Ainu activist Kaizawa Tadashi led the first Ainu delegation to China to learn how minority groups were treated there. The group included Ainu people from different regions and organizations. They joined as individuals, not as official representatives of any group.
The trip was a big moment in Ainu history. Even though Ainu had traded with other people across Asia for centuries, it was the first time a foreign country invited an all-Ainu group to visit and speak for themselves in the contemporary era.
Kaizawa called it an important moment: “This visit represented a moment of historical significance for Ainu people: the first time an all-Ainu delegation was officially invited by a nation the scale of China, and for us, it would be a new and challenging experience to conduct exchanges in a country with such a different system from Japan” [Kaizawa Tadashi, ‘Hajimeni’, Hokkaidō chūgoku hōmon danki, Kaizawa (ed.), Hokkaidō Ainu Chūgoku hōmon danki (Sapporo, Hokkaidō Ainu Chūgoku hōmon dan,1975), p. 3].