Craniometry of the Japanese Skulls of the Final Edo Era

Abstract

The changes in the physique of the Japanese through the historic ages have been traced since about ten years ago in the researches by SUZUKI, one of the present authors, and others. So far as the morphological characteristics of the head and face are concerned the change seems to be more rapid in the period from Edo era (17th-19th c.) to the present time than in the earlier periods in the history or Japan. Therefore, it is certainly one of our major interests to know the physical characteristics of the people who lived in the latter half of 19th century, which is an intermediate epoch between the two eras and is the dawn of modern Japan.Fortunately, the remains of the navy tomb, situated at Shirogane in Tokyo, in which 592 sailors and officers of the early period of the Japanese navy had been buried, were re-buried several years ago, and 191 skulls of them became available for our investigation.According to the document of the tomb, most of the buried persons were born in 1841-70 and died in 1873-90. Many of the officers and warrant officers were derived from samurai familyi n the feudal age, while a majority of the sailors were common people. As these two groups were buried in different parts of the tomb, the skulls could be separated for examination into three subgroups, i. e., (1) officers and warrant officers, (2) sailors, and (3) unknown classes.The results of the craniometry of Shirogane people were compared with those of the peoples of various historic ages (Suzukl et al.) and contemporary Japanese from Tokyo-Yokohama area. In many of the characteristics of the skull, Shiroagne people show an intermediate form between the people of Edo era and contemporary Japanese, and in some other characteristics they are nearer to either the former or the latter. The details are as follows:(1) The group of characteristics in which Shirogane people are nearer to Edo people and show significant differences from contemporary Japanese are the maximum head breadth, transversal arc length, nasal form, profile angle and prominence of the nasal root.(2) The group of characteristics in which Shirogane people are intermediate and show significant differences both from Edo people and contemporary Japanese are the nasal breadth, inter-orbital breadth and alveolar profile angle.(3) The group of characteristics in which Shirogane people show marked differences from Edo people and are rather near to contemporary Japanese are the maximum head length, length-breadth index of the head, length-height index of the head, horizontal circumference of the head, facial breadth and height, facial form, bi-orbital breadth and orbital form.(4) Shirogane people show no significant differences either from Edo people or from contemporary Japanese in the module of the head, basi-bregmatic height, medio-sagittal arc length, middle facial breadth, orbital and nasal height, etc.Accordingly, it is probable that the changes in characteristics have not occurred simultaneously in all of them but in the order of the groups of characteristics (3), (2) and (1).The fact that there are some differences in measurement values between the officers and the sailors, buried in different parts of the tomb, is probably due to the difference between two social classes in the feudal age, the samurai and the common people. The homologous phenomenon has already been found in the study of Tsushima islanders (IKEDA et al.), in which the samurais seem to have more progressive characteristics than the common people.