A Study on the Formation and Use of Pacific Ethnographic Collections by the Japanese: Focusing on the Toshio Asaeda Collection of the National Museum of Ethnology

Keywords

collection,ethnographic photo,Japanese

Objectives

The Toshio Asaeda Collection of the National Museum of Ethnology is comprised of some 6,000 photographs concerning the Pacific islands societies and their enviroment along with such supplementary materials as his diaries and paintings. These records that Asaeda—who had been a member of an expedition in the US—left behind are precious resources that tell us about natural and cultural features that have been lost. However, owing to the fact that the original materials scattered around Europe, Japan, and the US have not been fully organized and analyzed, as well as the fact that they have not been carefully examined by researchers on the Pacific region, this collection has not been fully put to use. This research project on MINPAKu’s Toshio Asaeda Collection could attempt to settle these problems.
The project brings togethers scholars with vast knowledge of Pacific history and cultures to carefully examine the collection’s anthropological and ethnographic information and look at the record of how it has been made use of in the past. At the same time, from the perspective of this being a collection amassed by a Japanese, the project seeks to both locate place of the Toshio Asaeda materials in the history of Pacific collections in Japan and analyze their present-day significance. By conducting a multifaceted and comprehensive investigation, the project will attempt to touch on the ethical side of the act of collecting. In addition, by gaining the insights of related collections held in other oversea museums and source communities, the project will elucidate the characteristics and issues of Pacific collections amassed by Japanese .

Research Results

This inter-university research project held 10 workshops over a period of three and a half years, where the researchers and guest lecturers delivered a total of 16 research presentations and held one meeting on the public release of project outcomes. The project contributed to the discussion on the formation of Pacific collections by Japanese people, which had been lacking in previous studies. A wide range of presentations were given at the workshops, encompassing everything from individual analysis of the Toshio Asaeda Collection which was one of the main focuses of the project, to the examination of the act of collecting itself.
Other research outcomes consisted of four oral presentations at international symposiums and other events: “Fragment of a History of Japanese Natural History: Toshio Asaeda’s Exploration of Pacific and His Texts in the 1930s” at the National Museum of Ethnology international symposium Interdisciplinary Research and Info-Forum Museum, “Tanken, hakubutsugaku, kyoseishuyo—Asaeda Toshio to Amerika” [“Exploration, Natural History, and Concentration Camps—Toshio Asaeda and America”] at the 527th Minpaku Associates Conference, “Nihonjin ni yoru saishoki no Garapagosu tanken” [“Early Explorations of the Galapagos Islands by Japanese”] at the 534th Minpaku Seminar, and “Asaeda Toshio korekushon wo tsujita kokusaitekina kyodo shiryochosa—Dijitaruka ni yoru kyoyu to Soromon shoto” [“International Joint Materials Research via the Toshio Asaeda Collection—Focusing on Sharing Through Digitalization and Exhibitions at the Solomon Islands”] at a breakout session of the 57th Annual Meeting of Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology.
In addition, the following publications were released: four essays in Ichthyology & Herpetology 109(3), Minpaku Monthly 46(2), Interdisciplinary Research and Info-Forum Museum, and Minpaku Tsushin Online 169); two peer-reviewed papers (“Fukei ni hisomu shisei—Tankenka Asaeda Toshio ni yoru Amerika nikeijin shuyojo niokeru fukeiga no bunseki” [“Selfness Concealed in Landscape—An Analysis of Landscape Paintings in a Japanese American Concentration Camp by Toshio Asaeda”] in Arts/ 38: 77-87, “Toward the Reutilization of Past Natural History Materials Regarding Tropical Marine Life in the Pacific Islands: Analysis of Watercolor Paintings By Toshio Asaeda from the Crocker Expeditions in the 1930s” in People and Culture in Oceania 38: 35-50 [Norio Niwa and Rebekah Kim]); and one single-author work (Garapagos wo aruita otoko—Asaeda Toshio no Taiheiyo tankenki [The Man Who Walked the Galapagos—A Record of Toshio Asaeda’s Exploration of the Pacific, Kyoiku Hyoron Sha, January 8, 2025).