was a ''

nattō , spelled as natto in standard English language use, is a traditional Japanese food made from whole soybeans that have been fermented with ''Bacillus subtilis'' var. ''natto''. It is often served as a breakfast food with rice. It is served wit ...

'' merchant who was the first to discover

Japanese Paleolithic The is the period of human inhabitation in Japan predating the development of pottery, generally before 10,000 BC. The starting dates commonly given to this period are from around 40,000 BC; although any date of human presence before 35,000 BC ...

artifacts. Prior to Aizawa, the scholarly consensus had been that Japan was uninhabitable before the

Jōmon period The is the time in Japanese history, traditionally dated between 6,000–300 BCE, during which Japan was inhabited by a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united through a common Jōmon culture, which reached a c ...

. Aizawa discovered stone axes at

Iwajuku The an archaeological site located in what is now the Kasuke neighborhood of the city of Midori, Gunma Prefecture in the northern Kantō region of Japan with finds from the Japanese Paleolithic period. It received protection as a National H ...

in September 1946. Aizawa embarrassed the professional archaeologists; he was only an amateur who passionately believed in pre-Jomon habitation.

References

* Keiji Imamura. ''Prehistoric Japan: new perspectives on insular East Asia'' p. 19. {{DEFAULTSORT:Aizawa, Tadahiro Paleolithic Japan Japanese archaeologists 1926 births 1989 deaths 20th-century archaeologists