Ainos, l' noz, a people living in the northern part of Japan, parts of Saghalin, the Kurile Islands, and the adjacent coast. There are perhaps 25,000 of them. As compared with the Japanese, they are a hairy, light skinned folk. Students are inclined to believe that they belong to the faraway white, or Caucasian, rather than to the Mongolian race. At one time they appear to have occupied all Japan. It is believed that many Ainos were absorbed by the Japanese in marriage, and this is one of the reasons why the Japanese differ somewhat from the Chinese. The Ainos are short, broad-shouldered, and shaggy. They are intemperate. They hold festivals in honor of bears. A hedge on the east side of the hut and a mop-like stick with a bundle of shavings tied to one end are objects of reverence. They have a fund of entertaining folk-lore stories. They live in filthy, rude huts, and subsist chiefly by hunting, fishing, and trapping, or else they work for the Japanese. An Ainos village was one of the features of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held at St. Louis. When requested to authorize an Ainos exhibit, the Japanese government consented only on condition that the natives be shown as an inferior, not a Japanese people. See JAPAN; KAMCHATKA.