Mount Poroshiri as Sacred Ainu Landscape was added to Your Favorites!
Hidakasanmyaku Erimo Tokachi NP, Hokkaido
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To Ainu communities along the Saru, Poroshiri was for reverence, not conquest: one record calls it “Kamuy oripak mosiri,” a mountain approached with deference, and says bears were not hunted there out of respect for its kamuy.
A 1986-recorded Ainu-language tale sends a man up Poroshiri after he prays to its kamuy. At the summit he finds a sea-like lake, birds and kelp; the kelp he carries down as proof turns into a serpent.
An Ainu legend about Poroshiri treats a white bear as the mountain’s white kamuy. Anyone who sees it is blown toward the foothills—but unharmed, because the spirit will not let human blood stain the mountain.
An Ainu tale makes Poroshiri’s future kamuy a boy who travels from across the sea to his father, scattering chestnuts en route. Museum researchers note that this path mirrors the tree’s eastern natural range in Hokkaido.
One 1988 oral-history record preserves Teru Nishijima’s family memory: they prayed to Poroshiri at their household nusa altar, and her father once climbed the mountain carrying heavy stones on a surveying trip.
A local Ainu elder located kamuy mintar (“the gods’ garden”) at Poroshiri and explained that kamuy meant unseen deities there—not bears.
On October 17, 2013, Poroshiri was added to Pirikanoka, a national scenic designation for Ainu-linked landscapes. Its official description recognizes the sacred mountain and the 3 glacial cirques around its summit as a “garden of the gods.”
