Arrival In Japan Research Articles

근세일본의 남만무역과 예수회 선교사추방령에 대한 연구

Purpose: This paper is an investigative study of the process from the introduction of flintlock guns by Polpogal trading ships in 1543, to Francisco Xavier's arrival in Japan six years later, to the edict expelling Jesuit missionaries in 1587. Research design, data, and methodology: This was the period when Nobunaga of Japan appeared and ruled the country, and Nobunaga committed suicide due to the Honno-ji incident and Hideyoshi Toyotomo became his successor. Then came the Azuchi-Momoyama period, when Hideyoshi unified Japan and there was serious conflict between trade with Portugal and Christian missionary work. Results: During the early modern Japanese Christian century (1549-1650), Christianity experienced an initial missionary period, a period of growth and development, and finally the appearance of martyrs. Nobunaga embraced Christianity to get rid of Buddhism, and Hideyoshi distributed an edict expelling Jesuit missionary Christianity to protect trade. During the Kirishitan century (1549-1650) in early modern Japan, Christianity went through a period of growth, a period of secrecy, and ultimately the emergence of martyrs. Nobunaga accepts Christianity to eliminate Buddhism, and Hideyoshi to promulgate an edict expelling Jesuit missionarie Christianity to protect trade. Implications: Starting with Sumitada Omura in 1563, Yoshitaka Kuroda in 1577, Sorin Otomo in 1578, Harunobu Arima in 1580, Yukinaga Konishi in 1584, and others were baptized and a group of so-called Christian daimyo emerged. They burn down Japan's shrines and Buddhism, dedicate Nagasaki as an ecclesiastical ordinance, and Hideyoshi expresses his disquiet and promulgates an expulsion order for the Jesuit missionaries.

Mitigation of effects of heat and humidity at Tokyo 2020 Olympic Summer Games equestrian events

Abstract The physiological challenge of Tokyo 2020, the XXXII Olympic Summer Games held in July-August 2021, was adaptation to training and competing in the subtropical summer weather conditions. Dressage, Eventing, and Jumping horses (n = 248) arrived at 05:00-06:30 h on six European and two Australian overnight chartered flights 8-to-10 days prior to beginning competition. All horses were housed at Japan Racing Association Equestrian Park in Bagi Koen. Eventing Cross Country was held an hour’s drive away at Sea Forest. All stables and conveyances were air-conditioned. Cooling stations were available at both venues and consisted of tall arched tents with large containers of water chilled to ≤15 °C, cooling/misting fans, and rubberised flooring for traction safety. Training hours began at 06:00 h daily with a mandatory mid-day break between 11:00 and 15:00-16:00 h when arenas were re-opened until 22:00. Daytime temperatures ranged 28.8-36.8 °C and peak humidity remained high throughout the Games (58-97%). There were no heat-related illnesses in horses observed by clinic veterinarians who were present at all training and competition rings whenever horses were exercising. Individual horses received elective intravenous fluids (10 litre minimum) on arrival in Japan, after cross country, and/or before departure. Reported ailments included post-transport pneumonia, exercise-induced pulmonary haemorrhage, orthopaedic injury, laceration, impaction colic, acute piroplasmosis, and laminitis. A persistent brisk westerly wind began nightly around 17:00 h, making evening competition sessions cooler than daytime training sessions. It was concluded that safe competitions were held despite persistently elevated subtropical ambient heat and humidity conditions.

Menstrual Abnormalities in Female International Students in Japan: Changes during Pre-Arrival, Difficult, and Current Periods.

The number of Japan's international students has rapidly increased in the last decade. This study examines the relationship between menstrual abnormalities in cycle and symptoms, stress level, and lifestyle of female international students in Japan across three time periods, namely pre-arrival, difficult, and current time periods. A cross-sectional design was employed, and data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire, including the menstrual distress questionnaire (MDQ), between December 2022 and February 2023. The questionnaire was distributed to 56 female international students from two universities in Japan, and a total of 29 valid responses were collected. We found varying menstrual cycle abnormalities and severity of menstrual symptoms across three time periods, with the difficult period after arrival in Japan displaying the highest symptom severity. Higher stress levels were significantly associated with more severe menstrual symptoms. Lifestyle habits such as alcohol consumption were also linked to menstrual symptoms. The current study emphasizes the importance of providing menstrual education, support, and resources to address international students' unique challenges in managing their menstrual health while studying abroad. By promoting awareness, education, and access to healthcare services, universities may contribute to international students' well-being and academic success.

Health of technical intern trainees: One-year qualitative longitudinal study after arrival in Japan

Objective This study aimed to qualitatively analyze changes in the health status and factors affecting technical intern trainees over time during their first year in Japan and examined the necessary support for healthy living.Methods The study targeted sixteen technical intern trainees who had been living in Japan for almost four months. The study was conducted quarterly in a year, using semi-structured interviews to measure physical and mental health conditions, injury or illness, subjective symptoms, and training and daily life conditions. Dietary content was assessed using photographs taken by participants. Health-check results were collected when available. Data were classified into the six components of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), and further qualitative data were analyzed inductively for health-affecting factors using qualitative longitudinal analysis.Results The types and timing of illnesses, injuries, subjective symptoms, and health-affecting factors varied. Stress and concerns were experienced by more than 56.3% of each study's participants and more than 44.4% had the possibility of a mood or anxiety disorder. The participants with heavy labor had musculoskeletal disorders in the first half of the study period. The health-check results were in Japanese and some participants did not fully understand them. Fifteen categories were extracted as health-affecting factors:《sleeping conditions》,《joy of independence and anxiety》,《decreased vitality and fatigue》,《undertaking the training》,《communication skills and efforts to learn Japanese》,《efforts for self-health care》,《adaptation to Japanese lifestyle》,《leisure and interaction with Japanese people》,《religious activities》,《training environment》,《living environment》,《support from friends, family and workplace》,《natural environment and economic trends》,《saving-oriented lifestyle》, and《motive for coming to Japan and self-evaluation after one year》.Conclusion The technical intern trainees experienced various physical and psychological symptoms. Support in maintaining and promoting positive aspects of health-affecting factors and removing negative aspects is important for the health of trainees. In addition, it is important to support the improvement of the health literacy of trainees by offering information on exercise facilities and medical institutions providing health-check services in multiple languages, and improving means of communications through cooperation with related organizations and the use of regular channels by trainees. Furthermore, involving healthcare professionals in "regional councils" is necessary.

Gastrointestinal endoscopy trends in a designated hospital for specified infectious diseases in Japan during the dawn of the "living with COVID-19" era.

January 2020 marked the very early period of SARS-CoV-2's arrival in Japan. At the time, we immediately and strictly adopted the use of enhanced PPE, including a N95, gown, gloves, eye protection, and an apron, during every endoscopic procedure for every patient, with or without COVID-19. One reason why we use enhanced PPE for every patient is because all endoscopic procedures should be considered aerosol-generating procedures, and another reason is that asymptomatic patients with COVID-19 cannot be identified during a pandemic. The volume of endoscopic screening/surveillance endoscopies decreased markedly, but therapeutic endoscopies did not decrease. In contrast, urgent endoscopic hemostasis has increased more than ever. The most common reason for the increase might be that the lack of protective equipment and the need for medical staff to deal with an unknown virus, creating a pandemic panic in emergency medicine.

Characteristics and Treatment Outcomes among Migrants with Pulmonary Tuberculosis: A Retrospective Cohort Study in Japan, 2009-2018.

This study aimed to describe characteristics and treatment outcomes of overseas-born pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) patients in Japan, and identify the factors associated with “treatment non-success”. We conducted a retrospective analysis of overseas-born patients with drug-susceptible PTB using cohort data of PTB cases newly registered in the Japan tuberculosis (TB) surveillance system between 2009 and 2018. Overall, 9151 overseas-born PTB cases were included in this study, and 70.3% were aged 34 years old or younger. “Students of high school and higher” (28.6%) and “regular workers other than service related sectors” (28.5%) accounted for over half of the study population, and they have continued to increase. Overall, the treatment success rate was 67.1%. Transferred-out constituted the largest proportion (14.8%) among the treatment non-success rate (32.9%). Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed patients whose health insurance type was “others and unknown”, including the uninsured (adjusted OR (AOR) = 3.43: 95% Confidence Intervals (CI) 2.57–4.58), those diagnosed as TB within “one year” (AOR = 2.61, 95% CI 1.97–3.46) and “1–5 years” (AOR = 2.44, 95% CI 1.88–3.17) of arrival in Japan, and males (AOR = 1.34, 95% CI 1.16–1.54), which were the main factors associated with treatment non-success. These findings imply that Japan needs to develop TB control activities considering the increasing trends of overseas-born PTB patients, the majority of whom are young and highly mobile. There is a need to pay greater attention to overseas-born PTB patients diagnosed within a short duration after entering Japan, who may be socially and economically disadvantaged for their treatment completion.

The Discourse of Self-learning: An Analysis of Japan’s EPA Programme for Healthcare Workers from Southeast Asia

ABSTRACT Japan signed Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam in 2008, 2009 and 2014 respectively, each of which includes a scheme that encourages the movement of healthcare workers into Japan. This scheme has remained a subject of intense scrutiny as a model of continuous employment of migrant workers from Southeast Asia. Applicants are required to complete one year of Japanese language training prior to working at the host institutions, and are expected to sit the Japanese-language healthcare licensure examination within three to four years of their arrival in Japan. This article examines the policy discourse of language learning practices and environments, which are important parameters for ensuring participants’ ongoing employment under this programme. The major finding is that the excessive promotion of self-learning among migrant workers correlates with a lower level of support from host institutions for their language learning. I argue that the Japanese government has shifted the responsibility for resultant negative consequences – such as the institutional burden of on-the-job training and the low exam pass rate – to the migrant workers by encouraging linguistic entrepreneurship.

In His Father’s Footsteps? Ahmed Münir İbrahim’s 1910 Journey from Harbin to Tokyo as a Member of the First Ottoman Student Delegation to Japan

In the historiography of Japan’s Interaction with the Turkish and the Muslim World, Ahmed Münir İbrahim (1887-1941) has been overshadowed by his father, Abdürreşid İbrahim (1857-1944). Abdürreşid, a Russian Tatar scholar and journalist, spent five months in Japan in the first half of 1909. After his journey, he published a two-volume travelogue entitled Alem-i İslam ve Japonya’da İntişar-ı İslamiyet in Istanbul in 1910. This travelogue has remained one of the most important sources for the history of early Turkish-Japanese relations and has predominantly been regarded as an expression of pan-Islamist and pan-Asianist thinking. Similar to his father, Münir too traveled to Japan in December 1910 as a member of the first Ottoman student delegation. Münir and his two companions, Hasan Fehmi and Mehmed Tevfik, were sent to Japan at the request of the pan-Asianist society Ajia Gikai to take up their studies in Tokyo. After his arrival in Japan, Münir published a brief, serialized travelogue in the Kazan newspaper Beyanülhak, which relates the students’ journey from Harbin to Tokyo, alongside other articles on Harbin and Japan. While Münir’s articles in the Ottoman journal Sebilürreşad and the Japanese journal Daitō have recently been scrutinized by historians, his travelogue in Beyanülhak has to date remained completely obscure. This article will, first, provide a concise discussion of the Ottoman student delegation to Japan and, second, examine key aspects of Münir’s travelogue, which may provide historians with important insights into the more mundane aspects of Turkish-Japanese exchanges behind the idealizing visions of pan-Islamism and pan-Asianism.

Providing Japanese health care information for international visitors: digital animation intervention

BackgroundOver 24 million international visitors came to Japan in 2016 and the number is expected to increase. Visitors could be at a risk of illness or injury that may result in hospitalization in Japan. We assessed the effects of a four-minute digital animation titled Mari Info Japan on the level of anxiety experienced by international visitors to Japan.MethodsWe conducted a non-randomized, controlled study at Narita International Airport outside Tokyo in December 2014. On the first day, we recruited international visitors for the intervention group at predetermined departure gates and, the following day, we sampled visitors for the control group at the same gates. We repeated this procedure twice over 4 days. The intervention group watched the digital animation and the control group read a standard travel guidebook in English. After receiving either intervention, they completed a questionnaire on their level of anxiety. The outcome was assessed using the Mari Meter-X, The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Form Y (STAI-Y), and a face scale, before and immediately after the intervention. We analyzed data with Wilcoxon rank sum tests.ResultsWe recruited 265 international visitors (134 in the intervention group, 131 in the control group), 241 (91%) of whom completed the questionnaire. Most of them had no previous Japanese health information before arrival in Japan. The level of anxiety about health services in Japan was significantly reduced in the intervention group (Mari Meter-X median: − 5 and 0, p < 0.001 and STAI-Y median: − 3 and 0, p < 0.001). The face scale analysis showed no significant difference.ConclusionsWatching a digital animation is more effective in reducing anxiety among international visitors to Japan compared with reading a standard brochure or guidebook. Such effective animations of health information should be more widely distributed to international visitors.Trial registrationUMIN-CTR (University Hospital Medical Information Network Center Clinical Trials Registry), UMIN000015023, September 3, 2014.

Effect of target temperature management at 32–34 °C in cardiac arrest patients considering assessment by regional cerebral oxygen saturation: A multicenter retrospective cohort study

AimTarget temperature management (TTM) is used in comatose post-cardiac arrest patients, but the recommended temperature range is wide. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of TTM at 32–34 °C while considering the degree of cerebral injury and cerebral circulation, as assessed by regional cerebral oxygen saturation (rSO2). MethodsThis is a secondary analysis of prospectively collected registry data from comatose patients who were transferred to 15 hospitals in Japan after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) from 2011 to 2013. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality at 90 days after OHCA, and the secondary outcome was favorable neurological outcomes as evaluated according to the Cerebral Performance Category. We monitored rSO2 noninvasively with near-infrared spectroscopy, which could assess cerebral perfusion and the balance of oxygen delivery and uptake. ResultsWe stratified 431 study patients into three groups according to rSO2 on hospital arrival: rSO2 ≤40% (n = 296), rSO2 41–60% (n = 67), and rSO2 ≥61% (n = 68). Propensity score analysis revealed that TTM at 32–34 °C decreased all-cause mortality in patients with rSO2 41–60% (average treatment effect on treated [ATT] by propensity score matching [PSM] −0.51, 95%CI −0.70 to −0.33; ATT by inverse probability of treatment weighting [IPW] −0.52, 95%CI −0.71 to −0.34), and increased favorable neurological outcomes in patients with rSO2 41–60% (ATT by PSM 0.50, 95%CI 0.32–0.68; ATT by IPW 0.52, 95%CI 0.35–0.69). ConclusionTTM at 32–34 °C effectively decreased all-cause mortality in comatose OHCA patients with rSO2 41–60% on hospital arrival in Japan.

A Career of Japan: Baron Raimund von Stillfried and Early Yokohama Photography by Luke Gartlan

Reviewed by: A Career of Japan: Baron Raimund von Stillfried and Early Yokohama Photography by Luke Gartlan Kerry Ross A Career of Japan: Baron Raimund von Stillfried and Early Yokohama Pho tography. By Luke Gartlan. Leiden: Brill, 2016. 384 pages. Hardcover, €103.00/$128.00. In the last decade, several studies have emerged that explore nineteenth-century visual culture in Japan. A Career of Japan: Baron Raimund von Stillfried and Early Yokohama Photography by Luke Gartlan is a welcome addition to this growing field of research. Despite its seemingly narrow focus on the activities of the Austrian commercial photographer Baron Raimund von Stillfried (1839–1911), who lived and worked intermittently in Japan from the mid-1860s through the early 1880s, the book offers a view into some of the most pivotal political and cultural developments of the tumultuous bakumatsu and early Meiji periods. Stillfried’s photographic activities were based in Yokohama, a critical imperial “contact zone” where vital social, political, and economic exchanges occurred among local officials, entrepreneurs, and the expatriate community. Photography emerged here as a profitable commercial trade and a critical government tool; Stillfried had a hand in both endeavors. Until now, however, his contribution to the culture and commerce of photography in Yokohama has received little serious scholarly attention. Gartlan excavates Austrian and Japanese archival sources to construct what he calls a “new biography” of Stillfried in which heretofore neglected materials are used not to create a unified historical narrative of the photographer’s life, but rather to explore the “fissures and shifts in his identity and practice” that “emphasize the contested nature of visual practice at the site of cross-cultural production” (p. 5). [End Page 107] Gartlan follows Stillfried’s little-known biography and artistic output to demonstrate the complexities and contradictions in the emergence of the commercial photography market in 1860s Yokohama. The exploration of Stillfried’s path prior to his arrival in Japan—his early life and arts education in Austria, service as a military officer from 1859 to 1863, and eager participation in the Austrian volunteer army in Mexico from 1865 until 1867—sets the theoretical backdrop for one of Gartlan’s central arguments: that most historians dealing with agents of Western imperialism have failed to take into account the radical differences in experience between those from Western European countries with substantial East Asian empires and those from other powers, like the Austro-Hungarian empire, with largely unfulfilled imperial aspirations. The ambivalent status of the Austrian empire, according to Gartlan, informed Stillfried’s conflicted status as an imperial photographer and a cultural intermediary while in Japan. Gartlan traces the changing market demands and domestic pressures that influenced Stillfried’s photographic practice in Japan, offering a nuanced view into the inner workings of treaty-port photography at the time. He shows that Stillfried was both an artist and an entrepreneur and explores the deeply interwoven aesthetic and commercial aspects of his photographic production. He also argues that the rise of Japan’s domestic photographic industry was critical in shaping changes in Stillfried’s aesthetic approach. Stillfried’s early work included landscapes that captured processes of modernization within Japan, challenging narratives about the supposedly untouched nature of the country that were already circulating in Europe and the United States and that often aligned classical Western civilization with a (fundamentally flawed) image of mid-nineteenth-century Japanese society as not yet tinged by modernization. Shortly thereafter, Japanese photographers (some of whom, like Usui Shūzaburō, were likely trained by Stillfried) began to create those desired views of Japan; since they also charged less money than Stillfried, this constituted a significant threat to his dominance in the globetrotter and expatriate market. In response, Stillfried’s work changed: as Gartlan explains, in the late 1860s he turned to carefully staged studio work that eschewed the references to modernization featured in his earlier landscapes. Gartlan, moreover, describes Stillfried’s shift toward experimentation with watercolors and overpainted photos, which the photographer termed “photocrayons” (p. 237), as a result of both his wish to expand his aesthetic repertoire and a series of legal cases in the consular courts that curtailed his control over his pictorial inventory. Stillfried did not limit...

Late MioceneCyclocarya(Juglandaceae) from Southwest China and Its Biogeographic Implications

Premise of research. Cyclocarya Iljinskaya (Juglandaceae) is a genus with a single living species that is endemic to central and south China. The genus has an abundant North American and Eurasian fossil record from the Paleocene to the Pliocene, documenting its spread across Europe to western Siberia during the Oligocene and its arrival in Japan by the Miocene. However, there have been no fossil occurrences of Cyclocarya near its modern distribution. In this study, we describe a new species of Cyclocarya from the upper Miocene Nanlin Formation in Lianghe County, western Yunnan Province, southwest China, and discuss its biogeographic implications.Methodology. We examined the fossil fruit using LM and SEM, and we compared its morphology with fruits of fossil Cyclocarya and extant Cyclocarya paliurus (Batalin) Iljinsk.Pivotal results. The fossil fruit of Cyclocarya simipaliurus sp. nov. consists of a small nutlet that is surrounded by a circular and flange-like wing. The nutlet is circular in plan view and o...

Nanban Folding Screen Masterpieces: Japan-Portugal XVIIth Century by Alexandra Curvelo

Portuguese Studies vol. 32 no. 2 (2016), 262–69© Modern Humanities Research Association 2016 Reviews Alexandra Curvelo, Nanban Folding Screen Masterpieces: Japan-Portugal XVIIth Century (Paris: Chandeigne, 2015). 175 pages, numerous colour illustrations. Print. Also available in Portuguese and French translations. Reviewed by Jeremy Roe (Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas — Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Centro de História d’Aquém e d’Além-Mar / Portuguese Centre for Global History (CHAM)) Nanban Folding Screen Masterpieces provides a concise and lavishly illustrated introduction to a corpus of artworks that offers a visual testimony to Portugal’s trading and missionary activity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ninety-one folding screens, each measuring around a metre and a half in height and over three in length, depicting the Portuguese or nanban-jin [barbarians from the south], have been catalogued by Japanese researchers, although another screen appeared on the art market in 2015. Curvelo comments that this ‘is an impressive number denoting the importance and popularity of this pictorial theme’ (p. 7), and her book focuses on thirteen screens to chart the development of this subject matter succinctly. The book opens with an introduction to the artistic, social and political context that shaped the representation of the nanban-jin as subject matter for these screens. Curvelo addresses the unification of early modern Japan before turning to discuss the development of the Kanō school of painting, whose painters are considered to have produced the most significant nanban folding screens. She explains how the Kanō school grew thanks to their ties with a succession of powerful patrons. Evidently, both the artists and their patrons developed a taste for what could be termed scenes of everyday life, and the arrival of Portuguese traders and missionaries provided a stimulus for a new facet of this subject matter. Detailed discussion of the function and reception of these paintings goes beyond the scope of Curvelo’s introduction, which instead concludes with a reflection on how to read these artworks, but throughout her text she alerts the reader to the critical issues and concerns that remain to be addressed by scholars. Curvelo continues by setting out a series of issues to be considered when studying these images, such as the superimposition of Japanese symbolism of the ship as bearer of good fortune onto the depiction of Portuguese caravels, a central motif. Trade is a key theme of these images and in relation to this Curvelo discusses how these screens are also testimony to the ‘hybridity’ of the Reviews 263 Luso-Asian encounter and later she examines a number that depict the world beyond Japan. In the first of three groups of nanban screens discussed by Curvelo the arrival and unloading of the Nau do trato, or black ship, appears on the lefthand screen, and, on the right-hand screen, the elaborate parade of Portuguese traders bearing clearly identifiable commodities amongst Japanese buildings and people. Curvelo’s painstaking selection of details enables close study of these complex images. It is clear how the rigging of the Portuguese ships fascinated the artists, with their eye for intricate depiction of detail, yet such alien elements were incorporated into their concern to hone the decorative potential of all the visual elements from natural phenomena, such as sea and trees, to the human figures and their garments. Curvelo traces the development of this first group of screens and comments on their many protagonists, along with their place in the social hierarchy of this rich cultural encounter. The depiction of the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries is an intriguing component as they are shown integrated into Japanese society, with their religious houses and rites. Given that the missionaries would be expelled from Japan in 1614 it is all the more striking that such scenes of integration became decorative motifs. In the second group of screens the left-hand screen shows the black ship being loaded and setting sail from a foreign land, while the right-hand screen shows its arrival in Japan and its cargo being unloaded. In this second group of paintings, with their contrasting depiction of both Japan and the barbarian world, there is a still richer wealth of details, including the...

All Astir

All Astir Mary K. Bercaw Edwards As I write this, we in the Melville world are looking forward to the Tenth International Melville Conference, “Melville in a Global Context,” to be held in Tokyo, Japan, June 25–29, 2015. A copy of the revised program can be downloaded from the Melville Society website <http://melvillesociety.org/>. The five-day conference includes a day-trip to cities by the sea in Kanagawa Prefecture, which are reminiscent of the days of Commodore Matthew Perry’s arrival in Japan in 1853. Melville wrote presciently in Moby-Dick about the aftermath of that encounter: “If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due” (chapter 24, “The Advocate”). The conference invites participants “to consider Melville’s deep interest in globalism, the many contexts in which his work has been and continues to be read, and the range of uses to which his writings have been put.” It includes speakers from throughout the Pacific and around the world and promises to be enriching, enlightening, and fun. I write not only with the joyful news of the upcoming conference but with sad news as well. We have recently lost three Melvilleans, two since the last issue of Leviathan appeared. Kathleen “Kay” E. Kier passed away at the beginning of March 2015. She served on the faculty of the English Department of Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY), for more than thirty years until her retirement in 2010. She supported the College’s Kay Kier Prize for an essay related to Herman Melville. Kay’s love for Melville’s works grew from vacations on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and her love of her father, who served in the U.S. Navy. Kay was a staunch advocate for public higher education and devoted to her alma mater, Queens College. I first encountered Kay when I read her investigation of Melville’s use of the “Beard” entry in the Penny Cyclopaedia for White-Jacket (“‘A Thing Most Momentous’? or ‘Part of the General Joke’?,” Melville Society Extracts 61 [1985]: 11–13) and heard Harrison Hayford’s warm and funny stories about her. My fondest memories of her are from the first international Melville conference in Volos, Greece, in 1997. As my father would have said, she was a “kick”—she was great fun. I always admired her devotion to public higher education. [End Page 117] Click for larger view View full resolution Kathleen “Kay” E. Kier. Photo courtesy of Peter Hamm. Many Melvilleans will remember meeting Kay at the Volos conference in 1997 and again at the Melville-Douglass conference in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 2005. Bob Wallace writes of first meeting Kay in Greece and calls her “such an engaging person.” Wyn Kelley adds: “I too met Kay in Volos and always appreciated her warm, welcoming spirit and wicked sense of humor.” Steven Olsen-Smith, co-editor of Melville’s Marginalia Online and Melville Society Treasurer, writes: “Kier’s Melville Encyclopedia [1990] is the most heavily thumbed student resource here in the MMO office. We acquired a second copy after coffee got spilt all over the first one a few years ago.” John Bryant, too, writes about the Encyclopedia: “Kay had an infectious good nature, and her encyclopedic work, which was based in part on a survey of the multivolume Penny Cyclopaedia, is a fine example of scholarly sleuthing of an important Melville [End Page 118] resource. During the mid-1990s when she was struggling for tenure, she asked me for a letter of support, which I was more than happy to give, and it gave me the opportunity to look more closely at the kind of critical thinking and not just hard work that goes into creating a Melville Encyclopedia. Some hint of that can be read in her 2007 review of Gail Coffler’s Melville’s Allusions to Religion in Leviathan 8.3 (our special issue on Japan).” I will end this set of reminiscences with Gail Coffler: “She [Kay] was great fun to be with. I met her at the start, through Don Yannella, and had good times with her...

Conrad and Lafcadio Hearn: Two Observant Wanderers Writing in Their Adopted Countries

Conrad and Lafcadio Hearn:Two Observant Wanderers Writing in Their Adopted Countries1 Yasuko Shidara (bio) INTRODUCTION In September 1922, Conrad, with kind hospitality, received a Japanese guest, Hidaka Tadaichi, professor of English literature at Waseda University, Tokyo. Hidaka had been a student of Lafcadio Hearn’s in Tokyo, and lived not far from him. According to Professor Hidaka’s memoirs “A Visit to Conrad,” Hidaka inquired of Conrad whether he had ever read any of Hearn’s works. Conrad answered, “Yes, I have read a few, such as Kokoro and Out of the East. They were very interesting. Reading them, I don’t know how many times I thought I’d like to go to Japan if there were a chance” (Okuda 82). Later in their conversation Conrad returned to this topic by asking Hidaka about Hearn’s family matters, such as whether his wife was Japanese and how many children he had. Conrad also wanted to know whether his own works were being read in Japan, and he hoped Hidaka would spread knowledge of them more widely (ibid. 84). This small scenario shows three modes of solidarity typical of Conrad: firstly, a collegial interest in writers who, like himself, had taken the East as their subject, writing from first-hand knowledge as he himself had done at the start of his literary career; secondly, the intent interest in his readership; and thirdly, a life-long sustained interest in the Eastern seas where he had sailed in voyages spanning seven years of his youth. In this essay I would like to explore the justification for putting Conrad and Hearn together, two writers who left their native Europe to wander into the remote corners of the world, writing in different genres, but each with his own observant eyes. [End Page 123] Although Conrad’s interest in Hearn is my starting point, there is need for some background, since although Hearn is a writer much studied in Japan, he is little known outside that context these days. As Federick R. Karl and Laurence Davies succinctly note in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, “Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) was born in the Ionian Islands to Greek and Irish parents; he worked as a journalist in the United States from 1869 to 87 and in Martinique from 1887 to 89. He spent the rest of his life in Japan, becoming a citizen in 1896. He wrote many studies, stories, and sketches of Japanese and Antillean life” (CL 4, 518). George Hughes comments further that Hearn’s “basic self-concept in Japan [was] that of a travel-writer,” who chose “entry and total immersion into the life of a foreign culture” (Hughes 206, 208), resulting in his accomplishment as a folklorist.2 Hearn is now “either forgotten or obscure to most Western readers” (Askew 44).3 But there were one or two decades when his books on Japan were regarded as the “sole authority” (Thomas 23). Indeed, one legacy of Hearn’s has entered world language in the word tsunami. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first occurrence of this word in English comes from Hearn’s sketch of a tsunami disaster, vividly written, included in his 4th volume, Gleanings in Buddha-Fields (1897). When Hearn died in Tokyo in September 1904 in the midst of the Russo-Japanese War, the German-language writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrote an obituary in Vienna, saying, “Japan lost its adopted son” (121). This expression reminds us perhaps of Conrad, too, who himself “felt adopted” both into the life of the sea, as he put it in A Personal Record, and also “adopted by the genius of the [English] language (v, 118).4 Within Japan, Hearn studies are flourishing, especially since the commemoration of the centenary of his arrival in Japan in 1890,5 including two international symposia (Hirakawa 1997, 2007) and the publication of a reliable encyclopedic reference book. Comparative studies have juxtaposed Hearn with Yeats and Bram Stoker, but not until now with Conrad.6 I. CONRAD’S ACCESS TO HEARN’S WRITINGS Edward Thomas, Lafcadio Hearn (1912) With the biographical studies well established for both writers, we can be reasonably sure that there was...

Vaccination and the politics of medical knowledge in nineteenth-century Japan.

The adoption of the cowpox vaccine in nineteenth-century Japan has often been seen as a more straightforward development than its introduction to other non-Western countries. However, the research leading to this conclusion has been based primarily on sources written by Japanese practitioners of Westernstylemedicine (ranpoˉ), while the perspectives of Chinese-style (kanpoˉ) practitioners,who were more numerous than ranpoˉ practitioners but less likely to have shown immediate enthusiasm for vaccination, have been largely neglected. Kanpoˉdoctors typically learned about vaccination from Chinese rather than European sources and often held an ambivalent attitude toward the vaccine’s foreign origins.This article develops an analysis of kanpoˉ writings on vaccination and suggests that skepticism about the vaccine remained widespread for at least a decade after its initial arrival in Japan, providing new insights into both the initial opposition and the subsequent acceptance of the technique.

The dawn of modern dentistry in Japan: The transfer of knowledge and skills from foreign dentists to Japanese counterparts in the Yokohama Foreign Settlement

Summary Modern Western dentistry was introduced to Japan by foreign dentists who arrived in Yokohama, after the opening of the country. The arrival in Japan of foreign dentists triggered the introduction of modern dentistry into Japan. We searched through advertisements in the English and Japanese language newspapers published in the Yokohama Settlement to trace the footsteps of these foreign dentists. This paper traces the early history of modern dentistry in Japan from 1865 to 1912 by dividing the period into four phases: Phase I (1865–1875), Phase II (1876–1889), Phase III (1890–1905), and Phase IV (1906–1912). W.C. Eastlack left America for a journey across the Pacific in January 1860. After setting up practices in Hong Kong and Shanghai, he arrived in Japan to open one at No. 108, Yokohama Foreign Settlement for 7 months starting on October 9th, 1865. He thus became the first foreign dentist in Japan, followed by colleagues who arrived in Yokohama and Kobe to start their own practices. These dentists hired Japanese dental assistants, who assimilated the technique of modern dentistry to become themselves professionals in their own right. Einosuke Obata, an assistant to St. G. Elliott, took the National Medical Licensure Examination to obtain a license to practice dentistry, thus becoming the first Japanese licensed dentist. This led in October 1883 to the establishment of new regulations for the Medical Licensure Examination to include dental subjects. In 1906, Japanese dental law was established.

Korean Books in Japan

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; This article examines the evidence for the importation of Korean books into Japan, including texts of both Korean authorship and Chinese authorship. Although Korean books had certainly reached Japan well before the 1590s there can be little doubt that the Japanese invasions of Korea in the last decade of the sixteenth century resulted in the widespread looting of Korean books and the arrival in Japan of Korean books on an unprecedented scale. However, there is both documentary evidence and the evidence of extant books in Japan to show that Korean books continued to be imported into Japan after 1600 and that they were highly valued there, particularly medical works of Korean authorship. Although there is little evidence of Japanese engagement with Korean vernacular writings, Korean writings in Chinese were frequently reprinted in Japan and these reprints are evidence of the esteem Korean texts enjoyed in Japan during the Edo period.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

The background of foreign patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and investigation of treatment results

This study focuses on the investigation of 35 foreign patients diagnosed as having pulmonary tuberculosis and treated at National Chiba-Higashi Hospital and the Chiba Anti-Tuberculosis Association between 1987 and 1991. All of the patients had lived in Japan less than five years. A large number of the patients were in their 20s. The chest X-rays of 24 cases (70%) revealed cavitary and sputum smear cultures for Mycobacterium tuberculosis were positive in 27 cases (77%). Many patients were in moderately advanced stages of the disease, becoming ill soon after their arrival in Japan, and being diagnosed symptomatically. Among the 35 cases, eight cases failed to finish treatment. Of those failing to finish, six were female and two were male. The results of sputum smear cultures of the patients failing to complete treatment revealed four cases that tested positive. Among those cases failing to complete treatment, four patients discharged themselves, three patients stopped during out-patient treatment, and one patient had to return to her home country because of a legal problem. A total of 14 patients were illegal immigrants: three of them failed to complete treatment because of their illegal status, and two of them due to unspecified reasons.

日本初のバレエ教師 G. V. ローシー 来日前の歩みを探る

日本初のバレエ教師 G. V. ローシー 来日前の歩みを探る