EAELY JAPAN — BISHOP 567 



FINAL CONQUEST OF THE AINU 



Finally by the close of the tenth century the subjugation of the 

 Ainu of the main island could be regarded as accomplished. But it 

 was long before they were completely assimilated. They rose again 

 and again, even as late as 1332, while a few villages of them were still 

 to be found about the shores of Aomori Bay so recently as the eigh- 

 teenth century. 



That portion of the race living in Yezo, Sakhalin, and the Kuriles 

 retained its independence for some time longer. The last serious 

 effort of the Yezo Ainu to expel the Japanese occurred in the latter 

 part of the seventeenth centurj^, when with their primitive weapons 

 they made a brave but hopeless fight against their foes clad in iron 

 armor and equipped with matchlock guns and keen steel swords. 



As a distinct people the Ainu have almost wholl}^ disappeared, with 

 the exception of the few thousands still living in the island of Yezo. 

 Nevertheless they form a very large element in the racial composi- 

 tion of the Japanese nation to this day.''® 



As usual in cases where crossing has occurred between Mongoloid 

 and other races, the external physical characteristics of the former 

 have tended to be dominant, although apparently the same does not 

 hold to quite the same extent regarding skeletal traits. Traces of 

 Ainu mixture are visible throughout the country, from the Loochoos 

 and Satsimia in the far south to Yezo on the north, while in isolated 

 regions like the mountain fastnesses of Kozuke, Shinano, and 

 Echigo Provinces in the center of the main island, there still occur 

 surprising numbers of pure Ainu types. Particularly strong was 

 this strain among the former Samurai, or knightly class, in large 

 part descended from the Ainu incorporated in the Japanese armies 

 of the eighth and ninth centuries.^^ To this inheritance it was that 

 the haughty two-sworded man of later times owed his less Mongo- 

 loid features, ruddier complexion, and heavier beard, to say nothing 

 of his splendid fighting qualities. 



It would be difficult to exaggerate the influence which the Ainu 

 have exerted over the historical development of the Japanese Em- 

 pire. For to the long centuries of warfare which their subjugation 

 entailed were due the rise of that hereditary warrior class and that 

 system of military government, without which Japan would almost 



»s On the large Ainu part in the modern Japanese racial complex, see KanichI Asakawa : 

 The Origin of the Feudal Land Tenure in Japan, Amer. Hist. Rev., vol. 20, 1914-15, pp. 

 1-23; reference on p. 17; Matsumoto, op. cit., pp. 73, 75 et seq. ; David MacRitchie : The 

 Ainos, Internationales Archiv fiir Ethnographie, vol. 4, Supplement, 1892, passim ; 

 Romyn Hitchcock, op. cit., p. 450. 



N. G. Munro (Prehistoric Japan, p. 634) says the religion of the Yamato was much 

 more deeply influenced by the Ainu than is generally supposed. 



^Asakawa, Origin of Feudal Land Tenure, p. 17; Matsumoto, op. cit., pp. 75 et seq. 



