Imafuku Ryuta (1955–) is a Japanese cultural anthropologist and critic, and professor emeritus at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Since the early 1980s, he has conducted fieldwork in Mexico, the Caribbean, the American Southwest, and Brazil. In “Kureoru Shugi,” he examines how languages and cultures are transformed through contact and mixture, challenging ideas of pure ethnic or national identity. “Gunto–Sekairon” approaches the world as an archipelago whose islands are connected, rather than divided, by the sea. His study “Henry Thoreau: Yasei no Gakusha,” which reinterprets Thoreau through nature, resistance, and learning, received the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. Since 2002, Imafuku has also directed Amami Jiyu Daigaku, a traveling outdoor school linking Amami, Okinawa, and Taiwan.
