Abstract
This paper attempts to explain a part of history related to the protection of wildlife and biological diversity by analyzing a certain person's view of nature. It picks out a zoologist,Shozaburo WATASE (1862-1929). WATASE's two activities, namely to enthusiastically introduce living things and to protect wildlife by establishing and designating natural monuments, seem to us to be a contradiction now. But by analyzing WATASE's discourse, I think they are not. WATASE's arguments for his two activities had trust in the "power of human work" in common. And they commonly set human beings in the absolute position in which he believed they could control nature. Moreover, it has become obvious that both of WATASE's arguments for his two activities were connected with Japanese colonial rules at that time. This fact suggests that to intend to conquer nature or to have trust in exercising the "power of human work" over nature is related to colonial rules, which are the intention and action to expand one's own sphere and rule others. And I think this fact also raises a question for reflective work on the way science should be, because we can regard biology, a part of science, as a form of exercising of the "power of human work".
