Jewelry makers and an embroiderer are among the craftspeople whose creations reflect the Indigenous people’s heritage. Torii gates at the entrance to Akan-Mashu National Park on Hokkaido, the ...

For the first time ever, craftspeople in Japan have brought together two unique creative traditions: the intricate patterns of indigenous Ainu artists from Hokkaido, and the ceramic potteries of Arita ...

“Imagine this place,” says Italian photographer Laura Liverani, as she tries to conjure up a picture of Nibutani, the village where she spent two months living with and photographing the indigenous ...

When Japan’s Meiji Era (1868-1912) government concluded that the country had a manifest destiny to commence full-scale colonization of the hitherto barely developed northern island of Hokkaido, it set ...

I am an Ainu. However, sometimes when I tell people I was born not in Hokkaidō, but in Tokyo, and was raised in Saitama Prefecture, it brings the conversation to a halt, as if they are thinking, “Oh, ...

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The Ainu of Hokkaido in Japan were not officially recognised as an indigenous people until 2008. This recognition came after a long history of exclusion and assimilation that almost erased their ...

Previously slated to open in April 2020, the Upopoy National Ainu Museum and Park in Shiraoi, Hokkaido, was unfortunately delayed due to Covid-19 coronavirus. Better late than never, Upopoy finally ...

On a wooded lake shore in northern Japan, the government is building a modernist shrine that has divided the indigenous Ainu community whose vanishing culture it was designed to celebrate. At a cost ...