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JAPAN'S GENERAL HISTORYLIBRARY
1.-OLD JAPANTHE MAKING AND SHAPING OF THE NATION.IS PEOPLE, RULERS, AND INSTITUTIONS. ORGANISATION OF THE EMPIRE & WARS OF GREAT FAMILIES. RISE OF THE SAMURAI AND THE SHOGUNATE. THE GOLDEN AGE OF OLD JAPAN. THE EVE OF THE GREAT CHANGE2.-NEW JAPAN. THE REAL CREATORS OF NEW JAPAN3.-WAR WITH CHINA. THE RESTORATION OF THE MIKADO AND THE GREAT EMANCIPATION.4.- WAR WITH RUSSIA. THE TRIUMPH OF NEW JAPAN5. THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF BUDDHISM THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY IN JAPAN6. THE NIHONGI :THE AGE OF THE GODS
HTMLHISTORY OF JAPAN FROM THE ORIGINSTO THE ARRIVAL OF THE PORTUGUESE IN 1542 ADCHAPTER I. PROTOHISTORIC JAPAN (CHINESE AND
KOREAN SOURCES.)
CHAPTER II. LEGENDARY JAPAN. (JAPANESE SOURCES.)CHAPTER III. OLD YAMATO (400 A.D. - 550 A.D.)CHAPTER IV. OLD YAMATO.FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF BUDDHISM TO THE GREAT COUP D’ETAT (550 TO 645 A.D.)CHAPTER V. THE GREAT REFORM OF 645.CHAPTER VI. FROM TENCHI TO KWAMMU. (662 TO 782 A.D.)CHAPTER VII. THE EMPEROR KWAMMU. (782 TO 805 A.D.)CHAPTER VIII. THE LEARNED EMPERORS. (806 TO 850 A.D.)CHAPTER IX. THE GREAT HOUSE OF FUJIWARA.CHAPTER X. THE CLOISTERED EMPERORS.CHAPTER XI.
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SHINTOTHE ANCIENT RELIGION OF JAPAN |
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THE REVIVAL OF PURE SHINTÔ |
BIBLIOGRAPHY |
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It is manifest that to understand a people and their national life, the physical conditions under which they live must be known. To enjoy the picture, we must study the background.
Dai Nippon, as the natives call their beautiful land, occupies a significant position on the globe. Lying in the Pacific Ocean, in the temperate zone, it bends like a crescent off the continent of Asia. In the extreme north, at the island of Saghalin, the distance from the mainland of Asia is so slight that the straits may be crossed easily in a canoe. From Kiushiu, with the island of Tsushima lying between, the distance from Corea is but one day's sail in a junk. For 4000 miles eastward from the main island stretches the Pacific, shored in by the continent of America. From Yezo to Kamtchatka, the Kuriles stretch like the ruins of a causeway, prolonged by the Aleutian Islands, to Alaska. The configuration of the land is that resulting from the combined effects of volcanic action and the incessant motion of the corroding waves. The area of the empire is nearly equal to that of our Middle and New England States. Of the 150,000 square miles of surface, two-thirds consist of mountain land. The island of Saghalin (ceded to Russia in May, 1875) is one mountain chain; that of Yezo one mountain mass. On the main island, a solid backbone of mountainous elevations runs continuously from Rikuoku to Shinano, whence it branches off into subordinate chains that are prolonged irregularly to Nagato and into Kiushiu and Shikoku. Speaking generally, the heights of the mountains gradually increase from the extremities to the centre. In Saghalin, they are low; in Yezo, they are higher: increasing gradually on the north of the main island, they culminate in the centre in the lofty ranges of Shinano, and the peaks of Nantaizan, Yatsugadake, Hakuzan (nine thou- sand feet high), and Fuji, whose summit is over twelve thousand feet above the sea. Thence toward the south they gradually decrease in height. There are few high mountains along the sea-coast. The land slopes up gradually into hills, thence into lesser peaks, and finally into lofty ranges.
As Fuji, with his tall satellites, sweeps up from the land, so Japan itself rises up, peak-like, from the sea. From the shores the land plunges abruptly down into deep water. Japan is but an emerged crest of a submarine mountain—perhaps the edge of hard rock left by the submergence of the earth-crust which now floors the Sea of Japan and the Gulf of Tartary. There seems little reason to doubt that Saghalin, Yezo, Hondo, and Kiushiu were in geologic ages united together, forming one island. Surrounded on all sides by swift and variable currents, the islands everywhere on the sea-borders exhibit the effect of their action. At most points the continual detritus is such as to seriously encroach on the land area, and the belief holds among certain native sea-coast dwellers, strengthened by the traditional tales of past ravages, that in process of time the entire country, devoured by successive gnawings of the ocean, will finally sink into its insatiable maw.
The geological formations of the country—the natural foundations —are not as yet accurately determined. Enough, however, is known to give us a fair outline of fact, which future research and a thorough survey must fill up. Of the soil, more is known.
Even in a natural state, without artificial fertilization, most of the tillable land produces good crops of grain or vegetables. On myriads of rice-fields, which have yielded richly for ages, the fertilitv is easily maintained by irrigation and the ordinary application of manure, the natives being proficient in both these branches of practical husbandry.
The rivers on such narrow islands, where steep mountains and sharply excavated valleys predominate, are of necessity mainly useless for navigation. Ordinarily they are little more than brooks that flow lazily in narrow and shallow channels to the sea. After a storm, in rainy weather, or in winter, they become swollen torrents, often miles wide, sweeping resistlessly over large tracts of land which they keep perpetually desolate—wildernesses of stones and gravel, where fruitful fields ought to be. The area of land kept permanently waste in Japan on this account is enormous. The traveler, who today crosses a clear brook on a plank, may tomorrow be terrified at a roaring flood of muddy water in which neither man, beast, nor boat can live a moment. There are, however, some large plains, and in those we must look to find the navigable rivers. In the mountains of Shinano and Kodzuke are found the sources of most of the streams useful for navigation on the main island. On the plains of the Kuanto (from Suruga to Iwaki), Oshiu (Rikuchiu and Rikuzen), Mino, and Echigo, are a few rivers on which one may travel in boats hundreds of miles. One may go by water from Tokio to Niigata by making a few portages, and from Ozaka to the end of Lake Biwa by natural water. In the northern part of Hondo are several long rivers, notably the Kitagami and Sakata. In Yezo is the Ishikari. In Shikoku are several fine streams, which are large for the size of the islands. Kiushiu has but one or two of any importance. Almost every one of these rivers abounds in fish, affording, with the surrounding ocean, an inexhaustible and easily attainable supply of food of the best quality. Before their history began, the aboriginal islanders made this brain-nourishing food their chief diet, and through the recorded centuries to the quick-witted Japanese proper it has been the daily meat.
In the geologic ages volcanic action must have been extremely violent, as in historic time it has been almost continual. Hundreds, at least, of mountains, now quiet, were once blazing furnaces. The ever-greenery that decks them today reminds one of the ivy that mantles the ruins, or the flowers that overgrow the neglected cannon on the battlefield. Even within the memory of men now living have the most awful and deadly exhibitions of volcanic desolation been witnessed. The annals of Japan are replete with the records of these flame-and- lava-vomiting mountains, and the most harrowing tales of human life destroyed and human industry overwhelmed are truthfully portrayed by the pencil of the artist and the pen of the historian in the native literature. Even now the Japanese count over twenty active and hundreds of dormant volcanoes. As late as 1874, the volcano of Taromai, in Yezo, whose crater had long since congealed, leaving only a few puffing solfataras, exploded, blowing its rocky cap far up into the air, and scattering a rain of ashes as far as the sea-shore, many miles distant. Even the nearly perfect cone of Shiribeshi, in Yezo, is but one of many of nature's colossal ruins. Asama yama, never quiet, puffs off continual jets of steam, and at this moment of writing is groaning and quaking, to the terror of the people around it. Even the superb Fuji, that sits in lordly repose and looks down over the lesser peaks in thirteen provinces, owes its matchless form to volcanic action, being clothed by a garment of lava on a throne of granite. Hakuzan, on the west coast, which uprears its form above the clouds, nine thousand feet from the sea-level, and holds a lakelet of purest water in its bosom, once in fire and smoke belched out rocks and ulcered its crater jaws with floods of white and black lava. Not a few of these smoking furnaces by day are burning lamps by night to the mariner. Besides the masses and fields of scoria one everywhere meets, other evidences of the fierce unrest of the past are noticed. Beds of sulphur abound. Satsuma, Liu Kiu, and Yezo are noted for the large amount they easily produce. From the sides of Hakuzan huge crystals of sulphur are dug. Solfataras exist in active operation in many places. Sulphur-springs may be found in almost every province. Hot-springs abound, many of them highly impregnated with mineral salts, and famous for their geiser-like rhythm of ebb and flow. In Shinano and Echigo the people cook their food, and the farmer may work in his fields by night, lighted by the inflammable gas which issues from the ground, and is led through bamboo tubes.
Connected with volcanic are the seismic phenomena. The records of Japan from the earliest time make frequent mention of these devastating and terrifying visitations of subterranean disorder. Not only have villages, towns, and cities been shaken down or ingulfed, but in many neighborhoods tradition tells of mountains that have disappeared utterly, or been leveled to earth. The local histories, so nu- merous in Japan, relate many such instances, and numerous gullies and depressions produced by the opening and partial closure of the earth-lips are pointed out. One, in the province of Echizen, is over a mile long, and resembles a great trench.
In addition to a good soil, Japan has been generously endowed by the Creator with mineral riches. Most of the useful varieties of stone are found throughout the empire. Granite and the harder rocks, through various degrees of softness, down to the easily carved or chipped sandstones and secondary formations useful for fortifications, buildings, tombs, walks, or walls, exist in almost every province.
Almost all the useful metals long known to man are found in this island empire. Gold and silver in workable quantities are found in many places. The island of Sado is a mass of gold-bearing quartz. Copper is very abundant, and of the purest kind. Lead, tin, antimony, and manganese abound. Of zinc and mercury there is but little. Iron is chiefly in the form of magnetic oxide. It occurs in the diluvium of rivers and along the sea-coast, lying in beds, often of great thickness. The first quality of iron may be extracted from it. Iron-stone and many other varieties of ore are also found. Petroleum issues from the ground in Echigo, Suruga, Echizen, Yezo, and in Saghalin; the ocean at some portions on the coast of the latter is said to be smeared with a floating scum of oil for miles.
The botanical wealth of Japan is very great. A considerable nuber of vegetable species have doubtless been introduced by human agency into Japan from the Asiatic continent, but the indigenous plants and those imported by natural means are very numerous.
The timber of the main island, Kiushiu, and Shikoku is superb in appearance and growth, of great variety, beauty, and adaptability to the uses of man. Yezo is one vast boom and lumber yard. Thirtysix varieties of useful timber-trees, including true oak, are found there. The Kuriles also afford rich supplies, and are capable of becoming to the empire proper what forest-clad Norway is to England. Yamato, on the mainland, is also famous for its forests, ranging from tallest evergreen trees of great size, fineness of grain, and strength of fibre, to the soft and easily whittled pines; but the incessant demands for firing and carpentry make devastating inroads on the growing timber. Split wood for cooking, and charcoal for warmth, necessitate the system of forestry long in vogue in some parts of the empire requiring a tree to be planted for every one cut down; and nurseries of young forest trees are regularly set out, though the custom is not universal. Most of the trees and many of the plants are evergreen, thus keeping the islands clothed in perpetual verdure, and reducing the visual difference between winter and summer, in the southern half of Hondo, at least, to a nearly tropical minimum.
The various varieties of bamboo, graceful in appearance, and by its strength, symmetry, hollowness, and regularity of cleavage, adapted to an almost endless variety of uses, are almost omnipresent, from the scrub undergrowth in Yezo to that cultivated in luxuriant groves in Satsuma so as to be almost colossal in proportion. There is, however, as compared with our own country, a deficiency of fruit-trees and edible vegetables. The first use of most of the bread grains and plants is historic. In very ancient times it is nearly certain that the soil produced very little that could be used for food, except roots, nuts, and berries. This is shown both by tradition and history, and also by the fact that the names of vegetables in Japan are mostly foreign. T
The geographical position of the Japanese chain would lead us to expect a flora American, Asiatic, and semi-tropical in its character. The rapid variations of temperature, heavy and continuous rains, succeeded by scorching heats and the glare of an almost tropical sun, are accompanied and tempered by strong and constant winds. Hence we find semi-tropical vegetable forms in close contact with Northern temperate types. In general the predominant nature of the Japan flora is shrubby rather than herbaceous.
The geographical position of Japan hardly explains the marked resemblance of its flora to that of Atlantic America, on the one hand, and that of the Himalaya region, on the other. Such, however, is the fact : the Japanese flora resembles that of Eastern North America more than that of Western North America or Europe.
The fauna of the island is a very meagre one, and it is also quite probable that the larger domestic animals have been imported. Of wild beasts, the bear, deer, wolf, badger, fox, and monkey, and the smaller ground animals, are most probably indigenous. So far as studied, however, the types approach those of the remote American rather than those of the near Asiatic continent.
It is most probable, and nearly certain, that prehistoric Japan did not possess the cow, horse, sheep, or goat. Even in modern Japan, the poverty of the fauna strikes the traveler with surprise. The birds are mostly those of prey. Eagles and hawks are abundant. The crows, with none to molest their ancient multitudinous reign, are now, as always in the past, innumerable. The twittering of a noticeably small number of the smaller birds is occasionally heard; but bird-song seems to have been omitted from the catalogue of natural glories of this island empire. Two birds, the stork and heron, now, as anciently, tread the fields in stately beauty, or strike admiration in the beholder as they sail in perfect grace in mid-air. The wild ducks and geese in flocks have, from time immemorial, summered in Yezo and wintered in Hondo.
The domestic fowls consist almost entirely of ducks and chickens. The others have, doubtless, been imported. Of sea-birds there are legions on the uninhabited coasts, and from the rocks the fishermen gather harvests of eggs.
Surrounding their land is the great reservoir of food, the ocean. The seas of Japan are probably unexcelled in the world for the multitude and variety of the choicest species of edible fish. The many bays and gulfs indenting the islands have been for ages the happy hunting-grounds of the fisherman. The rivers are well stocked with many varieties of fresh-water fish. In Yezo the finest salmon exist in inexhaustible supply, while almost every species of edible shell-fish, mollusca and Crustacea, enlivens the shores of the islands, or fertilizes the soil with its catacombs. So abundant is fish that fish-manure is an article of standard manufacture, sale, and use. The variety and luxuriance of edible sea-weed are remarkable.
The aspects of nature in Japan, as in most volcanic countries, comprise a variety of savage hideousness, appalling destructiveness, and almost heavenly beauty. From the mountains burst volcanic eruptions; from the land come tremblings; from the ocean rises the tidal wave; over it blows the cyclone. Floods of rain in summer and autumn give rise to inundations and land-slides. During three months of the year the inevitable, dreaded typhoon may be expected, as the invisible agent of hideous ruin. Along the coast the winds and currents are very variable. Sunken and emerging rocks line the shore. All these make the dark side of nature to cloud the imagination of man, and to create the nightmare of superstition. But Nature's glory outshines her temporary gloom, and in presence of her cheering smiles the past terrors are soon forgotten. The pomp of vegetation, the splendor of the landscape, and the heavenly gentleness of air and climate come to soothe and make vivacious the spirits of man. The seasons come and go with well-nigh perfect regularity; the climate at times reaches the perfection of that in a temperate zone —not too sultry in summer, nor raw in winter. A majority of the inhabitants rarely see ice over an inch thick, or snow more than twenty-four hours old. The average lowest point in cold weather is probably 20° Fahrenheit.
The surrounding ocean and the variable winds temper the climate in summer; the Kuro Shiwo, the Gulf Stream of the Pacific, modifies the cold of winter. A sky such as ever arches over the Mediterranean bends above Japan, the ocean walls her in, and ever green and fertile land is hers. With healthful air, fertile soil, temperate climate, a land of mountains and valleys, with a coast -line indented with bays and harbors, food in plenty, a country resplendent with natural beauty, but liable at any moment to awful desolation and hideous ruin, what influences had Nature in forming the physique and character of the people who inhabit Japan.
In seeking the origin of the Japanese people, we must take into consideration the geographical position of their island chain, with reference to its proximity to the mainland, and its situation in the ocean currents. Japanese traditions and history may have much to tell us concerning the present people of Japan—whether they are exclusively an indigenous race, or the composite of several ethnic stocks. From a study, however imperfect, of the language, physiognomy, and bodily characteristics, survivals of ancient culture, historic geology, and the relics of man's struggle with nature in the early ages, and of the actual varieties of mankind now included within the mikado's dominions, we may learn much of the ancestors of the present Japanese.
The horns of the crescent-shaped chain of Dai Nippon approach the Asiatic continent at the southern end of Corea and at Siberia. Nearly the whole of Saghalin is within easy reach of the continent by canoe. At the point called Norato, a little north of the fifty-sec- ond parallel, the opposite shore, but five miles distant, is easily seen. The water is here so shallow that junks can not cross it at low tide. After long prevalent favorable winds, the ground is left dry, and the natives can walk dry-shod into Asia. During three or four months in the year it is frozen over, so that, with dog-teams or on foot, communication is often a matter of a single hour. In Japanese atlases, on the map of Karafto, a sand-bank covered by very shallow water is figured as occupying the spaco between the island and the continent. A people even without canoes might make this place a gate of entrance into Saghalin. The people thus entering Japan from the north would have the attraction of richer supplies of food and more genial climate to tempt them southward. As matter of fact, communication is continually taking place between the Asiatic mainland and Saghalin.
Japan occupies a striking position in the ocean currents which flow up from the Indian Ocean and the Malay peninsula. That branch of the great equatorial current of the Pacific, called the Kuro Shiwo, or Black Stream, on account of its color, flows up in a westerly direction past Luzon, Formosa, and the Liu Kiu Islands, striking the south point of Kiushiu, and sometimes, in summer, sending a branch up the Sea of Japan. With great velocity it scours the east coast of Kiushiu, the south of Shikokti; thence, wdth diminished rapidity, enveloping both the group of islands south of the Bay of Yedo and Oshima; and, at a point a little north of the latitude of Tokio, it leaves the coast of Japan, and flows north-east toward the shores of America. With the variable winds, cyclones, and sudden and violent storms continually arising, for which the coasts of Eastern Asia are notorious, it is easUy seen that the drifting northward from the Malay Archipelago of boats and men, and sowing of the shores of Kiushiu, Shikokii, and the western shores of Hondo with people from the south and west, must have been a regular and continuous process. This is shown to be the fact in Japanese history, in both ancient and modern times, and is taking place nearly every year of the present century.
It seems most probable that the savages descended from the north, tempted south by richer fisheries and a wanner climate, or urged on by successive immigrations from the continent. There is abundant evidence from Japanese history of the habitation of the main island by the Ainos, the savages whose descendants now occupy Yezo. Shikoku and Kiushiu were evidently peopled by mixed races, sprung of the waifs from the various shores of Southern Asia. When the conquerors landed in Kiushiu, or, in sacred Japanese phrase, "when our divine ancestors descended from heaven to the earth," they found the land peopled by savages, under tribal organizations, living in villages, each governed by a head-man. Conquering first the aborigines of Kiushiu and Shikoku, they advanced into the main island, fought and tranquilized the Ainos, then called Ebisti, or barbarians, and fixed their capital not far from Kioto. The Ainos were not subjugated in a day, however, and continual military operations were necessary to keep them quiet. Only after centuries of fighting were they thoroughly subdued and tranquilized. The traveler today in the northern part of the main island may see the barrows of the Ainos' bones slain by Japanese armies more than a millennium ago. One of these mounds near Morioka, in Rikuchiu, very large, and named "Yezo mori" (Aino mound), is especially famous, containing the bones of the aborigines slaughtered, heaps upon heaps, by the Japanese shogun (general), Tamura, who was noted for being six feet high, and for his many bloody victories over the Ebisti.
For centuries more, the distinction between conquerors and conquered, as between Saxon and Norman in England, was kept up; but at length the fusion of races was complete, and the homogeneous Japanese people is the result. The remnants of Ainos in Yezo, shut off by the straits of Tsugaru from Hondo, have preserved the aboriginal blood in purity.
The traditional origin of the Ainos, said to be given by themselves, though I suspect the story to be an invention of the conquerors, or of the Japanese, is as follows: A certain prince, named Kamui, in one of the kingdoms in Asia, had three daughters. One of them having become the object of the incestuous passion of her father, by which her body became covered with hair, quit his palace in the middle of the night, and fled to the sea-shore. There she foand a deserted canoe, on board which was only a large dog. The yoang girl resolutely embarked with her only companion to journey to some place in the East. After many months of travel, the young princess reached an uninhabited place in the mountains, and there gave birth to two children, a boy and a girl. These were the ancestors of the Aino race. Their offspring in turn married, some among each other, others with the bears of the mountains. The fruits of this latter union were men of extraordinary valor, and nimble hunters, who, after a long life spent in the vicinity of their birth, departed to the far north, where they still live on the high and inaccessible table-lands above the mountains; and, being immortal, they direct, by their magical influences, the actions and the destiny of men, that is, the Ainos.
The term "Aino" is a comparatively modern epithet, applied by the Japanese. Its derivation, as given by several eminent native scholars whom I have consulted, is from inu, a dog. Others assert that it is an abbreviation of ai no ko, "offspring of the middle"; that is, a breed between man and beast. Or, if the Japanese were believers in a theory called of late years the "Darwinian," an idea by no means unknown in their speculations, the Ainos would constitute the "missing link," or "intermediate " between man and the brutes. In the ancient Japanese literature, and until probably the twelfth century, the Ainos were called Ebisu, or savages.
The proofs from language of the Aino ancestry of the Japanese are very strong. So far as studied, the Aino tongue and the Altai dialects are said to be very similar. The Aino and Japanese languages differ no more than certain Chinese dialects do from each other. Ainos and Japanese have little difficulty in learning to speak the language of each other. The most ancient specimens of the Japanese tongue are found to show as great a likenesss to the Aino as to modern Japanese.
Further proofs of the general habitation of Hondo by the Ainos appear in the geographical names which linger upon the mountains and rivers. These names, musical in sound, and possessing, in their significance, a rude grandeur, have embalmed the life of a past race, as the sweet names of "Juniata" and "Altamaha," or the sonorous onomatopes of "Niagara," "Katahdin," and "Tuscarora" echo the ancient glories of the well-nigh extinct aborigines of America, who indeed may be brethren of the Ainos. These names abounding in the north, especially in the provinces north of the thirty-eighth parallel, are rare in the south, and in most cases have lost their exact ancient pronunciation by being for centuries spoken by Japanese tongues.
The evidences of an aboriginal race are still to be found in the relics of the Stone Age in Japan. Flint, arrow and spear heads, hammers, chisels, scrapers, kitchen refuse, and various other trophies, are frequently excavated, or may be found in the museum or in homes of private persons. Though covered with the soil for centuries, they seem as though freshly brought from an Aino hut in Yezo. In scores of striking instances, the very peculiar ideas, customs, and superstitions, of both Japanese and Aino, are the same, or but slightly modified. Amidst many variations, two distinctly marked types of features are found among the Japanese people. Among the upper classes, the fine, long, oval face, with prominent, well-chiseled features, deep-sunken eye-sockets, oblique eyes, long, drooping eyelids, elevated and arched eyebrows, high and narrow forehead, rounded nose, bud-like mouth, pointed chin, small hands and feet, contrast strikingly with the round, flattened face, less oblique eyes almost level with the face, and straight noses, expanded and upturned at the roots. The former type prevails among the higher classes—the nobility and gentry; the latter, among the agricultural and laboring classes. The one is the Aino, or northern type; the other, the southern, or Yamato type. In the accompanying cut this difference is fairly shown in the strongly contrasting types of the Japanese lady and her servant, or child's nurse. The modern Ainos are found inhabiting the islands of Yezo, Saghalin, the Kuriles, and a few of the outlying islands. They number less than twenty thousand in all.
As the Aino of today is and lives, so Japanese art and traditions depict him in the dawn of history: of low stature, thick-set, full-bearded, bushy hair of a true black, eyes set at nearly right angles with the nose, which is short and thick, and chipped at the end, muscular in frame and limbs, with big hands and feet. His language, religion, dress, and general manner of life are the same as of old. He has no alphabet, no writing, no numbers above a thousand. His rice, tobacco, and pipe, cotton garments, and worship of Yoshitsune, are of course later innovations—steps in the scale of civilization. Since the Restoration of 1868, a number of Ainos of both sexes have been living in Tokio, under instruction of the Kai Taku Shi (Department for the Colonization of Yezo). I have had frequent opportunities of studying their physical characteristics, language, and manners.
Their dwellings in Yezo are made of poles covered over with thick straw mats, with thatched roofs, the windows and doors being holes covered with the same material. The earth beaten down hard forms the floor, on which a few coarse mattings or rough boards are laid. Many of the huts are divided into two apartments, separated by a mud and wattle partition. The fire-place, with its pot-hooks, occupies the centre. There being no chimney, the interior walls become thickly varnished with creosote, densely packed with flakes of carbon, or festooned with masses of soot. They are adorned with the implements of the chase, and the skulls of animals taken in hunting. Scarcely any furniture except cooking-pots is visible. The empyreumatical odor and the stench of fish do not conspire to make the visit to an Aino hut very pleasant.
Raised benches along two walls of the hut afford a sleeping or lounging place, doubtless the original of the tokononia of the modern Japanese houses. They sit, like the Japanese, on their heels. Their food is mainly fish and sea-weed, with rice, beans, sweet-potatoes, millet, and barley, which, in Southern Yezo, they cultivate in small plots. They obtain rice, tobacco, sake, or rice-beer, an exhilarating beverage which they crave as the Indians do "fire-water," and cotton clothing from their masters, the Japanese. The women weave a coarse, strong, and durable cloth, ornamented in various colors, and ropes from the barks of trees. They make excellent dug-out canoes from elm-trees. Their dress consists of an under, and an upper garment having tight sleeves and reaching to the knees, very much like that of the Japanese. The woman's dress is longer, and the sleeves wider. They wear, also, straw leggings and straw shoes. Their hair, which is astonishingly thick, is clipped short in front, and falls in masses down the back and sides to the shoulders. It is of a true black, whereas the hair of the Japanese, when freed from unguents, is of a dark or reddish brown, and I have seen distinctly red hair among the latter. The beard and mustaches of the Ainos are allowed to attain their fullest development, the former often reaching the length of twelve or fourteen inches. Hence, Ainos take kindly to the "hairy foreigners," Englishmen and Americans, whose bearded faces the normal Japanese despise, while to a Japanese child, as I found out in Fukui, a man with mustaches appears to be only a dragon without wings or tail. Some, not all, of the older men, but very few of the younger, have their bodies and limbs covered with thick black hair, about an inch long. The term "hairy Kuriles," applied to them as a characteristic hairy race, is a mythical expression of book-makers, as the excessively hirsute covering supposed to be universal among the Ainos is not to be found by the investigator on the ground. Their skin is brown, their eyes are horizontal, and their noses low, with the lobes well rounded out. The women are of proportionate stature to the men, but, unlike them, are very ugly, I never met with a handsome Aino female, though I have seen many of the Yezo women. Their mouths seem like those of ogres, and to stretch from ear to ear. This arises from the fact that they tattoo a wide band of dirty blue, like the woad or the ancient Britons, around their lips, to the extent of three-quarters of an inch, and still longer at the tapering extremities. The tattooing is so completely done, that many persons mistake it for a daub of blue paint, like the artificial exaggeration of a circus clown's mouth. They increase their hideousness by joining their eyebrows over the nose by a fresh band of tattooing. This practice is resorted to in the case of married w^omen and females who are of age, just as that of blackening the teeth and shaving the eyebrows is among the Japanese.
They are said to be faithful wives and laborious helpmates, their moral qualities compensating for their lack of physical charms. The women assist in hunting and fishing, often possessing equal skill with the men. They carry their babies pickapack, as the Japanese mothers, except that the strap passing under the child is put round the mother's forehead. Polygamy is permitted.
Their weapons are of the rudest form. The three-pronged spear is used for the salmon. The single-bladed lance is for the bear, their most terrible enemy, which they regard with superstitious reverence. Their bows are simply peeled boughs, three feet long. The arrows are one foot shorter, and, like those used by the tribes on the coast of Siberia and in Formosa, have no feather on the shaft. Their pipes are of the same form as those so common in Japan and Chin ; and one obtained from an Aino came from Santan, a place in Amurland.
The Ainos possess dogs, which they,use in hunting, understand the use of charcoal and candles, make excellent baskets and wicker-work of many kinds; and some of their fine bark-cloth and ornamented weapons for their chiefs show a skill and taste that compare very favorably with those exhibited by the North American Indians. Their oars, having handlesj fixed crosswise, or sculls made in two pieces, are almost exactly like those of the Japanese. Their river-canoes are dug out of a log, usually elm. Two men will fashion one in five days. For the sea-coast, they use a frame of wood, lacing on the sides with bark fibre. They are skillful canoe-men, using either pole or paddle.
The language of the Aino is rude and poor, but much like the Japanese. It resembles it so closely, allowing for the fact that it is utterly unpolished and undeveloped, that it seems highly probable it is the original of the present Japanese tongue. They have no written character, no writing of any sort, no literature. A further study may possibly reveal valuable traditions held among them, which at present they are not known by me to have.
In character and morals, the Ainos are stupid, good-natured, brave, honest, faithful, peaceful, and gentle. The American and English travelers in Yezo agree in ascribing to them these qualities. Their method of salutation is to raise the hands, with the palms upward, and stroke the beard. They understand the rudiments of politeness, as several of their verbal expressions and gestures indicate.
Their religion consists in the worship of kami, or spirits. They do not appear to have any special minister of religion or sacred structure. They have festivals commemorative of certain events in the past, and they worship the spirit of Yoshitsune, a Japanese hero, who is supposed to have lived among them in the twelfth century, and who taught them some of the arts of Japanese civilization.
The outward symbols of their religion are sticks of wood two or three feet long, which they whittle all around toward the end into shavings, until the smooth wand contains a mass of pendent curls. They insert several of these in the ground at certain places, which they hold sacred. The Ainos also deify mountains, the sea, which furnishes their daily food, bears, the forests, and other natural objects, which they believe to possess intelligence. These wands with the curled shavings are set up in every place of supposed danger or evil omen. The traveler in Yezo sees them on precipices, gorges of mountains, dangerous passes, and river banks.
When descending the rapids of a river in Yezo, he will notice that his Aino boatmen from time to time will throw one of these wands into the river at every dangerous point or turning. The Ainos pray raising their hands above their heads. The Buddhist bonzes have in vain attempted to convert them to Buddhism. They have rude songs, which they chant to their kami, or gods, and to the deified sea, forest, mountains, and bears, especially at the close of the hunting and fishing season, in all affairs of great importance, and at the end of the year. The following is given as a specimen :
"To the sea which nourishes us, to the forest that protects us, we present our grateful thanks. You are two mothers that nourish the same child; do not be angi'y if we leave one to go to the other."
"The Ainos will always be the pride of the forest and the sea."
The inquirer into the origin of the Japanese must regret that as yet we know comparatively little of the Ainos and their language. Any opinion hazarded on the subject may be pronounced rash. Yet, after a study of all the obtainable facts, I believe they unmistakably point to the Ainos as the primal ancestors of the Japanese; that the mass of the Japanese people of today are substantially of Aino stock. An infusion of foreign blood, the long effects of the daily hot baths and the warm climate of Southern Japan, of Chinese civilization, of agricultural instead of the hunter's method of life, have wrought the change between the Aino and the Japanese.
It seems equally certain that almost all that the Japanese possess which is not of Chinese, Corean, or Tartar origin has descended from the Aino, or has been developed or improved from an Aino model The Ainos of Yezo hold politically the same relation to the Japanese as the North American Indians do to the white people of the United States; but ethnically they are, with probability bordering very closely on certainty, as the Saxons to the English.
