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Imekanu (Kannari Matsu) (1875-1961)
Feb. 21st, 2025 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomiImekanu was born in 1875 to an Ainu family in Horobetsu, Hokkaido; her Japanese name was Kannari Matsu. Her father died when she was eleven, leaving Imekanu and her sister Nami to be raised by their mother Monashinok [transcriptions vary], a famous Ainu storyteller who taught her daughters the yukar oral sagas.
In 1891 she broke her pelvis in an accident, to spend the rest of her life walking with crutches. In 1892 she and Nami were sent to Hakodate to attend the Airin School, a private Christian school for Ainu youth which was founded against repeated bureaucratic obstacles by John Batchelor (Yaeko Batchelor’s adopted father, a missionary with great interest in Ainu language and culture), Imekanu’s uncle Kannari Kizo, and his son Taro. There the sisters learned to read and write Japanese and some English, as well as to transcribe Ainu in the Roman alphabet and to read the Bible. Imekanu was baptized in 1893 (the Japanese Ainu scholar Kindaichi Kyosuke wrote that curiously enough, her Christian and her Ainu faiths somehow never conflicted).
Upon graduation in 1898, the sisters became Anglican missionaries, working to educate as well as convert the Ainu; Imekanu became a central figure in every community she entered for her energy and commitment (her family was often the only one subscribing to a newspaper, and the neighbors would come over to read the news and the serial as well as listen to Monashinok's stories). Nami married Chiri Kokichi in 1902 (he may have originally preferred Imekanu until he learned about her disability). Their daughter Yukie, born in 1903, was adopted at age six by Imekanu (possibly upon a prior agreement that Nami’s daughters would go to Imekanu in order to continue her family line). When Yukie was bullied in elementary school, Imekanu counseled her not to let the wajin (Japanese) beat her down.
Yukie also learned Ainu and the yukar sagas from her aunt and grandmother and, before her extremely untimely death, created an Ainu-Japanese bilingual edition with support from Kindaichi, who first visited in 1918 and became a family friend. Imekanu herself began to write down the yukar in Ainu after her 1926 retirement from missionary work, creating 134 handwritten volumes totaling over twenty thousand pages, some of which were published by Kindaichi, while she gave many more to her nephew (Yukie’s brother) Chiri Mashiho, also an Ainu linguist of renown.
Imekanu received a Medal of Honor for her contribution to intangible cultural assets in 1956 (and may or may not have thought, thanks a lot, colonizers). She died in 1961.
Sources
https://moula.jp/LP/kamui/chiriyukie/ (Japanese) Mostly about Chiri Yukie, but including a picture of Yukie and Imekanu together (you can see Imekanu’s traditional lip tattoos)
In 1891 she broke her pelvis in an accident, to spend the rest of her life walking with crutches. In 1892 she and Nami were sent to Hakodate to attend the Airin School, a private Christian school for Ainu youth which was founded against repeated bureaucratic obstacles by John Batchelor (Yaeko Batchelor’s adopted father, a missionary with great interest in Ainu language and culture), Imekanu’s uncle Kannari Kizo, and his son Taro. There the sisters learned to read and write Japanese and some English, as well as to transcribe Ainu in the Roman alphabet and to read the Bible. Imekanu was baptized in 1893 (the Japanese Ainu scholar Kindaichi Kyosuke wrote that curiously enough, her Christian and her Ainu faiths somehow never conflicted).
Upon graduation in 1898, the sisters became Anglican missionaries, working to educate as well as convert the Ainu; Imekanu became a central figure in every community she entered for her energy and commitment (her family was often the only one subscribing to a newspaper, and the neighbors would come over to read the news and the serial as well as listen to Monashinok's stories). Nami married Chiri Kokichi in 1902 (he may have originally preferred Imekanu until he learned about her disability). Their daughter Yukie, born in 1903, was adopted at age six by Imekanu (possibly upon a prior agreement that Nami’s daughters would go to Imekanu in order to continue her family line). When Yukie was bullied in elementary school, Imekanu counseled her not to let the wajin (Japanese) beat her down.
Yukie also learned Ainu and the yukar sagas from her aunt and grandmother and, before her extremely untimely death, created an Ainu-Japanese bilingual edition with support from Kindaichi, who first visited in 1918 and became a family friend. Imekanu herself began to write down the yukar in Ainu after her 1926 retirement from missionary work, creating 134 handwritten volumes totaling over twenty thousand pages, some of which were published by Kindaichi, while she gave many more to her nephew (Yukie’s brother) Chiri Mashiho, also an Ainu linguist of renown.
Imekanu received a Medal of Honor for her contribution to intangible cultural assets in 1956 (and may or may not have thought, thanks a lot, colonizers). She died in 1961.
Sources
https://moula.jp/LP/kamui/chiriyukie/ (Japanese) Mostly about Chiri Yukie, but including a picture of Yukie and Imekanu together (you can see Imekanu’s traditional lip tattoos)
