PREHISTORIC JAPAN—BAELZ. 595 
the land. They landed on the island of Kiushiu and on the southerly 
part of the west coast of the principal island, founding a kingdom 
in Idzumo, the oldest of which any Japanese sources speak. The 
accounts of this kingdom are mythical, or legendary. Gods, monsters, 
and miracles play a great part in them, but without doubt there is 
some historical truth at the bottom. Another early migration of 
well organized but less civilized people must have been directed to 
the central part of Japan in the region around Kioto and Nara, which 
was afterwards the true center of the Japanese Empire for two 
thousand years. 
Probably later than these immigrants came other tribes, either by 
way of Korea or along the chain of islands made up by Formosa and 
the Liukiu Archipelago, which joins South China and Japan. The 
latter route, to be sure, is longer, but it is made comparatively easy 
by the “ Kuroshiwo” or the “black current” which flows in this 
direction, and by the periodic southwest monsoon of the summer 
which drives vessels northward, and the northeast monsoon of the 
winter which enables them to return easily. Whence the wanderers 
came who traveled by this route—if they did come this way—we do 
not know. Whether it was from Formosa, or, what is far more 
likely, from Shantung, or parts of central or southerly China, is an 
unanswered question. We do know, however, that it is in the south- 
west part of Japan, where the Kuroshiwo skirts the land, that the 
so-called Malayan type is most prevalent. 
These immigrations, particularly the last one, in all probability 
occurred in the first thousand years before Christ. That they came 
from the mainland of Asia is further indicated by the otherwise un- 
explained appearance at that time in southwest Japan of an iron-age 
culture too high for Malays of that period. Furthermore, the Japa- 
nese language is related to the Turkish, Hungarian, and Finnish; that 
is to say, to languages spoken by people who had settled in central 
and eastern Asia. The Turks or, let us say, the peoples of the Turk 
race, in earlier times made themselves felt more in the east than in 
the west. Once they invaded Korea with a great army, an attack 
in which their whole army was annihilated. China also suffered 
much from their inroads. In the eighth and ninth centuries A. D: 
they held control of a mighty kingdom in Turkestan. When these 
facts are considered, the great distance between the present-day 
Turkey and Japan makes this relationship of speech less strange. 
Even before immigration began by way of Korea or from the south, 
Japan was inhabited by people belonging to an entirely different race, 
the Ainos, little of whose blood remains in the veins of the Japanese 
at the present day. Once, as the names of mountains, rivers, and 
other localities bear witness and archeological finds indicate, they 
inhabited the whole of the Japanese islands. During the period 
