VIII.] THE NORTHERN MONGOLS. 309 



of terrestrial rule in Japan to be set so far back by one or two 

 millenniums as in Babylonia or Egypt. 



After the formation of the Japanese people and the establish- 

 ment of orderly government, apparently first in 

 the smaller southern islands 1 , the Ebisu (Ainu) Abo^g^s" 

 aborigines of Hondo had still to be dealt with. It 

 is now generally admitted that the Ainu formerly dwelt in those 

 districts where shell-mounds and other remains like those of Yezo 

 are still found. And this is confirmed by tradition and history, 

 according to which the present Japanese, on arriving in Nippon, 

 "found it tenanted by Ebisu or barbarians, whom they recognise 

 as the ancestors of the modern Ainus. Year by year the aborigines 

 were driven step by step towards the north. About the year 800 

 they were struggling near Morioka, and by the year 1200 they 

 seem to have been practically exterminated from Nippon, and 

 those who remained or had taken refuge farther to the north of 

 Yezo were completely subjugated 2 ." 



Apart from some exceptionally tall and robust persons amongst 

 the upper classes, and the famous athletes, acrobats, and wrestlers, 

 the general impression that the Japanese are on the whole a 

 short race with rather weak frames is fully borne out by the now 

 regularly recorded military measurements of recruits, showing for 

 height an average of 5 ft. 4^ in., for chest 33 in., and dispro- 

 portionately short legs. Other distinctive characters, all tending 

 to stamp a certain individuality on the people, taken as a whole 

 and irrespective of local peculiarities, are a flat forehead, great 

 distance between the eyebrows, a very small nose with raised 

 nostrils, no glabella, no perceptible nasal root ;5 ; an active, wiry 

 figure ; the exposed skin less yellow than the Chinese, and rather 

 inclining to a light fawn, but the covered parts very light, some 



1 So Prof. Basil Hall Chamberlain; who thinks "the common ancestors of 

 the present Japanese and Luchuan [Liu-kiuan] nations entered Japan from the 

 South-west, crossing the Korean Channel with the island of Tsushima as a 

 stepping-stone, and landing in Kyushu, the southernmost great island of Japan. 

 This is rendered probable, alike by geography, by the trend of legend, and by 

 the grammatical affinities connecting Japanese and Luchuan with Korean and 

 Mongol" (Geogr. Jonrii. 1895, p. 316). 



- Prof. J. Milne, quoted in Asia, Vol. I. p. 474. 



' G. Baudens, But. Soc. Geogr. x. p. 419. 



