Ainu are an indigenous people of the lands surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, including Hokkaido Island, Northeast Honshu Island, Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula, and Khabarovsk Krai, since before the arrival of the Yamato Japanese and Russians. These regions are referred to as Ezo in historical Japanese texts.
Official estimates place the total Ainu population of Japan at 25,000. Unofficial estimates place the total population at 200,000 or higher, as the near-total assimilation of the Ainu into Japanese society has resulted in many individuals of Ainu descent having no knowledge of their ancestry.
Japanese assimilation policies since the 19th century Meiji Restoration included forcing Ainu off their land, which in turn forced them to give up traditional subsistence hunting and fishing. Ainu were not allowed to practice their religion and were pushed into Japanese-language schools where it was impossible to preserve their own language.
Ainu means "human" in the Ainu language, particularly as opposed to kamui, divine beings. Ainu also identify themselves as "Utari" ("comrade" or "people").
During the Muromachi period (1336–1573), many Ainu were subject to Japanese rule. Disputes between the Japanese and Ainu developed into large-scale violence, known as Koshamain's Revolt, in 1456. Takeda Nobuhiro, ancestor of the Matsumae clan, killed the Ainu leader Koshamain.
In the 15th century, Manchuria in northern China came under Ming rule. Ainu and Nivkh peoples of Sakhalin were subjugated and became tributaries to the Ming dynasty. Women in Sakhalin intermarried with Han Chinese Ming officials when the Ming took tribute from Sakhalin and the Amur river region.
During the Edo period (1601–1868), Ainu, who controlled northern Hokkaido, became increasingly involved in trade with the Japanese, who controlled the southern portion of the island. The Tokugawa bakufu granted the Matsumae clan exclusive rights to trade with the Ainu in the northern part of the island. 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 groups competed with each other to import goods from the Japanese, and epidemic diseases such as smallpox reduced the population. Although the increased contact created by the trade between the Japanese and the Ainu contributed to increased mutual understanding, it also sometimes led to conflict, which occasionally intensified into violent Ainu revolts.
From 1799 to 1806, the Tokugawa shogunate took direct control of southern Hokkaido. During this period, Ainu women were separated from their husbands and either subjected to rape or forcibly married to Japanese men, while Ainu men were deported to merchant subcontractors for five- and ten-year terms of service. Policies of family separation and assimilation, combined with the impact of smallpox, caused the Ainu population to drop significantly in the early 19th century. In the 18th century, there were 80,000 Ainu, but by 1868, there were only about 15,000 Ainu in Hokkaido, 2,000 in Sakhalin, and around 100 in the Kuril islands.
Ainu have historically suffered from economic and social discrimination, as the government, as well as other people, regarded them as dirty and primitive barbarians. Japanese government during the 19th and 20th centuries denied the rights of Ainu to their traditional cultural practices, most notably the right to speak their language, as well as their right to hunt and gather.
Intermarriage between Japanese and Ainu was actively promoted by the Ainu to lessen the chances of discrimination against their offspring. As a result, many Ainu are indistinguishable from their Japanese neighbors, but some Ainu-Japanese are interested in traditional Ainu culture.
The Ainu have often been considered to descend from the diverse Jomon people who lived in northern Japan from the Jomon period One of their Yukar Upopo, or legends, tells that, "Ainu lived in this place a hundred thousand years before the Children of the Sun came".
The direct ancestors of the later Ainu people formed during the late Jomon period from the combination of the local but diverse population of Hokkaido, long before the arrival of contemporary Yamato Japanese people.
Ainu language likely originated from the ancient Okhotsk people, which had strong cultural influence on the "Epi-Jomon" of southern Hokkaido and northern Honshu, but that the Ainu people themselves formed from the combination of both ancient groups.
Hokkaido Jomon population formed from "Terminal Upper-Paleolithic people" indigenous to Northern Eurasia and from proper Jomon people, who arrived from Honshu about 15,000 BCE. Ainu, in turn, originated from the Hokkaido Epi-Jomon and from the Okhotsk people in Hokkaido.
