Together with the climate, the race stands forth as an indispensable factor in the promotion of its civilisation. Then to what race do the Japanese belong? Can all the people of Japan be homogeneously comprised under a single racial appellation, or must they be treated as an agglomeration of several different races? Are the Japanese, or the bulk at least of the Japanese, indigenous or immigrant? If the Japanese are an immigrant race, then whence did they originate, and what is the probable date of their immigration into this country? What race, if not the Japanese, are the aborigines of these islands? Questions of this kind, and others of a similar nature have stood waiting for solution these many years! But none of them has yet been completely answered, though attempts have been made not only by a large number of native investigators, professional as well as amateur, but also by not a few foreign philologists and archaeologists, who were tolerably well-versed in things Japanese. Recently many interesting excavations of ancient tombs and historical sites have been made, and various remains pertaining to the old inhabitants of the islands have been submitted to the speculative scrutiny of specialists. They have served, however, rather to lead one to deeper, more obstinate, scepticism, than to shed light on those doubtful and tentative answers and indecisive controversies. It is very much to be regretted that we have no authentic record of the early immigration into Japan from the pen of a contemporaneous writer, so that we could thereby verify the interpretations assigned to the remains found in the ancient tombs. This is to be attributed to the lack of the use of written characters among the aboriginal people, as well as to the illiteracy of the early immigrants. If we had as remains of prehistoric Japan such valuable historic materials as have been excavated in Europe and Western Asia, we should have been able to deduce the history of its early ages with a tolerable degree of certainty from the remains themselves, independently of any documental evidence. Unfortunately, however, in this respect also, our prehistoric remains consist only of a few kinds of earthenware, mostly with very simple patterns on them, and some other kinds of primitive utensils of daily use, such as saddles, bridles, sword-blades, and the like. Huge tombstones are sometimes found, but they have no such inscriptions as we see on many Greek sarcophagi, being provided only with a few unintelligible, perhaps meaningless, scratches. As to the primitive Japanese ornaments, very few historical data can be gathered from them, for they are generally beads of very simple design, and of three or four different shapes. It is quite hopeless to think that we should ever be able to dig out a single dwelling, not to speak of a whole palace, village, or town, on any Japanese historical site, since no stone, brick or other durable material was ever used in the construction of buildings.