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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Before Hokkaido was Hokkaido, it was known to mainland Japan as Ezo. Further back still, indigenous Ainu communities referred to the northern expanse as Ainu Mosir, a name they had used for untold ...

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 ...