午夜剧场

It was by chance that I became involved with Minakata Kumagusu. After moving from the Faculty of Letters at Mita to graduate school in Kyoto, I intended to study the history of tourism. However, my academic advisor was involved in a survey of 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. In his former residence in Tanabe City, Wakayama Prefecture, where he spent the latter half of his life, his belongings remained almost untouched, and full-scale research only began in the mid-1990s. When I first visited in 2001, the storehouse Kumagusu 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 heavy, stifling air inside that storehouse. Among those items were journals such as "Nature" and "Notes and Queries," which are the subject of this book, and their pages were densely covered with Kumagusu's handwritten notes.

Kumagusu had 51 English papers published in "Nature," which is said to be the highest number in history. From the end of the 19th century, when he began submitting papers in London, "Nature" was known as the world's leading scientific journal. Why were so many papers able to be published there? What kind of value did the Western academic world find in Kumagusu?

In this book, I attempted an approach from the historical perspective of contemporary Britain. I focused particularly on the aspect of the journal. "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, leading 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.

Masaki Shimura

午夜剧场 Press

296 pages, 4,000 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.