skip to content
Home

Darwin Correspondence Project

From W. F. Segrave   28 May 1875

British Consulate Stockholm

28 May 1875

Dear Sir

The Italian Minister here, who served for some time in Japan, informs me that the Inhabitants of the Island of Saghalien, lately ceded to Russia, are covered with hair, even as the gorilla,1

He tells me that this interesting people are supposed to be the remnant of the aboriginal tribes who inhabited Japan before the advent of its present population.2

Only a small remnant now survive who will probably not long outlive Russian improvements.3

I have no means of testing the accuracy of Mons dela Tours information, and indeed, I may say that I am disposed to question it, as I cannot at this moment call to mind that you have noticed the fact, if fact it be, in any of your works.

If there be any foundation for the statement, I am sure that you will agree with me that it is of the highest interest and importance from a scientific point of view, and well worthy of investigation

I therefore make no apology for bringing the subject to your notice and Remain | Dear Sir | Your faithful servt | W. F. Segrave | H.M. Counsul

Footnotes

1
The Italian minister was Comte Vittorio Sallier de la Tour. The Ainu people of the Island of Saghalien, now known as Sakhalin island, were renowned for their hairiness (Batchelor 1892, pp. 17–18; Savage Landor 1893, pp. 85, 88, 142, and 145); in Descent 2d ed., pp. 601–2, CD suggested that greater hairiness in certain races might be due to reversion. The Russians had established a penal colony in northern Sakhalin in 1857, but the Japanese held the southern part until August 1875, when, with the signing of the Treaty of Saint Petersburg (the Russo-Japanese Sakhalin, Kuriles Exchange Treaty), Russia gained sovereignty over all of Sakhalin in exchange for the Kurile Islands (Gentes 2002).
2
In the early part of the nineteenth century, the Japanese had subjected the Ainu to forced labour and resettlement; from the 1850s, they attempted to integrate them into Japanese culture. This policy of assimilation transformed the Ainu from barbarians into a ‘primitive race’, doomed to die out because it was unable to progress to higher levels of civilisation (Siddle 1997, 22–3).
3
In 1875, following the Treaty of Saint Petersburg, 841 Ainu from southern Sakhalin were removed by the Japanese to the island of Hokkaido, but many others remained on Sakhalin under Russian rule. Russia appropriated Ainu land on Sakhalin for agriculture in the hope of making their penal colony self-sufficient. See Howell 2005, pp. 186–9.

Bibliography

Batchelor, John. 1892. The Ainu of Japan: the religion, superstitions, and general history of the hairy aborigines of Japan. London: The Religious Tract Society.

Descent 2d ed.: The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. By Charles Darwin. 2d edition. London: John Murray. 1874.

Gentes, Andrew A. 2002. The insititution of Russia’s Sakhalin policy, from 1868 to 1875. Journal of Asian History 36: 1–31.

Howell, David L. 2005. Geographies of identity in nineteenth-century Japan. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

Savage Landor, Arnold Henry. 1893. Alone with the hairy Ainu, or, 3800 miles of a pack saddle in Yezo and a cruise to the Kurile Islands. London: John Murray.

Siddle, Richard. 1997. Ainu: indigenous people of Japan. In Japan’s minorities: the illusion of homogeniety, edited by Michael Weiner. London and New York: Routledge.

Summary

Has heard from Italian minister that the inhabitants of the Japanese island of Saghalien [Sakhalin], lately ceded to Russia, have their bodies covered with hair, like the gorilla, and are supposedly the remnant of the aboriginal population of the Japanese islands.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-9999
From
William Francis Segrave
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
British Consulate, Stockholm
Source of text
DAR 177: 131
Physical description
ALS 3pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9999,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9999.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23

letter

Darwin Correspondence Project
darwin@lib.cam.ac.uk

© University of Cambridge 2022

Copyright declaration

Privacy policy

Website by Surface Impression

 

Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge