From Howard to Hokkaido: Professor Reginald Gates's 'race crossing' research in Japan and transnational insurgencies against racial equality after 1945

In 1954, the biologist Professor Reginald Gates conducted biometric 'race crossing' research throughout Japan. Among his 'subjects' were the Ainu tribes of Hokkaido and 'war children', the offspring of Japanese women and US servicemen. Gates is largely remembered as an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Patterns of prejudice Vol. 59; no. 1; pp. 53 - 73
Main Author: Brown, Robert
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Abingdon Routledge 01.02.2025
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects:
Academic discourse
Academic staff
Ainu
Anthropologists
anthropology
Biometrics
British world
College faculty
far right
Humans
Insurgency
Intelligence tests
Intermarriage
Interracial relationships
Italian racial science
Japan
Mankind Quarterly
Marriage
Military personnel
Race
Racial inequality
Racism
Reginald Gates
scientific racism
Servicemen
Transnationalism
Tribes and tribal systems
Women
Japan
ISSN:0031-322X, 1461-7331
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In 1954, the biologist Professor Reginald Gates conducted biometric 'race crossing' research throughout Japan. Among his 'subjects' were the Ainu tribes of Hokkaido and 'war children', the offspring of Japanese women and US servicemen. Gates is largely remembered as an anachronistic conservative whose opposition to interracial marriage and belief in race theory ostracized him from the post-war Anglo-American scientific mainstream. The article examines the positive responses that Gates and his research paradoxically received from Japanese scientists. It argues that the methodological overlap between Gates and Japanese anthropologists complicates and decentres dominant Anglo-American understandings of the decline of racial thinking after 1945. Gates bypassed mainstream academic channels to get his 'race crossing' research published. Brown's article explores his correspondence and collaboration with the Italian scientific racist Luigi Gedda, head of the Gregorio Mendel Institute in Rome. It argues that the two were nodes in a wider transnational scientific insurgency against the UNESCO statements on racial equality (1950). Through the scientific racist Mankind Quarterly journal, Gates and a cluster of other marginal academics constructed racial hierarchies in which 'East Asians' were attributed with supposedly superior characteristics relative to other racialized groups, setting the scene for psychologist Richard Lynn's theses on 'Mongoloid' IQ, and the controversial 'bell curve' debates of the 1990s.
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ISSN:0031-322X
1461-7331
DOI:10.1080/0031322X.2025.2547480