The Ainu are the indigenous people of Hokkaido, northern Japan, and historically also Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands, distinguished from the majority Yamato Japanese population by a distinct language isolate, animist religious tradition centered on the bear ceremony (iomante) and a historically hunter-gatherer-fisher economy rather than wet-rice agriculture. Ainu communities were subject to systematic Japanese state assimilation policy from the Meiji era (from 1869) through the twentieth century, including land dispossession and language suppression, and Japan did not formally recognize the Ainu as an indigenous people in national law until 2019. Ainu language and cultural revitalization efforts are a documented and active contemporary movement, though the language itself is considered critically endangered by UNESCO with very few fully fluent first-language speakers remaining.
Facts
Group TypeSourced to the subject's own accountIndigenous ethnic group 1 Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountNorthern Japan (Hokkaido) and historically Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands (Russia) 1 Primary LanguageSourced to the subject's own accountAinu (a language isolate, critically endangered) 1 Subsistence ModeSourced to the subject's own accountHistorically hunting, fishing (notably salmon) and gathering in Hokkaido and Sakhalin, distinct from the wet-rice agriculture of the Yamato Japanese to the south. 1 Disputed
Population Estimateofficially registered population in Japan of roughly 13,000 to 25,000 self-identified individuals, though the true number of people of Ainu descent is estimated to be considerably larger given historical pressure toward assimilation 1 Sourced to the subject's own accountDecades of state assimilation policy in Japan discouraged open Ainu self-identification, so official counts are understood by researchers to understate the true population of Ainu descent. Sources
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