Smallpox and the Epidemiological Heritage of Modern Japan: Towards a Total History

Abstract

This article examines one of the long-term structural forces that contributed to the making of public health in Modern Japan. My overall argument is that the history of public health should be conceived as a total history, encompassing not just political, administrative, and scientific factors but also natural, social, and economic factors. Elsewhere I have discussed two of these factors in some detail, both of which were long-term structural forces resulting from the interactions of different realms: 1) the effect of the topography and the pattern of the use of land; and 2) the effect of the market as a medium for people's behaviour seeking the prevention of the disease. Here I will argue that the Japanese long-term experience of diseases provided another structural force that shaped public health in Japan. The long-term cumulative factor can be called the ‘epidemiological heritage’ of Japan.