Chances are you haven’t met an Ainu speaker in Japan. After all, Google’s Endangered Languages Project puts the number of native speakers at fewer than five. But the Ainu people once populated a wide ...

I am an Ainu. However, sometimes when I tell people I was born not in Hokkaidō, but in Tokyo, and was raised in Saitama Prefecture, it brings the conversation to a halt, as if they are thinking, “Oh, ...

Like other indigenous groups, the Ainu people of Hokkaido and the north-eastern Honshu island of Japan have experienced marginalization. After the Japanese government annexed their territory in 1890, ...

A film inspired by the story of a young Ainu woman who translated into Japanese an epic poem passed down orally among the indigenous people of Hokkaido will soon have a wide domestic release. The ...

In 2009, UNESCO in its “Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger” designated the Ainu language as being critically endangered. As the most dire of the five categories — only extinct is worse — used in ...

SAPPORO, JAPAN — For someone who grew up ashamed of her ethnic identity, they are powerful words. “You are beautiful just as you are. Don’t be afraid,” Mina Sakai sings to a young, enthusiastic crowd ...

The Ainu of Hokkaido in Japan were not officially recognised as an indigenous people until 2008. This recognition came after a long history of exclusion and assimilation that almost erased their ...

LONDON--Across a darkened exhibition hall, lit in islands containing artifacts and video installations, the voice of tenacious rights activist Shigeru Kayano croaks out words in the threatened ...

A bear-worshipping indigenous minority of northern Japan are to receive official recognition, a move that will end 140 years of enforced assimilation and discrimination. Representatives from Japan's ...

Like other indigenous groups, the Ainu people of Hokkaido and the north-eastern Honshu island of Japan have experienced marginalization. After the Japanese government annexed their territory in 1890, ...