A Curious Race

Taken from ‘Little Folks; a magazine for the Young.’ 1890.

 

‘In the north island of Japan and in some parts of the extreme north-east of Asia there lives an interesting race of people called Ainos. Where they came from nobody seems to know, for in many respects they are not at all like the Japanese and Chinese. The men are well built but rather under-sized, and their bodies are covered more or less thickly with hair. As the portrait in the New Heading shows, they wear long beards, and the hair of their head is also long and bushy. The women are not so well looking, as they have to do all the hard work of the tribe. The folk are not gifted with much intelligence, and they worship natural objects and animals, the bear being specially selected for this purpose. They spend their time in fishing and hunting. It is hard to tell what is the number of the Ainos. But they are not supposed to number more than 50,000 at the most, it is likely that they will sooner or later become extinct.’