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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. 2.1. A popular illustrated medical sheet about measles from 1862, when the Japanese measles epidemic was proclaimed as the epic crisis of a generation. The text outlines the clinical stages of measles infection. At first, a person will start to feel terrible and suffer from unquenchable thirst. By the fifth and sixth days, the victim will lose the appetite for food and cease eating, causing much worry. From the tenth through twelfth days, the person’s condition will significantly improve. However, even after the symptoms of measles have abated, the person has to follow a strict regimen in order to completely recover and avert a relapse. For seventy-five days in the convalescent period, the person has to abstain from certain actions and food items: sex, bath, moxibustion (a medical therapy involving the burning of moxa on meridian points on the body), wine, and buckwheat. Other taboo foods include burdock root, spinach, sorghum, eggplant, and taro, while the following are recommended to boost the person’s constitution: daikon (radish), pickles, sweet potato, azuki bean, common bean, kelp (arame; sea oak is a type of kelp), lily, and others. From Utagawa (Mōsai) Yoshitora, An Account about Recovering from Measles (Japanese title: Hashika yōjō no den), 1862. National Diet Library Digital Collections.
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