William Gowland (1842–1922), Pioneer of Japanese Archaeology

27 William Gowland (1842–1922), Pioneer of Japanese Archaeology SIMON KANER William Gowland INTRODUCTION1 A study of William Gowland entitled William Gowland: the Father of Japanese Archaeology, edited by former Keeper of Japanese Antiquities at the British Museum, Victor Harris, and retired Asahi journalist, Goto¯ Kazuo, was published in 2003.2 This book published, for the first time, the remarkable glass photographic plates made by Gowland of the hundreds of mounded tombs, dated between the third and seventh centuries AD, which he investigated during his sixteen-year sojourn in Osaka, advising the Osaka Mint.3 GOWLAND: A SUMMARY OF HIS LIFE William Gowland was born in Sunderland, County Durham, in 1842. Although he had originally intended to study medicine, he enrolled at the Royal College of Chemistry in London and subsequently at the Royal School of Mines. In 1869 he was made an Associate of the Royal School of Mines. Between 1870 and 1872 he worked as chemist and metallurgist at the Broughton Copper Works, before leaving for 271 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI Japan at the age of thirty to work at the Imperial Japanese Mint in Osaka. Arriving in Osaka in 1872, Gowland worked as Chemist and Metallurgist at the Imperial Japanese Mint, becoming Chief Metallurgist in 1878, and adviser (Metallurgy) to the Imperial War Department of the Japanese Government. These official appointments put him in a key position and ensured that he was able to collect from his colleagues and contacts important historical documents. Many of these now form part of the Gowland collection today at the British Museum. While in Japan, Gowland explored widely, contributing to the Handbook for Travellers in Central and Northern Japan edited by Ernest Satow and A.G.S. Hawes.4 He is credited with coining the term ‘Japanese Alps’.5 His interest in mountaineering and exploration was doubtless encouraged by his work at the Osaka mint, advising on the sourcing of metals as necessary components of the coinage which the mint was producing. Gowland returned to the UK in 1889, taking up the position of Chief Metallurgist at his old employer, the Broughton Copper Works. Between 1902 to 1909 and again from 1913 to 1914, Gowland was Professor of Metallurgy at the Royal School of Mines in South Kensington. He variously served as a member of the council of the Japan Society, President of the Royal Anthropological Institute and Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries of London. JAPAN’S ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES Gowland arrived in Japan in 1872, thirteen years after Charles Darwin published the Origin of Species which set out the theory of evolution. At about the same time, the geological antiquity of the human species had been demonstrated by Edouard Lartet and Henry Christy with archaeological excavations at sites including Massat and Les Eyzies in France. In 1865, five years before Gowland arrived in Japan, John Lubbock (later Lord Avebury) published Prehistoric Times, the first synthesis of world prehistory. The next year, 1866, a figure who was to become instrumental in confirming Gowland’s role in Japanese archaeology, Augustus Wollaston Franks,6 displayed archaeological materials at the British Museum for the first time employing the so- called ‘Three Age’ system, a technology-based chronological system of classification, designed by renowned Danish archaeologist C.J. Thomsen that was to be the standard method for many decades. Around that time, Machida Hisanari, a liberal minded samurai, studied in England for two years, visiting the British Museum and attending the Fourth World Fair in Paris in 1867.7 Machida was to head the 272.

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