[4][5] In addition to the Ainu, he conducted research on the Orork and Nivkh indigenous peoples of Sakhalin Island.

[6] He pioneered Ainu language research in the late 19th century, laying the groundwork for future studies.

[4][1] Piłsudski was born on November 2, 1866, in the Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire in present-day Lithuania.

For his involvement with a socialist in a plot to assassinate Alexander III of Russia in 1887 together with Vladimir Lenin's brother Aleksandr Ulyanov, Bronisław was initially sentenced to death, later commuted to fifteen years of hard labor on Sakhalin island (Ulyanov was hanged).

The rest of his prison sentence was changed to ten years of internal exile because he had settled without permission from the Russian authorities.

Three years later, Piłsudski was given a grant by the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences to study the Ainu.

He built an elementary school in the village where he taught Russian language and mathematics to the local children.

Piłsudski moved to Japan by himself, where he was befriended by Ōkuma Shigenobu, Futabatei Shimei, Torii Ryūzō, Katayama Sen, and others, and helped an organization of anti-imperial Russian refugees.

He described Bronisław as:an 'odd ball' who was so kind-hearted and innocent like a child that he would always insist in a very excited tone that he needed to do something to help Ainus and that it was his destiny to do that despite the fact that he was always a 'complete broke' then".