A faded colourised landscape photograph showing three Ainu men posing with weapons. The man on the left of the image is standing, wearing a loincloth and holding a bow and arrow in his left hand. The man in the middle is wearing trousers and holds a flat wooden object shaped like a spear or paddle, pointing downwards, with both hands. The man to the right of the image, also wearing trousers, is crouching and drawing an arrow fitted to a bow. All three men are bare-chested. The men are standing in front of a painted backdrop with a building visible in the top right-hand corner of the image. A tree trunk with sawn-off branches (either part of the painted backdrop or a prop) can be seen on the ground at the left of the image. Original caption (handwritten in ink beneath): ' "Ainus" '.

This photograph was probably taken in a commercial photography studio.

The Ainu are an ethnic minority of northern Japan who have a distinct culture and language. They were subject to discrimination from Japanese rulers during the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.