VIII.] THE NORTHERN MONGOLS. 311 



would therefore appear that Guillemard must be right, and that, 

 as even shown by all good photographs, differences do exist, due 

 in fact to the presence of this very Malay strain in the Japanese 

 race. 



Elsewhere 1 Mr Chamberlain has given us a scholarly account 

 of the Liu-Kiu language, which is not merely a 



J The Lan- 



" sister," as he says, but obviously an elder sister, guages and 

 more archaic in structure and partly in its pho- 

 netics, than the oldest known form of Japanese. In the verb, for 

 instance, Japanese retains only one past tense of the indicative, 

 with but one grammatical form, whereas Liu-Kiuan preserves the 

 three original past tenses, each of which possesses a five-fold 

 inflection. All these racial, linguistic, and even mental resem- 

 blances, such as the fundamental similarity of many of their 

 customs and ways of thought, he would explain with much 

 probability by the routes followed by the first emigrants from the 

 mainland. While the great bulk spread east and north over the 

 great archipelago, everywhere " driving the aborigines before 

 them," a smaller stream may have trended southwards to the little 

 southern group, whose islets stretch like stepping-stones the whole 

 way from Japan to Great Liu-Kiu ". 



Amongst the common mental traits, mention is made of the 

 Shinto religion, "the simplest and most rustic form" 



of which still survives in Liu-Kiu. Here, as in 



Japan, it was originally a rude system of nature- 

 worship, the normal development of which was arrested by 

 Chinese and Buddhist influences. Later it became associated 

 with spirit-worship, the spirits being at first the souls of the dead, 

 and although there is at present no cult of the dead, in the strict 

 sense of the expression, the Liu-Kiu islanders probably pay more 

 respect to the departed than any other people in the world. 



In Japan, Shintoism, as reformed in recent times, has become 

 much more a political institution than a religious 



_, _, . . . _ Shintoism. 



system. The Kami-no-unchi, that is, the Japanese 



form of the Chinese Shin-to, "way of the Gods," or "spirits," is 



Jour. Anthrop. Soc. 1897, p. 47 sq. 

 - Ibid. p. 58. 



