[M-ZZ41] Studies of Geoscience : historical, philosophical and STS studies

[MZZ41-P03] The establishment and origins of the Statutes of the Tokyo Geographical Society

*Toshiyuki Shimazu¹ (1.Department of Geography, Faculty of Education, Wakayama University)

Keywords:history of geography, Royal Geographical Society, Watanabe Hiromoto, Nabeshima Naohiro, Nagaoka Moriyoshi, Admiral Smyth

In the nineteenth-century West, political and economic trends ranging from regionalism to imperialism created a thirst for geographical knowledge in a broad sense, leading to the proliferation of geographical societies. The Tokyo Geographical Society (TGS), established in 1879, was the fifty-second established geographical society active at that time, and the first independent geographical society in Asia. This paper discusses the origins of the Statutes of the Tokyo Geographical Society (hereafter the Statutes) based on newly discovered historical materials. The following content is a summary of a portion of my essay scheduled to be published in English (Shimazu 2024) with supplementary information added. The Statutes were formulated by the drafting committee consisting of Nabeshima Naohiro, Nagaoka Moriyoshi, Watanabe Hiromoto, Katsura Taro, and Kitazawa Masanari, and were approved at the founding meeting held at Gakushuin on March 21, 1879. Article 2 of the Statutes states, “The purpose of this society is to investigate various scientific fields, dividing them in the manner of the London Geographical Society.” Watanabe Hiromoto, the advocate for the establishment of the TGS, became a full member of the Imperial and Royal Geographical Society of Vienna during his tenure as the First Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is known that this experience motivated him to establish a similar society in Tokyo. His diary, titled Watanabe Hiromoto Nikki (held at the University of Tokyo Archives), includes the entry “Preparing the Draft Statutes of the Tokyo Geographical Society” dated March 1, 1879, which indicates that Watanabe himself drew up this Draft Statutes. His diary further notes that on March 4, the drafting committee met at Nabeshima's residence in Nagata-cho to finalize the Draft Statutes, and that they decided to print them out and submit them to the meeting at Gakushuin. As a result of searching through NDL Search, Google Books, etc., I discovered that the printed Draft Statutes were held in both the Fukui Prefectural Archives and the National Institute of Japanese Literature. While the contents of the Draft Statutes and the Statutes are generally the same, subtle differences in wording can be observed. One notable difference is the sentence in Article 2 of the Draft Statutes, “The purpose of this society is to investigate various scientific fields, dividing them as follows, based on what is prescribed by the late British Admiral Smyth in the rules of the London Geographical Society.” The wording “various scientific fields” refers to the content of “chigaku (geography)” as defined by the Draft Statutes, which was classified into “hon-ka (main branch)”“keishitsu-ka (physical branch)”“toku-ka (specialized branch)” and “seiryaku-ka (political branch).” “The late British Admiral Smyth” meant Admiral William Henry Smyth (1788-1865), who served as the president of the RGS in 1849-50. His farewell presidential address on May 26, 1851, published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London (Smyth 1851), was identified as one source of the Draft Statutes. In this address, the divisions of geography were listed as “Absolute”“Physical”“Special” and “Political,” each further subdivided. The Japanese translation of these original texts was incorporated almost verbatim into the Draft Statutes and the Statutes itself. Smyth was one of the founders of RGS (Markham 1881), and it was he who drafted RGS's “Prospectus.” This document outlined the six objectives of the RGS (Anonymous 1832). Remarkably, the majority of the “Purpose of the Establishment of this Society,” appeared as Article 1 of the Statutes, can be considered a summary of the six objectives of the RGS mentioned above. It becomes evident that Smyth's two texts, written nearly twenty years apart, served as the primary sources for the major portions of the Statutes.