From the Netherlands to Japan: communicating psychiatric practice in the 1830s

Abstract

This article explores an example of the transmission of Dutch psychiatric knowledge to Japan in the Edo period (1600–1868), through the translation of a case study first published by Schroeder van der Kolk in 1826. The translation appeared in an innovative new journal of Western medicine edited by the Japanese rangaku (Dutch-learning) scholar, Mitsukuri Genpo. The case study describes the symptoms and treatment of a woman who experienced delusions following an ear infection, in terms largely familiar to the Japanese doctors of the time. This translation provides opportunities to consider the globalization and localization of psychiatric knowledge, the medicalization of mental health care in Japan, and the growing interest in Western psychiatry before its official introduction to Japan after 1868.