Places, Images, Times & Transformations

Fujimura Shin'ichi

(1950?- ). Japanese amateur archaeologist who faked important discoveries for years before he was exposed in 2000. Over the years, he had worked in 180 archaeological digs all around Japan and had always seemed to find something important and increasingly older than expected. In 2000, Fujimura and his team announced an important find in the Kamitakamori site near Tsukidate, Miyagi Prefecture. The finds were dated 570,000 years old. However, the next month the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper published pictures of Fujimura digging holes and burying the artifacts. He had planted artifacts from his own collection in strata that would have indicated earlier dates. All of Fujimura's work immediately fell under suspicion, and the discovery also affected the research of many other archaeologists in Japan and elsewhere. Most of Fujimura's other findings have been since proven forgeries. The Fujimura scandal had political implications, for the cornerstone of the traditional Japanese national myth was that the Japanese people have a unique ethnic ancestry and are not related to the people of surrounding nations, specifically Korea and China. Although most Japanese reject this "uniqueness" myth, a small group of nationalists still espouse it. Fujimura's findings of increasingly ancient artifacts had led to the discarding of the Korean descent theories and bolstered the nationalists' claim to Japan's unique ancestry. (from Wikipedia)

There is currently no content classified with this term.

Subscribe to RSS - Fujimura Shin'ichi