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 ...

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, ...

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, ...

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 ...

An online “talking dictionary” first launched in 2009 is attempting to preserve and pass on the Ainu language spoken by the indigenous inhabitants of Japan's northeastern island of Hokkaido and ...

The Penn Museum, in collaboration with the Penn Libraries, recently launched various Ainu-themed programming, including a documentary screening and an ongoing exhibit on Ainu representation in media.

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 ...

After failing to find a Buryat instructor, Inky Gibbens launched Tribalingual to offer e-courses in endangered languages spoken only by thousands of people. Inky Gibbens learns languages pretty easily ...

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 ...

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, ...