Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/58

 plements, and, unceasingly resisting the civilised immigrants who subsequently reached the islands, they were driven northward by degrees, and finally pushed across the Tsugaru Strait into the island of Yezo. That long struggle, and the disasters and sufferings it entailed, radically changed the nature of the Ainu. They became timid, gentle, submissive folk; lost most of the faculties essential to survival in a racial contest, and dwindled to a mere remnant of semi-savages, incapable of progress, indifferent to improvement, and presenting a more and more vivid contrast to the energetic, intelligent, and ambitious Japanese.

But these Japanese—who were they originally? Whence did the three or more tides of immigration set which ultimately coalesced to form the race now standing at the head of Oriental peoples? Strangely varying answers to this question have been furnished. Kampfer persuaded himself that the primæval Japanese were a section of the builders of the Tower of Babel. Hyde-Clarke identified them with Turano-Africans who travelled eastward through Egypt, China, and Japan. Macleod recognised in them one of the lost tribes of Israel. Several writers have regarded them as Malayan colonists. Griffin was content to think that they are modern Ainu, and recent scholars incline to the belief that they belonged to the Tartar-Mongolian stock of Central Asia. Something of this diversity of view is due to the fact that the Japanese are not a pure race. They pre