The Japanese Spirit

lace in racial science. If we do not take into account the inhabitants of the newly annexed island of Formosa, we have, roughly speaking, two very different races in our whole archipelago--the hairy Aino and the ruling Yamato race, the former being the supposed aborigines, physically sturdy and well developed, with their characteristic abundant growth of hair, who are at present to be found only in the Yezo island in the northern extremity of Japan, and whose number, notwithstanding all the care of our government, is fast dwindling, the sum total being not much more than 15,000. The Aino have a tradition that the land had been occupied before them by another race of dwarfish stature called Koropokguru, who are identified by some scholars with those primitive pit-dwellers known in our history as Tuchigumo,[2] whose traces, although scanty, are still to be met with in various parts of Yezo. Anyhow, we see at the first dawn of history the aborigines gradually receding before the conquering Yamato race, who are f