IzzyBird, weaving details
June 05, 2020
45
Isabella is doing what most writers toward the end of a trip, which is dump all of her notes into one very long document that isn’t terribly interesting but is full of very specific details about the size of the houses* and the size of the sleeping mats. While I’m happy that someone has noted all of this, I don’t know that it tells us much about the people. Your mileage may vary.
She talks a bit about the household gods and how they are an “essential part of the furnishing of every house.” In Benri’s house, at the left of the entrance, there are ten white wood wands, with with shavings at the top, stuck into a wall. Another projects from the window that faces the sunrise. “The great god — a white post, two feet high, with spirals of shavings depending from the top — is always planted in the floor, near the wall, on the left side, opposite the fire.”
The men spend the autumn, winter, and spring hunting deer and bear. They’ve been prohibited by the Japanese government from using poison and arrow traps and pitfalls, mostly because too many people were accidentally getting killed by them. But the Ainu still use poisoned arrows and let Isabella know that the eyes of the Japanese can’t be everywhere so maybe keep your eyes out for pitfalls when in the woods.
The women spend the bulk of their time making barkcloth. But unlike Japanese women, Ainu women look cheerful and “eat the same food as men at the same time, laugh and talk before the men, and receive equal support and respect in old age.”
Once this bark is prepared — layers are separated and split into narrow strips — it is time to weave it. “The loom is so simple that I almost fear to represent it as complicated by description,” Isabella says, before going on to make it seem complicated indeed.**
* Benri’s room is 35x25’, for the record, and the height of the walls never exceeds 4’10” because of the length of the reeds they use. This goes on - but because it’s not the kind of information I find interesting, I’m gonna skip it.
** A picture, which also gives you a sense of the tattoos.***
*** It’s a backstrap loom, essentially. It helps if you can see it.
I'm just getting caught up on all Izzy's adventures, and I want to say thank you for putting them up. I've enjoyed reading them, along with your comments and explanations.
Posted by: Tracey | June 07, 2020 at 01:57 PM