A genealogy of tubercular diseases in Japan

This paper examines the historical transformation of concepts of tubercular diseases in Japan from premodern to modern times. Its principal conclusion is that, between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries, intellectual and cultural circumstances in Japan first facilitated and then hindered the adoption of Western concepts of tubercular diseases. The Japanese adopted Western concepts of tubercular diseases from the early nineteenth century not because they suggested more effective therapeutic measures but because they mirrored ideas that the Japanese had developed during the previous century. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries concepts of tubercular disease based on Western medical thought conflicted with popular concepts, creating a point of cultural dissonance in Japanese society that was overcome only after effective medicinal cures for tuberculosis were invented. To demonstrate these points, this paper surveys representative Chinese, Japanese, and European medical texts and ideas from earliest times to the first half of the twentieth century. Although the focus is on one specific set of diseases, this example helps explain why the Japanese adopted Western medicine much more quickly than their cultural neighbours in China and Korea, although this conclusion is left implied rather than stated.