I wouldn't blame some readers for assuming that an article about foreign borrowings in these times of economic crisis would delve into the subprimal world of international finance. But I write this week and next not about leverage but linguistics.
While the overwhelming majority of Japanese words that have their origin in gairaigo (外来語, words imported from other languages) are English ones, this was not always the case. Languages other than English made early and heavy inroads into Japanese, and it is these that I focus on here (please note that words from Chinese, great in number, are beyond the scope of this piece.)
Among the earliest foreign imports into the Japanese language were no doubt words from Ainu and Sanskrit. The Ainu gave the Japanese sake (鮭, salmon; not 酒, rice wine, which they presumably concocted themselves) and rakko (ラッコ, otter). As for Sanskrit, many Buddhist terms in Japanese originate in that language, such as daruma (ダルマ), for "dharma."