200px, Tomitaro Makino was a pioneer Japanese

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

noted for his taxonomic work. He has been called "Father of Japanese Botany". He was one of the first Japanese botanists to work extensively on classifying Japanese plants using the system developed by

Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

. His research resulted in documenting 50,000 specimens, many of which are represented in his ''Makino's Illustrated Flora of Japan''. Despite having dropped out of

grammar school A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school ...

, he eventually attained a

Doctor of Science Doctor of Science ( la, links=no, Scientiae Doctor), usually abbreviated Sc.D., D.Sc., S.D., or D.S., is an academic research degree awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. In some countries, "Doctor of Science" is the degree used f ...

degree, and his birthday is remembered as ''Botany Day'' in Japan.

Early life

Tomitaro Makino was born in Sakawa, Kōchi to a prestigious sake brewer. His parents died during his early childhood, and he was raised mainly by his grandmother. Though he dropped out of school after two years, he cultivated a strong interest in English, geography, and especially in botany. In 1880, he became a teacher at the

primary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary e ...

in his hometown, where he published his first academic botanical paper. In 1884, he moved to

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...

to pursue his botanical interests at the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project b ...

where he worked with Ryōkichi Yatabe. He married in 1890 and later had 13 children.

Career

In 1887, Makino started to publish an

academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...

of botany. In 1936, he published ''Makino Book of Botany'', a six volume text on botany, in which he describes 6000 species, 1000 of which he discovered. He is best known for his ''Makino's Illustrated Flora of Japan'', published 1940, which is still used as an encyclopedic text today. In 1948, he was invited to the Imperial Palace to lecture on botany for

Emperor Hirohito Emperor , commonly known in English-speaking countries by his personal name , was the 124th emperor of Japan, ruling from 25 December 1926 until his death in 1989. Hirohito and his wife, Empress Kōjun, had two sons and five daughters; he was ...

Legacy

In total, Makino named over 2500 plants, including 1000 new

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriat ...

and 1500 new varieties. In addition, he discovered about 600 new species. After his death in 1957, his collection of approximately 400,000 specimens was donated to

Tokyo Metropolitan University , often referred to as TMU, is a public research university in Japan. Origin The origin of Tokyo Metropolitan University was Prefectural Higher School, under the old system of education, established by Tokyo Prefecture in 1929 as the third pu ...

. The Makino Herbarium in

and the Makino Botanical Garden on Mount Godai in his native Kōchi were named in his honor. He was also named an

Honorary Citizen Honorary citizenship is a status bestowed by a city or other government on a foreign or native individual whom it considers to be especially admirable or otherwise worthy of the distinction. The honour usually is symbolic and does not confer an ...

of Tokyo.

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Makino,

OCLC OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It wa ...

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

includes roughly 270+ works in 430+ publications in 4 languages and 1,060+ library holdings. WorldCat Identities 牧野富太郎
/ref> * ''Makino shokubutsugaku zenshū'' (Makino's Book of Botany) Sōsakuin, 1936 * ''Makino shin Nihon shokubutsu zukan'' (Makino's New Illustrated Flora of Japan), Hokuryūkan, 1989,

References

External links

a short biography

{{DEFAULTSORT:Makino, Tomitaro 20th-century Japanese botanists Botanists active in Japan People of the Empire of Japan People from Kōchi Prefecture 1862 births 1957 deaths 19th-century Japanese botanists Japanese taxonomists