[The growing-up and background of clinical neurology in Japan]

Japan strictly closed the country to foreigners except for the Dutch and Chinese in the days of Tokugawa Regime for about 200 years (1639-1858). During this period, Japanese neurology made a start. In 1774, five Dutch scholars in Edo (Tokyo at present) translated the Dutch version of a German textbook "Anatomische Tabellen". After the Meiji Restoration, Japan was rapidly westernized. The modern neurology was introduced mainly from Germany, France and the United Kingdom into Japan, and exerted a fruitful influence on the subsequent Japanese neurology. Prof. Hiroshi KAWAHARA published the first textbook of neurology (in Japanese) in 1897. Prof. Kinnosuke MIURA founded the first neurological journal in Japan in 1902. These two pioneers in Japanese neurology had their medical education under Prof. Erwin Baelz at the University of Tokyo during the last-eighteenth century.