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Practical Pursuits by Ellen Gardner Nakamura

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Chōei believed that Western texts included helpful solutions for fighting famine in Japan because it was often the result of cold weather which reduced rice crops. Chōei believed that Europe had a far more inhospitable and colder climate than Japan. In order to survive he assumed that the Europeans must have possessed crops that could withstand cold summers and harsh winters. In his work on famine, Chōei focused on the potential usefulness of such crops as buckwheat and potatoes for limiting the effects of famine. The Kōzuke physicians had introduced potatoes and buckwheat to Chōei. The rural physicians understood that these crops could potentially limit the effects of famine. Unlike rice, buckwheat allowed Japanese farmers to have two or three harvests even in cold summers. Chōei advocated planting potatoes because they were incredibly hardy and could withstand cold, wet summers. While these efforts did not necessarily swell the production of buckwheat and potatoes, their efforts set the stage for the eventual expansion of these crops after the Meiji Restoration.

In addition to combating famine, rural physicians developed networks to deliver the smallpox vaccinations to local villages. Nakamura argues that the efforts by ranpō physicians to bring these vaccinations to Japan encouraged “the wider acceptance of Western medicine, not only among private physicians but eventually the shogunate itself.” (p. 151.) For the most part these networks were local networks, organized by physicians for physicians to both deliver and preserve the smallpox vaccinations. Because these networks were somewhat informal, the smallpox vaccines were not distributed throughout the country at the same time. In fact, Keisaku, an advocate of Western medicine, had difficulty securing a smallpox vaccination for his village.

Nakamura does an excellent job throughout this book demonstrating that social networks developed between local physicians and proponents of Western medicine. Nakamura’s underlying thesis in this work is that these social networks allowed for the “exchange of ideas between urban and rural intellectuals, and, eventually, for social change in the late Tokugawa period and beyond.” (p. 180.) Nakamura successfully demonstrates that these networks did exist, but she fails to show how extensive they truly were. At the end of the book, it is not clear whether or not the relationship between Chōei had with the Kōzuke physicians was a typical arrangement. Nakamura’s work would benefit from additional examples of consulting arrangements between proponents of Western medicine and Japanese physicians. Despite this minor complaint, Nakamura’s book does an excellent job elucidating the growing influence of Western medicine during the Tokugawa period.

[[Category:Book Review]] [[Category:Historiography]] [[Category:Medical History]] [[Category:Japanese History]] [[Category:Asian History]]

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