The historian says, "The most direct way of understanding a country is to study its history." The geographer says, "The world is the stage upon which history is played out, and has an effect on its evolution."

Historical geography is what you get by synthesizing these two approaches. The juncture of any period of time and any point in space can be studied by historical geography. But in addition to having "a map in one hand and a history book in the other," this is a branch of learning that also requires you to set foot in the actual locality you wish to study.

Initially, in China as abroad, historical geography tended to be dominated by historians intent on recovering ancient geography in order to appreciate the lie of the land in past historical periods, as a means of assisting with their historical research.

Later, mainstream research in historical geography gradually shifted towards the "geography of the past." After the Second World War this developed into "seeking to understand the present," studying continuous changes in geography so as to reinforce its applicability to the present.

In Japan the scholar who opened up the field of historical geography on the basis of geographical research was Ogawa Takuji, who lived in the late Taisho and early Showa periods. Ogawa was trained as a geologist, but his fondness for sinology led him to make active use of ancient Chinese literature and local gazetteers of all periods in studying the historical geography of China. Spurred on by Ogawa Takuji, a number of Japanese students in history and geography departments joined this field of study, and towards the end of his life his last notable student was Hibino Takeo.

China is such a huge territory and its history is so long that to cover both its history and geography is truly an exhausting and thankless task. This is why among sinologists worldwide, the number of researchers in this field can be counted on the fingers of one hand. In Japan today, Hibino Takeo is the only acknowledged such authority.

Hibino Takeo's research is mainly concerned with China's middle antiquity from the Ch'in and Han period to the T'ang period, with special emphasis on the development of border areas. This could be said to be the least popular topic within the already un popular discipline of Chinese historical geography, which is why in addition to his command of English and French, Hibino Takeo is also able to converse in Manchu, Mongol and Russian.

According to Chengkung University history professor Li Mien-shih, who is quite familiar with Hibino's work, his books are most out standing for their "intelligent and wide ranging use of all kinds of documentary evidence." In his study of early Chinese agriculture, he sometimes had to draw upon the plants mentioned in the Classic of Poetry as evidence for the temperature and soil of the time; "And here Hibino is even stronger than Chinese scholars," admits Professor Li.

Basically Hibino started out as a historian but his teacher Ogawa Takuji was a geologist, so he has a firmer grounding in geography than most historians. This is why he has been able to complete studies such as his History of Chinese Mineralogy.

In Taiwan, research into Chinese historical geography suffers from a clear generation gap due to Taiwan's isolation from the main land over the past 40 years. Scholars like Wang Hui of Chinese Culture University and Li Mien-shih of Chengkung University are now in their seventies, and research among the younger generation, such as Shih Tien-fu of National Taiwan Normal University, is restricted to the historical geography of Taiwan. Hibino has travelled personally to various parts of China on field trips, which means his data is more comprehensive and thus all the more valuable.

Hibino Takeo was born in 1914 and gained his doctorate at Kyoto University, where he specialized in ancient Chinese historical geography during his time at the Institute of Oriental History. He has visited China many times.

Apart from historical geography, his interests include Chinese folklore, art and calligraphy. Since middle age he has been to several Southeast Asian countries to study their overseas Chinese communities on a historical geography basis.

Hibino Takeo is a prolific writer, and his major works include: A History of Chinese Agriculture, A History of Chinese Mineralogy, The Evolving Geography of China, Chinese Historical Geography, Archeology in Mongolia and Sinkiang, Ancient Monuments of Shansi, A Biographical Dictionary of Chinese History, Carved Inscriptions and Stone Portraits of Honan Province, and chronologies of Chinese art, overseas Chinese and world history. "His works amply testify to his breadth of learning and his outstanding vigor," comments National Taiwan University history professor Hsu Hsien-yao.

At age 77, Hibino is president of Ohtema Women's University at Nishinomiya, where in addition to his administrative duties he still teaches and supervises students writing their graduation theses, a rarity in Japan. Hibino comments: "Teaching is the only way to understand the students and to know the school better." So the scholastic disciplines mastered through fieldwork are indeed brought to bear on running the school.

This doyen of the Japanese sinological community received Sinorama's reporter at his home in suburban Kyoto, and the text of the ensuing interview now follows.

Q: How did you first get involved in sinology? Was it anything to do with your grandfather having been to China?

A: My grandfather went to China in the late Edo period. In those days Japan was still a closed nation, and in China Hung Hsiu-ch'uan had set up the Taiping Celestial Kingdom at Nanking. Japan had no diplomatic relations with the Ch'ing dynasty, but a group of scholars was sent to Shanghai to gather trade information, my grandfather among them.

My grandfather didn't speak Chinese, but he was no stranger to China -- our family links with China go back to the Yuan period. He wrote everything down in Chinese characters and made friends with Chinese people that way. His diary vividly describes what he saw and heard in Shanghai. Forty years ago I edited this material for publication as A Shanghai Diary, 1862.

My grandfather died before I was born, but he left a houseful of ancient Chinese calligraphy and books, and my father also enjoyed composing Chinese poetry, so I've been close to Chinese studies since my childhood.

When I was growing up, Japanese education placed a heavy emphasis on Chinese studies. At senior high we had to study the Summary of Eighteen Histories, Spring & Autumn Annals, Tso Chuan and Annals of the Historian, which spurred my interest in Chinese history. So lessons apart, I also read a lot of Chinese books at home.

Q: What other factors led to your embarking on sinological research and focusing on Chinese historical geography?

A: The oriental history course at Kyoto University covered three main areas: China, India and the Moslem world. I was interested in the history of communications between T'ang and Sung China and the West. My graduation thesis was on the development of Fukien in the T'ang and Sung periods. After graduating, I began studying Chinese historical geography because of my own interest, because my thesis was slanted towards regional studies, and at the urging of my professor and university president.

Q: You're the first sinologue of many we have interviewed who has studied Chinese historical geography. Is it a neglected field?

A: It is now, but when I started out historical geography was a flourishing subject among Chinese scholars. I corresponded with young scholars whose articles appeared in Ku Chieh-kang's journal Yu Kung, such as Tan Chi-lin of the Institute of Historical Geography at Shanghai's Futan University, and Professor Shih Nien-hai of Sian University. Those were memorable days, but sadly publication ceased with the outbreak of war.

Q: And in Japan itself?

A: It doesn't go back far in Japan. The subject only got started in the early Meiji period, and only four recognized scholars have emerged in the past 120 years, the pioneering Ogawa Takuji, his students Mori Rokujoh and Haru Sadao, and lastly myself, Ogawa Takuji's last student. The others have all passed away, alas. I'm the only one left, and who is there to come after?

Q: Could you explain just what historical geography consists of?

A: It's a synthesis of history and geography--basically, history focuses on written documents and pure geography focuses on land surveys, while historical geography brings the two together for comparison and to identify points of contact.

In our field we have to spend twice as much time as a historian or geographer, and comparative data about the same place in modern and ancient times are often uneven, so it's difficult to come up with earth-shattering results in a short time. That's another reason there's a dearth of scholars in the field.

Q: When you went to mainland China for two years in 1939, what was the nature of your research project?

A: I was 24 then, and went to China as a special researcher on China for the cultural affairs department of the Foreign Affairs Ministry. In the first year I travelled to Shantung, Shansi, Inner Mongolia and the Yangtze Valley, and the second year I stayed in Peiping. When the fighting intensified I left China, but before the end of the war I made two further short field trips to China in 1942 and 1943.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry's cultural affairs department was set up with reparation money from the Boxer Rebellion, when it was agreed by the eight-nation allied forces to allow part of the funds obtained from the Manchu government to be spent on China. So the department provided funds for scholars to visit China for research, without interfering at all in their chosen topic of research.

Q: Visiting China in 1939 during wartime, was your fieldwork affected at all? Especially being an "enemy" national?

A: During my two years in China I never met any trouble because I was purely a scholar and could act more freely than the military. As for my work being affected, intensified fighting meant that certain areas held by the Eighth Route Army became inaccessible.

Q: Did you have to take any special precautions on your field trips?

A: On a field trip it's essential to have contacts among the local people. Everywhere I went, I would first stress to the inhabitants that I was not a soldier or politician, I was there purely for research. Then I'd find a village chief, district head or teacher well trusted by the local people to introduce me and so minimize the people's fear of an outsider.

Ancient tombs, temples and inscribed stelae provide important evidence, and unless you have their confidence it's difficult to get near these places that are sacred to the Chinese.

Q: Do you have any particular impressions from those two years in China?

A: I remember in one tiny village where I was doing fieldwork a villager confided to me: "Japan is on the verge of defeat." I was taken aback since as there was no radio and the villager was illiterate, how could he judge? He continued: "When the war started the Japanese soldiers were neatly dressed and paid for whatever they bought in the village; gradually their uniforms grew ragged and now they only pay for a little of what they buy, so Japan won't hold out much longer."

What surprised me was that when I travelled elsewhere, several other people told me the same. The fact that they all relied on their personal experience of life to gauge wider events shows how widely shared Chinese culture is, and how evenly it has penetrated a broad area.

But there are differences between north and south China that go beyond cuisine and dialect; they also have different attitudes towards the Japanese. When I was in the north I was looked after attentively, people poured tea for me on the train; but in the south the children called me "hobgoblin! hobgoblin!" To the Japanese hobgoblins are nice creatures, but I appreciate that it's a term of abuse in China. I never suffered any such unpleasantness in the north.

Thinking about all this from the angle of historical geography, I think northerners are used to being ruled by nomadic tribes, and the physical environment makes northerners more open-minded; southerners, on the other hand, are the stubborn guardians of Chinese cultural traditions, so to speak, they opened up the south when they fled there to escape foreign domination, so they have a strong "spirit of resistance."

Q: Of what benefit were your two years of fieldwork?

A: My personal experience in these two years provided me with the material to write several books later on, but most of all it helped me to appreciate the Chinese themselves. During my year in Peiping I read the Story of the Stone and learned calligraphy with a Manchu teacher, and would sometimes view historic sites or visit the popular entertainment district. In the course of personal contacts I learned a lot about the unique Chinese way of life and thought, which was of particular use to me later in researching into the history of the overseas Chinese.

My fieldwork was carried out before the communist occupation of the mainland, when the streets and historic buildings were in good shape and Chinese culture was well maintained. I travelled south of the Yangtze by boat, rode on horseback, and travelled by wooden handcart on the loess plain, genuinely experiencing the original China at first hand. It was an experience of China that today's younger generation can never have.

Q: Apart from differences of period, how does your study of China's historical geography differ from that of other scholars, especially Chinese ones?

A: Chinese and Japanese scholars always used to have different approaches. When Japanese scholars now go to China for fieldwork they're subject to many restrictions and cannot travel so freely as before, but the Chinese can't necessarily go to those areas either, and there are even more limitations on what they can publish.

Q: You've also written about Chinese calligraphy, painting and folklore; was this out of personal interest or was it related to your studies?

A: Weren't Chinese gentlemen like this themselves in bygone days? They were literati who wrote and composed verse, they were artists skilled at calligraphy, painting, music and chess, and they were politicians who took examinations to become officials. To me, China is a vast country, not only in terms of territorial extent but in its long vertical continuity, something that other cultures lack. So if you want to study the city of Ch'ang-an in the T'ang period you must approach it from various angles--the T'ang period's whole history, geography, even its economy, politics and art. Of course I personally admire Chinese art too, so there's an element of both involved.

[Picture Caption]

Two hundred years of family tradition led Hibino Takeo into Chinese studies.

Besides assisting his research into historical geography, Hibino Takeo's youthful fieldwork in China has also helped him better understand the overseas Chinese. (photo courtesy of Hibino Takeo)

In addition to Chinese historical geography, Hibino has also written extensively on Chinese calligraphy and painting.

(Right) Decorated with Chinese works of art, his Japanese style house has taken on a very personal touch.

As university president, Hibino Takeo still supervises students' graduation theses, a rarity in Japan.

Two hundred years of family tradition led Hibino Takeo into Chinese studies.

Besides assisting his research into historical geography, Hibino Takeo's youthful fieldwork in China has also helped him better understand the overseas Chinese. （photo courtesy of Hibino Takeo）

In addition to Chinese historical geography, Hibino has also written extensively on Chinese calligraphy and painting.

（Right） Decorated with Chinese works of art, his Japanese style house has taken on a very personal touch.

As university president, Hibino Takeo still supervises students' graduation theses, a rarity in Japan.