awake on guard, to warn the others 
with a cry when it sights a boat 
eo they can dive under the water. 
When it swime it cleaves the waves 
quickly, exposing half ite body 
above the surface (Figure 4). 
a dy 
wy 
wi 
K 
WAL 
ce yt 
> % 
x, 
% 
“The sea otter (kaidateu) 
ie very much like the fur seal. 
Most of the fur eeal (ottotsu) 
being sold is actually sea otter 
(kaidateu). Real fur seal is 
difficult to find in the market. 
It is claimed that the main diffi- 
culty in making the famous medi- 
cine 'nambu-ichiryu-kintau!' [Iwate, 
one = pill, gold-red] is procuring 
Y genuine fur seal for it. The 
ie so Ly 53 ge Honso- [probably an earlier 
Setar herbal | states this medicine is 
ze very ecarce in China, and imported 
there from Japan. 
SBR 
"In Hokkaido the natives 
call large fur seals ‘netsufu', 
middle-sized ones ‘choki', and 
the small ones ‘uneu'. These 
names refer to the real fur seal 

Figure 4. ~ Early woodcut of fur seal (ottotsu). The fine are called 
floating in the sea (Bibl 8). The inscrip- 'tetsuht', and they are counted 
tion states: "The picture shows how the fur 'ichi-wa, ni-wa' [wa ie the Japa- 
seal (uneo) floate on the water. When they nese euffix used with ordinal 
eee them in this estate the aborigines think numbere in counting birds], and 
the animals sleep." not ‘ip-piki, ni-piki, san-biki' 
[the suffix for animals]. In 
Aomori the fins are eaten, and 
the big fina are called 'to', which may be the origin of the Japanese woman's and child's 
slang term ‘toto!’ for fish. The same word is also found in China. 
“The Ainu hunt the fur seal from boats of twisted straw. When they approach the 
sleeping flock they threaten the seal on guard by waving a fox's tail [see Frontispiece]. 
Thies so frightens the guarding seal that it flees without a sound. Then the hunters kill 
the sleeping seals with harpoons or bows and arrows. No other hunters are so skillful. 
They paddle their boats forward or backward without turning the bow. 
"It has been asked why the word 'ottosei' 1s understood to mean testicle (gaijin) 
when ite true literal meaning is the navel (sel). One book states a man tried. to get the 
answer from the Mateumae people, but could not. I was told by a native the other day that 
the fur seal's navel is so close to the penis that when the latter is cut off, the navel 
is always completely destroyed. However, this is probably only the case in the male, and 
we can certainly get the navel from the females." ‘ 
The Japanese word "ottosel" actually did not come into general accepted use for 
the fur sea’. until much later, when the Japanese become mors familiar with the animal, 
Some authentic medieval accounts use the terme "uneu", "uneo", or “oneppu", which were 
evidently of Ainu origin. The anonymous Ezo Miyagi (Bibl 5) states "The local provincial 
name for the fur seal (ottosei) is ‘uneo'. The female is called ‘homappu'. They are three 
or four shaku long. Larger ones, five or six shaku, or even eix or seven shaku long, are 
called 'oneppu!"® (Fieure 5). 
12 
