Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/414

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402
Race.

coming from Korea, and both gradually spreading eastward and northward. The first of these immigrations would have supplied the round or so-called "pudding-faced" type, common among the lower classes. The second would have supplied the aristocratic type, with its more oval outline, thinner nose, more slanting eyes, and smaller mouth,—the type to which Japanese actors endeavour to conform when representing noblemen and heroes. Be it remarked that both these types are Mongol. Both have the yellowish skin, the straight hair, the scanty beard, the broadish skull, the more or less oblique eyes, and the high cheek-bones, which characterise all well-established branches of the Mongol race. It is certain that some Mongols have come over and settled in Japan, namely Koreans and Chinamen at various epochs of authentic Japanese history.

A grave difficulty in the way of all pat theories on the subject of the origin of the Japanese is the sharp line of demarcation between the Japanese language and the languages of the neighbouring continent. The Japanese grammatical system, it is true, shows remarkable similarity to Korean; but such connection as Mr. Aston has endeavoured to make out between the two vocabularies is scant and shadowy. Something will be gained if we throw back to an indefinitely early period the immigration of that element of the nation whose language came to be adopted by all classes,—that is, as we presume, the pudding-faced element, the peasantry which forms the substratum of the whole, and which, as Dr. Florenz and Dr. Simmons have made clear, remained in a state of serfdom till comparatively recent times.

On this hypothesis Jimmu Tenno, the "first earthly emperor," and his followers would have been this early people's conquerors, or one set of its conquerors, the latest and most renowned, whose legendary deeds, blended with those of other invading bands in Izumo, and with echoes of the doings of native—or perhaps also foreign—dynasties in Yamato, were worked up, under the influence of Chinese ideas, into that fantastic compound known as "early Japanese history." The solidarity of the Luchuan