Ipetam

An or is a supernatural sword in the legends of the Ainu of Hokkaido.

An or is a supernatural sword in the legends of the Ainu of Hokkaido. ===Saru=== A story is told that once a stalwart, violent band of Tokachi Ainu went around pillaging the villages of the Saru Ainu. One village was attacked when most of its inhabitants had gone hunting, leaving only one old woman holding the fort. When she realized that a raid was upon her, she waved a nata (machete) with a loose rivet, and made it rattle. The Tokachi Ainu heard the sound and scurried away. The Saru were known to own the deadly sword that was normally kept in a box and made cluttering sounds when it fed on the leather straps ( ), but when unfed popped out and went on a killing spree. It is also told that the Ishikari Ainu bandits similarly tried to raid the Saru village and was driven away in like fashion. The storytelling also connects the epetam with Muramasa (the Tokugawa-bane sword). ===Hobetsu in Mukawa=== Hobetsu now part of Mukawa gives a tale once upon a time, where a girl was plowing the field, when the Hidaka Ainu came up the river in a raid.She immediately lifted the skirt of her clothing and crouched forward, sticking her butt-out in an evil-warding gesture called the , and fled. This caused the Hidaka bandits to be blinded and become unable to see her. They eventually found her climbing the fort, which they besieged. The men who normally went on duty at the fort were out hunting, so the old woman left to fend it swung her sickle-machete with the loose rivet, making it clatter. The Hidaka bandits mistook this to be the sound of the man-eating ipetam sword and fled, loosening their loincloths and doing the hoparta. ===Samani=== A chief of a village in Samani maintained a fort at He owned an ipetam sword, which had a will of its own, which would swing its blade and kill humans of its own accord, a frightening weapon. An enemy attacked the fort trying to steal this weapon, but they became locked in a stalemate. One morning, the chief climbed the lookout tower and found a beached whale on the opposite shore, flocked by many seagulls. The chief gleefully took his underlings to salvage the carcass, but it turned out to be a decoy, a sand-mound strewn with fish to attract the birds. The ruse left the fort unprotected, and the ipetam was stolen away. 。 ===Abashiri and Bihoro=== The story is told that once long ago, the monstrous bird huri came to reside up north at the mouth of the Abashiri River, inside a cave on the beach ( ). The locale was marked by a rock formation called Twin Rock ( ). The cave was forked inside, and the left path eventually led to an exit on a cliff at the opposite bank of the river, at Ōmagari, Abashiri, the right path was said to lead to the underworld. The bird made nest at the beach and started to feed on villagers. The Abashiri Moroyo village owned the male sword , and Bihoro village owned the female sword both reputed to slay a 1000 men at a single stroke. The Abashiri Moyoro dispatched 6 brave men to hunt it, and on their way the bird had dragged a woman holding a child into the cave. They split up, and 3 men charged first with the sword, never to return, and Moroyo's famous sword was lost, but the bird was never seen again either. The other 3 men who had lagged in the attack returned out of the cave in the riverside cliff. Then another furi was seen perched on the Twin Rock. This time, Bihoro's female sword was borrowed to kill it. They tried to reach the rock by building a bridge with reed-stalk, but the stalks broke and they could not cross. So they threw the sword at it, and the weapon devoured the bird. For this sword too was an ipetam, the "devouring sword". The sword remained stuck on the rock, so no one went to retrieve it, and then it transformed into a snake that was dangling, but later disappeared. Thus Bihoro too lost its precious sword. The cave was later called the "furi hole". In a variant, the two swords aren't individually specified. The team of 3 taking the "treasure sword called epetam" presumably succeeds in slaying the giant bird (Bihoro dialect form of huri), and the other 3 emerge unscathed from the rock-hole by the Abashiri River. Thereafter, people were told never to enter the pishui (beach) hole because it leads to hell. ===Katsurakoi in Kushiro=== A story is told localized in , Kushiro that chieftain's sword which was an ipetam became a pregnant woman-killer, a woman that a jealous village commanded to sneak in to try to steal the chief's other family treasure, a gleaming armor which he propped up on a pole above the fortification for all to see. The ipetam was kept in a double chest, and when dried fish were fed to it would eventually be gone, and the sword would rock and make noise to demand more, so it was always supplied with its food. The chief of Kitami sent in the pregnant woman expecting the village to lower their guard, and it happened on the day the village men were out fishing, so the woman succeeded in the theft. But the Katsurakoi chief realized and gave chase with the magic sword, catching up at the Moshiriya Chashi fortification. He cut the woman down, the unborn child and all, to retrieve his armor, so thenceforth the sword earned the name or "pregnant woman chopper". In a variant version, an (elder) of Katsurakoi owned an heirloom ipetam sword kept in a chest that crunched animal bone, making clattering noises and leaving pulverized bone dust. The elder and others became afraid something bad may come of it, so they weighed it down with tied rocks and sank it in the sea, c. 1897. Or others say it was fed on dried fish, but when it was left hungry, the sword would leave from its sheath seeking blood, so that the ipetam was sunk in the sea during the Meiji era. ==Explanatory notes== ==References== ===Citations=== ===Bibliography===

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1355443048 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.