A History of the Japanese People. Kikuchi Dairoku
and southern Europe."
The marked differences in height, noted above, do not invalidate this dictum: they show merely that the Asiatic yellow race has several subdivisions. Among these subdivisions the more important are the Manchu-Korean type, the Mongol proper, the Malay, and the Ainu. To the first, namely the Manchu-Korean, which predominates in north China and in Korea, Baelz assigns the higher classes in Japan; that is to say, the men regarded as descendants of the Yamato. They have "slender, elegant and often tall figures, elongated faces with not very prominent cheek-bones, more or less slanting eyes, aquiline noses, large upper teeth, receding chins, long slender necks, narrow chests, long trunks, thin limbs, and often long fingers, while the hair on the face and body is scarce." Dr. Munro, however, another eminent authority, holds that, "judging from the Caucasian and often Semitic physiognomy seen in the aristocratic type of Japanese, the Yamato were mainly of Caucasic, perhaps Iranian, origin. These were the warriors, the conquerors of Japan, and afterwards the aristocracy, modified to some extent by mingling with a Mongoloid rank and file, and by a considerable addition of Ainu." He remarks that a white skin was the ideal of the Yamato, as is proved by their ancient poetry.
As for the Mongol-proper type, which is seen in the lower classes and even then not very frequently, its representative is squarely built, and has prominent cheek-bones, oblique eyes, a more or less flat nose with a large mouth. The Malay type is much commoner. Its characteristics are small stature, good and sometimes square build, a face round or angular, prominent cheek-bones, large horizontal eyes, a weak chin, a short neck, broad well-developed chest, short legs, and small delicate hands. As for the Ainu type, Dr. Baelz finds it astonishing that they have left so little trace in the Japanese nation. "Yet those who have studied the pure Ainu closely will observe, particularly in the northern provinces, a not insignificant number of individuals bearing the marks of Ainu blood. The most important marks are: a short, thickly set body; prominent bones with bushy hair, round deep-set eyes with long divergent lashes, a straight nose, and a large quantity of hair on the face and body all qualities which bring the Ainu much nearer to the European than to the Japanese proper."
GENERAL PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
In addition to physical characteristics which indicate distinctions of race among the inhabitants of Japan, there are peculiarities common to a majority of the nation at large. One of these is an abnormally large head. In the typical European the height of the head is less than one-seventh of the stature and in Englishmen it is often one-eighth. In the Japanese is it appreciably more than one-seventh. Something of this may be attributed to smallness of stature, but such an explanation is only partial.
Shortness of legs in relation to the trunk is another marked feature. "Long or short legs are mainly racial in origin. Thus, in Europe, the northern, or Teutonic race—namely Anglo-Saxons, North Germans, Swedes, and Danes—are tail; long-legged, and small-headed, while the Alpine, or central European race are short of stature, have short legs and large heads with short necks, thus resembling the Mongolian race in general, with which it was probably originally connected." [Baelz.]
In the Japanese face, too, there are some striking points. The first is in the osseous cavity of the eyeball and in the skin round the eye. "The socket of the Japanese eye is comparatively small and shallow, and the osseous ridges at the brows being little marked, the eye is less deeply set than in the European. Seen in profile, forehead and upper lid often form one unbroken line." Then "the shape of the eye proper, as modelled by the lids, shows a most striking difference between the European and the Mongolian races; the open eye being almost invariably horizontal in the former but very often oblique in the latter on account of the higher level of the outer corner. But even apart from obliqueness the shape of the corner is peculiar in the Mongolian eye. The inner corner is partly or entirely covered by a fold of the upper lid continuing more or less into the lower lid. This fold, which has been called the Mongolian fold, often also covers the whole free rim of the upper lid, so that the insertion of the eyelashes is hidden. When the fold takes an upward direction towards the outer corner, the latter is a good deal higher than the inner corner, and the result is the obliqueness mentioned above. The eyelashes are shorter and sparser than in the European, and whereas in the European the lashes of the upper and the lower lid diverge, so that their free ends are farther distant than their roots, in the Japanese eye they converge, the free ends being nearer together than the insertions. Then again in the lower class the cheek-bones are large and prominent, making the face look flat and broad, while in the higher classes narrow and elongated faces are quite common. Finally, the Japanese is less hairy than the European, and the hair of the beard is usually straight." [Baelz.]
VIEWS OF JAPANESE ETHNOLOGISTS
It may well be supposed that the problem of their nation's origin has occupied much attention among the Japanese, and that their ethnologists have arrived at more or less definite conclusions. The outlines of their ideas are that one of the great waves of emigration which, in a remote age, emerged from the cradle of the human race in central Asia, made its way eastward with a constantly expanding front, and, sweeping up the Tarim basin, emerged in the region of the Yellow River and in Manchuria. These wanderers, being an agricultural, not a maritime, race, did not contribute much to the peopling of the oversea islands of Japan. But in a later—or an earlier—era, another exodus took place from the interior of Asia. It turned in a southerly direction through India, and coasting along the southern seaboard, reached the southeastern region of China; whence, using as stepping-stones the chain of islands that festoon eastern Asia, it made its way ultimately to Korea and Japan.
Anterior to both of these movements another race, the neolithic Yemishi of the shell-heaps, had pushed down from the northeastern regions of Korea or from the Amur valley, and peopled the northern half of Japan. The Korean peninsula, known in Chinese records as Han, appears in the form of three kingdoms at the earliest date of its historical mention: they were Sin-Han and Pyon-Han on the east and Ma-Han on the West. The northeastern portion, from the present Won-san to Vladivostok, bore the name of Yoso, which is supposed to have been the original of Yezo, the Yoso region thus constituting the cradle of the Yemishi race.
Japanese ethnologists interpret the ancient annals as pointing to very close intercourse between Japan and Korea in early days,* and regard this as confirming the theory stated above as to the provenance of the Yamato race. Connexion with the colonists of northern China was soon established via Manchuria, and this fact may account for some of the similarities between the civilization as well as the legends of the Yamato and those of Europe, since there is evidence that the Greeks and Romans had some hazy knowledge of China, and that the Chinese had a similarly vague knowledge of the Roman Empire,** possibly through commercial relations in the second century B.C.
*The annals state of Princes Mikeno and Inahi, elder brothers of Prince Iware (afterwards Jimmu Tenno). that the former "crossed over to the Eternal Land" (Tokoyo-no-kuni) and the latter went down to the sea plain, it being his deceased mother's land. Japanese archaeologists identify "mother's land" as Shiragi in Korea, and Tokoyo-no-kuni as the western country where the sun sets, namely China. They further point out that Susanoo with his son, Itakeru, went to Shiragi and lived at Soshi-mori, for which reason Susanoo's posthumous title was Gozu Tenno, gozu being the Japanese equivalent for the Korean soshi-mori (ox head). Susanoo is also quoted as saying, "there are gold and silver in Koma and it were well that there should be a floating treasury;"* so he built a vessel of pine and camphor-wood to export these treasures to Japan. The "Korea" here spoken of is the present Kimhai in Kyongsan-do. It is further recorded that Susanoo lived for a time at Kumanari-mine, which is the present Kongju. Again, a Japanese book, compiled in the tenth century A.D., enumerates six shrines in the province of Izumo which were called Kara-kuni Itate Jinja, or shrine of Itakeru of Korea. A much abler work, Izuma Fudoki, speaks of Cape Kitsuki in Izumo as a place where cotton-stuffs were imported from Shiragi by Omitsu, son of Susanoo. There are other evidences to the same effect, and taken in conjunction with the remarkable similarity of the Korean and Japanese languages, these facts are held to warrant the conclusion that the most important element of the Japanese nation came via Korea, its Far Eastern colony being the ultima thule of its long wanderings from central Asia.
**See Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Vol. 6, p. 189 b.
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