Full Description
Fujimoto, Homei, and Nakamura bring together the perspectives of women engaging in professional medical work across the expanse of the modern Japanese Empire (1868-1945). Through translations of primary source documents in three East Asian languages, this collection provides a window into the experiences of women working in a variety of medical professions, including doctors, nurses, midwives, and nutritionists. The voices of these women, collected from books, magazines, diaries, roundtable discussions, and oral histories, speak of the challenges, hopes, triumphs, and at times despair that women faced in their medical studies and workplaces.
While the women represent a kaleidoscope of political views both critical and supportive of the Japanese empire, this book demonstrates the significance of the Japanese nation and empire for many of these women. Their stories show how they pushed boundaries, traversed national or regional borders in search of medical opportunities, or attempted to carve out new spaces for women through their service as medical professionals.
This work, which includes little studied sources never before accessible in English, will appeal to scholars and students of history, Asian studies, gender history/studies, and the history of science, technology, and medicine.
Contents
Introduction: Restoring the Voices of Medical Women in the Japanese Empire
1. Critique: Layers of Translation: A Linguistic Strategy for the Professionalization of Midwifery in the Early Meiji Period
Text: A Manual for Midwives
2. Critique: With Scornful Laughter Rumbling in Her Ears: Ogino Ginko's Critics and Supporters
Text: The Career of the First Modern Female Doctor
3. Critique: "Home Doctors": Yoshioka Yayoi's Strategy to Promote Women Doctors in Modern Japan
Text: The Future of Women Doctors and Their Missions
4. Critique: Glass Ceilings and Factory Floors: Kondō Toshiko and the Dawn of Public Health Nutrition in Japan
Text: Rootwork
5. Critique: Resilient Paths: Opportunities and Challenges for Chinese Women Doctors Trained in Imperial Japan
Texts: About Myself; Discussing Medical Equipment on the Home Front in Light of Martyr Liang's Death; Impressions of a Woman Doctor Returning to China after Studying in Japan
6. Critique: Carving Space: Women Physicians in Colonial Korea
Text: A Roundtable with Women Physicians
7. Critique: Navigating Gender and Medicine: A Comparative Study of Female Doctors in Colonial Taiwan
Text: An Interview with Shi Man
8. Critique: Nursing War: Military, Medicine, and the Question of Femininity in Modern Japan
Text: A Military Nurse
9. Critique: Providing Care on the Militarized Islands: Nursing Activities in Wartime Okinawa
Text: District Nurse Activities Amidst the War
10. Critique: Saving the Lives of Settlers: District Nurses and Rural Healthcare in Hokkaido
Text: The Spirit of Compassion: Diaries of District Nurses in Hokkaido
