Débats autour des fouilles archéologiques à Osaka, 1917-1920

Abstract

Modern anthropology and archaeology appear in Japan at the end of the xixth century, in the context of state modernization. Centered on the Imperial university of Tokyo and on the Imperial Museum, the scholars of this scientific field consider the Japanese settlement as the result of an invasion of the archipelago : the Japanese would have repulsed the Ainos to the north, putting an end to the prehistoric times. After the chair of Archaeology has been created, at the Imperial university of Kyoto, a new group of scholars centered on Hamada Kôsaku, maintain on the contrary that the Japanese settlement does possess some continuity with that of the prehistoric times, and imagine « Japanese prehistoric times » upon the archipelago. In 1917-1919, this new group of anthropologists and archaeologists rally other scholars of the provinces, like the Imperial university of Tôhoku, and oppose the capital's academism about the interpretation of the excavations in the site of Ko, in the suburbs of Osaka. The « Kyoto School » try to re-think the accepted paradigm of the alternance of the settlement, and substitute for a continuist interpretation of the Japanese people on the archipelago. This new discourse, opposed to the predominant one of the capital, does not have large echoes. In fact, at the same time, the annexionnism does maintain the idea of the common origins of Japanese and Korean, according to which the Japanese's origins are on the continent.