Page:An Ainu-English-Japanese dictionary (including a grammar of the Ainu language).djvu/583

Rh and geographical nomenclature of Japan viewed in the light of Ainu studies,” including also “An Ainu Grammar” by myself, Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain wrote on page 57, at the close of his list of place-names, as follows:—

“The above catalogue may teach several things. First we learn from it the method followed by the Ainus in their geographical nomenclature, which is simple enough. They describe the river, village, or cape, as the case may be, by some striking feature. . . . . Secondly, there is a large number of names not to be explained in the present state of our knowledge. Some of them have perhaps been corrupted beyond recognition. Some are possibly pure but antiquated Ainu, no longer understood in the absence of any literary tradition. Why should not some have descended from the aborigines who preceded the Ainus, the latter adopting them as the Japanese have adopted Ainu names?” (the italics are mine).

Early in March (1904) I had the pleasure of escorting Professor Frederick Starr, of the Chicago University, to some of the Ainu villages, and while on the journey I found him to be particularly interested in place names and was on more than one occasion much struck by the many questions he put with regard to them, but when he began to speak of the supposed connection of some of them with the race of men spoken of in the sentence I have italicised above as the aborigines who preceded the Ainus, I at once saw the drift of his questions. It was after one of our conversations on these matters that he pointed out to me Prof. Chamberlain's words:—words which I had not previously taken into any serious account. The result is the present brochure.

Now, I must remark at the outset that I am one of those who has quite abandoned the idea of a race of men existing in Yezo anterior to the Ainu. I frankly admit that I formerly acquiesced in the ordinary belief in the existence of such a people in the ages gone by. The assertions of those who were here many years before me; the assurances given me by the Japanese; the so-called tradition of the Ainu respecting them, and the remains of pits