OGAWA Takuji and Kishu: Reflections on the spaces of knowledge

Abstract

Recent Anglophone scholarship in the history of geography has experienced a considerable growth of studies focusing on the significance of space and place in the production, circulation, and consumption of geographic knowledge in a broad sense. This trend originates from the "spatial turn" in the historiography of science. This paper examines how OGAWA Takuji (1870-1941), who supervised the first geography department in Japanese universities as a professor at Kyoto Imperial University, developed his thought and practice concerning geography in a variety of spatial contexts in his youth, These spatial contexts are here referred to as the "spaces of knowledge" and special attention is paid to "Kishu," which Ogawa saw as his own homeland. Kishu is an alias for the province of Kii including Tanabe where Ogawa was born in 1870. Born as the second son of a teacher of Chinese learning (kangaku), Ogawa was able to acquire that learning sufficiently in Kishu in his boyhood. Later, his knowledge of Chinese writing acted as one factor leading him to study geoscience and was also utilized for his excellent studies on the historical geography of China. After leaving Wakayama Junior High School, Ogawa entered the First High School in Tokyo in 1887 and initially intended to specialize in philosophy. Then he changed his future major from philosophy to electric engineering. But unluckily he suffered from insomnia and therefore was forced to be absent from school. This became an important turning point in his life. Stimulated by Nan'yu-shi, a travel book on Kishu written in Chinese by Confucian scholar SAITO Setsudo, Ogawa took a therapeutic journey to Kumano occupying the southeastern part of Kishu. His encounter with the material landscapes of Kumano blessed with scenic mountains, ravines, and coasts directed his interest to the study of geoscience. At that time, Ogawa had already expressed his concern with the external form of the earth's surface and the interrelationships between various phenomena on the earth. OGAWA Komakitsu, father-in-law of Ogawa Takuji, once taught geography at Keio Gijuku established by FUKUZAWA Yukichi, and this also served as a favorable condition for the willingness of Ogawa Takuji to specialize in geology at the Imperial University. In 1893, Ogawa entered the College of Science of the Imperial University and enrolled in the geology course. Among the Department of Geology at the College of Science there was intentionality toward Chigaku, a Japanese translation of the German Erdkunde, under the auspices of geologists KOTO Bunjiro and JIMBO Kotora, who were both also interested in geography. The department therefore functioned as the space of knowledge fostering the progress of Ogawa's geographic imagination, the content of which was nevertheless not completely determined by external contexts including imperialism. The Tokyo Geographical Society, to which Ogawa was admitted in 1897 after graduating from the Imperial University, gave him the opportunity to see geography clearly as one of his specialties. Ogawa thus came to formulate the task of geography as investigating the interrelationships between the physical and human phenomena on the earth's surface.