Medical history in Japan: recent developments
By Akihito Suzuki
In the past couple of decades, research into the history of medicine in Japan has greatly expanded, attracting young and promising scholars who have pioneered new questions. As in Britain and other countries, students of the humanities and social sciences are becoming increasingly prominent in the new demography of medical historians. Here, I can introduce only a few of the young students who have just finished or are now completing their PhD thesis.
Their diverse backgrounds, problems, and analytical frameworks promise interesting developments in the field of history of medicine in Japan.
- Portrait of a scientific Shintōist: Akashi Hiroakira (1839–1910) – by Daisuke Okumura
- Traumatic neurosis in Modern Japan – by Masahiro Sato
- Medicalising the mouth: the professional oral care structure in postwar Japan – by Rie Hogetsu
- Public health experts on Yokkaichi asthma – by Tomohisa Sumida
Akihito Suzuki is Professor of History at Keio University and the author of Madness at Home (2006) and Reforming Public Health in Occupied Japan (with Chris Aldous, forthcoming).
