Whom do the Japanese resemble, of other races? Popular ideas in the west associate them with the Chinese, but they are certainly a totally different race; if akin to them at all, they must have been separated stocks for at least a thousand years. Physically, they are, like the Chinese, yellow, or yellowish brown, in complexion, even in this having less of the jaundiced hue, and varying more in the shade or depth of color among themselves. Common opinion classes them as Mongolian, a name also given by some ethnologists to the American Indians. Probably the correct account is that the Japanese are Mongolian, and the Chinese race are outside of that stock. But if any population can be described as absolutely peculiar, in bodily and mental characteristics, it is that of Japan.
It is not easy, even with much study of this population, to discern three distinct types, which are spoken of by Rein and a few other observers. Hardly a dozen men or women, less than sixty years old, have come under my notice, whom I could not recognize as Japanese, in any costume, or in any part of the world. If one type differs from the rest, it is that of the lowest coolies, rustic laborers, and town scavengers, the remainder, probably, of the Eta caste, in feudal times outcast, like the Pariahs of Hindustan, now capable of citizenship under the reformed political system.
A typical Japanese may be thus described: Short in stature, a man 5 feet and 3 to 5 inches, a woman about 5 feet, or even less; weight, a man, 115 to 130 pounds, a woman, from 90 to 110 pounds; figure, that of the men only discernible when in foreign clothes, as, for example, soldiers and policemen; the shape of the women, concealed by their style of dress, well proportioned. Some years ago the men wore little or no clothing in warm weather; foreign influence has modified this, especially in the cities. Face round; the cheek-bones full, but the lower jaws about equally broad; chin small; lips never negroid, often somewhat full, upper lip rather short, its curve high; nose mostly convex (Roman), seldom aquiline, only thick and slightly upturned in the lowest class; bony brow prominent, hairy eyebrows, wide apart, smooth, not bushy, high and arched. The Japanese' eyes are their most peculiar features. In many, but not nearly all, there is some slope, rather backward than upward, never with the degree of obliquity common in the Chinese; the upper eyelid is heavy, the opening between the lids, often narrow (slit eyes), generally shaped like a fish, with the head towards the nose, and the tail, or outer angle, long and tapering to a point. The dark part of the eye is very dark, and the white very white, looking more so because of the short and inconspicuous eyelashes, and the absence, or nearly so, of the little red spot (caruncle) present in the eyes of other races—our own, for instance. What other race, or fraction of a race, combines such characteristics? Foreigners resident or visiting here, and wearing Japanese clothes, as the Salvation Army men and women now here do, are always easily known as such, from whatever part of the world they have come.
Of the mental and emotional traits of the Japanese, Professor Ladd, of Yale, gave the best account a year ago in Scribner's Magazine. They are sensitive, impulsive, mutable in feeling, enthusiasm, and pursuits; subject to waves of action and reaction; intelligent, not often superior in logical reasoning or abstract philosophy, but quick to learn, yet not inclined to depth or thoroughness; extremely skilful in imitation and improvement of the inventions of others, but deficient in inventive power themselves. Their chief superiority has been, for several centuries, in decorative art. They are, as some one has said, small in great things, and great in small things. Professor Ladd sums up much in saying that theirs is the sentimental temperament. The sentiment which controls them is that of the Confucian teaching, personal loyalty,—allegiance and subordination, for life or death, to the emperor first of all; in each family, of the wife to her husband, or, after his death, to her eldest son; of children to their father, and after him, to the eldest son, the head of the family. The story of the forty-seven Ronin, who, in the seventeenth century, planned and effected the death of the slayer of their daimio, knowing that every one of them would suffer death as a consequence, is a historical example of the force of this sentiment. Much later, in 1859, a band of Samurai murdered Ii Kamon, prime minister of the Shogun then in power, and then sent a letter to another member of his cabinet, giving patriotic reasons for their act, concluding with a request that the punishment of death might be, as it soon after was, inflicted upon them. Where else in all the world could such things happen?
We are not, by observation of these marked peculiarities, brought much nearer to an answer to the question of the origin of the Japanese people. We may, however, be thereby strongly impressed with the likelihood that only conjectural answers to that question can be now obtained. Another step in the inquiry will make the discrimination clearer, when we bring into view another race, the Ainu, who were inhabitants of Japan before the present dominant race came, and were driven, as the North American Indians have been, by colonizing Europeans, to remain as a subjugated remnant in a remote fraction of their ancient domain.—S. S. Times.
