This people's most widely known ethnonym, "Ainu" (Ainu: アィヌ; Japanese: アイヌ; Russian: Айны) means "human" in the Ainu language, particularly as opposed to kamui, divine beings. Ainu also identify themselves as "Utari"

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Pre-modern
The Ainu are the native people of Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kurils. Early Ainu-speaking groups (mostly hunters and fishermen) migrated also into the

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The Ainu have often been considered to descend from the diverse Jōmon people, who lived in northern Japan from the Jōmon period (c. 14,000 to 300 BCE). One of their

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Russo-Japanese War
Ainu men were first recruited into the Japanese military in 1898. Sixty-four Ainu served in the Russo-Japanese War(1904–1905), eight of

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Traditional Ainu culture was quite different from Japanese culture. According to Tanaka Sakurako from the University of British Columbia, the Ainu culture can be included into a wider "northern circumpacific region", referring to various indigenous cultures of

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The Ainu are traditionally animists, believing that everything in nature has a kamuy (spirit or god) on the inside. The most important include Kamuy-huci, goddess of the hearth, Kim-un-kamuy, god of bears and mountains, and Repun Kamuy, god of the sea, fishing,

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In 2008 Hohmann gave an estimate of fewer than 100 remaining speakers of the language; other research (Vovin 1993) placed the number at

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