Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1894 — A STRANGE PEOPLE. [ARTICLE]

A STRANGE PEOPLE.

Th* Queer Race Known as the Aina - In Japan. The word Ainu is a generic term, and signifies “hairy men” —a name applied to these curious people by themselves, says the St. James Budget. The Japanese estimate the number of the Ainu at 16,000, but Mr. Landor, after deducting the halfcastes, reckons that they do not exceed half that number. Pleasure and rest were the two chief objects, we are told, which induced Mr. Landor to visit these isles, but it appears to have been his fate to meet with neither. He landed at Hakodate, and after one day's rest set forth to survey the island and interview the inhabitants. He traveled some 4,200 miles, of which, 3,800 were traversed on horseback on a rough pack saddle, and, like the hero of Scott’s ballad, “he rode all unarmed and he rode all alone.” “I sat down in the tea-house on the soft mats, and my Bento—Japanese lunch—was served to me on a tiny table. I'nis wqs water soup; there was seaweed, there was a bowl of rice and raw fifth. The fish—a small funv—was in a diminutive dish, and its bacif was covered by a leaf; the head projected over the side of the plate. On the leaf were placed utvers] neatly cut pieces of raw fleet-, wfcich had apparently been removed from the back of the underlying anjmaL “As I had long been accustomed to Japanese food of this kind, I ate to my heart’s content, when, to my horror, the funa, which had been staring at me with its round eyes, relieved of the weight that had passed from its back to iny digestive organs, leaped up, leaf and all from the dish, and fell on the mat. All the vital parts had been carefully left in the fish, and the wretched creature was still alive.

“Horrible 1” I cried, violently pushing away the table and walking out disgusted, to the great surprise of the people present, who expected me to revel in the deliciousness of the dish.” These hairy people have long beards and mustaches, which, once having attained the age of manhood, they allow to grow and never touch. The women, not being favored by nature with such ornaments, endeavor to make up for the deficiency by tattooing a long mustache on their lips and cheeks.

The Ainu process of tattooing is a painful one. The tattoo marks are usually done with the point of a knife, not with tattooing needles, as by the Japanese. Many incisions are cut nearly parallel to each other. These are then filled with cuttle-fish black. Sometimes smoke-bjack mixed with the blood from the incisions is used instead. On the lips the operation is so painful that it has to be done by installments. It is begun with a small semi-circle on the upper lip when the girl is only two or three years of age, and a few incisions are added every year till she is married, the mustache then reaching nearly to the ears, where at its completion it ends in a point. Both lips are surrounded by it; but not all women are thus marked. Some have no more than a semicircular tattoo on the upper lip; others have an additional semi-circle under the lower lip, and many get tired of the painful process when the tattoo is hardly large, enough to surround their lips. The father of the girl is generally the operator, but occasionally it is the mother who “decorates” the lips and arms of her female offspring. Besides this tattoed mustache, a horizontal line joins the eyebrows, and another line, parallel to it, runs across the forehead. The tattoo could nbt be of a coarser kind. A rough geometrical drawing adorns the arms and hands of women, the pattern of one arm being often different from that of the other.