Volume 1, The Aborigines of Sakhalin, contains translations into English of the Polish, Russian and Japanese material on, for example, the history, folklore, economic life, shamanism, sexual life, medical anthropology, and the bear festival which has been published between 1898 and 1936, mainly in local journals which are hardly accessible today. English, French and German articles appear in the original language.

Volume 2, Materials for the Study of Ainu Language and Folklore, contains a reprint of the classic 1912 Cracow edition with an Ainu-English index with indication of frequency and occurrence, a reverse index, an English index, and a grammatical index.

Volume 4 includes unique records of Orok (Uilta), a Tungusic language (dictionaries, texts, grammatical comments) noted down by Pilsudski directly from native informants at the beginning of the 20th century on Sakhalin. The original source material is identified with the help of - and confronted against - all the existing contemporary dictionaries with the assistance of leading specialists in the field (the Novosibirsk Avrorin group, also called the school of Manchu-Tungusologists). Abundant comparative data are quoted.

All necessary introductory information and commentaries of...