Chiri Yukie (知里 幸恵), just nineteen, was no scholar by training. She was a young indigenous woman born into two worlds—one that demanded she conform, and another that she couldn’t bear to see disappear. The Ainu, her people, had long been swallowed by Japan’s attempts at assimilation, their language, Ainu-itak, fading to little more than whispers among the old. But those whispers were loud enough for her to hear.