Fumiko Ikawa-Smith is a Japanese Canadian archaeologist. She is an emeritus professor in the department of anthropology at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She trained as an anthropologist and prehistorian and specialises in the Early Palaeolithic cultures in East Asia, specifically Japan). She is married to Philip E. L. Smith, also an archaeologist, with one son.
Life
Born in Kobe, Japan on 10 September 1930, Fumiko is the eldest daughter of the Buddhist historian, Ikawa Joukei. She studied English at an early age at the suggestion of her mother, a secondary school teacher. She graduated with an undergraduate degree from Tsuada College which subsequently became Tsuda University in 1953 with her thesis on the critical essays by T. S. Eliot.
She used her proficiency in English to secure a clerical position with Masao Oka, an ethnologist at the department of sociology at Tokyo Metropolitan University and assisted with his lectures and research. This experience led her to resign her position in 1954 in order to study anthropology as a postgraduate student at the same institution. Fumiko focused on the ancient civilisations of Central America which meant that she met Clyde Kluckhohn who in turn introduced her to American anthropology. He was in Japan in order to give a series of seminars on American Studies. This meeting caused her to take a leave of absence and obtain a Fulbright Program to study for a year at Harvard University.
Fumiko had intended to specialise in Central American archaeology under Gordon Willey. But once she studied with Hallam Movius she decided to specialise in Early Palaeolithic cultures in [Asia]. She obtained an A. M. in anthropology, from Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, in 1958. In 1959 she married Philip E. L. Smith, an archaeologist interested in prehistory whom she had met at Harvard University. In 1960 they moved to Canada, with their son, as Philip had obtained a teaching job at the University of Toronto, Ontario. She obtained her PhD from Harvard University in 1974 with her doctoral thesis on the Early Palaeolithic cultures of Japan.
Career
She accompanied her husband to excavate in Egypt, on the Canadian Expedition to Egyptian Nubia from September 1962 to May 1963. The small group was headed by Philip E.L. Smith, with the title of the “Canadian Expedition to Egyptian Nubia”, was Canadian government's contribution to the International salvage archaeology efforts in connection with the Aswan Dam construction. After spending the summer in Japan, they returned to Toronto for the academic year. Upon their return to Canada when Philip, her husband resumed teaching, she was employed with the Expedition funds as research assistant to sort and label artifacts. She subsequently became a lecturer in the department of anthropology at the University of Toronto. She started teaching part-time at McGill University in Montreal in 1966 as her husband, Philip, started to teach at Université de Montréal. After a few years of part-time teaching, she was appointed assistant professor of anthropology in 1970, associate professor in 1974 and granted tenure. She obtained her PhD from Harvard University in 1974 for her dissertation on the Early Palaeolithic cultures of Japan. She was promoted to associate professor in 1975. A year after she obtained her PhD in 1975, she became the chair of the anthropology department at McGill University. She became professor in 1979.
Fumiko has two strands in her career: a university administrator and a researcher. She was the chair of the anthropology department in 1975, soon after being granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor. She suspected that she was promoted to chair as each of the well-established full professors in the department: Peter Gutkind, Richard Anthony Salisbury, and Bruce G. Trigger might try to influence her. She is reported to have said that she thought at the time that each established academic thought he could persuade her to carry out his own agenda, as "I was a woman, a Japanese woman at that, who is supposed to be docile. I think I became a chair not "in spite of" being a woman, but "because" of being a woman.”