Sapporo Agricultural College and Modern Japanese Geography, with Particular Reference to Prof. Cutter's Lecture on the Geography of Europe delivered in 1881

Abstract

One of the characteristics of the history of Japanese geography in the modern period is the fact that the establishment of chairs was rather late compared with other sciences. It was not until 1907 that the chair of geography was founded at Kyoto Imperial University, the first one at any Japanese University. Before 1907, a few geographical books were written by non-specialists of geography and they received a warm welcome. Eminent among them were “Jimbun Chirigaku Kogi (Lecture on Human Geography)” (1888) and “Nihon Fukei Ron (On the Beauties of Natural Scenery of Japan and their Implications)” (1894) by S. Shiga, “Chirigaku Ko (Consideration of Geography, The Earth and Man)” (1894) by K. Uchimura, and “Jinsei Chirigaku (Geography of Life)” (1903) by T. Makiguchi.Shiga and Uchimura were graduates of Sapporo Agricultural College, predecessor of the present Hokkaido University. Makiguchi, who was not a graduate of S.A.C., was a teacher at a normal school in Sapporo at the time he wrote his book, from 1897 to 1901. In addition to the above, I. Nitobe, who was a classmate of Uchimura's at S.A.C., introduced Meitzen's concept of the morphology of rural settlements for the first time in Japan in his book “Nogyo Honron (Main Discourse on Agriculture)” (1898). He was one of the promoters of The Research Society for Study of the Native Land, which exerted a considerable influence on the rise of human geographical studies in the 1910's and 20's.We can safely say that Sapporo is one of the birthplaces of modern Japanese geography. However, Sapporo Agricultural College had no department of geography. Geography was not taught even as a separate subject, though S.A.C. had unique characteristics of a liberal art college compared with the other higher educational institutions at that time.At the Library of Hokkaido University, there are collected various notebooks of the lectures delivered by American professors and recorded by Japanese students. Among them, there is found a notebook under the title of “Lecture on the Geography of Europe by Dr. J.C. Cutter, M.D., Notes by S. Ibuki, 1881”. Dr. Cutter was invited as a professor of physiology, comparative anatomy and English literature. In the introductory part of his lecture on English literature, he taught the geography of Europe, which is considered to be one of the earliest lectures on geography delivered at a higher educational institution in modern Japan.In the present article, the Japanese translation of Prof. Cutter's lecture is made with explanatory remarks of the author. The lecture is composed of two parts, chapters 1 to 8, and 9 to 16. The former part contains physical geography of Europe, with an introduction entitled “Physical geography in relation to social conditions and pursuits” in the first chapter. The second part deals with the appearence and diffusion of races and languages in the Eurasian Continent with special reference to Aryan problems.His lecture is highly characterized by the Euro-centric viewpoint which was prevalent in the 19th century. For example, he taught: “Semitic and Aryan languages were for a long time confined to the continent of Asia in which they occupied only small parts. They are now universally distributed. This group of languages have attained the highest degree of perfection. These types of languages are spoken by majority of the white type of the human species. They were introduced into Europe from India by the Aryan invasions or infiltration. From the Aryan mother tongue have sprung all the European languages. They are now used by peoples occupying about 3/15th of the earth's surface. It is the people using these languages who have been the leaders in civilization in historic periods”. This quoted opinion is typical of Europeans in the mid-19th century. It was accepted by some students at S.A.C., and rejected by others.