Japanese Medical Lives in Transformation

This book examines how, 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. Ellen Gardner Nakamura considers how the adoption of Western medicine became an important symbol of Japanese modernity and progress.

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 six 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.