Ainos

Ainos, a race who were probably the first inhabitants of Japan, but who now are reduced to about 15,000, confined chiefly to the islands of Yesso and Sakhalin. They are short in stature, but strongly built, and the bodies of many are covered with short, bristly hair. They speak a language distinct from Japanese, and appear to be rapidly dying out. Their features are rather European than Mongolian. They exist principally by hunting and fishing, eating the flesh and making idols of the skins of their prey; are polygamous, live in wretched huts under their own chiefs, and are heartily despised by the Japanese. See JAPAN; also Bickmore's The Ainos or Hairy Men (Lond. 1868); Miss Bird's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880); Chamberlain's Aino Studies (1887); and works by Batchelor (1892), MacRitchie (1892), Douglas Howard (1893), and Savage Landor (1893).