Currently, there is no journal specializing in primatology; I declare that this is the very first primatology journal. Isn't this exciting? First of all, primatology department is non-existent in any university of the world, and therefore there is nothing such as an academic society for primatology. The modification in the operation of academic authority is evidenced by the fact that the Japan Monkey Centre (JMC) introduced the publication of this specialized journal, skipping the normal course of development, which is to begin by establishing a department at a university, followed by organizing an academic society, and then publishing a journal. The term "primatology" can be translated as "reichourui-gaku" in Japanese. But, we do not prefer such a difficult, orotund name. The primatology that we envision is a new scholarly endeavor to comprehensively investigate, so to speak, the genealogical history of humankind, by comparatively studying primates situated in various phylogenetic statuses, from various academic fields from the perspectives of not only morphology and development, but also physiology, psychology, ecology, sociology, and so forth.

It is from this standpoint that we conceived, an idea of gathering various primate species from around the world in a zoo that is expected to be built under the supervision of the JMC; we do not recklessly expand our research focus to include animals that do not share recent common genealogy with humankind. In this first volume, only articles that are based on naturalistic observations of Japanese monkeys could be included, but this journal seeks to gradually fulfill all the aforementioned ambitions. On the other hand, I request contributions from outside the country and promotion of the journal, until it achieves global recognition. I might have made too many irresponsible remarks, but I just want things to proceed in a lively manner, anticipating a bright future for us. Therefore, I sincerely ask your support and cooperation.

Kinji Imanishi