THE HAIRY AINU.* THE Hairy Ainu of the Island of
Hokkaido (Yezo) are the most primitive and therefore the most interesting savages left to us. The Australians are a more developed race, and have, more- over, certain tribal customs, such as exogamy, which displace them from the honour of being absolutely the lowest in the scale. To the Hairy people belong this honour, such as it is, and also that human interest which, in our estimation, attaches to the true savage, especially when he has the virtues of a child, simplicity, gentleness, friendliness, and lastly, the quality of being picturesque.
The Ainu of pure race do not, according to Mr. Savage Landor, number more than eight thousand, which means in these days that the race is decaying and must before long die away. For with the habits described for us with much care by the humorous and vigorous pen of the traveller, the Ainu may be said barely to exist ; and though the battle for life is not always to the strong, it is certainly not to the despondent eater of rotten fish. It is not that the Ainn lack physical endurance or the means of supporting life, but that they have not perfected sufficiently the means to secure them a balance of comfort ; and lastly, they are a despairing race. It is this mental weakness that is fatal to races the best adapted to their surroundings, and the Ainn do their best to assist in the process of decay by practising endogamy, or in plain words, intermarrying; and, as our traveller says, the race is dying from consumption, lunacy, and poverty of blood, and in fifty years will be extinct.
The hairiness of the Ainu is not the only remarkable fact about him. The lack of curiosity, the absence of the sense of touch in the finger-tips, and its presence, or perhaps that of sensitiveness, at the back of the head, and the manner in which the feet are often called upon to help the hands, are peculiarities which place the Ainn very low in the scale of man's evolution, or rather ascent. So poorly developed are taste and smell among the Ainu, that in this particular they must be considered inferior to beasts. The traveller says they could not distinguish between a piece of salmon properly dried and a piece quite rotten. Sight and hearing are the best senses they possess, and of these two, hearing is the more acute. But it must be understood that, even as regards hearing, many races are far and away more gifted by nature, and that one of the Hairy men would compare but poorly with a Blackfoot Sioux or a Maori.
The religious ideas of the Ainu, like snakes in Iceland, do not exist. They have superstitions, and indulge in a sort of totemism, that is to say, they firmly believe the bear to be their ancestor ; but their worship does not go further than to fatten a bear—of which some are kept caged in almost every village—and on an appointed day to
torture the beast for a while, kill him and eat him. The " Inao," said by some to be " divine symbols," are
willow wands with bunches of shavings hanging from either end, which are placed near the collection of bear skulls in the east of the hut, and perhaps on the hearth or in the walls, on festal days; but Mr. Savage Landor could not find in them any symbolism. They are sometimes used as charms, as are also bundles of reeds rudely made to resemble dolls, which are placed near infants to divert the attention of evil spirits. The variety of meanings attached to certain epithets, and to one in particular, has misled other writers, so our traveller declares ; moreover, the extremely narrow comprehension of the Ainu, their utter indifference to any but the material facts of life, their inability to count as far as ten, and their habit of acquiescing in answer to every
• Alone with the Hairy dints; or, 5,800 Naas on a Pock-Saddle in Yew, and e Cruise to the Kurile Islands. By A. H. Savage Lander. With Map and Mut- tratione by the Author. London : John Murray.
form of question, just as a Highlander does, makes research useless, unless it be patient and painstaking. One word which a translator made out to be " Creator," means the " man who made the village ;" and another was said to mean " the home of God," whereas it signifies "an ancient vil- lage." The word Sarnia, which firstly means " ancient," but is susceptible of hundreds of meanings, and is applied to anything good, bad, or indifferent by the Ainu, has led to this confusion.
Some careful measurements made by Mr. Landor reveal striking physical peculiarities. They were taken from pure Ainu of the best type living on the upper Tokachi River. The average height of five men was 5 ft. 21 in. ; of five women, 4 ft. 10-1 in. The spread of the arms, from finger-tip to finger-tip, was 5 ft. 5; in. for the men, and 5 ft. 11 in. for the women. Thus the arms of the Ainu, when their chest measurement and breadth of shoulder is taken into account, are very long, and their hands very near to their feet. They measured 37 in. round the chest. The Ainn of Shikotan, one of the Kurile Islands, differed considerably from those on the mainland, and the spread of the arms was even greater, for, with the same height, it was nearly 7 in. more than the height. Mr. Savage Landor began his adventures at Hakodate, and from thence followed the coast-line the whole way round Yezo, with the exception of a few odd miles of no interest at all, and making occasional excursions inland. It must have been an extremely tedious journey at times, and bad travelling, with the streams and marshes that always form an incident on the coast-line of a mountainous island. Before the five months of his wanderings were over, be was reduced to sandals, stockings with no feet, a shirt., and a coat. The traveller's first encounter with the Ainu was hardly en- couraging. He was sketching a group on the shore, and when the Ainu found out what he was doing, they were, or seemed to be, within an ace of murdering him, throwing his painting materials about, destroying the sketch, and sitting on the artist. These were civilised Ainu, and so Mr. Landor bad them "run in," when they apologised humbly enough. The village of Piratori, some fifteen miles from the coast, on the Sara River, gave the traveller his first real insight into the life and habits of this remarkable race. Benry, the Chief of Piratori, was a great drunkard, and after welcoming the traveller, intimated that his throat was dry. Sake was procured for him, and after dipping and waving his moustache- lifter several times, with a word of salutation, he lifted his moustache and drained the bowl. The waving of the mous- tache-lifter, construed by some to mean an act of worship, is no more than a ceremony ; even the most degraded drunkard likes to furnish the act of drinking with some grace. This Ainu chief, after drinking a few bowls of liquid fire, asked if the traveller desired to see how much an Ainu could drink. Mr. Landor suggested the river, but Benry demurred, and there the matter rested. He was sketched in his crown of shavings and seaweed, kingly cloak, and pipe, and neither he nor any other Ainn made nearly so much fuss as the first subjects of the artist's brush. But this man, who was fairly intelligent, could no more tell what a sketch represented than the man in the moon. Civilised people are often very dull in this respect, but the meaning of lines, one would think, most men could grasp. Even prehistoric man could draw, and draw well, as we know. Our traveller was present at a festival, which was striking in its simplicity, and the group of chiefs and elders with their long white beards lighted up by the solitary ray of sunshine that penetrated the large hut, would, we are told, have delighted Rembrandt. This was the drinking part of the festival, but late in the afternoon horse-races followed. The younger women spent the whole time dancing, but the men never, according to the writer, took any notice of the dancing. From the Sarn to Cape Erimo was out of the beaten track, and thenceforth Mr. Landor had the Ainu un- civilised and all to himself. Yezo has not a generous climate, and the traveller's remark that a desolate monotony, an odour of rotten fish, and the multitudes of crows, were the distinguishing ha:urea of the land of the Ainu, show that the performance of his task required a stubborn perseverance and dogged energy on his part. The approach to the Ainu settlements on the Tokachi River was through reeds, higher than pony and man, with mosquitoes in attendance; but the traveller seems to have considered the advantages of meeting the pure-bred Ainu a compensation. And these
Ainu were gentle and courteous, and, in their way, as polite as the Japanese. Returning to the coast., Mr. Landor went on to Nemuro, and thence to the Kurile Islands. Shikotan, to which the Japanese carried some Ainn from Shimushir and Urup, because these islands were said to be too distant to be looked after, was his destination; but his visit was short, for the Ainu here in Etorofu and Kuna- shiri are very few, though apparently of a finer type. They have come from the very volcanic and northern islands, where game was abundant and the climate sterner. From Nemuro he resumed his journey, meeting with some adventures, but always finding the Ainn submissive to the stronger will of the Caucasian, and hospitable; indeed, for those who like salmon cold, dried, or rotten,.a journey round the coast of Yezo must be one long dream of delirious joy. Before ending his journey he had one serious mishap, breaking the bone below the ankle. Mr. Landor concludes his volume with several chapters on Ainn industries, art, physiognomy, dress, char- acteristics, habits, modes of expression, which are so careful and detailed, that we—as also must all who wish to study the life of a truly barbarous race—find them the most interesting reading in the volume. Nor are the chapters devoted to the Koro-pok-kuru, the extinct pit-dwellers of Yezo, less readable. This curious people, it seems certain, had no connection with the Ainn, by whom they were conquered, but belonged to those extinct tribes that all over Europe have puzzled the archaeologist,—a race so diminutive and so feeble, that the Ainu, backward as they seem to us, had probably little difficulty in exterminating them. As for the Ainn, says our traveller, they bear more resemblance to the Northmen of Europe than to the Mongolian races. He took great pains in examining the pit remains, and his opinion is more trustworthy than those gathered from hearsay. Mr. Landor's style is lively and attractive, and its very fullness has a charm. His numerous sketches, skilfully reproduced, also assist his narrative with excellent portraits of the Ainu, their houses, and their implements, and make the book a readable tale of travel and a most excellent study of a race that vies with the Eskimo in ethnological and physiological interest.
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