On the contrary, in Dai Nippon, or Great Land of the Sun's
Origin, we have a little country easy of study. In geology it is one of
the youngest of lands. Its known history is comparatively modern. Its
area roughly reckoned as 150,000 square miles, is about that of our
Dakotas or of Great Britain and Ireland. The census completed December
31, 1892, illustrates here, as all over the world, nature's argument
against polygamy. It tells us that the relation between the sexes is,
numerically at least, normal. There were 20,752,366 males and 20,337,574
females, making a population of 41,089,940 souls. All these people are
subjects of the one emperor, and excepting fewer than twenty thousand
savages in the northern islands called Ainos, speak one language and
form substantially one race. Even the Riu Kiu islanders are Japanese in
language, customs and religion. In a word, except in minor differences
appreciable or at least important only to the special student, the
modern Japanese are a homogeneous people.
In origin and formation, this people is a composite of many tribes.
Roughly outlining the ethnology of Japan, we should say that the
aborigines were immigrants from the continent with Malay reinforcement
in the south, Koreans in the centre, and Ainos in the east and north,
with occasional strains of blood at different periods from various parts
of the Asian mainland.
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