Without detailing processes, but giving only results, our view of the
origin of the Japanese people and of their religion is in the main as
follows:

The oldest seats of human habitation in the Japanese Archipelago lie
between the thirtieth and thirty-eighth parallels of north latitude.
South of the thirty-fourth parallel, it seems, though without proof of
writing or from tradition, that the Malay type and blood from the far
south probably predominated, with, however, much infusion from the
northern Asian mainland.

Between the thirty-fourth and thirty-sixth parallels, and west of the
one hundred and thirty-eighth meridian of longitude, may be found what
is still the choicest, richest and most populous part of The Country
Between Heaven and Earth. Here the prevailing element was Korean and
Tartar.

To the north and east of this fair country lay the Emishi savages, or
Ainos.

In "the world" within the ken of the prehistoric dwellers in what is now
the three islands, Hondo, Kiushiu and Shikoku, there was no island of
Yezu and no China; while Korea was but slightly known, and the lands
farther westward were unheard of except as the home of distant tribes.

Three distinct lines of tradition point to the near peninsula or the
west coast of Japan as the "Heaven" whence descended the tribe which
finally grew to be dominant. The islands of Tsushima and Iki were the
stepping-stones of the migration out of which rose what may be called