Chair: Ann B. Jannetta, University of Pittsburgh

Of the three classic scourges of life—disease, famine, and warfare—warfare has received the most attention from historians of premodern Japan. Yet famine and disease were as pervasive as warfare, and more deadly. Furthermore, each member of this notorious trio had an effect on the others as well as on society at large. Examining their underlying causes and far-reaching effects gives us a more fully-realized understanding of life in premodern Japan. These papers address health and famine in Japan from the Heian through late Muromachi periods, exploring them from a variety of new perspectives.

In one paper, Wayne Farris revisits his earlier work on epidemics, this time focusing on evidence from archeology and religious ritual. Arguing that this was an "age of microparasitism," he shows us how disease affected far more than the death rate in Heian Japan. Carol Tsang looks at the worst of the medieval famines, and drawing on economic theory to help understand who suffered most from the famine and why, addresses as well connections between famine and conflict. Finally, Andrew Goble returns to the issue of health, expanding our exploration of health issues to include mental health. His work compiles data for a broad range of individuals and relates health conditions to other stresses in sengoku life. Fujiki Hisashi will offer comments on the papers, placing them in the context of recent Japanese scholarship, including his own on how villages faced these challenges to survival.

W. Wayne Farris, University of Tennessee

In Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan, 645–900 (Harvard University, 1985), I endorsed William McNeill’s thesis that foreign-borne epidemics of killer infections coming approximately a generation apart repeatedly devastated Japan’s population and held back social and economic development in a drastic way. My book drew on court annals, tax records, legal statutes, and medical instructions sent to the provinces, particularly for the smallpox epidemic of 735–737.

This paper will explore other kinds of evidence which reinforce the view that epidemics played a critical, and perhaps pivotal, role in Japanese society from the seventh through the mid-twelfth centuries. Archaeological excavations have uncovered remarkable artifacts associated with magical attitudes toward pestilence. These artifacts include wooden tablets written with phrases to ward off plagues, wooden human forms used to cure the victim, pots painted with the faces of victims, and numerous other items.

This archeological evidence also points to religious ways of dealing with epidemics, an approach that has only been hinted at in the English-language literature. Whether one speaks of Gion Shrine, the goryoo-e rites to calm the spirits of political victims (such as Sugawara no Michizane), or rituals surrounding the "epidemic god" (ekishin), the central place of epidemic disease in ancient religious practice is becoming clear in the Japanese literature, and it is time to bring English-language readers up-to-date.

Moreover, the timing of all the evidence—beginning in the late seventh century and concluding in the twelfth century—confirms earlier findings that this era was Japan’s "age of microparasitism."

Carol Richmond Tsang, University of Illinois, Chicago

The worst of the many famines that struck Japan in the fifteenth century was the Kanshô famine of 1460–1461. At its peak in 1461, more than 2,000 people a month were dying in Kyoto of starvation and its companion, disease. Most of these people were not Kyoto residents, but refugees from the provinces who had fled to the capital in search of food and public relief, making this one of the first "modern" epidemics in Japanese history.

Most scholars have been content to see famines as caused simply by crop failures, a view the economist Amartya Sen has argued explains little about the origins and effects of famines. Drawing on Sen’s theoretical framework, this paper discusses the Kanshô famine, considering a number of factors that contributed to the extent and pattern of hunger that developed. It uses courtier and priestly diaries among other kinds of records to examine the effects of the famine in Kyoto; which provinces the famine reportedly hit the hardest and why; what population was most vulnerable; what efforts were made at relief, and what other factors might have contributed to this particularly severe famine. Of particular importance is the effect of warfare on people’s ability to obtain food, since the provinces which apparently experienced the greatest devastation were also the provinces which in those years saw warfare in the form of the Hatakeyama succession dispute.

Andrew E. Goble, University of Oregon

This paper will examine sixteenth-century diaries and clinical records in order to elucidate aspects of the mental and physical health (ill-health) of the general population in the central, Kinai region.

The late sixteenth century, as so richly explicated in works like Berry’s The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto, was one of change, dislocation, innovation, and warfare. These elements, particularly the "macro-parasite" of warfare, exerted a substantial impact on and provided the context for people’s health and longevity. Scholarship to date that has touched on the issue of health and illness has dealt with either the macro-level of epidemic, or the micro-level of individual lives. This paper, by contrast, will examine records that allow us to obtain perspectives on health and illness that are below the macro-level and yet still broad-based.