Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/26

 their southern islands on the Kuroshiwo, or black current which washes their shores. In their houses, raised two feet above the ground, you may trace the vestigial remains of the water-house built on piles; and although the Japanese share with the Koreans the habit of removing their shoes indoors and sitting on matted floors, their peculiar wooden clogs, with the separated big toe, are plainly the invention of a barefooted people treading the forest trails, and needing at a moment's notice to be able to free their feet for tree-climbing.

It is necessary to dwell on these details in order to fix well the differences between the Chinese and the Japanese. The Chinese almost from the dawn of history are a race of peaceful cultivators, walling themselves in for defence; the Japanese are a water-people, who become a forest-folk and who hunt and fish and only learn agriculture reluctantly. At the beginning of the Christian era, thinly scattered in the valleys and along the coasts of their own islands, they had not yet driven out the aborigines we know as the Ainus and warfare against them was constant and intense. Being rude and unlettered, there are few traces of their early history. But from this dim forest past comes the Japanese torii, that curious structure