To this day, a small native population of Ainu people are living in Hokkaidō, an island in the northern part of Japan. The indigenous Ainu people have for centuries fostered good relations with the gods through rituals and ceremonies, during which they sing songs and perform dances to them. These are not only a form of entertainment, but also a way for them to express honor, respect, and gratitude to the deities that are found in nature.
One of the dances is known as the Ainu Dance, which is centered around the worship of spirit deities or Kamui in the Japanese-Ainu language. The majority of Japanese deities are associated with animals, such as the bear, owl, and turtle, which were all considered significant by ancient Japanese.
In the traditional style, dancers are often accompanied by onlookers who sing without musical instruments. Various dances imitate the calls and movements of animals and insects; some, like the sword and bow dances, are rituals; and others, like the show dances, are purely entertainment. These dances are performed at ceremonies and banquets, as part of newly organized cultural festivals, and privately in everyday life.
Stories performed by the dancers are mostly based on animals or the lifestyle of the Ainu people. These include the birds dance (chikap rimse), which portrays a flock of birds flying in the sky, as well as the whale dance (fumpenere), which tells the story of a time when the tribe celebrated and shared whale meat for a feast. In the fumpenere, a woman found a sickly whale who beached itself on the shore. They believed the whale was a blessing from their gods, and they began to cut up the whale for everyone to share. The story was turned into dance movements in order to pray for a plentiful hunt each time it was performed.
The symbolic act of Ainu dance also plays a central role in some formal ceremonies like Iyomante, where the participants send the bear they ate back to heaven by mimicking what they saw the live bear do and embodying it as a deity. Throughout all of the existence of Ainu dance, a common theme has been an acknowledgement of life, work, and community.
As with many other forms of cultural dance, the movements and themes of the Ainu dance are unique to each region. However, many have been lost or forgotten over time, despite its importance as one of the most ancient forms of dance in Japan.
Nowadays, the Ainu population is considered scarce. Approximately 80% of the current population come from mixed cultures, which means that there are very few people who celebrate the original culture and traditions of the Ainu. The elderly population of Japan helped to bring the music and dance traditions of the Ainu to the public's attention, but as that generation is dying out, so are the memories and cultural lessons.
Ainu dance was enlisted as an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2009 after being designated an important intangible folk cultural property in 1984. Currently, efforts are being made to recreate ancient dances based on ancient records and to develop new forms of music and dance. People other than preservation society members in Hokkaido are also becoming involved in activities to revive and preserve Ainu performing arts.