As our stock of reliable, authentic information concerning our origins is so scanty, it is at the disposal of any one to manufacture whatever hypothesis he chooses, however wild a speculation it be, and sustain it as long as he likes against any antagonist, not by proving it positively and convincingly, but by pointing out the impossibility of the opposing hypothesis, so that the present state of archaeological research in Japan may be summed up as an intellectual skirmish carried on by regular as well as by irregular militant scholars. Therefore, in spite of the fact that Japan now abounds in ethnologists, big and small, each fashioning some new hypothesis every day, there can be perceived only a very slow progress in the solution of the fundamental question, "Who are the Japanese?" We are almost at a loss to decide to which assertion we can most agreeably give our countenance with the least risk of receiving an immediate setback. So I shall be content to state here only those hypotheses, which may be considered comparatively safe, although they may not rise far above the level of conjecture. The only thing virtually agreed to by all investigators engaged in ethnological inquiry concerning Japan, is that the Ainu is the aboriginal race, and that the Japanese so called belongs to a stock different from the Ainu. Once for a time there prevailed a hypothesis that there was a people settled in this country previous to the coming of the Ainu, who must be therefore an immigrant race. It is said that the Ainu called this people by the name of Koropokkuru. But very little indeed is known about these supposed autochthons, except that they were very small in stature, and that this pigmy race receded and vanished before the advancing Ainu. The theory had its foundation only in some Ainu legends, and was not supported by any archaeological remains, which could be attributed, not to the Ainu, but to a special pigmy race only. Much reliance, therefore, could not be placed upon this hypothesis, or rather vague suggestion, and it was speedily dropped. Still it is not yet decided whether the Ainu is the real autochthon in Japan or an immigrant from some quarter outside the Empire. Most of the Ainologists are rather inclined to the opinion that the Ainu himself is also an immigrant, though no other race prior to him had settled in Japan. But then there arises among scholars another disagreement, that about the original home of the race. Some hold the opinion that the Ainu came over to the Japanese islands from the north or the northwest, that is, from some coastal region of the Asiatic continent on the other side of the Sea of Japan. And there are not a few, too, who not only trace the origin of the race into the heart of Asia, but even go so far as to say that the Ainu came from the same cradle as the Caucasian race. Some go still further and localise the origin of the race more minutely, identifying the race as a branch of the protonordic race, akin to the