Minakata Kumagusu's London: International Academic Journals and the Progress of Modern Science

2020/04/16

It was by chance that I became involved with Minakata Kumagusu. After moving from the Faculty of Letters in Mita to graduate school in Kyoto, I intended to study the history of tourism. However, my academic advisor was involved in researching Kumagusu's materials, and I was mobilized as an assistant.

Kumagusu is known as a biologist and folklorist who was active from the Meiji era to the early Showa era. His personal effects remained almost untouched in his former residence in Tanabe City, Wakayama Prefecture, where he spent the latter half of his life, and full-scale research only began in the mid-1990s. When I first visited in 2001, the storehouse that Kumagusu had used as a specimen room and library was still cluttered with biological specimens preserved in formalin and books from all times and places. I can still never forget the musty air floating inside the storehouse. Among them were journals such as Nature and Notes and Queries, which are discussed in this book, and the pages were filled with Kumagusu's handwritten notes.

Kumagusu published 51 English-language papers in Nature, which is said to be the highest number in history. Since the late 19th century, when he began submitting papers from London, Nature has been known as the world's leading scientific journal. Why were so many of his papers able to be published there? What kind of value did the Western academic world find in Kumagusu?

In this book, I have attempted an approach from the historical perspective of contemporary Britain. In particular, I focused on the aspect of journals. Nature was a commercial magazine and functioned as a forum for discussion where anyone could freely contribute. This significantly expanded the number of participants in "science." Furthermore, because it was published as a weekly magazine, discussions progressed week by week, and the speed of scientific development increased remarkably. As a result, Nature became a fundamental apparatus supporting modern science.

On the other hand, Notes and Queries functioned as a place for the accumulation of knowledge and led to the compilation of works such as the Oxford English Dictionary.

However, under the rapidly expanding global situation of the time, there were things that Western human resources alone could not provide, and Kumagusu's activities became necessary. For details on the role Kumagusu played, please pick up a copy of this book.

Minakata Kumagusu's London: International Academic Journals and the Progress of Modern Science

Masaki Shimura

Keio University Press

296 pages, 4,000 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.