Page "romance" Paragraph 164

The Momoyama family had come from Miyagi Prefecture, in the northeast of the main Japanese island of Honshu, where there are still traces of the mysterious Ainu strain.

The Ainus were a primitive people, already living on the island before the principal ancestors of the Japanese came from Southern Asia.

Apparently they were of Caucasian blood.

They had white skins and blue eyes ; ;

all their men were bearded, and many of their women were beautiful.

A pitiful few of them are left now, to subsist mainly on the tourist trade and to sing their ancient tribal chants, which have the same haunting sadness as the laments of the American Indians.

Most of them have been assimilated, but sometimes a man in Miyagi or Akita prefectures is much more hairy than the average Japanese, and occasionally a girl will be strikingly lovely, her coloring warmed and improved by a little of the tawny honey-in-the-sun tint of the invaders from the South.