Find out the basis for such beliefs, along with what Hokkaido's Ainu have traditionally thought about the crane, the bear, the flying squirrel, and a host of other creatures. The excerpts below ...

An Ainu ceremony known as Iyomante, in which people shoot arrows at a brown bear cub regarded as a god. It’s based on the belief that sending the bear’s spirits back to the divine world will ...

He is not of Ainu descent: “I visited the Ainu village in 1999 after making a ring in the shape of a bear’s paw, and was deeply impressed by the culture.” Sometimes Mr. Shimokura ...

To the Ainu, bears represent the ultimate incarnation of a god. So, a less-skilled translator — perhaps lacking a flair for marketing — might have rendered it as “Kamui Mintara, A (Dangerous ...

One Ainu group is petitioning the force and the ... on the vertical tail wings of its aircraft. It features a brown bear’s head, a bird’s feathers and an arabesque design, with the central ...

Documentary investigating a film made of the Ainu bear ceremony by Neil Gordon Munro, who studied the Ainu culture for thirty years before settling in Nibutani for the last twelve years of his life.

The immediate predecessors of the Ainu, who are the native people of northeastern Japan, occupied the site. Many archeologists consider the Ainu to be the last living descendants of the Jomon ...

An invaluable record of Ainu culture is finding an international audience almost 100 years after it was first published. "Ainu Shinyoshu," or "Collection of Ainu Songs of Gods," compiled by author ...