THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF EARLY JAPAN ' 



By Carl. Whiting Bishop 

 Smitlisonian Iiistiiutiur„ 



[With 9 plates] 



It is matter for congratulation, in view of the steadily growing 

 interest in the question, that the accumulation of evidence from 

 various sources begins at length to throw some definite light on the 

 origin of the Japanese people. Much confusion has existed on this 

 subject hitherto, owing mainly to tlie fact that the work of investi- 

 gators along different lines had been insufficiently collated and cor- 

 related, while at the same time the methods of interpretation were 

 not altogether free from fault. A solution of the j^roblem is not 

 to be attained by a study of conditions and events in the Japanese 

 islands alone. The same causes which have brouglit about the 

 various contacts, friendly or hostile, between Japan on the one 

 hand and eastern Siberia, Korea, Shantung, and the southeastern 

 Chinese littoral on the other, during the past three decades, have 

 been at Avork without intermission ever since the first settlement of 

 man in this portion of the globe. The developments, political, so- 

 cial, economic, whose course we have followed with such close atten- 

 tion during the past fcAV years are but the latest phase of a process 

 whose beginnings are lost in the darkness of prehistoric time. It is 

 thither that Ave must trace them if we Avould arrive at anything like 

 a right comprehension of the foundation upon which rests the na- 

 tional life of Japan. 



FIRST CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS OF THE JAPANESE PEOPLE 



Derived Avithout exception fronl Chinese sources- are our first 

 contemporary accounts of the Jai)anese people, 2,000 years ago. 

 The region at that time occupied by their various tribes embraced 

 not Avhat Ave think of as the Japanese islands, but only their Avestern- 

 most portions, together apparently Avith the southern end of the 



1 Rf-ad at the joint meeting of the Association of American Geographers and the 

 American Geographical Society, April, 1922. Reprinted by permission from the Geo- 

 graphical Review, vol. XIII, no. 1, January,, 1023. 



= See for an account of these, James Murdoch : A History of Japan, Yokohama, 1010, 

 vol. 1, pp. .'}! ct scf]. For accounts of wliat tlio ("jiinese writers have to siiy regarding 

 Ihe ea;ly Japanese, see E. H. Parker: Ma.Twan-Lin's Account of Japan up to A. D. 1200^ 

 Trans.. Asiatic Soc. of Japan, vol. 22, 1894, pp. 35-68; also, Albert Tschepe : Japans 

 Beziehungen zu China scit den iiltesten Zeiten bis zum Jahrc 1600, Yenchow-fu, 1907. 



547 



