Ellen Gardner Nakamura – författare

The history of Western medicine in the late Tokugawa period is usually depicted as a prelude to modern medicine. By comparison to the Western medical science that was systematically introduced in the Meiji period, the Tokugawa study of Western learning is often seen as a hopelessly backward exercise in which inadequately equipped Japanese doctors valiantly struggled to make sense of outdated Dutch knowledge. In contrast, this book argues that the study of Western medicine was a dynamic activity that brought together doctors from all over the country in efforts to effect social change. Western knowledge was not simply the property of elite samurai doctors working for the Bakufu or domains but was shared even by commoner doctors working in local practices in rural backwaters. Through the examples of the doctors Takano Choei (1804-1850) and Takahashi Keisaku (1799-1875), this book explores the context into which local Japanese doctors incorporated Western ideas, the social networks through which they communicated them, and the geographical spaces that supported these activities. By examining the social impact of Western learning at the level of everyday life rather than simply its impact at the theoretical level, the book offers a broad picture of the way in which Western medicine, and Western knowledge, was absorbed and adapted in Japan.

Fujimoto, Homei, and Nakamura bring together the perspectives of women engaging in professional medical work across the expanse of the modern Japanese Empire (1868–1945). Through translations of primary source documents in three East Asian languages, this collection provides a window into the experiences of women working in a variety of medical professions, including doctors, nurses, midwives, and nutritionists. The voices of these women, collected from books, magazines, diaries, roundtable discussions, and oral histories, speak of the challenges, hopes, triumphs, and at times despair that women faced in their medical studies and workplaces.While the women represent a kaleidoscope of political views both critical and supportive of the Japanese empire, this book demonstrates the significance of the Japanese nation and empire for many of these women. Their stories show how they pushed boundaries, traversed national or regional borders in search of medical opportunities, or attempted to carve out new spaces for women through their service as medical professionals.This work, which includes little studied sources never before accessible in English, will appeal to scholars and students of history, Asian studies, gender history/studies, and the history of science, technology, and medicine.

At the end of the 19th century, Japanese modernizers abandoned the traditional Chinese-style medicine that had dominated for centuries, and turned instead to Western medical theory and practice. In this book, Ellen Gardner Nakamura reconsiders the story of the adoption of Western medicine through the eyes of six medical practitioners.The men who took the lead in transforming Japanese medicine under the new Meiji government were Western-style Japanese physicians, an enthusiastic minority who had studied European medical texts and techniques in the era before the ‘opening’ of Japan. Their achievements in creating the institutions of modern Japanese medicine are celebrated in almost every Japanese medical history book. Japanese Medical Lives in Transformation, on the other hand, focuses on a selection of lesser-known men and women whose roles in the transformation of Japanese medicine were important but unspectacular. The Japanese doctors discussed here had various educational backgrounds. Most trained in the Dutch-style medicine which had become popular in the middle of the Tokugawa era, but they ultimately struggled with the transition to modernity. To what extent was their background in premodern Western-style medicine an advantage in adapting to the Meiji era? Who were the winners and who were the losers in the modernization process? What personal and professional challenges did they face? This book is shaped by these broad questions and the informative life trajectories of six fascinating contemporaries.