In the daylight he found the bloodstained wooden wolf and picked it up, worshiping it and promising to make many inau and some tonoto (the traditional Ainu drink, brewed from millet) for him.  Then he went to sleep, and dreamt this dream: A young man, dressed all in black, appeared before him and explained that he was not really a bad god, but that he had fallen hopelessly in love with the woman.   His love was so intense that he caused the father-in-law to bring the woman to this place and leave her.  However, she had the charm of the god of the wolf with her.  That charm protected her.  The god then asked the young man to take the woman and her child back to her people and not blame the father-in-law, as he did not know what he had done.

The young man awoke and found that the woman had had the same dream.  They set off for the woman’s village, where the young man explained that he had killed a bear.  The village people came with him to the place where the bear lay.  They skinned it and carried it back to the village where they had a marvelous ceremony sending the guest bear off to the land of the gods.  The young man had another dream that night in which he learned that the bear god would never trouble the woman and her village again, and that he himself would be especially favored by the gods and become a rich and happy man.

The bear kamui noticed a very small dancer who was better than all the rest. But not until he had made many visits to the worthy hunter’s house did the bear kamui discover the dancer’s true identity.

The iyomante

The apparent paradox of both worshiping a god and eating its flesh seen in the two previous tales is very common in Ainu tradition and is seen especially in those tales that concern themselves with the bear-ritual feast, the iyomante.  The Ainu and other northern peoples share rituals in which a food animal is worshiped and thanked for his flesh, sent off to the land of the gods, and then asked to come again.  The Lapps and some Eskimo treat the bear as an honored guest (marattone in Ainu) who receives gifts and at the same time offers himself as the feast food.

Part of their underlying belief system also contributes to this idea.  The Ainu have traditionally believed that when the kamui visit the world of man, they wear a disguise or dress in the shape of, say, a bird, an owl, or a bear.  And the kamui, having once put on this “dress,” cannot return to heaven unless the disguise, or flesh, is removed by men.