The 80th Genten Special Contribution
■ Description
“The E-Day, or Portrait of 12 Monkeys” exhibited this time is a retitled and revised version of “猿山には２通りある。” (2022).
As the original title suggests, there are two main types of subjects. One is the Monkey Park and the other is the Monkey Center. The monkey park is at Arashiyama Monkey Park Iwatayama in Kyoto, and the monkey center is at the Japan Monkey Centre in Inuyama City, Aichi Prefecture.
As I have already mentioned in “猿山には２通りある。,” the theme is to express the two ways of being in our society. The park is a homogeneous society with only Japanese macaques. The center, on the other hand, is a diverse society of different monkeys. This time, in order to be able to intuitively intuit it at a glance, the background was elaborated on the right and left wings. It’s a little too simple, but it’s red for the right wing and blue for the left.
In the United States, where the red and blue implies a presidential election in 2024 amid the dangers of the world situation, I fear that the outcome may create friction with countries that do not have the freedom to vote.
Isn’t it time to reiterate, then, that the act of free voting is premised on the expression of naïve inner feelings? In Japan, where we are losing sight of the significance of voting, I think this perspective is equally necessary. That is the purpose of this work.
But can we actually say that much? I think some people would argue that Park is right-wing and Center is left-wing. In this article, we took a deep dive into the origins of these two. A very interesting fact emerged.
First of all, this discovery was a coincidence, but both started their businesses in 1956. In both cases, the director was selected from the same Kyoto University Primate Research Group. To find out what it was like at this time, let’s quote a researcher at the time.
“Full-scale research and research on wild monkeys in Japan began around Showa 23 (1948), shortly after the end of World War II, when four zoologists of Kyoto University, Kinji Imanishi, Shunzo Kawamura, Junichiro Itani, and Kisaburo Tokuda, began research on monkeys (= Nihon macaques * Kujo note) from the scorched earth of the defeat of the war. In Showa 26 (1951), the Animal Ecology Group led by Professor Densaburo Miyaji joined to form the Primate Research Group, which was further expanded to include people involved in psychology, anatomy, experimental animal science, and a wide range of other research fields, including other universities and research institutes.” -間直之助『サルになった男』(雷鳥社, 1996)
By the way, the author, Naonosuke Hazaｍa, was in Professor Miyaji’s group, which is said to have joined later, and later became the director of the Monkey Park. He is in charge of investigating and feeding the monkeys, and the facility is privately run by the Iwata family, the landowners. On the other hand, Kinji Imanishi, who should be considered the source of monkey research, became the acting director of the Japan Monkey Centre, which was established as a foundation under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology with investment by Nagoya Railway, and he later became known as the founder of Japan primate research.
By the way, according to Kiyoaki Saito, who wrote his biography, Mr. Imanishi was more of a mountaineer than an academic researcher. He was a hardcore adventurer who had been involved in overseas expeditions since before the world war Ⅱ, and less than 10 years after the war, he led an alumnus of Kyoto University’s mountaineering club to climb the Himalayas. It seems to me that the establishment of the Japan Monkey Centre, which Imanishi was approached by the Nagoya Railway, was also a preparation for the trip to Africa that departed immediately afterwards. It must have been a timely offer.
However, the purpose of this Africa-bound “Japan Monkey Centre First Gorilla Research Team” was not only to collect monkeys for the center. From the beginning of his research on Japanese macaques, Imanishi has been conducting theoretical observations about the origin of humans, which led to the survey of apes in Africa. As a result, the following year, in 1957, he founded “Primates”, an academic journal specializing in primates.
Naturally, these actions cannot be covered by individuals and require patrons. According to Michio Nakamura’s Genealogy of “「サル学」の系譜,” the first chairman of the Japan Monkey Centre was Keizo Shibusawa, a folklorist who served as governor of the Bank of Japan and Minister of Finance. He also provided financial support to Imanishi and Junichiro Itani when they traveled overseas. In addition, the first and second volumes of “Primates” were published in Japanese, but from the second volume onwards they were fully translated into English with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation.
So, although all things were not revealed this time, it seems that it is not difficult to imagine that there is a left-wing trend in the Monkey Center. It may be said that the study of primates and apes is on the left-wing side in the first place.
Now, isn’t it unfair to cite Monkey Park, which is a private facility in Japan, to the Monkey Center, which started as a global foundation? It seems for a moment. However, in fact, it is also a crook without being defeated.
The first thing I noticed was the following description for the origins of the Park on Wikipedia.
“In July 1954 (Showa 29), in addition to the inventor and the owner of the mountain, the first meeting was held in the presence of about 10 people, including the director of the Kyoto Forestry Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the chief of the Kyoto City Tourism Bureau, the representative of the Kyoto University Primate Research Group, Densaburo Miyaji, and researchers, and it was decided that it would be a private business of the Iwata family on Mt. Iwata, and the investigation and feeding of monkeys will be entrusted to Naonosuke Hazama, a researcher of the Kyoto University Primate Research Group. A full-fledged investigation was immediately launched”
A similar story is described in Naonosuke’s own book, “サルになった男”, but the problem is the “Kyoto City Tourism Bureau”.
This is because it was not until 1965 that materials from the Kyoto City Culture and Tourism Bureau, which mainly conducts archaeological surveys, began to be active, and even in the materials of the Kyoto City Tourism Bureau before that, general tourism resources were not surveyed, and only historical temples and shrines and culture were mainly documented. It seems unlikely the manager traveled for the private facility monkey park.
This is speculation, but isn’t the role of the city hall in the immediate postwar period mainly to investigate and protect cultural properties that escaped the war, not to promote tourism? In general, the Japan Tourism Organization was established in 1964, the year the Tokyo Olympics were held, and the tourism industry, including overseas, was finally restarted.
So, who on earth was the “Kyoto City Tourism Bureau” that witnessed the establishment of the Monkey Park?
The inspiration for this was “京都洛西の観光とハイキング” (1960), edited by the Federation of Hoshokai in the Kyoto Rakusai District. I found a large feature of the monkey park that had just opened here.
It was the first time I had heard of it, but the editor, Hoshokai, is “an organization that beautifies nature and tourist spots and conducts activities to protect their charm and pass it on to future generations,” and in fact, it seems that it is still present all over Japan.
Relying on a web search, I browsed Tanaka Zensuke’s “鉄城翁伝” (1944), which is called “the founder of Hoshokai,” and found that he was a person who greatly contributed to the development of Iga city. “鉄城” here means “railway”. He was the one who founded the Iga Railway, which I traveled to that summer once before. However, I couldn’t help but laugh at the sentence that compared him to the leader of Germany at the time, perhaps because it was published in wartime.
However, it was here that I finally realized this. Before the war, the Ministry of Railways was in charge of the Tourism Bureau. In 1930, the “Board of Tourist Industry, Japan”, which was renamed from the “Japan Tourist Bureau”, was established in the Ministry of Railways, and a tourism section was established in Kyoto City, which tried to attract foreign visitors, and was dismantled after the war. But while the organization were dismantled, there should have still been people who were fluent in foreign languages. And in the documents of the Board of Tourist Industry, Japan, three long-established hotels that remained from before the war as the Kyoto branch were listed.
On top of that, in the original copy of “サルになった男”, it is correctly stated like this:
“In addition to the three people who attended the meeting (including local Mr. Iwata, Mr. Furukawa and Kyoto Zoo technician Mr. Mr./Ms. Hoshino), there were about ten people, including Professor Miyaji of Kyoto University, a university friend of mine and representative of the Primate Research Group, the head of the Kyoto Forestry Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the heads of the Kyoto Tourism Bureau, sections, and sections, and myself.”
If we calculate the bureau, section, and section as three, there will be a total of nine.
These are speculations, but they seem more or less certain. In other words, the mysterious “Kyoto Tourism Bureau” that helped establish the Monkey Park was probably the pre-war “Tourism Bureau” that probably still had direct influence on the city government at that time. And it must have been a hotel operator that had been around since before the war.
They have a lot of influence on the right-wing side, and it is probably no coincidence that the representative of the right-wing side of the 2024 US presidential election is a hotel tycoon.
The circumstances under which the study of Japanese macaques were started are described in detail in Junichiro Itani’s “高崎山のサル” (Kodansha, 2010). When Imanishi, Itani, and others were conducting a feeding survey of a group of monkeys on Kojima Island in Kyushu, the feeding that began on Mt. Takasaki, which is near Beppu Onsen, was also successful, and Itani and his colleagues began to identify monkey-individuals, which greatly advanced their research.
Feeding is not particularly uncommon now, but it was in the immediate post-war period when food for humans was scarce. It is a kind of speculation that invites criticism to turn monkeys, which were a kind of vermin, into a tourism business by continuously distributing a large amount of food. In “高崎山のサル,” it is said that the feeding of Mt. Takasaki was the brainchild of the mayor of Oita Ueda, but it must have been the hotel operator in Beppu that had been in operation since before the war that encouraged him.
Thinking about it this way, it seems that the simple tourism plan on the right-wing side, which was to feed monkeys and make them a spectacle, later became the catalyst for major progress in primate research in Japan on the left-wing side.
It can be said that society is not divided into two parts, but rather that they influence each other.
That is why the free voting there is not forced by partisanship, but is premised on the expression of naïve inner feelings.
[References]
- Naonosuke Hazama “サルになった男” (Raichosha, 1996)
- Kiyoaki Saito “今西錦司と自然（日本の伝記 知のパイオニア）” (Tamagawa University Press, 2022)
- Michio Nakamura, “「サル学」の系譜 -人とチンパンジーの50年” (Chuokoron Shinsha, 2015)
- Kyoto Rakusai District Hoshokai Federation / Ed. Kyoto City Tourism Bureau / Supervised “京都洛西の観光とハイキング” (Kyoto Rakusai District Hoshokai Federation, 1960)
- Tetsujokai doujin “鉄城翁伝” (Ueno Tetsujokai Office, 1944)
- Junichiro Itani, “高崎山のサル” (Kodansha, 2010) *Originally published in Kinji Imanishi / ed., “日本動物記 ２ 高崎山のサル 伊谷純一郎” (Kobunsha, 1955)
WEB – Wikipedia (2024.05.18 confirmed)
Arashiyama Monkey Park Iwatayama
International Tourism Bureau
WEB – Mie Prefectural Museum of Art (2024.05.18 confirmed)
Zensuke Tanaka, the founder of “Hosho” – Petition to the Diet to “protect the landscape”
■ Identification
| Series | 投票の日、あるいは１２ひきのサルのポートレート |
| Photographer | 九条イツキ |
| Captured Date | 2022.5.7-8 |
| Location | 犬山＆嵐山周辺 |
| Titles | e-day_01-12 (左右別) |
| Reproduction Limit | 3 |
| ID History | saruyama, e-day, |
| Notice | 譲渡時要許認可, saruyamaからe-dayに移行にあたり６カット入れ替え |