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The Ainu are the indigenous people of Japan, inhabiting the Northern island of Hokkaido as well as the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin. Their name means “human”, or more accurately the opposite of the gods that inhabit all plants, objects, and animals in their heavily animistic religion. Thought to once inhabit all of Japan, the Ainu were pushed northward by the influx of immigration from Asia that occurred primarily during the Yayoi period of Japanese history around 2,300 years ago. The Ainu have faced a long history of oppression and hardship. Throughout the modern era, they have faced active assimilation, forced...

Bear-worshipping Ainu to flourish again By Julian Ryall in Tokyo Last Updated: 4:20AM BST 07/06/2008 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 minority Ainu people bow their heads after the Japanese parliament recognised their indigenous status The Ainu, the original inhabitants of Hokkaido island, were conquered by Japan in the mid-1800s and forcibly assimilated into Japanese culture. The Meiji government in Tokyo declared the Ainu language illegal, forced them to adopt Japanese names, redistributed their land to mainland settlers and...

Orkney Islanders have Siberian relatives Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/05/2008 A new study on ancient human migrations suggests that Orcadians and Siberians are closely related, writes Roger Highfield. Orkney Islanders are more closely related to people in Siberia and in Pakistan than those in Africa and the near East, according to a novel method to chart human migrations. The surprising findings come from a new way to infer ancient human movements from the variation of DNA in people today, conducted by a team from the University of Oxford and University College Cork, which has pioneered a technique that analyses the...

A map of Japan showing the fateful site of Sakushukotoni-gawa on Hokkaido. Origins of the Ainu by Gary Crawford The ringing telephone broke the evening silence. It was the fall of 1983, and my research partner, Professor Masakazu Yoshizaki, was calling from Japan. "Gary, I have some news," Yoshi said. "We have a few grains of barley from a site on the Hokkaido University campus. I think you should come and look at them." The Japanese language is notorious for its ambiguity, so I wasn't quite sure of the full meaning of what I had just heard. But I didn't...

New Lapita find re-dates known Fiji settlers VITAL CLUE: The pottery shard, at least 200 years older than any other piece found in Fiji, is thought to be the work of the Lapita people that originated near Taiwan AFP , AUCKLAND Sunday, Oct 24, 2004 A biological anthropologist excavates a skeleton after archeologists discovered a 3,000-year-old cemetery in Vanuatu in August, holding secrets about the first humans to colonize the South Pacific. A shard of pottery showing a human face, pre-dating any other Lapita pottery in Fiji, has now been found and hailed a s a significant discovery. PHOTO: AFP...

An independent investigator for the UN says racism in Japan is deep and profound, and the government does not recognise the depth of the problem. Doudou Diene, a UN special rapporteur on racism and xenophobia, was speaking at the end of a nine-day tour of the country. He said Japan should introduce new legislation to combat discrimination. Mr Diene travelled to several Japanese cities during his visit, meeting minority groups and touring slums. He said that although the government helped to organise his visit, he felt many officials failed to recognise the seriousness of the racism and discrimination minorities suffered....

Tribes fail to halt study of ancient skeleton 01/09/03 RICHARD L. HILL Four Northwest tribes lost another round in federal court Wednesday in their effort to halt a scientific study of the ancient skeleton called Kennewick Man.U.S. Magistrate John Jelderks in Portland rejected the tribes' request to delay the study until the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals can hear the legal dispute. In August, Jelderks ruled that eight anthropologists who sued the federal government could proceed to study the 9,300-year-old remains. The Nez Perce, Umatilla, Colville and Yakama tribes appealed his decision and later asked Jelderks to delay the...

from the January 29, 2003 edition The Pinta, Santa Maria, and a Chinese junk? A new book claims the Chinese discovered America in 1421, but historians refute thesis. By Amanda Paulson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor To the Norsemen, the Japanese, and the Carthaginians; to the Irish, the Africans, and a long list of others who, it is claimed, crossed the oceans to America long before 1492, add one more: the Chinese. They toured up and down both coasts of the Americas, established colonies, made maps, and left behind chickens. That, at least, is the theory posed...

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BASQUE AND AINU INTRODUCTION The language of the Ainu bear-worshippers of Northern Japan has generally been considered a language-isolate, supposedly being unlike any other language on earth. A few researchers noticed a relationship with languages in south-east Asia, others saw similarity with the Ostiak and Uralic languages of northern Siberia. The Ainu look like Caucasian people, they have white skin, their hair is wavy and thick, their heads are mesocephalic (round) and a few have grey or blue eyes. However, their blood types are more like the Mongolian people, possibly through many millennia of intermixing. The Ainu...

Remains shed light on the northern `barbarians' The Asahi Shimbun AOMORI-In ancient times, northern Honshu and southern Hokkaido were considered untamed lands inhabited by mysterious barbarians who refused to be ruled by Japanese emperors. Much remains a mystery about the northern ``Emishi'' people, but a recent excavation in Aomori Prefecture sheds some light on the tribes that had a long history of conflict. Researchers have dug up an unprecedented number of iron arrowheads, as well as human remains-one with its hands bound-from the Hayashinomae ruins near Hachinohe. The discovery suggests a fierce war was fought at the settlement site in...

THE SAMURAI AND THE AINU Findings by American anthropologist C. Loring Brace, University of Michigan, will surely be controversial in race conscious Japan. The eye of the predicted storm will be the Ainu, a "racially different" group of some 18,000 people now living on the northern island of Hokkaido. Pure-blooded Ainu are easy to spot: they have lighter skin, more body hair, and higher-bridged noses than most Japanese. Most Japanese tend to look down on the Ainu. Brace has studied the skeletons of about 1,100 Japanese, Ainu, and other Asian ethnic groups and has concluded that the revered samurai of...