Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/216

204 characterized by the wholesale butchery and merciless slaughter of women and children that is usually so marked a feature of savage warfare. In a foreign war—e. g., against the Japanese—the chief of Sara, who was the recognized head of the nation, assumed command of all the combined forces, the village chiefs acting as colonels. But the utter want of discipline militated heavily against the Ainu, and this undoubtedly was one of the leading causes of their defeat, numbers being a secondary consideration. With the greater strength and superior power of endurance of the Ainu, had they been drilled in concerted action by skillful officers, such as the Japanese generals have been since the time of authentic history, and taught to make the most of their numbers, it can hardly be doubted that they would have made a much better showing than they did.

The language of the Ainu is entirely different from the Japanese. Many "click" sounds are heard, and it is much more consonantal, and there seems to be much less objection to the consonant ending of a word, which is so cordially hated by the Japanese. In the use of pronouns the Ainu language would be considered as philologically in advance of the Japanese, as they are used to indicate the antecedent or person in many instances where Japanese would leave the determination of the person speaking, spoken to, or spoken of, to the context and to the form of the verb. Honorific and humble forms of the verb are not used. The emphasis is similar to that of Japanese; intonation does not always convey the same shade of meaning—that is, interrogation, exclamation, etc.—as in English, although stress is often indicated by an explosive sound.

The tone of voice is always lower and more musical than that of the Japanese, and in the case of younger women is really quite pleasing. One peculiarity of the speech of women is a drawing out of the final vowel of words ending in a or e. At times this approaches the long a-a-h or e-e-h of a contented little baby.

The Ainu have been called the hairy people, and, contrasted with the Japanese, the name is well given; still, I could not find any of the animal-like pelts I had been led by some authors to expect to see. The men have heavy, coarse shocks of black hair on the head, cut off short behind across the nape of the neck, and allowed to grow nearly to the shoulders on the sides, being roughly brushed to either side from the forehead. Their beards are very strong and quite long, being allowed to grow without restraint. Most of them have "mossy breasts," and a few have a furry growth on the shoulders and down the back, but not more than I have seen on the shoulders of coolies in the south of China; while for hairy growth on legs and arms, I have seen Caucasians as well covered as any Ainu that I saw.