Arizona republican., 1904-07-13
Are They of Israel?

! From French sources comes the sug- gestion that the Japanese have a liberal mixture in their veins of the blood Of Israel. The St. James Gazette admits the plausibnity of this guess, and quotes in proof of it the following facts;
 Tn the ancient Shinto ritual of Ja- pan are some curious obsevances of a distinctly Jewish character. The Shinto temples, like the Jewish taber- nacle. have a holy place and a holy or holies a representation of an ark and cistern. The priests, called Kan Nu- shi, priests of the Lord, wear, like the Jewish priests. white linen dresses, turbans, and brooches, in wnich they offer up the mochi or unleavened bread sweet wine and wave the offer ing of the first fruits. Several of the Shinto festivals occur on the same days as the Jewish, many of their ceremon- ies being identical
 The London Spectator adds the fol- lowing particulars:
 They have stood apart in their is- lands for centuries, during which time they have developed, and have grown
 
 of their own They have imbibed, like all other islanders, something from all the forces with which they came in contact. They have passed, like Euro peans, through a heightened feudal period, and feudalism breeds at least courage and the habit of obedience to accepted leaders. They have developed an art Of their own, a folklore of their own, habi, Of political thinking widely distinct in kind from that of any other Asiatic people. What they ex- actly are is still in many respects a mystery to European observers; but it is quite possible that the broad gen eralizatiOns by which we describe con tinents do not fully apply to them that they have become in the process of the centuries during which they have remained In 8 seclusion without a parallel a distinctly separate people, deriving their strength and their weak ness from original sources, and no more Asiatic than they are Europeans"
 To Russian sources we are indebted for the following:
 "The whole ancient feudal constitu- ton of Japan proves to the historian, who happens to be an anthropologist too the relatively great Aryan element in the Japanese stock. But there are other significant signs of the same truth. The Japanese dynasty and the Japanese nO5ility-according to all re- liable accounts-are distinguished in their physical characteristics from the masses Of the Japanese people in a fashion so decided that the partially Aryan origin Of the former at least be- comes sensibly apparent. Types of all most absolutely Aryan complexion are by no means rare. Those who regard human annals as the natural history of mankind will regard the much com mented Japanese capacity for assimila- tion as additional evidence of the pres ence of a strong admixture of Aryan blood''
 Some people ridicule the idea that the blood of Israel can be found among various nations of the earth, widely separated by oceans and continents, but anyone who will take the trouble of going back through the circles of past generations, of which each is mar rower as to numbers than the succeed ing one will find that he cannot pro- ceed through so very many centuries, before he comes to ancestry common to millions of the people now living. Queen Victoria claimed. with a con siderable showing of facts, that she was a descendant of David. Undoubtedly the blood Of Israel, now, is found in most countries of the earth, and it IS, therefore, no wild speculation that leads ethnologists to consider the presence of that no5ls blood in Japan.