The Daily News. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1922. JAPANESE COLOR.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 November 1922, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1922. JAPANESE COLOR.

'The decision of the United States Supreme Court that Japanese are not white, within the meaning of the American law, not being Caucasians, and therefore not entitled to naturalisation, is well calculated to form the subject of profound academical argument. The contention advanced by one of the Japanese applicants for American citizenship that lie is a descendant from the white tribe of the Ainu was a stroke of Japanese genius, and it might have been founded on truth, though absolutely incapable of proof. It, is certainly a curious, though well-established, fact that ethnology has failed to identify the inhabitants of Japan with any other race, Occidental or Oriental. That they, migrated from the adjacent continent is not doubtful, but from what part of it there are no conclusive evidences available. The Japanese possessed no early history and no traditions as to their own provenance, so they had recourse to Chinese annals, and finding therein a faith that islands inhabited by immortals lay somewhere in the Eastern Ocean, they seem to have identified their country with those islands, and having ascribed to their primeval ancestors a divine origin, called Japan “sacred,” all that was then required being to embellish the theory with picturesque myths, and therefrom grew up the basis of their national religion—Shinto (the way of the .deities), which continues still to command reverence. Although those facts savor of the elements of a fairy tale, they throw no actual light on the composition of the Japanese as a race. Without doubt they Are a mixed people, among them being found Mongolian and Malayan types, the former being the patricians and the latter '/he plebeians. The Ainu people (mentioned in the American Supreme Court) are known to have settled in Japan in the early days before the Mongoloid invasions, of which there were two or more. The Ainu people came from Siberia, but in a still more remote era they had been preceded by another type of Siberian colonists, known as the pit-dwell-ers (Koro-pok-guru). The earlier Mongoloid incursion swept, the Ainu people before it, but the later one appears to have been more reasonable, leading to a mixture of the two races. Then appeared on the scene the Malayan adventurers who overthrew the Mongoloid colonies, yet amongst, the Japanese of to-day the supremacy of the Mongoloid type appears to have been immemorially established. It is interesting to note that the Ainu, as described by tradition, were a. flat-faced, heavy-jawed, hirsute people, belonging to a very low order of humanity. They burrowed in the ground for shelter; they recognised no distinctions of sex in apparel, or of consanguinity in intercourse: they clad themselves in skins, drank blood, were insensible to benefits, and perpetually resentful of injuries. Their present representatives, a few thousand who were driven to the northern island of Ezo, are a timid people, said to be incapable of progress and indifferent to improvement — a remarkable contrast to the energetic, intelligent and ambitious Japanese It was a man claiming descent from these Ainn of Siberia, who sought naturalisation in America as being of Caucasian stock: No wonder the plea failed. for it is almost impossible to c-onceive any progressive country welcoming.as citizens such a tyne of people as the Ainu, whose only claim consists of descent from o white though thoroughly decadent race. It is only when the facts are known that the merits of a legal

judgment can be fully appreciated. The incident emphasises the wisdom of each country being entitled to say whom it shall admit within its borders auu. whom it shall reject—a right that should be guarded jealously and for all time.