128 
Japan and the Japanese, 
relatives, visitors, and acquaintances. It is followed most 
assiduously as a source of pleasure and pastime. 
There is, however, an exception to be made, as it regards 
the Ainos, or aborigines of Japan. They are, without 
doubt, the savages of the country, and, as such, practise 
savage customs, live savage, barren, comfortless lives, and 
are destitute of nearly all the arts and learning of their 
Japanese masters, who generally treat the Ainos kindly, 
although the latter go in awe of them. These Ainos have 
no history like the Japanese proper ; they assert that they 
descended from a dog ; they know absolutely nothing, 
except how to hunt, fish, and make the rudest shelters ; 
they cannot count more than a thousand, and they have no 
knowledge of reading, while their clothing is made of the 
bark of trees, or the undressed skins of animals. Beyond 
making bark-cloth and weaving mats, they practise no arts, 
and their religion, or idolatry, consists principally in getting 
drunk with the national beverage, sakl. Tattooing is prac- 
tised among them, both as a source of ornament and as 
a national custom, while some Ainos assert further that it 
is a part of their religion. 
In the religion of these Ainos, it is an understood thing 
that each house has its own gods. These gods are generally 
white wands, or small rods, with shavings hanging to them^ 
and are suspended from nails in the walls. Other gods are 
white posts, two or three feet high, also with shavings, fixed 
in the ground at one end of the house. They have also 
shrines to these idols, on the hills, but no temples. These 
gods are set up anywhere — on precipices, banks of rivers, 
mountain passes, and hills. In offering sacrifices of sake^ to 
these idols, the Aino really worships the sun, or fire, or 
some other natural object, and believes that the more sakh 
he consumes, the more pleased the gods are. Another act 
