German-Japanese relationship in pathology and forensic medicine during the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Abstract

Since the last decades of the 19th century there has been intensive academic contact between German and Japanese pathologists and forensic physicians. In the late 1880 s the Japanese physician Moriharu Miura worked on behalf of the Japanese Government with Rudolf Virchow for several years. Close connections existed between the Freiburg Institute of Pathology and several Japanese scholars; very well known is the collaboration between Ludwig Aschoff and the Japanese pathologist Sunao Tawara. According to some forensic doctors, the first forensic physician in Japan was Wilhelm Doenitz who held the chair of anatomy in Tokyo and first practised forensic medicine part-time and an additional way, later as a full time forensic pathologist. In order to improve the education of Japanese forensic pathologists, K. Katayama was sent to Europe where he worked for 2 years with Liman in Berlin and for another 2 years with Hofmann in Vienna. Back in Japan he founded the Institute of forensic medicine at the university of Tokyo and in 1889 became head of Japanese forensic medicine. The paper examines the contact and the cooperation between German and Japanese physicians related to the development and establishment of forensic medicine in Germany and Japan.