The earliest music and dance in Japan is that which surrounds the animistic beliefs of the ancient indigenous peoples, ancestors of today's dwindling Ainu community of Hokkaido. The present Ainu community is believed to be c 80 per cent of mixed blood, relatively few of whom now even speak or understand the Ainu language, let alone practice its traditional customs.

Until recently the ancient Ainu music tradition had been perpetuated by an ever-diminishing number of elderly individuals. However, over the past decade young Hokkaido-based musician Oki Kano has been active in reviving the Ainu music tradition with the aim of making it more relevant for today's Ainu youth.

Much of the Ainu music and dance tradition is associated with the worship of spirit deities (kamui), in particular those connected with animals such as the bear, the owl and the sea turtle.

Styles of Ainu music have traditionally revolved around a form of epic poetry called the yukar, and the upopo, a vocalised form of contrapuntal or polyphonic music based on chanting. The Ainu instrumentarium is of the wider pre-Buddhist indigenous tradition and incorporates a five-stringed zither known as the tonkori and a jew's harp known as the mukkuri, plus drums and naturally-fabricated percussion instruments.

Ainu dance is very reminiscent of that of Melanesia, comprising both participatory social dances accompanied by responsorial singing and pantomimic dance such as the chikap rimse (bird dance) which portrays flying birds and the humpenere (whale dance) which tells of the discovery on the beach of a whale carcase and the subsequent division of whalemeat amongst the tribe.