Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/22

 Civilisation was brought to Japan by a Mongoloid invasion or immigration at a date which historians have hitherto failed to fix with any accuracy, but which was certainly several centuries—probably six or seven—before the Christian era. The new-comers did not represent an advanced stage of material progress. They knew nothing of iron, and used only bronze implements, and their keramic successes were confined to the production of rude, hand-made pottery, scarcely superior to that of the aborigines mentioned above. What is known of these earliest Mongoloid invaders has been gathered from the contents of the mounds in which they buried their dead. Following them at an interval of probably five centuries—it is still necessary to avoid explicitness—came another tide of Mongoloid invaders, who brought with them a knowledge of iron-smelting and of the potter's wheel, and whose ideas of form and decoration indicated a much higher grade of civilisation than that of their predecessors. The story of these second comers does not exist in the pages of history. It is told only by the "dolmens" which they constructed for purposes of interment, and as to the contents of those dolmens mention need not be made here of anything but pottery.

The Dolmen pottery is divided into three groups by Mr. W. Gowland,—who has made a specialty of the study of these interesting tombs and their contents,—namely, "lightly burned terra-cotta," "hard-burned earthenware," and "coarse terra-cotta." It indicates, in short, that although its makers understood the use of the wheel and had some conception of decorative effect, they knew nothing of translucid porcelain, and were not even able to apply glaze to