According to Jirota Mokottunas Kitahara, an associate professor at Hokkaido University’s Center for Ainu and Indigenous Studies, dog has been used to belittle the Ainu people since olden days.

In a Nippon Television news program that aired March 12, a comedian used the word “inu,” which means “dog” and was apparently intended as a pun on Ainu, when a documentary about an Ainu ...

The Ainu believe that the world rests on the back of a giant trout, that otters caused human beings to be flawed, and that seeing an owl fly across the face of the moon at night is cause for great ...