The Japanese Nation in Evolution Author:William Elliot Griffis Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I THE ARYAN WHITE RACE IN THE ARCHIPELAGO The story of the island people now called the Japanese may be divided into two parts. One era belongs to ... more »the prehistoric aeon; that is, in the night of time. The other begins with written history. The one is concerned with ethnic origins, the other with nation building. The first suggests beginnings on sparsely populated islands, telling how the archipelago was peopled first by savages, and secondly by barbarians with arts and taste. In the written story we see a stream of human culture borne by people who came from old seats of civilization and built up the State. One set of men, the white Aryans, was cut off from culture, and remained savage. The other set, already semi-civilized, was successively reenforced from the continent. Situated on the great ocean highway of the Kuro Shiwo, or Black Current, in the path of the waifs and strays, borne up from the tropics, along the whole waterway from Lombok to Alaska, these Islands of the Sunrise have never lacked potential settlers. Along the whole way of this natural ocean route are lighthouses furnished by the volcanoes at night,landmarks clearly visible by day, and shallows with food always within reach. In repossessing, since 1895, Formosa, with its copper-colored aborigines, and since 1869 the Riu Kiu (Loo Choo) islands, which stretch like the cross-pieces of a long rope-ladder, the Japanese are simply repatriating their kinsmen and reoccupying the dwelling-places of their Malay ancestors. In concentrating all the Ainu of the Hokkaido in Yezo island, they are showing kindness to their Aryan forebears. To sum up, then, we have first the movement of natural immigrants, compelled by storm and current, as distinct from civilized men. . Over against this movement, but much...« less