Korpokkur ( ain, コㇿポックㇽ; ja, コロポックル, translit=Koropokkuru), also written Koro-pok-kuru, korobokkuru, korbokkur, or koropokkur,Ainu-Grammatik, vol.2 Hans Adalbert Dettmer, O. Harrassowitz, 1997 koro-pok-guru, are a race of small people in folklore of the

Ainu people The Ainu are the indigenous people of the lands surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, including Hokkaido Island, Northeast Honshu Island, Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula and Khabarovsk Krai, before the arrival of the Y ...

of the northern Japanese islands. The name is traditionally analysed as a tripartite compound of ''kor'' (" butterbur plant"), ''pok'' ("under, below"), and ''kur'' ("person") and interpreted to mean "people below the leaves of the Fuki" in the

Ainu language Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu, is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isolate ...

. The Ainu believe that the ''korpokkur'' were the people who lived in the Ainu's land before the Ainu themselves lived there. They were short of stature, agile, and skilled at fishing. They lived in pits with roofs made from

butterbur ''Petasites'' is a genus of flowering plants in the sunflower family, Asteraceae, that are commonly referred to as butterburs and coltsfoots.Okhotsk culture The Okhotsk culture is an archaeological coastal fishing and hunter-gatherer culture that developed around the southern coastal regions of the Sea of Okhotsk, including Sakhalin, northeastern Hokkaido, and the Kuril Islands during the last half o ...

Penglai Mountain Penglai () is a legendary land of Chinese mythology. It is known in Japanese mythology as Hōrai. McCullough, Helen. ''Classical Japanese Prose'', p. 570. Stanford Univ. Press, 1990. . Location According to the ''Classic of Mountains and Sea ...

Saisiyat people The Saisiyat (; Hakka Pha̍k-fa-sṳ: ''賽夏族(Sòi-hà-tshu̍k)''), also spelled Saisiat, are an indigenous people of Taiwan. In 2000 the Saisiyat numbered 5,311, which was approximately 1.3% of Taiwan's total indigenous population, making t ...

Pas-ta'ai Pas-ta'ai (Chinese: 矮靈祭; pinyin: ''Ǎilíngjì''), the “Ritual to the Spirits of the Short eople��, is a ritual of the Saisiyat people, a Taiwanese aboriginal group. The ritual commemorates the ''Ta'ai'', a tribe of short dark-skinned p ...

References

External links

Ainu Entry
from the

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica A notable ongoing event was the Comparison of the Amundsen and Scott Expeditions, race for the South Pole. Events January * January 1 – A decade after federation, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory ...

which includes a somewhat different interpretation of the koro-pok-guru. {{Japanese folklore long Ainu legendary creatures Dwarves (folklore)

Further reading

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