Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/65

 except that their builders occupied the tract of country from the shores opposite Korea on the west to Musashi and the south of Shimotsuke on the east, and did not penetrate to the extreme northeast, or to the regions of mountain and forest in the interior.

Here another point suggests itself. If the fashion of the Japanese dolmen was introduced from abroad, evidences of its prototype should survive on the adjacent continent of Asia. If the numerous dolmens found on the coasts of Kiushiu and Izumo facing Korea are to be taken as indications that their constructors emigrated originally from the Korean peninsula, then Korea also should contain similar dolmens, and if an ethnological connection existed between Japan and China in prehistoric days, China, too, should have dolmens. But no dolmens have hitherto been found in China, and the dolmens of Korea differ radically from those of Japan, being "merely cists with megalithic cap-stones" (Gowland). It has been shown, further, that dolmens similar to those of Japan are not to be found in any part of Continental Asia eastward of the shores of the Caspian Sea, and that Western Europe alone offers exactly analogous types. In short, from an ethnological point of view, the dolmens of Japan are as perplexing as the dolmens of Europe, and the prospect of solving the riddle seems to be equally remote in both cases. All that can be affirmed is that the dolmens offer strong corroborative