men or resembling them. Hundreds of generations
have toiled to produce even their low estate of culture." ¹.
Whence the Japanese came we do not certainly know,
nor when they reached their land, nor what strains of
blood have mingled to produce them. All their mi-
grations had passed from memory long before the times
when they had reached the state of culture which is
the earliest scholarship as yet reveals. But even in
this earliest stage it is possible to detect, as we should
expect, foreign elements, the result of contacts long
forgotten with other peoples.

In the third or fourth century of our era, then, we
may imagine ourselves in the land which in the future
was to be called Japan. Excepting the natural features
of the landscape, there was little which we should
recognise. There were neither cities, nor temples, nor
art. The people lived in huts, collected in tiny ham-
lets for the most part by the banks of rivers and on
the sea-coast Only the centre of the main island, with
portions of the west and south-west, had been subdued,
the remainder being still in the possession of the
aborigines, with whom was carried on constant warfare.
Around the villages were the signs of rude agricul-
ture with rice as the principal crop, hunting and
fishing being the chief occupations. Commerce was

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