TRACES OF AJSr EARLY RACE IJV JAPAN: 259 



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So far as the ancient records of Japan are to be relied upon (and 

 they certainly go back before the Christian era with considerable ac- 

 curacy), Jimmu Tenno in the first century of our era came from a prov- 

 ince in Kinshin for the conquest of Niphon or Japan. The invaders 

 met with so courageous a resistance that they were obliged to go back 

 to their own shores. The people who repulsed Jimmu Tenno and his 

 followers are believed by the Japanese to have been the hairy men of 

 Yesso, the ancestors of the present inhabitants of the northern islands. 



The study of the language, traditions, and folk-lore of the Ainos, 

 furnishes good reasons for believing that the ancestors of the Ainos 

 came from Kamtchatka, drifting down through the Kuriles, and gradu- 

 ally becoming proprietors of the soil before the Japanese came from 

 the south to displace them. 



Fig. 9— the rims of this vessel are quite common in the heaps, but only one, the fragments 

 of which could be matched, was fouud. Its height was about 300 mm. 



With every reason for believing that the Japanese came from the 

 south, displacing the Ainos, who came from the north, the question 

 next arises as to the original occupants of the island. Did the north- 

 ern people encounter resistance from a primitive race of savages, or 

 were they greeted only by the chattering of relatives still more remote, 

 whose descendants yet clamber about the forest-trees to-day ? The rec- 

 ords are silent on these points. A discovery that I made in the vicinity 

 of Tokio last year leads me to believe that possibly the traces of a race 

 of men previous to the Aino occupation have been found. I say possi- 

 bly, because a study of the Aino people, their manners, and traces of 

 their early remains, is necessary before a definite opinion can be formed. 



On my first visit to Tokio I discovered from the car-window a gen- 

 uine " Kjoekkenmoedding," or shell-heap, as we call them. The de- 

 posit is in Omori, about six miles from Tokio ; and one may well won- 

 der why it had not been recognized before. It had probably often 



