Organizer: Sabine Fruehstueck, University of Vienna
Chair: Morris Low, Australian National University
Discussant: James R. Bartholomew, Ohio State University
From the late nineteenth century to the early Showa era, scientists attempted increasingly to make use of scientific knowledge to set up well-functioning, and well-regulated bodies that would form a better and more modern nation. Part one of this "back-to-back" panel looks at changes in discourses of the body in medicine and allied sciences from the late nineteenth century onwards. It sheds light on how the scientific programming of the body became one of the explicit aims of the modernization and civilization attempted by Japanese scientists, physicians, the bureaucracy and social reformers. The body had to be "good" for society and that could only be the case when in a healthy state. The individual body was perceived as the mirror of the collective national body which was in turn envisioned as an organism.
The increasing concern for public health dominated newly established scientific and pseudo-scientific fields, such as bacteriology, eugenics and sexual science. Regardless of their actual scientific basis, all of them contributed significantly to the programming of the body in terms of prevention rather than treatment. Three areas of prevention will be treated in this panel: The prevention of diseases caused by germs, the prevention of defective genes, and the prevention of nervous illnesses caused by misled sexual behavior.
In his paper on causal constructions of disease during the late nineteenth century, Christian Oberlaender examines the transition from experience to experiment in the field of bacteriology and its impact on how public health was envisioned. He argues that bacteriology revolutionized the medical view of disease and marked a major departure from the nineteenth century preoccupation with pathological anatomy. Oberlaender concludes that a "Beriberi germ" discovered and "experimentally proven" to exist by a Japanese doctor trained in Germany played a significant role in the rivalry between Army and Navy surgeons.
Sumiko Otsubo discusses the advent of eugenical thought in early twentieth century Japan. In Japan, Mendelian theories of inheritance were dominant while the Lamarckian theory of the inheritance of acquired character was considered unscientific. Focusing on the work of the founder of Japan’s first eugenic organization, Yamanouchi Shigeo, Otsubo examines why he and his work were virtually excluded from the history of biology and botany.
Sabine Fruehstueck analyzes the appearance of neurasthenia as an umbrella term for a variety of "deviant" behavior ranging from masturbation to revolutionary activities in early twentieth century sexological writings. She argues that during the time of increasing popularity of sexological knowledge and writing, unsolved social problems, unknown diseases, as well as incomprehensible individual behavior were all believed to be caused by neurasthenia while neurasthenia itself was thought to originate from "wrong," unscientific, traditional uses of sex.
Christian Oberlaender, German Institute for Japanese Studies, Tokyo
Bacteriology revolutionized thinking about the causation of disease. Prevention and the search for necessary causes came to dominate medical thinking. This was a major departure from nineteenth century medicine’s preoccupation with pathological anatomy and relative indifference to disease causation. It marked a major step in the transition from experience to experiment. In Japan, the advent of bacteriology in the 1880s coincided with an intense rivalry between Army and Navy surgeons in the investigation of the cause of Beriberi, a major threat to public health at the time. A "Beriberi germ," discovered and "experimentally proven" by a Japanese doctor trained in Germany in the "modern" methods of bacteriology, presented the Army doctors with a powerful weapon to prevent—in the face of overwhelming evidence—a triumph of their Navy colleagues who expounded nutritional theories.
Sumiko Otsubo, Ohio State University
This paper explores eugenic thought of Yamanouchi Shigeo (1876–1973), who was trained in plant cytology in the United States and later became one of the popularizers of eugenic ideas in Japan. Despite his academic training and research at various internationally-renowned institutions, his numerous publications, and longevity, his life as a scholar has remained obscure.
By the early 20th century, most eugenicists in the U.S. and Japan began accepting the Mendelian theory of evolution (biological determinism, "nature") and denying the Lamarckian notion of inheritance of acquired characters (influence of education and environment, "nurture"). However, Yamanouchi Shigeo’s eugenic view represents a paradox: He was a Mendelian cytologist sympathetic to Lamarckism. Was his "nurture"-oriented eugenic view unscientific? Is it why he was largely excluded from the history of botany in Japan? This study attempts to answer these questions and analyze origins and distinct features of Yamanouchi’s eugenic ideas by contextualizing Yamanouchi’s eugenic thought, shedding light on his life.
After examining his scientific papers, popular writings, documents of various organizations to which he belonged, I argue that the dichotomy between Mendelism and Lamarckism—or that of nature and nurture—does not work in understanding Yamanouchi’s view. The discipline of cytology stood on the Mendelian premise. What Yamanouchi questioned was not the entire Mendelian framework but August Weismann’s germ plasm theory which reinforced Mendelism.
Sabine Fruehstueck, University of Vienna
At the beginning of the twentieth century many Japanese doctors, biologists, and educators were convinced that neurasthenia or shinkei suijaku was the result of extensive autoerotic practices which were in turn stimulated by alcohol and "bad literature." Neurasthenia was perceived as the pre-stage of psychoses. Psychoses would bring about pathological consequences which would in turn eventually culminate in moral degradation, social chaos and probably even revolution.
The Japanese authorities took two measures in order to prevent social disorder and bring the sex life of the Japanese population under the control of medicine and the bureaucracy. They began with two particular social groups: prostitutes, for whom health check-ups became obligatory, and pupils who were to be examined regularly by school medical officers.
These views and measures were by no means unique to Japan. In Europe and North America similar opinions were expressed well into the nineteenth century. Japanese sexologists accepted both western sexological thinking as well as European sexual culture as superior and more advanced; and they did so very much in line with their colleagues in various other disciplines in Japan at the time. They utilized this assumption for publicizing their new field and establishing themselves as experts on the knowledge of sex, thus significantly contributing to discourses on public health, social order and the building of Japan.