OSAKA (Kyodo) Tadao Umesao, the founding head of the National Museum of Ethnology and renowned for unique dissertations and books on civilizations based on fieldwork, died of natural causes at his home in Osaka Prefecture on Saturday, his family said Tuesday. He was 90.
One of his best known books, "An Ecological View of History: Japanese Civilization in the World Context," from 1957, explains how the civilizations of Eurasia evolved with deep links to ecological systems. In his theory, he divided the continent into Western Europe, Japan and the region in between.