Excerpt from The Koropok-Guru, or Pit-Dwellers of North Japan: And a Critical Examination of the Nomenclature of Yezo

A question has often presented itself to my mind with regard to the kitchen middens as proof of antiquity. It is this. These pots, jars and cu ps are made of sun-dried clay, not burnt. I cannot think that sun-dried vessels could last under ground in a damp climate such as this for many hundreds of years. Surely the frost and dampness would tend towards their rapid resolu tion into the soil.

But then fowl/my there are the place-names. Yet even these must be given up. In the Memoirs mentioned above Prof. Chamberlain catalogues 2 to real native names out of which the meanings for 99 only could then be supplied. Well then might the Professor ash Why should not some have descended from the aborigines who preceded the Ainos, the latter adopting them as the Japanese have adopted Aino names? But this was in the year 1887 when our knowledge of the Ainu tongue was only just beginning. At that time I could have asked the very same question; indeed, if I remember rightly, Professor Chamberlain and I did talk the matter over together at Horobetsu just before the memoirs were published. Since then some progress has been made in these studies, and I can no longer ask such a question. I have studied Mr. Chamberlain's list very carefully on the spot with the Ainu, the result being that the real root meanings of the whole 210 with some 90 others have been given below.

But lastly one would imagine that if a race distinct from the Ainu once dwelt here some human remains would be forthcoming. I have made careful inquiries on this point and find that no signs of any have yet been discovered. Old pits and graves have been dug into but the results have always been the same: that is to say, the skulls and bones exhumed have invariably proved to be Ainu. The skeletons of no dwarfs have yet been found.

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