National Ainu Museum
Photo: Own work — CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The National Ainu Museum in Shiraoi, Hokkaido, is Japan’s first national museum dedicated to the history and culture of the indigenous Ainu people, offering interactive exhibits and cultural experiences.
Planning your visit
The Ainu are the indigenous people of Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kurils, with a language unrelated to Japanese, a distinct material culture and a history of dispossession under Meiji assimilation policy that Japan only formally acknowledged in 2019.
Upopoy, the national centre at Shiraoi, opened in 2020 with the National Ainu Museum at its heart — the country's first national institution devoted to the subject, and notable for presenting Ainu history in the first person, with exhibition texts written from an Ainu perspective and the Ainu language given precedence on the labels.
Themes cover language, worldview, livelihoods, exchange, work and history, and the wider park adds a reconstructed village, craft workshops, and performances of dance and the mukkuri mouth harp.
Repatriation of ancestral remains is part of the site's remit.
Shiraoi is around an hour from Sapporo. Allow half a day. Current availability is shown below.
Before you book
Where is National Ainu Museum?
National Ainu Museum is in Shiraoi, Japan. The map on this page marks its exact location.
How long should I allow for National Ainu Museum?
Allow half a day. That is the time the collection itself takes at an unhurried pace, before any queue.
Do I need to book National Ainu Museum in advance?
Tickets can be bought on the door at quiet times, but booking ahead fixes the date and avoids the queue at busy ones. Live availability is shown on this page.