Quoted By:
More important than either of these types as an element of the Japanese nation is the Malay. Small in stature, with a well-knit frame, the cheek-bones prominent, the face generally round, the nose and neck short, a marked tendency to prognathism, the chest broad and well developed, the trunk long, the hands small and delicate—this Malay type is found in nearly all the islands along the east coast of the Asiatic continent as well as in southern China and in the extreme south-west of Korean peninsula. Carried northward by the warm current known as the Kuro Shiwo, the Malays seem to have landed in Kiushiu—the most southerly of the main Japanese islands—whence they ultimately pushed northward and conquered their Manchu-Korean predecessors, the Izumo colonists.
None of the above three, however, can be regarded as the earliest settlers in Japan. Before them all was a tribe of immigrants who appear to have crossed from north–eastern Asia at an epoch when the sea had not yet dug broad channels between the continent and the adjacent islands. These people—the Ainu—are usually spoken of as the aborigines of Japan. They once occupied the whole country, but were gradually driven northward by the Manchu-Koreans and the Malays, until only a mere handful of them survived in the northern island of Yezo. Like the Malay and the Mongol types they are short and thickly built, but unlike either they have prominent brows, bushy locks, round deep-set eyes, long diver-gent lashes, straight noses and much hair on the face and the body. In short, the Ainu suggest much closer affinity with Europeans than does any other of the types that go to make up the population of Japan.
