The Ainu people live primarily on Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost major island. Their traditional homeland was once far larger, stretching across several regions of the North Pacific, but today the vast majority of Ainu are concentrated in specific areas of Hokkaido, with smaller numbers in other parts of Japan and a handful of descendants in Russia.
The Ainu Homeland Before Modern Borders
The traditional Ainu homeland, called Ainu Mosir, covered a wide arc of territory across the North Pacific. It included Hokkaido, the southern tip of Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands chain, Sakhalin Island, and the northern edge of Honshu (Japan’s main island). This territory spanned parts of what is now northern Japan and eastern Russia.
The Ainu lived across this vast region for thousands of years, hunting, fishing, and trading. Sea otter furs from the Kuril Islands were considered luxury goods in both Asia and Europe, and the fur trade drew Russian expansion into the area during the 1700s, when Russian settlers partnered with Sakhalin and Kuril Ainu hunters and set up trading posts. In 1875, Russia gave up its claims to the Kuril Islands in exchange for control over Sakhalin, and the Kurils became a formal Japanese province. These colonial pressures from both Japan and Russia steadily compressed Ainu territory over the centuries.
Where the Ainu Live Today
The overwhelming majority of Ainu people live on Hokkaido. Within the island, the population is not evenly spread. About 70 percent live in just two subprefectures: Hidaka and Iburi. Hidaka, along Hokkaido’s southern Pacific coast, has long been a center of Ainu life. Iburi, just to the west, includes the town of Shiraoi, which has become an important cultural hub.
Beyond these concentrations, Ainu people live in cities across Hokkaido, particularly Sapporo, the island’s largest city. A significant number of Ainu also live elsewhere in Japan, especially in the Tokyo metropolitan area, though exact figures are difficult to pin down. Japan has no census question on ethnicity, so population estimates rely on voluntary surveys conducted by the Hokkaido prefectural government, which only count Ainu within Hokkaido itself. The true number of people with Ainu heritage across all of Japan is almost certainly higher than official figures suggest.
Displaced Communities From Sakhalin and the Kurils
The Kuril Ainu were hit especially hard by colonization. When Soviet forces took control of the Kuril Islands and southern Sakhalin at the end of World War II in 1945, the Ainu living there were expelled along with Japanese settlers. Most were relocated to Hokkaido. Even today, many of their descendants remain on Hokkaido, unable to return to their ancestral lands in what is now Russian territory. There is essentially no recognized Ainu community left in Russia.
Cultural Centers Across Hokkaido
Several locations on Hokkaido serve as living cultural centers where Ainu traditions are actively preserved and shared. The most prominent is Upopoy National Ainu Museum and Park, located on the shores of Lake Poroto in Shiraoi Town. Opened in 2020 as a Japanese government initiative, Upopoy is the country’s first national museum dedicated to Ainu history and culture. It includes a reconstructed traditional Ainu village with cise (traditional houses), interactive workshops, and a permanent exhibition covering six themes: language, the Ainu worldview, daily life, history, work, and cultural exchange with other peoples.
Other cultural facilities are scattered across the island. Sapporo has the Pirka Kotan center in its southern Minami ward, dedicated to promoting Ainu culture in the urban center where many Ainu now live. In eastern Hokkaido, the Kussharo Kotan Ainu Folklore Museum sits near Lake Kussharo in Teshikaga, preserving traditions from the inland Ainu communities of that region. These sites function both as museums for visitors and as gathering places where Ainu people practice and transmit their traditions.
Legal Recognition and Identity
In 2019, Japan passed legislation formally recognizing the Ainu as an indigenous people of Japan for the first time. This was a significant shift. For much of modern Japanese history, government policy focused on assimilation rather than recognition, and many Ainu concealed their heritage to avoid discrimination. The legal recognition has encouraged more people to openly identify as Ainu, though stigma and the long effects of assimilation policies mean that many people with Ainu ancestry still do not publicly claim it.
The Ainu language, once spoken across the entire Ainu Mosir territory, is critically endangered. Most fluent speakers are elderly, and revitalization efforts are centered in Hokkaido, particularly through programs connected to Upopoy and community language classes. The geographic concentration of the Ainu population on Hokkaido makes the island not just where most Ainu live, but where nearly all organized efforts to sustain Ainu culture take place.