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"Western" Knowledge/Local Practice: Medicine and Science in Late Tokugawa Japan
Organizer: Susan L. Burns, The University of Chicago
Chair: Peter Nosco, University of British Columbia, Canada
Discussant: Morris F. Low, Johns Hopkins University
By the early nineteenth century, European works on medicine and natural science circulated widely in Japan as translations in Chinese and Japanese, often laboriously hand-copied, found their way into the hands of even local physicians and scholars. Nonetheless, the English language historiography on “Western Learning” has focused almost exclusively on a few iconic figures, most notably Sugita Gempaku and Ogata Koan, who are treated as forerunners of a scientific mode of thinking that was only realized after 1868. Alternately, Western Learning is discussed within the framework of “practical learning,” and Japanese scholars of “Western Learning” are represented as mining European works for useful information and techniques, while failing to engage critically or systematically with the premises of European science. Our panel seeks to disrupt this approach to “Western Learning” in two ways. First, rather than focusing on the elite individuals, we examine lesser known, even obscure figures and networks of scholars. Secondly, we aim to rethink the narrative that casts Japanese doctors and scientists as either passive or naïve recipients of European knowledge. Susan Burns will examine the case reports of a doctor practicing in rural Tohoku in the 1840s and 50s who actively sought to test European medical theories. Maki Fukuoka will explore Ito Keisuke’s attempt to utilize Linnaean nomenclature in his own botanical studies. Ellen Nakamura will re-examine the work of Kusumoto Ine, celebrated as Japan’s first woman doctor, by moving beyond hagiography to explore the social networks within which she lived and worked.
The Introduction of the Linnaean System to Owari: Ito Keisuke's Taisei Honzo Meiso (1829)
Maki Fukuoka, University of Michigan
In 1829, Ito Keisuke published Taisei Honzo Meiso [The Nominal Differentiations in Western honzo-gaku], the first book to introduce the Linnaean system of nomenclature to Japan. Trained as a physician, Ito was a prominent member of Shohyaku sha, a private group of scholars that pursued the study of honzo-gaku [bencao in Chinese] from the 1800s to late 1880s. Ito's publication contributed to propel honzo-gaku discourse in the last years of Tokugawa Japan by articulating an alternative nominal method to classify botanical specimens in the field of honzo. The issue of nomination had been a permeating epistemological challenge for honzo-gaku scholars of Owari since the late 18th century. However, it is misleading to understand Ito's work merely as a textual translation of Carl Peter Thunberg's Flora Japonica (1784) into Japanese. Rather, I argue that Ito’s publication responds to the specific regionality of the honzo-gaku context in Owari and in that respect, it is more fitting to render his work as an intellectual project to challenge and re-think discursive issues at hand. This presentation examines the process Ito underwent in applying the universality of the Linnaean system to the locality of his native Owari honzo-gaku, and aims to show that the concept of epistemological accuracy imbued in both Chinese bencao and the Linnaean system were simultaneously questioned and acknowledged to concretize and enrich his local practice. I analyze the ways in which Ito negotiated two ways of approaching botanical specimens in pictorial and textual levels and assert that Ito’s publication strategically aims to re-shape the local practices of honzo-gaku.
A Village Doctor and “Western Medicine” in Early 19th Century Japan: Nanayama Jundô at Work
Susan L. Burns, University of Chicago
Nanayama Jundô (1818-c.1868) was a village physician who practiced in Dewa province (Akita prefecture) in the 1840s and 1850. Although he lived and worked far from the cultural centers of Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto, Nanayama was actively engaged with the medical theories and debates of his time. He amassed a sizeable library that included classic treatises of Chinese medicine, contemporary Japanese works on medical theory, and at least twenty works by European authors in Chinese and Japanese translation. Nanayama also compiled several volumes of “case reports,” a well-established genre of medical writing in early modern Japan. Published volumes of case reports typically sought to establish the efficacy of the medical theories of the “school” the author had founded or with which he was associated or aimed to demonstrate the healing expertise of the author-physician himself. Nanayama’s case reports, while imitating the form of such published accounts, do not seem intended to promote either a particular body of theory or Nanayama himself. Rather, Nanayama’s intent seems to have been to record particularly interesting and challenging cases and the mode of treatment he employed. In this paper, I will analyze Nanayama’s case records in order to explore his engagement with Western medical discourse and his negotiation of the multiple forms of medical theory of which he had knowledge.
In Her Father’s Footsteps: Nakamura Ine (1827-1903) and Medical Networks in 19th Century Japan
Ellen Nakamura, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Kusumoto Ine (1827-1903) was one of the first women in Japan to practice Western medicine. The daughter of Philipp Franz von Siebold, a physician of German origin who visited Japan in the early nineteenth century, and Kusumoto Taki, his Japanese concubine, Ine studied alongside men, attended dissections, learned the Dutch language, and maintained a practice both in general medicine and in obstetrics at a time when medical training was usually closed to women. While her circumstances were extraordinary in many ways, her life reveals much about what it was possible for a woman to do if given the right opportunities and support, as well as what was still impossible. This study is based on letters and other primary materials, in particular, the writings of the men who supported Ine during her career. These men constituted a network of doctors and scholars of Western learning who knew and admired Ine’s father Siebold. Their scattered writings reveal details of her medical activities, as well as highlighting their own importance in supporting her career. While Ine’s story has previously often been told in romanticized terms, this paper attempts to see her as a participant in medical networks that played an important role in the broader history of Western medicine in Japan.