Japanese Anthropological Research on Africa

Abstract

Contemporary scholarship on Africa by Japanese anthropologists is vital, diverse, and expanding. This brief review surveys the development of anthropological research on Africa by Japanese scholars and is followed by a compilation of Japanese publications on Africa in English and French. Although some observations about Japanese anthropological research in Africa will be offered, the goal is primarily to inform American Africanists of this Japanese scholarship and the contexts within which it has developed rather than to attempt a critical appraisal. It is not commonly known among western scholars that anthropology was formally established in Japan over one hundred years ago. The Anthropological Society of Tokyo (now the Anthropological Society of Japan) was established in 1884 by Shogoro Tsuboi, and two years later its journal Zinruigaku Zassi was first published. In 1893 Tsuboi was appointed the first professor of anthropology at the University of Tokyo. The Linguistic Society of Japan was formed in 1896 (although linguistics had been taught at the University of Tokyo for a decade), the same year that the Archaeology Society of Japan was established. As Takao Sofue notes, because anthropology at the University of Tokyo developed primarily as physical anthropology, ethnology (only termed cultural anthropology after World War II) emerged later and with the influence of Japanese folklorists (1962: 173-75; see also Yamaguchi and Nagashima, 1987). An informal group of scholars began meeting in 1928. Their name, the APE Circle (standing for Anthropology, Prehistory, and Ethnology), represented their desire to pursue a broader study of humans. In 1934 they formally created the Japanese Society of Ethnology and their journal Minzokugaku kenkyu appeared in the following year. The Folklore Society of Japan also was established in 1935.