Yumi Koizumi, a guest artist, provided the artwork for today’s Doodle, which celebrates Yukie Chiri, an Ainu translator, on his 120th birthday. Native Japanese people known as the Ainu live in Japan’s northern regions. At the point when they had to move and absorb into Japanese culture during the mid 1900s, Chiri made a compilation of Ainu incredible stories, called yukar, to guarantee their accounts and culture were appropriately safeguarded.
On this date in 1903, Chiri was born in Hokkaido’s Noboribetsu City. At the time, the Ainu people were being forced to adopt traditional Japanese values. She was sent to live with her aunt in Asahikawa as a young girl, where she learned both Ainu and Japanese. She excelled in language arts and was a gifted student.
At the point when she was a teen, Chiri met a Japanese language specialist named Kyōsuke Kindaiachi who was attempting to record Ainu old stories and customs. She made the decision to work on transcribing and translating yukar for the rest of her life, and she eventually published an anthology titled Ainu Shinysh (or A Collection of the Ainu Epics of the Gods). Due to the fact that yukar are oral works meant to be chanted, this was a particularly challenging task.
Many readers started to respect the Ainu culture as a result of Chiri’s writings. Today, many people still cite Chiri’s anthology as the most reliable source for Ainu traditions and culture.
Happy birthday Yukie Chiri!