Yūjirō Motora

Yūjirō Motora (Japanese: 元良 勇次郎, romanized: Motora Yūjirō; December 5, 1858 – December 13, 1912), sometimes also known as Yuzero Motora, was a Japanese experimental psychologist. He was one of the earliest Japanese psychologists. He was known for conducting research on the attention spans of school-aged children, and he set up the first psychological laboratory in Japan.

Born in Sanda, Motora studied at Boston University and completed a Ph.D. in philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, but his studies also included significant work on physiological psychology with G. Stanley Hall. After graduate school, he returned to Japan, where he served on the faculty of the Tokyo Imperial University, later known as the University of Tokyo. There he taught a number of students who became influential psychologists and academics.

A practitioner of Zen meditation, he wrote that understanding meditation should be based on a participant's own interpretation rather than the ideas of a Zen master. He also translated the works of eminent Western psychologists into Japanese and conducted early work in clinical psychology. Motora was still an active researcher and professor when he contracted a fatal case of erysipelas in his mid-fifties.