JAPAN 



With the modernization of this important country, entomology 

 received rather early attention, but it was really not until after some 

 of the early students, especially selected for their intellectual quaUties, 

 ha:d begun to return from Europe and the United States that applied 

 science in many directions began actively to move. The vi^riter was a 

 student at Cornell with the brilliant botanist, R. Yatabe, for example, 

 whose greatly lamented death occurred all too early, when his work 

 at the Imperial University was becoming notable. There were later 

 traveling students who went into entomology. 



Silkworm culture is one of the oldest industries in Japan, and 

 consequently there has always existed in that country a familiarity 

 with insects that does not exist in other countries. Insect subjects, 

 for example, were often used by Japanese artists, especially in the old 

 days. The accuracy of some of these old drawings is very impressive 

 and leads one to believe that the Japanese are naturally very keen 

 observers of details as well as of larger things. 



Prior to 1867 insects were studied in Japan principally as to their 

 use in medicine. They were used for medical purposes very exten- 

 sively, and in fact still are so used.^ As late as 1919 Miyake published 

 an important paper entitled " Investigations upon Insects Used for 

 Food and in Medicine." Some excellent zoologists and morphologists 

 were developed at an early day, notably Mitsukuri and Watase. In 

 1880 the Tokyo Zoological Society was organized, and for a period 

 of years entomological papers appeared in its magazine. Mr. C. P. 

 Clausen informs me that Doctor Ishikawa began the publication in 

 this magazine of a series of articles entitled " Stories about Insects " 

 which were widely read ; and the magazine was used in place of 

 books on this subject as none had been printed at that time in 

 Japanese. In 1898 was published Matsumura's " Entomology of 

 Japan," the first book confined to insect classification to be published 

 in that country. It aroused a great interest in entomology, and many 

 publications followed. 



Kakichi Mitsukuri, the eminent Japanese zoologist and embry- 

 ologist, was born in 1857. He came to the United States in 1873 ; 

 took his doctorate in philosophy at Yale in 1879 and at Johns Hopkins 



^ In an important monographic paper on gall-producing aphides and their 

 galls, by Prof. Kota Monzen, published in May, 1929, the statement is made 

 that Ranzan One described a sumach gall in 1802 stating that the gall "was 

 inhabited by small insects and was utilized by women to dye their teeth ! " 



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