Studies on Some Japanese Fishes of the Family Gempylidae 
Kiyomatsu Matsubara and Tamotsu Iwai^ 
\ 
Though the fishes of the family Gempyli- 
dae have long been of interest to ichthyolo- 
gists and though considerable literature 
concerning this family has accumulated, the 
group still is far from being satisfactorily 
understood. 
Since the publication of "Gempylidae of 
Japan” by Dr. Toshiji Kamohara in 1938, 
some additional facts have come to light, and 
several discrepancies have been found to exist 
between his descriptions and our specimens. 
The present paper, supplementing Kamo- 
hara’s, treats seven species of the family, re- 
ferred to the genera Neoepinnula, Epinnula, 
Mimasea, Gempylus, Rexea, Nealotus, and 
Promethichthys . The specimens thus far ex- 
amined were all taken by deep-sea trawlers 
off the Pacific coast of Japan at a depth of 
about 100 fathoms, and all are deposited in 
the Department of Fisheries, Faculty of Agri- 
culture, Kyoto University. Neoepinnula, de- 
scribed as a new genus, is based on Epinnula 
orientalis Gilchrist and von Bonde. 
The family Gempylidae is closely related 
to the Scombridae and is apparently an off- 
shoot from that family, divergent in the 
direction of the Lepidopidae and Trichi- 
uridae. This family is distinguished, from the 
Scombridae at least, by having the dentition 
strong, the body usually elongated, and the 
ventral fin small, often reduced to a single 
spine, or even absent in adults. 
1 Department of Fisheries, Faculty of Agriculture, 
Kyoto University, Nagahama, Maizuru, Japan. Manu- 
script received in two parts, on May 2 and November 
9, 1950. These parts have been amalgamated and 
edited by Dr. Carl L. Hubbs of the Editorial Board of 
Pacific Science, 
The few species comprising this family live 
in the high seas and are widely distributed in 
warm regions throughout the world. 
The measurements of various parts of the 
body were made in the same way as those 
made by the senior author in his study on the 
scorpaenoid fishes of Japan (Matsubara, 1943: 
6-7). We have carefully observed the gill 
rakers stained by alizarin red and cleared by 
potassium hydroxide. 
Acknowledgments: We wish to express our 
sincere gratitude to Mr. Vernon E. Brock, 
Dr. Carl L. Hubbs, Mr. T. Abe, Dr. T. Kamo- 
hara, and Mr. M. Nakamura, all of whom 
helped us in various ways. We are also greatly 
indebted to Messrs. G. Abe and S. Noda for 
assistance in obtaining material. Expenses for 
investigations of deep-sea fishes were de- 
frayed from 1943 to 1945 by a research fund 
from Viscount Keizo Shibuzawa and since 
1948 by a grant from the Japanese Ministry 
of Education. 
Neoepinnula new genus 
The genus Epinnula was established by 
Poey (1854: 369) for the accommodation of 
his new species E. magistralis, which he ob- 
tained at Havana, Cuba. In 1924 another new 
species, E. orientalis, was added to this genus 
by Gilchrist and von Bonde (1924: 15, pi. 4, 
fig. 1) on the basis of a specimen taken from 
Natal, South Africa. On careful examination 
of specimens of these two species, we found 
some remarkable differences, on the basis of 
which we erect a new genus Neoepinnula, 
with N. orientalis (Gilchrist and von Bonde) 
as genotype. 
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