WAYS OF THE AINUS OF JAPAN.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2481, 17 May 1909, Page 7

WAYS OF THE AINUS OF JAPAN.

Dwarfed creatures, covered with hair, half monkey, half man, cowering for shelter beneath the -burdock leaves in unapproachable forests —such were the Ainus of which I learned at school. Ardent believers in Darwin’s views of our ancestry quoted this race as affording a striking illustration of the truth of his theories, and some rumors reached our class that the hairy human creatures had tails. Alas that the truth must deal a blow to those pretty fancies! I have lately seen the Ainus, writes M. C. Slopes in the Athenaeum, have spoken with them, and walked with them in the virgin forests of the land they now inhabit, and my pulses are stilled. I can testify that the portrait imagination had painted of them was a travesty. Yet all romance and strangeness arc not gone from them, and in their distant land' they are living a life that it may be interesting to tell of. Driven from the main island of Japan bv the Japanese. they now live in the northern island of Yczo," and in some outlying islands, where they form small communities and live apart from the Japanese, for whom they feel little friendship. The first Ainu man I saw reminded me instantly of the popular conception < f an Old Testament patriarch, and I thought at once of Abraham as lie must have looked before his hair grew white. The line face of this man of 60 years included a slightly Jewish nose and deepset eyes, was crowned by a halo of thick hair which fell hist to his shoulders and stood out bushily all around his head. Around his brow was bound a brightlycolored handkerchief, which intensified the illusion. This type is common among the older men, and of all tlie Ainu men I caw only one was ugly and unintelligent in appearance, and he was obviously the village idiot. The men are short, it is true, seldom exceeding oft. sin. in stature, but pygmies they are not, and so thickset and broad-shouldered that they have the appearance of great strength and manliness. , . The Ainu man differs widely from tire Ainu woman. This fact is all the more notable because among the Japanese the difference is often very slight, and in the eyes of a foreigner it may be impossible to recognise the sex of an individual during the first and last ten years of life. The Ainu women look ill fitted to he the male of the Ainu man, for the faces of the older ones, and many, oven, of the girls, are rendered startling and somewhat repulsive by the curious dark green tattoo marks which are heavily scored on

thorn. Many of the women are much shorter than the men and more thick-set; ndeed, some of the older ones are most squatty and have such short lower limbs that their figures are entirely lacking in grace, alike in motion and repcsc. 'their hair is worn without ornament or dressing, very little longer than that the men, and falls in waving locks on either side of their broad faces. The typical pattern of the tatto marks is one which comes in a thick curved line both above and below the lips, and continues <n either side almost to the ears, whore it suddenly turns upward. At a very short distance it gives them the appearance wearing a fierce moustache of the es Ist orreicht” typo. Across the forehead um one or two bands of similar color, either straight or waving, and going from temple to temple like the unwelcome wrinkles on Western foreheads. The transformation of expression resulting from these ornaments is so great that at”first one can hardly believe that the women belong to the same race as the keen, intelligent, handsome men. let amon" the younger women who have not been tattooed the bright expression of the face shows them to ho lit mates for ad men. Sometimes the girls are most attractive —two of those I saw were distinctly beautiful, even according to oiu own standards; and all of them appear muck and vivacious in comparison with the inscrutable calm and apparent stupidity o. Japanese women. To-day the Ainus are a subject race, having been driven further and iuithei back in Japan by the Japanese until they hold only a part of the northern islands. In truth' they have but a precarious loothold in the‘land, which is now entirely under the Japanese, and is every year increasingly cultivated, they live in Milams or groups apart from the Japanese in houses of a different shape from those common in the country. Indeed their houses are little more than straw huts with a curiously high roof (or should one say low walls which make the roof look out of all proportion?) with many tiers of thatching. , , The women ride into the Japanese Miliums sitting cross-legged on the backs ot marcs which are followed by frisking foals. Here they sell the vegetables they bring with them in baskets and buy soap and thread and all such things as they cannot make themselves. This last class of article is rapidly increasing in number, for the old Ainu industries and individual products arc dying out and the arts ot weaving, carving, cloth-making, and many others are becoming lost among them, the men still hunt, but hears are much fewer now than they were in the old days when the (meat bear feasts and festivals were originated and warriors of valor were decorated with a crown, the ornament of which was a bear’s head rudely carved m wood. Those on the coast sro out to tea to fish in boats with square-ended prows, some of whicu are still rudely carved. The people call to each other m harsh tones, in words with short syllables in which k is apparently the most frequent letter—a language very different from the soft and poetical speech of the conquering Japanese. In the names of places n is very common, as many descriptive adjectives boo-in with this letter in Amu, but often tins is changed to hj in Japanese; for example, the place Poronai is always spoken of, ana is even written up at the railway station, as Horonai by the Japanese. Writing is an unknown art among the Ainus—not even a forgotten ono like notterv-making and it does not seem likely that it will now he evolved by a people who are rapidly dying out of the land they have lost.

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