But the Japanese had, so far as can be ascertained, little advantage from cross-breeding. Probably they were originally a Tartar race. The primitive inhabitants of the islands were ancestors of the Hairy Ainus, who still survive in small numbers. Like the aboriginals of Australia, the Ainus were a primitive rather than a degraded type, closely allied to the ancestors of the European races. Probably the Tartar invaders who colonised Japan came by way of Corea. But after their advent there was no new element introduced to give the human race in Japan a fresh stimulus; and that original Tartar stock, though vigorous and warlike, has never proved elsewhere any great capacity for organisation. In the sixth century of the Christian Era, Chinese civilisation and the Buddhistic religion came to the Japanese, who at the time had about the same standard of culture as the Red Indians of the American continent when the _Mayflower_ sailed. For some four centuries the Japanese island race was tributary to China, and during that time there was evolved a national religion, Shintoism, which probably represented the old Tartar faith modified by Chinese philosophy. In the eighth and subsequent centuries, Japan in its national organisation very closely resembled feudal Europe. As in Europe, there was a service tenure for the land; a system by which organised groups, or KO's, became answerable collectively for the deeds of each member of the group; and, as in feudal Europe, Church and State made rival claims to supreme power. Indiscriminate fighting between rival feudal lords, a constant strife between the Shoguns, representing the priestly power, and the Mikados, representing the civil power, make up the islands' history for century after century. Through it all there is no gleam of light on the evolution of the latent powers which were to come to maturity, as in an hour, during the nineteenth century. Japan appeared to be an average example of a semi-civilised country which would never evolve to a much higher state because of the undisciplined quarrelsomeness of its people. In the sixteenth century Europe first made the acquaintance of Japan. Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, British traders and explorers visited the country. St Francis Xavier established missions there and baptized many in the Christian faith. After two centuries of general toleration, with intervals of welcome and yet other intervals of resolute massacre, in 1741 the last of the Europeans were ordered out of the islands, the Japanese having decided that they wanted neither the religion, the trade, nor the friendship of the White Man. The same prohibitions were applied at the same time to Chinese traders. A resolute policy of exclusiveness was adopted.