Do you like traveling?
I like it very much.
I went to Hokkaido
last summer.
I visited
a Ainu museum.
I learnd about
the Ainu there.
Once Hokkaido
was the land of the Ainu.
The name of places
show this.
For exaple,
Sappo, 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 fissing,
and began farming
against their wil.
They could not
use there
own language
in public.
Today some Ainus
are trying to keep
their traditional ways.
Kayano Sigeru
is one of them.
He thought,
The life of a people
is in its language.
So he started
Ainu language classes
with his friends.
This moved many people.
Now Ainu teachers
give their
people laguage lessons.
The language lives again.
※Time required 14min 4ses.
It time is very slowry...
