Ainu Essay

Ainu is spoken in the far northern islands of Japan in Hokkaidô. This is an island about 83,530 square feet, which is about one fifth the size of Japan. It is surrounded by coasts and has mountains, lakes, and rivers. Speakers of Ainu live on southern Sakhalin. Earlier, but they used to live in Kuril Islands and Kamchatka. They even lived in the northeast region of Honshű. Ainu is believed to have origins in Siberia and the southern Pacific (Gall & Hobby, 2009). This non-Japanese language means “human” or people (Leeming 2010). There are currently around 1,200 to 2,400 speakers of Ainu that are residing in Hokkaidô. (Leeming 2010). According to Gall and Hobby, Ainu belongs to a Paleo-Asiatic or a Paleo-Siberian community of languages. It consists of two dialects called Hokkaidô and Sakhalin, which are subdivided into other minor dialects (Gall & Hobby, 2009).

The Ainu are people that live a conventional life revolving around hunting, fishing, gathering plants and raising millets. However in recent years, rice and dry-crop cultivation and commercial fishing have replaced these. The Ainu people use trained dogs for hunting and nets for fishing. They also use the bow and arrow, the spear, and other traps to hunt animals. Their economy was very different from their Japanese, Korean, and Chinese agriculturalist neighbors (Ohnuki-Tierney 1996).

The Ainu religion is pantheistic. They believe that there is a god of mountains and a god of water, which is why they hunt, fish, and gather food in mild quantities so they do not upset these Gods. In Hokkaidô, there is also dairy farming, forestry, mining, food processing, woodworking, and paper industries. They also believe that animals are visitors from another world. The most respect i...

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...e lesson television program in Hokkaidô that provided lessons in different dialects of Ainu (Gall & Hobby, 2009).

The family life of the Ainu women consists of weaving and embroidering. It also consists of gathering plants and taking care of children who are home-schooled. The Ainu men hunt and fish. This shows the conventional divisions among men and women. The traditional clothing of the Ainu is made of textile of inner elm bark fibers. It is worn with a woven sash, which is similar to the Japanese kimono. This traditional clothing is still worn for special occasions but in daily life the Ainu wear international-style clothing (Gall & Hobby, 2009).

Although Ainu is an endangered language, there are steps being taken to preserve this language before it completely dies out. These steps include the writing system that is being developed so Ainu can be remembered.