"In the past this spacious Hokkaido was our ancestors' world of freedom. Living with ease and pleasure in the manner of innocent babes in the embrace of beautiful, vast nature, they were truly beloved children of nature. Oh, what happy people they must have been!" — Yukie Chiri.
Was primitive life really the paradise it seems to those betrayed by or weary of civilization? The question is pertinent, but let's put it aside for a moment.
Yukie Chiri was an Ainu of the Horobetsu region of southwestern Hokkaido. Her grandmother was a shaman-bard, her aunt a woman whose encyclopedic knowledge of Ainu oral lore earned her official recognition in 1956 as an "intangible cultural asset."