In 1868 there were about 15, 000 Ainu in Hokkaido, 2000 in Sakhalin, and around 100 in the Kurile islands.

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.

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.

Intermarriages between Japanese and Ainu were actively promoted by the Ainu to lessen the chances of discrimination against their offspring.

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.

As a result of the Treaty of Saint Petersburg ( 1875 ), the Kuril Islands were handed over to Japan, along with its Ainu subjects.

However, Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sussex said Kanzō Umehara considered the Ainu and some Ryukyuans to have " preserved their proto-Mongoloid traits " According to anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons physical features of the Proto-Mongoloid were characterized as, " a straight-haired type, medium in complexion, jaw protrusion, nose-breadth, and inclining probably to round-headedness ".

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.

The Ainu population, as previously Japanese subjects, were " repatriated " to Japan.

During the Tsarist times, the Ainu living in Russia were forbidden from identifying themselves as such, since the Imperial Japanese officials had claimed that all the regions inhabited by the Ainu in the past or present, are a part of Japan.

During the Soviet times, people with Ainu surnames were sent to gulags and labor camps, as they were often mistaken for the Japanese.

After World War II, most of the Ainu living in Sakhalin were deported to Japan.

Of those who remained, only the elderly were full-blooded Ainu.

Due to this, children born after 1945 were not able to identify themselves as Ainu.

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.

Without a writing system, the Ainu were masters of narration, with the Yukar and other forms of narration such as the Uepeker ( Uwepeker ) tales, being committed to memory and related at gatherings, often lasting many hours or even days.

Most Ainu relocated to Hokkaidō when the Japanese were displaced from the island in 1949.

Japanese society, with its ideology of homogeneity, has traditionally rejected any need to recognize ethnic differences in Japan, even as such claims have been rejected by such ethnic minorities as the Ainu and Ryukyuan people.

The Ainu, the native inhabitants of Hokkaido, also maintained a settlement at another location nearby until the beginning of the 20th century, when the Ainu were mostly assimilated into Japanese society.

Tanner Peter is a world renown author on the subject of " Ainu " population and he himself leads a recognition society for their ethnic representation in government.

Ainu music, historically, has represented the state of Ainu society.

While these excerpts are indicative of the attitude of the government that the Ainu should conform to the rest of Japanese society, the pamphlet ’ s very existence counters the idea that they fit in.

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

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.

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.

For example, Oki, born as a child of an Ainu father and a Japanese mother, became a musician who plays the traditional Ainu instrument tonkori.

On Sakhalin island, there are a few dozen people who identify themselves as Sakhalin Ainu, but many more with partial Ainu ancestry do not acknowledge it.

According to Alexei Nakamura, as of 2012, there are only 205 Ainu living in Russia ( up from just 12 people who self-identified as Ainu in 2008 ) and they along with the Kurile Kamchadals ( Itelmen of Kuril islands ) are fighting for official recognition.

The Ainu have often been considered to descend from the Jōmon-jin people, who lived in Japan from the Jōmon period.

Mark J. Hudson Professor of Anthropology at Nishikyushu University, Kanzaki, Saga, Japan, said Japan was settled by a " Proto-Mongoloid " population in the Pleistocene who became the Jōmon and their features can be seen in the Ainu and Okinawan people.

** Kamuy in Ainu mythology, who built the world on the back of a trout

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.

Historically, many peoples who had interactions with the ancestors of the Ainu called them and their islands Kuyi, Kuye, Qoy, or some similar name, which may have some connection to the early modern form Kai.

Powell said that the Ainu descend from the Jōmon people who are an East Asian population with " closest biological affinity with south-east Asians rather than western Eurasian peoples ".

The Ainu believe that the koro-pok-guru were the people who lived in the Ainu's land before the Ainu themselves lived there.

It has been suggested that this myth points to an actual neolithic people who existed separately from the Ainu, and may even have been examples of Homo floresiensis, the so-called " hobbit " hominid.

In 1669 an Ainu leader, led a revolt against the Matsumae clan who controlled the region, it was the last major uprising against Japanese control of the region and it was put down in 1672.

Arai Hakuseki, who knew in the 18th century that there were stone tools in Japan, suggested that there was Shukushin in ancient Japan, and then Philipp Franz von Siebold claimed that indigenous Japanese was Ainu people.

" Ainoid " distinguishes the people who are related to, or who are ancestors of, the Ainu, who first emerge as " Ezo " in Hokkaido in the Kamakura period, and then become known as Ainu in the modern period.

Historically, they spoke the Ainu language and related varieties and lived in Hokkaidō, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin.

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.

At this early age it is almost certain that the Emishi encountered here are ancestors of the Ainu since the territories covered by the expedition are in areas where these people are thought to have lived.

For northeastern Japan proper, he subscribed to the tradition which assigned prehistoric sites to the Ainu, who lived in pits and made stone implements and pottery.