A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan

Abstract

As a researcher in medical anthropology, I found A Disability of the Soul to be a deeply moving travelogue. The book begins with the author, Karen Nakamura, stepping off of the train in Urakawa, a small and remote town in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. Nakamura had traveled to Urakawa to write an ethnography of mentally ill people living there. Ethnography is the term applied to a depiction of the daily realities of a group of people, an account written by anthropologists based on interviews and participant observation. Nakamura’s ethnography is based on fieldwork conducted at the Urakawa Red Cross Hospital, where she observed psychiatric inpatients, Bethel House, a multifaceted organization that supports mentally ill people who are living in the community, and the Acorn Society, a self-directed support group of people in recovery. Bethel House has recently become an officially recognized social welfare organization and its business that helps Bethel residents to develop social ties has become a limited liability company. These groups are supported in part by local Christian churches, whose origins can be traced to missionary efforts by Protestant Congregational churches.