Hokkaido characters

Hokkaido Characters
Type	Jindai moji
Languages	Uncertain
Time period	Meiji period?
Parent systems	Rock paintings in Temiya Cave? Hokkaido Characters
Unicode range	Unallocated

The Hokkaido characters (北海道異体文字, hokkaidō itai moji), also known as Aino characters (アイノモジ, aino moji) or Ainu characters (アイヌ文字, ainu moji), are a set of characters discovered around 1886 on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. At the time of their discovery, they were believed to be a genuine script, but this view is not generally supported today.

Heikichi Shōji, a member of the Tokyo Anthropological Society (東京人類学会), collected various Ainu artifacts in Hokkaido, including some antiques with characters written on them. Among these, a piece of bark and a sash were introduced in the September 9, 1886 issue of the Mutsu Shimpo (陸奥新報), a local newspaper in Aomori Prefecture, and three days later in the Sendai paper Ōunichi Nichishinbun (奥羽日日新聞). Enomoto Takeaki opined that these must have been characters used by the Emishi a thousand years before. At the 25th meeting of the Tokyo Anthropological Society in December of that year, Shōji displayed pieces of leather, stone fragments, washi (Japanese paper), and a sheath, all inscribed with the characters.

The anthropologist Tsuboi Shōgorō published an article in 1887 in the 12th issue of the Tokyo Anthropological Society Report that used the Hokkaido characters, along with carvings in Temiya Cave and Oshoro Stone Circle in Otaru City, to support his own Koro-pok-guru theory. This theory argued that the Koro-pok-guru, a legendary race of small people in Ainu mythology, were in fact residents of Japan predating the Ainu themselves, and had been forced to the northeast by the immigration of the Ainu's ancestors.

In August 1887, Tsuboi went on to publish an article in the 18th issue of the Tokyo Anthropological Society Magazine entitled Variant Characters on Antique Articles from Around Hokkaido (北海道諸地方より出でたる古器物上に在る異体文字). In addition to stating that the characters were systematically arranged, unlike those at Temiya Cave, and thus represented a script, he further suggested the possibility that these characters were used by people who came to Japan from Eurasia.