Factbook

A Dynamic Compendium of Interesting Japanese Literary and Publishing Facts
If you would like to contribute to this compendium please submit your ideas here.
All will be considered for publication by our expert panel.
  • Factbook Keyword Search:
  • Share
    • Medicine

    In the 1940s, studying medicine exempted individuals in Japan from being drafted as soldiers. It’s something that two of Japan’s most talented post-war storytellers did[UPDATED: 2-5-2023]

    Japan’s military conscription rules changed as the Second World War progressed. These changes included lowering the age that individuals had to reach before falling into scope for the Japanese wartime draft as well as the cancellation of university student deferments.

    Students who studied most subjects, including literature and the humanities, were drafted. Most ending up as soldiers, but some students were exempt such as students studying medicine. High school students were also mobilised to work in factories to help the war effort in its final years.

    This no doubt encouraged some literary types such as Kobo Abe (1924-1993), whose father was a doctor, to study medicine. In 1943 Abe entered Tokyo Imperial University Medical School, but after graduating he never actually practised clinical medicine.

    Many believe his wife, who was an artist and theatre designer and subsequently illustrated some of his books, was the inspiration and the main reason behind his decision to quit the medical profession shortly after he graduated from university and one year after they married in 1947.

    Abe, who is said to have been a shy man beneath the mantle of arrogance that success can sometimes bring, went on to become one of Japan’s most renowned and respected authors as well as a favourite amongst Japanese creative types who have dubbed him ‘The Kafka of Japan’. His daughter and only child, however, decided to return to the family tradition of becoming a practising doctor. She is an obstetrician and a mother of three children.

    Another brilliant Japanese storyteller who studied medicine in Japan in the 1940s and is known as ‘The Walt Disney of Japan‘, is Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989). He is probably Japan’s most famous animator and manga artist.

    Tezuka studied medicine at Osaka University from 1945. He also had a medical family background, and was already actively publishing stories as a student.

    Medical studies and the understanding of science, that Tezuka and Abe possessed, in particular the study of anatomy, had an impact on their storytelling. This is reflected most evidently in both of their robot-related narratives – a genre they were both pioneers within; and one that would eventually become something of a national obsession.

    Interestingly, Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was also a trained clinician, and at one point ran a struggling medical practice in Hampshire, before making his name with his creations Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in 1887.

    Doyle just like Abe and Tezuka has had a major long term influence on publishing and storytelling trends in Japan, creating a cluster of ultra influential clinically-trained fiction writers, who have; alongside Akinari Ueda (1743-1809), an Edo Period (1603-1868) writer, a physician author and waka poet, famous for his spooky tale     Ugetsu Monogatari, Tales of Moonlight and Rain, helped change Japanese storytelling for the better.

    In the 1940s, studying medicine exempted individuals in Japan from being drafted as soldiers. It’s something that two of Japan’s most talented post-war storytellers did Posted by Richard Nathan
  • Share
    • Medicine

    Japanese authors in the 1800s turned tuberculosis into a romantic condition[UPDATED: 9-18-2020]

    In Japan’s Meiji era (1868-1912) when the nation was rapidly modernising after more than 250 years of isolation, Western influences were extremely strong. These spanned almost everything – even literary perceptions of tuberculosis, which was originally stigmatised in Japan.

    The disease became a romantic condition with titles such as Hototogisu, referred to in English as The Cuckoo or Nami-Ko: A Realistic Novel, penned in 1899, by Roka Tokutomi (1868-1927).

    Hototogisu, one of the first of this genre depicting tuberculosis, was published long before Thomas Mann’s (1875-1955) famous novel, The Magic Mountain, which was published in German in 1924, and is considered a classic of this genre.

    The Magic Mountain, a favourite of contemporary Japanese authors, such as Haruki Murakami, uses the experiences of a young man at a Swiss sanatorium to depict the microcosm of Europe and the ideologies of the time.

    Hototogisu, on-the-other-hand is the tragic tale, of a young woman called Namiko who contracts tuberculosis, that blends grief, and love with tragic realism in its narrative. 

    A digital edition of an English translation published in 1904 under the title Nami-Ko, translated by Sakae Shioya (1873-1961) and E. F. Edgett (1867-1946), is available online.

    The author writes in its introduction: “it was not to reveal our life and customs to the foreigner that Nami-Ko was written however, for at the time of its writing, four years ago, I did not dream that it would ever be translated, or, indeed that it would ever reach the popularity it has gained in my country”.

    According to Nobue Urushihara Urvil, an academic at the University of Texas, in modern Japanese literature, tuberculosis was a special subject. In addition to the romanticised images of the illness, what is characteristic of the construction of tuberculosis in Japanese literature is its association with the concept of the individual or self. 

    “Tuberculosis in literature of the time was celebrated as a tool to conceive the inferiority of [the] modern person. Tuberculosis was an important theme in an enormous number of works of literature including novels, short stories, haiku poems, free-style poetry, and essays”, according to Urvil.

    Many Japanese writers were themselves suffering from tuberculosis and most of them who had it died from the disease. A good by tragic example of this is Masaoka Shiki (1867-1907) considered one of the four great haiku masters who a close and influential friend of Soseki Natsume (1867-1916) who himself is often referred to as Japan’s greatest modern novelist.

    Shiki, who was only 34 when he died, studied alongside Soseki in high school and also at Tokyo Imperial University. His penname Shiki can also be read as hotogisu, cuckoo, and according to legend in Japan this bird coughs up blood when it sings.

    Nonetheless, not all diseases were treated the same way by Japan’s Meiji era authors. In contrast, syphilis, which some famous Japanese authors are known to have had, as well as leprosy (Hansen’s Disease), were generally not depicted in works of fiction, and when they were, they were not usually seen as romantic or philosophical diseases that portrayed the human condition, and the peripheral and margins of society. 

    That said, the world’s first cell phone novel, or keitai shosetsu, Deep Love, released in 2003 treated AIDS as a romantic and tragic condition with echoes of Hototogisu in its narrative. Written by a 30-year-old Japanese man, it’s a gritty young-adult novel about a girl who turns to prostitution to pay for her boyfriend’s heart surgery, and tragically dies after she contracts AIDS. 

    The 2020 pandemic, caused by the coronavirus (Covid-19), immediately spawned reading lists on social media as well as book recommendations from independent bookshops and newspapers including lists such as: Pandemics: An Essential Reading List ; Your Quarantine Reader, and Your coronavirus reading list: reader suggestions to bring joy in difficult times.

    These lists include famous titles such as: A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) published in 1722, The Plague by Albert Camus (1913-1960) , Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and even occasionally books by Japanese authors, Ascendance of a Bookworm by Miya Kazuki for instance. 

    Unsurprisingly, the lists have generated new interested in and demand for these titles. Camus’ novel started flying off the shelves in Japan in March 2020 at the height of news about the virus, for example, leading to Shinchosha, Camus’ Japanese publisher, to order a reprint. 

    New ‘Lockdown Literature’ is bound to start appearing in Japan and elsewhere in different forms and formats, but whether the canon of ‘Corona-Literature’ to come will be defined by a narrative or author that treats the virus as a romantic condition, like tuberculosis, or focuses on the self, relationships at a distance or social distancing in our social media age is something that future generations of readers will determine.
    Japanese authors in the 1800s turned tuberculosis into a romantic condition Posted by Richard Nathan
  • Share
    • Medicine

    Japan’s first medical textbook, written in 984, is considered Asia’s first book on medical ethics[UPDATED: 2-14-2018]

    Japan’s first medical textbook was written in 984 by Yasunori Tamba (912- 995), who is sometimes referred to as the Hypocrates of Japan, during Japan’s Heian Period (794-1185). 

    The book, known as Ishimpo or Ishinpo was written in kanbun, the Chinese writing system used during this period in Japan, and presented to the Emperor of Japan. 

    The text consisting of 30-volumes is a systemised compilation of medical knowledge, theory, techniques and practice. It is partly based on and cites ancient Chinese texts, which no longer exist. 

    It covers sexual disease and practice, dental and oral problems – such as bad breath, cleft palate, toothache, and tooth decay – as well as pharmacology, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, moxibustion and acupuncture. 

    The Cambridge World History of Medical Ethics lists the Ishimpo as the first Asian text in its 77-page Chronology of Medical Ethics, which starts from 4,000 BCE. 

    The first three individuals the chronology cites are: Moses (circa 1,200 BCE) Kong Qiu or Confucius (551-479 BCE) and Buddha (563-482 BCE). The first text included is the Hippocratic Corpus including its famous oath written in 400 BCE. 

    The type of traditional medical practice, including acupuncture and moxibustion, described in the Ishimpo now falls within the Japanese definition of Kampo (Chinese Medicine), which was originally used to distinguish this form of medical practice from Rampo (Dutch Medicine), the Western medical practices and techniques that Dutch traders and sailors brought with them to Japan in the 16th Century. 

    The oldest and most complete copy of the Ishimpo, which is illustrated in parts, is preserved at the Tokyo National Museum and is designated as a National Treasure of Japan.
    Japan’s first medical textbook, written in 984, is considered Asia’s first book on medical ethics Posted by Richard Nathan