page_title: Ainu people
section_title: Meiji Restoration and later
hierarchical_section_title: Ainu people / History / Meiji Restoration and later
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: Japanese Ainu group of four men and two women (standing) with seated young boy and man holding a baby in the Department of Anthropology exhibit at the 1904 World's Fair.
context_page_description: The Ainu or the Aynu, also known as the Ezo in historical Japanese texts, are an East Asian ethnic group indigenous to Japan, the original inhabitants of Hokkaidō and Russia.
  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 with Ainu heritage having no knowledge of their ancestry.
context_section_description: In the 18th century, there were 80,000 Ainu. In 1868, there were about 15,000 Ainu in Hokkaidō, 2000 in Sakhalin and around 100 in the Kuril islands.
  The beginning of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 proved a turning point for Ainu culture. The Japanese government introduced a variety of social, political, and economic reforms in hope of modernizing the country in the Western style. One innovation involved the annexation of Hokkaidō. Sjöberg quotes Baba's (1890) account of the Japanese government's reasoning:
  ... The development of Japan's large northern island had several objectives: First, it was seen as a means to defend Japan from a rapidly developing and expansionist Russia. Second ... it offered a solution to the unemployment for the former samurai class ... Finally, development promised to yield the needed natural resources for a growing capitalist economy.
  In 1899, the Japanese government passed an act labelling the Ainu as "former aborigines", with the idea they would assimilate—this resulted in the Japanese government taking the land where the Ainu people lived and placing it 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 Wa-Jin who had decided to move to Hokkaidō, encouraged by the Japanese government of the Meiji era to take advantage of the island's abundant 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 (拓殖, takushoku), 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. As well as this, factories such as flour mills, beer breweries and mining practices resulted in the creation of infrastructure such as roads and railway lines, during a development period that lasted until 1904. 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.
  The 1899 act was replaced in 1997—until then the government had stated there were no ethnic minority groups. It was not until June 6, 2008, that Japan formally recognised the Ainu as an indigenous group (see § Official recognition in Japan).
  The vast majority of these Wa-Jin men are believed to have compelled Ainu women to partner with them as local wives. 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. 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. There are also many small towns in the southeastern or Hidaka region where ethnic Ainu live such as in Nibutani (Ainu: Niputay). Many live in Sambutsu especially, on the eastern coast. In 1966 the number of "pure" Ainu was about 300.
  Their most widely known ethnonym is derived from the word ainu, which means "human" (particularly as opposed to kamui, divine beings). Ainu also identify themselves as Utari ("comrade" or "people" in the Ainu language). Official documents use both names.
caption: Japanese Ainu group in 1904
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