Dawn of the modern neurology in Japan

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The modern neurology was introduced into Japan at the end of 19th century by three persons. Hiroshi Kawahara, Professor of Internal Medicine at Aichi Medical School (forerunner of the University of Nagoya, School of Medicine), wrote a textbook of clinical neurology in 1897. He is also the discoverer of bulbospinal muscular atrophy, upon which he wrote a paper in Japanese in 1897. Kinnosuke Miura was one of the pupils of Charcot in Paris. Miura was deeply impressed by Charcot’s method of clinical investigation and wrote a paper on hysterical monoplegia in French in 1892 under the guidance of Charcot. He proposed to the Japanese Government to isolate a special department of neurology at the University of Tokyo in 1897, but his proposal was not accepted and he became Professor of the Department of Internal Medicine of the University of Tokyo. In order to introduce the clinical examination of Charcot into Japan, Miura asked to a pupil of him, Tsunemaru Satoh, to translate Charcot’s Tuesday Lessons (1887-1888, 1888-1889) into Japanese. Satoh translated them from the German edition, completed to translate all the Tuesday Lessons into Japanese, and published the translations serially in a Japanese medical journal “Tokyo Iji Shinshi (New Medical Journal of Tokyo”. He later published them into three volumes of book from 2006 to 2011. Satoh became Director of the Japanese Red Cross Hospital. Due to the great efforts of these trail-blazers, the modern neurology took a firm root in Japan at the beginning of 20th century.