In the face of all this one reads with interest in a book by a professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge that:
“Among other atrocious libels which have fastened upon the fair name of the Chinese people, first and foremost stands the charge of female infanticide, now happily, though still slowly, fading from the calculations of those who seek the truth.”[99]
CHAPTER V
DEATH BY NEGLECT AND SACRIFICE IN JAPAN—THE NEW-BORN TABOO—MYTH OF THE EXPOSURE OF THE CHILD OF THE GODS—GROWTH OF THE MARRIAGE CUSTOM—THE ARRIVAL OF THE CHINESE—MODERN CANNIBALISM—MODERN LAWS ON THE SALE OF CHILDREN.
THE first inhabitants of Japan were a numerous people named Koropok-guru, who lived in conelike huts built over holes dug in the earth and who were exterminated by the Ainu people. The latter were in turn conquered by the race that we speak of today as the Japanese; these last settlers coming to the islands of Japan from somewhere in the north of Central Asia, while a second stream of South Asian immigrants were drifted to Japan by the Japan current.
In the Kojiki, or “Records of Ancient Matters,” dictated by Hide-no-are and completed in A. D. 711 or 712, we have a record of the mythology, manners, language, and the traditional history of Japan; this “history” purports to give the actual story of Japan from the year 660 B. C., when the first Emperor Jimmu, “having subdued and pacified the savage deities and extirpated the unsubmissive people, dwelt at the palace of Kashiwabara.” Modern Japanese scholars as well as Western scholars are inclined to say that there is really no authentic history before A. D. 461 but as a picture of the customs of early Japan, the Kojiki is still the only authentic document that we have.
Inazo Nitobe, in dividing the history of his country into periods, groups the legendary age and all that went before the political reforms of the seventh century as the first period, under the name of the “ancient period.”
These ancient people, the mythical people of the Kojiki, had passed through a genuine Bronze Age and had in general attained a high level of barbaric skill. Of their many curious customs, both in the Kojiki and in the equally important Nihongi or “Chronicles of Japan,” prominent notice is made of the “parturition house”—“one-roomed but without windows, which a woman was supposed to build and retire into for the purpose of being delivered unseen.” Here is evidence that the infant was “taboo” until it had been received by the head of the house.