Minakata Kumagusu (南方 熊楠; May 18, 1867 – December 29, 1941) was a Japanese author, biologist, naturalist and ethnologist.
Minakata was born in Wakayama, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. In 1883, he moved to Tokyo, where he entered the preparatory school Kyōryū Gakkō. The headmaster of Kyōritsu, Takahashi Korekiyo, encouraged Minakata in his botanical studies, and stimulated his interest in the English language. The following year, Minakata passed the entrance exam to Tokyo University Preparatory School (Tokyo Daigaku Yobimon), counting among his classmates the novelist Natsume Sōseki.
At the end of 1886, Minakata set off to study in the United States. He arrived in San Francisco in January of the next year, and he studied there for about six months. He next went to Michigan State Agricultural College, where he was accepted, becoming the first Japanese to pass the entrance exam there. These were just the first steps, however, in Minakata's unusually adventurous studies in various parts of the world, which would eventually include Cuba, Haiti, what is now Panama, Venezuela, and England, before returning to Japan.
In addition to his studies in slime moulds, Minakata was intensely interested in folklore, religion and natural history. He wrote several papers, including 51 monographs in Nature. He is known for discovering many varieties of mycetozoa.
Minakata had epilepsy, experiencing grand mal seizures. He was able to predict when he was about to have a seizure (as is common in epilepsy) due to a sense of déjà vu.
Minakata Kumagusu came back to Japan in 1900 after 14 years of unique study experience abroad mainly in the U.S. and England. He settled in Wakayama Prefecture, his birthplace, until his death in 1941. He lived in Tanabe City from 1904 to 1941. Minakata devoted his entire life to studies of natural history and folklore, and contributed a number of articles to the British science magazine Nature and the British folklore magazine Notes and Queries. He was also involved in anti-shrine-consolidation protests and the nature conservation movement in Japan. He was respected as "a great scholar with no degree" and loved by the locals who called him Minakata Sensei (the teacher) or Minakata-san (Mr. Minakata), while branded by some as an oddball. More than 60 years after his death, Minakata's achievements and life history has been made clear by a number of books and papers including The Complete Works of Minakata Kumagusu and The Diary of Minakata Kumagusu, and the research is still ongoing.
Minakata Kumagusu was born in the castle city of Wakayama on April 15, 1867, the second son to a hardware dealer Yahei Minakata, 39, and wife Sumi, 30, and was raised with three brothers and two sisters. Since childhood, he had had extraordinary interests in the natural world and demonstrated a marvelous memory. As early as at the age of seven he transcribed an encyclopedia.
To develop his talent, Yahei, a self-made man, sent Minakata to the newly opened Wakayama Middle School (now Toin High), which was unconventional for a merchant family those days. Minakata's thirst for knowledge was growing bigger as he at home recited the Chinese classics and transcribed the books that he had learned by heart at a collector's place. That he transcribed Wakan Sansai Zue, an encyclopedia of 105 volumes, and Honzo Komoku, illustrated books of flora, in over five years is a famous episode from this period. At school, however, he remained a low achiever. He would finish lunch early and observe a frog or a crab in the empty lunch box.
After finishing middle school, he went to Tokyo in March 1883. The following year he entered the Preparatory School of Tokyo University. Among his colleagues were Masaoka Shiki, Natsume Sōseki, and Bimyo Yamada, who later became eminent figures of Japanese literature. Again Minakata was not interested in school and spent more time outside the university transcribing books in libraries, visiting zoos and botanic gardens, and collecting artifacts, animals, plants and minerals. At the news that Miles J. Berkeley, a world-famous British cryptogamist, and American botanist Moses A. Curtis had collected 6,000 species of fungi including slime molds, Minakata decided to produce an illustrated book that would cover more. In February 1886, following a failure at the end-of-year exam, he came home and told father that he would go to America. Initially opposed, Yahei finally gave in to his son's enthusiasm and let him go.
Minakata boarded the City of Beijing in Yokohama in December 1886. The next month the ship arrived in San Francisco, and he soon started to study at Pacific Business College just to experience American life (business was not his favorite subject).
In August 1887, he moved to Lansing, Michigan, and enrolled at the Michigan State School of Agriculture. One night in November 1888, however, he was in trouble for a drinking binge with a couple of Japanese and American friends in the dorm. He took the responsibility alone to save others from expulsion and early next morning left for Ann Arbor.
Minakata met bright Japanese students in Ann Arbor, the location of another state university. While keeping company with them, he stayed away from university and studied on his own by reading books and collecting plants in the mountains, particularly cryptogams including fungi and lichens. In October 1889, he read a biography of Conrad Gessner, a Swiss naturalist and a leading figure of modern biology, and swore he would become Japan's Gessner, which was when his quest for the wonders of cryptogams began.
When he heard from William W. Calkins, a retired American colonel and a collector of lichens, that in Florida there were still many undiscovered plants, Minakata was ready to go. With two microscopes, books, a pistol, insect catchers as well as a medicine box and a plant press that he had just bought in Ann Arbor, Minakata went to Jacksonville in April 1891. He collected plants and animals while staying with Jiang, a supportive Chinese vegetable storekeeper. After three months enthusiastically collecting plants and animals, he moved to Key West, Florida, then to Havana, Cuba in mid-September.
After a month in Havana, a Japanese circus rider suddenly visited him. That encounter brought him to a new adventure of traveling in Port-au-Prince, Caracas, Valencia, and Jamaica with the circus working as a mahout's hand. This enabled him to collect precious fungi and lichens in the West Indies. In January 1892 he returned to Jacksonville and worked on the plants he had collected in Florida and Cuba at Jiang's. When Jiang wound up the business in August, Minakata moved to New York. In September he put an end to six years in America and got aboard the City of New York bound for the UK.
After crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the ship arrived at Liverpool. In London, Minakata visited Yoshikusu Nakai, branch manager of the Yokohama Shokin Bank, an old friend of the Minakata family from Wakayama. The man handed him a letter from Tsunegusu, one of his younger brothers, about their beloved father's death. Minakata was totally devastated.
He lived in downtown London where rents were cheap. While working on herbaria and exchanging specimens and letters with William W. Calkins and Allen, he visited the British Museum, the South Kensington Museum and other galleries. He then was introduced to Japanese Asian antique dealer Kataoka Prince. In August 1893, Minakata read in Nature magazine, his favorite since his time in U.S., a thesis titled "Five articles about the composition of constellations." Its questions inspired him to write a reply.
Kataoka Prince, who had noticed the erudition of the shabby-looking man, introduced him to Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, of the British Museum. Thereafter, Minakata visited the museum often to ask advice from Franks. Using a fragmented dictionary borrowed from his landlady, he completed an article titled "The Constellations in the Far East" in 30 days. The article was published in Nature, and he suddenly became known among the intelligentsia. He contributed regularly to the magazine after that and also started writing for Notes and Queries. He continued to contribute a number of articles and letters to the magazines after returning to Japan and won a reputation worldwide as an authority on Oriental studies.