Aino Hairiness and the Urvolk of Japan

Abstract

IN Mr. B. H. Chamberlain's remarkable and instructive monograph on the Ainos, contained in the first number of the Memoirs of the Literature College of the Imperial University of Japan, just published, will be found an explanation of the different conclusions that have been arrived at by different observers as to the hairiness of that singular people, equally isolated, so far as our present knowledge extends, by language and by physical characteristics from all surrounding races. When I spent some days among these so-called savages in 1865 or 1866, I had the opportunity of examining some four or five score of them, chiefly men, and in every individual I found the phenomenon of hairiness more or less marked. The sternal, inter-scapular, and gluteal regions were, in particular, thus provided with a natural covering, the very regions where such a protection from the drip of rain would be most serviceable. I remember well that in some individuals the gluteal fur was so abundantly developed that thick tufts of hair, several inches long, could be grasped in the hand. But recent travellers have been struck by the number of natives they met with deficient in hairiness—whether they were proportionately lacking in face-hair is not stated—and it has been doubted whether hairiness is really an Aino characteristic. Dr. Baelz's investigations have, however, amply vindicated the claim of the Ainos to be the hairiest people in the world, and now Mr. Chamberlain shows that the smooth-bodied natives are in fact half-breeds, the progeny of native mothers by Japanese fathers. Unions of this kind have probably increased in frequency during the last two decades. Between the two races, however, some incompatibility seems to exist, for their progeny exhibit a diminished fertility. “The second generation,” says Mr. Chamberlain, on the authority of the Rev. Mr. Batchelor, who has lived for years among the Ainos, and contributes an exhaustive grammar of their language to the volume of Memoirs before me, “is almost barren; and such children as are born—whether it be from two half—breed parents, or from one half-breed parent and a member of either pure race—are generally weakly. In the third or fourth generation the family dies out.”