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pass for men of great learning are expected to be acquainted with many tens of thousands."* While looking into this matter, in Tokio, I requested my friend, Captain F. Brinkley, R.A. (perhaps the greatest master of the Japanese language among foreigners), to favour me with his views upon it, and this he was kind enough to do. The memorandum with which he accordingly furnished me is so valuable and instructive that I append it without alteration to this chapter. It will be seen from it that some twelve or thirteen thousand characters in all must be "stored away in the memory, beyond the reach of time and the necessity of revision," before a young Japanese can fairly start in pursuit of science! But it is easy to see that this colossal system of mnemonics grew naturally enough out of that far earlier system under which, before the invention of writing, memory was the only library, and the toil of long years the only means there were of storing it. Now that Japan has entered upon the modern period, she must, so far, discard her ancient forms of language as to furnish her sons with readier means of acquiring knowledge.

The ancient language of Japan-by which I mean the language spoken before the opening of her communications with Korea and China- appears to have stood alone. It had some degree of affinity with that of Korea, less (according to the highest authorities) in the roots of words than in grammatical form and structure. There is, however, but one language outside of Japan itself which can be considered as having many words in common with Japanese, and that is the language of the Loo-choo-Islands. This appears to so far resemble the Japanese that Mr. Satow, who examined a Loo-chooan vocabulary, says that it differs very little from it; and adds that some members of the Loo-chooan embassy to Yedo spoke Japanese with perfect correctness. This correctness must, however, be regarded as an accomplishment, and not as a proof of identity between the two languages,

* Dr. David Murray, late Superintendent of Education in Japan, in

the Philadelphia Exhibit on Education.

because interpreters are, as a matter of fact, often employed to facilitate communications between natives of the respective countries. It will be correct to assume, with Mr. Aston, that the Loo-chooan tongue is an offshoot from the Japanese-a mere Japanese dialect, in fact. The relation between the languages of Japan and Korea is doubtless a wholly different one, and one of far greater historic significance, but it is quite beyond my power to throw any light upon it. All I can do in the matter is to express surprise that, as far as I know, this early philologic relationship between Japan and the Korean peninsula has been so little studied.

It is to the absence of any living or known languages allied to that of Japan and Loo-choo that we must primarily attribute the little progress that has been made by comparative philologists in their investigations respecting it. It has not yet received even a definite place among the great families of tongues, some writers, at least, placing it, with the Korean, among languages that are of doubtful origin.* Authority on the whole, however, certainly excludes it from the Aryan and Semitic classes, and includes it in the Turanian group of tongues, although it is not to be found in the long genealogical tables of that family of languages which are given by Mr. Max Müller at the end of his Lectures on the Science of Language.' Mr. James Fergusson, in his most interesting Ethnological Appendix to his History of Architecture,' boldly says: "In the old world the typical Turanians were the Egyptians; in the modern the Chinese and Japanese." Mr. W. G. Aston, who has acquired a masterly acquaintance with Japanese, and has written grammars both of the spoken and of the written language—which differ greatly-says that it possesses all the characteristics of the Turanian family, being agglutinative (i.e. maintaining its "roots" in their integrity), without

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*The author of the article "Philology" in the 1878 edition of 'Chambers' Encyclopaedia,' for example, who, under the heading "Monosyllabic or Isolating," places 1, the Chinese, 2,

the Tibetan, and 3, the Siamese, Anamese, and Burman, adding, "Japanese and the language of Korea are doubtful.”

formative prefixes, poor in conjunctions, and copious in the use of participles. He adds: "The Japanese language is further an example of the rule common to all languages of this family, that every word which serves to define another word invariably precedes it; thus the adjective precedes the noun, the adverb the verb, the genitive the word which governs it, the objective case the verb, and the word governed by a preposition the preposition." In a paper read at the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1874, Mr. Aston neverthelessfollowing up Mr. Edkin's theory, that the Chinese language had remote relations with the Aryan family-himself points out some resemblances between Japanese and that family, and gives numerous examples of apparent identity between Japanese and Aryan roots. He lays no great stress on the matter, and adduces the difficulty which I have already mentioned, viz. the absence of cognate languages, as the great obstacle to the pursuit of inquiries of this kind.

My learned friend Mr. Hyde Clarke, whose ethnological and philological researches are well known, has long had his attention drawn to the Japanese language, and after many labours has discovered relations between that and the languages of Ashantee and western Africa. His expectations of finding a solution of the main problem were discouraged by the vast ethnological differences between the peoples; but having, on ethnological grounds, "to distinguish a white race earlier on the field of history than the Aryans," he has, in accordance with his readings of history, looked for this race in High Africa-" regions as healthy as those of High Asia, from which the Aryan migrations are held to have proceeded." Pursuing this line of inquiry, he has arrived at the opinion that it is in an ancient TuranoAfrican empire that the origin of the Japanese should be sought. This view is so novel and so far-reaching that I have appended to this chapter the memorandum upon it with which Mr. Hyde Clarke has been so obliging as to furnish me.

It was very early in our era, as will have already been seen, that Japan began to have intercourse with Korea,

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and to derive thence aid and instruction which greatly facilitated the progress both of the fine and of the industrial arts; and few things are more striking even among the many striking things which may now be observed in Japan, than the complete and handsome manner in which her present scholars, historians and officers, recognise this ancient indebtedness to the people of the neighbouring peninsula. The Japanese have plenty of native pride, no doubt, but they appear to be without the false pride which deters some people from acknowledging the advantages which they have derived from others. A recent native writer says that in the earliest times the use of alphabetical characters was unknown in his country, and that it was introduced when intercourse with foreign countries was first opened. Characters are said to have been so introduced by natives of Minama (part of Korea) who visited Japan during the reigns of Kaikua and Sujin (157-30 B.C.). Books were first seen in Japan when the warrior-empress, Jingu Kogo, carried away from Korea as many of them as she could lay hands on, with everything else that was at once valuable and portable, after her successful invasion of that country. In the third century (A.D.) the son of the emperor Ojin was, as we have seen, taught to read Chinese works, and from that time forward Chinese language and literature exerted a strong influence upon those of Japan. Prior to this, there is reason to suppose,

*It is reasonable to ascribe to this cause the circumstance that in Japan as in China "writing" has always signified so very much more than with ourselves. Our alphabet is little or nothing more than a mechanical system of communication; but in China there is a divine authority and beauty about their written characters. Some of them came from the scales of the turtle or dragon-horse that Toh-he found in the river bed. These he expanded to the great lines of the universe. The starry curves of the

heavens, the undulations of mountains, the winding of rivers-in these were the elements of writing, and these elements shared the divinity of creation. Obviously a system of writing thus begun, or thus developed, would greatly favour that fanciful interweaving of meanings which it is impossible, as one so often finds, to render in a language like ours, or indeed in any foreign language whatever. I may have occasion to make mention again of the difficulty in the chapter on Proverbs and Phrases.

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Reproduced for this Work by a Japanese Engraver.

To face page 54, Vol. II.

1. YOSITUNÉ riding on the Tengu to take his Fencing Lessons at Kurama Yama. 2. TAIBO: a fabulous bird: the Japanese "Roc."

From HOKUSAI.

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