特集「牧野富太郎」によせて

抄録

NHK, Japan Broadcasting Corporation has started to Broadcast a new program on NHK's morning drama series commonly known as Asadora, titled “Ranman” which portrays the life of Tomitaro Makino as a drama. He is the first scientist to be portrayed as a protagonist in the 62-year history of this popular drama series.
Tomitaro Makino was born in a rural village west of Kochi City in 1862. His curiosity in plant life soon developed into a devotion to botanical research throughout his life of 94 years. As an avid field botanist, Makino collected some 400,000 botanical specimens and named over 1,500 new species and subspecies of plants during his life. In 1940, he published his Illustrated Flora of Japan, a reference work that remains indispensable to professional botanists and enthusiasts even today. Travelling widely throughout Japan for his work, Makino became well known as much for his bright personality as his ability to communicate the wonder of the plant kingdom. Taken together, they make Tomitaro Makino the father of botany in Japan.
It should be noted that from the early years of the 20th century, Tomitaro Makino recognized that research on plant diversity in Japan would lead to promotion of the plant industry through the development of novel edible, horticultural, and medicinal plants, and he urged Japanese plant taxonomists to make efforts towards this end. Today the basic principles of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which include research and conservation of plant diversity, sustainable use, and equitable sharing of benefits arising from them, are not only linked to one of the SDGs, the goal of “protecting the richness of the land”, but are also extremely important issues related to the goal of “eliminating poverty and hunger”. I look forward to seeing efforts in Japan that will bring Makino Tomitaro's idea of industrial utilization as an outlet for plant diversity research into the present day.