Description: An exploration of the experiences and life trajectories of six Japanese doctors who lived through the transition to modern Western medicine in the late 19th century.
Brief description: Ellen Gardner Nakamura is Senior Lecturer in Japanese and Asian Studies at University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is the author of Practical Pursuits: Takano Choei, Takahashi Keisaku, and Western Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Japan (2005).
Review Quotes:
"This seminal work by Ellen Nakamura represents a noteworthy addition to the historiography of medicine in Japan. Employing collective biography and extensive primary sources, Nakamura challenges conventional perspectives on Japan's medical modernization in the latter half of the 19th century, foregrounding the nuanced experiences of six lesser-known medical practitioners." --Hiro Fujimoto, Assistant Professor, Heidelberg University, Germany
"For historians of East Asian medicine, this book is exemplary in its invitation to view modernisation not as a straightforward or binary process, but as a complex outcome of negotiation, exclusion, and compromise. Methodologically rigorous and elegantly argued, it offers vital lessons for global historians interested in the nuanced, often fraught realities lurking behind narratives of progress and reform." --Michael Shiyung Liu & Yani Song, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, Social History of Medicine