Shy friend · 5d
Do you know if ainu culture has any deities or myths around foxes? I'm curious if they are depicted as tricksters like the rest of East Asia or are more benevolent creatures, I know that they are sometimes used in Iomante but thats the extent of my knowledge and google wasnt much help ^^; (or it was from a yamato/western perspective)
They're also shapeshifting tricksters! But, similar to foxes in Japanese myths, they can still be benevolent.
There's a translated collection of Ainu folktales from Basil Hall Chamberlain online. It includes some stories about foxes.
https://sacred-texts.com/shi/aft/aft.htm
There's also a paper on foxes in Kamuy Yukar that you mind find interesting.
https://asianethnology.org/article/349/download
As an aside, a work being written, published, or translated by someone who is not Ainu does not necessarily devalue it. You just need to be aware that there could be biases or certain cultural knowledge that was not available to whoever worked on it. The nicher the topic you're researching (Ainu culture -> Ainu religion -> animals in Ainu religion -> foxes in Ainu religion), the more scarce the number of published works. The Ainu studies field is not ginormous, and English works are even fewer. Though I study indigeneity in Japan, my work primarily pertains to modern political history and identity formation under and "after" empire. Since I am not a religious studies person and my immediate family are not religious, my knowledge about foxes in religion outside of the written yukar I have read is quite limited.
