Popularizing Organ Transplantation in Japan: Travelling Iceboxes as the ‘Relay of Life’

Abstract

In Japan, the ‘relay of life’ has become a common metaphor for organ transplantation. Its prevalence has owed much to the cultural construction of a breakthrough motif vis-à-vis Japan's first legally and publicly accepted transplant case in 1999. The media coverage of this event forged a specific imagery in which the relay of life model and a hopeful breakthrough message were inscribed. This breakthrough motif then developed into the general metaphor for transplant medicine in Japan. Previous research has arguably ascribed the Japanese metaphor to the endeavour, by promoters of transplant medicine, to avoid invoking the Euro–American idea of a transplanted organ as a gift, in a culture that sees gift exchange (including organ transplantation with living donors) as a practice that takes place principally within the personalized network. However, this does not explain the relay metaphor per se, and is therefore an incomplete account. It is necessary to examine the reasons behind the choice of this specific metaphor, what the relay of life actually signifies, and how the metaphor was articulated and distributed. This enquiry illuminates the aforementioned developing process of the relay metaphor, whilst also taking account of the then Japanese public debating discourse about transplant medicine vis-à-vis its metaphoric idiom in the English language, the ‘gift of life’. It demonstrates that the relay metaphor in Japan was not established through the deliberate efforts of those promoting transplantation, but rather was constructed via media coverage of a breakthrough case in 1999.