CHAPTER XXVII.

Physiological Observations--Pulse-beat and Respiration--Exposure--Odour of the Ainu--The Five Senses.

The following physiological remarks are mostly from observations made on Ainu of the Upper Tokachi district, the natives of which have had no communication with Europeans and little with Japanese previous to my own visit to them. Observations made on the semi-civilised Ainu of Volcano Bay and Piratori, on those of the north-east and west coasts, and the Ishikari River, as well as on half-castes of different districts, have been taken into consideration.

Owing to the lack of a clinical thermometer and other instruments, I, unfortunately, was not able to ascertain the normal temperature of the body; nor could I get any very accurate observations as to the frequency of the pulse-beat, owing to the miserable condition of my watch and the difficult task of getting natives to sit perfectly still while their pulse was felt. A superstitious fear, too, that some evil would befall them accelerated the pulsations, and they invariably moved away rubbing the spot I had touched on their wrist. Though I could not count the exact number of pulsations to a minute, the movement of the pulse was as a rule slow and rather weak. Respirations were fourteen to seventeen to a minute in men, and about sixteen to twenty in women, and the respiratory movements were similar in both sexes, viz., costal breathing was predominant. In half-castes I have sometimes noticed abdominal breathing.

The Ainu not only bear cold well, but prefer it to heat, though, indeed, their country is never very hot. The sun's rays have no fascination for them, as with so many other races; and I have seldom seen Ainu basking in the sun for purely physical pleasure, although they go about with uncovered heads, and do not seem to suffer any ill effects from the practice. The Ainu of Piratori wear Japanese hats of wicker-work; and others, especially women, tie round their head a Japanese towel--a fashion, as we have seen, also adopted from the Japanese. With this head-dress the crown of the head is left uncovered.

The Ainu are not massively formed, but they are sturdy, and, as we have seen, can bear almost any amount of privation as regards food and drink. Sleep is necessary to them, and they require a great deal to be in anything like good condition. The sleeping hours are generally from an hour or so after sunset to sunrise; but during the day they are often drowsy, and turn in to have a siesta after food and exercise. In men the voice is soft and deep; shriller but still gentle in women. The Ainu seldom perspire, partly because the pores of their skin are blocked with dirt; partly because their long hair absorbs a great quantity of natural moisture; and mostly because they do not drink much except when they can get hold of intoxicants.

The skin is greasy--the natural result of many years of an unwashed existence; and this gives to the hairy people a peculiar and strong odour, much resembling that of monkeys. Many are familiar with the peculiar odour of an uncleaned monkey's cage, and the same, intensified a thousand times, characterises an Ainu village. Hundreds of yards off you can distinctly smell out a village, or if the wind is blowing towards you, that peculiar odour is perceptible for a full half-mile. Although the sense of smell is acute in the Ainu--for they sometimes employ it in tracking animals--they are not aware of their own strong odour; but they are quick in distinguishing that of other races. I have several times heard Ainu of the coast remark that I possessed a different odour from that of the Japanese; but they could neither define it nor assimilate it to that of any animal they knew, though several of them one day held a lengthy pow-wow about it; and in the interest of anthropology I submitted to the unpleasant process of being smelt all over by them. The Chinese unanimously assert that Europeans smell like sheep, and they say this is the reason we constantly wash and bathe, being aware of our infirmity, and doing our best to diminish it by soap and water. We ourselves attribute to Jews one distinct odour, and yet another to the Russians; not to speak of those belonging to the negroes, the Chinese, and, in fact, all other nations. Thus, the odour has some importance in the classification of peoples, as it largely depends on the kind of food as well as the personal habits of a race. Meat-eaters smell differently from fish-eaters, and these again from vegetarians. As regards the Ainu, their filthy habits of course increase their offensiveness, while bodily exercise renders them intolerable. The Japanese recognise the Ainu odour as a distinguishing mark of the race, and Japanese fishermen have often said to me, "_Aino shto taihen kusai_"; "_Saru_," or else "_Kumma onaji koto_"--"Ainu men smell bad, just like a monkey or a bear."

As an Ainu grows older this peculiarity increases. The weaker sex is generally more "strongly scented" than are the men, owing to the fact that women wear skins and rough cloth rags nearly all the year round, while in summer the men go about either entirely naked, or very lightly clad.

On the north-east coast of Yezo and in Shikotan (Kurile Islands) I saw some Ainu who, contrary to the rule, had red hair, and their animal odour was terribly offensive. The Ainu do not use any unguents like palm-oil, cocoanut-oil, or the like, by which the unpleasantness of certain African tribes and Eastern peoples is to be accounted for. What they have is natural and national, and due to their food, habits, and race alone.

The Ainu have no partiality or dislike for any particular scents, and their sense of smell shows itself mainly in their power of tracking game or animals, as was said before. The same might be said of the sense of "touch," which they seldom apply practically, notwithstanding their sensitiveness in certain parts of the body, especially under the arm-pits and on each side of the spinal column and the back of the head--just those parts which in most animals are the most sensitive; but they have no developed sense of touch in their finger-tips, as with civilised nations.

Most Ainu find it difficult to declare which is the heavier of two not very unequal weights. Differences in the temperature of two bodies, and in the smoothness or texture of two surfaces, are also extremely difficult for them to define, while it is easy for them to judge of weights and texture by eyesight. The palms of the hands, which are so sensitive with us, owing to the papillæ being more thickly studded there than in other parts of the body, are less intelligently sensitive with the Ainu. When they touch cold or hot objects they feel pain, but not difference of temperature, as when with us a wound is touched it makes little difference whether it is by something hot or cold, it is simply pain, and not discrimination. Their lips, as well as the tip of the tongue, are slightly more sensitive; the lower lip more so than the upper. I was never able to determine the relative sensibility of the sensitive parts of the Ainu body, as my experiments either caused anger and impatience, or hilarity and mockery. If the first, the observations had to be stopped before they were well begun; if the second, beyond the general results which I have quoted, the answers were mere guesswork on their part, and therefore not worth recording. Most of my observations are based on experiments made while the men were unaware that they were observed at all. Often, when asleep, I have touched them on the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands without causing them to awake, while when touched on the lower lip or in the lumbar region they invariably woke up startled. One day I tried this experiment on an Ainu who was sleeping on his back, with his mouth wide open. I touched his tongue with a well-sharpened lead-pencil, and the effect was subitaneous; more so than on either the lips or the lumbar region. The skin directly over the spine was dull, but the ears showed a certain amount of sensibility. The sense of "taste," which is a mere modification of the sense of touch, is also dull, although naturally, when stimulated by very acid or bitter substances, it produced distinct impressions. Even with ourselves, though more perfected than the sense of smell--which, however, often comes to its assistance--few can boast of having the sense of taste very acute. In our lower classes an extraordinary amount of salt, mustard, pepper, or sugar is needed before they can call their food "tasty," whereas a person of more refined education will detect the lack or excess of even the smallest portion. Over-stimulation of the lingual nerves and extremes of heat or cold deaden the sensibility of the tongue, palate, and fauces, and destroy the power of distinguishing flavours; bad digestion also frequently affects the organs of taste. From this we may argue, then, that the sense of taste, though born in one, has to be cultivated before it is brought to any degree of refinement. The Ainu not only do not possess this acquired refinement, but, through monotony of food, learn only one kind of flavour, and cannot distinguish differences. Thus, as many labourers in our country would not find any difference between a beef-steak slightly underdone and one over-cooked, so an Ainu finds no difference whatever between a piece of salmon properly dried and one perfectly rotten. In this respect the Ainu are far below beasts.

In tribes of natives like the Ainu, who have lived an adventurous life, mostly in the open air, it is but natural that the two senses of "sight" and "hearing" should be more developed than those of "touch," "smell" and "taste;" as life itself depends mostly on their accuracy and acuteness. The Ainu possess good sight. Inflammation of the eyes is very common among their children, owing to their filthy condition; but it seldom affects their permanent sight; very few Ainu suffer either from myopy or cataract, or other eye affections such as are frequent among civilised and more studious nations. In very warm climates, where the sun is powerful and the light strong, the eyes are generally shielded by specially long and thick eyelashes and eyebrows, which last prevent the sweat from running down the forehead into the orbit; but, strange to say, the Ainu, who are a northern race, and have always lived in cold climates, have eyelashes even longer and thicker than any race of people in tropical climates. The iris is of a somewhat greyish tint, sometimes traversed with brown shades. The white of the eye is less pearly than with Caucasian races, and the eyes, shaded as they are by long eyelashes and heavy eyelids, seem to possess all the qualities necessary for abnormally long vision. And this we find to be the case, for the Ainu can distinguish objects a long way off, but they are dense as to minutiæ. In other words, the eye of an Ainu is ready to receive an impression, but very slow in transmitting to the brain the impression received.

As we have seen, they cannot reproduce the "human form divine," or any faithful representation of anything animate or inanimate which they have seen. They see _en gros_; thus, should an Ainu's attention be drawn to some very distant object rapidly moving on the shore, he will at once say that it is a horse, because he knows that the chances are it is a horse, but he will be unable to describe its colour, and whether cantering or galloping, saddled or unsaddled, by a single glance at the horse, unless his attention is called to each particular detail, when he will answer each question correctly enough. The Ainu vision is then strong, but the brain is not quick in response. Testing their sight by "test dots," as used in the British Army, was not a success, greatly owing to their inability to count and the inaccuracy of their answers.

The most fully-developed sense in the hairy people is, in my opinion, that of hearing. Distant sounds are clearly recognised and specified, and they are also aware that by placing one ear near the ground, far-off sounds of horse's hoofs and the like can be clearly distinguished. The ticking of a Waterbury watch could be heard by Ainu at a distance of twenty and twenty-two feet, while I could only hear it nineteen feet away. I was often struck by the quickness with which they detected the tick-tack even when the watch was in my pocket, and they were six or eight feet away. The unusual sound fixed their attention and made them curious as to the cause, and they showed a childish kind of surprise and delight when the watch was produced and passed round among them, each one being allowed to enjoy his share of the ticking.

Resuming these few remarks on the characteristic points of Ainu senses, my readers will probably have noticed certain facts which strongly support Darwin's theory of evolution, and the hairy arboreal ancestor with pointed ears from which the races of men are descended.