Article
ID: CBB256090427

Reinventing “Hygiene”: The Sanitary Society of Japan and Public Health Reform During the Mid-Meiji Period (2023)

unapi
Hygiene Science and technology studies (STS) Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence Meiji period (Japan, 1868-1910) 19th century Japan Fukuzawa Yukichi Nagayo Sensai Sanitary Society of Japan

During the last decades of the nineteenth century, public health policy in Japan transformed from a stricter focus on anti-disease measures to a more discursive and long-term strategy, one that attempted to train local and prefectural administrators to implement top-down directives regarding hygiene (eisei ). This paper uses the early speeches and articles published by The Sanitary Society of Japan (Dai Nippon Shiritsu Eiseikai 大, lit. “Great Japan Private Hygiene Association”), the nation’s largest forum for the discussion and dissemination of knowledge related to hygiene, to analyze how and why this change took place. Founded in 1883 by leading figures in medicine and the medical social sciences, the Society attempted to reformulate popular understandings of hygiene and health after widespread manipulation of the government’s early public health programs. I argue that the Society repurposed and reformulated supposedly native Japanese healing practices in order to ground unfamiliar medical concepts, including the term “hygiene” (eisei) itself, within the familiar vocabulary of supposedly shared medical traditions. In recuperating and mobilizing these ideas, the organization broadened the discourse of hygiene while also immuring the concept within a circle of medical elites.

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Authors & Contributors
Wittner, David G.
Aleksandra Kobiljski
Hashimoto, Takehiko
Kawamura, Noriko
Kikuchi, Yoshiyuki
Kim, Hoi-Eun
Journals
Historia Scientiarum: International Journal of the History of Science Society of Japan
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
科学史研究 Kagakusi Kenkyu (History of Science)
Social History of Medicine
化学史研究 [Kagakushi kenkyū; Journal of the Japanese Society for the History of Chemistry]
Revue d'Histoire des Sciences
Publishers
University of Toronto Press
Columbia University
Palgrave Macmillan
University of California Press
University of Chicago Press
Concepts
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
East Asia, civilization and culture
Technology
Medicine
Technology transfer
Modernization
People
Dresser, Christopher
Okubo, Toshimichi
Shimomura, Kotaro
Tait, Peter Guthrie
Edison, Thomas Alva
Time Periods
Meiji period (Japan, 1868-1910)
19th century
20th century, early
Edo period (Japan, 1603-1868)
18th century
17th century
Places
Japan
United States
Great Britain
Germany
Institutions
Semet-Solvay Company
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