Inoculating Modernity: Disease and Vaccination in Early Modern Japanese History

Description:
Inoculating Modernity: Disease and Vaccination in Early Modern Japanese History

This short lecture discusses the introduction of the Jennerian smallpox vaccine to early modern Japan, emphasizing how the technology of vaccination intermingled with cross-cultural exchange, local and foreign medical practices, and European and American imperialism. We begin with a short discussion of Dutch learning in Tokugawa Japan and the perils of smallpox before turning to the history of variolation in East Asia and following that through to vaccination. Variolation, a technique for creating immunity through controlled exposure to a live, but weakened smallpox virus, emerged early in Chinese history but never gained popularity in Japan. It would take the lengthy efforts of a series of foreigners, as well as the careful support and study of a great many Japanese "Dutch scholars" and medical doctors, to bring the vaccine to Japan from Europe and provide the means to eradicate smallpox.

References:
Jannetta, Ann. Epidemics and Mortality in Early Modern Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

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

Kiple, Kenneth. The Cambridge World History of Human Disease. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Miyajima Mikinosuke. “The History of Vaccination in Japan.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 16 (1923): 23–26. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2103585/

Nakayama Tetsuo. “Vaccine Chronicle in Japan.” Journal of Infection and Chemotherapy 19:5 (2013): 787–798.