Birth Customs in Ainu Tradition

Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.

"Ainu Family Life and Religion," from Popular Science Monthly by J.K. Goodrich, 1888.

There is no ceremony of any kind, nor isolation of the mother, before the birth of a child. As the women are not allowed to offer prayers or take any active part in religious observances, the prospective mother can not ask the gods for their assistance at the time of delivery in order to make parturition easy; indeed, it would probably never enter the head of an Ainu woman to thus interfere with the course of Nature. The father, always preferring sons, and being extremely anxious for a male heir, if he has none already, will pray to the gods to give him a son, and offer libations of sake to the goddess of fire, if his means admit of the expense, or his desire is sufficiently keen to justify the extravagance.

Ainu women on Sakhalin Island. Image by the National Museum of Denmark.

Parturition is very easy, due to the active habits of the women, and is greatly assisted by their physical conformation, as they have broad hips and great strength in the pelvic region. The woman continues her daily tasks until the labor-pains actually come on. She then retires to her hut, where she is attended by a few of her most intimate relations, and, if it be her first baby, her mother will doubtless officiate as midwife. As the kneeling position which a woman assumes at the time of delivery greatly facilitates the passage of the child through the pelvis, and tends to expedite the after-birth, the woman in a surprisingly short time resumes her household duties quite as if nothing unusual had occurred.

There is no ceremony of purification for the mother, nor does she receive congratulations. On the contrary, it is the father who is congratulated; and when the poor mother has taken up her drudgery once more, it is he who remains by the fireside, wrapped up in his good clothes, to receive the felicitations of his relatives and friends, smoking constantly and drinking many a cup of sake, particularly if the baby be a boy and the heir. I was greatly surprised to find this near approach to the couvade in this part of the world, and this one little thing seems to separate the Ainu further than ever from the Japanese.

J. K. Goodrich, "Ainu Family Life and Religion," Popular Science Monthly 34 (November 1888), 81-92.

J.K. Goodrich

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