The Ainu are indigenous people of Japan, specifically Hokkaido and northeastern Honshu. They have spoken the Ainu language, which is a language in a small language family of the Ainu languages, consisting of Kuril Ainu, Sakhalin Ainu, and Hokkaido Ainu. This language is different from the Japanese language and currently, it is considered a critically endangered and near extinct language as there are about 10 native speakers as of 2007.

Since the Ainu language did not have a writing system, it was crucial for the Ainu to pass down traditions, folktales, and songs by word of mouth. Because of this, Ainu have a rich oral literature tradition, called yukar. Yukar were about Ainu mosir, the land of the humans, kamuy moshir, the land of the gods, and gods and humans interacting with each other. Women were mostly yukar performers, and there were Ainu who kept a written record of yukar in Japanese, translated them into Japanese, and published them, like Chiri Yukie. Because of people like her, yukar have been preserved even in the present day. 

The Ainu were mostly hunter gatherers, as not many crops were able to be grown in the harsh, cold winters of Hokkaido. Their traditional cuisine mainly consisted of salmon, rabbit, fox, and deer, as well as root vegetables. Ainu settlements were called kotan, or village. Kotan were mostly located near rivers or seashores so food was readily available. An average Ainu family had four to seven people, and they lived in a house woven with dried grass and tree bark called cise. The Ainu believed that everything in nature has a kamuy, or god, and their traditions involved communicating with them. The most significant ceremony was iomante, in which they would send back the spirits of the animals they hunted to kamuy mosir, or the land of the gods.

Below is an interactive map of current day Japan showing places that are relevant to the Ainu.