Shinichi Fujimura - Success

Success

Fujimura was born in Kami, Miyagi in 1950. After graduating from a high school in Sendai, he obtained a job in a manufacturing company. He became intrigued by archaeology when he was a child, finding shards of Jōmon pottery in the backyard of his house.

In 1972 Fujimura began to study archaeology and to look for Paleolithic artifacts during his holidays. He became acquainted with some amateur and academic archaeologists in Sendai and they founded a NGO group, Sekki Bunka Kenkyukai in 1975. The group discovered and excavated many Paleolithic stone artifacts in Miyagi prefecture, such as at Zazaragi site in 1981, Nakamine C site in 1983 and Babadan A site in 1984. From a cross-dating investigation of the stratum these stone tools were estimated to be about 50,000 years old.

He established his reputation as a leading amateur archaeologist because he found most of the artifacts on his own. He even became known as the archaeologist with the "divine hands".

After this success, he participated in 180 archaeological digs in northern Japan and almost always found artifacts, their age becoming increasingly older. Based on his discoveries the history of the Japanese Paleolithic period was extended to about 30,000 years. Most of the archaeologists did not question Fujimura's work and this discovery was written in the history textbooks. Later he gained a position as a deputy director at the private NGO group Tohoku Paleolithic Institute.