The Ainu are the Indigenous people of Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, whose distinct language, animist religion, and way of life set them apart from the ethnic Japanese who colonized their homeland. For much of the modern era the Japanese state tried to assimilate them out of existence; only in 2008 and 2019 did it formally recognize them as an Indigenous people. They are a living people whose culture is now being revived.
For most of a century, Japanese law had an official word for the Ainu: former aborigines. The people it described had an older, simpler word for themselves. They were ainu — 'human' — the beings of this world, set against the kamuy, the gods who came to visit it. They were the Indigenous people of the north, with their own land, language, and gods. The state that governed them spent decades insisting they were merely Japanese.