308 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



express 47 syllables (the so-called I-ro-fa syllabary), raised to 73 

 b> the nigori and maru diacritical marks. 



Passing to Japan, we find that to Chinese influence is also 



due the present national name Nippon, which was 



Japanese adopted about the 7th century A.D., and is etymo- 



logically the same word as Japan \ After the first 



settlement by neolithic Caucasians, now represented by the "hairy 



Ainu " of Yezo, the archipelago was occupied at long intervals 



both by Continental Mongols from Korea, and by 



Origins . . 



Constituent Oceanic Mongols and Indonesians from Malaysia. 

 From the fact that the Japanese language shows 

 radical affinities with Korean, but none with Malayo-Polynesian, 

 it may perhaps be inferred that the Korean element arrived first, 

 and also outnumbered the later Malayan intruders sufficiently to 

 impose their Mongol speech on them, and gradually merge with 

 them in the present composite Japanese nationality. This ethnical 

 fusion must have taken place long before the establishment of po- 

 litical unity, which is, comparatively speaking, quite a recent event. 

 Even for the legendary Jimmu Tenno, reputed founder of the 

 empire, no greater antiquity is claimed than 660 B.C. No doubt 

 he is represented as being fifth in descent from Amaterasu, the 

 Sun-Goddess, and the great divinity of the Shinto religion' 2 . But 

 even were his predecessors endowed with the longevity of the 

 antediluvian patriarchs, they would not require the beginnings 



1 Both forms come from the Chinese Nit-pon, the " Rising Sun" (Nit, sun, 

 pon, origin), from which the Chinese made first Ni-pen, then through Mongol 

 influence Ji-pen, whence Marco Polo's Zipangu, and the European variants 

 (Giappone, Japon, Japan, etc.). But in Japan, by assimilation of /, Nit-pon 

 became Nippon (Nip-hon, Nif-hon], the name, not merely of the large island 

 of Hondo, as shown on some maps, but of the whole archipelago. Thus Chin. 

 Ji-pen = Jap. Nippon = Japan. There is also a fanciful national name, Akizu- 

 no-Sima, " Mermaid Isle." 



2 "The reigning House of Japan descends from the Sun-Goddess Amate- 

 rasu" (J. J. Rein, Japan nach Reisen it. Studien, 1881, p. 245). The veracious 

 native chroniclers made out that the present Mikado is the i2ist in direct 

 descent from Jimmu Tenno. In any case the contrast is striking between the 

 impassive Chinese with their 28 or 30 dynasties, and the mercurial Japanese, 

 who have been contented to live under a single dynasty since the appearance of 

 the "Sun-Goddess" on earth. 



