While trying to watch as many of Kurosawa Akira’s movies as I could find, I stumbled onto Derzu Uzala, a late and unusual work set in the Russian Far East, filmed in Russian and without anything Japanese about it. The title character, a Nanai hunter and trapper is unforgettable.

The Nanai, or Goldi, are a Tungustic (Manchu) people of the Amur Bassin. in Northernmost China and around Vladivostok, Russia. Traditionally, they fished the rich rivers and the Sea of Japan, and hunted in the Taiga forest, home of the Amur Tiger.

This wonderful movie was made from a wonderful book, Dersu the Trapper by V,K. Arseniev, from 1923.

Vladimir Arseniev and Uzula became friends during a few share adventures around Lake Khanka north of Vladivostok. Arseniev gives a profound sense of the mindset of hunter-gatherers through the accounts of the life, deeds and extraordinary personality of Dersu.

I found in the book this useful advice: How to follow a bee to the hive.

“A Cozak named Mozin undertook to find the bee’s store of honey he carefully watched the direction taken by the returning bees and took a piece position on it with a cup of honey. A bee appeared and when it flew us more then watched it carefully till other side then he moved up in that direction and repeated it and so on step by step until he slowly but surely came to the hive the bees themselves showed him the way.” V.K. Arseniev, Dersu the trapper

Nanai village along the Amur, north of Khabarovsk, 1895

I can’t resist adding this Taiga story from another good book:

“In Tuva, during one of these legendary mosquito storm of the Taiga, as we covered from head to toe with gloves and veils and insect repellents, the local, Lazo, walked up to a large anthill and struck the top of it forcefully with his hand held flat he then held one hand quite level about an inch above the anthill and waited under attack the ants exuded formic acid which with the local covered his hand he then rubbed his hand over his arms which were thus protected he held up his bare hand with a cloud of insects swirling around it and not one of them landing on his skin just imagine how many tricks of this kind have been lost.“ What is Paleolithic art, Jean Clottes