The Japanese cannot claim purity of descent. Their complexion and frequent crisp or wavy hair indicate that their Asian origin has been modified by other blood. They were not the earliest inhabitants of the archipelago they occupy, but moved into it probably about a thousand years before the Christian era.[143] The immigrants seem from some linguistic evidence to have come from Manchuria or Mongolia, and to have found upon the islands a different people, the Ainos (properly Ainu) remarkable for their heavy beards and hairy persons. These have now been driven to the northernmost portion of the archipelago, where about 1200 of them still reside. It was long thought that the languages of the Ainos and Japanese have some affinities, but except in loan words and a general phonetic resemblance, this has now been disproved. The Ainos seem physically related to the Ghiliaks, and came from the north and west. They are supposed to have been the first occupants of the Kurile islands.
Like other mixed peoples, the Japanese vary so much in height, form of skull, hue and bodily proportion, that it is impracticable to set up any fixed type for them, further than to say that their general Asiatic aspect is usually unmistakable to the trained eye.[144] In mental qualities they are gifted, being intelligent, artistic, brave, kind, and honorable, fully alive to the benefits of a high civilization, and able to accept with profit all that the western world has to offer.[145] They are monogamists, and the position of woman has always been respected among them. The prevailing religion is the Shintoism or worship of the powers of nature, but Buddhism, introduced in the 7th century, has also many votaries. At heart, however, they are an irreligious people, like the Chinese, and are unconcerned about the ideal and the mystical. Many of their arts, like that of writing, were at first learned from the Chinese; but they have improved upon them, and given them other directions, as in the development of their phonetic from the Chinese syllabic alphabet.
Japanese art has attracted in recent years the admiration of the European world, and many motives in it have been accepted by our lovers of decorative effects. It is indeed wonderful in its technical finish, and its theory of composition has novelties which are worthy of imitation, but it is devoid of that something which we call the ideal; and its canon of proportion of the human body has never been developed to approach the classical models.
There is an extensive literature in the Japanese tongue. Most of it deals with practical subjects, and even the poetry is usually didactic in spirit.
The Koreans seem originally to have come from the same stock as the ancestors of the Japanese. They are of more positive Asiatic type, and are a mixed people, the ruling class (the Kaoli) having conquered the peninsula in the second century before our era. They closely resemble the Loochoo islanders, and doubtless are consanguine with them. Their industries are similar to those of Japan, which country, indeed, obtained many of its arts from China by way of the Korean peninsula.
LECTURE VIII.
INSULAR AND LITTORAL PEOPLES.
Contents.—Variability of islanders and coast peoples. Physical geography of Oceanica. Ethnographic divisions.
I. The Negritic Stock. Subdivisions. 1. The Negritic Group. Members. Former extension. Physical aspect. Culture. 2. The Papuan Group. Location. Physical traits. Culture and language. 3. The Melanesian Group. Physical traits. Habits. Languages. Ethnic affinities of Papuas and Melanesians.
II. The Malayic Stock. Location. Subdivisions. Affinities with the Asian Race and original home. 1. The Western or Malayan Group. Physical traits. Character. Extension. Culture. Presence in Hindostan. 2. The Eastern or Polynesian Group. Physical traits. Migrations. Character and culture. Easter Island.
III. The Australic Stock. Affinities between the Australians and Dravidians. 1. The Australian Group. Tasmanians and Australians. Physical traits. Culture. 2. The Dravidian Group. Early extension. Members. Culture. Languages.
Before proceeding to the ethnography of the American continent, I would have you take a rapid survey of the inhabitants of that extensive archipelago whose islands are thickly dotted in the Indian and Pacific oceans, and ascertain as far as may be the relationship in which they stand to the population of the adjacent coasts.