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1 creation฀of฀the฀sanba฀฀ in฀meiji฀japan At the beginning of the twentieth century, many women in Japan gave birth without assistance, although a few women had access to the aid of traditional midwives. Gradually Japanese cultural practices changed and more women turned to the services of the modern midwife, or sanba, especially for difficult births. In 1907, for instance, thirteen-year-old Shin Tanaka1 watched as a sanba saved her mother’s life in their village in Kanagawa prefecture (or province) in central Japan. The midwife’s help made a deep impression on Shin. Shin’s mother had called on a midwife after two long days of labor with her fifth birth. Although the baby was stillborn, her mother lived through the ordeal, unlike four other unattended women in the neighborhood who died in childbirth. Shin never forgot that midwife and the important role she played in aiding her mother. After working as a teacher and a nurse for several years, she decided to become a midwife. She trained at the Sakai School of Midwifery and later opened her own midwifery school, the Tanaka Maternity Hospital and Midwifery School.2 The history of Japanese American midwives begins in Japan with the creation of the sanba, or modern, licensed midwife.3 The sanba was a product of national and international politics, including Japan’s quest for empire. The figure of the sanba drew on two of Japan’s routes to modernity and international power: more education for women and knowledge of western science. Midwifery reform took place during the Meiji Period (1868–1912), when the Japanese government standardized midwifery through educational and licensing requirements. Nonetheless, women as well as men, midwives as well as state officials and doctors, constructed the sanba of modern Japan. Japanese women who trained as midwives used Japan’s quest for empire and modernity to pursue their own personal and professional interests. Many young, urban women benefited from the increased opportunities to japanese฀american฀midwives 14 earn a living. Between 1880 and 1920, the sanba, or state-certified midwife , began to replace the toriagebaba, or traditional midwife, who lacked formal education and licensing. Government regulation had both positive and negative consequences for midwives. Even as midwife licensing placed limitations on who could practice midwifery and what services midwives could provide, it institutionalized the field of midwifery in modern Japan to the benefit of a new generation of women workers and birthing women. The Quest for Empire The history of midwifery in Japan was shaped by the nation’s imperial quest. Interest in public health and healthy babies was bound up with Japanese nationalism and resistance to foreign domination. In this sense, the modernization of midwifery in Japan was part of a pattern, long noted by scholars, in which Japan sought to become a modern, imperial nation by using the tools of the West to compete with and protect itself from western imperialism. Modernity meant such developments as industrialization, the emergence of the nation-state, and an enlarged middle class.4 As a small island nation, Japan maintained its autonomy by arming itself in new ways and absorbing useful practices from others. In order to avoid the subjugation China had faced at the hands of western nations, Japan embraced, rather than rejected, the ways of outsiders. Unlike China, who in the nineteenth century had resisted western ideas and practices, Japan borrowed from them. Japan was able to achieve its goals because it was a small nation with a strong, centralized system that controlled various aspects of society, including education and the police. As it had done earlier in its history, Japan survived and flourished by changing, although the extent and nature of the change was complicated. The goal was to escape western control, modernize in western ways, and still remain thoroughly Japanese.5 In the last third of the nineteenth century, Japan created a nation and an empire. Japan had been closed to outsiders from the West, except for a few Dutch, since the mid-seventeenth century of the Tokugawa Period (1603–1867). Then, in 1853, U.S. President Millard Fillmore sent the American commodore Matthew C. Perry to Japan. Perry arrived with four warships in Edo (later Tokyo) Bay and used cannon power to force Japan to sign a treaty of trade with the United States. In 1868 Japan entered a new era with the overthrow of the Tokugawa government and restoration of political power to the emperor, who took...

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