During the 1970’s and ’80’s the field of meteoritics was totally revolutionized by the sudden collection of thousands and thousands of meteorites from Antarctica. 

I can’t remember when I first heard about meteorites being found in Antarctica in huge quantities. … That lack of knowledge made for some interesting research when I started trying to hunt down the name of the person responsible for this breakthrough, especially because at first I didn’t look back far enough. I did at least know he was Japanese. However … !

Nearly all the articles I read discussed ANSMET which is US funded research in Antarctica since 1976. But the same articles, while going on and on about how important these rocks from space are, because they tell us about the early solar system, blah, blah, blah, fail, entirely, to mention that the Japanese were finding thousands of meteorites before ANSMET got going. 

I wanted the Japanese names and story. So…

A Japanese glaciologist, Renji Naruse, found a meteorite in the Yamato Mountains in Antarctica, while on the JARE 10 expedition to Antarctica in 1969. Then the team found eight more. JARE stands for Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition and the expeditions seem to be numbered simply in the order in which they occurred. 

Masao Gorai, an igneous petrologist, was the guy who got the rocks Naruse and his team found. A paper was published under the following names.

Yoshida M, Ando H, Omoto K, Naruse R, Ageta Y (1971) Discovery of meteorites near Yamato Mountains, East Antarctica. Japanese Antarctic Record 39, 62–65.

It was more or less ignored elsewhere in the world. In 1973 another paper was presented to the Meteoritical Society.

Shima M, Shima M (1973) Mineralogical and chemical composition of new Antarctica meteorites. Meteoritics 8, 439–440.

Shima’s paper detailed what Masao Gorai had discovered almost immediately. (I’m betting that Gorai wrote in Japanese publications but I didn’t come across any papers with his name in my quick searching.) The nine meteorites brought to Gorai were not all rock from the same meteorite fall. They were of at least six different types, and had simply been brought to their location by the movement of ice in Antarctica.** As such, there was potential for finding a lot more meteorites. This paper inspired an American who developed a team and got money for an expedition to Antarctica in 1976. (ANSMET) That expedition found nine more rocks. But in the meantime …

… the Japanese sent more JARE expeditions and the JARE 15 expedition in 1973-74 found 663 meteorites in the Yamato Mountains. Keizo Yanai was the scientist responsible for directing the expedition to hunt for more meteorites. He wrote about the principles of ice movement that would govern where meteorites would be brought together.

After the Yamato triumph Keizo Yanai went out with two American expeditions that were set up following his ideas. In the first case the expedition found meteorites that weighed, in total, 460 kg. (That’s ~ one thousand pounds.) The next American Japanese mission counted the meteorites instead of weighing them, for a total of 310 meteorites, including one that was thought to be the first Martian meteorite ever found. In 1979, Yanai went back out with JARE 20, and found 3,500 meteorites in the Yamato Mountains and 5 more in the Belgica mountains. He returned with a Japanese mission in 1987-88 (JARE 29)and found 350 Asuka 87 and 2,000 Asuka 88. 

JARE 29 ended in a disaster when Yanai and several others fell into ice crevasses and had to be rescued, and flown back to Japan for medical attention. The catastrophe ended Keiko Yanai’s field work, but when you add it up he helped find —  663 + 310 + 3,500 + 5 + 350 + 2,000 — 6,828 meteorites, plus whatever number was part of the collection for which I only have the total weight. Yanai wrote papers and worked in various museum and research capacities until his death. Here’s a link to one of his papers.  1991AMR…..4…70Y  Varieties of Lunar Meteorites recovered from Antarctica.  Yanai and Kojimi. Most of this information comes from Keiko Yanai’s obituary. https://meteoritical.org/news/keizo-yanai-1941-2018 obituary

Let’s just say that again. 

Keiko Yanai helped to find 6,828 meteorites.

He helped develop the principles by which searchers for the last 50 years have hunted in Antarctica for meteorites. I like to know these names.

**Most of the above information came from this article  https://caslabs.case.edu/ansmet/2019/12/22/50-years-ago-today/  from Case Western Reserve. It is the only one I have found that actually names the Japanese scientists who began the amazing transformation of the study of meteoritics. 

Another helpful article. https://stemlounge.com/how-antarctica-became-the-worldwide-leader-in-meteorites/