Yoshiharu Sekino

Yoshiharu Sekino (関野 吉晴) is a Japanese explorer, travel writer and photographer, anthropologist, and doctor.

Sekino was born in Tokyo. In 1971, while still a student at Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo), he cofounded and participated in a university team that descended the entire length of the Amazon, thereafter travelling around south America. He graduated (in law) from Hitotsubashi in 1975, and (in medicine) from Yokohama City University in 1982.

Sekino has worked as a doctor in hospitals in western suburban Tokyo, but is better known for his travels in Peru and elsewhere in south America; as well as in Africa, where his explorations into the origins of mankind were made into a television series, Gurēto jānī (グレートジャーニー, i.e. "Great Journey"), broadcast on Fuji Television and later available on a set of DVDs.

Since 2002 Sekino has been a professor of cultural anthropology at Musashino Art University.

Starting in 1974, Sekino has published a stream of books about south America, anthropology, exploration, prehistoric demography, and more; some of which are primarily photographic.