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Illness and Epidemics in Premodern & Early Modern Japan

Primary Sources

Textual Sources

Nara Japan, 749–770: A Study and Translation of Shoku Nihongi, Tenpyō Shōhō 1-Hōki 1, 4 vols. Translated by Ross Bender. CreateSpace, 2015–2016. 

See particularly entries surrounding the death of Retired Emperor Shômu in 756:

  • Tenpyô Shôhô 8.4.29  壬子 mizunoe-ne [June 1, 756]  

  • Tenpyô Shôhô 8.5.23  丙子  hinoe-ne [June 24, 756]  

  • Tenpyô Shôhô 8.5.24  丁丑  hinoto-ushi [June 25, 756]  

  • Tenpyô Hôji 2.8.18  丁巳 hinoto-mi [September 24, 758]  

    [Emperor recommends chanting the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra as a prophylactic measure against disease in all provinces.]

  • See 737, 6th–9th months for devastation of the smallpox epidemic that killed the heads of the four branches of the Fujiwara house (Fusasaki, Maro, Muchimaro & Umakai).

Macomber, Andrew. "Moxibustion for Demons: Oral Transmission on Corpse-Vector Disease." In Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources, edited by Pierce Salguero, New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. 

Visual Sources

Ippen hijiri-e (ca. 1299). Shinshū Nihon emakimono shūsei, vol. 11, and Nihon emakimono zenshū vol. 10.

Yamai no sōshi, reproduced in full in Nihon emakimono shūsei, v. 9, and Nihon emakimono zenshū, v. 6. Also available online.

Secondary Sources

Burns, Susan. "Constructing the National Body: Public Health and the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Japan." In Nation Works. Asian Elites and National Identities, edited by Timothy Brook and Andre Schmid, 17–50. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. 

Burns, Susan. Kingdom of the Sick: A History of Leprosy in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2019.

Como, Michael. "Horses, Dragons, and Disease in Nara Japan." Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 34, no. 2 (2007): 393–415.

Como, Michael. Weaving and Binding: Immigrant Gods and Female Immortals in Ancient Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2008.

Farris, William Wayne. Daily life and demographics in ancient Japan. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 2009.

Farris, William Wayne. "Diseases of the Premodern Period." In Cambridge World History of Human Disease, edited by Kenneth Kiple, 376–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1993.

Farris, William Wayne. Japan's Medieval Population: Famine, Fertility, and Warfare in a Transformative Age. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2006.

Farris, William Wayne. Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan, 645–900. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Frank, Bernard. Démons et jardins. Aspect de la civilisation du Japon ancien. Paris: Collège de France, Institut des hautes études japonaises, 2011. 

Fujiwara Yū. Nihon shippei-shi 日本疾病史, 1912 [reissued most recently as vol. 122 of Heibonsha's Toyo Bunko series (1969)]

Fujiwara Yu. Nihon igaku shi. Shinri sha, 1904.

Goble, Andrew. Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011. 

Gramlich-Oka, Bettina. "The Body Economic: Japan's Cholera Epidemic of 1858 in Popular Discourse." East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 30 (2009): 32–73.

Hattori Toshiro 服部敏郎. Edo jidai igaku shi no kenkyū. 1988.

Hattori Toshiro. Heian jidai igaku no kenkyū. Kuwana bunseido, 1955.

Hattori Toshiro. Kamakura jidai igaku shi no kenkyū. Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1964.

Hattori Toshiro. Muromachi Azuchi Momoyama jidai igaku shi no kenkyū. Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1971.

Hattori Toshiro. Nara jidai igaku shi no kenkyū. Tokyodo, 1945.

Hattori Toshiro. 王朝貴族の病状診断. Yoshikawa kobunkan, 2006.

Hurst, G. Cameron. "Michinaga's Maladies. A Medical Report on Fujiwara no Michinaga." Monumenta Nipponica 34, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 101–112.

Jannetta, Ann. Epidemics and Mortality in Early Modern Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.

Janetta, Ann. The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the 'Opening' of Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

Johnston, William. "A Genealogy of Tubercular Diseases in Japan." Social History of Medicine 7, no. 2 (1994): 247–67.

Johnston, William D. "Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Demographic Change in Early Modern Japan." East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 30 (2009): 73–92.

Kasuya Makoto 加須屋誠. Yamai no Sōshi『 病草紙』. Chūō kōron bijutsu shuppan 中央公論美術出版, 2017. 

Kim, Sujung. Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian "Mediterranean" Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2020. 

"Korera sōdō: byōsha to iryō コレラ騒動 : 病者と医療." Nihon no rekishi 日本の歴史 97. Kinsei kara kindai e 近世から近代へ. Shūkan Asahi Hyakka 週刊朝日百科. No. 625, (1988): 257–288.

LaFleur, William. "Hungry Ghosts and Hungry People: Somaticity and Rationality in Medieval Japan." In Fragments for a History of the Human Body, edited by Michel Feher, Volume 1, 271–303. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989.

Miyata Noboru 宮田登 . Kinsei no Hayarigami 江戸のはやり神．評論社／ちくま学芸文庫, 1993. 

Nakamura, Ellen Gardner. Practical Pursuits: Takano Chōei, Takahashi Keisaku, and Western Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005. 

Ooms, Hermann. Imperial Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2009.

Rotermund, Hartmut. "Demonic Affliction or Contagious Disease? Changing Perceptions of Smallpox in the Late Edo Period." Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 28, no. 3–4 (2001): 373–398.

Rotermund, Hartmut. Hōsōgami, ou la petite vérole aisément : matériaux pour l’étude des épidémies dans le Japon des XVIIIe-XIXe siècles. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1991. 

Rotermund, Hartmut. "Illness Illustrated: Socio-Historical Dimensions of Late Edo Measles Pictures (Hashika-e)." In Written Texts Visual Texts: Woodblock-Printed Media in Early Modern Japan, edited by Susanne Formanek and Sepp Linhart, 251–282. Hotei, 2005. 

Smits, Gregory. "Warding off Calamity in Japan: A Comparison of the 1855 Catfish Prints and the 1862 Measles Prints." East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 30 (2009): 9–31.

Tatsukawa Shōji 立川昭二. Edo Yamai no Sōshi: kinsei no byōki to iryō 江戸 病草紙―近世の病気と医療. Chikuma Shobō 筑摩書房, 1998.

Tatsukawa Shōji 立川昭二. Nihon no byōreki 日本人の病歴. Chūkō shinsho 中公新書, 1976.

Tsuchida Naoshige 土田直鎮. Nihon no rekishi: Ocho no kizoku. Chūō kōron, 1965.

Twitchett, Denis, "Population and Pestilence in T’ang China." Studia Sino-Mongolica: Festschrift fur Herbert Franke, edited by Wolfgang Bauer, 42–53. Wiesbaden, 1979. 

Warren, Emily. "Sick Days in the Konjaku Monogatari-shū: Healing and Epidemics in Late Heian Japan." M.A. diss. University of Southern California, 2014. 

Watanabe, Takeshi. "Reexamining the Yamai no Sōshi: Defining Illness, the Ill, and the Normal." In Yamai no sōshi, edited by Kasuya Makoto and Yamamoto Satomi. Tokyo: Chūō kōron bijutsu shuppan, 2017.

Yamazaki Tasuku 山崎佐. Nihon ekishi oyobi bōekishi 日本疫史及防疫史. Kokuseido, 1931. 

Yiengpruksawan, Mimi. "The Visual Ideology of Buddhist Sculpture in the Late Heian Period as Configured by Epidemic and Disease." In Iconography and Style in Buddhist Art Historical Studies, 69-79. Kobe: Kobe University Press, 1995. 

Additional Readings on Modern Japan

Johnston, William. The Modern Epidemic: A History of Tuberculosis in Japan. Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Monographs, 1995.

Perelman, Elisheva A. American Evangelists and Tuberculosis in Modern Japan. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2019.

"Special Issue: Vulnerable Populations Under COVID-19 in Japan." The Asia Pacific Journal, edited by David Slater. 

Additional Readings of Interest (non-Japan)

Camus, Albert. The Plague. London: Vintage International, 2012.

Crosby, Alfred, Jr. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972.

Crosby, Alfred, Jr. Ecological Imperialism: Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2015.

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel. Norton, 1998.

Gottfried, Robert. The Black Death. The Free Press, 1983.

McNeill, J. R. Mosquito Empires. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2010.

McNeill, William. Plagues and Peoples. Doubleday, 1976.

Morris, R. J. Cholera 1832: The Social Response to an Epidemic. Croom Helm, 1976.

Thornber, Karen Laura. Global Healing: Literature, Advocacy, Care. Leiden: Brill, 2020.

Notes

This reading list was generously crowdsourced through the Premodern Japanese Studies (PMJS) community.

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