The aboriginal inhabitants of Japan, they reside mainly on Hokkaido and, in Russia, on Sakhalin. They live by hunting, fishing, small-scale farming, and more recently by tourism. Their language and physical morphology are entirely unrelated to other east Asian peoples; their traditional religion is a shamanistic animism centered around a Bear Cult. They have been gradually pushed further and further north by succeeding extensions of Japanese control over the islands, and now are in much reduced numbers. They have never held a definite state in the sense usually catalogued by this archive. Nevertheless, from time to time Ainu leaders have emerged under one circumstance or another, which the following list notes.