<NEWS>
Mahale 50 Book Coming Soon

Michio Nakamura1, Kazuhiko Hosaka2, Noriko Itoh1 & Koichiro Zamma3
1 Wildlife Research Center, Kyoto University, Japan
2 Kamakura Women’s University, Japan
3 Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University, Japan



We are happy to announce here that we are finalizing a book, Mahale Chimpanzees: 50 Years of Research, which will soon be published from the Cambridge University Press (the publication is due in September 2015). Publication of this volume was planned in order to compile the research achievements that have been accumulated after half a century of research at Mahale.

As readers of Pan Africa News are well aware, the late Prof. Toshisada Nishida, the founder of chimpanzee research at Mahale, published a monograph on Mahale’s chimpanzees, titled Chimpanzees of the Lakeshore (Nishida 2012). In the book, he described various episodes of his research life in Tanzania together with several important academic topics to which he dedicated his research career. However, the book was not intended to comprehensively cover the research topics investigated by other researchers at Mahale. Actually, he wanted to edit an encyclopedic volume about Mahale, which would complement his personal account. In the special issue of Pan Africa News, Emeritus Prof. Masao Kawai wrote as follows:


“Furthermore, he was preparing to compile all his longtime accomplishments into a lifework English language volume. I can hardly imagine how deeply he regretted having to go on his last journey without realizing such plans.” (Kawai 2011)


We, therefore, pursued his goal, making use of the apt opportunity of the 50th year of research at Mahale.

This coming book takes the form of an edited volume, composed of 50 chapters and seven appendices by a total of 24 authors. Each chapter summarizes the research outcomes that have been made from Mahale in addition to new unpublished data. Thus, with this single volume the reader will easily get access to the key information published from Mahale. We also focused on the accumulation of the research effort of 50 years, thus, highlighting longterm changes in behavior wherever possible.

This is the fourth academic edited volume on Tanzanian chimpanzees by the Japanese research team. The former three volumes were published in 1977 (Itani 1977), 1990 (Nishida 1990), and 2002 (Nishida et al. 2002), respectively. This means each time span between publications is 12–13 years. The first and the third ones are in Japanese and the second and upcoming fourth ones are in English. Among 24 authors in the upcoming volume, none had contributed to the first book: By the time, none had yet started their careers as researchers, most of them were still in their childhood, and some were even not born yet! This shows how the current of time is.

Through compilation of the research outcomes over these 50 years, we have learned that we still have much more to know about chimpanzees. The research must go on. We hope this upcoming volume will facilitate even younger people to get interested in chimpanzees. In order to continue the Mahale research for another 50 years, we definitely need involvement of the younger generation.







REFERENCES

Itani J (ed) 1977. [The Chimpanzees.] Kōdansha, Tokyo, in Japanese.

Kawai M 2011. The passing of Professor Toshisada Nishida lamented. (translated by Hosaka K). Pan Afr News 18(special issue):1–2.

Nishida T (ed) 1990. The Chimpanzees of the Mahale Mountains: Sexual and Life Histor y St rategies. University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo.

Nishida T 2012. Chimpanzees of the Lakeshore: Natural History and Culture at Mahale. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Nishida T, Uehara S, Kawanaka K (eds) 2002. [The Mahale Chimpanzees: Thirty-Seven Years of <Panthropology>.] Kyoto University Press, Kyoto, in Japanese.



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