A free ride to the Middle East on an oil tanker may not be the flashiest start to a career. But for Waseda University professor Sakuji Yoshimura, the voyage he organized to Egypt in 1966 was the first step in what has become 35 years of archaeological exploration born from a childhood fascination with the tale of the discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb.
Returning to Japan in April 1967 after completing a general survey as a member of a five-student Waseda team, Yoshimura again went to Cairo to study and helped secure for the university in 1971 the first excavation rights granted to an Oriental party by Egyptian authorities.
But the 58-year-old professor, currently director of the university's Institute of Egyptology, believes it is not enough to simply dig among the ruins, and has become a sort of public relations official for the Land of the Pharaohs.