Ainu or Aynu may refer to:

Their most widely known ethnonym is derived from the word ainu, which means " human " ( particularly as opposed to kamui, divine beings ), basically neither ethnicity nor the name of a race, in the Hokkaidō dialects of the Ainu language ; Emishi ( Ebisu ) and Ezo ( Yezo ) ( both ) are Japanese terms, which are believed to derive from another word for " human ", which otherwise survived in Sakhalin Ainu as enciw or enju.

Words used as prepositions in English ( such as to, from, by, in, and at ) are postpositional in Ainu ; they come after the word that they modify.

Many of the Ainu dialects, even from one end of Hokkaido to the other, were not mutually intelligible ; however, the classic Ainu language of the Yukar, or Ainu epic stories, was understood by all.

By the mid-18th century, Qing officials had registered 56 surname groups ; of these, Qing sources note that six clans and 148 households were those of Ainu and Nivkh who came under the Qing administrative umbrella on Sakhalin.

The Kai element also strongly resembles the Sino-Japanese reading of the characters ( Sino-Japanese, Japanese kun ' yomi ), which have been used for over a thousand years in China and Japan as the standard orthographic form to be used when referring to Ainu and related peoples ; it is possible that Matsuura's Kai was actually an alteration, influenced by the Sino-Japanese reading of Ka-i, of the Nivkh exonym for the Ainu, namely Qoy or.

The ‘ Ainur ’ ( meaning ‘ Holy Ones ’, singular ‘ Ainu ’) are the first such concepts-embodied or themes-realized ; they are the children ‘ of Ilúvatar ’ s thought .’ Upon their creation, when nothing else existed, Ilúvatar taught the Ainur the art of ‘ Music ’, which becomes their life and work.

All but the Hokkaidō language are extinct, with the last speaker of Sakhalin Ainu having died in 1994 ; and Hokkaidō Ainu is moribund, though there are ongoing attempts to revive it.

Notable cultures with such example of having a totem pole-like objects are those by indigenous people of Jilin, northeast China ; the Koreans ; the Ainu, indigenous people of north Japan ; and the Māori, indigenous people of New Zealand.

Data on Ainu population is not available ; " Ainu " may have been either included in the " Other " category or the Ainus may have identified themselves as " Japanese " during the census.

The Ainu languages that are now spoken by Ainu minorities in Hokkaidō ; and were formerly spoken in southern and central Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands ( an area also known as Ezo ), and perhaps northern Honshū island by the Emishi people ( until approximately 1000 CE ), are associated with the founding Jōmon people of Japan from than 14, 000 years ago or earlier, and the Satsumon culture of Hokkaidō, although the Ainu also had contact with the Paleo-Siberian Okhotsk culture whose modern descendants include the Nivkh people ( whose original homeland was mostly occupied by the Tungusic people ), which could have linguistically influenced the Ainu language.

The Momoyama family had come from Miyagi Prefecture, in the northeast of the main Japanese island of Honshu, where there are still traces of the mysterious Ainu strain.

Turkic – Mongolic – Tungusic and Korean – Japanese – Ainu, grouped as " North Asiatic ".

Turkic – Mongolic – Tungusic and Korean – Japanese – Ainu, grouped in Eurasiatic.

Turkic – Mongolic – Tungusic and Korean – Japanese – Ainu, grouped in a common taxon ( cf.

In Japan, because of intermarriage over many years with Japanese, the concept of a pure Ainu ethnic group is no longer feasible.

Active contact between the Wajin ( the ethnically Japanese ) and the Ainu of Ezochi ( now known as Hokkaido ) began in the 13th century.

During the Tokugawa period ( 1600 – 1868 ) the Ainu became increasingly involved in trade with Japanese who controlled the southern portion of the island that is now called Hokkaido.

Later the Matsumae began to lease out trading rights to Japanese merchants, and contact between Japanese and Ainu became more extensive.

Throughout this period Ainu became increasingly dependent on goods imported by Japanese, and suffered from epidemic diseases such as smallpox.

Although the increased contact brought by trade between the Japanese and the Ainu contributed to increased mutual understanding, sometimes it led to conflict, occasionally intensifying into violent Ainu revolts, of which the most important was Shakushain's Revolt ( 1669 – 1672 ).

In 1899, the Japanese government passed an act labeling the Ainu as former aborigines, with the idea they would assimilate — this resulted in the land the Ainu people lived on being taken by the Japanese government, and was from then on under Japanese control.

Also at this time, the Ainu were granted automatic Japanese citizenship, effectively denying them the status of an indigenous group.

The Ainu were becoming increasingly marginalized on their own land — over a period of only 36 years, the Ainu went from being a relatively isolated group of people to having their land, language, religion and customs assimilated into those of the Japanese.

In addition to this, the land the Ainu lived on was distributed to the Wajin who had decided to move to Hokkaido, who had been encouraged by the Japanese government of the Meiji era to take advantage of the island ’ s abundance of natural resources, and to create and maintain farms in the model of western industrial agriculture.

While at the time the process was openly referred to as colonization (" takushoku " 拓殖 ), the notion was later reframed by Japanese elites to the currently common usage " kaitaku "( 開拓 ), which instead conveys a sense of opening up or reclamation of the Ainu lands.

During this time the Ainu were forced to learn Japanese, required to adopt Japanese names and ordered to cease religious practices such as animal sacrifice and the custom of tattooing.

Most of those who identify themselves as Ainu still live in this same region, though the exact number of living Ainu is unknown.

This is due to confusion over mixed heritages and to ethnic issues in Japan resulting in those with Ainu backgrounds hiding their identities.

Though the resolution is historically significant, Hideaki Uemura, professor at Keisen University in Tokyo and a specialist in indigenous peoples ' rights, commented that the motion is " weak in the sense of recognizing historical facts " as the Ainu were " forced " to become Japanese in the first place.

It is believed that there are no remaining living descendants of the Kamchatka Ainu.

( 2004 ), two out of a sample of sixteen ( or 12. 5 %) Ainu men have been found to belong to Haplogroup C3, which is the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup among the indigenous populations of the Russian Far East and Mongolia.

The Ainu were distributed in the northern and central islands of Japan, from Sakhalin island in the north to the Kuril islands and the island of Hokkaidō and Northern Honshū, although some investigators place their former range as throughout Honshū and as far north as the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula in what is now Cape Lopatka.

Unlike the other Ainu clans currently living in Russia, there is considerable doubt whether the Nakamura clan of Kamchatka should be identified as Northern Kurils Ainu, Southern Kurils Ainu or as Kamchatka Ainu.

The town of Nibutani ( Ainu: Niputay ) in Hidaka area ( Hokkaido prefecture ) has a number of Ainu households and a visit to some of the Ainu owned craft shops close to the Ainu museums ( there are two of them in Nibutani ) is an opportunity to interact with the Ainu people.

As a result of this the study of the Ainu language is limited and is based largely on historical research.

In fact, no attempt to show a relationship with Ainu to any other language has gained wide acceptance, and Ainu is currently considered to be a language isolate.

Similarly, no one identifies themselves as Amur Valley Ainu, although people with partial descent can be found in Khabarovsk.

Recent research suggests that the historical Ainu culture originated in a merger of the Okhotsk culture with the Satsumon, one of the ancient archaeological cultures that are considered to have derived from the Jōmon period cultures of the Japanese Archipelago.

( 2006 ) have tested a sample of four Ainu men and have found that one of them belongs to haplogroup C3.

" The burakumin are one of the main minority groups in Japan, along with the Ainu of Hokkaidō and those of residents of Korean and Chinese descent.

Ossë is one of Ulmo ’ s people – a water Ainu.

She is introduced in The Silmarillion as an Ainu, one of the Queens of the Valar and one of the Aratar.

MacRitchie himself argued in his Testimony of Tradition, under a chapter subheading entitled " A Hairy Race " ( p. 167 ) that they were somewhat connected to the Lapps or Eskimos, but were a distinct race because of their very long beards, concluding: " one seems to see the type of a race that was even more like the Ainu than the Lapp, or the Eskimo, although closely connected in various ways with all of these " ( p. 173 ).

In 1789 Kunashiri was one of the settings of the Menashi-Kunashir Battle in which Ainu revolted against Japanese tradespeople and colonists.

The Ainu began reclaiming their identity as a cultural group in the 1960s and 70s, meeting with one another, creating organized groups, and even developing an Ainu flag.

When Ainu ceremonies were performed regularly for the first time in years, it allowed Ainu to come together, to identify and get to know one another through the avenue of culture, and to bond through that avenue as well.

( June 15, 1926 – May 6, 2006 ) was one of the last native speakers of the Ainu language and a leading figure in the Ainu ethnic movement in Japan.

John C. Street ( 1962 ) proposed linking Ainu, Korean, and Japanese in one family and Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic in another, with the two families linked in a common " North Asiatic " family.