ETHNOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE AINU MATERIALS AT THE RUSSIAN MUSEUM OF ETHNOGRAPHY IN ST. PETERBURG

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A. The Russian Museum of Ethnography has been known to have a rich collection of Ainu ethnographical materials of which we had had no information. The joint investigation of Japanese and Russian researchers worked for three years in 1997 - 1999 over the collections for the first time since the year of collecting.B. The investigation consisted in documentation of the whole items of the collections basing on the original registration, fixing the results of observation in sheets and photographs of several kinds.C. As a result of the three-year joint investigation, we got known that the Russian Museum of Ethnography holds 22 collections of Ainu materials in number about 2600 items and 6 photo-collections in 268 pictures.D. The majority of the collections belongs to B.N.Vasil'ev, who was dispatched in 1912 to Hokkaido and Sakhalin, where he collected the materials intensively in a short term. The collections cover, therefore, an interesting ethnography of the Ainu life in the south-west region of Hokkaido, in village Saru, and in the southern regions of Sakhalin at the beginning of 20th century.E. The photos and the datam along with the results of the joint investigation are planned to be published as a catalogue, which undoubtedly will serve for a detailed and wideranged study of the Ainu culture.