Tomitaro Makino (牧野 富太郎, Makino Tomitarō; 24 April 1862 – 18 January 1957) was a pioneer Japanese botanist noted for his taxonomic work. He has been called "Father of Japanese Botany", having been one of the first Japanese botanists to work extensively on classifying Japanese plants using the system developed by Linnaeus. His research resulted in collecting more than 500,000 specimens, many of which are represented in his Makino's Illustrated Flora of Japan. Despite having dropped out of grammar school, he eventually attained a Doctor of Science degree, and his birthday is remembered as Botany Day in Japan.
In total, Makino named over 2,500 plants, including 1,000 new species and 1,500 new varieties. In addition, he discovered about 600 new species.
After his death in 1957, his collection of approximately 400,000 specimens was donated to Tokyo Metropolitan University which has housed the collection at its Makino Herbarium. Around the same time, Makino Botanical Garden opened in his native Kōchi on Mount Godai. His home in Higashiōizumi, Nerima-ku, Tokyo was converted into the Makino Memorial Garden and Museum.
He was also named an Honorary Citizen of Tokyo.
Tomitaro Makino was born 22 May 1862 in Sakawa, Kōchi to a prestigious sake brewer and household goods purveyor called Kishiya (岸屋). The privileged merchant family was entitled to a surname and sword-bearing. His parents died during his early childhood (father Sahei (佐平) at age 3, mother Kusu (久壽) at age 5) and he lost his grandfather Kozaemon (小左衛門) at age 6, leaving his step-grandmother Namiko (浪子) to raise him. His name was also changed from Seitarō (誠太郎/成太郎) given at birth to Tomitaro around the time he lost his close kins.
In 1872 at age 10 (or 1871, age 9), he began attending a terakoya (so-called "temple school") run by Doi Kengo (土居謙護) in his home neighborhood, later transferring to Itō-juku, run by Confucian scholar Itō Ranrin where he was taught alongside Four Books and Five Classics Chinese learning, arithmetic and calligraphy as well.
In 1873 at age 11 (or 1872, age 10), he cross-enrolled at Meikōkan (名教館) but since Itō was also part of the faculty here, he soon quit Itō-juku. Since Meikōkan was a gōgaku (lit. "village"), it had the pretense of education for samurai extended to commoners, and was mostly attended by samurai family pupils. A classmate here was Hiroi Isami (later dubbed "father of harbor engineering"). This school did not stick to Chinese scholarship, but taught geography, astronomy, and physics, western-style, using Fukuzawa Yukichi's Sekai kunizukushi and Kawamoto Kōmin's Kikai kanran kōgi (気海観瀾広義, Observations of the Billowing Waves of Air and Sea, Enlarged) as textbooks. Around this time, Makino became acquainted with a certain westernization enthusiast named Manabe, who not only recommended the adoption of zangiri hairstyle (without topknot), but coaxed Makino into joining the same English study society of which he was already a member. This study group had hired two English linguists from Kōchi city, and borrowed English books from the prefectural government office. Thus Makino got his start in gaining literacy in English.
Meikōkan became Sakawa Elementary School due to gakusei school reform, and Makino attended only 2 years before dropping out (though this is misleading, since he had attained the top level for "lower elementary school" thus nearly graduating), and began to study botany in a self-taught manner. He states that he expected to succeed in his family brewery at the time, and was "not contemplating at all" about entering a life of academia. He spent a brief period of this time in his youth supporting the Freedom and People's Rights Movement in his hometown Tosa Province.
He foisted the duty of operating the brewery onto his grandmother and senior manager (bantō) while he lived a dilettante's life as he pleased. At age 15, he took up the teaching post at Sakawa Elementary, resigning after 2 years in 1880 (at age 17/18), when he moved to Kōchi city to attend Goshō Gakusha (五松学舎). But since this institution concentrated heavily on Chinese learning, it did not please him to attend any of its lectures, and delved into studying geography and botany which were the subjects that interested him. Around this time, he was also diligently making handwritten copies of herbal medicinal scholar Ono Ranzan's critique Honzō kōmoku keimō (本草綱目啓蒙) (i.e. "Elucidation of Bencao Gangmu), which developed his knowledge of herbal pharmacology a. But his trip to Kōchi did have its windfall, which was getting the acquaintance of Koichirō Naganuma (永沼小一郎). Naganuma taught at Kōchi Shihan Gakkō (precursor to the Kōchi University Education Department), who was so proficient in English as to privately translate such books as Robert Bentley's Botany and show the manuscripts to Makino. Thus Makino widened his knowledge of western botanical scholarship, learning who the authorities in the field were. Makino has stated in his autobiography: "My knowledge of botany owes greatly to Naganuma-sensei".
Makino self-published his first academic paper in a journal he created in 1879 (around the end of his elementary schoolteacher career, before leaving for Kōchi). The journal was called Hakubutsu sōdan (博物叢談; "Collected discourse on Natural History"). The journal was created around Makino, who handprinted each copy to distribute to the readership. Later, some time during his 20s (1880s) while still in his home province, he began circulating a handmade periodical called Kakuchi zasshi (格致雑誌).This was also hand-copied by Makino with inkbrush on washi paper.
At age 19, Makino mounted on a trip to Tokyo to see the 2nd National Industrial Exhibitions (1 March–30 June 1881). Accompanied by the senior manager (bantō)'s son and accountant clerks, Makino purchased books and a microscope. Makino also visited the Natural History Bureau at the Ministry of Education where he was warmly received by naturalist Yoshio Tanaka and botanist Motoyoshi Ono (Ranzan's great-grandson) from whom he heard talk on the latest news in botany, and was shown around the facility's botanical garden.
In 1881, Tomitarō married his fiancée and cousin Yamamoto Nao (山本猶) 2 years his junior in his hometown, and she became the new young madam of the Kishiya brewerie establishment. Since he had a grand wedding in his hometown, Sakawa's local history makes clear record of it, but Makino himself did not mention this marriage in any of his writings, including his autobiography (Jijoden).
In July 1884 at age 22, he moved to Tokyo to pursue his botanical studies in earnest. At the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Science in the Botanical Institute (Shokubutsugaku kyōshitsu) he met Cornell-educated professor Ryōkichi Yatabe, who granted the privilege to come freely to the Institute and make use of its library, equipment and other resources, allowing Makino to delve into his botanical research. Makino started to send specimens to Karl Maximovich of Russia considered the foremost authority on East Asian flora at the time, and since these tended to be rare and curious samples, it delighted the Russian to the extent that whenever Maximovich sent a copy of his work to the institute, he would send a separate copy privately for Makino.
In 1887 at age 25, he co-founded the journal Shokubutsugaku zasshi (植物学雑誌; "Botanical Magazine") in collaboration with the institute's colleagues Ōkubo Saburo, Nobujirō Tanaka, Tokugorō Someya (染谷徳五郎) and others., with contributions from Komajirō Sawada (澤田駒次郎), Mitsutarō Shirai, Manabu Miyoshi, and Yatabe as well. This same year Makino lost his step-grandmother (aged 77) who raised him.
November 1888 at age 26, he began publishing the series Nippon shokubutsu shi zuhen (日本植物志図篇; "Illustrated Japanese Plants") which he had long been conceptualizing, at his own-expense. Towards that end, he apprenticed himself at a printing press in order to learn the techniques of lithography, and he eventually drew the plant illustrations himself, considered "photo-like in accuracy", and highly praised by Maximowicz. It was arguably the first illustrated compendium (zukan) of flora published in Japan. To Makino it was a "crystallization of his hardships" which he considered "presentable with pride to the world", and a monument to Japanese biological history according to his biographer.