抄録
Siberia and Russian Far East have been one of the significant fields of the Japanese anthropology and ethnology. Ryuzo Torii, who was an apprentice of Shogoro Tsuboi, a founder of the Japanese anthropology, intensively researched Siberia, Far East Russia, Mongolia and Northeastern province of China (Manchuria). However, the Soviet Union, which succeeded the rule of these regions from the Imperial Russia, had shut out the Japanese scholars since the 1930s. During the age of the Cold War, the Soviet Union did not allow the western anthropologists to engage in the field research in Siberia and Far East with few exceptions.
The firmly closed door began to be opened in the Perestroika regime. Since the end of the l98 0s, Soviet government gradually permitted the western journalists and scholars to engage in the field research. And the door was finally opened in the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Since then European, American, and Japanese researchers, rushed into Siberia and Russian Far East.
The first symposium on the northern peoples was held in Abashiri in 1986, and the Museum of the Northern Peoples was established in 1989, when the process of the Perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union were still running. The history of the symposium and the museum synchronized with the process of the development of the field research in Siberia and Russian Far East by Japanese scholars.
