OUTCASTES AND MEDICAL PRACTICES IN TOKUGAWA JAPAN

Event details
Speaker : Dr Timothy Amos
               Visiting Fellow, Department of Japanese Studies, NUS
Date      : Friday, 31 August 2007
Time      : 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Venue    : AS4/03-28 (JS Meeting Room)

Abstract

In 1765, an entire village in eastern Japan requested that a resident eta (outcaste) be permitted to have his official status designation changed in order to function more effectively as the local doctor. The document informs us that he was “highly valued” (chōhō ) by the local community and that his legal eta status was in fact restricting his activities. Interestingly, Sugita Genpaku also mentions in his famous Rantō kotohajime that an aged male of eta status expertly performed an autopsy in front of him. He notes that this elderly person was actually a last minute replacement for his ill son who was also reputed to be “skilled” (kōsha ). This paper, citing these and other examples, traces the history of medical practices in outcaste communities in eastern Japan during the Tokugawa period. It suggests several ways in which medical knowledge may have accumulated in some outcaste communities and hints at how these communities provided an intriguing platform for scholars involved in Western Learning to build on in their pursuit of scientific knowledge about the human body.