Torii Ryuzo
Torii Ryûzô was a pioneer in anthropology in Japan, known primarily for his research on the Okinawan people and their relationship to the Japanese.
Born in Tokushima in 1870 to a merchant family, Torii Ryûzô is described as a loner[1] who did not do well in school, and in fact dropped out after twice failing the entrance exams for second grade. He was, however, an avid reader, and thus achieved a degree of education on his own.[1]
Joining the Anthropological Society as an adult, he met Tsuboi Shôgorô, and in 1893 was offered a position sorting reference materials and handling other tasks in the anthropology research department of Tokyo Imperial University.[1]
He became an active anthropologist in his own right, traveling to Okinawa, Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, Siberia, Sakhalin and elsewhere, and producing a considerable amount of scholarship. His book Yûshi izen no Nihon ("Prehistoric Japan") became a bestseller in the Taishô period.[2] He became an assistant professor at Tokyo Imperial University in 1922, and later went on to secure professorships at Kokugakuin and Sophia Universities in Tokyo, as well as serving as an associate professor at Yenching University in Beijing.[3]
Torii's work on Okinawa centered on assertions of the origins of the Okinawan and Japanese people, and the connections or differences between them. Through an examination of pottery, magatama and other artifacts, and of the skin color of people from different islands, he determined that the people of modern-day Yaeyama are descended from Yayoi people who traveled there via/from Kyushu. He distinguished, prehistorically, three peoples active in the region: Ainu, Ryukyuans, and "Japanese proper," making a series of claims as to when and where these peoples were active in Okinawa and in the Japanese mainland.[2]
In the end, he described the modern-day Okinawan people as closely related to the Japanese, citing evidence such as the similarities between artifacts found in Yaeyama, Okinawa and Kyushu, and their dramatic difference from those found in Taiwan, while at the same time categorizing the Okinawans as separate from the "Japanese proper."[4]
References
- Yonetani, Julia. "Ambiguous Traces and the Politics of Sameness: Placing Okinawa in Meiji Japan." Japanese Studies 20:1 (2000). pp15-31.
