Chimpanzee Culture Wars: Rethinking Human Nature alongside Japanese, European, and American Cultural Primatologists By Nicolas Langlitz

24 When the editor-inchief of PAN contacted me to review this book, I was somewhat hesitant. This was not because I was uninterested, but because it takes me a signif icant amount of t ime to read through a 352-page academic book in English. The reading process actually took three weeks, not simply because of my modest English ability, but also because the book contained rather intricate philosophical discussions referring to Rousseau, Heidegger, Merleau‒Ponty, etc. Nonetheless, I felt compelled to finish because the book’s theme is quite relevant to my own research and many of the people mentioned in the text are familiar to me. In brief, this book is an ethnography of “cultural primatologists” studying chimpanzees. Two famous primatologists, one from Europe and another from Japan, are the main figures of the book, although many other supporting individuals appear at relevant points. These two eminent scholars differ in various ways, which readers will learn in detail from the book, but I would like to highlight their commonalities. First, both study western subspecies of chimpanzees, field studies of which started later than those of eastern subspecies. Second, both belong to academic institutions where they were able to delve entirely into research, avoiding the need to devote time to undergraduate teaching. Third, the two were heads of their respective institutions while also conducting their own research projects (so, they have long been “alpha males!”). Fourth, their research teams are highly international in terms of membership. I draw attention to these points as I think they can affect the behaviors of researchers in the same way as the leaders’ regional or cultural origins. The descriptions of these two stalwarts by Langlitz were quite interesting and useful. Being Japanese myself, I was more familiar with the situation in Japan, but discovered a great deal from accounts of the Max Planck team. For example, it was interesting to learn of the very refined hygiene measures taken at the field site, the important role of a specialized statistician at the institute, the overhabituation problem of chimpanzees, and the tendency for students to rely exclusively on electronic devices to take data and even to read e-books in the forest (though this last point may be more of a generational difference than a cultural one), etc. Perhaps Western readers can learn likewise from descriptions of the Japanese side. The aim of this book is not just to describe the behaviors of two human alpha males, of course. By going into the field sites and laboratories of these primatologists, Langlitz’s ultimate aim is to understand the reflections of “cultural primatologists” from the viewpoint of cultural anthropology. While Langlitz is well aware that his observations are “very much skewed toward the researchers who allowed me” (p. 12), he looks more broadly at the controversy over whether or not chimpanzees have cultures by comparing the backgrounds of “field studies vs. laboratory studies” and “Euro‒American studies vs. Japanese studies.” I felt slightly awkward to find myself mentioned on p. 12 alongside big names of cultural primatology. While I felt honored to be grouped among such eminent scholars, honestly speaking this accolade should rather belong to Toshisada Nishida. Nishida also deserves to be mentioned more often elsewhere in the text, at least in my view. For example, Langlitz did not refer to Nishida even as a representative of Mahale. Instead, he repeatedly arranged “Goodall’s Gombe” and “Itani’s Mahale” consecutively (e.g., pp. 20–21, p. 59, p. 106). I do not deny the significance of Itani’s role in the initial stage of Mahale research. Calling Mahale “Itani’s,” however, seems almost like calling Gombe “Leakey’s,” as it disregards those who actually worked on site. It was Nishida who stayed at Mahale for a long time, accomplishing the habituation of K and M group chimpanzees, and subsequently writing many influential papers about the site, and maintaining it over Chimpanzee Culture Wars: Rethinking Human Nature alongside Japanese, European, and American Cultural Primatologists