Do you like traveling? I like it very much. I went to Hokkaido last summer. I visited an Ainu museum. I learnd about the Ainu there.
Once Hokkaido was the land of the Ainu. The names of places show this. For example, Sapporo, Kushiro, and Asahikawa are from the Ainu language.
People in Honshu went into Hokkaido at the end of the Edo period. They changed the Ainu way of life.
These chages became official in the Meiji period. Many Ainu customs became illegal. They stopped hunting and fising, and began farming against their will. They could not use their own language in public.
Today some Ainus are trying to keep their traditional ways. Kayano Shigeru is one of them.
He thought, The life of a people is in its languages. So he started Ainu language classes with his friends. This moved many people.
Now Ainu teachers give their people language lesson. The language lives again.
