunk into a bottomless swamp in the Kamuy Kotan area, it stopped coming back
Sources:
daisetsu-kamikawa-ainu.jp/en/story/tateiwa/
manganelo.com/chapter/golden_kamui/chapter_92
For the record, the author of Golden Kamuy tries his best to accurately incorporate Ainu beliefs and practices in his manga by cooperating with cultural experts. While I can't find the source of his legend, he does have access to Japanese sources we don't.
Ipetam: A "man eating sword" that lives in the Kamuy Kotan. Taken from daisetsu-kamikawa-ainu.jp:
"In the legend Sokonashi Numa to Yoto, it is said that a leader of the Ainu village threw a man-eating sword into the bottomless swamp where the strange red Tateiwa rock reach up eight meters. A sword discovered at the bottom of the swamp is still enshrined at the Ryuo Shinto Shrine to the Water God.
Asam-sak-to (bottom – lacking – swamp) and Ipetam-suma (sword – rock) are the Ainu words for the bottomless swamp and Tateiwa rock. Tateiwa rock was given its name due to its resemblance to a sword, and the word Ipetam is derived from the Ainu words for eat (ipe) and sword (tam) to form the meaning of a man-eating sword.
This rock is said to be the same sword from the legend."
The manga Golden Kamuy talks of the legend thus:
"A glowing sword that floats though the sky and attacks people. Even if you abandoned it deep in the mountains or sunk it to the bottom of a deep river, it would always come back. If you put it into a box with some rocks, it would eat the rocks with a scraping noise. As soon as it ate all the rocks, it would fly out of the box and attack people again. Once the ipetam was sunk into a bottomless swamp in the Kamuy Kotan area, it stopped coming back
Sources:
daisetsu-kamikawa-ainu.jp/en/story/tateiwa/
manganelo.com/chapter/golden_kamui/chapter_92
For the record, the author of Golden Kamuy tries his best to accurately incorporate Ainu beliefs and practices in his manga by cooperating with cultural experts. While I can't find the source of his legend, he does have access to Japanese sources we don't.
