CHAPTER XXVI.

Heredity--Crosses--Psychological Observations.

The mental qualities of the Ainu are not many, and what they have are by no means great; nor are they improved by education, for what they know comes more from inheritance than personal acquirement, though naturally every rule has its exceptions. I repeatedly noticed that talent, such as it was, ran in certain families, the members of which were all more or less intelligent. Certain families were more musical than others; other families were more artistic--if, indeed, such a word could be applied to the very low development of the artistic faculty when at its best among the hairy people. Various members of one household were potently insane; others were as potently idiotic. I shall not class under this heading of heredity transmitted disease, like leprosy, consumption, &c., but I shall limit myself to heredity in physical traits and mental qualities. Unfortunately, with the Ainu intercourse between the sexes is so imperfectly regulated as to often lead one to erroneous conclusions. The reader may easily imagine the difficulty of establishing precise rules of transmission in a race like the Ainu, where castes are not marked, with the exception of the chieftainship in each village, the only necessary qualifications for which are a sound, sharp intellect, a strong physique, and personal courage. The office is hereditary if these qualifications are also inherited; but should the sons or brothers of the chief prove unworthy of his place, the Ainu would assemble in a "village council" and elect another strong, clear-headed, and brave man in place of the _roi fainéant_ thus summarily deposed. These chiefs have no absolute authority, though the men often consult them in their quarrels and difficulties, which they are asked to settle. Thus, because of these qualities necessary for the office, these chiefs are a slightly superior type to the other natives; for with savages, as with civilised people, sharp-witted, strong, and brave men are naturally of a finer type than those who are their inferiors in these qualities: but the difference among the best Ainu and the worst is so small that I do not feel justified in classing chiefs as of a different caste. Besides, exceptional beauty, strength, or larger stature is not necessarily transmitted in the families of chiefs, nor do the Ainu themselves consider them better-looking than others.

As Ainu laws of marriage have no relation to the physical and moral improvement of the race, the only way of classifying the natives for purposes of heredity is by tribes, each village being considered as a tribe. Ainu villages are generally very small, and the inhabitants of each village intermarry among themselves, therefore each member of the community is in some way related to every other member; hence heredity in certain physical traits, mental qualities, and diseases shows itself in one community and not in another. The difficulty of tracing the exact connection of each individual with his or her relations beyond the acknowledged father and mother also baffles research in more minute details. Abnormal formations are sometimes transmitted to many members of one tribe, as, for instance, the hare-lip and webbed fingers, of which deformities two or three specimens could be found in a small village numbering fifteen or twenty houses. Malformation of the umbilicus is common--sometimes in almost every member of one small community--while it is very rare in others. Children are mostly affected by this, as in some villages the cord is not treated at all at birth; and this leads to an abnormality till the child grows older, when the few who survive seem to get all right. In other villages the cord is fastened in a very primitive, not to say imperfect, manner, with a common string of _Ulmus campestris_ fibre.

Albinism is very uncommon among the Ainu. I do not know of any case when it has been transmitted, as albinos are greatly disregarded by the Ainu, and, I was told, seldom marry.

Red hair, or hair with red shades in it, is common among the Ainu of the north-east coast of Yezo, and also among the Kurilsky Ainu of Shikotan, where nearly all the children have light hair. It darkens considerably as they grow older, as many of the men said they had light hair when young, which turned dark with age. Members of certain communities have inherited the love of bear-hunting; others the love of fishing; some tribes have a musical aptitude, and a certain artistic talent for rough ornamentations on wood; others have developed their inherited power of sustaining hunger and thirst. The only characteristic which all the different tribes have inherited, without exception, is love for intoxicating drinks; and this love is not only inherited by thoroughbred Ainu, but also by half-castes.

Mixed marriages between Japanese and Ainu are frequent, but the progeny are unfortunate beings, of whom a large percentage die when very young: those who live are generally malformed, ill-natured, and often idiotic. Their sight and hearing are not so acute as with the pure Ainu, and crosses are said to be sterile, with very few exceptions. If children of second crosses are born they seldom live to be more than five years old.

Half-breeds are invariably from a Japanese man with an Ainu woman, but occasionally an Ainu man marries or cohabits with a half-caste woman. I have never seen a pure-blood Ainu man marry a pure-blood Japanese woman. The majority of half-breeds are males: I should think two-thirds males and one-third females. The half-caste women are physically finer than the men, but they are said to be very generally, if not uniformly, sterile.

The products of the first cross greatly resemble in general look the Ainu parent, without being quite as hairy, though still very hairy; but a strange peculiarity is, that they get bald while quite young. One can easily detect them by their eyes, which are frequently like those of the Japanese, by the wide flat forehead, and by the pose of the head, which inclines forward. They generally walk with their toes turned in, instead of keeping their feet perfectly straight, like the pure Ainu. The moral and intellectual position of these half-breeds is a pitiful one. They are rejected by both the Ainu and Japanese, and are held inferior to both alike.

A high moral standard, whether got from philosophic breadth or Christian virtues, does not suit a despised barbarian race like the Ainu. Nothing could or does kill them quicker than civilisation. Experiments have been tried to civilise certain Ainu: they were made to wash, bathe, and live in comfortable, clean quarters: they were instructed and got good food; but after a few months they had to be sent back to their native place and ways, for civilisation only killed them.

The half-castes have none of the good qualities of either race. They are neither as brave as the Ainu nor courteous and light-hearted like the Japanese. The following remarks, which I take direct from my diary, were written by me between Shimokebo and Tomakomai, on the south-west coast of Yezo, where many half-breeds are found along the sea-shore, and I shall pass them on untouched to my readers.

"The Ainu along this coast were decidedly ugly. Many half-breeds are also found along this coast. These half-breeds invariably grow bald in early life, whereas the Ainu do not. The hair on their back, arms, and legs is not so long or so thick as with the pure Ainu. Their teeth are neither so strong nor so sound. As is usually the case when a mixture of two or more races takes place, the lower and upper jaws not being of the right proportion, it follows as a matter of course that unusual pressure and friction injure and wear out the enamel of the teeth, thus causing premature decay. The Americans and Australians are good examples of this premature decay caused by the disproportion of the upper and lower jaws. Also, teeth which do not fit well together sometimes grow so long as to be a nuisance to the person who owns them. I found that these half-breeds have all the bad qualities of both the Ainu and the Japanese, and have not retained any of the good ones. They are ill-tempered, lazy, and vindictive. It is well to mention that, on the Japanese side, they have come mostly from the criminals exported by the Japanese Government, which fact partly explains why they are so evil-minded and untrustworthy. Instead of falling into the more civilised ways of the Japanese, these half-breeds prefer the wild life of their Ainu ancestors; and if anything they are wilder than the Ainu themselves. Insanity is very common among half-breeds. The head is in most instances of an abnormal size; the frontal bone is generally more sloping than with the thoroughbred Ainu; and though the skull be wide from one temple to the other, it is not spacious enough from the frontal bone to the back of the head. They have heads so shaped that the animal propensities are in excess of the moral and mental faculties. In thoroughbred Ainu I found the bumps of amativeness, philoprogenitiveness, and tune very well developed. In the half-breeds these bumps hardly show at all, and in some cases the back of the head--where the two first bumps are found--is almost flat.

"Ainu half-breeds never live to be very old. They are often affected with rheumatism--_kaki_, a disease peculiar to the Far East--leprosy, and consumption, and they suffer from these diseases much more than do the pure Ainu. I found leprosy quite common among half-breeds--while I have seen but few Ainu affected with it. In most instances, though, leprosy had only attained its first stages--contraction of fingers and subsequent dropping off of the three phalanges, ears, and nose; but this may be explained by the fact that the sufferers in general succumb before the disease attains its more serious character, when the whole body is visibly affected by it."

Precise laws as to the degree of quickness of perception, power of reasoning, and learning of the Ainu race cannot be given, for, as I have mentioned before, almost each individual would require a special rule for himself. My readers may have noticed that, while some Ainu were but little above monkeys, others were sharp, and gave answers very much to the point. This may apparently be regarded as a contradiction on my part by people who have neither lived with savages, nor studied the temperament of beasts. But it is not a contradiction. There are in this world clever monkeys and stupid monkeys: some can never be made to learn any tricks; others will learn them in no time. Intelligence is instinctive, and not acquired, though of course it can be greatly developed with education; thus, the Ainu are instinctively intelligent, but I wish my readers clearly to understand that their intelligence does not go much further than that of an intelligent monkey, though of course the Ainu have the advantage over beasts of being able to talk, and therefore, to a limited extent, discuss and combine. The Ainu memory is a perfect blank in certain respects, as with arithmetic, science, mechanics, reading, writing, drawing, and delineating maps; while in other directions it seems to be fairly keen, as in hunting, fishing, tracking, and acquiring languages up to a certain point. This last faculty is noticeable in nearly all the lowest races, as the Australian aborigines, the Tasmanian natives (now extinct), the Tierra del Fuegians, &c. The Ainu ideas of time are vague, and if you add to that the extreme difficulty which they experience in counting even up to ten, and their inability to count beyond that number, it is easy to understand why we can never learn the exact age of Ainu individuals.

Like the monkeys, the Ainu cannot concentrate their attention, and they are easily wearied. Beads and shiny objects have a fascination for them; but other objects, even perfectly new to them, arouse but little curiosity, which soon passes, and they show no intelligence and less imagination as to the probable use of these strange objects. They show no inquisitiveness, and no wish to be taught the use of anything new and unfamiliar.

It will be remembered that at Yamakubiro, on the Tokachi River, beyond the natural astonishment caused by the first appearance of my ponies, the strange baggage, and myself, the Ainu did not pay much attention to this novel sight, and did not show any wish to have it explained, while more civilised people, like the Japanese, would not have been satisfied until I had shown and explained every article in my possession, and allowed each person to try its use, &c., after which they would talk for hours of what they had seen. The Ainu are not "built" so, and therefore they have never made any progress. In the more civilised parts of Yezo we have a proof of it. Their backwardness in acquiring the habits and customs of their conquerors the Japanese, arises from incapacity more than from conservatism. Yet for all that the Ainu are so incapable of improving themselves, they are very persevering in what they do attempt, as in their rough wooden carvings, the hollowing of their "dug-outs," the construction of their wooden tools and weapons, the weaving of their rough garments, and the ornamentation thereof; but in all these they appear to act more automatically than with keen and constructive intelligence.

The Ainu are not to be taken _au pied de la lettre_, for the illusions produced by ignorance and untutored imagination prevent anything like literal accuracy; but they are not what we may call conscious and immoral liars. A good example of this is my adventure at Horobets, when, although they knew that they would be severely punished by the Japanese policeman, the Ainu confessed their attack on me, and did not attempt either denial or evasion. They are often plucky, and even distinctly courageous; as, when out bear-hunting, a man armed only with a large and not over sharp knife unhesitatingly attacks this formidable beast, who sits up on his hind quarters, sure to crush the life out of his assailant should he miss his stroke. The Ainu, protecting his head with his left arm, and having taken the precaution to cover his back with skins, goes merrily for the embrace; and while Bruin squeezes, the hairy man splits its body open with the large knife.

The Ainu are cool-blooded. They are not subject to strong emotions, and therefore they are not much affected by dreams and nightmares. They are not affectionate except for a momentary impulse; but, like most animals, they are faithful when they love. Mothers are fond of their children till they have reached puberty; but after that the affection seems to fade away. Paternal love is much less strong.

The pure Ainu are comparatively honest people, which may be due to the incapacity for being dishonest. In a country where there is no exact definition of property, where anybody can get what he requires without resorting to theft, there is no reason why everybody should not be honest. Then, according to Ainu ideas, stealing is not always stealing. For instance, if an Ainu, without asking, takes away some of the salmon caught by one of his hairy brethren, he will be blamed for it, he will get into a row, and probably be beaten; but if the theft is perpetrated on a Japanese or a stranger he will be praised, though the Ainu well knows that he is not acting right. Their desire is stronger than their conscience, such as it is; and having no laws of their own to rule them worth speaking of, they often do according to their desire, without deserving the accusation of conscious dishonesty. It is exactly the same case as when a dog jumps on the dining-table when everybody is absent and carries off the leg of mutton which he knows he ought not to touch; but the temptation was too strong, and he could not resist it. The Ainu are fond of independence, though in many instances I found them gentle, and apparently submissive to a stronger will than their own. The field of their brain-power is of course very narrow, and the same rough, rude, primitive thoughts and ideas are constantly repeated in their conversation as well as in their designs.