neck short, a marked tendency to prognathism, the chest broad and well
developed, the trunk long, the hands small and delicate--this Malay type
is found in nearly all the islands along the east coast of the Asiatic
continent as well as in southern China and in the extreme south-west of
Korean peninsula. Carried northward by the warm current known as the
Kuro Shiwo, the Malays seem to have landed in Kiushiu--the most
southerly of the main Japanese islands--whence they ultimately pushed
northward and conquered their Manchu-Korean predecessors, the Izumo
colonists. None of the above three, however, can be regarded as the
earliest settlers in Japan. Before them all was a tribe of immigrants
who appear to have crossed from north-eastern Asia at an epoch when the
sea had not yet dug broad channels between the continent and the
adjacent islands. These people--the Ainu--are usually spoken of as the
aborigines of Japan. They once occupied the whole country, but were
gradually driven northward by the Manchu-Koreans and the Malays, until
only a mere handful of them survived in the northern island of Yezo.
Like the Malay and the Mongol types they are short and thickly built,
but unlike either they have prominent brows, bushy locks, round deep-set
eyes, long divergent lashes, straight noses and much hair on the face
and the body. In short, the Ainu suggest much closer affinity with
Europeans than does any other of the types that go to make up the
population of Japan. It is not to be supposed, however, that these
traces of different elements indicate any lack of homogeneity in the
Japanese race. Amalgamation has been completely effected in the course
of long centuries, and even the Ainu, though the small surviving remnant
of them now live apart, have left a trace upon their conquerors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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