Frederick Starr

Born in Auburn, New York, in 1858, Frederick Starr became an American academic and anthropologist known for his wide-ranging fieldwork and lively public presence. He taught at the University of Chicago, where anthropology was still a young discipline, and he built a reputation as a restless traveler who liked bringing distant places and cultures to a broad audience.

Starr carried out research in Mexico, the Congo, the Philippines, and Japan, among other places. He was especially noted for his interest in Japan, where he became well known for collecting ofuda and senjafuda and for writing about Japanese life and culture in a way meant to engage non-specialist readers as well as fellow researchers.

His career also reflected the contradictions of early anthropology: energetic, curious, and deeply shaped by the collecting habits and ideas of his era. He died in Tokyo in 1933, leaving behind books, lectures, and photographs that still give a vivid sense of how one American scholar tried to interpret the wider world.