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The , also known as or , 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.〔Harada Minoru says of these "Ainu characters", as well as ''jindai moji'' in general, that 〕 == Discovery and research == Heikichi Shōji, a member of the , 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 , a local newspaper in Aomori Prefecture, and three days later in the Sendai paper . 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 . 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. In October of the same year, this time in the 20th issue of that same Tokyo Anthropological Society Magazine, Shōji himself released an article called . Although he admitted that there was no proof, Shōji expressed the view that these characters were likely used by the Emishi in ancient times. In 1888, the Kokugaku scholar Naosumi Ochiai wrote a book entitled . Therein he posited that the Hokkaido characters were used by the Emishi people, who neither understood Japanese nor used Kanji. He further produced 14 symbols, combinations of which supposedly composed 50 of the characters, but supposed that it would prove impossible to understand them without knowing their readings. In the appendix on dubious characters in Hirata Atsutane's , he suggested a connection between the Hokkaido characters and Izumo characters, as well as other supposedly ancient characters. In 1975, Kiyohiko Agō wrote , in which he connected the Hokkaido characters with not only the carvings in Temiya Cave but also those in Fugoppe Cave, in the town of Yoichi. The , headed by Takahashi Yoshinori, claims a connection between ''jindai moji'' including the Hokkaido characters and an advanced prehistoric society, and further between the Hokkaido characters and the ancient Sumerian and Assyrian civilizations of Mesopotamia. Furthermore, they claim that the carvings in the Fugoppe Cave themselves consist of the Hokkaido characters. In 2007, the author Harada Minoru, a member of the skeptical group Togakkai (the "Academy of Outrageous Books"), offered the following evaluation: 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hokkaido characters」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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