Night Parade wing
Ainu traditions entered through their own cultural framing.
6 entries
Cultural framing comes first
Standing rule (from the akkorokamui entry, now page-level): Ainu kamuy are not "monsters" but powers in a distinct, living cosmology. This wing presents Ainu material as Ainu — never silently absorbed into "Japanese folklore." Where a being was partially absorbed into Shinto practice (Akkorokamui as Atkorkamuy), the absorption is the labeled event, not the identity.
Field-guide entries
the great octopus of Uchiura Bay
RegionalIn Uchiura (Funka) Bay, Hokkaidō: an octopus the size of the bay's weather — accounts run to a hectare of body, 100 meters across — so red that "the redness shines out to the skies," which is its mercy: sailors see the glow and steer away.
the lake that has a fish, the fish that has an island
RegionalThe white-spotted char, at legend-scale.
the aunt who owns the woods
Regional"The old woman who owns the wooded plain" — also rendered "swamp aunt": a wild-haired demonic woman of tree hollows and riverbank willow groves.
the people beneath
RegionalBefore the Ainu, say the Ainu, there were others: small people living in pit-dwellings underground, skilled fishers and hunters who traded in the dark — leaving "deer, fish, and other game" at night, preferring never to be seen.
the Ainu water-child born from a war
RegionalThe Ainu water-being: child-sized (3–12 years in appearance), haired, no kappa dish; "skin like sea turtle, purplish or reddish," bird- or sickle-shaped feet — and the anatomical signature: both arms connect internally, so pulling one shortens the other, or detaches both (the same sliding-arm anatomy Wajin folklore gives the kappa, kept, while the dish is dropped).
the Ainu fart monster
RegionalThe name translates, with dignity intact, as "a monster that breaks wind".