Demonic Affliction or Contagious Disease? Changing Perceptions of Smallpox in the Late Edo Period

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which smallpox epidemics were perceived in premodern Japan. It is a study of the ways of thinking that crystallized around the struggle to eradicate smallpox, and aims to clarify the formative elements of the now extinct cult of the smallpox deity. In this struggle against smallpox, practices based in magical thinking and measures that were strikingly modern in nature existed side by side until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the practice of vaccination finally prevailed.