Introduction

Abstract

This chapter begins by examining medicine as a business. It investigates how modern medicine spread not just through state-supported institutions and networks of like-minded practitioners but also through a variety of actors engaged in market relations. The chapter also studies how the pharmaceutical industry promotes this tacit hegemony by fostering medical knowledge and shaping patterns of consumption through the manufacture and sale of medicines. Using the case of Hoshi Pharmaceuticals — a short-lived company known for its connections to the Japanese state and its imperial project — the chapter explores how the pharmaceutical industry served as an intermediary for instilling the values of a modern medicinal culture that supported Japan's national development and imperial expansion. By following Hoshi's involvement in commodities such as opium, quinine, and patent medicines across Japan and its expanding empire (and beyond), the chapter connects the dreams and schemes of politicians and industrialists to the innovations of scientists and the productive power of labor, not only in Japan and the rest of East Asia but in places like Peru, the Dutch East Indies, and the United States.