This description is not accepted without some reserve by Chamberlain, who in fact holds that "the physical type of the Luchuans resembles that of the Japanese almost to identity[664]." In explanation however of the singularly mild, inoffensive, and "even timid disposition" of the Liu-Kiuans, this observer suggests "the probable absence of any admixture of Malay blood in the race[665]." But everybody admits a Malay element in Japan. It would therefore appear that Guillemard must be right, and that, as even shown by all good photographs, differences do exist, due in fact to the presence of this very Malay strain in the Japanese race. Elsewhere[666] Chamberlain has given us a scholarly account of the Liu-Kiu language, which is not merely a "sister," as he says, but obviously an _elder_ sister, more archaic in structure and partly in its phonetics, than the oldest known form of Japanese. In the verb, for instance, Japanese retains only one past tense of the indicative, with but one grammatical form, whereas Liu-Kiuan preserves the three original past tenses, each of which possesses a five-fold inflection. All these racial, linguistic, and even mental resemblances, such as the fundamental similarity of many of their customs and ways of thought, he would explain with much probability by the routes followed by the first emigrants from the mainland. While the great bulk spread east and north over the great archipelago, everywhere "driving the aborigines before them," a smaller stream may have trended southward to the little southern group, whose islets stretch like stepping-stones the whole way from Japan to Great Liu-Kiu[667]. Amongst the common mental traits, mention is made of the Shinto religion, "the simplest and most rustic form" of which still survives in Liu-Kiu. Here, as in Japan, it was originally a rude system of nature-worship, the normal development of which was arrested by Chinese and Buddhist influences. Later it became associated with spirit-worship, the spirits being at first the souls of the dead, and although there is at present no cult of the dead, in the strict sense of the expression, the Liu-Kiu islanders probably pay more respect to the departed than any other people in the world. In Japan, Shintoism, as reformed in recent times, has become much more a political institution than a religious system. The _Kami-no-michi_, that is, the Japanese form of the Chinese _Shin-to_, "way of the Gods," or "spirits," is not merely the national faith, but is inseparably bound up with the interests of the reigning dynasty, holding the Mikado to be the direct descendant of the Sun-goddess Hence its three cardinal precepts now are:--1. Honour the _Kami_ (spirits), of whom the emperor is the chief representative on earth; 2. Revere him as thy sovereign; 3. Obey the will of his Court, and that is the whole duty of man. There is no moral code, and loyal expositors have declared that the Mikado's will is the only test of right and wrong.