Chiyo Nakamura

Chiyo Nakamura (中村チヨ; 1906–1969) was a Japanese Nivkh shaman, craftswoman, performer, and writer of Nivkh folklore and songs.

Personal life
In September 1905, the year before Chiyo was born, Sakhalin island below the 50° north parallel became Japanese territory under the Treaty of Portsmouth.

In 1906, Chiyo was born in Shisuka, Karafuto Prefecture, Japan. Her father was a Santan person (山丹), born on Sakhalin and raised on the Asian mainland, who came to Shisuka in his 20s and married a Nivkh woman. Chiyo was named "Cho" (チョ) when she was born; she was a member of the Nivkh Kenvng (ケヌブン) clan. Chiyo also used the normative kanji spelling in 千代 for her personal name, as well as the longer "Chiyoko" (千代子).

When Chiyo was born in 1906, the southern Poronay basin including Shisuka was a Nivkh enclave among settlements of Sakhalin Ainu and Oroks.

In August 1945, the Soviet Union invaded Karafuto and quickly conquered it. Between 1946–1948, more than 400,000 Japanese inhabitants of Sakhalin (including Japanized indigenous people) who had not already been evacuated during World War II were deported to Japan under an agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States.

In 1947, Chiyo and her family, including two of her children, relocated from Otasu in Sakhalin to Hokkaido. First, they lived in Iwanai for about two years; then they moved to Abashiri, where several other Nivkh and Orok families also settled. Chiyo also had a third child; she hoped to be reunited her eldest son Igarainu (一郎) in Hokkaido, but he was exiled to Siberia and died in a Soviet camp.

In 1969, Chiyo died in Abashiri.

Cultural works
In Abashiri, Chiyo led an amateur performance ensemble. Preserved at the Hokkaido Museum of Northern Peoples are photos of Chiyo's performances, along with her three wooden idols, shaman's belt, rattle, and tambourine beater. Her other artifacts, including handmade traditional fur clothing, have been displayed at the Hokkaido University Botanical Gardens Museum and at the Hokkaido Island Historical Museum. Chiyo also collaborated on linguistic research with Yonemura Kioe, director of the Abashiri City Local Museum.

Chiyo's main written work is "Gilyak Folklore" (ギリヤークの昔話) (1992), posthumously published, which she dictated to Robert Austerlitz between 1956–1958. Her other dictations published in 1992 include "The Cowardly Santan," "Old Ainu Stories," two stories about an Ainu fox, "The Alcohol-Loving Ainu God," two stories about the Orok, and two stories about war between the Ainu and Orok.