Don't know about the ainu, but Okinawans are treated well, though there were decades of language repression -- this was true of Hakka and non-han indigenous pop

Don't know about the ainu, but Okinawans are treated well, though there were decades of language repression -- this was true of Hakka and non-han indigenous population in Taiwan too. However, gp was about foreign minorities. There have been foreign-born (Caucasian) members of the diet, for example. I guess the one thing weird about Japan is that there is some expectation of cultural erasure -- if you immigrate and you want to fully assimilate, you have to take a Japanese name.