Abstract
This paper analyses how the conceptual and therapeutic formation of Japanese traditional medicine (Kampo) has been socially constructed through interactions with popular interpretations of illness. Taking the example of emotion-related disorders, this paper focuses on the changing meaning of constraint (utsu) in Kampo medicine. Utsu was once a name for one of the most frequently cited emotion-related disorders and pathological concerns during the Edo period. With the spread of Western medicine in the Meiji period, neurasthenia replaced utsu as the dominant emotion-related disorder in Japanese society. As a result, post-Meiji doctors developed other conceptual tools and strategies to respond to these new disease categories, innovations that continue to influence contemporary practitioners. I begin this history by focusing on Wada Tōkaku, a Japanese doctor of the Edo period who developed a unique theory and treatment strategy for utsu. Secondly, I examine. Yomuto Kyūshin and Mori Dōhaku, Kampo doctors of the early twentieth century, who privileged neurasthenia over utsu in their medical practice. The paper concludes with a discussion of the flexibility and complexity of Kampo medicine, how its theory and practices have been influenced by cross-cultural changes in medicine and society, while incorporating the popular experience of illness as well.
Highlights
Traditional medicine tends to be associated with the image of a continuous and unchanging form of knowledge inherited from the past
In the post-Meiji period, when neurotic theory came to Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, Kampo doctors abandoned the notion of ki constraint and adopted neurasthenia from their Western medicine counterparts as the primary lens for understanding emotion-related disorders (Watarai 2003; Kitanaka 2004a, b)
This paper has presented a historical account of the theoretical and therapeutic transformation of Kampo medicine through the treatment of emotionrelated disorders
Summary
Traditional medicine tends to be associated with the image of a continuous and unchanging form of knowledge inherited from the past. Keywords Kampo medicine · Emotion-related disorders · Utsu · Neurasthenia · Constraint ‘In a peaceful age, there is no one who does not suffer from the constraint in the liver and gallbladder’.3 in the post-Meiji period, when neurotic theory came to Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, Kampo doctors abandoned the notion of ki constraint and adopted neurasthenia from their Western medicine counterparts as the primary lens for understanding emotion-related disorders (Watarai 2003; Kitanaka 2004a, b).
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