Author Description

Twelve hundred years ago a Chinese historian stated that "On the eastern frontier of the land of Japan there is a barrier of great mountains, beyond which is the land of the Hairy Men." These were the Aino, so named from the word in their own language signifying "man." Many European writers have described them, but hardly any with such opportunities as Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain, Professor of Philology at the Tokyo University, who has taken down from the Ainos the present collection of their tales, and prefaced it with an account of their ways and state of mind.