Japanese Medical Lives in Transformation - (Soas Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan) by Ellen Gardner Nakamura (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

At the end of the 19th century, Japanese modernizers abandoned the traditional Chinese-style medicine that had dominated for centuries, and turned instead to Western medical theory and practice. In this book, Ellen Gardner Nakamura reconsiders the story of the adoption of Western medicine through the eyes of six medical practitioners.

The men who took the lead in transforming Japanese medicine under the new Meiji government were Western-style Japanese physicians, an enthusiastic minority who had studied European medical texts and techniques in the era before the 'opening' of Japan. Their achievements in creating the institutions of modern Japanese medicine are celebrated in almost every Japanese medical history book. Japanese Medical Lives in Transformation, on the other hand, focuses on a selection of lesser-known men and women whose roles in the transformation of Japanese medicine were important but unspectacular. The Japanese doctors discussed here had various educational backgrounds. Most trained in the Dutch-style medicine which had become popular in the middle of the Tokugawa era, but they ultimately struggled with the transition to modernity. To what extent was their background in premodern Western-style medicine an advantage in adapting to the Meiji era? Who were the winners and who were the losers in the modernization process? What personal and professional challenges did they face? This book is shaped by these broad questions and the informative life trajectories of six fascinating contemporaries.

Review Quotes

This seminal work by Ellen Nakamura represents a noteworthy addition to the historiography of medicine in Japan. Employing collective biography and extensive primary sources, Nakamura challenges conventional perspectives on Japan's medical modernization in the latter half of the 19th century, foregrounding the nuanced experiences of six lesser-known medical practitioners.
Hiro Fujimoto, Assistant Professor, Heidelberg University, Germany

About the Author

Ellen Gardner Nakamura is Senior Lecturer in Japanese and Asian Studies at University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is the author of Practical Pursuits: Takano Choei, Takahashi Keisaku, and Western Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Japan (2005).