Physiological Observations--Pulse-beat and Respiration--Exposure--Odour
of the Ainu--The Five Senses.
The following physiological remarks are mostly from observations made on
Ainu of the Upper Tokachi district, the natives of which have had no
communication with Europeans and little with Japanese previous to my own
visit to them. Observations made on the semi-civilised Ainu of Volcano
Bay and Piratori, on those of the north-east and west coasts, and the
Ishikari River, as well as on half-castes of different districts, have
been taken into consideration.
Owing to the lack of a clinical thermometer and other instruments, I,
unfortunately, was not able to ascertain the normal temperature of the
body; nor could I get any very accurate observations as to the frequency
of the pulse-beat, owing to the miserable condition of my watch and the
difficult task of getting natives to sit perfectly still while their
pulse was felt. A superstitious fear, too, that some evil would befall
them accelerated the pulsations, and they invariably moved away rubbing
the spot I had touched on their wrist. Though I could not count the
exact number of pulsations to a minute, the movement of the pulse was as
a rule slow and rather weak. Respirations were fourteen to seventeen to
a minute in men, and about sixteen to twenty in women, and the
respiratory movements were similar in both sexes, viz., costal breathing
was predominant. In half-castes I have sometimes noticed abdominal
breathing.
The Ainu not only bear cold well, but prefer it to heat, though, indeed,
their country is never very hot. The sun's rays have no fascination for
them, as with so many other races; and I have seldom seen Ainu basking
in the sun for purely physical pleasure, although they go about with
uncovered heads, and do not seem to suffer any ill effects from the
practice. The Ainu of Piratori wear Japanese hats of wicker-work; and
others, especially women, tie round their head a Japanese towel--a
fashion, as we have seen, also adopted from the Japanese. With this
head-dress the crown of the head is left uncovered.
The Ainu are not massively formed, but they are sturdy, and, as we have
seen, can bear almost any amount of privation as regards food and drink.
Sleep is necessary to them, and they require a great deal to be in
anything like good condition. The sleeping hours are generally from an
hour or so after sunset to sunrise; but during the day they are often
drowsy, and turn in to have a siesta after food and exercise. In men the
voice is soft and deep; shriller but still gentle in women. The Ainu
seldom perspire, partly because the pores of their skin are blocked with
dirt; partly because their long hair absorbs a great quantity of
natural moisture; and mostly because they do not drink much except when
they can get hold of intoxicants.
The skin is greasy--the natural result of many years of an unwashed
existence; and this gives to the hairy people a peculiar and strong
odour, much resembling that of monkeys. Many are familiar with the
peculiar odour of an uncleaned monkey's cage, and the same, intensified
a thousand times, characterises an Ainu village. Hundreds of yards off
you can distinctly smell out a village, or if the wind is blowing
towards you, that peculiar odour is perceptible for a full half-mile.
Although the sense of smell is acute in the Ainu--for they sometimes
employ it in tracking animals--they are not aware of their own strong
odour; but they are quick in distinguishing that of other races. I have
several times heard Ainu of the coast remark that I possessed a
different odour from that of the Japanese; but they could neither define
it nor assimilate it to that of any animal they knew, though several of
them one day held a lengthy pow-wow about it; and in the interest of
anthropology I submitted to the unpleasant process of being smelt all
over by them. The Chinese unanimously assert that Europeans smell like
sheep, and they say this is the reason we constantly wash and bathe,
being aware of our infirmity, and doing our best to diminish it by soap
and water. We ourselves attribute to Jews one distinct odour, and yet
another to the Russians; not to speak of those belonging to the negroes,
the Chinese, and, in fact, all other nations. Thus, the odour has some
importance in the classification of peoples, as it largely depends on
the kind of food as well as the personal habits of a race. Meat-eaters
smell differently from fish-eaters, and these again from vegetarians. As
regards the Ainu, their filthy habits of course increase their
offensiveness, while bodily exercise renders them intolerable. The
Japanese recognise the Ainu odour as a distinguishing mark of the race,
and Japanese fishermen have often said to me, "_Aino shto taihen
kusai_"; "_Saru_," or else "_Kumma onaji koto_"--"Ainu men smell bad,
just like a monkey or a bear."
As an Ainu grows older this peculiarity increases. The weaker sex is
generally more "strongly scented" than are the men, owing to the fact
that women wear skins and rough cloth rags nearly all the year round,
while in summer the men go about either entirely naked, or very lightly
clad.
On the north-east coast of Yezo and in Shikotan (Kurile Islands) I saw
some Ainu who, contrary to the rule, had red hair, and their animal
odour was terribly offensive. The Ainu do not use any unguents like
palm-oil, cocoanut-oil, or the like, by which the unpleasantness of
certain African tribes and Eastern peoples is to be accounted for. What
they have is natural and national, and due to their food, habits, and
race alone.
The Ainu have no partiality or dislike for any particular scents, and
their sense of smell shows itself mainly in their power of tracking game
or animals, as was said before. The same might be said of the sense of
"touch," which they seldom apply practically, notwithstanding their
sensitiveness in certain parts of the body, especially under the
arm-pits and on each side of the spinal column and the back of the
head--just those parts which in most animals are the most sensitive; but
they have no developed sense of touch in their finger-tips, as with
civilised nations.
Most Ainu find it difficult to declare which is the heavier of two not
very unequal weights. Differences in the temperature of two bodies, and
in the smoothness or texture of two surfaces, are also extremely
difficult for them to define, while it is easy for them to judge of
weights and texture by eyesight. The palms of the hands, which are so
sensitive with us, owing to the papillæ being more thickly studded there
than in other parts of the body, are less intelligently sensitive with
the Ainu. When they touch cold or hot objects they feel pain, but not
difference of temperature, as when with us a wound is touched it makes
little difference whether it is by something hot or cold, it is simply
pain, and not discrimination. Their lips, as well as the tip of the
tongue, are slightly more sensitive; the lower lip more so than the
upper. I was never able to determine the relative sensibility of the
sensitive parts of the Ainu body, as my experiments either caused anger
and impatience, or hilarity and mockery. If the first, the observations
had to be stopped before they were well begun; if the second, beyond the
general results which I have quoted, the answers were mere guesswork on
their part, and therefore not worth recording. Most of my observations
are based on experiments made while the men were unaware that they were
observed at all. Often, when asleep, I have touched them on the soles of
the feet and the palms of the hands without causing them to awake, while
when touched on the lower lip or in the lumbar region they invariably
woke up startled. One day I tried this experiment on an Ainu who was
sleeping on his back, with his mouth wide open. I touched his tongue
with a well-sharpened lead-pencil, and the effect was subitaneous; more
so than on either the lips or the lumbar region. The skin directly over
the spine was dull, but the ears showed a certain amount of sensibility.
The sense of "taste," which is a mere modification of the sense of
touch, is also dull, although naturally, when stimulated by very acid or
bitter substances, it produced distinct impressions. Even with
ourselves, though more perfected than the sense of smell--which,
however, often comes to its assistance--few can boast of having the
sense of taste very acute. In our lower classes an extraordinary amount
of salt, mustard, pepper, or sugar is needed before they can call their
food "tasty," whereas a person of more refined education will detect the
lack or excess of even the smallest portion. Over-stimulation of the
lingual nerves and extremes of heat or cold deaden the sensibility of
the tongue, palate, and fauces, and destroy the power of distinguishing
flavours; bad digestion also frequently affects the organs of taste.
From this we may argue, then, that the sense of taste, though born in
one, has to be cultivated before it is brought to any degree of
refinement. The Ainu not only do not possess this acquired refinement,
but, through monotony of food, learn only one kind of flavour, and
cannot distinguish differences. Thus, as many labourers in our country
would not find any difference between a beef-steak slightly underdone
and one over-cooked, so an Ainu finds no difference whatever between a
piece of salmon properly dried and one perfectly rotten. In this respect
the Ainu are far below beasts.
In tribes of natives like the Ainu, who have lived an adventurous life,
mostly in the open air, it is but natural that the two senses of "sight"
and "hearing" should be more developed than those of "touch," "smell"
and "taste;" as life itself depends mostly on their accuracy and
acuteness. The Ainu possess good sight. Inflammation of the eyes is very
common among their children, owing to their filthy condition; but it
seldom affects their permanent sight; very few Ainu suffer either from
myopy or cataract, or other eye affections such as are frequent among
civilised and more studious nations. In very warm climates, where the
sun is powerful and the light strong, the eyes are generally shielded by
specially long and thick eyelashes and eyebrows, which last prevent the
sweat from running down the forehead into the orbit; but, strange to
say, the Ainu, who are a northern race, and have always lived in cold
climates, have eyelashes even longer and thicker than any race of people
in tropical climates. The iris is of a somewhat greyish tint, sometimes
traversed with brown shades. The white of the eye is less pearly than
with Caucasian races, and the eyes, shaded as they are by long eyelashes
and heavy eyelids, seem to possess all the qualities necessary for
abnormally long vision. And this we find to be the case, for the Ainu
can distinguish objects a long way off, but they are dense as to
minutiæ. In other words, the eye of an Ainu is ready to receive an
impression, but very slow in transmitting to the brain the impression
received.
As we have seen, they cannot reproduce the "human form divine," or any
faithful representation of anything animate or inanimate which they have
seen. They see _en gros_; thus, should an Ainu's attention be drawn to
some very distant object rapidly moving on the shore, he will at once
say that it is a horse, because he knows that the chances are it is a
horse, but he will be unable to describe its colour, and whether
cantering or galloping, saddled or unsaddled, by a single glance at the
horse, unless his attention is called to each particular detail, when he
will answer each question correctly enough. The Ainu vision is then
strong, but the brain is not quick in response. Testing their sight by
"test dots," as used in the British Army, was not a success, greatly
owing to their inability to count and the inaccuracy of their answers.
The most fully-developed sense in the hairy people is, in my opinion,
that of hearing. Distant sounds are clearly recognised and specified,
and they are also aware that by placing one ear near the ground, far-off
sounds of horse's hoofs and the like can be clearly distinguished. The
ticking of a Waterbury watch could be heard by Ainu at a distance of
twenty and twenty-two feet, while I could only hear it nineteen feet
away. I was often struck by the quickness with which they detected the
tick-tack even when the watch was in my pocket, and they were six or
eight feet away. The unusual sound fixed their attention and made them
curious as to the cause, and they showed a childish kind of surprise and
delight when the watch was produced and passed round among them, each
one being allowed to enjoy his share of the ticking.
Resuming these few remarks on the characteristic points of Ainu senses,
my readers will probably have noticed certain facts which strongly
support Darwin's theory of evolution, and the hairy arboreal ancestor
with pointed ears from which the races of men are descended.
[Illustration: TROPHY OF BEARS' SKULLS.]