The research group that consisted of 16 experts of medical science, anthropology, history, biology and other sciences investigated the four mummies of the Fujiwara family in 1950. This investigation aroused much attention all over Japan because of the natural scientific method was applied to the interdisciplinary research for the first time after World War 2. The report was published as "Chusonji to Fujiwara yondai (Chusonji Temple and the four generations of the Fujiwara family)".
At that time, there was a historical controversy concerning the race of emishi. Not only anthropologists but also historians took an interest in the genealogy of the Fujiwara family that took control of the Tohoku district for a hundred years in the late 11th century. Many scholars thought that the Fujiwara family was emishi, like the Abe and the Kiyohara families.
According to the historical document, the first generation of the Fujiwara family; Kiyohira, called himself 'chief of the eastern barbarians' (toi no enshu) and 'chief of obedient barbarians' (fushu no joto). The second generation; Motohira was also called kyodo (Hun) and oku no ebis (the inner barbarians) and the third; Hidehira was Oshu no juteki (the barbarian in Tohoku). This was the reason why many scholars and the general public thought that the Fujiwara family had come from emishi and were the rulers of it. On the other hand, a few scholars thought the Fujiwara family had originally come from aristocracy in Kyoto, because Hidehira was appointed the General of Mutsu and later the governor. In the ritsuryo system, only the aristocrats were appointed to these positions.
In the research, the physical anthropologists, Hasebe Kotondo and Suzuki Sho examined the race of the Fujiwara family. Hasebe insisted in the report that the bodies of the Fujiwara family had no features common to the Ainu, and that their physical features were typical of emishi in this region. Suzuki supplemented this view that the Fujiwara family had many characteristics of the Japanese race proper rather than that of the Ainu.
Hasebe thought that emishi were different from Ainu but that was not identified. Takahashi Tomio has insisted in his works that emishi in the ancient history were different from ezo (the Ainu) in the early modern history, and that emishi were the political and cultural concept of people in the northeast of Japan, who did not obey the central government. Therefore, it is not a question whether emishi were the Ainu or not.
In 1987, Hanihara Kazuo published his report on the Fujiwara family. He analyzed Suzuki's data which was derived from the direct measurements of the craniums of bodies and denied the theory that the Fujiwara family was Ainu. He suggested the Fujiwara family came from Kyoto, not the natives in Tohoku. At the same time, he insisted that the ancient emishi were neither Ainu nor Japanese proper today by means of statistical analysis of the craniums and that the argument over emishi vs. Ainu was irrelevant to the process. In the end, both Ainu and Japanese proper came from the Jomon people, but the influence of people from overseas separated them into Ainu and Japanese proper. The ancient emishi were also separatied into Ainu and Japanese proper. This is now the common view of historians such as Takahashi and Kudo Masaki.
