PS COLUMN ARCHIVE

October 28, 2009

Discovery found on my trip

The other day, I had an opportunity to go to Kumamoto on account of some business. After I finished what I had to do on Friday I visited, by taking advantage of weekend Saturday, a small town called Takahashi in Kumamoto city situated along the Sea of Ariake, where I wanted to visit from a long time ago. The town is located near the mouth of Tsuboi river flowing down by the Kumamoto Castle, and is within the range of twenty minutes by car from the center of Kumamoto city. The reason I wanted to visit there is not because there are some historic landmarks (actually there are no such historic sites except large shrine called Takahashi Inari) but because I recalled a story of the man by the name of Edward Morse who wrote in his diary that he was so much impressed by the town when he visited there 130 years ago.

Morse is an American who came to Japan in 1877 to collect shellfishes that were not found in his birthplace of Boston. But he was unexpectedly assigned the job of professor of zoology at the newly established university of Tokyo, as a result of which he stayed in Japan for a little over two years. During his assignment he discovered shell mounds of Jomon wares, by which he established the academic foundation of archaeology of Japan. I suppose there must be many of the readers who know of his name as a discoverer of Omori shell mound. I think his name is worth to be more popularly known because his discovery of Jomon wares is what we learned in Japanese history at the very beginning.

After two years’ duty at the university, it was in 1879 when he traveled to Nagasaki, Kumamoto and Kagoshima. He came to Kumamoto by boat after he gathered shellfishes in Nagasaki. He was first surprised by shoaling beach of the Sea of Ariake and got off the boat at eight kilometers offshore. He wrote in his diary that he walked another ten kilometers (from my experience of my visit there this time, I assume it was probably just about five kilo) from the beach to have arrived at Takahashi village. Because of heavy rain on that day, he couldn’t gather shellfishes at the shore but he found rarely seen shellfishes called Lingulidae anatina in a garbage pail in the village. This shellfish is generally called “shell” but actually it does not belong to Mollusca but to another species of Brachiopoda, and so it is quite natural that Morse was very much excited over this discovery because his primary objective of coming to Japan was to collect species of Brachiopoda.

Lingulidae anatina first emerged on the earth five hundred million years ago and ever since has continued of its existence up to now without transformation: in this respect it would deserve to be said as living fossil. Morse wrote in his diary as follows. (Translated by TPS/J)

“How surprised I was when I found many shell fishes of Lingulidae anatina in one of garbage pails! As this creature was used as food, I ran about like a crazy man looking for the one who could tell me where he found them. Shortly after, I learned that they were picked at ebb tide edible for daily food. This very creature, if by it alone, is the prime reason to have led me to Japan. Momentarily, I thought of concentrating all my attention on this insect of remote age by abandoning everything else.”

This is why I came to Takahashi village by expecting to see Lingulidae anatina and hopefully to eat them. Another reason is that I whished to see the same scenery as Morse did as left in Morse’s two sketches of the landscape of the village. In Morse’s drawings are depicted a small hamlet along a narrow stream flowing down to the Sea of Ariake. In his sketches there are seen many poles of about a few meters high driven into the bottom of the river, which I couldn’t make out what they are for a long time.

Visiting Takahashi village 130 years after Morse told me that the scenery drawn by Morse was completely gone. Along the river are built concrete levees, and wherever you go in the town you can sense no more taste of the past to feel like a small town along a river streaming down to the Sea of Ariake. Even more regrettably fishermen told me that there are no more seen Lingulidae anatina
in that part of the area. I’m really sorry for this. I also heard that the Sea of Ariake has completely changed in this twenty years.

And yet, I did make a discovery. The discovery is that I found out a number of poles depicted in Morse’s sketches are bamboo-mooring poles for boats. As I walked from Takahashi town to the shore of Ariake sea, I witnessed that fishermen are still mooring their boats in the same way as before to have convinced me what the Morse’s poles were all about. The scenery of poles sticking out of the river has disappeared from Takahashi village because no more boats come upstream as far as the village. Even so, the old idea how to use shoaling beach of Ariake Sea is still alive among fishermen.

Many of the readers may say, “It’s just a small discovery” but to me it was a big discovery to uncover a long time question. You just can’t make such discovery by reading as many books as you might. This is something you can make out only by visiting the actual sites. Such an unexpected discovery this time made my trip a very happy one.

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