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Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity
Wei Yu Wayne Tan
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While the loss of sight—whether in early modern Japan or now—may be understood as a disability, blind people in the Tokugawa period (1600–1868) could thrive because of disability. The blind of the era were prominent across a wide range of professions, and through a strong guild structure were able to exert contractual monopolies over certain trades. Blind in Early Modern Japan illustrates the breadth and depth of those occupations, the power and respect that accrued to the guild members, and the lasting legacy of the Tokugawa guilds into the current moment.
The book illustrates why disability must be assessed within a particular society's social, political, and medical context, and also the importance of bringing medical history into conversation with cultural history. A Euro-American-centric disability studies perspective that focuses on disability and oppression, the author contends, risks overlooking the unique situation in a non-Western society like Japan in which disability was constructed to enhance blind people's power. He explores what it meant to be blind in Japan at that time, and what it says about current frameworks for understanding disability.
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Illustrations
Abbreviated List of Historical Periods
A Note on Japanese Terminology and Names
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1. Japanese Ophthalmology
Chapter 2. Eye Medicines
Chapter 3. The Blind Guild
Chapter 4. Nonmembership and the Challenge of Authority
Fig. 3.2. Image of the guild’s stone-stacking rite, as imagined by the illustrator. The protocols of the guild’s rituals can be reconstructed from Records of Enpekiken (Japanese title: Enpekiken ki), a seventeenth-century source written by Kurokawa Dōyū under his literary pseudonym, and from Hayami Shungyōsai’s The Illustrated Compendium of Festivals of Various Provinces (1806) of the late Tokugawa period. Left: Three blind men are gathered at a riverbank at Shijōgawara. Their heads are shaven, and each person has a walking staff. The leftmost person is stacking stones, the blind man next to him is gathering stones, and a third blind man (perhaps the oldest) stands in the foreground. Two samurais bearing swords may be observers of the rite and serve the blind men as sighted guides. This ritual activity would have followed a grand performance of offerings and music at the guild’s headquarters. Illustration by Hayami Shungyōsai from The Illustrated Compendium of Festivals of Various Provinces (Japanese title: Shokoku zue nenchū gyōji taisei), vol. 2 (1806). National Archive of Japan Digital Archive.
Fig. 3.3. A gathering of guild members at a Myōonkō ceremony, from an illustrated travel guidebook typical of the late Tokugawa period. This illustration shows a local guild group at Nanatsudera (a temple) conducting the ritual of Myōonkō (also called Bentenkō) to honor the patron deity of music. The text says that the rite was held on the fifteenth day of the tenth month. The blind musicians are sitting on the floor around a central space in an L-shaped configuration. The arrangement is determined by the men’s ranks. Left: Three men with their heads shaven are low-ranked members (this is clear from their lack of headgear; the higher the rank, the more elaborate the dress code). Right: The blind musician playing the biwa appears to be a senior guild member, presumably playing Heike music, the music of choice at ceremonies. Scrolls showing venerated blind musicians hang in the background. Sighted onlookers have been invited to the venue to observe the rite—the participation of sighted people as audience members was probably common. From Okada Kei et al., Illustrated Gazetteer of the Famous Places of Owari (Japanese title: Owari meisho zue), edited by Wakayama Zenzaburō (Nagoya: Nagoya Onkokai, 1933). National Diet Library Digital Collections.
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