Ainu people, Japan

One of their Yukar Upopo, or legends, tells that "The Ainu lived in this place a hundred thousand years before the Children of the Sun came".

Ainu culture originated in a merger of the Okhotsk and Satsumon cultures.  Active contact between the Wajin (the ethnically Japanese) and the Ainu of Ezochi (now known as Hokkaido) began in the 13th century. The Ainu formed a society of hunter-gatherers, living mainly by hunting and fishing, and the people followed a religion based on phenomena of nature.

Today, it is estimated that fewer than 100 speakers of the language remain while other research places the number at fewer than 15 speakers. The language has been classified as “endangered”. As a result of this the study of the Ainu language is limited and is based largely on historical research. Although there have been attempts to show that the Ainu language and the Japanese language are related, modern scholars have rejected that the relationship goes beyond contact, such as the mutual borrowing of words between Japanese and Ainu. In fact, no attempt to show a relationship with Ainu to any other language has gained wide acceptance, and Ainu is currently considered to be a language isolate.