rvival from
different languages. On the contrary, in few countries of Japan's
magnitude does corresponding uniformity of speech prevail from end to
end of the realm. It cannot reasonably be assumed that, during a
period of some twenty-five centuries and in the face of steady
extermination, the Yemishi preserved their language quite distinct
from that of their conquerors, whereas the various languages spoken
by the other races peopling the island were fused into a whole so
homogeneous as to defy all attempts at differentiation. The more
credible alternative is that from time immemorial the main elements
of the Japanese nation belonged to the same race, and whatever they
received from abroad by way of immigration became completely absorbed
and assimilated in the course of centuries.

No diligent attempt has yet been made to trace the connexion--if any
exist--between the Ainu tongue and the languages of northeastern
Asia, but geology, history, and archaeology suffice to indicate that
the Yemishi reached Japan at the outset from Siberia. The testimony
of these three sources is by no means so explicit in the case of the
Yamato, and we have to consider whether the language itself does not
furnish some better guide. "Excepting the twin sister tongue spoken
in the Ryukyu Islands," writes Professor Chamberlain, "the Japanese
language has no kindred, and its classification under any of the
recognized linguistic families remains doubtful. In structure, though
not to any appreciable extent in vocabulary, it closely resembles
Korean, and both it and Korean may possibly be related to Mongol and
to Manchu, and might therefore lay claim to be included in the
so-called 'Altaic group' In any case, Japanese is what philologists
call an agglutinative tongue; that is to say, it builds up its words
and grammatical forms by means of suffixes loosely soldered to the
root or stem, which is invariable."

This, written in 1905, has been supplemented by the ampler researches
of Professor S. Kanazawa, who adduces such striking evidences of
similarity between the languages of Japan and Korea that one is
almost compelled to admit the original identity of the two. There are
no such affinities between Japanese and Chinese. Japan has borrowed
largely, very largely, from China. It could scarcely have been
otherwise. For whereas the Japanese language in its original form--a
form which differs almost as much from its modern offspring as does
Italian fro