A history of dental anthropology in Japan

Abstract

Dental anthropology in Japan reached its prosperity after the second world war, but its sprouting began in the Meiji era. Anthropologists such as Yoshikiyo Koganei have begun research on dental caries and ritual tooth extraction in ancient skulls. Tsunetaro Fujita, appeared in the Showa era, established the anatomy of teeth, and showed the possibility of dental anthropology through research on various morphologies of teeth. There were many dental anthropologists from his subordinates, one of whom was Kazuro Hanihara. He showed that a set of dental traits frequently appeared in Asians, and defined it as the Mongoloid Dental Complex. In the generation following Hanihara, the dental traits of the ancient Japanese such as the Jomon people and the Yayoi people and also in various groups in the Asia-Pacific region were investigated. Hypotheses on the origin of Japanese people and the dispersal of people in Asia were proposed from those researches. Dental anthropology was most active in the 1990s when researches were not only on metric and non-metric dental traits, but also spread out to various aspects such as three-dimensional morphology, paleopathology, primate teeth, attrition, occlusion, and heredity. Entering into this century, the number of dental anthropological researchers is gradually decreasing. The information from the teeth is thought to be infinite. The future issue will be what we extract the useful knowledge from them.