“The Ainu are generally considered to be the indigenous population of Japan. But, like all cultures on earth, the history of the Ainu is much more complex than any one label. The 20,000 to 60,000 people who presently identify themselves as Ainu are concentrated on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, but the Ainu culture once stretched up to the southern part of Sakhalin Island and the Kurile Islands (now part of Russia).”

from BibliOdyssey