Tadahiro Aizawa (相沢 忠洋, Aizawa Tadahiro, June 21, 1926 – May 22, 1989) was a nattō merchant who was the first to discover Japanese Paleolithic artifacts. Prior to Aizawa, the scholarly consensus had been that Japan was uninhabitable before the Jōmon period. Aizawa discovered stone axes at Iwajuku in September 1946. Aizawa embarrassed the professional archaeologists; he was only an amateur who passionately believed in pre-Jomon habitation.
References
Keiji Imamura. Prehistoric Japan: new perspectives on insular East Asia p. 19.
Photo of Aizawa