Treating emotion-related disorders in Japanese traditional medicine: language, patients and doctors

Abstract

This paper analyses how the conceptual and therapeutic formation of Japanese traditional medicine (Kampo) has been socially constructed through interactions with popular interpretations of illness. Taking the example of emotion-related disorders, this paper focuses on the changing meaning of constraint (utsu) in Kampo medicine. Utsu was once a name for one of the most frequently cited emotion-related disorders and pathological concerns during the Edo period. With the spread of Western medicine in the Meiji period, neurasthenia replaced utsu as the dominant emotion-related disorder in Japanese society. As a result, post-Meiji doctors developed other conceptual tools and strategies to respond to these new disease categories, innovations that continue to influence contemporary practitioners. I begin this history by focusing on Wada Tōkaku, a Japanese doctor of the Edo period who developed a unique theory and treatment strategy for utsu. Secondly, I examine. Yomuto Kyūshin and Mori Dōhaku, Kampo doctors of the early twentieth century, who privileged neurasthenia over utsu in their medical practice. The paper concludes with a discussion of the flexibility and complexity of Kampo medicine, how its theory and practices have been influenced by cross-cultural changes in medicine and society, while incorporating the popular experience of illness as well.

Illustration 1

Fourteen courtesans inside the abdomen 十四傾城腹の内 (58–59) (Fourteen courtesans inside the abdomen (by Shiba 1793) is a parody of the acupuncture text Japanese annotation of the fourteen vessels 十四経絡発揮和解 by Okamoto Ippōshi 岡本一抱子, which is a commentary on Annotation of fourteen vessels 十四経発揮, a Chinese acupuncture text of the Yuan period by Hua Poren 滑伯仁)

Illustration 2

An advertisement for ‘Leben’, a medicine for neurasthenia, appearing in the Osaka-Asahi Newspaper, 29 June 1929, Osaka, Asahi-Shimbun-sha