A magazine interview with Umewaka Minoru records that Morse began practicing Noh in January 1883. Morse traveled back and forth between Japan and the United States several times, but it is estimated that his studies of Noh chanting occurred during the final month or so of his last trip to Japan, a trip that lasted for less than a year that spanned June 1882 through February 1883. His interest was not limited to objects, however, but extended to the culture of Japan and Noh became a part of his quest for further knowledge. He was clearly driven by both curiosity and a keen spirit of enquiry.
Morse’s interest was aroused by the earthenware he found during the Omori excavation and he collected ceramics and folk artifacts across the length and breadth of Japan. Morse’s investigations extended to Noh, the tea ceremony and other aspects of Japanese culture He also went to great lengths to welcome several fellow Americans to Tokyo Imperial University, including the physicist Thomas Corwin Mendenhall and the philosopher and art historian Ernest Francisco Fenollosa. His achievements in the archaeological excavation of the Omori Shell Mounds are particularly significant as they led to the inception of archaeology and anthropology in Japan. Brought to Japan by his specialized interest in brachiopods, which he aimed to collect, Morse went on to be inaugurated as professor of the Department of Science at the Imperial University in Tokyo and made significant contributions to the development of academic research and education in Japan.
It is said that, having landed in Yokohama, he spotted the Omori shell-mounds from the window of a train bound for Shimbashi. While Morse did not go to college, he was noted for his collections of land snails, becoming a professor at Bowdoin College and a lecturer at Harvard University, and he was named secretary of the authoritative American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1872. Morse was born in Portland, Maine in 1838. In Japan, Morse’s name appears in history textbooks as the excavator of the Shell Mounds of Omori and he is known as a great man. Professor Edward Sylvester Morse (1838-1925) was an American zoologist. Edward Sylvester Morse, Wikimedia Commons
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