Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan

Abstract

Health care in contemporary Japan - a modern industrial state with high technology, but a distinctly non-Western cultural tradition - operates on several different levels. In this book Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney provides a detailed and historically informed account of the cultural practices and cultural meaning of health care in urban Japan. In contrast to most ethnomedical studies, this book pays careful attention to everyday hygienic practices and beliefs, as well as presenting a comprehensive picture of formalized medicine, health care aspects of Japanese religions, and biomedicine. These different systems compete with one another at some levels, but are complementary in providing health care to urban Japanese, who often use more than one system simultaneously. As an unequalled portrayal of health care in a modern industrial, but non-Western, setting, it will be of widespread interest to scholars and students of anthropology, medicine, and East Asian studies.