Bear And Teddy Bear - Ainu Carved Wood, Japan, 1950-60 #1

Direct hewn wood - small dents, cracks from aging. The Ainu are an aboriginal population living in northern Japan. They arrived around the 14th century BC, in the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin; (1000 years before the Wa people, ancestors of the current Japanese people). During the Meiji era, forced assimilation prohibited their culture, dispossessed them of their lands, until the complete annexation of Hokkaido. For the Ainu, in nature are divine spirits "kamuy", male or female, some good, others malevolent. A major ceremony concerns the Kamuy Kim-un (bear). The village captures a cub, carefully cares for it for a whole year, before taking its life with an arrow. Its flesh is then consumed to free the spirit, which can then return home, carried by a ceremony. For the Ainu, this is a charity ceremony: the Kim-un kamuy was pampered for a year, and only its "body shell" was consumed. It is believed that the origin of the statuettes lies in the miniature "inoka" figurines, animist stylized bears, showing the animal's power of metamorphosis. Kim-un kamuy, when he descends from the mountains, dons his bear costume. The bear thus becomes "a man of the mountains." Just like the Eskimo people of Canada and the Chukchi of Siberia, the Ainu perceive the bear as equal to humans. From 1924, bears were produced. In 1933, Emperor Hirohito commissioned sculptures, an event that brought this craft to public attention. After the war, carved wooden bears spread to homes throughout Japan. A decline began in the 1980s, and rural exodus. An illustrated note will be given to the buyer.