Nakayama Heijirō

Nakayama Heijirō

Nakayama Heijirō ( Japanese 中山 平 次郎 ; born June 3, 1871 in Kamigyō , Kyōto ; † April 29, 1956 in Fukuoka , Fukuoka Prefecture ) was a Japanese pathologist and archaeologist.

Life

Nakayama was born in Kyoto in 1871 into a family of doctors. His ancestor Nakayama Genko (1697–1779) was a doctor at the imperial court in Kyoto during the Edo period . Likewise, his grandfather Nakayama Akira, who was the court doctor of the daimyō Tokugawa Iemochi , of Princess Kazu ( 和 宮 親子 内 親王 Kazu-no-miya Chikako naishinnō ) and her mother Hashimoto Tsuneko (1826-1865) was active. His father Nakayama Yukiteru and his mother Masa also worked until the tenryakuryō office ( 典 薬 寮 ) was abolished as officials of the imperial house and court office, where they were responsible for the supervision of the medicines, the medicine garden and the medical treatment of the officials.

First, Nakayama Heijirō studied medicine at the Imperial University of Kyūshū together with his older brother Morihiko . In 1874 he moved to Tokyo and continued his medical studies at the Imperial University of Tokyo , which he graduated in 1900. Here he also had the opportunity to show ceramic shards that he had collected in middle school to the anthropologist Tsuboi Shōgorō , who identified them as pottery of the Yayoi period . Between 1903 and 1906 he stayed as a foreign student in Germany and Austria. On the return trip he made the acquaintance of the pathologist Tawara Sunao , who had studied in Germany at the same time as Nakayama. After his return to Japan in 1906, he was a professor at the Imperial University of Kyoto , the medical school in Okayama, which then became part of the medical department of the University of Kyūshū. His students included Hakaru Hashimoto , known for discovering Hashimoto's thyroiditis , and the Chinese writer and politician Guo Moruo , who studied medicine in Kyushu but never practiced this profession. Nakayama worked as a pathologist with the life cycle of the pair of leeches (Schistosoma japonicum), on which he received his doctorate in 1907. In 1909 he contracted a life-threatening infection with pyogenic, pus-forming bacteria during an autopsy, which he survived. Then he began to deal with his second area of ​​interest, archeology.

As an archaeologist, he was interested in the northern Kyushu region. He founded the Archaeological Society of Kyūshū ( 九州 考古学 会 Kyūshū Kōko Gakkai ) in 1930 . When he left the university a year later, he was transferred to the nobility with the award of the upper third class ( 正 三位 jōsan'i ). In 1954 he was honored with the Culture Prize for West Japan. Nakayama died of pneumonia in 1956 at the age of 84. Nakayama is remembered in Japan primarily for his outstanding achievements in the field of archeology.

archeology

After Nakayama turned to archeology, he first dealt with stone walls ( 石 築 地 Ishitsuiji ) on Hakata Bay. In 1913 he published an article in the Fukuoka Nichinichi Shimbun about the stone walls from the Kamakura period , in which he identified them as protective walls against the Mongol invasions ( 元 寇 防 塁Genkō Bōrui ). This designation is still valid and known today.

Nakayama also dealt with the golden seal given to Na, the King of Wa, by the Han Emperor Guangwu . The seal was discovered in 1784 on the island of Shika. Nakayama tried to clarify the circumstances of the find, about which nothing was known. To do this, he looked in temples for clues to the seal and he recorded the orally transmitted facts of the find by questioning the islanders.

In 1917 he wrote a seminal essay on finds from the prehistoric period and what he called an interim period ( 中間 時代 ) in northern Kyūshū. Up until Nakayama's essay, research assumed that the Japanese Paleolithic was immediately followed by the Kofun period . Using stone tools and metal artifacts that were discovered in jug coffins ( 甕 棺 墓 kamekan hata ) at the Itazuke site in Fukuoka , Nakayama argued that there must have been an intermediate period between the Paleolithic and Kofun periods. This interim period was then called the Chalcolithic or Copper Stone Age by Hamada Kōsaku , which is now known as the Yayoi period . Nakayama was the first to make this distinction.

Another merit of Nakayama is to determine the location of the hot-time kōrokan ( 鴻臚 館 ), an institution for diplomatic and economic relations with foreign countries. Contrary to popular belief, Nakayama took the view that the Kōrokan must have been in Fukuoka Castle . This view was confirmed 30 years after Nakayama's death when the remains of the Kōrokan were discovered during repair work at Heiwadai Stadium in 1987.

Works (selection)

medicine

• 1908 輸卵管 内 ノ 回 虫 (about: About the roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides) in the fallopian tube ), in: Journal of the Faculty of Medicine at Fukuoka University, Vol. 2 No. 1
• 1909 死因 ト ナ リ タ ル 食道 静脈 瘤 ノ 破綻 (about: About the rupture of the venous knot in the esophagus as the cause of death), in: Journal of the Medical Faculty at Fukuoka University, Vol. 3 No. 2
• 1910 on Schistosomum japonicum, in: Journal of the Faculty of Medicine at Fukuoka University, Vol. 3 No. 3

archeology

• 1912 福岡 附近 の 史蹟 (approximately: Historic sites in the vicinity of Fukuoka)
• 1913 元 寇 防 塁 の 価 値 (for example: The meaning of Genkō Bōrui), in: Fukuoka Nichinichi Shimbun ( 福岡 日 々 新聞 )
• 1917 九州 に 於 け る 彌 生 式 土 器 と 貝 塚 土 器 (for example: clay vessels made of clams and Yayoi ceramics in Kyūshū), in: Journal of Archeology Vol. 8 No. 4
• 1918 雑 録 貝 塚 土 器 の 縄 文 と 古 瓦 の 縄 文 (for example: Miscellings to string patterns on old bricks and ceramics from clam heaps), in: Zeitschrift für Archäologie Vol. 8 No. 12

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 中山 平 次郎 . In: 20 世紀 日本人 名 事 典 at kotobank.jp. Retrieved November 12, 2019 (Japanese). 
2. ↑ 中山 玄 亨 の 墓 ～ 京都 漢 方 史跡 ～ . 蒼 流 庵 随想 , August 11, 2016, accessed November 14, 2019 (Japanese). 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Okazaki Takashi ( 岡 崎 敬 ): 中山 平 次郎 先生 と 考古学 (Sensei Nakayama Heijirō and archeology) . Tsukiji Shokan, 1985, p. 2-9 .
4. ↑ Hashimoto Hakaru: Knowledge of the lymphomatous changes in the thyroid gland (goiter lymphomatosa) . In: Arh f Klin Chir . tape 97 , 1912, pp. 219-248 .
5. ↑ 官 報 Number 1433, October 7, 1931

Web links

• 中山 平 次郎 と 福岡 の 考古学 . Fukuoka City Museum, 2013,accessed November 13, 2019(Japanese). 

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Nakayama is the family name, Heijirō the first name.