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It is more than probable that the Japanese term kami is the same as the Aino word kamui, and that the despised and conquered aboriginal savage has furnished the mould of the ordinary Japanese idea of god which even to-day with them means anything wonderful or extraordinary.
The rotten branches or roots of trees sometimes turn into bears. Such bears as these are termed payep kamui, i.e. "divine walking creatures," and are not to be killed by human hand. Formerly they were more numerous than they are now, but they are still sometimes to be seen. l. Coition. The Ainos think it very unlucky for the woman to move ever so slightly during the act of coition.
Inasmuch as the little civilisation now possessed by the Ainos has in great measure been learnt from the Japanese, it is natural that their modern language should have picked up numbers of Japanese words, from the name of kamui which they give to their gods, down to the rice-beer or sake in which they seek continual drunkenness, now their main source of enjoyment.
On the one hand they give it the name of kamui or "god"; but as they apply the same word to strangers, it may mean no more than a being supposed to be endowed with superhuman, or at all events extraordinary, powers.
These, once the old kami of the primitive Japanese, or kamui of the aboriginal Aino, show the mental soil and climate which were to condition the growth of the seed imported from other lands, whether of Buddhism or Christianity. It is very hard to kill a god while the old mind that grew and nourished him still remains the same.
See also on the Aino term "Kamui," by Professor B.H. Chamberlain and Rev. J. Batchelor, T.A.S.J., Vol. II.; The Ainu of Japan, by Rev. John Batchelor; B. Douglas Howard's Life With Trans-Siberian Savages; Ripley Hitchcock's Report, Smithsonian Institute, Washington. Besides money accounts and personal matters, there were numerous temple amulets and priests' certificates. I., p. 283.
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