Organizer: Brett L. Walker, University of Oregon
Chair: Andrew Edmund Goble, University of Oregon
Discussants: Carol Ann Benedict, Georgetown University; William Johnston, Wesleyan University
This panel represents current research concerning the role of medicine in shaping Japanese cultural and political history. Specifically, the participants identify the ability of imported medical knowledge and pharmaceutical products to penetrate otherwise regulated national boundaries, transforming Japanese material culture and native ecologies.
Andrew Goble illustrates that within the context of late-medieval trading with the continent, pharmaceutical products were among the most influential in shaping Japanese material culture. From tea to new varieties of rice, many products originally imported as medicines altered the cultural and ecological landscape of Japan. Brett Walker investigates the place of medicine in the Japanese colonization of Ainu lands. At the same time that northern domains offered Ainu medicines as gifts to the Tokugawa shogunate, they used trade as an impetus to move into contested regions in Hokkaido. Heidrun Reissenweber looks at the diversity of medical culture in eighteenth-century Japan through the therapeutic activity of Ogino Gengai. Ogino relied on continental medical culture in practice, but was well-informed about medical theory from the West.
An exploration of imported medical knowledge reveals that although trade contributed to the construction of a national "Japanese" identity by emphasizing the foreign "other" in overseas relations, the exchange of medical information often transcended national space and flowed through the restrictions erected by premodern governments influencing Japanese cultural and political development.
Andrew Goble, University of Oregon
The period from roughly 1300–1600 witnessed an enormous expansion in Japan’s overseas contacts. These were conducted in a variety of ways, from formal diplomatic missions, trade both licensed and informal, to illicit contacts ranging from smuggling to piracy. The contacts were multilateral and transnational, and occurred within the broader context of an East and Southeast Asian network that shipped goods from Burma to Japan and most points in between.
Medicines were a regular part of this trade. However, outside of some specialized circles they have been given little attention, in contrast to elite art objects and tea, originally introduced as a medicinal item. Yet, we have much information that suggests that the medicines and materia medica that were brought to Japan for consumption or as imported species for the production of Japanese substitutes arguably had a larger cumulative impact on daily life and material culture than is recognized. Indeed, we might even broaden our definitions here (since food and medicines were closely related) to include such items as varieties of rice, malabar nightshade, or ginkgo trees.
This paper utilizes medical and pharmaceutical texts, treatment records, diaries, and materials on overseas trade in order to examine what materia medica was introduced, purchasing activities of pharmacists, connections between suppliers and physicians, and some of the "overseas knowledge" acquired. Finally, I suggest that our understanding of medieval perceptions of "Japanese" and "others" might usefully consider the "non-national" mentality of the medical world.
Brett L. Walker, Washington State University, Vancouver
This paper explores the exchange of medical knowledge in the Japanese conquest of Ezo. In the early seventeenth century, among the most symbolically valuable items traded between Ainu and Japanese were pharmaceutical products. Ainu had developed their own distinct medical culture, one defined by a complex ritual framework but which utilized various medicines. Many of these medicines were discovered by Ainu, and were indigenous to the northern ecosystem, but other information concerning medicines came from China, a product of ties with Northeast Asian peoples.
Early on, Tokugawa Ieyasu demonstrated an interest in the medicines available in Ezo. In 1604, for example, among the topics discussed between Ieyasu and Matsumae Yoshihiro was the availability of fur seals. Dried fur seal penis was considered a potent medicine, and was traded at the highest levels as official gifts. The shogunate even ordered that a medicinal lichen, as well as bear gallbladder, be sent to Edo. Medicinal gifts tied the distant Matsumae domain, as well as Ainu lands, to the political hub of Tokugawa Japan.
Later, physicians were dispatched to catalogue medicines located in Ezo. Many Ainu medicines reached the attention of prominent physicians, who prescribed them in Nagasaki. This paper reveals the place of medicines in linking Ainu lands to the political center of early modern Japan, as well as the role of Ainu culture in shaping the development of Tokugawa medicine.
Heidrun Reissenweber, University of Munich
Medicine in Japan in the late 18th century was characterized by a diversity of medical theories largely based on traditional Chinese or Japanese medical culture and its corresponding therapeutic approaches. In this intellectual climate a keen interest in Western medical knowledge took root. The prevailing opinion remains that this enthusiasm for Dutch Learning paved the way for the shift from traditional East Asian to Western medicine in the 19th century. But to what extent this new medical knowledge influenced the everyday work of physicians has yet to be explored.
Ogino Gengai (1737–1806) was a pioneer in Western blood-letting in Nagasaki. His work Shirakuhen (1764) contributed to his reputation as an expert in this technique. He became famous as a practitioner, and his services were requested by both feudal lords and the court. One of his travel diaries, the Todo Sado-no-kami oshinki, contains detailed patient records. This manuscript reveals Ogino Gengai’s exclusively East Asian therapeutic approach. The prescriptions he applied reflect influences from a variety of medical schools of his time, but there is no evidence that he integrated his knowledge of Western techniques into his therapeutic activity.
This example sheds some light on the gap between medical theory and practical reality, a problem which may be indicative of the dissemination of new medical knowledge in East Asia, as well as other parts of the world.