@article{oai:rekihaku.repo.nii.ac.jp:00000340,
 author = {春成, 秀爾 and Harunari, Hideji},
 journal = {国立歴史民俗博物館研究報告, Bulletin of the National Museum of Japanese History},
 month = {Mar},
 note = {application/pdf, Research on ‘Akashi Man’ began in 1931 when NAORA Nobuo discovered a human innominate bone in eroded cliff material from along the Nishiyagi Coast at Akashi City in Hyogo Prefecture. NAORA, judging from the fossilized condition of the bone, thought that it came from the Nishiyagi Formation of Middle Pleistocene age. This was an extremely important discovery as at that time it was believed that Japan had not been occupied by humans during the Pleistocene period. However, many scholars, without even examining the find itself, proclaimed instead that the bone must be that of a modern human which had fallen into that formation from a recent cemetary. Unfortunately, the actual Akashi bone was destroyed by fire during the Second World War.
After the end of the War in 1948 HASEBE Kotondo studied an existing replica of the Akashi innominate, and estimated that it belonged to the Early Pleistocene period. He compared it to Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus forms and gave it the name Nipponanthropus akashiensis. He conducted further excavations that same year along the Nishiyagi Coast but made no new discoveries. Additionally, many who participated in the excavation thought that the Nishiyagi Formation lacked the proper conditions for the preservation and fossilization of bone.
In 1982 ENDO Banri and BABA Hisao conducted further comparisons between the replica of the Akashi bone and these of Australopithecus to modern Japanese Home sapiens. They concluded that the Akashi bone should be considered a modern Home sapiens.
However HARUNARI Hideji has since brought up the fact that several other scholars who had had a chance to examine the real bone besides NAORA, including MATSUMURA Akira, an anthropologist, and SHIKAMA Tokio, a paleontologist, had also concluded that the bone was fossilized.
Therefore, in March of 1985 an investigatory team from the National Museum of Japanese History under the direction of HARUNARI set out to conduct another excavation on the Nishiyagi Coast. The goal of this investigation was to examine the geological circumstances from which the Akashi bone was excavated and to estimate the age of the Nishiyagi Formation.},
 pages = {5--28},
 title = {1. 発掘前史（前篇　発掘調査の成果 / 第Ⅰ部　発掘調査）},
 volume = {13},
 year = {1987},
 yomi = {ハルナリ, ヒデジ}
}