Project Leader
Anatole Bernet (PhD candidate)
Sciences Po Center for History (Paris)
Project
The project focuses on the academic elite that emerged at the end of the Tokugawa period, as part of the birth of a “hygienic modernity” (Rogaski, 2004) in Japan. It examines the origins of the first medical graduates (igaku hakushi) and their interactions within a recomposing Japanese society in the early Meiji period. In addition to interpersonal relationships, the project also examines the relationships that individuals maintained with a variety of newly created institutions.
Research Objectives
This project aims at highlighting the continuation of an already existing aristocratic endogamy through the medium of health, as well as its intertwining with new types of kinship-like allegiances based on affiliation to an institutional or academic framework. It furthermore wishes to assess the extent to which this emerging network of sanitary elites has influenced Imperial Japan’s health policies from the Meiji Restoration to the Second Sino-Japanese War.