EARLY JAPAN BISHOP 553 



of a crocodile or an alligator." The religion was one of nature 

 worship, with a strongly anthropomorphic trend and a highly in- 

 teresting body of folklore. Possibly as a result of the matrilineal 

 organization of society, the principle of reproduction and growth 

 received special veneration, and goddesses were particularly in evi- 

 dence. Ancestor worship, where found at all in this area, appears 

 onlj'^ late and then as a consequence of the introduction, among the 

 higher classes, of a patriarchal type of family in imitation of the 

 Chinese. Practically all these culture elements are traceable in 

 Japan, some of them surviving to this day, while others have dis- 

 appeared only in comparatively recent times. 



From the end of the promontory of Shangtung to the correspond- 

 ing projection on the opposite coast of Korea it is only a trifle over 

 a hundred miles — a stretch of sea easily negotiable by such in- 

 veterate sea rovers as were the Neolithic coast peoples of eastern 

 and southeastern Asia. The strait between Korea and Japan is al- 

 most exactly the same distance across; and here there are islands 

 where early voyagers could conveniently break their journey. It 

 seems likely for a number of reasons that the colonization of Japan 

 by the Mongoloid peoples of the neighboring continent took place 

 largely by way of Korea. Probably, however, even within the 

 Neolithic period a good deal of migration went on also directly 

 across the Yellow Sea. The distance here is something under 500 

 miles, with the lofty island peak of Quelpart, already mentioned, 

 forming a natural stepping-stone. 



This migration of peoples into Japan, to be properly understood, 

 must be viewed as a phase of that great ethnic movement which 

 brought about the colonization by the so-called yellow-brown races 

 of so much of the enormous area extending from Japan on the 

 east to Madagascar on the west. When this process began, we are 

 as yet unable to say; but it seems not unlikely that one of the con- 

 tributing factors was the pressure generated by the slow expansion 

 coastward of the Chinese in the second and first milleniums before 

 Christ. The disturbances set up, for example, by the Chou conquest 

 of the Yellow River Basin, about the eleventh century before our 

 era, were felt far and wide and must have led to much shifting of 



^'A crocodile {Crocodilus porosiis, or " Estuarine crocodile") seems to liave been 

 found anciently all along the southeastern Chinese coast at least as far north as the 

 Yangtze delta, although now practically exterminated ; cf. Arthur Stanley : The Collec- 

 tion of Chinese Reptiles in the Shanghai Museum, Journ. North-China Branch of the 

 Royal Asiatic Soc, vol. 45, 1914, pp. 21-31, reference on p. 23. 



A true alligator (Alligator s-ineiisis) , smaller than the American forms and rarely 

 exceeding G or 7 feet in length, still occurs in the Yangtze, although it is hy no means 

 common; cf. A. A. Fauvel : Alligators in China, ibid., vol. 13 (N. S.), 187S, pp. 1-36 f. 



