Hygienic governance and military hygiene in the making of imperial Japan, 1868-1912.

Abstract

This article explores how the Meiji medical authorities applied Western medicine-derived hygienic ideas and plans to build up imperial Japan. Although several medical historians have recently begun to investigate the important role that Western medicine played Japan's modern nation-building, there has been little historical analysis of how hygiene administration influenced military hygiene in this process. While some prominent historians of modern Japan have discussed the impact of Dutch medicine on the rise of Western learning during the Tokugawa era (1603-1868) or have placed it within the context of Japan's colonial expansion into Taiwan or China, they have not analyzed the process by which hygiene administration contributed to the development of military hygiene in the making of imperial Japan. In this paper, I will investigate why and how Japan's medical leaders adopted German medicine and the British hygiene administration system, and pursued their application to Meiji Japan's military forces.