14 MARCH 1981, Page 17

The hairy Ainu

Sir: In view of the failure of your correspi, dents to predict the outcomes of recent elections in countries so accessible to English-speakers as India and the United States of America, one wonders at them being let loose upon the Ainu. Lest Murray Sayle (21 February) may have given any of your readers an unduly Nordic impression of these 'tall and fair-skinned people' you may like to record, as does my ColumbiViking Desk Encyclopaedia (3rd edn.), that the Ainu — 'aborigines of Japan, forced to retreat to N islands' — are 'short, stocky and hairy'. Perhaps, of course, they have come on well under Soviet provision?

C. R. Brand

71 South Clerk Street, Edinburgh