--- title: "The *Yukar* as a Living Archive: Chiri Yukie’s Epistemic Resistance" sousTitre: "When Ainu Orality Defies Colonial Erasure Through Narrative Sovereignty" description: "Through *Ainu Shin'yōshū*, Chiri Yukie reveals how Ainu oral epics (*yukar*) are not mere folktales but technologies of cultural survival. Rooted in embodied performance, they preserve a worldview threatened by Japanese assimilation while asserting narrative sovereignty against the colonial archive. A meditation on oral transmission as an act of epistemic resistance." date: 2026-09-09 lang: en tradition: ainu auteurs: ["Yukie Chiri"] --- # The *Yukar* as a Living Archive: Chiri Yukie’s Epistemic Resistance C ## The Voice That Resists Erasure Yukie Chiri grew up in a world where stories were not written but embodied. For her, Ainu oral epics—those *[yukar](https://viasophia.org/lexique/yukar/)* passed from memory to memory—were not relics of a vanished past but tools of survival. They carried within them a way of knowing the world that eluded colonial categories: neither folklore nor mere tradition, but a living technology, rooted in the body, the land, and the language. Her work, *Ainu Shin'yōshū*, was no neutral transcription. It was a political act, a reclamation of confiscated speech. She understood that these brief tales, centered on the natural world, could not be grasped without their performance context. They emerged from a culture where knowledge was lived through listening, where understanding was not fragmented into abstract concepts but experienced in the shared moment. Unlike writing, which fixes and isolates, Ainu orality was an event: it demanded the storyteller’s presence, the space of performance, and a community to receive it. Chiri insisted on this fundamental difference. What was committed to paper was only a diminished echo of what unfolded in voice, gesture, and breath. Understanding the circumstances in which she grew up, deeply knowledgeable of her people’s traditions and fully bilingual in Ainu and Japanese despite the policies of assimilation promoted by the Japanese local and national governments and the colonialist culture of discrimination, has led me to become more aware of the situation of indigenous peoples around the globe whose histories are marked by similar struggles. Understanding the circumstances in which she grew up—deeply immersed in her people’s traditions and fully bilingual in Ainu and Japanese despite the assimilation policies enforced by local and national Japanese governments and the colonial culture of discrimination—I became more aware of the situation of Indigenous peoples worldwide, whose histories are marked by similar struggles. *[Une voix de l'intérieur]* Yukie Chiri spoke from a singular position: that of an Ainu woman who lived under the pressure of assimilation while preserving her language and stories. The French rendering of this passage respects her style and nuances. She did not merely describe a threatened culture; she embodied its resistance through her own journey. ## The Living Archive Against the Dead Archive The encounter between Yukie Chiri and the Japanese linguist Kinda’ichi Kyōsuke in 1918 marked a turning point. The latter, fascinated by Ainu tales, saw in them an equivalent to Homeric epics. For him, transcribing them was a way to rescue them from oblivion while elevating them to the status of universal heritage. He persuaded the young woman to devote her life to this task, emphasizing the nobility of these traditions. Yet, in Chiri’s view, this perspective carried a trap: it reduced orality to an object of study, a fixed text, when it was first and foremost a living practice. Kinda’ichi, trained in literate culture, projected onto Ainu tales categories that were foreign to them. He compared them to Greek epics, as if to grant them legitimacy in the eyes of academia. But this comparison, though flattering, obscured what made the *[yukar](https://viasophia.org/lexique/yukar/)* unique: its grounding in a specific territory, language, and cosmology. Chiri emphasized that these tales were not "things" to be archived but events to be lived. Their power lay in their capacity to renew themselves with each performance, to adapt to circumstances, to resist the fragmentation imposed by writing. ## Narrative Sovereignty as an Act of Resistance For Yukie Chiri, oral transmission was not merely a means of preservation but a form of sovereignty. By keeping Ainu epics alive, her people asserted their right to an autonomous narrative, independent of colonial frameworks. Japanese assimilation policies, which aimed to eradicate the Ainu language and traditions, failed to silence these tales. They survived because they were carried by bodies, voices, and memories that refused to be reduced to silence. She reminded us that Ainu orality was not a vestige of the past but a present practice, a way of thinking about the world that defied colonial logic. Unlike writing, which separates and analyzes, orality unites and encompasses. It does not merely tell stories: it brings them into being, here and now. In this sense, the *[yukar](https://viasophia.org/lexique/yukar/)* was far more than a tale. It was a technology of resistance, a means of preserving a worldview against those who sought to erase it. ## Listening as a Political Act Yukie Chiri called for a different kind of listening. Not one that sought to grasp, classify, or possess, but one willing to be transformed by what it heard. Ainu tales did not ask to be understood by the standards of literate culture but to be experienced in their performative dimension. They reminded us that knowledge was not just a matter of words but of relationships: between storyteller and audience, between humans and the non-human world, between past and present. By choosing to transcribe these tales, Yukie Chiri did not yield to the temptation of the dead archive. She turned them into a bridge between two worlds, a way of making visible what was meant to disappear. But she insisted: the written text would never equal the performance. It was only an echo, a trace. The true archive—the one that resisted erasure—was the one that continued to live in the voices of those who passed it on. ## Sources - Chiri Yukie, *Ainu Shin'yōshū* — Sarah M. Strong, Ainu Spirits Singing, University of Hawai'i Press, 2011 (manuscrit de 1922, publié en 1923), trans. Sarah M. Strong (de l'ainu et du japonais vers l'anglais) ; rendu français maison Canonical source : https://viasophia.org/en/reenchanter/2026-09-09-yukar-comme-archive-vivante-resistance/