But critics say the law was heavy on symbolism but light on substance, and stopped short of acknowledging that the Ainu have traditional rights to hunt and fish under the U.N. The 2019 law went further, promising to create a society that respects the pride of the Ainu. In June 2008, one month before the Group of Seven leaders summit in Hokkaido, parliament passed a resolution declaring that they were Indigenous. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, that Japan moved to address the question of whether the Ainu were Indigenous. But it would not be until 2007, following the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of The U.N. That law was not repealed until 1997, when a new law that aimed to promote Ainu culture was passed.

The 1899 law also determined how land was to be distributed to the Ainu and imposed strict limits on how it could be legally transferred.Ī traditional Ainu hut on the grounds of Nibutani Ainu Museum in Biratori, Hokkaido

But as Japan began a period of rapid industrialization during the Meiji Era (1868-1912), the Ainu were removed from their land and banned from commercial hunting and fishing.ĭuring the 20th century, they suffered from extreme discrimination following the passage of an 1899 law that, in an attempt to assimilate the Ainu into Japanese society, forced them to take up farming for a living instead of relying on hunting and fishing for trout and salmon, which they were already banned from doing in the Sapporo area through an 1878 law.

The lawsuit argues that the ancestors of the Raporo Ainu Nation engaged in the commercial trading of salmon in the area with Japanese during the Edo Period (1603-1867).

The suit, which was filed in 2020 against the national and Hokkaido governments, has drawn national and international attention, because, while Japan legally recognized the Ainu people as Indigenous in 2019, it only allows the Ainu to fish for salmon for the purposes of practicing cultural tradition - not for economic reasons.

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