일본인의 피는 다른가?

Abstract

The blood type discovered in 1901 was used as a sign of racial characteristics, as it was found that it had hereditary in 1910. In conjunction with eugenics, there was a tendency to perceive that the difference between Westerners‘ blood type characteristics was a criterion for determining superiority and inferiority, leading to research that divided Japanese and their neighbors. This paper examined the ‘scientific’ movement to define the Japanese through blood type as well as the popularity of eugenics discourse in Japan since the late 1920s. Tanemoto Furuhata, a researcher who represented Japanese blood type studies before and after the war, surveyed 300,000 people and measured the results with the biochemical race index made in Germany. Furuhata used the results to emphasize the differences between the surrounding peoples, ignoring the big differences from the West, and argued that the Japanese blood was “different” from the neighbours.
 On the other hand, based on the biochemical race index and the research results of Tanemoto Furuhata, Takeji Furukawa created blood type and personality discourse, while at the same time creating an argument that blood type and personality discourse could measure temperament in a group, that was, an ethnic unit. This paper found that his blood type and personality discourse was closely related to blood type and racist discourse, and that personality discourse was also used as a mechanism to overcome Japanese enthusiasm in racist discourse and discriminate Japanese from other ethnic groups. Takeji Furukawa's blood type and personality discourse had been criticized by academia, but on the contrary, it had received enthusiastic support from the public. It can also be seen that academia in Japan before the war also continued to study blood types with such personality discourse in mind.
 Although Tanemoto Furuhata and Takeji Furukawa had different specialties in forensic science on one side and psychology and pedagogy on the other, the two continued to have something in common in terms of trying to find the characteristics of the Japanese people through blood types. The two used common statistical data, and this paper found that they were similar in the direction of trying to reveal the existence of a unique blood type for Japanese based on a nationalistic perspective in analyzing the data.