Note 42 — Chapter IV · PEOPLE, HOUSES, FOOD, DRESS

“Various Impressions” is the title of an address delivered at a meeting of the Imperial Education Society by Dr. Nitobe, reported very fully in the Kyōiku Kōhō. Dr. Nitobe gave an account of his travels in the South Pacific. He visited Java, many other islands, and Australia. At Java he felt persuaded that an eminent French ethnologist who not long ago said that, as the result of much investigation, he had come to the conclusion that the Japanese race was 6/10 Malay, 3/10 Mongolian, and 1/10 mixed, was right. Among the mixed elements there was an Aryan element, which came from India, and a negrito element. “Now it is supposed,” says Dr. Nitobe, “that this negrito element comes from the Javanese. It no longer shows itself in the Japanese in regard to the form of the nose and that of the cheek-bones, but it is to be seen in the curly hair of certain inhabitants of Kyūshiu. In Oshū, from which I come, this peculiarity is not known. During my travels in the South Pacific Islands I was repeatedly struck by the similarity of Malay customs to our own. In the structure of their houses even this was very manifest.”—Japan Mail.