This is a bibliography of works on the Ainu people of modern Japan and the Russian Far East.
This is a bibliography of works on the Ainu people of modern Japan and the Russian Far East.
The Ainu are an ethnic group of related indigenous peoples native to northern Japan including Hokkaido and Northeast Honshu, as well as the land surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, such as Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula, and the Khabarovsk Krai; they have occupied these areas known to them as "Ainu Mosir", since before the arrival of the modern Japanese and Russians. These regions are often referred to as Ezo (蝦夷) in historical Japanese texts.
Nivkh, or Gilyak, or Amuric, is a small language family, often portrayed as a language isolate, of two or three mutually unintelligible languages spoken by the Nivkh people in Russian Manchuria, in the basin of the Amgun, along the lower reaches of the Amur itself, and on the northern half of Sakhalin. "Gilyak" is the Russian rendering of terms derived from the Tungusic "Gileke" and Manchu-Chinese "Gilemi" for culturally similar peoples of the Amur River region, and was applied principally to the Nivkh in Western literature.
Ishikari Subprefecture is a subprefecture of Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan, located in the western part of the island. The subprefecture covers 3,539.86 square kilometres (1,366.75 sq mi) and on July 31, 2023 had a population of 2,379,802. The subprefecture takes its name from the Ishikari River, the third longest in Japan, which flows through western Hokkaido and empties into the Sea of Japan in the city of Ishikari. There are 6 cities, three towns, and one village under its jurisdiction. Sapporo is both the capital of Hokkaido Prefecture and Ishikari Subprefecture. Shikotsu-Toya National Park is located in the southern part of the subprefecture, and Shokanbetsu-Teuri-Yagishiri Quasi-National Park in the north.
Ezo (蝦夷) is the Japanese term historically used to refer to the people and the lands to the northeast of the Japanese island of Honshu. This included the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, which changed its name from "Ezo" to "Hokkaidō" in 1869, and sometimes included Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. The word Ezo means "the land of the barbarians" in Japanese.
Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan, sometimes also Japanic, is a language family comprising Japanese, spoken in the main islands of Japan, and the Ryukyuan languages, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. The family is universally accepted by linguists, and significant progress has been made in reconstructing the proto-language, Proto-Japonic. The reconstruction implies a split between all dialects of Japanese and all Ryukyuan varieties, probably before the 7th century. The Hachijō language, spoken on the Izu Islands, is also included, but its position within the family is unclear.
Ainu, or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu, is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isolate with no academic consensus of origin. It is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.
The classification of the Japonic languages and their external relations is unclear. Linguists traditionally consider the Japonic languages to belong to an independent family; indeed, until the classification of Ryukyuan as separate languages within a Japonic family rather than as dialects of Japanese, Japanese was considered a language isolate.
Ae-oyna-kamuy (アエオイナカムイ) or Oyna-kamuy (オイナカムイ) for short is an Ainu kamuy (god) and culture hero. In Ainu mythology, he is credited with teaching humans domestic skills, and for this reason he is called Ainurakkur, and otherwise known as Okikurmi.
Kesen dialect or Kesen is a Japanese dialect spoken in Kesen County, Iwate Prefecture, Japan.
Bronisław Piotr Piłsudski was an ethnologist who researched the Ainu people after he was exiled by Tsar Alexander III of Russia to the Far East.
Shirō Yabu is a Japanese scholar of the languages of Burma. He is a professor emeritus at Osaka University. He joined the Department of Burmese language of Osaka University in 1982 as an assistant professor and worked there until 2009.
Yoshio Nishi was a Japanese scholar of Tibeto-Burman linguistics. He first studied linguistics while a student at the International Christian University (Tokyo) under the leadership of Roy Andrew Miller. After the master's coursework at the University of Tokyo and his time studying at Rangoon University, he taught at Kyushu University, Kagoshima University, Ehime University, and Kobe City University of Foreign Studies. In 1996 when the university newly founded the doctoral course at its graduate school, he was the only D-maru-gō professor of linguistics qualified to supervise doctoral students. He is now a professor emeritus at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, and was nominated in 1993 as a distinguished professor at Central University of Nationalities in Beijing.
Shiro Hattori was a Japanese academic and writer. Born in Kameyama, Mie, Hattori was a linguist known particularly for his work on premodern Japanese and Japonic languages and the Ainu language. He was a professor at the University of Tokyo.
Archdeacon John Batchelor D.D., OBE was an Anglican English missionary to the Ainu people of Japan until 1941. First sent under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society of the Church of England, Batchelor lived from 1877 to 1941 among the indigenous Ainu communities in the Northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. He was a charismatic and iconoclastic missionary for the Anglican Church in Japan and published highly regarded work on the language and culture of the Ainu people. Batchelor only reluctantly left Japan at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1941.
Take Asai (浅井タケ) or Tahkonanna was the last fluent speaker of the Sakhalin Ainu language. She was born in Otasu village on the West coast of Sakhalin Island, and moved to Rayciska (Raichishika) during her childhood. After World War II she was relocated to Hokkaido and toward the end of her life lived in an old-age home in Monbetsu, Hidaka, Hokkaido. She served as an informant with the Piłsudski Research Project and other projects until her death in 1994.
Sakhalin Ainu is an extinct Ainu language, or perhaps several Ainu languages, that was or were spoken on the island of Sakhalin, now part of Russia.
Mashiho Chiri (Japanese: 知里 真志保) was an Ainu linguist and anthropologist. He was best known for creating Ainu-Japanese dictionaries.
Hoyau or hoyau kamui, in Ainu mythology, is a type of malodorous and venomous dragon or dragon god, believed to thrive in summer or near fire, but lose strength in the cold, whose trait earns it the alternative name of sak-somo-ayep.
The Ainu languages, sometimes known as Ainuic, are a small language family, often regarded as a language isolate, historically spoken by the Ainu people of northern Japan and neighboring islands.
The mintuci is a water sprite or an aquatic supernatural creature, a half-man-half-beast, told in stories of Ainu mythology and folklore. It is also considered a variant of the kappa and therefore a type of yōkai.