Beriberi in Modern Japan: The Making of a National Disease

242 Pages·2012·2.933 MB·English

by  Alexander R. Bay

In modern Japan, beriberi (or thiamin deficiency) became a public health BAY Beriberi in Modern Japan
problem that cut across all social boundaries, afflicting even the Meiji Emperor.
During an age of empire building for the Japanese nation, incidence rates in
The Making of a National Disease
the military ranged from 30 percent in peacetime to 90 percent during war. B
Doctors and public health officials called beriberi a “national disease” because e
r
it festered within the bodies of the people and threatened the health of the
i Alexander R. Bay
empire. Nevertheless, they could not agree over what caused the disease, b
e
attributing it to a diet deficiency or a microbe.
r
In Beriberi in Modern Japan, Alexander R. Bay examines the debates over i

the etiology of this “national disease” during the late nineteenth and early i
n
twentieth centuries. Etiological consensus came after World War I, but the

M
struggle at the national level to direct beriberi prevention continued, peaking
during wartime mobilization. War served as the context within which scientific o
d
knowledge of beriberi and its prevention was made. The story of beriberi
e
research is not simply about the march toward the inevitable discovery of “the r
beriberi vitamin,” but also the history of the role of medicine in state making n

and empire building in modern Japan. J
a
Alexander R. Bay is assistant professor of history at Chapman University. p
a
n
Cover image: The imperial army, Northern China
occupation forces, in the field. Ryōyū 12 (August 1937).
Cover design: Maureen Ballatori
668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA
P.O. Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.urpress.com
Beriberi in Modern Japan
BBaayy..iinndddd ii 1100//2266//22001122 66::0044::3311 PPMM
Rochester Studies in Medical History
Senior Editor: Theodore M. Brown
Professor of History and Preventive Medicine
University of Rochester
ISSN 1526-2715
The Mechanization of the Heart: Health and Zionism: The Israeli Health Care
Harvey and Descartes System, 1948–1960
Thomas Fuchs Shifra Shvarts
Translated from the German by
Death, Modernity, and the Body:
Marjorie Grene
Sweden 1870–1940
The Workers’ Health Fund in Eretz Israel Eva Åhrén
Kupat Holim, 1911–1937
International Relations in Psychiatry:
Shifra Shvarts
Britain, Germany, and the
Public Health and the Risk Factor: United States to World War II
A History of an Uneven Medical Revolution Edited by Volker Roelcke, Paul J. Weindling,
William G. Rothstein and Louise Westwood
Venereal Disease, Hospitals and the Urban Poor: Ludwik Hirszfeld: The Story of One Life
London’s “Foul Wards,” 1600–1800 Edited by Marta A. Balińska and
Kevin P. Siena William H. Schneider
Translated by Marta A. Balińska
Rockefeller Money, the Laboratory and
Medicine in Edinburgh 1919–1930: John W. Thompson:
New Science in an Old Country Psychiatrist in the Shadow of the Holocaust
Christopher Lawrence Paul J. Weindling
Health and Wealth: Studies in History and Policy The Origins of Organ Transplantation:
Simon Szreter Surgery and Laboratory Science, 1880-1930
Thomas Schlich
Charles Nicolle, Pasteur’s Imperial Missionary:
Typhus and Tunisia Communities and Health Care:
Kim Pelis The Rochester, New York, Experiment
Sarah F. Liebschutz
Marriage of Convenience: Rockefeller International
Health and Revolutionary Mexico The Neurological Patient in History
Anne-Emanuelle Birn Edited by L. Stephen Jacyna and
Stephen T. Casper
The Value of Health: A History of the
Pan American Health Organization The Birth Control Clinic in a Marketplace World
Marcos Cueto Rose Holz
Medicine’s Moving Pictures: Medicine, Health, Bacteriology in British India:
and Bodies in American Film and Television Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics
Edited by Leslie J. Reagan, Pratik Chakrabarti
Nancy Tomes, and Paula A. Treichler
Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China
The Politics of Vaccination: Practice and Policy Xiaoping Fang
in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland,
Beriberi in Modern Japan:
1800–1874
The Making of a National Disease
Deborah Brunton
Alexander R. Bay
Shifting Boundaries of Public Health:
Europe in the Twentieth Century
Edited by Susan Gross Solomon,
Lion Murard, and Patrick Zylberman
BBaayy..iinndddd iiii 1100//2266//22001122 66::0044::5511 PPMM
Beriberi in Modern Japan
The Making of a National Disease
Alexander R. Bay
BBaayy..iinndddd iiiiii 1100//2266//22001122 66::0044::5522 PPMM
Copyright © 2012 by Alexander R. Bay
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no
part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published 2012
University of Rochester Press
668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
www.urpress.com
and Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydellandbrewer.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-427-7
ISSN: 1526-2715
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bay, Alexander R.
Beriberi in modern Japan : the making of a national disease / Alexander R. Bay.
pages ; cm. — (Rochester studies in medical history, ISSN 1526-2715 ; v. 24)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58046-427-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Beri-beri—Japan—History.
2. Diet—Japan—History. I. Title.
RC627.B45B29 2012
613.2'5—dc23
2012036248
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
This publication is printed on acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America.
BBaayy..iinndddd iivv 1100//2266//22001122 66::0044::5522 PPMM
To my mom:
She’s the greatest.
(My dad isn’t half-bad either)
BBaayy..iinndddd vv 1100//2266//22001122 66::0044::5522 PPMM
BBaayy..iinndddd vvii 1100//2266//22001122 66::0044::5522 PPMM
Contents
List of Illustrations viii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Medicine, Power, and the Rhetoric of Empire 1
1 The Geography of Affliction: Beriberi in Edo and Tokyo 11
2 Putting the Laboratory at the Center 30
3 Beriberi: Disease of Imperial Culture 52
4 Empire and the Making of a National Disease 87
5 The Science of Vitamins and the Construction of Ignorance 106
6 The Rice Germ Debate: Total Mobilization and the
Science of Vitamins in the 1930s 128
Conclusion 152
Notes 159
Bibliography 205
Index 227
BBaayy..iinndddd vviiii 1100//2266//22001122 66::0044::5522 PPMM
Illustrations
Figures
2.1 Incidence rates from Ryūjō 44
3.1 Rice, barley, and beriberi incidence rates in the
Konoe Division, 1886–96 73
3.2 Manpower lost in the army due to disease, 1878–93 76
3.3 Overview of beriberi incidence rate and diet during the
Russo-Japanese War 82
6.1 Cross-section of rice grain 134
6.2 Rice mill diagram 142
Tables
2.1 Beriberi Hospital data (corrected) 35
2.2 Beriberi incidence rates in the navy, 1878–84 46
2.3 Beriberi incidence rates in the navy, 1878–86 47
3.1 Army diet in 1889 60
3.2 Mori Rintarō’s nutritional tests 61
3.3 Beriberi incidence rates in the navy, 1878–88 64
3.4 Sino-Japanese War disease incidence rates 66
3.5 Beriberi incidence rates in Taiwan, 1895–1902 69
3.6 Navy diet during Sino-Japanese War 70
BBaayy..iinndddd vviiiiii 1100//2266//22001122 66::0044::5522 PPMM
Acknowledgments
I can still hear the booming voice of the late Jeffrey P. Mass, who in his tough-
love mentoring drove home the point, “Only you can fi x your paper!” Upon
completion, I indeed have to shoulder the burden of any and all errors or short-
comings; nevertheless, I am indebted to numerous friends, colleagues, mentors,
and institutions.
I would like to thank my editor, Theodore Brown at the University of Roches-
ter Press, for his early interest in my work and constant support throughout the
writing process. James Bartholomew kindly read a semifi nal draft, and this book
benefi ts from his expertise concerning the history of science and medicine in
Japan. William B. Hauser provided important advice concerning late-game edit-
ing. The feedback from Sarah Cypher at The Threepenny Editor was invaluable.
The anonymous readers for the University of Rochester Press provided enlight-
ening suggestions for reshaping the manuscript into a publishable piece. I also
owe many thanks to Brett Walker for providing extensive feedback. My good
friend and classmate from Stanford Brett Whalen read and commentated on
almost every chapter. Through his comments and continued involvement in my
work, he has been a constant source of encouragement, exemplifying the aca-
demic spirit of camaraderie.
Suzuki Akihito acted as my faculty sponsor at Keiō University during a Japan
Society for the Promotion of Science postdoctoral fellowship that supported
research and writing throughout the 2008–9 academic year. I owe Suzuki-sensei
and his assistant Iwamoto Chiemi many thanks for arranging travel funds and
other logistical matters that made my sojourn truly productive. Ichikawa Tomō
facilitated several visits to the Research Institute of Humanity and Nature in
Kyoto under the auspices of Moji Kazuhiko for archival work as well as presenta-
tions of my scholarship. At Aoyama Gakuin, I presented research and received
important feedback from the Asian Association for the Social History of Medi-
cine, headed by Iijima Wataru. I continue to benefi t from an ongoing research
fellowship at the Kitasato Institute, sponsored by Kosoto Hiroshi, chair of the
History of Medicine Department within the Kitasato University Oriental Medi-
cine Research Center, which gives me access to the department’s library as well
as the archives at the Shirogane Library. James Baxter, former editor of the Japan
Review, helped me formulate an early iteration of this project, and I would like
to acknowledge that the Japan Review has kindly allowed for the reproduction of
material that appeared in Alexander R. Bay, “Beriberi, Military Medicine, and
Medical Authority in Prewar Japan,” Japan Review 20 (2008): 107–59.
BBaayy..iinndddd iixx 1100//2266//22001122 66::0044::5522 PPMM