Epidemics Past and Science Present: an Approach to Cholera in Nineteenth-Century Japan

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Epidemics Past and Science Present: an Approach to Cholera in Nineteenth-Century Japan EPIDEMICS past AND SCIENCE PRESENT: AN approach to CHOLERA IN NINETEENTH-century japan WILLIAM JOHNSTON · wesleyan UNIVERSITY ABSTRACT CHOLERA IN JAPAN: FROM EPIDEMIC WAVES TO ENDEMIC STASIS The history of cholera in nineteenth-century Japan challenges the idea that the disease was primarily episodic. Cholera, at least in the way we understand the Historians and public health specialists have frequently disease today, probably first reached Japan in 1822. One described cholera in terms of global pandemics, with five contemporary Japanese hand-written account quotes Jan occurring in the nineteenth century, one in the early twentieth Cock Blomhoff, the Director of the Dutch trading mission on century, and one having started in 1961 and continuing Deshima in Nagasaki between 1817 and 1824, who claimed today. In Japan, however, cholera remained endemic the disease had spread from Batavia.1 The same manuscript from no later than 1877 until the 1920s, a period during that quotes Blumhoff contains another work that describes which several epidemic outbreaks occurred. Biological and cholera as having spread that year throughout western ecological research on the cholera bacillus from the last two Honshu where it struck old and young, strong and weak and decades explains the reasons why cholera became endemic rapidly caused death among many.2 Other contemporary in nineteenth-century Japan as well as the patterns that epidemic cholera took earlier in the century. Furthermore, 1 Korera, part 1 of Bunsei Mizunoeuma Aki Tenkōbyō Korera Mo- cholera’s endemicity in Japan challenges the boundaries of the rubusu Keikin [The Experience of Cholera Morbus in the Fall concept of pandemic as applied to that disease. Epidemic of 1822] (anonymous hand-copied, non-paginated manuscript in the Fujikawa Archive, Kyoto University, not dat- ed). 2 Mizunoeuma Tenkōbyō Setsu [An Explanation of the Epidemic of 1822], part 2 of Bunsei Mizunoeuma Aki Tenkōbyō Korera Moru- The above image, kindly provided by Waseda University, depicts the main Edo crematory during the cholera epidemic of 1858. 28 HARVARD ASIA QUARTERLY 14.4 (2012) | Epidemics Past and Science Present Epidemics Past and Science Present | HARVARD ASIA QUARTERLY 14.4 (2012) 29 accounts claim that the disease entered Japan from Korea localized or have been a less severe form than the cholera that via Tsushima, first reaching the city of Hagi (in present day appeared during the nineteenth century. The cholera bacillus Yamaguchi prefecture); this followed an active trade route is an evolving organism and the disease-causing form that between Korea and Japan.3 Despite historians’ attempts to spread globally from the early nineteenth century might not establish the correct route of entry, there is no reason that have emerged until then.6 Yet without corroborating genetic cholera could not have entered Japan from more than one material from contemporary cholera bacilli or more detailed route during this or later epidemics. Indeed, multiple entry textual evidence it is impossible to say with certainty whether points would have increased the chances of an infectious the disease reached Japan before 1822. Of interest here is not disease becoming epidemic. the accuracy of this claim but the fact that when cholera did The same manuscript that quotes Blumhoff also arrive in Japan in 1822 it carried a sense of familiarity, at least includes a separate work called Korori Ben Naihen [A Treatise to some observers. on Cholera, Vol. 2] by a physician from Aki (in present-day Hirahira then contradicts his previous assertion when Hiroshima Prefecture) named Hirahira Yūteki. In his account he states, “this disease resembles previous epidemics but is of the epidemic, Hirahira presents contradictory yet intriguing not the same; it resembles kakuran but is not [the same as] assertions about cholera in Japan. The first is a claim of earlier kakuran.”7 The contradiction was probably unimportant cholera epidemics. He writes, “I have heard that some fifty to Hirahira. Many Japanese medical works at that time years ago there was a great epidemic of this disease and those uncritically compiled earlier information on a subject and who contracted it died.”4 Together, the historical and scientific did not attempt to establish what we now consider scientific suggest that this is not completely implausible. There is textual facts even in the sense in which Ludwik Fleck uses the term.8 evidence that cholera was endemic in the Indian subcontinent Kakuran was a disease name for a range of gastro-enteric long before the first pandemic erupted in 1817. European disorders less severe than what we now call cholera. As a seafarers to the Indian subcontinent reported cholera as medical term its use parallels the European use of cholera early as the sixteenth century and during the late eighteenth morbus, which was usually but not universally distinguished century there were reports of the disease among British troops from cholera Asiatica – keeping in mind that nosology at in India and on British ships that had docked there.5 If that the time in both Europe and Japan was a loose science. In were indeed the case, there is some possibility that cholera comparison to later epidemics this one was relatively mild. reached Japan before 1822. British ships could have passed It spread from Kyushu and western Honshu to Osaka and the disease to the Dutch who in turn could have brought it Kyoto and as far east as Shizuoka but did not reach Edo. It to Japan. There are no records of a cholera epidemic in Japan had dissipated by the beginning of 1823.9 during the 1770s but the disease might either have remained It is notable that the 1822 epidemic brought with it the word korori, which combined both a pun and Japanese busu Keikin. transliteration of the European word “cholera.” The more 3 Yamamoto Shun’ichi, Nihon Korera Shi [A History of Cholera in scholarly-sounding term korera also became widely used, Japan] (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1982), 6-7. especially in medical texts, but throughout the nineteenth 4 ūteki, Hirahira Y Korori Ben Naihen (hand-copied, non-paginat- century the word korori remained common as a word for ed manuscript in the Fujikawa Archive, Kyoto University, dated 1842 in afterword). cholera. In his otherwise medically-oriented text, Hirahira 5 Edmund Charles Wendt, in A Treatise on Asiatic Cholera (New noted two bits of doggerel that played with this word:10 York: William Wood and Co., 1885), 3-5, cites a 1503 descrip- Korori to kokete sora ibiki tion of “Asiatic Cholera” by Gaspar Correa, a member of Vasco [Tumbling down and falling over, pretending to snore.] de Gama’s expedition, as well as other descriptions from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries including an especially 6 Shah M. Faruque and John J. Mekalanos, “Phage-bacterial Inter- devastating epidemic among British troops in 1782 that reached actions in the Evolution of Toxigenic Vibrio cholerae,” Virulence the British fleet. Robert Pollitzer, in his classic history of the 3 (2012): 1-10. disease, documents numerous accounts of cholera outbreaks be- 7 Hirahira Yūteki, Korori Ben Naihen. fore 1800. See R. Pollitzer, “Cholera Studies, 1. History of the 8 Ludwik Fleck, The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact Disease,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 10 (1954): (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). 421-427. Biologists continue to find this evidence persuasive. 9 Mizunoeuma Tenkōbyō Setsu, part 2 of Bunsei Mizunoeuma Aki See, for example, Rita R. Colwell, “Global Climate and Infec- Tenkōbyō Korera Morubusu Keikin. See also Yamamoto, Nihon tious Disease: The Cholera Paradigm,” Science, New Series, 274 Korera Shi, 5-13; Nakajima Yōichirō, Byōki Nihon Shi [Disease (1996), 2025; and John J. Mekalanos, Eric J. Rubin and Mat- in Japanese history] (Kyoto: Yūsankaku, 1982), 46-8; and Ann thew K. Waldor, “Cholera: Molecular Basis for Emergence and Bowman Jannetta, Epidemics and Mortality in Early Modern Ja- Pathogenesis,” FEMS Immunology and Medical Microbiology 18 pan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 157-60. (1997): 241. 10 Hirahira Yūteki, Korori Ben Naihen. William Johnston received his BA from Elmira College in Elmira, New York, and his AM in Regional Studies – East Asia and PhD in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University. He is Professor of History, East Asian Studies, and Sci- ence in Society at Wesleyan University, where he is also a Faculty Fellow at the College of the Environment for the 2012-13 academic year. At present he is working on a book about the history of cholera in Japan. This paper received support from the Japan Foundation. 28 HARVARD ASIA QUARTERLY 14.4 (2012) | Epidemics Past and Science Present Epidemics Past and Science Present | HARVARD ASIA QUARTERLY 14.4 (2012) 29 avoided the second cholera pandemic that scholars now date as having occurred between 1829 and 1851. Japan’s second epidemic, which continued from 1858 into 1859, took place during what is considered the third global pandemic, which dates between 1852 and 1859. This epidemic was severe: it started with an infected American sailor from the USS Mississippi, which had docked in Nagasaki in the sixth month (by the Japanese calendar) of 1858. The disease quickly swept through western Japan and reached Edo the following month. From there it spread throughout most of the country.15 During the seventh and eighth months of 1858, death registers in Edo recorded over 268,000 deaths from all causes, an astounding mortality rate of approximately 26,000 per 100,000 of population. Because no other epidemic disease was present at the time, the vast majority of this excess mortality would have Figure 1: Kanagaki Robun, Ansei Umanoaki Korori Ryūkō Ki 16 Source: Waseda University. been from cholera. It is of note that according to Yamamoto Shun’ichi, the physician and professor of medicine at Tokyo Yomego no hirune mo korori to se University who wrote a comprehensive history of cholera in [Like a new bride taking a nap, tumbling right over.] Japan, the disease virtually disappeared during the winter of Both point to the rapidity with which cholera claimed 1858-1859, only to reappear in the summer of 1859, then its victims.
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