Kazuo Tanaka, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, passed away on March 5, 2024, at the age of 95. He is well known to people working on mosquitoes as a senior author of “A revision of the adult and larval mosquitoes of Japan (including the Ryukyu Archipelago and the Ogasawara Islands) and Korea (Diptera: Culicidae)” (1979). American Mosquito Control Association members may remember that he received the John N. Belkin Award in 2004. This honor shows his contributions not only to the study of regional mosquito fauna, but also to basic mosquito morphology, especially interpretations about the structure of larval maxillae with an emphasis on its usefulness in studying mosquito phylogeny.
Tanaka was a unique medical entomologist in that 1) his formal education ended at the age of 16 before the completion of secondary school and 2) he was employed as a mosquito taxonomist only for 10 years. He suffered from asthma from early childhood, which influenced his life, most seriously in the first third of it. Below I describe his life based on his publications, notes he gave me about his early-life memories (ages 3–16), and personal conversations. His life can be divided into 5 periods: boyhood, an entomologist initially studying carabid beetles, next studying mosquitoes, then studying indoor insects, and finally post-retirement.
December 6, 1928: He was born in Tokyo, Japan, as the second son of Kurou Tanaka and Sayo Tanaka.
1932–1941 (ages 6–12): He went to primary schools in Kanagawa, Tokyo, and Osaka.
1941–1945 (ages 12–16): He attended secondary schools in Okayama, Osaka, Tokyo, and Niigata.
August 15, 1945, the end of World War II: He was in an agricultural village in Niigata Prefecture.
He moved several times during his school years because of transfers of his father (a bank clerk), except the first move to Kanagawa near Tokyo for improvement of his health in rural environments and the last move to Niigata for child evacuations to rural areas in the last phase of the war.
During this era, compulsory education was only attendance at primary schools for six years, and the aim of many of the secondary schools was to acquire skills for jobs. Fewer than 10% of young people attended secondary schools as a step to higher education. Kazuo took this course where he learned basic knowledge of various sciences and English.
Because of asthma attacks, in some years he could not fulfill the minimum required attendance days. Once in a primary school, he was able to advance up to the next grade with the help of teachers. In secondary school, he once needed two years for one grade. He experienced his most severe asthma attacks in his midteens and withdrew from the secondary school in Niigata without completing it.
During his primary school days, he learned from books and boys’ magazines at home more than from classes. Especially useful was a series of 80 books for primary school children, including classical stories of Japan and other countries (in Japanese translation) and various fields of social and natural sciences. It was his good fortune that reading suitable for children was easily available.
However, after the asthma attacks stopped, he could perform normally and enjoy various activities with classmates and by himself. At younger ages, he was especially active in baseball. Although thin and weak physically, he was a slugger. He investigated batting forms of university players from photographs in magazines and, by trial and error, found that a ball goes farther if the batter relaxes at the moment of the ball’s contact with the bat. He was regularly a first baseman and fourth batter in a lineup.
He was also active in insect collection. He first made insect specimens as summer-vacation homework in the first year of primary school (age 6). His work was kept at the school because of its high quality. This anecdote indicates that he was naturally excellent with handiwork. When he was 8 years old, he was fascinated by a classmate’s illustrated book of Japanese insects, and he begged his mother to buy it. He believed that the book showed all of the insects in Japan, so insects collected were mistakenly regarded as a species in this book.
In secondary schools, he joined insect clubs, where his interest in insects became scientific. He learned much from a textbook written by a professional entomologist: he made collection tools by himself, identified specimens using various references, and understood morphological traits separating related species. He also reared insects to observe and record behaviors and metamorphoses. In every school he attended, he met friends who liked insects and he led club activities. He was especially attracted to ground beetles (carabids) because of the curious form of a large species, Damaster blaptoides Kollar, which specialized as a land-snail eater.
Probably 1946: He returned from Niigata to Chiba Prefecture near Tokyo. After that he moved several times but stayed in the region around Tokyo during his entire life except for a few years (after 1979) when he lived in Southeast Asia.
1962: He received the Doctor of Agriculture (PhD) degree from the Tokyo University of Agriculture with the submission of a thesis about the ecology and intersubspecies hybridization of D. blaptoides.
During this period, he was unemployed. Fortunately, his father could support him, so he concentrated on his carabid research as far as his health allowed. He collected carabids around his home and observed the ecology of some species by rearing them. He also conducted time-consuming hybridization experiments of D. blaptoides for his dissertation.
His first paper (1953, age 24) reported 54 carabid species collected in Niigata in 1945. The second paper (1956) described the ecology and immature morphology of 5 carabid species reared from eggs at home during 1947–1948. Many papers on carabids, mainly taxonomy including new taxa of 1 genus, 1 subgenus, 31 species, and 3 subspecies, were published between 1956 and 1987, mostly before 1962 and in English. He learned how to write scientific papers by reading senior entomologists’ papers. In his papers, he expressed thanks to leading entomologists, indicating active contacts with them to get comments for improvement.
His carabid collection (16,379 individuals) was donated to the Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Japan (Yoshimatsu et al. 2018). The collection data were also uploaded in a species-distribution website, GBIF, by Osawa (2020). His collection is unique in 2 ways. First, specimens he collected were largely from areas near Tokyo where he lived; a small number of specimens from remote areas that he collected were only at sites visited for scientific meetings and mosquito collections. He never conducted long-distance trips for carabid collection, probably because he was afraid of experiencing asthma attacks in remote areas. However, his collection covers whole areas in Japan because he became a leading carabid taxonomist and was asked to identify specimens collected by others. The other uniqueness is that he collected all species he found even though they were common. Therefore, his collection thoroughly represents the local carabid communities.
1965–1978: He served as a US military entomologist in Kanagawa, Japan.
1978: He took a general course of tropical medicine at the Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Tokyo.
1979: With Kiyoyuki Mizusawa and Edward S. Saugstad, he published “Mosquitoes of Japan and Korea.”
1979–1981: He stayed in Indonesia as an expert for malaria control in a Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) project: The Promotion of Health in North Sumatra with Special Attention to the Asahan Area.
He likely obtained his PhD with the hope of joining universities or other institutes to continue research on carabids. I do not know how he pursued this goal, but once he told me that he was employed by the US institute because American people simply evaluated his capacity. Initially he helped an Acari study. According to him, he was most skillful at making microscopic samples. During 1969–1976, he was a principal researcher on a project about the mosquito fauna of Japan and Korea, which led to the well-known monograph published in 1979.
Prior to employment by the US institute, he had no experience in medical entomology. However, his wide interest in insects certainly made his adaptation to research on mosquitoes easy. In 1957, he published short notes about new distributions of 2 small flies in Bibionidae and Coelopidae. The specimen list of the1979 monograph includes at least 13 specimens of mosquitoes collected with nets by Tanaka during 1952–1959! He collected mosquitoes attracted to him and kept them as specimens, although he must never have anticipated studying mosquitoes.
1981–1997: He worked for Teiso Kasei Co. Ltd, a pest control company.
1985: He received an award from the Japan Society of Medical Entomology and Zoology for the taxonomical study of Japanese mosquitoes.
1987–1989: He lived in Thailand as an expert on the taxonomy of arthropods of medical importance in a JICA project: The Research Promotion in National Institute of Health.
1996: He received an award by the Society for the Research of House and Household Insect Pests, Japan.
During this period, he received an award for the study of Japanese mosquitoes and joined a project in Thailand as a medical entomologist. However, his main activities were related to indoor insect pests as an employee of a pest control company. His wide interests in various insects were again a major strength. He produced about 30 publications about indoor insect pests, including scientific papers, explanations for beginners, and textbook chapters. He corrected customarily, accepted errors, and settled confusions concerning identification of indoor insects. For these contributions, he was awarded in 1996 as stated above.
Tanaka retired in 1997. He received the AMCA’s John N. Belkin Award.in 2004.
After retirement (the top photo in 2015), he returned to mosquitoes and during 1998–2004 published 12 papers concerning the taxonomy of pupal mosquitoes in Japan, including proposals for 3 new subgenera. In 2014, he wrote a chapter, Family Culicidae, in “Catalog of the Insects of Japan Vol. 8” published by the Entomological Society of Japan. Because of the format of this publication, a key to genera and subgenera of the subtribe Aedina was not included, and the number of citations was limited to a minimum. Therefore, he subsequently published a version including the key and all citations (Tanaka 2018). In the introduction, he states that this study is imperfect, but he cannot continue further and expects future completion by someone else. His library on mosquitoes was donated to Department of Medical Entomology, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, as Tanaka’s library.
The last 8 years of his life were spent in hospitals or at home in a wheelchair because of cancer and a general decline in physical strength. He always said, “My body is sick but my brain is ok.” He always explained his physical conditions with clinical examination values and continued efforts to keep muscle strength.
I have described his life focusing on his relations with insects; however, his life was further enriched by his wide interests. For example, he was interested in the modern history of relations between Japan and China and was compiling an annotated chronological table (1842–1941), based on the literature he read. At the end of ver. 10 (2012, 65 pp), he listed about 300 references for further reading! I suppose this work was just to deepen his own understanding.
He enjoyed finding cheap and delicious food. He evaluated food only with his tongue without being disturbed by reputation and prices. A phrase he often used, “number one,” meant “the best taste for me.”
Throughout his life, he enjoyed the Grand Sumo Tournament (Japanese traditional and professional wrestling). During primary schools, he learned to read and write kanji (Chinese characters) not taught in schools from the ring names of sumo wrestlers. After retirement he enjoyed the live TV broadcast that begins at 1 p.m. for matches of the lowest rank class and ends at 6 p.m. for the highest class. He watched all matches and enjoyed predicting who among beginners were promising. However, he never evaluated wrestlers only by strength. Important for him was how they respected traditional polite manners.
His concern about traditions can be seen also in his preference for old (=original) complicated kanji. After World War II, simplified kanji have been used even for classical publications originally written by using old kanji. However, he continued to use old kanji throughout his life in handwritten personal communications. Probably he liked old kanji because he felt them more beautiful and could enjoy writing more.
Tanaka sometimes appeared conservative, but he was never a simple follower of customs. He saw everything without any preconceptions, even for views supported by authorities. He followed his own sense and thought about questions until he was satisfied. By this open-mindedness and independence, he enjoyed life and contributed to entomological fields with which he was concerned. When readers use “Mosquitoes of Japan and Korea” (1979), please remember for a while the life of Kazuo Tanaka, an entomologist with a unique career, who lived to the best of his ability under given conditions.
I express sincere thanks to Mikiya Tanaka, his nephew, for information and checking the manuscript, and to Peter Armbruster for suggestions about English expressions. Help by Phil Lounibos and Larry Hribar was essential in this submission.