was a pioneer Japanese botanist noted for his taxonomic work. He has been called "Father of Japanese Botany",Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Makino Tomitarō" in . having been one of the first Japanese botanists to work extensively on classifying Japanese plants using the system developed by Linnaeus. His research resulted in collecting more than 500,000 specimens, many of which are represented in his Makino's Illustrated Flora of Japan. Despite having dropped out of grammar school, he eventually attained a Doctor of Science degree, and his birthday is remembered as Botany Day in Japan.
Legacy In total, Makino named over 2,500 plants, including 1,000 new species and 1,500 new varieties. In addition, he discovered about 600 new species.
After his death in 1957, his collection of approximately 400,000 specimens was donated to Tokyo Metropolitan University which has housed the collection at its Makino Herbarium. Around the same time, Makino Botanical Garden opened in his native Kōchi on Mount Godai. His home in Higashiōizumi, Nerima-ku, Tokyo was converted into the Makino Memorial Garden and Museum.
He was also named an Honorary Citizen of Tokyo.
Early life Tomitaro Makino was born 22 May 1862 in Sakawa, Kōchi to a prestigious sake brewer and household goods purveyor called . The privileged merchant family was entitled to . His parents died during his early childhood (father at age 3, mother at age 5) and he lost his grandfather at age 6, leaving his step-grandmother to raise him. His name was also changed from given at birth to Tomitaro around the time he lost his close kins.
In 1872 at age 10 (or 1871, age 9), he began attending a terakoya (so-called "temple school") run by in his home neighborhood, later transferring to Itō-juku, run by Confucian scholar where he was taught alongside Four Books and Five Classics Chinese learning, arithmetic and calligraphy as well.
In 1873 at age 11 (or 1872, age 10), he cross-enrolled at but since Itō was also part of the faculty here, he soon quit Itō-juku. Since Meikōkan was a (lit. "village"), it had the pretense of education for samurai extended to commoners, and was mostly attended by samurai family pupils. A classmate here was (later dubbed "father of harbor engineering"). This school did not stick to Chinese scholarship, but taught geography, astronomy, and physics, western-style, using Fukuzawa Yukichi's and Kawamoto Kōmin's as textbooks. Around this time, Makino became acquainted with a certain westernization enthusiast named Manabe, who not only recommended the adoption of zangiri hairstyle (without topknot), but coaxed Makino into joining the same English study society of which he was already a member. This study group had hired two English linguists from Kōchi city, and borrowed English books from the prefectural government office. Thus Makino got his start in gaining literacy in English.
Meikōkan became due to school reform, and Makino attended only 2 years before dropping out (though this is misleading, since he had attained the top level for "lower elementary school" thus nearly graduating), and began to study botany in a self-taught manner. He states that he expected to succeed in his family brewery at the time, and was "not contemplating at all" about entering a life of academia. He spent a brief period of this time in his youth supporting the Freedom and People's Rights Movement in his hometown Tosa Province.
He foisted the duty of operating the brewery onto his grandmother and senior manager () while he lived a dilettante's life as he pleased. At age 15, he took up the teaching post at Sakawa Elementary, resigning after 2 years in 1880 (at age 17/18), when he moved to Kōchi city to attend . But since this institution concentrated heavily on Chinese learning, it did not please him to attend any of its lectures, and delved into studying geography and botany which were the subjects that interested him. Around this time, he was also diligently making handwritten copies of herbal medicinal scholar Ono Ranzan's critique (i.e. "Elucidation of Bencao Gangmu), which developed his knowledge of herbal pharmacology a. But his trip to Kōchi did have its windfall, which was getting the acquaintance of . Naganuma taught at (precursor to the Kōchi University Education Department), who was so proficient in English as to privately translate such books as Robert Bentley's Botany and show the manuscripts to Makino. Thus Makino widened his knowledge of western botanical scholarship, learning who the authorities in the field were. Makino has stated in his autobiography: "My knowledge of botany owes greatly to Naganuma-sensei".
Makino self-published his first academic paper in a journal he created in 1879 (around the end of his elementary schoolteacher career, before leaving for Kōchi). The journal was called . The journal was created around Makino, who handprinted each copy to distribute to the readership. Later, some time during his 20s (1880s) while still in his home province, he began circulating a handmade periodical called .This was also hand-copied by Makino with inkbrush on washi paper.
At age 19, Makino mounted on a trip to Tokyo to see the 2nd National Industrial Exhibitions (1 March–30 June 1881). Accompanied by the senior manager (bantō)'s son and accountant clerks, Makino purchased books and a microscope. Makino also visited the Natural History Bureau at the Ministry of Education where he was warmly received by naturalist Yoshio Tanaka and botanist (Ranzan's great-grandson) from whom he heard talk on the latest news in botany, and was shown around the facility's botanical garden.
In 1881, Tomitarō married his fiancée and cousin 2 years his junior in his hometown, and she became the new young madam of the Kishiya brewerie establishment. Since he had a grand wedding in his hometown, Sakawa's local history makes clear record of it, but Makino himself did not mention this marriage in any of his writings, including his autobiography (Jijoden).
Career In July 1884 at age 22, he moved to Tokyo to pursue his botanical studies in earnest. At the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Science in the Botanical Institute (Shokubutsugaku kyōshitsu) he met Cornell-educated professor Ryōkichi Yatabe, who granted the privilege to come freely to the Institute and make use of its library, equipment and other resources, allowing Makino to delve into his botanical research. Makino started to send specimens to Karl Maximovich of Russia considered the foremost authority on East Asian flora at the time, and since these tended to be rare and curious samples, it delighted the Russian to the extent that whenever Maximovich sent a copy of his work to the institute, he would send a separate copy privately for Makino.
In 1887 at age 25, he co-founded the journal in collaboration with the institute's colleagues , , and others., with contributions from , Mitsutarō Shirai, Manabu Miyoshi, and Yatabe as well. This same year Makino lost his step-grandmother (aged 77) who raised him.
November 1888 at age 26, he began publishing the series which he had long been conceptualizing, at his own-expense. Towards that end, he apprenticed himself at a printing press in order to learn the techniques of lithography, and he eventually drew the plant illustrations himself, considered "photo-like in accuracy", and highly praised by Maximowicz. It was arguably the first illustrated compendium (zukan) of flora published in Japan. To Makino it was a "crystallization of his hardships" which he considered "presentable with pride to the world",: "この出版は、私にとってはまったく苦心の結晶であった。私は、これは世に誇り得るものと自負している。" and a monument to Japanese biological history according to his biographer.: "おそらくこの本の出版は、日本の生物学史上にいつまでも名を残すであろう".
Around this time, while Tomitarō was building his position as botanical researcher, the funding was backed by his home business, and after the grandmother's death, his cousin/wife Nao sent funds as requested to the point that Kishiya's business operation was in peril. And despite already having a wife, Nao, in his home town, he fell in love at first sight with 14-year old who was the popular seller-girl daughter of a confection store in Tokyo, and the couple began cohabiting in , Taitō-ku (formerly in Shitaya-ku), at a detached wing of a princely priest's villa, belonging to a prince assigned to Rinnō-ji in Nikkō. The following year their first daughter Sonoko (1888–1893).
In 1889 he discovered a new species of plant, the , published in a paper co-signed by Saburō Okubo that appeared in their Shokubutsugaku zasshi ("Botanical Magazine"). It was the first time in Japan that a scientific name was given to a plant species. In 1890, he was collecting plants in the former , , Tokyo, when in an waterway he found an unfamiliar insect-eating aquatic plant. He had discovered the occurrence in Japan of Aldrovanda vesiculosa (Japanese: mujinamo) which was then only known to grow sporadically in various faraway parts of the world. The report he made about this gained him world-wide notice in botanical circles.。
In 1890, at age 28, he married . The same year he was banned from the Botanical Institute by Prof. Yatabe, seemingly blocking his path to continue research. One of the reasons given for the expulsion was that the Institute had its own ideas about issuing anillustrated botanical compendium, and Makino's series posed a direct competition, and Makino himself concluded that had been the case. It has also been stated, in defense of Yatabe, that Makino made a regular habit of checking out books without permission, ultimately such a sanction became necessary. Makino in despair even contemplated defecting to Russia and taking his collection of specimens to Maximowicz, hopefully to continue research abroad, but in 1891 his mentor died unexpectedly of influenza and the bold plan did not materialize., Chapter "土佐っ坊の本音 the true feelings of a Tosa Lad", p. 175
In 1891, his family business Kishiya was at a point of failing, and could no longer send funds to Makino. He returned to his home town to liquidate and divide family assets. Tomitarō as the nominal tōshu (i.e, proprietor of the business, also meaning the head of the extended family) ruled to have Nao marry the senior manager (bantō) Nao and her husband however soon folded the Kishiya business.
During a period of stay in his province, one thing he did was to meddle in the local education of western music. Then a telegram arrived telling him his young daughter had died, so he hastened back to Tokyo,
In 1893, Prof. Yatabe was ousted from Tokyo University replaced by Jinzō Matsumura, who invited Makimura back to fill the post of assistant on On 11 September. On the assistant's flimsy salary of 15 yen per month, it grew difficult for him to support his growing family, and not enough to sustain his spending habits on research, purchasing books, etc., yet he was determined to purchase all costly books he deemed necessary, going into deep debt.: "The greatest cause of his poverty was books. Books were his instructors for the self-taught man, and more precious than life. Later on, he became used to spending 100,000 or 200,000 yen on books without even flinching 貧乏の最大の原因となったものは本であった。本は独学する彼にとっての先生であり、命より大切なものだったからである。後には全く金がなくなっても十万円分や二十万円分の本を平気で買うようになった。十万円分や二十万円分の本を平気で買うようになった"。 He couldn't pay his rent, and one time his property got seized and auctioned off.