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Some of the people were Ainos, some were Japanese, just as in the every-day world. Among the number were some whom he had known when they were alive. But, though he saw them, they, strange to say, did not seem to see him. Indeed he was invisible to all, excepting to the dogs; for dogs see everything, even spirits, and the dogs of Hades barked at him fiercely.
Whether the Ainos have any conception of the influences at work in and the progress being made by the Empire of which they are subjects, I do not know, but to me it is both interesting and curious to regard this ancient and decaying race, either indifferent to or ignorant of all the bustle and hurry and worry of modern civilisation so close to them and yet so far removed from their childlike minds and ideas.
Their numerals above one thousand are borrowed from the Hindus, and their manner of counting is the same as that of the Ainos of Yezo. Their theory of medicine is derived from Arabia, and abounds in mystery and superstition.
Moreover, even had not the height prevented him, the fact of its being nothing but filthy fœces would have done so. As for going round either side of it, that would have taken him too much out of the way. So he went home again, feeling quite spiritless and vanquished, because robbed of his treasures. This is the reason why, ever since, we Ainos have not been able to read. xliv. The Good Old Times.
The men, however, wear at certain seasons thick rain-coats made of salmon skin, as also leggings made of a fibre peculiar to themselves, and high boots constructed of straw. I am sorry to have to relate that the Ainos have a fondness for saké, and there is a good deal of intoxication among them.
She screamed and struggled; and, when she was inside the hut, she turned into a wriggling, writhing dragon. The sky darkened, the thunder crashed, the dragon vanished, and the hut was consumed by lightning. Okikurumi was very angry at what the man had done. So he left off feeding the people, and went away, none, knew whither. That is why the Ainos have been poor and miserable ever since that time.
These were made up of the various migrations from the main land and the drift of humanity brought by the ocean currents from the south; Ainos, Koreans, Tartars and Chinese, with probably some Malay and Nigrito stock. In the central part of Hondo, the main island, the Yamato tribe dominated, its chief being styled Suméru-mikoto, or Mikado.
The Ainos are, it seems, to be no exception to that mysterious law of the survival of the fittest, which decrees that an inferior race shall go down before the superior, and in due course become merely a name. I have called this a mysterious law because such disappearance is not necessarily the result of conquest or of ruthless destruction.
The inference from records and local names, worked out with great care by Professor Chamberlain, is "that the Ainos were truly the predecessors of the Japanese all over the Archipelago.
I have said seemingly, because the beliefs of a people such as this are difficult to get at, and even when one has got at them almost impossible to comprehend. One writer has termed the religion of the Ainos, "a very primitive nature-worship," and their gods "invisible, formless conceptions." Such definitions do not convey much information.
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