Shinichi Fujimura

Introduction

Shinichi Fujimura was born in 1950 from the Miyagi prefecture of Japan. He is a prolific archaeologist, who is well known for his discovery of stone artifacts from the Lower to Middle Paleolithic ages that later turned out to be a hoax. Fujimura had an impeccable skill of finding ruins and sites that held stone artifacts from prehistoric eras. Many of his peers referred to him as “God’s Hands” due to this so-called luck.

Biography

Fujimura grew up in a town near Sendai where he would spend most of his childhood. When he was just a child, he ended up finding prehistoric pottery when playing in his garden. Growing up in Post-World War II Japan, Fujimura was raised during an era where pride in one’s nation was especially important. The environment and culture he grew up in would affect how Fujimura was able to keep his deceptions going.

As a self-made archaeologist with no formal training, Fujimura was an uncommon sight in the archaeological field. He advanced so far in his career that he eventually became a senior director at the Tohoku Paleolithic Institute.

Scandal

His biggest discovery and hoax was when Fujimura discovered a piece of stoneware that was dated to be 40,000 years old (early Paleolithic period) in 1981 at the Kamitakamori site. This is what brought him to the limelight and what ultimately led to his downfall as there was video recordings of him planting artifacts at the dig site. The recordings were set up by Mainichi Shimbun, a journalist that worked for a prominent newspaper in Japan; his recordings would be released for all to see. Fujimura did not fight the video evidence and admitted to planting fakes of artifacts in over 180 sites. Fujimura did not put into much effort into burying his artifacts as they would be dug up in the wrong strata. The strata in which he buried his forgeries would not have lined up with the time period they were dated to.

Not only did Fujimura have to face the consequences of his actions, but the entire country of Japan felt the aftermath of this hoax unveiling. Fujimura was only able to keep his hoax up for so long because of the system he was apart of. In Japan, culturally it would be offensive to make such a strong claim against them. For someone to have called out Fujimura for his dishonesty would be akin to a personal attack against his character.

The Japanese mandates surrounding archaeological finds was determined to be the main enabler of Fujimura’s hoax as no peer evaluation was needed for Fujimura. In Japan, archaeologists were free to publish their findings without any peer-review and still have their publications be credible. The archaeological community at the time even censored any negativity between archaeologists, which further allowed Fujimura to stay in the limelight for so long.

Outcome

After Fujimura was found out, Japan went through a major remodeling in regards to their archaeological scientific community. Allowing Fujimura to get away with his scandal for so long was a major embarrassment for Japan as it showed how little they focused on releasing quality scientific finds. Especially after the events of World War II it was incredibly important for Japan to try and raise patriotism amongst its citizens and establish that they are still a country full of academic achievements.