This land, the great Dai Nippon -- corrupted into Japan -- is inhabited by the sunniest people on our planet. Their manners, customs, amusements. language, religion, history, poetry, art, fiction all give us pictures of a nation simple, joyous, imaginative, artistic, and neither too laborious, nor too superstitiously religious.
But when we inquire who are they, when come they, what attracted them to these sunny isles, when settled they there, and how are they related to us and to the rest of our Asiatic Cousins -- then we find ourselves groping in the dark.
To judge from their mental and physical characteristics, the Japanese seem allied to several distinct races. The Mongolian type is everywhere prevalent; the oblique eyes are common among the aristocracy, who indeed are of pure Mongolian descent; this form of the eye is held as a distinguishing mark of beauty. Nevertheless there are faces among them strictly Semitic; and there are others of the Aryan type.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
