Akira Komiya

Terada Torahiko (1878-1935) was a physicist who played an important role in developing the study of physics in modern Japan. He published not only many scientific papers in the field of geophysics and experimental physics, but also many other essays both on scientific and literary subjects. He is today appreciated as a creater of the "scientific essay" genre in Japan. In the history of Japnanese literature, he is known as a younger friend of Natsume Soseki (1867-1916). In I Am a Cat, one of Soseki's earliest works, written in 19041906, there is a character called "Mizushima Kangetsu", a young physicist who studies such "peculiar" themes as "Mechanical Studies on Hanging" and "The Effects of Ultraviolet-rays on Electrical Conductivities of Frog's Eyeballs". It was said as soon as the work was published that the "model" for "Kangetsu" was Terada Torahiko. We can note some facts on this point. In the first place, both "Kangetsu" and Torahiko share the same birthplace and other biographical data. Secondly, a study of the theme "On Hanging" had really been published in The Philosophical Magazine in 1866 by a British physicist, Rev. Samuel Haughton. It was Terada Torahiko who told Soseki about this article. Finally, Torahiko received a doctorate in 1908 for "Acoustical Investigation of the Japanese Bamboo Pipe , Syakuhati", which one might regard as a "peculiar" theme. We are able to find in the correspondence of Torahiko and "Kangetsu" some important features of Terada Torahiko's works. One of those features, I think, is possibly that he had an intention to develop physics beyond the bounds of modern western thought.

Adachi Buntaro (1865-1945) was an anthropologist whose life spanned the entire prewar period of modern Japan. He authored several books on anatomy which dealt with the arteries and veins of the Japasese as a distinct people. Das Arteriensystem der Japaner (The Arterial System of the Japenese) published in 1928, and Das Venesystem der Japaner (The Venial System of the Japanese), 1933, are his main works. In these books, Adachi endeavoured to map out the entire circulatory system of the Japanese. Twenty years of extensive anatomical research were required to produce these books. Why did he make a such thoroughgoing investigation of this subject? We can see in this point a response of a modern Japanese to the racialist attitude that was prominent in the physical anthropology of the west in the 19th Century, particularly in the racially based study of human skulls conducted by two French anthropologists : Pierre Paul Broca (1824-1888) and Jean Louis Quatrefages (1810-1892). The intention of Adachi Buntaro was not to demonstrate that the bodies of Europeans and Americans and those of Japanese were the same, but to prove that while they were unmistakably different in detail, nevertheless functionally equal as physical system. He opposed the established theory of racial difference in anthropology at that time by means of applying more strictly the scientific methods of the discipline to his subject. The name of Adachi Buntaro is largely unknown today, but I think he should receive wider recognition for the exemplary posture he adopted as a Japanese researcher approaching the problem of race in a modern world where Europeans and Americans predominated. The case of Adachi illustrates well that consciousness of race is a key when we want to understand the thoughts and the behavior of those who lived in early modern Japan.