Minakata Kumagusu in London: Challenging Eurocentrism in the pages of Nature

Lightman, Bernard and Meade, Ruselle ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1428-3489 2023. Minakata Kumagusu in London: Challenging Eurocentrism in the pages of Nature. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 10.1098/rsnr.2023.0053

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Abstract

The Japanese biologist and ethnologist Minakata Kumagusu has achieved a degree of celebrity in Japan for being the first Asian contributor to the British scientific magazine Nature. However, although Minakata's many contributions to Nature from 1893 to 1914 provided British readers with rare insight into Asian scientific achievements, he is seldom discussed in western history of science scholarship. In this article we examine Minakata’s Nature articles to gain insight into how his encounter with the eurocentrism of British culture while living in London from 1892 to 1900 affected his intellectual development. We argue that having his articles published in Nature to gain scientific recognition was not Mintakata’s real goal. Rather, we demonstrate that his Nature articles were connected to a larger project that inspired Minakata for much of his life, a descriptive sociology of Japan. For this descriptive sociology, Minakata wished to construct a new form of historical analysis that drew on past Asian sources, as well as anthropological and sociological perspectives learned from British philosopher of evolution Herbert Spencer and British anthropologists such as Edward Clodd, Edward Tylor and Andrew Lang. Minakata’s writings reveal him to be much more than a conduit of information about Asia, but as a pioneering intellectual who sought to demonstrate how Asian science connected to, and even complemented, western science.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Modern Languages
Publisher:	The Royal Society
ISSN:	0035-9149
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	12 September 2023
Date of Acceptance:	23 August 2023
Last Modified:	24 Nov 2024 23:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/162404

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