For the past twenty years, Fujimura had been in the academic and media spotlight for a series of extraordinary discoveries dating from the Early and Middle Paleolithic Periods. In a career that spanned more than two decades, Fujimura’s findings had appeared to push back the earliest human habitation of Japan from 30,000 to 600,000 years ago. The Kamitakamori site in particular had captured worldwide attention, as evidence unearthed by Fujimura seemed to show not only that early humans inhabited the area 600,000 years ago, but that these early humans were more intelligent than their contemporaries elsewhere in the world. In the words of one archaeologist, Fujimura had been in the process of “rewriting the story of human evolution.â€Â
Fujimura initially only admitted to the two cases in which his forgeries had been witnessed. However, re-examination of several other sites where he had worked yielded more planted artifacts, and a review of his previous discoveries revealed surface damage and traces of different types of sediment on the artifacts, suggesting that the artifacts had been transported from a different site. Although many of Fujimura’s artifacts had been examined by specialists and been loaned out for exhibitions, such details had gone largely unnoticed. Even after the first forgeries were exposed, it took time for a consensus to develop among scholars that Fujimura’s other discoveries were suspect. Fujimura’s confession in the fall of 2001 confirmed that his forgery had begun as early as 1980 and involved 42 sites. It is possible that most of the sites with which he was involved in his long career – over 180 in all – were affected by his forgery.
Reactions to the Scandal
The Japanese media avidly reports the latest developments in archaeology, and major discoveries often make national headlines. Fujimura’s findings were therefore widely publicized, and his more important discoveries were incorporated into school textbooks (references to these findings were quickly removed after the forgery was revealed). Books on archaeology and Japanese history came to include descriptions of the Early/Middle Paleolithic Period based on Fujimura’s discoveries, which appeared to overturn the belief that Japan’s earliest inhabitants migrated approximately 30,000 years ago from what is now Korea.
News of the scandal quickly spread around the world. The New York Times poked fun at the archaeology-related merchandizing efforts of towns near Fujimura’s sites, which had tried to bolster their flagging economies by selling “Early Man†brand sake, sweet buns, and noodle soup, and holding an “Early Man Marathonâ€Â. The same article criticized Japan’s “giddy archaeology boom†which took place “without peer review, and even without a scientific dating of the artifacts,†and quoted Fujimura’s bizarre explanation that “the devil made me do it.â€Â1 Newsweek described Fujimura’s downfall under the headline “Japan loses a million years of human prehistory,†and pointed to a dissent-stifling “cordiality†in Japanese academic circles.2 In January 2001, the British journal Science ran a strongly-worded article titled “Japanese Fraud Highlights Media-Driven Research Ethic,†which stated that:
[The Fujimura scandal] exposes a sloppy side of Japanese archaeology in which press conferences take precedence over publication, few scientists bother to study artifacts once they are plucked from the ground, and there is little public debate over the scientific merits of any claim… Scientists say this competition has had a corroding effect on archaeology in Japan. Press conferences are typically held at sites to trumpet the latest findings.