Ainos

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

l' noz, a people living in the northern part of Japan, parts of Saghalin, the Kurile Islands, and the adjacent coast. There are perhaps 25,000 of them. As compared with the Japanese, they are a hairy, light skinned folk. Students are inclined to believe that they belong to the faraway white, or Caucasian, rather than to the Mongolian race. At one time they appear to have occupied all Japan. It is believed that many Ainos were absorbed by the Japanese in marriage, and this is one of the reasons why the Japs differ somewhat from the Chinese. The Ainos are short, broad-shouldered, and shaggy. They are intemperate. They hold festivals in honor of bears. A hedge on the east side of the hut and a mop-like stick with a bundle of shavings tied to one end are objects of reverence. They have a fund of entertaining folk-lore stories. They live in filthy, rude huts, and subsist chiefly by hunting, fishing, and trapping, or else they work for the Japanese. An Ainos village was one of the features of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held at St. Louis. When requested to authorize an Ainos exhibit, the Japanese government consented only on condition that the natives be shown as an inferior, not a Japanese people. See Japan ; Kamchatka 2026 Editor's Note: This page uses language about race that was commonplace when the book was published and is offensive by today's standards. The text has been left exactly as it was printed, rather than cut or softened, so that the historical record — including how ordinary such language once was — is preserved. (Ed: BR 2026-07-22) 2026 Editor's Note: 'Ainos' is the old spelling of the Ainu , and this article's guess that they were 'Caucasian' is a discredited race theory. After a century of forced assimilation, Japan only legally recognized the Ainu as an indigenous people in 2019; their language is now critically endangered, down to a handful of native speakers. (Ed: BR 2026-06-02)