Gardner E. Nakamura Japanese Medical Lives in Transformation...2025

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Gardner E. Nakamura Japanese Medical Lives in Transformation...2025

Book in PDF and EPUB formats At the end of the nineteenth century, Japanese modernizers abandoned the Sino-Japanese medicine that had dominated for centuries, and turned instead to Western medical theory and practice. European medicine would be the way to care for Japanese bodies in the future, becoming an important symbol of modernity and progress. Indeed, the Meiji era (1868–1912) has long been understood as the beginning of Japan’s “modernity.” Although the meanings attributed to modernity and the processes through which it came into being continue to be debated by historians, this was a time when, as Ravina has eloquently argued, Japan’s leaders sought to build a nation-state that would help Japan “stand with the nations of the world.”1 The Meiji government introduced vastly different national laws, institutions, technologies, and even social conventions because they were seen as fundamental strengths of powerful modern Western nation-states. Medical practice was just one of the many facets of life subject to the implementation of a Western model