IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB562919694

Between trust and violence: Medical encounters under Japanese military occupation during the War in China (1937–1945) (2020)

Medical History
Volume: 64
Issue: 4
Pages: 494-515

DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2020.44

URI: http://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/medical-history/article/between-trust-and-violence-medical-encounters-under-japanese-military-occupation-during-the-war-in-china-19371945/0AB4B38EC031572C4309528BFC2D1D5E

Outside Links

PubMed

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Rural history Violence Doctor-patient relationships Imperialism Medicine and the military; medicine in war Military occupation 20th century, early Japan China

During the War in China (1937–1945), the Japanese military combined warfare with the maintenance of a military occupation. To sustain its tentative grasp over the occupied territories, the Japanese military vied to cultivate trust among the local population. This was a challenging task in the midst of a violent war which as many historical works described was accompanied by brutal war crimes. A less explored aspect of the occupation was medical care. This article unfolds this history by analysing medical encounters between Japanese military medics and military affiliated agents, and members of the local population in the rural Chinese countryside. Testimonies reveal that these encounters – some spontaneous and others deliberate – were small moments of humanity and benevolence within a violent environment. Concomitantly, they demonstrate the overarching tension in this unequal encounter and the use of medicine as a pacifying tool that also served as means to build and maintain the occupation through the transference of medical trust towards the military at large. Thus, this article presents a different aspect of the role of trust and distrust in medical care, as well as expanding the analysis of medicine as a ‘tool of empire’ to the context of military occupation.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB562919694/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Elliott M. Reichardt; (2020)
‘To Awaken the Medical and Hygienic Conscience of the People’: Cultivating Enlightened Citizenship through Free Public Healthcare in Haiti from 1915–34 (/isis/citation/CBB524291036/)

Book Seok-Won Lee; (2020)
Japan’s Pan-Asian Empire: Wartime Intellectuals and the Korea Question, 1931–1945 (/isis/citation/CBB330563116/)

Thesis Sakura Marcelle Christmas; (2016)
The Cartographic Steppe: Mapping Environment and Ethnicity in Japan's Imperial Borderlands (/isis/citation/CBB827878446/)

Article Charlotte G. Borst; (2021)
"The Noblest Roman of them all?": Professional versus Popular Views of America's Country Doctors (/isis/citation/CBB987526420/)

Article Shao Dan; (2023)
Red Star over Medicine: Redefining Doctor-Patient Relationship in Early CPC History (1930s–1960s) (/isis/citation/CBB084789840/)

Article Hong, Sungook; (2007)
East Asian STS: Some Critical Issues (/isis/citation/CBB000760598/)

Article Yuting Dong; (January 2022)
Red Brick Imperialism: How Vernacular Knowledge Shaped Japanese Colonial Expertise in Northeast China, 1905–45 (/isis/citation/CBB335679263/)

Book Alexia Moncrieff; (2020)
Expertise, Authority and Control: The Australian Army Medical Corps in the First World War (/isis/citation/CBB930779514/)

Article David M Pomfret; (2020)
Imperial Rejuvenations: Youth, Empire, and the Problem of Accelerated Aging in “Tropical” Colonies, ca. 1800–1914 (/isis/citation/CBB154676425/)

Thesis Reut Harari; (2016)
Medicine on the Battlefield: The History of Army Medics in Modern Japan (/isis/citation/CBB592442379/)

Book Kim, Hoi-Eun; (2014)
Doctors of Empire: Medical and Cultural Encounters between Imperial Germany and Meiji Japan (/isis/citation/CBB001422439/)

Article McDonald, Kate; (January 2015)
Asymmetrical Integration: Lessons from a Railway Empire (/isis/citation/CBB001550723/)

Article Kang, Jin-Yeon; (2015)
Forging the Colonial State as an Arbiter of Internal Boundaries: Japanese Colonial Rule and the Agrarian Relational Shift in Korea (/isis/citation/CBB001422237/)

Book Yang, Daqing; (2010)
Technology of Empire: Telecommunications and Japanese Expansion in Asia, 1883--1945 (/isis/citation/CBB001250900/)

Article Tsukahara, Togo; (2007)
Introduction to Feature Issue: Colonial Science in Former Japanese Imperial Universities (/isis/citation/CBB000760592/)

Article Lee K Pennington; (2020)
Wives for the Wounded: Marriage Mediation for Japanese Disabled Veterans during World War II (/isis/citation/CBB743684093/)

Chapter Tsuneishi, Kei-ichi; (2007)
Unit 731 and the Human Skulls Discovered in 1989: Physicians Carrying Out Organized Crimes (/isis/citation/CBB000760183/)

Book Timothy M. Yang; (2021)
A Medicated Empire: The Pharmaceutical Industry and Modern Japan (/isis/citation/CBB110485402/)

Article Setoguchi, Akihisa; (2007)
Control of Insect Vectors in the Japanese Empire: Transformation of the Colonial/Metropolitan Environment, 1920--1945 (/isis/citation/CBB000760594/)

Book Manu Karuka; (2019)
Empire's Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad (/isis/citation/CBB365384229/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}