Tadao Umesao
Encyclopedia
was a Japanese
anthropologist. A professor for decades at Kyoto University
, he was also among the founders and the director-general of National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka
, Japan
. A number of Umesao's theories were influential on anthropologists, and his work was also well known among the general population of Japan.
, Japan. In 1943, he graduated from the Faculty of Science at Kyoto University. Umesao was initially educated as an animal ecologist, but as he conducted fieldwork with nomads in the steppe
s of Mongolia
from 1944 to 1946, his interest shifted from animals to humans. He served as an assistant professor on the Faculty of Polytechnics at Osaka City University
from 1949, achieving his doctoral degree from Kyoto University in 1961. In 1965, he took a position with his alma mater
. In 1986, Umesao lost his eyesight due to a viral infection. He continued to write by dictation and to serve his profession. On his retirement in 1993, he was named professor emeritus at Kyoto University as well as at the National Museum of Ethnology. He died in 2010 at the age of 90.
, Pakistan
and India
, shattering his conventional dualistic image of the continent consisting of “Seiyo” (Occident) and “Toyo” (Orient
), and inspiring in him the notion of the “Chuyo” (Mediant, or Middle world). These reflections led to the paper “Introduction to the Ecological Conception of the History of Civilizations” (1957), which ten years later was expanded into a book, An Ecological View of History (1967).
In his theory, he divides the Eurasia
n continent into three major ecological zones: Japan, the Mediant, and Western Europe. He argues that Japan
and Western Europe
, because of their similar environmental and socio-historical conditions on the peripheries of imperial and civilizational centers, are analogous civilizations that evolved in parallel and autonomously. This view was influential for historians and anthropologists, but also popularly for the post-war generation of Japanese
, as a counter model to the euro-centric
conception of history, where Japan would have achieved modernization
only through Western influences.
societies in Tanzania
(1963–64) and in Libya
(1968) as well. Whereas Euro-American pastoral anthropologists tended to concentrate their attention mainly on people, Umesao’s approach differed in the way he focused on the interaction between animals and humans. The outcome of his research, The World of Hunting and Nomadism (1976), influenced subsequent Japanese pastoral anthropologists. For his contribution to the study of nomads, he was honored as a Person of Cultural Merit in Mongolia in 1998.
on the increasing importance of “information” as a social phenomenon, combining concepts of animal embryology
and civilization history. In his “Information Industry Theory: Dawn of the Coming Era of the Ectodermal Industry” (1963), he claimed that following the agricultural age (that is comparable to the endodermic stage in embryology where the digestive system is formed) and the industrial age (which is the mesodermic stage where the bones, muscles and circulatory system appear), a new society will form around the information industry
. He argued that with the development of mass media
and computers, information will become an important economic factor, and that this was equivalent to the ectodermal stage where the brain, nerves and sense organs come to function. He was thus one of the earliest to predict the coming of the Information Age
. His pioneering contribution was recognized with the C & C Prize funded by the NEC Corporation in 2002.
held in Osaka
, Umesao was instrumental in the founding of the National Museum of Ethnology that opened in the Osaka Expo grounds in 1977. Appointed as head of the museum’s preparatory office in 1974, he set forth his team of young scholars on ethnological expeditions across the globe assembling documentary materials and artifacts. He remained as the director-general of the museum until his retirement in 1993, continuing as museum’s special advisor until his death in 2010.
It was upon the initiative of Dr. Umesao that the museum housed a series of international symposia on “Civilization Studies” between 1983 and 1998, funded by the Taniguchi Foundation. This was an international joint research project run in cooperation with prominent Japanologists, Josef Kreiner (Bonn University) and Harumi Befu (Stanford University). Scholars from Eurasia and North America were invited to discuss key issues concerning the Japanese civilization in the modern world, with the goal of reconfiguring the history of civilizations from a Japanese perspective. Publications followed in Japanese and English.
in Paris, an offer seldom presented to foreign scholars. He subsequently received the title of Commandeur of Ordre des Palmes académiques in 1988 from the French government.
Publications in other languages:
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
anthropologist. A professor for decades at Kyoto University
Kyoto University
, or is a national university located in Kyoto, Japan. It is the second oldest Japanese university, and formerly one of Japan's Imperial Universities.- History :...
, he was also among the founders and the director-general of National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. A number of Umesao's theories were influential on anthropologists, and his work was also well known among the general population of Japan.
Personal life
Tadao Umesao was born in 1920 in KyotoKyoto
is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...
, Japan. In 1943, he graduated from the Faculty of Science at Kyoto University. Umesao was initially educated as an animal ecologist, but as he conducted fieldwork with nomads in the steppe
Steppe
In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...
s of Mongolia
Mongolia
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...
from 1944 to 1946, his interest shifted from animals to humans. He served as an assistant professor on the Faculty of Polytechnics at Osaka City University
Osaka City University
, abbreviated to , is a public university in Japan. It is located in Sumiyoshi-ku, Osaka City.- History :OCU's predecessor was founded in 1880, as the Osaka Commercial Training Institute with donations by local merchants. It developed into Osaka Commercial School in 1885, then was municipalized in...
from 1949, achieving his doctoral degree from Kyoto University in 1961. In 1965, he took a position with his alma mater
Alma mater
Alma mater , pronounced ), was used in ancient Rome as a title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele, and in Christianity for the Virgin Mary.-General term:...
. In 1986, Umesao lost his eyesight due to a viral infection. He continued to write by dictation and to serve his profession. On his retirement in 1993, he was named professor emeritus at Kyoto University as well as at the National Museum of Ethnology. He died in 2010 at the age of 90.
The three ecological zones
In 1955, Umesao traveled through AfghanistanAfghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, shattering his conventional dualistic image of the continent consisting of “Seiyo” (Occident) and “Toyo” (Orient
Orient
The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym that means various parts of Asia.- Derivation :...
), and inspiring in him the notion of the “Chuyo” (Mediant, or Middle world). These reflections led to the paper “Introduction to the Ecological Conception of the History of Civilizations” (1957), which ten years later was expanded into a book, An Ecological View of History (1967).
In his theory, he divides the Eurasia
Eurasia
Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...
n continent into three major ecological zones: Japan, the Mediant, and Western Europe. He argues that Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
, because of their similar environmental and socio-historical conditions on the peripheries of imperial and civilizational centers, are analogous civilizations that evolved in parallel and autonomously. This view was influential for historians and anthropologists, but also popularly for the post-war generation of Japanese
Postwar Japan
Postwar Japan refers to the period in Japanese history immediately following the end of World War II in 1945 to the present day. Before and during the war Japan was known as an empire but is now officially the .-Occupation and democratization:...
, as a counter model to the euro-centric
Eurocentrism
Eurocentrism is the practice of viewing the world from a European perspective and with an implied belief, either consciously or subconsciously, in the preeminence of European culture...
conception of history, where Japan would have achieved modernization
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
only through Western influences.
Comparative study of pastoral societies
He conducted studies on pastoralPastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
societies in Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
(1963–64) and in Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
(1968) as well. Whereas Euro-American pastoral anthropologists tended to concentrate their attention mainly on people, Umesao’s approach differed in the way he focused on the interaction between animals and humans. The outcome of his research, The World of Hunting and Nomadism (1976), influenced subsequent Japanese pastoral anthropologists. For his contribution to the study of nomads, he was honored as a Person of Cultural Merit in Mongolia in 1998.
Information industry
Umesao also developed a unique cultural theoryCulture theory
Culture theory is the branch of anthropology and semiotics that seeks to define the heuristic concept of culture in operational and/or scientific terms....
on the increasing importance of “information” as a social phenomenon, combining concepts of animal embryology
Embryology
Embryology is a science which is about the development of an embryo from the fertilization of the ovum to the fetus stage...
and civilization history. In his “Information Industry Theory: Dawn of the Coming Era of the Ectodermal Industry” (1963), he claimed that following the agricultural age (that is comparable to the endodermic stage in embryology where the digestive system is formed) and the industrial age (which is the mesodermic stage where the bones, muscles and circulatory system appear), a new society will form around the information industry
Information industry
The information industry or information industries are industries that are information intensive in one way or the other. It is considered one of the most important economic sectors for a variety of reasons....
. He argued that with the development of mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
and computers, information will become an important economic factor, and that this was equivalent to the ectodermal stage where the brain, nerves and sense organs come to function. He was thus one of the earliest to predict the coming of the Information Age
Information Age
The Information Age, also commonly known as the Computer Age or Digital Age, is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously...
. His pioneering contribution was recognized with the C & C Prize funded by the NEC Corporation in 2002.
Popular press
Umesao's work was not limited to the theoretical side of scholarship. The Art of Intellectual Production (1969) was a guide on how to collect and record information, arrange them in a logical order, and compose the results of research in readable Japanese. It was a practical manual on information processing before the diffusion of computers, and it became a longtime best-seller. Many of his writings appeared in non-academic journals or as paperbacks, accessible to the general public.National Museum of Ethnology
After his involvement in organizing the World Exposition of 1970Expo '70
was a World's Fair held in Suita, Osaka, Japan between March 15 and September 13, 1970. The theme of the Expo was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese Expo '70 is often referred to as Ōsaka Banpaku...
held in Osaka
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
, Umesao was instrumental in the founding of the National Museum of Ethnology that opened in the Osaka Expo grounds in 1977. Appointed as head of the museum’s preparatory office in 1974, he set forth his team of young scholars on ethnological expeditions across the globe assembling documentary materials and artifacts. He remained as the director-general of the museum until his retirement in 1993, continuing as museum’s special advisor until his death in 2010.
It was upon the initiative of Dr. Umesao that the museum housed a series of international symposia on “Civilization Studies” between 1983 and 1998, funded by the Taniguchi Foundation. This was an international joint research project run in cooperation with prominent Japanologists, Josef Kreiner (Bonn University) and Harumi Befu (Stanford University). Scholars from Eurasia and North America were invited to discuss key issues concerning the Japanese civilization in the modern world, with the goal of reconfiguring the history of civilizations from a Japanese perspective. Publications followed in Japanese and English.
International dissemination
Umesao’s most influential work was not accessible in English until only recently. However, his writings have been translated into French, German, Italian, Chinese, Mongolian, Esperanto, and Vietnamese. He has held lectures in Korea, U.S.A, Brazil, and France. He was invited in 1984 to give a lecture series at the Collège de FranceCollège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
in Paris, an offer seldom presented to foreign scholars. He subsequently received the title of Commandeur of Ordre des Palmes académiques in 1988 from the French government.
Publications
Major Publications in Japanese- 1956 Exploration to the Moghols in Afghanistan, Iwanami Shoten
- 1967 Ecological Conception of the History of Civilizations, Chuo Koron-sha
- 1969 The Art of Intellectual Production, Iwanami Shoten
- 1974 The Japanese in the Global Age, Chuo Koron-sha
- 1976 The World of Hunting and Nomadism, Kodansha
- 1986 The Formation and Development of Modern Japanese Civilization, Nihon Hoso Shuppan Kyokai
- 1987 The Museum as Media, Heibonsha
- 1988 Civilization Theory on Information, Chuo Koron-sha
- 1988 Women and Civilization, Chuo Koron-sha
- 1989 Research Management Theory, Iwanami Shoten
- 1989-94 Collected Works of Tadao Umesao, Chuo Koron-sha
- 1997 Action and Imagination: an autobiography, Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha
- 2000 Japanese Civilization in the Modern World: Comparative Study of Civilizations, Chuo Koron Shinsha
Publications in other languages:
- 1983 Le Japon à l'ère Planétaire, Paris : Publications Orientalistes de France.
- 1984 Il Giappone Nell'era Planetaria, Milano: Spirali Edizioni.
- 1988 “Prolegomena zu einer historischen Betrachtung zivilisierter Lebensformen“ in Japan ohne Mythos, Munich: Iudicium.
- 1998 The Roots of Contemporary Japan (trilingual in English, Japanese and Chinese), Tokyo: The Japan Forum.
- 2002 Ecological and Anthropological Study of the Nomadic Culture of Mongolia, Hohhot: People’s Press of Inner Mongolia.
- 2003 An Ecological View of History: Japanese Civilization in the World Context, Edited by Harumi Befu, Translated by Beth Cary, Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.
- An Ecological View of History was also translated into Chinese (Shanghai, 1988) and Vietnamese (Ha Noi, 2007)
Awards and honors
- Jan. 1988 The Asahi Award, Japan
- Apr. 1988 Commandeur, Ordre des Palmes académiques, France
- May 1988 Medal with Purple Ribbon, Japan
- Oct. 1990 Japan Foundation AwardJapan Foundation AwardThe Japan Foundation Awards honor individuals and organizations for significant contributing to "the enhancement of mutual understanding between Japan and other countries." Activities in an academic or cultural field have been presented by the Japan Foundation annually since 1973...
, 1990. - Nov. 1991 Person of Cultural Merit, Japan
- Nov. 1994 Order of Culture, Japan
- Jul. 1998 Person of Cultural Merit, Mongolia
- Nov. 1999 Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Japan
- Oct. 2002 C & C Prize (Foundation for Computers and Communications Promotion), Japan